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NYT Opinion Piece on DRM And P2P
bsartist writes "The NYT is running an opinion piece written by a working musician who has a pretty healthy dislike of copy protection and DRM. From the article: 'As for musicians, we are left to wonder how many more people could be listening to our music if it weren't such a hassle, and how many more iPods might have our albums on them if our labels hadn't sabotaged our releases with cumbersome software.'"
Sure... hindsight is always 20/20, but you have to figure, most signed artists had no idea what they were getting into. They are hapless garage bands that some bastard feels they can exploit to make a bit of coin.
Sure, they SHOULD have known. But when someone is waving your dream in your face, it is hard to think logically.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
I think the even bigger problem is that you haven't heard of 99.999999% of non-label bands. You at least have a shot when someone's paying you to put out an album. When you're on your own, you're out of luck.
--
RumorsDaily
Well, you're here now. So you tell us: what's good about DRM? What's good about taking control of someone's computer? What's good about encumbering CDs with vulnerable, untrustworthy software, surreptitiously installing it, and having it run in Ring 0 so that people can listen to a crude, lossy approximation of the music for which they have paid? What's so damn good about selling broken CDs?
I find it interesting that the more I read on music, the more apparent it is to me that there are a very few (dozens, maybe hundreds) out of the millions of bands that actually make rock-star kinda money.
For the rest: it's just a dream the label sold them.
I guess what I'm suggesting is that most bands are not giving up much 'fortune' without a major label. Most bands can probably make just as much money w/o the label as with, and this would leave the band to make their music, their way, and reach their fans which most claim to be the reason they started in the first place.
See the lil' secret that all middlemen don't want people to know is that they have no discernable skill of their own, other than profiting off the backs of others...(see patents & copyrights -- it's the middleman fighting for protections). The creators don't need middlemen, but middlemen sure as hell need the creative...
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
"Luckily, my band's recently released album, "Oh No," escaped copy control, but only narrowly. When our album came out, our label's parent company, EMI, was testing protective software and thought we were a good candidate for it."
Problem: Major record labels (or their parent companies) want to force copy protection onto the albums of their talent.
Solution: Don't sign with one of those labels, or make sure your contract includes stipulations that your albums will not have copy protection.
This opinion article is indicative of increasing artist awareness of how copy protection will hurt them -- the difficulty is that the labels still have more bargaining power for upcoming talent.
This is a great opportunity for a well-funded indie label to step up and fill the void, to attract talent by guaranteeing no copy protection.
If someone demonstrates to the major labels that it's beneficial to not require copy protection, they may follow suit -- though I'd speculate that copy protection is all about making sure the record-buying public still sees free copying & downloading as 'wrong.' What they'd really hate to see is most musinc 'consumers' feeling that it is normal and 100% acceptable to get all their music from filesharing.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Okay - so what's the choice?
You sign a restrictive agreement with a cartel that has absolute control over all marketting channels, or you wallow in obscurity forever. Are you surprised that some people go for the restrictive contract? It's the best they can get.
You sign a restrictive agreement with a cartel that has absolute control over all marketting channels, or you wallow in obscurity forever.
I think you really hit on it there. The cartel has control over all marketing channels, except one -- the Internet. But they're desperately trying to gain control over that one.
Think how much better a situation we'd be in if we just had compulsory licensing for Internet trading. In effect you'd pay a small tax on your broadband connection, and share files without limits. A rights collection organisation would be responsible for periodically analysing the sharing traffic and working out how to apportion the revenues of the tax to the artists, in proportion to how many people are listening or sharing their music.
Bands would actually compete to make better music and try to get as many people to share and listen to it as freely as possible.
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
I was pitching the idea of an online karaoke store to a karaoke label. Conversation went something like this;
me: "DRM will always be cracked, folks will find a way around, why bother?"
him: "It makes the labels comfortable"
Me: "Yah but the cats out of the bag, its open season on the net for filesharers"
him: "I like to quote my locksmith friend, locks aren't supposed to keep criminals out, they're supposed to keep honest people in"
I should have come back with "Oh so you think everyones dishonest do you?", but nah, I liked this guy.
Not that it will ever happen in our lifetime for audio files, but there will be some advancement in audio that will only be avaliable on DRM, it's only a matter of time. Maybe it will be some newfangled 42 channel lossless surround sound that we haven't even concieved of yet.
At some point, all these files floating around for free on the net are going to start sounding pretty crappy, and the DRM files will be the only ones that will be the MUST HAVE rage.
I sort of picture christmas with the family. I'm sitting there showing off some non DRM linux based audio juke that I can ssh into, compile my kernel on and browse the newsgroups, and my grease mechanic uncle will pull out the "Microwhore pocket media" device that straps to your chin and transmits 52 channel DRM audio through your jawbone. No matter how cool it is to other geeks I can run seti@home on my linux based juke, it won't matter to the other family members all pressing the micropoop to their chins and salivating from a near orgasmic audio experience.
This has been brought up a lot of times about OSS, GNU, linux stuff in general. We're going to be assed out when it happens, back here on slashdot complaining about the lack of linux driver support for playing back these drm audio.
DVD Jon will fly in wearing a blue leotard, red boots, red cape, and a tux logo in a diamond on his chest. He'll break the DRM again, we'll be happy for a while, but the rest of the consumer market will go on.
Smart people, tech savvy people are in the minority. I hate to say this, but it's true. Most of the world buys what the TV tells them to.
This musician should do what many others have done and start his or her own website. Make the music available there, free of charge or for a small fee.
How many musicians have succeeded in making a living this way? Without the exposure the record labels can give you (through their lock on radio) you aren't going to sell many songs. There may be one or two exceptions, (Ani DeFranco come to mind) but it's pretty rare.
If they were stupid enough to sign a restrictive contract with some media label, the just wait until the agreement expires.
Perhaps, but some contracts don't ever expire. I believe the contracts are usually based on # of albums, not a set amount of time. And guess what, the record company gets to decide when to release the album. So they can sit on it as long as they want, and you're f**ked.
And if you did get out of the contract, what are you going to do, get a better deal from a different record company? Unless you are already successful, it's not going to happen.
I'll repost this, since the AC got pushed down into the threshold basement.
Travel to http://www.bugmenot.com/ and you'll find that registration is never required again!
(Also comes complete with a firefox plugin)
"If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door." - Paul Beatty
DRM is "workable" so far only because it really impacts a minority. A growing minority, but a minority anyway. For most people, iTunes is seen as a "reasonable compromise" and they assume some unknown group they call "hackers" probably still "pirates" music.
Joe six pack couldn't care less.
Soon, however, you'll need a special monitor or a special TV to watch high quality video. That crosses the line. The industry as a whole is going to find out that you DO NOT MESS WITH THE TV. That, in the US, is sacred. Mess with the TV and you're a "damn govm't commie".
I predict that the requirement for special viewing hardware to "Close the analog hole" will go over about the same way Microsoft's attempt to tell I.T. directors they had to upgrade within 6 months or pay full retail. Anyone else remember that mistake?
All its going to do is wake up people who presently don't care to how over-reaching the policy is. The backlash will be fun to watch.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Unfortunately, DRM doesn't prevent people from making a copy of a file. What it does do is make it more difficult and illegal to make a copy; neither of these are sufficient barriers to stop a person from copying the file if they really want to. Thus, DRM does not prevent piracy; that's a myth.
However, DRM is very good at preventing legal copying of files. You can stop a customer from copying the music from their CDs to their MP3 player, which means that the customer will have to buy their music again in MP3 form - all the more profit for you. Similarly, you can use DRM to prevent your competitors from accessing your online music service, and use it to prevent free markets arising.
DRM is an excellent tool for restricting consumer freedom and choice. But that's all it's good for.
Now, where was the common sense of someone during the production process saying that it makes no sense to make an actual paying customer suffer through this insanity? I mean, if the copy actually was pirated then it would no longer have any restricted operations and the whole damn portion about piracy would have been removed. So the only people that are forced to endure such garbage are the very people who the commercial is not intended to address.
And that is why media companies are losing it. Copy protection and usage restrictions are nothing more than hassles for actual paying customers. And every time the content providers, whether it is music, movies, or videogames try to introduce another technological solution to their market problem, they only alienate paying customers. The actual people who are unwilling, uninterested, or unable to pay for the content just go out and get versions without the protection.
Great model.
There are many independent bands who do just fine for themselves financially. They're not pulling in millions, but they're living decently ... And then there's this very issue of freedom. Would you trade your freedom and integrity as an artists for money? A true artists, one who puts his or her work above all, most likely would not.
With all due respect, you just don't get it. IT nerds and performers think very differently about their careers, and it is probably useful to understand this difference if you want to understand the choices that each make.
It is a generally accepted principle in our capitalist world that there is a correlation between risks and rewards. The riskier a venture you undertake, the higher the rewards need to be, or else no one would undertake these risks. So far, so good.
Sysadmins, programmers and other nerd types typically follow a medium-risk, medium-return path. You won't make as much as the CEO, but in most cases you won't starve, either. You do a job that is fairly well respected in society and there is (generally, again) a reasonable expectation that you will be able to get a decent job.
Performers - actors, musicians, etc. - follow a high-risk, high-return path. Only a small percentage of people that want to make a living as performers are ever able to do so (imagine if 80% of CompSci graduates could never find a job programming but had to do it on the side while they worked at Starbuck's). They spend years waiting tables or playing in crappy local bars hoping to get their big break. So, when that chance does come, they grab onto it and they feel (rightly, I believe) that they deserve their success. Actors don't work crap jobs for years so they can turn down a $1 million paycheck in a big movie and say, "I don't want to work for a MPAA-affiliated studio!"
The same - by and large - goes for musicians as well. They are performers that (probably) busted their asses to get where they are, and they aren't going to give up a shot at the big time because of what DRM technology is put on their CDs (which generally isn't up to them anyway). It's like this for pro athletes as well, and many other professions where only a tiny percentage of those pursuing it will ever achieve success. (Interestingly, the only place where IT nerds typically do intersect with this world is those who start up their own companies - another high-risk, high-reward path. But these types are arguably a breed apart from most IT folk.)
So you, Mr. Programmer Guy, can talk all you want about how these people are sellouts and should be perfectly happy to just get by with a living wage, etc. However, if you are actually interested in understanding this phenomenon, then you need to understand that performers generally come from a mindset that is 180 degrees away from yours. Even if you don't empathize with this, you should make an effort to understand it.
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