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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.'"
I found that piece to be quite interesting.
What was said at the end, in particular, about the record labels feeling that because it targetted college students with the best access to P2P was the reason to put the DRM on it.
But the labels obviously don't see that that would only drive college students to download. If one person buys the CD in the college setting and it won't get on his iPod, he'll inform his friends and they won't buy it, no matter how great the CD is, and will instead go onto a P2P service and download it from a Linux/Mac/Shift-key user who ripped it in 10 minutes anyway.
I begin to wonder if the labels understand cause and effect. And that quite a number of college students are tech-savvy enough to use Linux/Mac/etc. anyway, more so than in the home setting.
I wish some of the entertainment industry execs would click that link and get a fucking clue.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
"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"
Ok, go here: http://www.okgo.net/music_music.asp
Best of luck to the band!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
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
If you always treat people as if they are out to lie to you and steal from you, they WILL lie to you and steal from you.
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 can't help but wonder, how many more people would have RTFA had it not been encumbered by an account system.
**Record company executives reasoned that because we appeal to college students who have the high-bandwidth connections necessary for getting access to peer-to-peer networks, we're the kind of band that gets traded instead of bought.**
This is a stupid argument. EMI's "protective software" overwrote my sound drivers when I tried to rip a purchased Leahy CD to mp3 so I could then listen to the music on my portable mp3 player. The lesson I learnt? Don't purchase EMI and/or Leahy CDs -- I didn't really need the CD or the hassle in the first place.
If I absolutely have to have the music, I now know it's far safer to download EMI mp3s from the flavour of the week p2p program than it is to purchase the CD.
EMI's "protective software" encourages piracy, not discourages it.
And at least Sony's "protective software" gave you some sort of a heads-up that there was 'extras' on their CDs; EMI didn't tell me a damn thing. I had to figure out what in hell happened to the sound card on my own.
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.
" Um, we are listening to your music. We're just not paying. That's the point. "
No, that's not the point. The point is that the less net-savvy people are not listening to the music, since they can't download it to their iPod due to copy protection.
Did you read TFA, or are you just spouting garbage because you feel so proud of yourself for getting songs for free?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
From the article:
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. Record company executives reasoned that because we appeal to college students who have the high-bandwidth connections necessary for getting access to peer-to-peer networks, we're the kind of band that gets traded instead of bought.
You know what? It was hearing "A Million Ways" on NPR, then a P-2-P download of the song, that CAUSED me to purchase the entire album! If I had not been able to dig the whole song a couple of times, I would have never have purchased it. "Oh No" was the first CD I've bought in 2 years. (I just haven't found a lot of music lately that appeals to me.)
So the very avenue that the record companies fear, generated a sale. How many others has it generated?
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'm sure there are a few people who get fired up about it, but I suspect most people don't care all that much.
I suppose you didn't hear about the Sony DRM debacle did you? Ok, was being sarcastic there as you'd have to be living under a rock not to have heard about it. Then would you mind revising your statement above as obviously MANY people cared a bunch about that and it put DRM right into the limelight...which the RIAA doesn't want it shown. It doesn't want press about DRM or anything like this. They want the people not to "care all that much". But obviously this isn't going to happen as many people got fired up about the rootkit AND the DRM crap.
And as you see, now there's even editorials in the frickin New York Times!
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
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.
But a true artist might be willing to trade freedom and a percentage of album sales to get more people to listen to their music. The recording industry can be a very efficient marketing force, getting music played on the radio, getting CDs placed in stores, getting tours booked and so on and so on.
I really don't see integrity coming into play. Most musicians really don't care about DRM one way or another, or at the very least are ambivalent. For most people "integrity" means having a code of ethics that matches theirs.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
It's OK labels. Don't cry now. There there. Yes, stop sniffling. It's OK. I know your customers and your vendors hate you, but it's OK. The politicians, lobbyists, and, well, you still love you.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
"but you don't need 50 cent's money to live large (heh), heck, a couple hundred thou a year from touring gigs is fine
And how many artists are successful enough to make six figures touring? Not many.
"so the future will be the same even with 100% music piracy: bands will just make cash from touring gigs and advertising"
And what about everyone elso who is involved with producing the music? All the people who work in the studio, all the people who work on distro, all the people who make an album happen? Do you think that only musicians who self-finance should be able to succeed? How about all the money it takes to get a band to the point where touring becomes profitable? Because the jump from playing small bars to big venues is a huge one, and requires some serious capital.
"it's not morality, repeat IT IS NOT A QUESTION OF MORALITY TO PIRATE MUSIC"
Well, that depends on your morals, now doesn't it? If your morality doesn't account for all the people who worked to make the product you want to listen to (sound engineers, etc), then sure, it's not a question of morality. If your morality doesn't account for the validity of the marketplace, then sure, it's not a question of morality.
Me, I don't like concerts. I can't frickin stand the crowds or the volume. The only way I can support an artist I like is to either send them money directly, or purchase their album (yeah, I know they make crap off album sales).
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
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.
My recent strategy has been to purchase CDs directly from the artists at their shows. Not only are they making some cash from me at the shows, but frequently they have their older albums on sale as well as cases of their current work. Does this mean the label is totally out of the picture? Maybe not, but sometimes. I have purchased "pirated" CDs from the artists themselves because the f'ing label didn't think it worth their time to make more. Sure this won't work for the FOTM pop bands, but I don't listen to that junk anyway. Big bands like the Rolling Stones? Local used CD stores and discount racks, baby. I plan on doing all I can to give as little as possible to big labels.
I returned the latest Santana CD to Borders Bookstore, where I bought it, after discovering it installed crap without my permission on my company-issued laptop. I was direct with the manager about the problem and they accepted the return with very little hassle.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
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.
New York Times
December 6, 2005
Op-Ed Contributor
Buy, Play, Trade, Repeat
By DAMIAN KULASH Jr.
Los Angeles
THE record company Sony BMG recently got in trouble after attempting to stem piracy by encoding its CD's with software meant to limit how many copies can be made of the discs. It turned out that the copy-protection software exposed consumers' computers to Internet viruses, forcing Sony BMG to recall the CD's.
This technological disaster aside, though, Sony BMG and the other major labels need to face reality: copy-protection software is bad for everyone, consumers, musicians and labels alike. It's much better to have copies of albums on lots of iPods, even if only half of them have been paid for, than to have a few CD's sitting on a shelf and not being played.
The Sony BMG debacle revealed the privacy issues and security risks tied to the spyware that many copy-protection programs install on users' computers. But even if these problems are solved, copy protection is guaranteed to fail because it's a house of cards. No matter how sophisticated the software, it takes only one person to break it, once, and the music is free to roam and multiply on the peer-to-peer file-trading networks.
Meanwhile, music lovers get pushed away. Tech-savvy fans won't go to the trouble of buying a strings-attached record when they can get a better version free. Less Net-knowledgeable fans (those who don't know the simple tricks to get around the copy-protection software or don't use peer-to-peer networks) are punished by discs that often won't load onto their MP3 players (the copy-protection programs are incompatible with Apple's iPods, for example) and sometimes won't even play in their computers.
Conscientious fans, who buy music legally because it's the right thing to do, just get insulted. They've made the choice not to steal their music, and the labels thank them by giving them an inferior product hampered by software that's at best a nuisance, and at worst a security threat.
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.
The truth is that the more a record gets listened to, the more successful it is. This is not just our megalomania, it's Marketing 101: the more times a song gets played, the more of a chance it has to catch the ear of someone new. It doesn't do us much good if people buy our records and promptly shelve them; we need them to fall in love with our songs and listen to them over and over. A record that you can't transfer to your iPod is a record you're less likely to listen to, less likely to get obsessed with and less likely to tell your friends about.
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. Record company executives reasoned that because we appeal to college students who have the high-bandwidth connections necessary for getting access to peer-to-peer networks, we're the kind of band that gets traded instead of bought.
That may be true, but we are also the sort of band that hasn't yet gotten the full attention of MTV and major commercial radio stations, so those college students are our only window onto the world. They are our best chance for success, and we desperately need them to be listening to us, talking about us, coming to our shows and yes, trading us.
To be clear, I certainly don't encourage people to pirate our music. I have poured my life into my band, and after two major label records, our accountants can tell you that we're not real rock stars yet. But before a million people can buy our record, a million people have to hear our music and like it enough to go looking for it. That won'
Damian had a harsher version of this article on music industry blog coolfer.com. Read it here. Looks like he was forced to tone it down for the ny times...
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.
"95% of all Slashdot