Yahoo Exec Speaks Against DRM

AWhiteFlame writes "Dave Goldberg of Yahoo spoke against DRM on media files last Thursday at the Music 2.0 conference in Los Angeles. From the article: 'According to attendees, Goldberg pointed to the experience of eMusic, which offers its subscribers access to MP3 files without any digital rights management attached. Rights management restrictions have created a barrier for consumers, he said, making it a hurdle to transfer music to portable devices, and creating incompatibility between music services and MP3 players ... A Yahoo spokeswoman said that Goldberg was 'basically trying to move the industry forward,' and wanted to prompt industry-wide discussion about what the consumer experience is."

Comments

Interesting..

[taskforce]

...considering Yahoo's music service uses a propretary media player (Yahoo's) with a propretary DRM implementation (Microsoft's) on the subscription model where your music is all deleted when you cancel your subscription... by DRM.

Re:Interesting..

[apocal]

this is probably not by choice but what the industry demands. Yahoo doesn't like it, and is trying to open discussion for change perhaps?

Promising, but...

[john-da-luthrun]

...DRM will only hit the buffers when ordinary users realise they're paying for their own shackles. At the moment I suspect it's still only a tiny minority of users who care about this issue, so "the market" still makes it worth record companies' while to impose DRM. Hence, while Emusic is a great service, it only has quite a limited selection - and even more limited if you live in the UK, and run up regularly against "This is not available for download in your country" notices even on Emusic.

Re:I never got it

[Billosaur]

In the day of the tape/casette/VCR players, nobody would cry about people with tape/casette/VCR recorders because they copied some music/movies from a rental service, or TV, or the radio.

On the contrary: Jack Valenti Testimony at 1982 House Hearing on Home Recording of Copyrighted Works

To quote: But now we are facing a very new and a very troubling assault on our fiscal security, on our very economic life and we are facing it from a thing called the video cassette recorder and its necessary companion called the blank tape. And it is like a great tidal wave just off the shore. This video cassette recorder and the blank tape threaten profoundly the life-sustaining protection, I guess you would call it, on which copyright owners depend, on which film people depend, on which television people depend and it is called copyright. And that was 1982!

Only way I'll get downloaded music

[CastrTroy]

The only way I'll pay for downloaded music is if its lossless (wav,flac) and if it costs significantly less than the CD. If the artist only has 1 good song they aren't worth giving any money to. If they can produce an album where I like at least half the songs, and don't hate the rest, then I will buy the music. If the download doesn't cost less than half of what the CD costs, then I don't see where I am getting a better deal.

Re:EMusic's problem

[weekendgeek]

Try this:

http://www.emusic.com/browse/all.html

If you live in the UK... (Gowers)

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Sadly, the Slashdot eds decided not to run my story about the Gowers Review calling for evidence as of yesterday, so since it's directly relevant I'll mention it here.

For those who don't know, this is a government-ordered review into the current state of intellectual property, and whether it needs amending in light of new technologies, easy distribution over the Internet, etc.

The review is concerned with several quite general questions, quite a few specific issues, and any other comments interested parties care to make. Among the specific issues explicitly mentioned in the call for evidence (available on the web site linked above) are:

• the period for which copyright lasts;
• what sorts of fair use rights might be appropriate in the UK (bearing in mind that we don't have anything directly equivalent to US fair use provisions at present, and a lot of the things mentioned in this discussion -- such as format-shifting for personal use -- are clearly illegal here at present);
• the use of DRM (including several very relevant questions about balancing the right of a copyright holder to protect their work and the right of a consumer to use it reasonably);
• access to orphaned works, for which the legitimate copyright holder can no longer be reached.

So, if you're from the UK and you've ever bitched on Slashdot about the unfairness of DRM, the media cartels gaining ever longer "temporary" protections, the daftness that format-shifting is illegal even when the industry is happy to sell you equipment that all but requires it to be useful, the use of patents to create a barrier to entry for OSS, or any number of other IP-related issues, stop complaining on here and write to the Gowers Review to make your case. You can bet the big businesses all will be.

Macrovision?

[MS-06FZ]

Please explain to me, then, why every VCR you can buy in stores has a Macrovision circuit, which causes the video signal to become intentionally degraded if you use a Macrovision signal (like a rental VHS tape played on another VCR, or a DVD player) on the line input - and not necessarily only if you happen to be recording that signal on the VCR. This is the same as DRM and it's worked its way into just about all the consumer-level VCRs out there, and it's been around for ages.