Apple's DRM Is Bad For Consumers and Business

BoredStiff writes "Cory Doctorow, noted sci-fi writer and Boing Boing editor, marshals a strong argument against digital rights management in a recent InformationWeek article. His assertion is that there's no good DRM and that Apple's copy-protection technology makes media companies into its servants. Other copy-protection technologies, like Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, are just as bad."

Comments

Conflicted Feelings

[slashdot-jake]

There are some things that I prefer renting over buying, and movies are one of those things. With the exception of a few "classics", movies don't have enough replay value for me to justify paying more to buy them. Heck, if DVD's were as cheap as rental I wouldn't buy them because they would just be one more thing cluttering up the house.

However, the concept of rental clashes with the nature of the online and digital world. Everything that exists can be copied in exact form. You can't return data - you have a copy, not the original. The way I see it there are two options, the concept of rental can be preserved artificially with the introduction of DRM, or it can be abandoned in favor of purchases.

As a consumer I don't have a problem with the general idea of DRM on a rental - my fair use rights aren't being violated, because I don't have the right to backup, timeshift, or format shift rentals to begin with (unlike media I own, for which any DRM is intolerable). Where the problem occurs is the proprietary nature of DRM. At best, the rental DRM would be an "Open Standard" meaning anyone who pays RAND* patent fees and signs an NDA will be allowed to implement a device, and be given keys (specific to them) to decode the data. Then I could buy online rental devices or software from any number of manufactures, and it would be guaranteed to work with any number of online rental stores. This is similar to the legal workings of DVDs, Blueray, WMV. At the worst you have proprietary technologies, where each company has it's own format and player, like with Apple or DVIX (the first one). In both cases there will never be an open source player - the best we could hope for is something like the new Real Player that has an open source core with proprietary plug-ins. Even that is unlikely, as the movie industry is demanding end-to-end security (HDMI, Trusted Computing) which an open source operating system would not provide.

In the other option, the internet utopia dream was that the price of media would drop to the point of making rental unnecessary and removing the allure of piracy from the general public. The media industries are strongly opposed to this model of the future, and the only way it will ever happen is if independent media producers embrace it with success, and eventually put the current media companies out of business. This is also unlikely given the weight that the media companies have in government. Therfore, media purchases will also be hindered with DRM for the conceivable future, and will continue to be priced at traditional rates.

So given DRM on rental verses DRM on purchase, I definitely prefer the previous, but there is another potential risk with DRM rental and it is a biggy. The media companies have shown themselves very fond of the idea of DRM rental, as seen with Napster. They like the model where people don't own copies of media, but instead just subscribe to services that provide them. If too many people embrace these services, we could end up in a situation where everything is locked up. We continue to hear stories about how the original archive copies of important cultural media is being lost due to the extreme length of copyright, and the mismanagement of the copyright holders (Dr Who, classic films). But in most of those cases, at least lower quality copies exist in the form of consumer media. However, if we can no longer record broadcast media, and there are no purchased copies of media, the copyright holders will be the only ones capable of preserving the records of our popular culture. Time and time again they show themselves inept at doing so.

Anyway, I plan on sticking to buying CD's and renting locally for as long as those options exist, and continue to support those independent producers who treat their customers with respect. I'll keep trying to inform my representatives about the issues. But I'm not optimistic. We'll see what happens.

* For the uninitiated:
RAND = Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory
NDA = Non-Disclosure Agreement

Re:Conflicted Feelings

[IAmTheDave]

As a consumer I don't have a problem with the general idea of DRM on a rental - my fair use rights aren't being violated, because I don't have the right to backup, timeshift, or format shift rentals to begin with (unlike media I own, for which any DRM is intolerable).

I wonder - wouldn't fair-use rights of the media follow you for the duration of the rental? For instance, I have the right to skip from chapter to chapter, pause, rewind - basically time-shift any part of the movie. I have the right to play with any included interactive content on my PC during that time period (not that I would, mind you...) etc.

Sure, the rights we're talking about are ones that don't make much sense for a one week rental, but while in possession of content that I've rented, am I afforded the same rights that I would have if I owned the DVD/CD/whatever, during the rental period?

Also, if I rent a movie that installs DRM on my PC (ex: Sony rootkit) does the company's right to enforce such DRM end at the end of my rental period?

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[Bazman]

"unlike media I own, for which any DRM is intolerable". You own the media. You dont own the copyright of the content. Copyright holders can impose any restrictions they like. Anything. It might be that you can only play this disk on a Monday and only if you are wearing lederhosen. Really. You find that intolerable? Well, then you can't play it. Read the small print. Carefully.

Re:Conflicted Feelings

[JulesLt]

>If too many people embrace these services, we could end up in a situation where everything is locked up.

I think the only way that will happen is if hardware-DRM becomes mandatory in such a way that the playing of 'unprotected' content is disallowed. 'How can we be sure that the video you are playing is really a home movie and not a pirate recording'. In the long term this might even be technically feasible (lets say that you introduce some kind of HDMI like control into A/V recording devices such that even your home videos are uniquely encrypted).

If that doesn't happen, then there will always be an important part of culture that will reject the 'closed' world, just as many acts today deal with companies selling DRM-free music. What will become more obvious is when people cross over from one world to the other - it is going to be a far bigger deal than switching from an indie to a major.

Re:Conflicted Feelings

[Anonymous Coward]

"Read the small print. Carefully."

Read the law...carefully.

Copyright is an artificial and LIMITED set of rights granted to the creator. That limitation centers around copying and distribution of the content...NOT around restrictions of how one views the content.

Re:Conflicted Feelings

[Anonymous Coward]

Copyright holders can impose any restrictions they like. Anything.

Not anything. Things such as First Sale and Fair Use are restrictions on the scope of the copyright monopoly. This means that copyright doesn't give the copyright holder the right to, for instance, ban time-shifting (Supreme Court, Betamax case) or format-shifting (Federal appeals court, Diamond Rio case).

Re:Conflicted Feelings

[2nd Post!]

As a consumer I don't have a problem with the general idea of DRM on a rental - my fair use rights aren't being violated, because I don't have the right to backup, timeshift, or format shift rentals to begin with (unlike media I own, for which any DRM is intolerable).

Well, as a consumer, purchasing from the iTMS gives you the right to backup, timeshift, and format shift.

So what is the problem? Is it theoretical, or real?

The real problem I see is that the DRM makes it inconvenient to format shift, but not impossible. In which case the iTMS DRM is really about minimal inconvenience, rather than restriction.

Re:Conflicted Feelings

[KiloByte]

The copyright holder can not restrict use, just distribution (copying). No amount of small print can change this. To restrict use, they would have to get you to enter a valid contract with them.

Re:Conflicted Feelings

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, you are wrong, Grand Rights and Moral Rights make sure a creator's work cannot be used beyond the will of the original creator. Moral rights are actually non-transferable, meaning even if all the rights are sold the moral rights are still in the hand of the original creator. Moral rights don't give the owner a power on how something will be used but it gives them the rights to refuse any modification or placement of their creation.

Re:Conflicted Feelings

[capologist]

The copyright holder can not restrict use

Tell it to CleanFlicks.

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[ivan256]

Yeah, they need to hear it.

The were distributing the movies.

Your argument has exactly the opposite meaning than you intended.

Re:Conflicted Feelings

[ivan256]

Sorry, you're wrong.

An individual's right to privacy trumps even that. The original creator doesn't even have the right to know how you are using his work as long as you aren't distributing it, so the creator has no such veto.

What I do in the privacy of my own home to a creative work is none of the copyright holder's business, whether it's their will that I don't do it or not.

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[kimvette]

CleanFlicks was distributing outside of Fair Use, right? They were in the wrong.

Making backups, format-shifting, time-shifting, viewing unlimited times - THOSE are Fair Use. Copying and then transferring copies to others for a fee is clearly not Fair Use. Copying the majority of a work, modifying it and distributing the derivative work is not Fair Use.

Parodying? Satire? Fair Use, depending on the extent of the original content copied, etc.

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[capologist]

Yeah, they were distributing movies. That's perfectly legal when you purchase legitimate copies; you're entitled to resell them. However, they were editing those copies as requested by the consumer, so that the consumer could use the copyrighted work as the consumer wished. The industry managed have this ruled "illegitimate" based on an absurd argument about protecting the integrity of the artistic vision. The fact that this was obviously not the intent of the copyright clause is apparently irrelevant.

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[capologist]

It was absolutely fair use. Since the court ruling, it's not Fair Use, but it is fair use. What they were doing was the hi-tech equivalent of ripping pages out of a book because the customer didn't want those pages and could not possess the means by which to rip those pages out himself. The ruling, based on a vague notion of "artistic integrity," is utterly absurd.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Well then by what right do all my DVDs specify that they are 'for private viewing only'?
Sure sounds like a restriction on use to me.

Re:Conflicted Feelings

[cpt kangarooski]

As a consumer I don't have a problem with the general idea of DRM on a rental - my fair use rights aren't being violated, because I don't have the right to backup, timeshift, or format shift rentals to begin with (unlike media I own, for which any DRM is intolerable).

This is incorrect for two reasons.

First, you forget that someone is the owner of the copy being rented. Remember, with certain quite narrow exceptions, copyright law does not prohibit anyone from renting out a lawfully made copy of a copyrighted work that they own. For example, if you go to Best Buy and purchase a movie on DVD there, copyright law will not bar you from renting that copy as much as you like. 17 USC 109 is the relevant law.

Second, any use by any person may be fair. Whether it is fair or not depends on the circumstances involved. Mere ownership of the copy that is the source of the use is not required. It may be a relevant factor, but that is all. One can trivially imagine likely fair uses involving a rented copy. For example, if you are creating a presentation as a student for a film class, it would likely be a fair use to copy short clips from a rented copy of a film to demonstrate various points in your presentation. I suggest you look at the four elements of the statutory fair use test at 17 USC 107.

In any event, all DRM is intolerable in conjunction with published works.

Re:Conflicted Feelings

[cpt kangarooski]

Sure, the rights we're talking about are ones that don't make much sense for a one week rental, but while in possession of content that I've rented, am I afforded the same rights that I would have if I owned the DVD/CD/whatever, during the rental period?

No, that's not how it works. You can engage in fair uses all the time, regardless of whether you own a copy, rent a copy, or don't have a copy at all. Fair use is not contingent on ownership. Rather, it's contingent on the circumstances involved. For example, it is entirely possible that if Alice tried to engage in a particular use whilst owning a copy, that it would be unfair, while if Bob tried to engage in the same use, not owning a copy, that it would be fair. Other factors are what's key. Depending on the use in question, ownership might be a relevant factor, but it is not the only one or the most important one.

Re:Conflicted Feelings

[cpt kangarooski]

Making backups, format-shifting, time-shifting, viewing unlimited times - THOSE are Fair Use.

Viewing is not a fair use. This is because viewing is not part of copyright, and therefore can't be covered under fair use, which is a part of copyright. Viewing is simply part of real property law. The right to watch a movie you own is the exact same right that you have to eat an apple that you own; it's the right of a property owner to do anything with his property that he wants to, if it does not violate the law.

As for backups, and space and time shifting, those are potentially fair uses, depending on the circumstances, but there can just as easily be circumstances where they are not fair uses. And there are plenty more fair uses besides the ones you listed, which are in fact quite novel and unimportant, really.

Copying the majority of a work, modifying it and distributing the derivative work is not Fair Use.

It can be. Parodists do this all the time.

Copying and then transferring copies to others for a fee is clearly not Fair Use.

Again, it can be, it just depends on the circumstances. Anything can be a fair use with the right circumstances. And anything can be unfair, with the wrong circumstances. That's how fair use is.

Frankly, the D.C. did a piss-poor fair use analysis in the CleanFlicks case. Factors 1 and 4 were in their favor, and should've been enough.

Re:Conflicted Feelings

[cpt kangarooski]

What happens when the copyright expires, as the Constitution demands it ultimately must? Will the DRM magically evaporate? Or will it impair people from doing anything they like with the then-public domain work?

This alone is reason enough to get rid of DRM to the fullest extent we can.

There are other problems with it, though. For example, copyright does not prevent people from conveying lawfully made copies of works. But iTMS DRM interferes with this, since the work is not usable by the second purchaser. Copyright law is meant to serve the public interest. Why should the public tolerate mere authors and publishers interfering in this, twisting and warping matters for their own desires? Why shouldn't the default rules be the only rules, at least in ordinary consumer transactions?

Copyright deals with the big picture, over the long term. You're thinking too small. Think big, and the problems that make DRM inherently unacceptable become plain as day.

Re:Conflicted Feelings

[cpt kangarooski]

Moral rights are also the biggest bullshit, and are a virtually unknown concept in the US. We don't have moral rights with regard to film, and we are best off not having them at all, since they are a completely bad idea with nothing in their favor.

Copyright law is utilitarian -- except for right now, when it's just corrupt.

Re:Conflicted Feelings

[2nd Post!]

Why does the copyright need to expire before people can do anything they like with the work? You can already burn to CD and reimport into a lossless format and from there use it as a sample in another work, embed it in another work, modify and edit it, and essentially do anything you can already do with non DRM work.

If they got rid of the lossless burning things might be very different.

Yes, you can't just transfer the file. You can hand out as many copies as you wish, but the DRM prevents it from being played willy nilly. DRM is not copyright, and copyright is not DRM. There is nothing inherent about the iTMS DRM that make it unacceptable in 30 years because you should already have an unencrypted backup, burned to CD, of your work the minute you buy it. Take advantage of the technology!

Re:Conflicted Feelings

[cpt kangarooski]

Why does the copyright need to expire before people can do anything they like with the work?

It's possible you're misunderstanding me slightly due to my wording. I don't mean 'anything' in the sense of 'not nothing,' but instead in the sense of 'everything under the sun.'

When the work enters the public domain, there are no more copyright-related restrictions on the work. I can do literally anything I wish with the work, including simply making and selling copies. It is true, though, that prior to the copyright expiring, that I can do some things with the work. But not absolutely anything; I'm limited then.

You can already burn to CD and reimport into a lossless format

Why should I tolerate such a deliberate pain in the ass? Why is it in my interests to protect people when they try to make my life difficult by throwing obstacles at me? Especially as they may be insurmountable, since not all DRM is implemented like Apple's.

Re:Conflicted Feelings

[rizzo320]

This is why customers rip the pages out of the purchased books, not the publshers or the printers.

Re:Conflicted Feelings

[Firehed]

Lossless? What iTMS are you using? Last I was aware, every song in their multi-million-strong library was available at 128Kbps, no more, no less. Far from lossless, which (at least in my experience) tends to hover around the 750Kbps mark. IANAL, but I'm pretty confident that them preventing you from burning at the full bitrate of the lossy version WOULD violate your fair use rights. You pay less and get a lower quality version - fine, I can deal with that. Hell, I'm not bothered that they want to prevent me from handing out their content for free to everyone as I please, even if I find it disagreeable (that's to say, I understand, but still think it sucks). But disallowing me from using that content as I please without making me incur further costs (blank media) and time is simply unacceptable.

Their implementation is horrible in any form, though from my understanding and small amount of experience, iTMS takes by far the least invasive approach. Good. But the method sucks. I don't have any alternative, but I expect to be able to transfer my purchased media among my own computers and have it Just Work - not be restricted to a single player. I like iTunes now (used to detest it, but it's grown on me) and have no plan to switch portables, but I don't want to worry about things not working if something comes up. I paid for it - I can use it, and if that's ever not the case, then the system isn't working. When iTunes is dead and I want to move my media, how am I going to re-attain my license on the new computer? I'd be SOL, and I'm not okay with that. My remaining three options (CD, allofmp3, piracy) all screw over the artist, while two of them offer lossless media and one of them is comparatively cheap. Of course iTunes screws over artists too, but then again so does every other option that isn't 'going to a concert'. Might as well get the best quality for my buck, and not support the organization that I so truly detest in the process. Exactly which one that is depends on how cheap or picky I'm feeling at the moment, but it's not going to be the CD.

No matter what happens, artists get screwed. If you buy the CD, they see next to none of that money. If you buy it from iTunes, they see next to none of that money. If you buy it from AllofMP3, they almost certainly see none of that money. If you pirate it, there's no money for them to see. CDs are lossless, as are most albums on AllofMP3 and the odd torrent. iTunes is cheaper and lossy, as is AllofMP3 and piracy. iTunes and some CDs have copy protection, and are the only two that give money to the RIAA - the people who ensured that copy protection was present, whereas AllofMP3 is in a legal limbo and piracy is just plain illegal. All of these somewhat increase the chance of seeing the artist in concert, though I'm personally more inclined to pay to see an artist where I haven't already paid for the CD/digital album. The CD is starting to die out to the various forms of online distribution, and with next-gen optical drives not (yet) supporting plain ol' CDs (well, blu-ray anyways last I knew), ripping may not always be an option. And if your protection-licensor goes the way of the dodo, you're equally screwed- stocked with a pile of useless media that you can't play.

Long story short - I understand their desire for copy protection, and am not opposed to the concept. But their implementation is simply something waiting to leave purchasers high and dry once we've all moved on to the Next Big Thing. It's a risk you take with analog media, where we needed to move on to increase the quality, but that's simply not the case with the digital storage a PC offers - computers, in some form or another anyways, are here to stay, and while the hardware may change, the idea of storing stuff and being able to play it back won't. This 'licensed media' approach to everything is the same as our different analog media, where you needed a new setup to play the newer media. In ten years when CD-capable drives have gone the way of the floppy (still h

Re:Conflicted Feelings

[mstone]

You've got three different bodies of law all mushed together -- copyright, license law, and contract law -- and are dangerously close to joining Microsoft in declaring the GPL illegal.

Copyright law gives the rights holder the power to establish the license under which the work will be distributed. That's all. You're right that copyright law per se doesn't apply to use, only to distribution and copying. License law, OTOH, does give the rights holder the power to set restrictions upon use.

The term 'license' originally meant 'permission to enter my land'. Entering somene else's land without permission is called 'trespassing'. Now, if I give you permission to enter my land, I have every right to impose restrictions on your behavior while you're there. If I say, "no hunting," you can't come onto my land, shoot my deer, and then say, "the restriction is invalid because I never signed a contract." The default state under the law is that you have no right to be on my property, period. I waived my right to have to arrested for trespassing simply for being on my land when I gave you the 'no hunting' license, but you can't extend that license beyond the terms that I set.

Contract law is irrelevant to licensing issues, because the fundamental legal questions are different. The fundamental question of contract law is, "did both sides do what they promised to do?" The fundamental question of license law is, "did the licensee obey the terms that the licensor set?" In a contract, I make a promise contingent on the promise that you made to me. With a license, I waive my right to sue under certain conditions, and you choose between obeying those conditions or not using my property at all.

License law doesn't require any consideration from the licensee because it really only regulates the behavior of the licensor. I can't trap you by inviting you onto my property to come birdwatching, then turn around and have you arrested for trespassing as soon as you show up. As long as you obey the terms I set, license law prohibits me from setting the police on you.

As soon as you step outside the terms of my license, tough, you're back into 'you have no right to be here at all' territory.

Re:Conflicted Feelings

[spyinnzus]

I'm pretty sure CleanFlicks was out of Fair Use was because they were selling material that they didn't have distribution rights to. If they didn't make a cent off of distributing other people's works it might have been a bit more of a legal debate.

Re:Conflicted Feelings

[Ohreally_factor]

What about "public performances" as a type of viewing? Meaning, a person screens a DVD that they have purchased to the general public, in effect becoming a movie theater (at least) temporarily (and regardless if admission is charged or not). It is my understanding that this falls outside of fair use and constitutes unlawful distribution. In this sense, at least, viewing would fall under the purview of copyright law.

As I understand it, similar rules apply to the playing of music in public places, whether recorded or performed. If a public venue has either copyrighted recorded music or copyrighted live music, the copyright holder should be re-numerated. For this reason, many clubs purchase blanket licenses that allow them to play copyrighted materials.

Straighten me out if I'm misunderstanding something here. Beyond your stated credentials, your posts generally show a keen insight into these matters, and I tend to at least listen to what you have to say, cap. I hope I'm not being difficult in pointing out what I see as an exception to your point about viewing. Thanks.

Re:Conflicted Feelings

[Ohreally_factor]

You've basically hit upon why I think that DRM is really not a long term issue and is not something about which we need to be overly fearful.

And the fact of the matter is that the underground is always more powerful than the media conglomerates when it comes to creation of culture. All that the media conglomerates can do is package, recycle, and attempt to assimilate underground culture. They've been very good at this up to now, and have made a lot of money doing so. It's not just that they have had the distribution channels sewed up. They've also had the marketing channels sewed up.

The internet changes all that. Not just the distribution, but also the marketing. We have an unprecedented access to underground creativity, just as the underground artists have unprecedented access to us. The media conglomerates have become a whole lot less relevant, and if they try to clench their sphincter of distribution in the misguided notion that they're controlling the teat of popular culture, they're going to find their customers have left for more hospitable mammary nourishment.

My point is that while the so called *AAs are trying to get the distribution genie back in the bottle, they can do nothing at all about the marketing genie. And without the marketing genie, their cultural monopoly is effectively over (tho' it might take a while for them to whither away). Kaput. They're paper tigers, and DRM is at best a set of paper fangs. Culture is not going to die from a paper cut.

Personally, I'm shifting more and more of my cultural consumption to non-cartel culture. I'm not completely avoiding the cartel, I'm just being much more selective when I consume their products. And I'm being a helluva lot more experimental in sampling the HUGE amount of non-cartel stuff out there.

Re:Conflicted Feelings

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're not selling your old stuff, then? Just giving it away?

Re:Conflicted Feelings

[sd.fhasldff]

At best, the rental DRM would be an "Open Standard" meaning anyone who pays RAND* patent fees and signs an NDA will be allowed to implement a device, and be given keys (specific to them) to decode the data.

No, no, no! Leaving aside the whole "DRM is inherently evil" debate, there's absolutely no reason that a DRM standard should be this closed. Why not have the whole thing open sourced and un-patent-encumbered? DRM is trivial to implement and doesn't rely on obfuscation or security-through-obscurity to work. It's a simple matter of encryption and key management.

Re:Conflicted Feelings

[Anonymous Coward]

Viewing is simply part of real property law. The right to watch a movie you own is the exact same right that you have to eat an apple that you own; it's the right of a property owner to do anything with his property that he wants to, if it does not violate the law.

You mean "chattels" or "personal property" rather than "real property", right? The problem is that the content is not necessarily a chattel in freehold; it may be goods delivered under licence, and the licensee may be bound by a series of obligations beyond the statutory and common law ones you allude to in the last few words above. The salient question is whether the licensor retains a chose in action, and case law (and statute) are somewhat confused with respect to the doctrine of first sale and other means by which originators' rights are attenuated or exhausted.

Re:Conflicted Feelings

[cpt kangarooski]

You mean "chattels" or "personal property" rather than "real property", right?

Yes. Sorry for the error, I was pretty tired last night.

it may be goods delivered under licence

It could be, but this is pretty uncommon. Software is the only area where there is a real attempt at this sort of thing. While some people -- computer geeks mostly, it seems -- might think that everything is like software, really no one else licenses to the mass market. And EULAs themselves are still a little up in the air.

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[cpt kangarooski]

There is a public performance right for some works. You can see it, and the other primary rights, at 17 USC 106. It's not a form of distribution, however; distribution requires that copies (i.e. tangible copies) be distributed. Of course, it is just as capable of being a fair use as anything else. Non-public performances, however, remain outside the purview of copyright, and that was more or less what was being talked about, I think.

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[frederickroyceperez]

I think the distributors who you refer to , ideally , intend to be the limit of your choice . This makes it impractical for any other source , ideally . Utopian solutions like these are the only ideal answer .

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[swv3752]

The internet itself is under attack. If the communications giants, which are closely allied with big media, have thier way; we are screwed.

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[Shadowmist]

Again, again, again. Lack of profit has nothing to do with copyright or fair use. or performance. You want to show Lord of the Rings to 300 people and not charge them for it? You still have to pay the same kind of license a movie theater has to shell out. becasue anything beyond the scale of living room viewing goes into distribution, no exceptions, period.

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[ivan256]

You're telling me that they magically figured out a way to do this without copying the DVD, and they were merely reselling an altered disc? Somehow, I doubt that. If that were the case, it wouldn't have ended up in court in the first place.

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[Dixie_Flatline]

I can't tell if you're serious or not with saying "mere authors anad publishers".

The creator of a work and anyone they authorize to distribute their work should have absolute control over that work, as far as I'm concerned. I should be allowed to record music in my basement and never distribute it, carve a statue that's never seen, or paint a painting and then burn it. Similarily, I should be allowed to play my music at a concert and stipulate that nobody ever records it because I feel that each concert should only be listened to once.

Whether or not you partake in these artistic endeavours -- if I allow you any opening to -- is up to you. If you don't like the DRM on a song, don't buy it. A creator should be allowed absolute control over a work of art. This isn't like patents, where ideas can literally save lives.

That said, it's a two way street. If an artist wants to work within today's framework of laws, they need to accept that they can't have control over a work in perpetuity. Laws should not apply selectively.

In any case, I believe that DRM is a stepping-stone evil that can be lived through. Apple's DRM is permissive enough that I don't care about the lock-in. I hope for a better way some day, but first you have to convince people that paying for music is worth it so that when the DRM is removed, people will actually pay for it instead of disappearing into the night. (Alternatly, we can work to convince artists that record companies are a bum deal, and they should give their music away for free, live modestly, take donations, and make money from concerts. I think working on both things is probably the best bet, actually.)

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[capologist]

You're telling me that they magically figured out a way to do this without copying the DVD, and they were merely reselling an altered disc?

Of course not. It is a different physical disc, because the original disc is not physically rewritable. But you're emphasizing an irrelevant logistical detail and ignoring the purpose and essence of the act. The logistics are a little different than ripping pages out of a book, but the effect is the same. In no way does society benefit from emphasizing such logistical details and ignoring the essence and effect of an action, nor does it benefit from allowing the studios to eliminate fair use rights through technical means that ensure that the only way to "rip pages out" is to transfer the copy to a different physical medium. In no way does this interpretation of copyright law "promote the progress of science and the useful arts"; quite the contrary, it erects barriers to such progress.

If that were the case, it wouldn't have ended up in court in the first place.

The court ruling doesn't emphasize the physicality of the medium so much as some presumed fundamental right of the copyright holder "to protect its creation in the form in which it was created."

The court argues by analogy that "a person who dislikes Michelangelo's statue of David" does not have "a right to take a sledgehammer to it, or, as may be more aptly said in this case, to put a fig leaf on it to make it more acceptable for viewing by parents with young children."

Of course somebody who dislikes the statue doesn't have a right to take a sledgehammer to the original, but if I purchase a replica of the statue, I have every right to take a sledgehammer to it or to put a fig leaf on it. And if I don't have a sledgehammer or the means by which to affix a marble fig leaf to the statue, I have every right to pay a vendor to do it for me. The court's own analogy doesn't support the ruling; it undermines it.

Finally, the court rules to award the summary judgement to the studios because the redaction causes "irreparable injury to the creative artistic expression in the copyrighted movies. There is a public interest in providing such protection." Yet nowhere does it articulate what this interest is, let alone make a convincing argument that the judgement advances that interest.

The whole ruling is full of such nonsense. It's an utter piece of crap.

Re:Conflicted Feelings

[JulesLt]

They lost full control of the distribution channels years ago, certainly with music. I think that is the main reason that the emphasis shifted so much towards marketing and promotion in the era after punk / post-punk. The one thing independent and self-funded artists can't do is throw millions of pounds in advertising at something to make it stick. I think the game is still open with the web. While a lot of people use it to discover stuff, I suspect there is still life in the broadcast / bundle / channel model yet - the 'mainstream' will be a significant niche - and a lot of those people could probably be convinced to give up on the Internet for a 'safe internet' of carefully vetted shopping and media sites, just as they will give over their computers because trusted computing will mean that only authorised programs will run, so no more viruses. The major aren't helping themselves by continually narrowing the range of what they offer, and spending more money on trying to get more customers to buy the same thing.

Re:Conflicted Feelings

[cpt kangarooski]

I can't tell if you're serious or not with saying "mere authors anad publishers".

I am serious.

The creator of a work and anyone they authorize to distribute their work should have absolute control over that work, as far as I'm concerned.

I disagree. A copyright holder should have no control over what other people do with their work, except to the degree that the public generally is better off giving them control over the public in conjunction with the work than the public would be if they did not.

Remember: a copyright is not control over the work. It is control over people.

I should be allowed to record music in my basement and never distribute it, carve a statue that's never seen, or paint a painting and then burn it.

I agree completely. I have no desire to compel artists to do anything at all, and I would be adamantly against any attempt to do so.

However, I also have no desire to let artists compel other people to do or not do things. I am willing to tolerate it if it is in the public interest, but only if it is in the public interest. And then, only to the degree that results in the greatest overall benefit to the public.

Similarily, I should be allowed to play my music at a concert and stipulate that nobody ever records it because I feel that each concert should only be listened to once.

I disagree completely. Copyright is meant to serve the public interest in promoting the progress of knowledge. A large part of this is ensuring that works are not lost. If you create a work and have no desire to preserve a copy of it for posterity, and that work is out there in the public, then not only should you never have the ability to prevent the public from stepping in and doing your job, but we should praise them for it, and condemn you.

If you don't like the DRM on a song, don't buy it.

That's like saying that if I don't like a car that pollutes heavily, that I shouldn't buy it. It is an asinine suggestion. If I don't like the polluting car, I will seek to have a law passed that bans the car altogether.

I don't think that we can ban DRM per se, due to the 1st Amendment, and I don't have a problem with that. OTOH, I do think that we can make the use of DRM so utterly unappealing that, in conjunction with highly appealing alternatives, such as copyright, that we can effectively eliminate it as a real threat to the public interest. If authors have to choose between copyright and DRM, and if they know that it will be legal to break the DRM, legal to make and distribute copies of the DRMed work, and that significant amounts of money and resources are available to crack the DRM, I think they'll abandon DRM of their own free will, opting to use copyright sans DRM instead. And if they don't, DRM will just turn out to be useless. Either way, the public wins.

Re:Conflicted Feelings

[Dixie_Flatline]

I don't feel that your polluting car example carries any weight; there's demonstrable harm to the environment and to human beings because of the pollution. If you don't like a product, don't buy it. That's the way the market works, for good or ill. It works the same with music that you don't like listening to -- don't buy it. If enough people agree with you, the artist will starve and go work as a waitress in some dingy bar, with any luck.

Art is too ephemeral to be controlled. For the sake of art, someone should be able to decide whatever they like in terms of control. If they mean to distribute and profit off of their work, well, maybe you have a point.

DRM may not be a good idea for any number of reasons, but it should be anyone's perogative to try and protect their intellectual property however they like. If it's the case that nobody wants to buy it because they find these terms and conditions to onerous, then that's their problem, not anyone else's. It IS property, just property that can't be physically held or manipulated. This doesn't make it any less deserving of protection if the artist wishes it. You wouldn't take a physical copy of the CD and commit theft, and so shouldn't you interfere with their attempt to make their music into a restricted physical analogue. However, if they give it freely, then go wild. The trick is to get everyone to give their art freely and then support their decision by attending concerts or buying merchandise or whatever.

I'm Canadian, so I like to think I have a natural distrust of capitalist systems where people get rich for very little work, but even I don't think DRM banning will solve anything. It's best to prevent MANDATORY DRM and let everything else work itself out. Incentives tend to be more effective than punishments.

Re:Conflicted Feelings

[cpt kangarooski]

I don't feel that your polluting car example carries any weight; there's demonstrable harm to the environment and to human beings because of the pollution.

It has nothing to do with the harm to the environment, or people. It simply illustrates the point that governments have broad regulatory authority and should act in the interests of their people. I could have just as easily had an example in which zoning laws were used to dictate where commercial development could and could not take place, what sorts of signage could be used, etc.

For the sake of art, someone should be able to decide whatever they like in terms of control. If they mean to distribute and profit off of their work, well, maybe you have a point.

No, that's not how it works. No one has an inherent right to copyrights. In fact, copyrights are an infringement of the right of free speech. They are tolerated, however, when they are more beneficial to the public than they are harmful. Since no artist inherently has any rights with regard to their work, other than to create it at all, and to reveal it to someone else, any other rights must be granted to them by the public. If the public won't grant him that right, then the artist simply won't get it, period. Thus, the public gets to decide how much control artists enjoy on works that the artist hasn't kept absolutely private. This is because they must give up their inherent rights in order to give the artist control over them. It's not something done lightly.

It IS property, just property that can't be physically held or manipulated.

No, it's not. If creative works were property, we wouldn't need copyright law at all. Ordinary laws of chattel property would work fine, just as they do for many things which are intangible (e.g. debts). Copyright law attempts to simulate, to some degree, what it would be like if works were property. Arguably, copyrights themselves (as opposed to the works to which they pertain) are property. And certainly copies are property. But works cannot be. There's a three-prong test for whether something is property or not (1: the owner can use and enjoy it; 2: the owner can lend it to others and recover it from them, and; 3: the owner can dispose of it by conveying it away or destroying it) and works are incapable of satisfying prong 2, and are incapable of satisfying prong 3 as well.

so shouldn't you interfere with their attempt to make their music into a restricted physical analogue

I should interfere with it. I should make it unpalatable for them, and just this side of impossible. It harms me for them to do that. Why would I ever encourage them to do it, or reward them for having done it? It would be contrary to my self interest. You have no problem with DRM-using authors acting in their self interest, so why shouldn't I get to act in mine?

Incentives tend to be more effective than punishments.

I agree. And remember, I don't think it would be constitutional to ban DRM. I want to provide such a huge incentive (i.e. copyright) to people who don't use DRM that DRM dies out. And since the DRMed works would be uncopyrighted as a result, I have no qualms with copying them freely, cracking the DRM, etc. Those authors will have had their chance for legal protection, didn't take it, and end up getting screwed as a result. Not my problem.

Re:Conflicted Feelings

[ivan256]

But you're emphasizing an irrelevant logistical detail

The hell I'm not. I'm emphasizing the entire legal standing in the case.

The court ruling doesn't emphasize the physicality of the medium so much as some presumed fundamental right of the copyright holder "to protect its creation in the form in which it was created."

The copyright holder absolutley has that right under the current law, but only in situations where a copy is being made. In fact, the ruling was considerably more narrow than what the law allows. Not only does the creator have the right to protect their creation in the form in which it was created, but they have the right to stop you from making copies for any other damned reason they can come up with too.

The court argues by analogy that "a person who dislikes Michelangelo's statue of David" does not have "a right to take a sledgehammer to it, or, as may be more aptly said in this case, to put a fig leaf on it to make it more acceptable for viewing by parents with young children."

Let's fix your utterly stupid and broken analogy:

The court argues by analogy that "a person who dislikes Michelangelo's statue of David" (irrelevant detail, BTW) does not have "a right to make an identical copy of a majority of it and then take a sledgehammer to it, or as may be more aptly said in this case, to copy the entire statue except for the penis to make it more acceptable for viewing by parents with young children."

There, now the analogy is accurate, if not stupid because Michelangelo's David is not protected by copyright. To further emphisize how dumb your analogy is, under the ruling, defacing an artistic work, or a licensed copy of an artistic work remains perfectly legal. You can continue to crush, burn, microwave, or deficate on your DVDs at will. You can also fast forward through the naughty bits, or flip to religious programming until the cast has been reclothed, all with total disregard to artistic integrity.

The law may be crap, but the ruling upholds the law. They did not have the right to run the business they were running.

Your first mistake

[voice_of_all_reason]

Was actually availing yourself of music that 1) costs money and 2) is restricted.

You are, uh, aware there's mp3s out there on the internets?

Re:Your first mistake

[ronkronk]

What will happen when Apple goes bankrupt? Or when the next generation of mini-players comes out with a new DRM?

You must be thinking of the OTHER music companies, that re-authorize every month or what have you.

If Apple went out of buisiness, you music would continue to play on your current Mac until the end of time.

However, like you say eventually you'd want to move the music. Two options then:

CD's - I can burn any ITMS song to CD as much as I like (limit of ten burns a playlist, but I can always make new playlists...)

Hymn - I can convert protected AAC files into unprotected AAC files, which I can then play on anything that undrestands AAC (most PC players, not many portables) or convert it from there.

So yeah I feel sorry for anyone buying music from anywhere other than ITMS or AllOfMP3.com. I still don't like to use AllOfMP3 though as I don't feel it gives artists as much as it should. Perhaps in the future I'll buy from ITMS, then buy the non-lossy version from AllOfMP3. Too much work though, so I probably wont...

Re:Your first mistake

[kfg]

You are, uh, aware there's mp3s out there on the internets?

You are, uh, aware that this comes up out there in the articles?

KFG

Re:Your first mistake

[argent]

So yeah I feel sorry for anyone buying music from anywhere other than ITMS or $PIRATESITE

I feel sorry for people getting music from anywhere but iTunes or eMusic or mp3bogs like 3hive or buying CDs in used music stores and ripping them or...

Re:Your first mistake

[Incongruity]

Don't forget emusic.com -- cheap, 100% legal and 100% DRM free-music. [I wish they paid me, but sadly, I pay them for access, just to be clear.]

Re:Your first mistake

[m0rph3us0]

Copyright is government intrusion into a free market. The only people who make money from distribution are *gasp* the distributors. If you eliminate copyright you have free competition for distribution. There are lots of ways artists can make money with out needing to ask the government for a monopoly. That artists need copyright is as silly as thinking that bakeries need the government to give them a zone in which no one else can compete. There is no such thing as intellectual property, the intellect is unlimited. No one loses anything by me using your idea. You still have the use of your idea thus I have no deprived you of use of it. (Otherwise known as stealing).

Re:Your first mistake

[vought]

What will happen when Apple goes bankrupt? Or when the next generation of mini-players comes out with a new DRM?


Either the files revert to their original rights holders (the record publisher) or, if it worth their while, some other company will quickly buy the rights to the DRM'ed tracks and handle the business.

I love this alarmist screaming - Doctorow's really got himself convinced that all it would take is Apple's demise to screw everyone who ever bought songs from the TMS. He didn't bother to do any research, but instead decided to scream from the rooftops about how bad the coming dark age of digital rights management will be.

In the old days, the physical medium was the DRM.

Then, consumers started demanding smaller and better sonic reproduction.

Then came the .mp3 file - almost perfect, but no good for distribution - at least not if the publisher wanted to make money.

Now, we have iTMS, windows media, etc. ad infinitium. Arguably, iTMS does a really good job - and I have a hard time believing no one would buy the iTMS IP if Apple were to suddenly go out of business. (Think about it, Cory - would the labels have let Apple run with this whole music store idea if they were the slightest bit afraid of the lawsuits that would results from a defunct iTMS?)

Doctorow either hasn't thought this through or more likely has let the more hysterical elements of the Anti-DRM crowd pollute his normally well-oiled brain with "what ifs" and half-truths. The real truth is that DRM is here to stay in one form or another, and with sufficient consumer protection laws, there will always be recourse against businesses who try to leave consumer holding the bag - but unfortunately, gutting consumer protection laws in deference to "out of control" lawsuits (which will be the next thing to get legislated out of existence) seems to be the political course lately.

Re:Your first mistake

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried out the eMusic free trial. I really liked the service and choice of plain mp3 for file format. I'd love to use eMusic more, except for one thing. I hate subscriptions. I refuse to sign up to be billed a regular monthly charge, when in reality my music consumption varies quite a bit from month to month.

The day that eMusic offers an a la carte purchasing option is the day that I become a devoted eMusic customer. For now I will stick with iTMS.

Re:Your first mistake

[Anonymous Coward]

No one loses anything by me using your idea. You still have the use of your idea thus I have no deprived you of use of it. (Otherwise known as stealing).

Loss of value can be just as detrimental as loss of possession. If I build a landfill next to your house, I have not denied you the use of your house, but I have devalued it such that it impacts you significantly.

Re:Your first mistake

[noewun]

There is no such thing as intellectual property, the intellect is unlimited.

That's an absolutely ridiculous statement. Your logic is off, as well, because you're conflating the idea of copyright with the execution of the laws.

There is absolutely a need for copyright, because there has to be a way for artists to protect the results of their effort, which is what art is. Every movie, book or song you like is the result of the work of an artist, or a group of artists. Without some legal form of protection which ensures the benefits accrued from that effort will go back to remunerating the artist(s), producing that art becomes much more difficult. I am a writer, which means (for now, hopefully) that I have to balance paying work and writing. Should I get published, I would very much like my writing to pay my bills, so I can devote more time to writing. Without copyright, that becomes much more difficult, as anyone can publish my work as their own and reap the benefits of my toil. Without some legal framework to ensure that I can be compensated for what I have created, it becomes very difficult for me to make a living.

As a fr'instance, suppose you had spent the last three years writing a movie script. Suppose you had been lucky enough to get interest from a producer and begin the production process. Now, suppose someone steals your script and makes the movie. The last three years of your life just went up in smoke. IN y our logic, there is 1) nothing you can do and 2) nothing you should do.

If you had said the application of the copyright laws have become more and more restrictive an in favor of corporations, I would have agreed with you. But saying that there is no need for copyright is plain silly.

Re:Your first mistake

[Incongruity]

They do offer a la carte options on top of any of the service plans (they're called "booster packs") -- I completely understand your reluctance to be sucked into a subscription system -- I feel the same way, almost... There's no contract (that's a big one for me) and so far, I'm still using all of my monthly downloads before the month is up.

Re:Your first mistake

[Anonymous Coward]

For the record, with emusic you can get a $10 subscription/month of 40 songs. So assuming you buy at least 10 songs/month on iTMS, you're already in the black. Or there are subscription options that are more but better deals, though those wouldn't interest you. But on top of that, for something like $15 you get a booster pack of 50 songs, which lasts forever. It does mean you have to buy in chunks rather than one at a time, which kind of sucks. But it makes it more a la carte; after the first $10/month you can spend as little or as much as you want.

Of course, if you don't spend $10/month at iTMS, you probably listen to music they don't have at emusic anyway :)

Re:Your first mistake

[haggie]

Don't forget Lala.com and the other CD exchange services. I've exchanged hundreds of CDs for $1/piece. New releases and back catalog. More selection than allofmp3.com

Re:Your first mistake

[mrchaotica]

Then came the .mp3 file - almost perfect, but no good for distribution - at least not if the publisher wanted to make money.

So what?!

What our society seems to have forgotten is that the publisher does not have a God-given right to make money! If technology has evolved beyond the need for publishers -- and it has -- then publishers should be abolished, and good riddance to them! If they can't make their business model work without abusing the law, then they deserve to die.

We, as a society, will be much better off if we remember this fact, and the sooner the better!

Re:Your first mistake

[Anonymous Coward]

four years?

Re:Your first mistake

[ben there...]

(Think about it, Cory - would the labels have let Apple run with this whole music store idea if they were the slightest bit afraid of the lawsuits that would results from a defunct iTMS?)

Yeah, like the time I sued Sony for no longer producing the players to play my Betamax collection.

Wait, I never did that. And neither did anyone else.

Re:Your first mistake

[DonGar]

Unfortunately, Hymn no longer works with iTunes 6. I don't share my music, but I did use it to crack everything I bought over iTunes so that I would have permanently usable copies. Since iTunes 6 (and realizing Hymn wasn't likely to be updated), I've stopped buying from iTunes.

I consider weak DRM to be wrong, but a form of practical compromise. But I don't buy anything I can't crack pretty casually. If I've bought something, I want to decide for myself where I can play it, and not lose access to the content when someone else decides to stop supporting it. Otherwise, I'm just renting.

Re:Your first mistake

[bit01]

No, your argument is meaningless because you are falling into the logical trap of assuming that the-law-as-it-is-currently-implemented is the only way maximising society's benefit. That's flat out wrong. The RIAA likes to push this fallacy because they have an entrenched interest in maintaining the status quo but it's just self serving nonsense so they can maintain their parasitism.

In addition as history and the web has shown the reality is that people will continue to create regardless of what "protections" or otherwise that the law gives them.

Incidentally, who says you should be able to make a living from it? We now have sufficient books so that a person could read continuously for multiple lifetimes, there's simply not a big need for more books. Let's let supply and demand do it's thing.

The law is a creation of the mind and can be anything we want it to be. There are an infinite number of possible ways of balancing the rights of all citizens. Existing copyright is just one possibility of many and there is little evidence that existing copyright law is the best way to go. We should at least have some objective, scientific evidence for the net efficacy of whatever law is chosen.

---

Scientific, evidence based IP law. Now there's a thought.

Re:Your first mistake

[noewun]

No, your argument is meaningless because you are falling into the logical trap of assuming that the-law-as-it-is-currently-implemented is the only way maximising society's benefit. That's flat out wrong.

It's clear to me you didn't read my post very well, because I said, " you had said the application of the copyright laws have become more and more restrictive an in favor of corporations, I would have agreed with you." So, given you haven't paid attention to what I said, I don't know why you're responding, other than to hear yourself speak.

Incidentally, who says you should be able to make a living from it?

I do. As does capitalism, which you attempt to reference with your solipsistic 'supply and demand' reference. Artists have as much a right to make a living from their work as does anyone else who works for a living, including yourself. Let's see you work for free for a while. However, I see there is no need to go forward, as I am talking to a wall. Anyone who claims that the law is solely a "creation of the mind" is living on their own, lonely planet.

Re:Your first mistake

[Ohreally_factor]

You don't even need to tie it to re-numeration to support the importance of the principle of copyright as an extension of property rights. Without copyright, the GPL would not only be toothless. It would be meaningless. There would be no mechanism whatsoever to insure that source was given back to the creator and the community when changes were made and distributed. This is the most important difference between the GPL and the BSD license or the GPL and the public domain.

Without copyright, everything that wasn't held as a secret would be public domain. And when you or I create some new code, we could either keep it a secret (or try as best we can) or we could "share", with no guarantees of reciprocation from others building and profiting on our ideas.

Re:Your first mistake

[Ohreally_factor]

Did you also notice how he links to a blog entry he wrote, but than he misrepresents what he originally wrote? He links to this, saying in the current story that it is about how Apple killed off the ROKR. But if you bother to read the actual blog entry, he points out that the main blame is supposedly with the cell carriers.

It's this sort of intellectually dishonest crap that turned me off of Doctrow a long time ago. He wants to be a Cringley (which some might argue is not a very lofty aspiration), but instead is firmly caught in a Dvorak transmogrification. I've lost all respect for Doctrow. Hey Cory, on the off chance you read this, I have one question for you: is that a real poncho or is that a Sears poncho?

Re:Your first mistake

[bit01]

No, your argument is meaningless because you are falling into the logical trap of assuming that the-law-as-it-is-currently-implemented is the only way maximising society's benefit. That's flat out wrong.

It's clear to me you didn't read my post very well, because I said, " you had said the application of the copyright laws have become more and more restrictive an in favor of corporations, I would have agreed with you." So, given you haven't paid attention to what I said, I don't know why you're responding, other than to hear yourself speak.

I paid attention to what you said. It's just that even with that proviso you're restricting the number of possibilities unnecessarily. Copyright law needs to be fixed for individuals as well as corporations.

Incidentally, who says you should be able to make a living from it?

I do.

Well you would, wouldn't you? You perceive current copyright law as benefiting you. Others perceive it as being at the expense of others in the community.

As does capitalism,

No it doesn't. Capitalism says nothing about this. Capitalism is merely private ownership. Maybe people should be able to own the copies they have and do whatever they like with them.

which you attempt to reference with your solipsistic 'supply and demand' reference.

Nothing solipsistic about it. Supply and demand varies depending on how the law and hence the market is structured.

Artists have as much a right to make a living from their work as does anyone else who works for a living, including yourself.

Nobody has the right to make a living by parasitising others. If what they are producing is not in demand because of a surfeit of availability then I'd suggest they start producing something that people do want.

Let's see you work for free for a while.

No thanks, I'm producing things in demand.

However, I see there is no need to go forward, as I am talking to a wall. Anyone who claims that the law is solely a "creation of the mind" is living on their own, lonely planet.

Since you've more-or-less ignored my main point and my sig (that current copyright law is only one of an infinite number of possibilities and that there is no reason to believe that current copyright law is the best alternative) then I suspect you are the wall. I also never said that law is solely a creation of the mind though whether you like it or not all law, like software, is a creation of the mind.

Please note that my main point is not that copyright should not necessarily exist, merely that the handwaving of people like yourself trying to justify the current law as the only possibility is just that. Handwaving. With little justification. It's time such wide ranging and major impact laws had a much more scientific and objective basis than "it feels good". It could well be that no copyright law, or something completely different like usage rights, contracts or DRM, might be a superior alternative.

Personally I'd like to see copyright law reduced to about 5 years (varying, depending on the form), requiring pro-active registration and renewal by the author (so that "can't locate author" doesn't stop a work from being used), expires on author's death, have a much more restricted definition of derived work (e.g. translations would be a new work), not valid for personal use for minors and the severely disadvantaged (for education), does not restrict the number of copies any one person can have (because they can only read/listen to one copy at a time), is invalidated if it becomes a standard (like trademarks), can be invalidated by a court of law if it can be proven the copy restriction is anti-competitive in any sense (e.g. by blocking reverse engineering and hence competition), exclusivity not transferable (meaning an author cannot give exclusive rights to a publisher though they can license publicati

Re:Your first mistake

[TecKnow]

I tried emusic. Some of the MP3's I got from emusic were of unbearably poor quality, with skips, occasionally gaps, and worst of all painful audio artificats that made me think my speakers were broken at first. What's up with that?

Re:Your first mistake

[dvhh]

But you agree that when you buy a song you are basically "renting" them a song. But enough of apple bashing, DRM prove to be successful as software validation is successful (eg: symantec, macromedia/adobe, microsoft ). It has only prevented a small share of piracy to be done, and is just more annoying for legals users ( "no we don't say you are a thief but we want to check just in case ...." ). However future medias prove that the future will be very dark, HD-Media DRM that can prevent your video player to work just because the compagny, who made it, made a mistake (in that case what happen ? do we get a refund on the player or do we have a 1000$ piece of junk player ?).

Re:Your first mistake

[Duds]

If allofmp3 is a pirate site, importing a CD is pirating.

Re:Your first mistake

[Weedlekin]

"As does capitalism, which you attempt to reference with your solipsistic 'supply and demand' reference. Artists have as much a right to make a living from their work as does anyone else who works for a living, including yourself."

Capitalism does not confer any rights beyond that of individuals being able to own property (capital) which is theirs to do with as they wish, within confines that the capitalist system imposes by its nature, so owning a gun for example does not mean one is free to shoot anything or anyone, because damaging or destroying the property of others infringes on their rights as owners (and this includes their lives and bits of their bodies, which they also own). No form of capital has any intrinsic value beyond what others are willing to pay for it, and that includes work, which is simply another form of capital -- the only "right" a worker has under a capitalist system is therefore to receive the amount of capital from others that they're willing to exchange for that work, or not doing it at all, in which case no capital exchange takes place (i.e. you get nothing).

What then would be the role of copyrights under a capitalist system? Actually, none at all, because they use the threat of force to prevent the natural tendency of markets to place less value on desirable commodities that are scarce than equally desirable ones which are plentiful. Why something is plentiful has no relevance, only the fact that it is, and using non-market forces to change this is profoundly anti-capitalist, while measures such as DRM that make it more technically more difficult difficult for others to "manufacture" an equivalent would be quite acceptable.

Note that patents are equally anti-capitalist because they again use non-market forces to maintain a temporary artificial monopoly. Trademarks on the other hand are something that serves to identify market entities, so infringing on them would be an attempt to artificially manipulate markets by pretending to be someone or something else instead of simply releasing one's own product or service that competes on its own merits (doing what IBM does better than them is fine, but pretending to be IBM isn't).

All of the above makes it rather ironic that the so-called capitalist US is determined to force countries like China and Russia to adopt "IP" protection measures that are intended to prevent that most capitalist of phenomena, i.e. home-grown entrepreneurs producing easily manufactured products more cheaply than overseas competitors!

Re:Your first mistake

[Incongruity]

I've (only) downloaded just over 200 songs from them in the last three months or so and I haven't had any issues. I know that their FAQ says that if that happens you're supposed to download the song again (you can do that free of charge) and if that doesn't change things then email them through their contact form and they'll try to fix it. But all I can say is that I haven't had the same issues you have. If I did, I might not be a subscriber.

Re:Your first mistake

[Workaphobia]

Now here's something I've been wondering for a little while, about eMusic, that I wanted to know before I considered signing up. Obviously if they're distributing plain, non-drm'd mp3 files, they can't stop me from doing what I want with them, legal or not. But I'd still like to know A: whether I have the right of first sale over the music I purchase - that is, can I resell the tracks I download to someone else provided I delete my copy, so that it would be like selling a physical CD; and B: do any of my rights to the music I've already downloaded terminate when/if I end my subscription?

Because if I get *all* the rights that I would get if I had purchased the physical CD, well, that's a damn convincing argument to get me to sign up. I'm slightly concerned that if Apple ever opens up their DRM, eMusic might start using that, since they freely admit that they only chose the mp3 format for iPod compatibility and not out of any moral appreciation for unrestricted music. But if they ever do that I suppose I can just cancel the subscription.

Re:Your first mistake

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, like the time I sued Sony for no longer producing the players to play my Betamax collection.

Wait, I never did that. And neither did anyone else.

That's because you can still buy high-end analog and D-Beta players today that were made by Sony last week. Beta is and has always been high-end, broadcast quality. And yes, those 1982-vintage tapes will still work in a new Beta deck.

Beyond that, comparing a physical player (which can be resold to other who need to accomplish a task) to source code or other intellectual property like the iTMS is kind of dumb; it's a stupid comparison, but even in your anti-DRM fervor, you could have spent the twenty seconds on Google it would have taken to avoid what should be a truly embarassing post for you. Beta still ships.

Your attempt to link Beta format tapes and Apple (only for the 197456th time on Slashdot) has been refused by the logic police.

I don't normally call people names in the comments, but you are well and truly stupid.

sooooo they say...

[revlayle]

"...Apple's copy-protection technology makes media companies into its servants..."

...and Apple would have a problem with this why? Don't they want EVERYONE to be their servent?

Re:sooooo they say...

[Midnight Thunder]

"...Apple's copy-protection technology makes media companies into its servants..." ...and Apple would have a problem with this why? Don't they want EVERYONE to be their servent?

The irony is that it was the media companies who gave Apple this power, by mandating DRM.

Re:sooooo they say...

[peacefinder]

"The irony is that it was the media companies who gave Apple this power, by mandating DRM."

Exactly. Apple is neither demon nor saint here... they're just riding the wave of the moment.

Their success comes because they put together a vertical integration: a playback device, a content distribution platform, a music store, and most critically an agreement with enough major record labels to support the rest. (It's probable that other tech powers could have managed this, but Apple is the one which did it.)

DRM doesn't do Apple any good in itself. (Or didn't at the iPod/iTunes launch, anyway.) I'm sure DRM was a big headache to design and implement, and they could just as well have done without it. But a plausible DRM implementation was the only way for Apple to get the record companies to play ball, so (in order to reap the profits from the other stages) Apple had to include it.

Now, the iPod/iTunes/iTMS/FairPlay stack is a raging success. It's so successful that it has given Apple the whip hand over the record companies. (Which is more than a bit amusing.)

If at some point the record companies want to break Apple's grip on power, they can do so easily... just drop their DRM demand, thereby cutting their own throats. Or they can stop selling through iTMS, and watch that revenue stream dry up, their artists leave, and listen to their customers howl. Or they can go to an Apple competitor and negotiate a better DRM deal... which consumers will ignore, because a better deal for the record companies is necessarily a worse deal for the end user.

So I think the record industry is done as a power broker. This is undoubtedly bad for them and for Apple's competitors, and it's less than ideal for consumers, but it's too soon to say that it's really bad overall. With the record companies' power broken, more artists are going to retain the rights to their works, and publish via TuneCore.com or iTMS or whatever. In time, that's going to change the face of the industry.

Re:sooooo they say...

[capologist]

just drop their DRM demand, thereby cutting their own throats. Or they can stop selling through iTMS, and watch that revenue stream dry up, their artists leave

I wonder how long it will be before major artists start selling their music directly through their own websites and say, "F*ck the record labels."

No, I take that back.

I wonder how long it will be before the record labels successfully lobby Congress for legislation that effectively prohibits artists from doing an end run around the labels.

Re:sooooo they say...

[peacefinder]

"I wonder how long it will be before the record labels successfully lobby Congress for legislation that effectively prohibits artists from doing an end run around the labels."

I think they're unlikely to succeed at that, and even that they are unlikely to try. Since the labels aren't actually the content creators, they'll have a heck of a time working around the constitution's copyright clause to do such a thing.

Plus, they still have revenue and will for a long time to come. They're not about to go bankrupt, so they have lots of time to live in denial. If every artist dropped their label today (or as soon as their contracts run out, anyway) the labels still control huge portions of the back catalogs of most big artists. That gives them enormous clout. While I think that clout has peaked and will diminish from here on out, it'll still be a long slow fall.

Re:sooooo they say...

[capologist]

they'll have a heck of a time working around the constitution's copyright clause to do such a thing.

Constitution? How quaint!

Re:sooooo they say...

[peacefinder]

Yeah, I guess I'm just an old-skool conservative. :-)

Re:sooooo they say...

[arose]

A constitutional extremist!

This guy must be a slashdot reader...

[jhfry]

... considering that this topic has been beaten to death here and every side of the argument has been discussed. It's a well known fact to any Slashdot reader that DRM is bad. Maybe this article should be posted on Apple's, the DMCA, and every other media monster's website. Here it's just telling us what we already know.

Re:This guy must be a slashdot reader...

[Linker3000]

Ric Romero is on the case.

Re:This guy must be a slashdot reader...

[UbuntuDupe]

Stupid but honest question: if DRM is bad, is the production of music only profitable through DRM also bad? Record companies use DRM so as to make copying more difficult and protect their copyright in the music. Do people find it unfair that they can't circumvent copyright as easy as they'd like?

Re:This guy must be a slashdot reader...

[kfg]

Cory "posted" the article on InformationWeek, not here. Here just links to it.

If there is information in the article for the dedicated Slashdot reader it's that the message is getting out onto another "media monster's website."

KFG

Re:This guy must be a slashdot reader...

[jhfry]

"Stupid but honest question: if DRM is bad, is the production of music only profitable through DRM also bad?"

There is no such thing as "the production of music only profitable through DRM". I believe, as do many anti-DRM activists, that the average person is more than willing to pay a fair price for anything they want or need, they do not need to be forced to do the right thing.

The problem is that the media giants have decided that they want more than a fair price for their product, so many people look elsewhere to get the things they want. This then results in the media giants deciding that they need to protect their products from theft... so they spend an ungodly amount of money developing and deploying ineffective technologies that do nothing but further alienate their customers while increasing their overhead. Now they have fewer customers, lower profit margins, and more theft occuring... so what do they do, the same stupid thing all over again!

What needs to happen is that these media giants need to start TRUSTING THEIR CUSTOMERS!!! We are in a web of distrust... we don't trust them, and they don't trust us. If an entertainer were to get most of the proceeds from their work, while the record company took a fair share, we could trust them. The cost of their wares would drop and most of us would buy the stuff without thought. But $20 for a CD of music I don't care much for, by an artist who I know only get's pennies of my money. It's bullshit. I would rather steal the music and send the artist a dollar or two.

Fortunately I don't like music, so I don't bother stealing it... talk radio is more entertaining.

Re:This guy must be a slashdot reader...

[UbuntuDupe]

I believe, as do many anti-DRM activists, that the average person is more than willing to pay a fair price for anything they want or need, they do not need to be forced to do the right thing.

The problem is that the media giants have decided that they want more than a fair price for their product,

So, let me see if I can get this straight. You want to dictate the price of music you believe they rightly own the copyright for, and, failing that, you oppose them putting up any barriers to copyright infringement of their product. Explain to me the significant difference between that and

"You wouldn't need so many casino security guards if the odds of winning weren't so low!"

"You wouldn't need to watch for shoplifters if you didn't charge so much!"

Do you have a grown-up version of this argument?

Re:This guy must be a slashdot reader...

[westlake]

It's a well known fact to any Slashdot reader that DRM is bad. Maybe this article should be posted on Apple's, the DMCA, and every other media monster's website.

Fully half of Apple's revenues are coming from the iPod and iTunes. The second and third tier providers are by no means doing badly. So long as there is money to made here, the Slashdot poster can safely be ignored.

Re:This guy must be a slashdot reader...

[shmlco]

"The problem is that the media giants have decided that they want more than a fair price for their product, so many people look elsewhere to get the things they want..."

No, the problem is that everyone and his brother has their own definition of what constitutes a "fair" price. As your "$20" statement illustrates.

For most things that wouldn't be an issue, as if you think the price for some product is unfair you simply do without it or buy something else. It's not like you're going to die without the lastest piece of junk from 50-Cent. But here, when people decide the price is "unfair" they think they're entitled to it anyway. Back to your statement, why would you buy music from an artist you don't care much for? On the flip side, if you don't care for them, why steal (your word) their music and waste your time in the first place?

Voting with your dollars is one thing. Stealing quite another.

Finally, why should they trust you? You've just clearly stated that anytime you think the terms of the agreement is "unfair" you're going to break it. Where's the "trust" in that?

What if I think it's worth a buck and you think it's worth a quarter? Or if they drop the price of a track to a quarter, and you think a tune by an artist you don't care for is only worth a nickel. In either case are you now justified in stealing whatever you want yet again?

There are quite a few worthwhile arguments out there. Yours, however, isn't one of them...

Re:This guy must be a slashdot reader...

[Fringe]

I believe, as do many anti-DRM activists, that the average person is more than willing to pay a fair price for anything they want or need, they do not need to be forced to do the right thing

Belief is usually required when not supported by facts or reality.

Years ago one of my programs was selected by PC Magazine as one of their top 5 freeware/shareware utilities for that year. I made mine fully functional, donations appreciated. I got three, ever. But I regularly ran into people who used it all the time and even recognized my name and gushed about it when introduced to me, plus it wound up on all sorts of those utility discs you used to be able to buy for $5 at computer shows, without me ever being contacted by the CD publishers or the users. I never made a big deal about it, but it did tell me a lot about people.

Perhaps people need not be forced to do the right thing, but if not at least actively propelled and urged, evidence is they won't.

Re:This guy must be a slashdot reader...

[dr.badass]

The problem is that the media giants have decided that they want more than a fair price for their product, so many people look elsewhere to get the things they want.

The fact that you, personally, do not want to pay a particular price does not make it unfair.

I would rather steal the music and send the artist a dollar or two.

What about the producer? What about the recording engineer? What about all of the other people involved in creating the recording that you've just stolen? Do they not deserve to be compensated for their work?

Re:This guy must be a slashdot reader...

[no_opinion]

Thanks for the great example. Look at the p2p track data for a popular release (e.g. from BigChampagne), and then total up the sales figures for that album and singles combined across all legitimate formats (CD, iTunes, Napster, etc.). When I've done this, the data shows that many more people pirate than purchase. Surprise, but people are not inherently honest, they'll take free if it's easy and they don't think they'll get caught. There needs to be both a carrot and a stick.

Re:This guy must be a slashdot reader...

[mrchaotica]

believe, as do many anti-DRM activists, that the average person is more than willing to pay a fair price for anything they want or need, they do not need to be forced to do the right thing.

Either that, or the artists will find other ways of making money instead of selling songs per-copy. For example, they would play concerts or sell T-shirts or solicit donations or whatever.

Re:This guy must be a slashdot reader...

[crabpeople]

copyright infringment is me liberating songs that will be locked away from the public in perpetuity. As soon as they make things fall into public domain after something resonable (~15 years) then ill re evaluate my position.

and dont be stupid. Copyright infringment isnt stealing. Just because the grandparent misused a word doesnt mean you have to parrot it.

Re:This guy must be a slashdot reader...

[mrchaotica]

There are quite a few worthwhile arguments out there. Yours, however, isn't one of them...

Indeed.

The real justification for copyright infringment has nothing to do with price. Instead, it originates from the fact that copyright was originally designed as a social contract for the purpose of benefiting society (that's what the "to Promote the Progress of Science and the Useful Arts" part of Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8 of the US Constitution means). Because the music publishers have already violated the social contract (in a variety of ways: using DRM, lobbying to have copyright extended way beyond any socially-beneficial length, etc.), we, as citizens, no longer have any obligation to hold up ours.

And before anyone says it*, no, copyright violation isn't stealing. It can't be, because ideas are not property, and the music never belonged to the publishers -- or the artists -- to begin with. Ideas inherently belong to society (as is obvious to demonstrate: what would happen without copyright law?); we're merely taking back what's rightfully ours.

*shmico: I'm aware that you didn't say it; in fact, thank you very much for putting it in quotes like that

Re:This guy must be a slashdot reader...

[capologist]

Voting with your dollars is one thing. Stealing quite another.

Pirating music/movies/software/ebooks isn't stealing. It's freeloading. There is a significant difference. It's amazing how effectively the industry has bamboozled the public into believing that there isn't.

Re:This guy must be a slashdot reader...

[bky1701]

That's exactly why donation systems work best. I may think a CD is worth 2$, but you may really love it and want to give them 60$ (where it maybe sold for 20$ now). Open software and many other systems work on this; why can music and movies not? It's gimme gimme mentality, and only makes me not want to give them ANYTHING yet still use what they want to rape me for just to spite them (however in most cases it isn't even worth it...). So there is the fix to your problem.

Re:This guy must be a slashdot reader...

[cpt kangarooski]

Stupid but honest question: if DRM is bad, is the production of music only profitable through DRM also bad?

Yes. Ultimately, we're worse off with DRM and the music than we would be with no DRM and without that music. (It wouldn't be all music, of course: history shows that lots of music will get created, published, recorded, etc. without DRM) This means that the music you're asking about costs more to the public than it is worth to the public. That makes it bad.

It'd be great to have it, sans DRM. But if that won't happen, so be it.

Do people find it unfair that they can't circumvent copyright as easy as they'd like?

Often it is unfair. Literally so: when DRM interferes with a fair use, which by definition is not an infringement of copyright, then what else can we call that, but unfair?

Plus, DRM doesn't conform with the shape of copyright. Copyright expires; DRM does not. Copyright can be changed by legislation; DRM cannot be. Copyright has many exceptions lest it be overbroad and harmful (which is not to say that it isn't already overbroad and harmful); DRM tends to ignore these as implemented.

Re:This guy must be a slashdot reader...

[UbuntuDupe]

Yes. Ultimately, we're worse off with DRM and the music than we would be with no DRM and without that music. (It wouldn't be all music,

Thank you. That's clearer and more honest than most posts I've seen on this: you accept that some music would be produced irrespective of DRM, and some would not be worthwhile without, and further accept that the music that needs it, isn't worth it if it would mean DRM.

Often it is unfair. Literally so: when DRM interferes with a fair use, which by definition is not an infringement of copyright, then what else can we call that, but unfair?

I don't see any problem with people making their works *physically* more difficult to copy, as long as they don't try to make it *legally* more difficult. For example, if I interlace the text of a book with some colorful picture when published online as a .gif, someone will have to transcribe it in order to exercise his fair use rights of quoting excerpts on his blog or whatever. That would imply that laws protecting DRM restrictions and keeping you from circumventing them are bad, but if they just want to put them on to make it harder for mouth-breathers to share them, that's okay. I assume it's illegal to circumvent DRM, so I would agree with you in opposing that.

However, I don't know how they can, legally or physically, prevent you from exercising genuine fair use rights, such as quoting. Worst comes to worst, *tape record* an excerpt of the music you want to quote.

Plus, DRM doesn't conform with the shape of copyright. Copyright expires; DRM does not. Copyright can be changed by legislation; DRM cannot be.

And it just so happens that making DRM expirable or on-the-fly modifiable would also make it easily crackable.

Also, if the copyright term really does expire, that means you can legally download a digital copy. In the rare event that copyright is modified for the better, Congress could require them to re-issue the work with different restrictions.

Re:This guy must be a slashdot reader...

[cpt kangarooski]

I don't see any problem with people making their works *physically* more difficult to copy, as long as they don't try to make it *legally* more difficult.

I disagree. Remember, no one has an inherent right to a copyright. A copyright is granted by the public, via our servant, the government, only when it is in our interest to do so. We can, and traditionally have, granted copyrights only when the claimant satisfies certain conditions. I don't see why one such condition cannot be that they cannot use, authorize, or allow those they authorize to use, DRM with their works.

If they don't like it, they are free to either 1) not create or publish their works, or 2) use DRM and not get a copyright. I think that by making copyrights rewarding, and making the use of DRM unrewarding (by e.g. having the government put significant effort into cracking the DRM on the public domain works that would be using it) we can steer authors et al into doing what we want, even though it is ultimately their choice.

Also, if the copyright term really does expire, that means you can legally download a digital copy.

But unless the DRM is cracked, that copy still won't function.

Re:This guy must be a slashdot reader...

[Ohreally_factor]

This is, in my mind, the only legitimate complaint about DRM mixed with copyrights. The two are contradictory. It's not DRM that is bad, it's the DMCA that's the real problem. Focusing on the DRM is not going to be effective. Focusing on a terrible law will be effective. We need to change the law, people. Fighting DRM is quixotic at best.

Re:This guy must be a slashdot reader...

[arose]

You may be a pack animal, I'm not, they can stick themselves, because the're not getting my money nor my eartime. All I want of them is to leave me alone, unfortunatly they won't, they push manufacturers ad lawmakers to design and regulate the hardware I purchase with my hard earned money in the way they want to have it, and that's what anti-DRM is about for me.

Re:This guy must be a slashdot reader...

[cpt kangarooski]

Well, I don't think that we can ban DRM due to 1st Amendment concerns. But I do think that we can fight it effectively by making DRM and copyright mutually exclusive, and then making copyright far more attractive (while still maximizing the public benefit) than DRM as options to authors and publishers. But it does still require significant changes to the law.

Re:This guy must be a slashdot reader...

[ortholattice]

Well, I wouldn't call it a total loss, since presumably it enhanced your reputation. Being selected by PC Magazine as one of the top 5 is quite an honor and a real gem to add to your resume. Heck, I might write a program for free (i.e. with no expectation of donations) if I could achieve that. In the long run that might be worth more than a few hundreds or even thousands in donations in terms of the impression you make on potential employers for negotiating salary, etc. Also, have you considered open-sourcing it for enhancement/porting by others, since apparently there's no economic incentive to keep it closed source (assuming it is, like most freeware)? That way your contribution can live on forever, beyond the life of the current OS it happens to run on.

Re:This guy must be a slashdot reader...

[gsn]

Really, I thought when something was unfair you try and change the system. Voting with your dollars is our method of changing the system - if a company loses enough buisness its forced to change their system. No the problem is the entertainment industry is a cartel not just a company and even if people vote with their dollars and decide to go to engage in mass stealing they apparently have enough money to slow down the process. Also, I distinctly remember them being convicted for price fixing and distinctly dont remember them giving me any money back for the around 20 cds and probably many many more tapes I bought. Do you really want to argue that the price is fair...

So yes voting with your dollars is one, usually good way of changing the system. A revolution is another. And the later is remarkably much more effective when your opponent is a lot bigger than you. Thats what the p2p thing is. Voting with your dollars was a great way of punishing a local restaurant for bad service but is a tad idealistic in todays economy.

What I'd like to have happen is to buy direct from the artists. Computers and networks make distribution a lot easier, and getting a band publicity is not as hard as people think. Its really not difficult to see a social networking site with bands and users who rate them and I'd be willing to believe you could find a group of users with similar music tastes and see what bands they liked best. Theres internet radio. We already have services that can suggest new music choices based on your own choices. I think several good bands could become very popular without going anywhere near a record company. I think interacting with artists directly would mean more variety and would be a better and more personal experience. It would mean than voting with your dollars was a concept with meaning. Yes, tt might mean an end to superstars. But I can also imagine a whole gaggle of teenage girls falling over some heartthrob on the net, so maybe not. My 0.02

Re:This guy must be a slashdot reader...

[Unusually_Cool]

What about the producer? What about the recording engineer? What about all of the other people involved in creating the recording that you've just stolen? Do they not deserve to be compensated for their work?

They did get paid. Its called a salary. Or maybe they got paid by the hour. In either case, they are compensated once, much like artists should be.

Re:This guy must be a slashdot reader...

[dangitman]

That's exactly why donation systems work best.

Work best at what? Making money? I don't think so. I'm pretty sure that for-sale non-negotiable copyrighted software, music and movies make a LOT more money than those sustained by voluntary donation.

At producing the best/most innovative or popular product? Again, the world's best artists in music and movies, and the world's most innovative/powerful software tends to come from the non-negotiable commercial side of things. Very few of the people who distribute via donation could compete with the non-negotiable commercial players. Even independent musicians tend to sell their music or concert tickets for a fixed price, not donation. You see, people like to have a reliable income so they can eat, have a place to live, and money to invest in their future creative projects.

naughty!

[BronsCon]

Dead horse, go fetch a switch from that willow tree.

To go foward should we go back?

[brunokummel]

I remember when an old friend told me back at school that he had the ultimate anti-copying technology ! He said let's go back to the vinyl discs! I remember that i laughed my heart out back then, but everyday now I wonder what would the market become if he's right? Not to mention the users...

Re:To go foward should we go back?

[geekoid]

maybe not: http://www.zzounds.com/item--NUMTTX1

Re:To go foward should we go back?

[Ohreally_factor]

Ah, but what happens when the turntable manufacturers go bankrupt? Or there are no more needles or cartridges? Why isn't Doctrow pointing out this threat? Why isn't he railing about 8 track tapes? Wax cylinders?

Answer: Because he's the slashdot equivalent of a MySpace attention whore. This whole article is more about Cory's self promotion than about him fighting any injustice.

People are waking up...

[sweetnjguy29]

...and realizing that DRM sucks. Recently a non-techie friend asked me if his ipod could "talk" to my Zen Mirco:M so he could borrow some music for a few days. I said "sure, they are just mp3s" - she wanted to know how that was possible...that it was so easy to copy and duplicate a file back and forth from my computer to my music device without any hassles...and after our discussion, she was flabbergasted that she had been locked into iTunes and how her rights and freedoms were restricted by its DRM.

Many other people are waking up to the fact that DRM is shorthand for "you really don't own this piece of music you paid $1 for, and that you can't share it, or copy it, or use it on a different computer." People, and the information they rely and enjoy, desire true freedom.

Re:People are waking up...

[Anonymous Coward]

You had a real nice comment until:

her rights and freedoms were restricted

Last time I checked buying commerical music was neither a right nor a freedom.

Re:People are waking up...

[Otter]

Recently a non-techie friend asked me if his ipod could "talk" to my Zen Mirco:M so he could borrow some music for a few days...and after our discussion, she was flabbergasted that she had been locked into iTunes and how her rights and freedoms were restricted by its DRM.

Putting aside your friend's sex change in the middle of this conversation -- what "rights and freedoms" are involved in not being able to "borrow" copyrighted music?

Re:People are waking up...

[kfg]

what "rights and freedoms" are involved in not being able to "borrow" copyrighted music?

The same as those involved in taking a book out of the library. Publishers put up a big stink about that too. Come to think of it, they've never ceased at looking for ways to subvert that. Someday they might succeed, say with ebooks, DRM and the DMCA.

KFG

Re:People are waking up...

[keytohwy]

Locked into iTunes? I just left Borders where I could not stomach $18.99 for a new release. On the way out, I saw a Pink Floyd Album for $14.99 (not The Wall). I can buy them for $9.99 on iTunes, and despite what you say, I can put it on up to 5 computers AT A TIME, and can burn/copy it as often as I like, and if I choose to break the law, I can share it by burning a CD and giving it away. Oh yes, the recipient will have to re-rip, giving them lesser quality, but forgive me if I don't feel bad for those that steal having inferior recordings. And why is Apple getting stung here? It's not like they want to invest money in DRMs. It's the labels that demanded it. keytohwy *and that you can't share it, or copy it, or use it on a different computer." People, and the information they rely and enjoy, desire true freedom.*

Re:People are waking up...

[RLiegh]

>Last time I checked buying commerical music was neither a right nor a freedom.

The freedom to do what you want with something which you have paid money for is a fundamental right.

Don't settle for less, ever.

Re:People are waking up...

[TimTheFoolMan]

Well, presuming that you can't listen to the song while your friend is "borrowing" it, I think you've got a legitimate beef. On the other hand, if you bought a copy of a book that I wrote, photocopied all 1500 pages, and I didn't get a royalty hit, I'd be appropriately annoyed. Likewise if you had a PDF version of the book, and used file-copy to "borrow it," I'd want to know why you didn't buy it.

Handing a book to a friend and copying a file are two different things. Cory (and others) need to "wake up" to this fact.

Tim

Re:People are waking up...

[krunk7]

1. You can transfer music with just as much ease to and from your iPod as you can from your Zen.
2. If by "locked" into iTunes you mean "must use iTunes music store". Your full of FUD
3. If by "locked into iTunes" you mean you must use iTunes to transfer music. Not quite right, but then virtually all devices of this kind come with some sort of transfer utility.

iPod is just a player. iTunes is just a player. iTunes music store DRM's their music like any other online seller of music like them. If you don't want to DRM, don't buy the music. It's not like your iPod won't work. Sheesh.

Re:People are waking up...

[HTTP Error 403 403.9]

Putting aside your friend's sex change in the middle of this conversation...

I blamed DRM: Dick Removed from Man.

Re:People are waking up...

[MKalus]

she was flabbergasted that she had been locked into iTunes and how her rights and freedoms were restricted by its DRM.

How exactly does iTunes use DRM? iTunes itself does not create DRM encrypted files, the ones you download from the iTMS ARE of course DRM "protected" but iTunes doesn't lock anybody in. All the files I have in my iTunes (over 30K) are DRM free and can be copied anywhere I like to copy them.

Re:People are waking up...

[Moofie]

"she was flabbergasted that she had been locked into iTunes and how her rights and freedoms were restricted by its DRM."

iPods play MP3s just fine. What "rights and freedoms" are you talking about? Are they at all similar to the rights and freedoms that would be restricted if you were to buy something from one of the DRM vendors that is compatible with your Zen Micro?

Re:People are waking up...

[vertinox]

Putting aside your friend's sex change in the middle of this conversation -- what "rights and freedoms" are involved in not being able to "borrow" copyrighted music?

Fair Use

On the same token, what right do media companies have to charge me money every time I let a friend listen to my music?

Re:People are waking up...

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, nice anecdote. Did you just make that up right here? On the spot?

Re:People are waking up...

[penguinstorm]

"DRM is shorthand for "you really don't own this piece of music you paid $1 for, and that you can't share it, or copy it, or use it on a different computer.""

Arguably you never have owned this piece of music.

The real problem is that while there is only *one* source of DRM (yes there are many, but for the sake of argument follow it) there are multiple forms of copyright. Most DRM policies initiate in the U.S., which essentially means that although I am in Canada I'm subjected to some form of U.S. copyright policy.

DRM is not inherently bad -- we just argue over the definition of fair use.

Re:People are waking up...

[Anonymous Coward]

what "rights and freedoms" are involved in not being able to "borrow" copyrighted music?

How about the right to sell something that you own?

It seems pretty obvious to me. If you bought a CD, you'd expect to be able to sell it. In fact, if you look around, you'll see there are all of these "used CD" stores where they actually do this. Borrowing something is directly equivalent to buying something at zero cost, then selling it back at zero cost.

DRM is an attempt to subvert ownership; the media companies want to pretend to sell things to us, while they are actually renting something with a built-in self-destruct device.

This is fraudulent at its best, and when it's supported by the force of the law (DMCA), it is a blatant violation of the freedoms of individual humans -- in favor of the monied owners of our Congressmen.

Re:People are waking up...

[Mr2001]

Handing a book to a friend and copying a file are two different things. Cory (and others) need to "wake up" to this fact.

Ah, but you're ignoring the different ways books and music are used.

You don't typically just listen to a song once, and then consider yourself done with it until months or years later when you decide to revisit it. However, that is a common way to use books (and movies). Which means libraries fill basically the same market role for books that P2P sharing does for music: one person buys one copy, which is then passed around to various other people, eliminating all those others' need to buy their own copies. Library patrons don't need to buy their own copy of a book because they've already read it for free, and they won't want to read it again for quite some time; music downloaders don't need to buy their own copy of a CD because they just downloaded one. In one case a copy is made, and in the other it isn't, but they have the same effect on sales (except that each library branch serves fewer patrons than a P2P network).

Re:People are waking up...

[kfg]

Well, presuming that you can't listen to the song while your friend is "borrowing" it, I think you've got a legitimate beef.

I have no idea what the license(s) on those mp3s was/were. For all we know it was perfectly legal for him to "give" the stuff to her.

Handing a book to a friend and copying a file are two different things.

A good reason to persist in buying property instead of leasing by license, don't you think?

The question is in a world where data is naturally ubiquitous is it really that different? The fact that some very strange laws must be passed to artificially maintain the monopoly suggests that something strange is going on. At the very least things are no longer working in the manner that they once did.

Perhaps people who try to make money from artificial monopolies on "things" that are actually easier to make anew than to transfer individually need to "wake up" to the new reality.

Think about that. It is easier to make a new one than to actually transfer the old one.

Think about this: if someone suddenly announced that they had invented a machine that anyone could make from parts available at Home Depot for about a hundred bucks that could duplicate any physical object from an equal mass of any other object -- there is no way in hell you would ever be legally allowed to simply go to Home Depot and construct such a machine.

Bonus points for knowing why not.

KFG

Re:People are waking up...

[Kesh]

They don't. Then again, giving copies of the song to your friend is not fair use. Letting them listen to your copies on your CD/MP3 player/8-track/etc. would be fair use. Giving/selling them the physical CD/MP3 player*/8-track/etc. would be fair. Just letting them "borrow" a copy off your player is not.

* Provided you didn't keep a copy on your hard drive, naturally.

Re:People are waking up...

[Jay Random the Other]

>The freedom to do what you want with something which you have paid money for is a fundamental right.

All right, then. I paid money for this house; I therefore have the fundamental right to build a blast furnace in the back yard and stable feedlot cattle in the bedrooms.

What's that you say? Zoning laws don't allow industrial use in a residential district? But my fundamental rights, waah, waah, waah!

I also paid money for this semi-automatic rifle; I therefore have the fundamental right to fire off rounds into the air whenever I feel like it, and if someone happens to be in the way when the bullets come down, tough.

What's that you say? Illegal to discharge a firearm inside city limits? But my fundamental rights, waah, waah, waah!

And I paid money for this lovely limited-edition art print hanging on the wall behind me; I therefore have the fundamental right to make unlimited copies of it and sell them on eBay for $20 each, thus driving the original artist out of the business of selling his own prints for $200.

What's that you say? . . . . .

The fact is, when you buy a copy of a musical recording, you are not buying the right to do whatever you want with it. Copyright law, which imposes explicit restrictions on your so-called fundamental rights, is much older than recorded music. And the idea of the law putting restrictions on what you can do with your personal property is as old as law and property themselves.

Re:People are waking up...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, so the person who buys a gun (has paid money for, in your terms), has the freedom to shoot anyone they want as a fundamental right?

Re:People are waking up...

[dr.badass]

Recently a non-techie friend asked me if his ipod could "talk" to my Zen Mirco:M so he could borrow some music for a few days. I said "sure, they are just mp3s" - she wanted to know how that was possible...that it was so easy to copy and duplicate a file back and forth from my computer to my music device without any hassles...and after our discussion, she was flabbergasted that she had been locked into iTunes and how her rights and freedoms were restricted by its DRM.

Nowhere in this incoherent story have you indicated what the actual "problem" was. On the one hand, you're saying that you were trying to connect an iPod to a Zen. The reason that wouldn't work has nothing to do with DRM. Also, you seem to be implying that you can't play MP3s on an iPod, which isn't true and wouldn't have anything to do with DRM if it was. Or maybe you mean to say that you were trying to copy music from the iPod to your Zen. That wouldn't work even without DRM, because the Zen can't play AAC.

Many other people are waking up to the fact that DRM is shorthand for "you really don't own this piece of music you paid $1 for, and that you can't share it, or copy it, or use it on a different computer."

In the case of iTunes DRM, none of those statements are true.

Re:People are waking up...

[RLiegh]

Ironically, all of your exaggerated and extreme examples only come into play when you do things which adversely affect someone else. IE causing pollution which drives down your neighbors property, fire a weapon which can maim or kill someone else or engaging in fraud which damages the income and reputation of someone else.

At the end of the day I'm allowed to do what I want with my property, but I'm held responsible for the mis use (ie, printing up a gazillon copies and selling them on ebay) of it as well.

So, that said; the freedom to do what you want with something which you have paid money for is a fundamental right. Period. That does not release you from accepting responsibility for your mis-use of what you do with it; but if you don't have the freedom to misuse it, you don't really own it.

Ownership -property rights- is the cornerstone of a free country.

The current climate is eroding the concept of personal property through the means of limited use/rental (you rent -not own- the films and music you download, in the future you will rent -not own- the copy of Windows you operate) as well as eroding the already-established concept of fair use and ownership.

This is a condition to be resisted; not embraced.

Re:People are waking up...

[dr.badass]

Think about that. It is easier to make a new one than to actually transfer the old one.

This is true for data, but not for the content, which is the valuable asset is being protected. Four megabytes of random data is not worth as much as four megabytes of data that can be decoded into a song. Why? Because it is more difficult to create a new song than random data.

Re:People are waking up...

[kfg]

Because it is more difficult to create a new song than random data.

Number nine. . .number nine. . .number nine . . . number nine. . .

KFG

Re:People are waking up...

[samuel4242]

when you do things which adversely affect someone else

When you make unauthorized copies without paying royalties, you hurt the original creator. But I guess those folks don't fall into the category of "someone else."

I'm often amazed how often DRM-haters view the creators as a different class of beings, living in another world from the average joe. But the copyright laws help the average joe too if and when the average joe takes advantage of teh cool technology to create something. There are a number of interesting best sellers at lulu.com and I bet few of them would have been published without the new technology. I'm glad these authors get the protection of copyright because according to the arguments of some folks here, they've turned into evil copyright-wielding monsters by putting out their books.

Just for the record, there are a number of songs and books that have changed my life. I almost wish I could pay the author/singer/writer more than the stated price.

Re:People are waking up...

[RLiegh]

when you do things which adversely affect someone else

When you make unauthorized copies without paying royalties, you hurt the original creator.

I should be able to make as many copies as I want...no one is hurt unless and until I distribute them.
But no, no one gets hurt as long as I am making copies of my own property. No one has the right to stop me from doing that. That's what used to be considered 'fair use' until the [MP||RI]AA started buying laws.

But I guess those folks don't fall into the category of "someone else."

The point where 'someone else' wants to come between me and my Fair Use rights they become 'someone who must be stopped'.

Re:People are waking up...

[TimTheFoolMan]

Yes, I ignored the differences in ways that the mediums are used. It's not relevant to the issue at hand.

Return to the question of a PDF of my book. No doubt, you would look at downloading that across a P2P network exactly the same way, regardless of whether or not you were going to read it once, or read it daily. Is a Bible different because many people crack it open every day? Using your argument, any fixed document that's read and re-read regularly would be purchased exactly once.

This is the same "change the game so my argument holds water" technique that Cory uses all the time. It's the kind of thing that makes it impossible to have a reasonable discussion with him, because he bases his position on a proposition that isn't relevant. Unfortunately, most people don't stop him at that point, because he's always carrying the banner of "information wants to be free," and pretending to be Thomas Jefferson.

Ultimately, Cory wants to "possess" music (and other electronic data that is similarly protected) without paying the content creator for their work and he wants to get away with it. Whether you call it stealing or something altruistic, he wants the benefit without cost, and without renumeration to the artist or legitimate owner of publication/distribution rights. It's as simple as that.

Tim

P.S. Your argument also suggests that there is no value in owning books. I own them specifically so I can go back and re-read them when I choose to, and not when they're available at the public library. I buy music (principally CD's) for the same purpose. My gripe with online music is that the license doesn't follow the physical model that a CD allows.

Re:People are waking up...

[IntergalacticWalrus]

You're talking out of your ass. Transfering music on an iPod does not magically add DRM to it. Only music purchased from the online store is DRM'ed. Everything else is stored as regular files in /iPod_Control/Music so it's no rocket science to manually extract them (the filenames are lost, I'll admit, but who cares as long as you have correct metainfo tags, which you should have since the iPod needs them).

Re:People are waking up...

[zpok]

The only real problem I can see here is that your zen holds a bunch of WMA files, and instead of explaining that that's the one file format he/she (?) can't use, you wowed him/her (herma?) with your wild techie nollidj...
You hero you!

Re:People are waking up...

[Ohreally_factor]

I should be able to make as many copies as I want...no one is hurt unless and until I distribute them.

Knock yourself out.

The problem is that you seemed to imply that it was within your rights to distribute copies. The poster with the hermaphroditic friend is claiming that distribution of copies without recompensing anyone is his moral right.

Re:People are waking up...

[Mr2001]

Return to the question of a PDF of my book. No doubt, you would look at downloading that across a P2P network exactly the same way, regardless of whether or not you were going to read it once, or read it daily. Is a Bible different because many people crack it open every day? Using your argument, any fixed document that's read and re-read regularly would be purchased exactly once.

Yes, I believe it is different in terms of the impact on sales. If downloading weren't an option, the Bible is more likely to be purchased than other books, precisely because people use it so often that borrowing a copy is unlikely to provide the benefit they want. Therefore, someone downloading a Bible is more likely to be depriving someone of a potential sale than someone downloading another book. (Of course, I don't think there's anything immoral about depriving someone of a potential sale, so morally I'd say downloading a Bible is equivalent to downloading anything else.)

Unfortunately, most people don't stop him at that point, because he's always carrying the banner of "information wants to be free," and pretending to be Thomas Jefferson.

If sharing the same opinion as Thomas Jefferson means he's pretending to be Jefferson, then who are you pretending to be?

Ultimately, Cory wants to "possess" music (and other electronic data that is similarly protected) without paying the content creator for their work and he wants to get away with it. Whether you call it stealing or something altruistic, he wants the benefit without cost, and without renumeration to the artist or legitimate owner of publication/distribution rights. It's as simple as that.

Again, library patrons also want the benefit without cost; it's just that the benefit a book provides isn't as closely tied to ownership. Someone who borrows a book from the library when he wants to read it, instead of buying his own copy, is acting just as selfishly (if you call it that) as someone who downloads an album.

Your argument also suggests that there is no value in owning books. I own them specifically so I can go back and re-read them when I choose to, and not when they're available at the public library. I buy music (principally CD's) for the same purpose.

Certainly, some people do that for some books, but you can't ignore the impact that libraries have on the sale of books.

Re:People are waking up...

[TimTheFoolMan]

"(Of course, I don't think there's anything immoral about depriving someone of a potential sale...)"

This sentence states the difference between our positions more clearly than anything else.

Tim

Re:People are waking up...

[RLiegh]

The problem is that you seemed to imply that it was within your rights to distribute copies.

Not at all; I'm saying it is my right to make as many copies for my own use as I want.
No one gets hurt unless I distribute copies; at that point, there's a whole slew of laws covering that.

Re:People are waking up...

[Anonymous Coward]

One of us is smoking something, and I don't smell no smoke.

Re:People are waking up...

[kfg]

Kids these days, don't know nothin' :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_9

KFG

Re:People are waking up...

[linuxrocks123]

> The freedom to do what you want with something which you have paid money for is a fundamental right.

I don't think so. That's the Libertarian rhetoric, alright, but it's nowhere in the U.S. Constitution.

Re:People are waking up...

[friedman101]

she

you must be new here

Re:People are waking up...

[Mr2001]

"(Of course, I don't think there's anything immoral about depriving someone of a potential sale...)"

This sentence states the difference between our positions more clearly than anything else.

I suppose you think movie reviewers are acting immorally if their reviews convince anyone not to see a particular movie, thus depriving the studio and theater owner of potential ticket sales... and competing companies are acting immorally if they produce a better (or, more relevant to file sharing, cheaper) alternative, thus depriving their competitors of potential sales... and so on. If not, then you must agree that depriving someone of potential sales isn't immoral.

Re:People are waking up...

[TimTheFoolMan]

If a reviewer likes the movie but intentionally drives people away, that's just as unethical as record companies pushing crappy music through payola. How does that reviewer benefit from doing this more than by giving an ethical and accurate review? Unless he's an investor in a competing studio, he doesn't, and your argument falls flat on its face.

As for competition resulting in fewer sales being a relevant comparison... good gosh man, you've got your Cory Doctorow impersonation down pat! "Help me, I'm bein' repressed... they won't let me have everything my heart desires for free."

<Brain voice>
Mr2001, I must compliment you on your incredible parody of the Anti-DRM crowd. You should do Vegas with this act... it's wonderful! Together, we will take over the world!
</Brain voice>

<Pinky voice>
Brilliant! NARF!

Oh... no... wait. You'll lose your shirt in Vegas because somebody with a video camera will buy one ticket and tape the show. You'll pocket one admission fee, and all those years of preparing your act will go down the freely accessed YouTube.

Poit!
</Pinky voice>

Tim

Re:People are waking up...

[Mr2001]

If a reviewer likes the movie but intentionally drives people away, that's just as unethical as record companies pushing crappy music through payola. How does that reviewer benefit from doing this more than by giving an ethical and accurate review? Unless he's an investor in a competing studio, he doesn't, and your argument falls flat on its face.

Now hold on. Who said anything about liking the movie? The question is simply whether depriving someone of a potential sale is immoral in itself. If a bad review causes tickets to go unsold, then it has deprived the theater owner and the studio of potential sales, whether the review was honest or not.

If depriving someone of a potential sale is not inherently immoral, as I believe, then we can't conclude that file sharing is bad just because it deprives record companies of potential sales. The immoral part of your dishonest-reviewer scenario is the reviewer's dishonesty, but there is no dishonesty in the act of file sharing, apart from a handful of people who intentionally mislabel files.

As for competition resulting in fewer sales being a relevant comparison... good gosh man, you've got your Cory Doctorow impersonation down pat! "Help me, I'm bein' repressed... they won't let me have everything my heart desires for free."

And I see you're quite skilled at constructing strawmen. That's good, because unlike information, straw can't be sent over the internet, so you won't have to worry about those hippies stealing your God-given right to charge people for what they could do themselves for free.

Re:People are waking up...

[dangitman]

Ownership -property rights- is the cornerstone of a free country.

That's funny - I thought human rights were the cornerstone of a free country. Property rights are far more insignificant. A country ruled by property rights above all else is a corporate-ruled country, or perhaps a fascist country. I'm not sure how you get the idea that property rights are anywhere near the level of human rights. Humans are born with life and liberty (or lack thereof), not property. Often the lack of liberty is due to property ownership superceding human liberty.

Re:People are waking up...

[Scudsucker]

Borrowing something is directly equivalent to buying something at zero cost, then selling it back at zero cost.

Not when both parties have permanent copies, it isn't.

Doctorow is an idiot

[Deep Fried Geekboy]

I'm so friggin' tired of his blathering on this subject. Apple's DRM has done more for the availability of music on the internets than anything except bittorrent. If it wasn't for Jobs having the cojones to square off against the music and movie congloms we'd all be renting our music by now. Without DRM iTunes would be eMusic.

The guy needs to try a spell in the real world.

And his novels SUCK. No wonder he has no need for DRM.

Re:Doctorow is an idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdotters are modding the parent flamebait, but Doctorow really is a self-whoring idiot who writes this stuff to masturbate all over the blogosphere. He thinks he's got some kind of awesome grasp on technology just because he writes (bad) sci-fi and does "virtual signings" in Second Life.

Give me a fucking break.

Re:Doctorow is an idiot

[apflwr3]

I would almost wholeheartedly agree. I say almost, because Apple does make it so you pretty much cannot use any progam and device combination besides iTunes/the iPod to listen to the music that you purchase. *

I understand it from a business perspective-- but it does limit the consumer, and it was done purely for Apple's own benefit (i.e. not to placate the content providers, which is one reason always given to defend Apple's DRM.)

* yes, you can burn it to CD and convert it back, or use the semi-legit hack program of the moment, but that's a kludge.

Re:Doctorow is an idiot

[i_should_be_working]

If it wasn't for Jobs we'd be buying cds and downloading mp3s, as many of us still are.

The guy needs to try a spell in the real world. And his novels SUCK. No wonder he has no need for DRM.

How is he not in the real world? He's practicing what he preaches. And no his books don't suck. I know that popularity doesn't equate to quality, but if an author can give away his books and still make money selling them, it should be obvious that he's doing something right.

Re:Doctorow is an idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm so friggin' tired of his blathering on this subject."

Well you know you don't have read it, and the fact it was written by Mr.Doctorow wasn't hidden.

"Apple's DRM has done more for the availability of music on the internets than anything except bittorrent."

I would beg to differ. For legal avaliability..yes, for avaliability in general..no. The original Napster and the subsiquent replacements have all contributed a great deal to avaliability of music and other content, even if in a legally dubious manner. Apple convinced the recording industry to let them sell you ACC encoded songs with restrictions for $0.99. The estimated amount of music swapped over networks like Gnutella and Kazaa at it's peak in one week exceeded total sales to date on iTunes. I suspect that some of the more shall we say aggressive Apple fans would by anything Apple told them to.

"If it wasn't for Jobs having the cojones to square off against the music and movie congloms we'd all be renting our music by now."

Some how I doubt that. The recording industry isn't about to give up CDs since they still make up
the bulk of the total sales for music. The number songs sold on iTunes divided by the number of iPods sold works out to a little over 20 songs per iPod. That means people are getting the rest from CDs they own or barrow or from P2P networks.

"Without DRM iTunes would be eMusic."

eMusic isn't that bad. They manage to do good business without DRM. Any store that doesn't sell the stuff played by MTV gets a plus in my book.

"And his novels SUCK. No wonder he has no need for DRM."

Like music, novels are subject to personal tastes and preferences. Though as review saying something sucks isn't particularly helpful as it isn't particularly discriptive.

I can't believe your post got modded as 5, Insightful. Yet more proof the mod system on /. doesn't mean squat.

Re:Doctorow is an idiot

[nblender]

I agree. Doctorow is over-rated and also largely an idiot. He regularly froths at the mouth about the industry claiming that 'copying IP is not theft because no one has been deprived of its use after it was copied" and then in another pro-author incident, blatantly accuses the antagonist for "stealing IP"... (I can't find the references on boingboing right now).

I might also add that I use mp3's on my ipod and none of them are DRM'd so I'm hardly "locked in".

Re:Doctorow is an idiot

[xigxag]

If it wasn't for Jobs...we'd all be renting our music by now.

That's total Apple fanboy BS. Most music players contain mostly CD rips, not iTMS purchases. People have always been able to buy music without purchasing tracks online, they continue to do so, and as you acknowledge they can still download music without purchasing it at all. It's the omnipresent fear of the latter that ultimately keeps the record companies in check, not Jobs's balls. I've got nothing against Jobs for being a savvy businessman, but DRM just stinks.

And his novels SUCK. ...and how DARE he blaspheme the Church of Jobs.

Re:Doctorow is an idiot

[MKalus]

The guy needs to try a spell in the real world.

I think he lost a bit perspective over the last few years. My favourite beef right now is that he is blabbering on that he is abandoning OS X because of the "proprietary file formats" that Apple is using. I am not quite sure which formats he means.

I am starting to get the feeling he just needs to be "special" and "differnt", Apple now has become "too mainstream" for him and he is "moving on".

As for his Novels.... Some funky ideas, I just wish he would stop being so utterly in love with everything Disney does, or at least let's it colour his view of the world.

Re:Doctorow is an idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

by your own words then, Microsoft is a good company because having one major OS did more for expanding the use of PC's than anything else. Great arguement, now actually try to back it up with facts. Oh wait, you have none. The OP is hardly insightful and is simply dead wrong.

Re:Doctorow is an idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

Word.

I really want to like what he and Xeni are doing but the more I'm exposed to them, I just can't help but think they are very stupid and disconnected.

It's like they started thinking they are famous or some shit like that. Started believing their own bullshit and taking themselves too seriously.

Re:Doctorow is an idiot

[apflwr3]

I might also add that I use mp3's on my ipod and none of them are DRM'd so I'm hardly "locked in".

That's not what I was saying. You can't play a track downloaded from the iTunes Store on a non-Apple mp3 player (not without a hack, I know it's possible by burning a CD and re-importing it etc., etc.-- but again, that's a messy workaround)

That's where their DRM borders on the "evil." If a lot of your collection comes from the iTunes store, and you want to listen to this collection on a portable device, you are locked into buying iPods. This doesn't have to be (Apple could license their DRM technology to Creative, for example.)

Re:Doctorow is an idiot

[Tankko]

Cory's problem is that he doesn't make a living off of something that is easily copied that people want in a digital format, so he's largely unaffected by piracy. Yeah, he writes books and releases them as text, but the fact is 99% of book buyers want paper books right now, so he's in no real danger.

Cory can rant and rave all he wants, but he's not living the problem.

Re:Doctorow is an idiot

[Bing Tsher E]

Buying CDs??

Don't you have a library card?!?

Re:Doctorow is an idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

You can use iTunes-purchased music with any program that speaks QuickTime, provided the machine you're on is authorized to play that particular song. That means, just to name an example, that you can bring an iTunes-purchased song into iPhoto and use it as the soundtrack for a slide show. You can then burn that slideshow to DVD and send it to your mom or whatever.

It's not just Apple apps. It's any app that uses QuickTime. And that's every last program for the Mac that does anything at all with audio.

If Windows developers haven't caught up yet, that's their problem. (Or, you know, your problem for trying to do media on a PC. Yeck. PCs are for Office and games.)

In other words, Apple has gone over backwards to do everything they can to make sure that you can USE your music while still making it really inconvenient for you to COPY somebody else's music.

And yes, iTunes-store music only works on the iPod, not your $39.99 Sears MP3 player. Sucks if you don't have an iPod. But here's a thought. If you don't have an iPod and you don't use your music in any of those other ways I described, why are you buying music from the iTunes store anyway? Just mail-order the damn CD.

It's kinda silly to say "This shoe is too small!" when you went out and bought the wrong size on purpose.

Re:Doctorow is an idiot

[SteeldrivingJon]

". I know that popularity doesn't equate to quality, but if an author can give away his books and still make money selling them, it should be obvious that he's doing something right."

How do you know he makes money selling them? Have you looked at his royalty statements?

For all anyone knows, he's a trust fund baby living on his grandparents' money (his parents were Trostkyist fools, so they clearly didn't make any money), or maybe he lives on revenue from the startup he was involved in which was acquired in the late 90s.

Re:Doctorow is an idiot

[SteeldrivingJon]

"As for his Novels.... Some funky ideas, I just wish he would stop being so utterly in love with everything Disney does, or at least let's it colour his view of the world."

Yeah, no kidding. Doctorow thinks the world owes him a lifetime of free entertainment, yet he's a slavish fanboy who goes nuts over every piece of tacky Disney merchandise he finds.

It's very odd.

Re:Doctorow is an idiot

[elrous0]

Exactly, Apple has used DRM to grab the world by the balls. If you buy from itunes, you're stuck with buying an Apple player. Buy songs from any other online retailer and you can't play them on an Apple player (since the studios require DRM and Apple refuses to build support for any other form of DRM into their players except their own). They have grabbed a monoploy and are using it to beat everyone else over the head with it.

Not that I suspect MS or any other big corp would do any different if they had the monopoly. But it should be a nice wakeup call to all the Apple fanboys who think that Apple ISN'T just a typically greedy bunch of heartless corporate motherfuckers.

Ah, who am I kidding, they're is NOTHING that's going to wake THEM up after all that koolaid.

-Eric

Re:Doctorow is an idiot

[kchrist]

If you buy from itunes, you're stuck with buying an Apple player.

I think you meant to add "... if you want a portable music player". I can play this music on my computer without buying any additional hardware or software. I can burn them to CD and play them in my CD changer.

Re:Doctorow is an idiot

[MKalus]

Yeah, no kidding. Doctorow thinks the world owes him a lifetime of free entertainment, yet he's a slavish fanboy who goes nuts over every piece of tacky Disney merchandise he finds.

It's very odd.

Actually if you look at his "profile" on Wikipedia you realize that his parents probably never let him go to Disneyland when he was a kid, so he's overcompensating.

That would be all fine and well with me, but what makes this really bad is:

- Unlike Apple, Disney has activly changed the law to allow them to profit longer from their work.
- Has been instrumental in lobbying the DMCA.

All Apple did was follow the law and get a system in place that adheres to it, but is as lose as possible.

Not only this, but he is not only giving Disney his money, but regularly free publicity in form of BoingBoing posts and by making it part of his Novels.

Looking at this I can't take anything he says against Apple seriously. The man lost his way.

Re:Doctorow is an idiot

[muhgcee]

He also gives a lot of talks. I am guessing he makes a good chunk of change off of that.

Re:Doctorow is an idiot

[SteeldrivingJon]

"Actually if you look at his "profile" on Wikipedia you realize that his parents probably never let him go to Disneyland when he was a kid, so he's overcompensating."

Being Canadian, they probably went to Florida, but drove past Disneyland on the way to a Marxist summer camp, traumatizing the poor boy forever.

Re:Doctorow is an idiot

[Scudsucker]

Bad analogy. Even with Apple's enormous marketshare, there is nothing stopping you from having the same experience with the same music for a similar price on a similarly sized player for an equal or lesser price.

Compare that to Windows. Are you a gamer? You need Windows. Planning on running a business? Need Office, and probably Windows. And so on.

Until Apple starts singing labels to exlusive contracts and you can't buy phiscal cd's and rip them yourself, this argument doesn't hold any water.

bizarre?

[Anonymous Coward]

...ones that are genuinely bizarre, like limiting the number of times you can burn a given playlist.

That is bizarre. If I download a cd, I should be able to burn 1000 copies and sell them on the streets for cash...

iTunes limit is like 7 burns or something. If I buy a cd and lose/break it more than 7 times, I'm a friggin idiot.

And this topic is dead and beaten, but I'm really bored at work...

which makes no sense

[mgabrys_sf]

re:"t Apple's copy-protection technology makes media companies into its servants"

Wasn't this the protection scheme that the media industry demanded over it's content before providing licesens for distribution - hence it's NOT Apple's? And if it's not Apple's - are you actually claiming that the media companies are making servants of themselves?

Re:which makes no sense

[himurabattousai]

1. Media companies want DRM. Apple comes up with a (relatively) non-restrictive response, barely enough to get approval.

2. iTunes explodes in popularity, in part because most people don't want to/need to go beyond what they are allowed to do. This popularity is not about "DRM is right" v. "DRM is wrong." It's about the illusion of freedom (and it is an illusion); the limits of freedom are only known when they're reached, and most iTunes users don't reach them. Those that do, go around because it's easy to do so.

3. The popularity of iTunes makes media companies drool. They want more, but can't get it because they agreed to a certain business model. They can't change the model or get out of iTunes because they need the money that iTunes brings in.

Sometimes, the best way to defeat an enemy is to make him your friend. This is sort of what Apple has done to the media companies. Sure, the growth of iTunes exceeded reasonable expectations, but that was a risk the media companies took. Were iTunes not as big as it is, the situation would be reversed, but for now, Steve Jobs pretty much has the media companies doing his bidding. If that doesn't make them Apple's servants, then what would?

Taste good is good for soul

[Anonymous Coward]

If it is good for you you no want, you want thate bad are for you. You are who you eat and that why you are big american pig like my russian sister of wife is big russian pig. True, is huge.

I don't get it...

[bobalu]

I buy the CDs and rip them.

No restrictions, no problem.

Re:I don't get it...

[Kesch]

no rootkits?

Re:I don't get it...

[linguae]

No restrictions, no problem.

For now. But I wonder what would happen if CDs had a sort of DRM (similar to DVD's CSS)? Imagine if they marketed those new CDs as "Red Ray" or "HDCD" or something like that, with triple the songs, clearer audio, lyrics on the disk, and other "benefits"? What if consumers don't care about the DRM and buy these new CDs in droves, effectively obseleting the CD (just like how the DVD replaced VHS tapes)? Then you'll have to answer to the DMCA, unfortunately, and that would be one more restriction and a few more problems.

Don't believe me? It can (and most likely will) happen. So start a stockpile of CDs now; you'll need them.

Re:I don't get it...

[jb.hl.com]

I own about 150 CDs and exactly 0 rootkits. Your point?

Re:I don't get it...

[sm62704]

I think he was referring to the Sony XCP rootkit that shipped on Sony-BMG's audio CDs. Neglect to hold the shift key down and you're r00ted.

Re:I don't get it...

[p0ps]

On CDs you only get old music or new music by artists trapped in label contracts. My strategy, for now is to trade my CDs (mostly on <a href="http://www.lala.com">lala</a>) until there isn't any more music I need that way, meanwhile gathering new music on mp3 from smart, unemprisoned artists. I expect we'll shift to a "music as service" model where artists will make money by being paid to perform or appear.

Re:I don't get it...

[Curmudgeonlyoldbloke]

Or turn off autorun on CD drives. Rocket science it ain't.

Re:I don't get it...

[Bing Tsher E]

I check CDs out of the library and rip them on NetBSD.

What's a 'rootkit'??

Re:I don't get it...

[jb.hl.com]

My point was you can buy CDs (and rip them) and not get rooted. It's not an either-or thing as the pro-piracy crowd like to make out. :)

That said, most of my music collection isn't copy controlled; the few CC CDs I have were painless to rip.

Re:I don't get it...

[sm62704]

I've never had problems ripping any CD that would actually play. But I did get rooted despite having autorun shut off. My 19 year old daughter trusted Sony and manually ran the autorun file on the CD, probably looking for videos or something.

Was I mad! I forgave my daughter, but Sony will never, ever get another penny from me, not for CDs and not for electronic equipment. I'll cheer the day their CEO dies, and may even travel to Japam to piss on his grave.

Most people DIDN'T get infected with Sony's evil trash. But just because you've never been rooted doesn't mean you can't be. All it takes is trusting the wrong person. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Re:I don't get it...

[jb.hl.com]

I'll cheer the day their CEO dies, and may even travel to Japam to piss on his grave.

All a little harsh for some software, don'tcha think?

Re:I don't get it...

[sm62704]

Harsh? Everyone dies. I'm not calling for his execution. I'm just saying he's scum, a waste of oxygen.

Re:I don't get it...

[jb.hl.com]

Even saying that over software is very very over the top. It's just bits and bytes, dude.

Re:I don't get it...

[sm62704]

No, it's having to buy XP since I couldn't get drivers for my audio and video for 98, and having to buy a sound card because I couldn't find ANY drivers. Sony's rootkit cost me about $200. Multiply that by all Sony's other victims. It's not bits and bytes, its cold hard cash. Sony and their CEO are evil.

Re:I don't get it...

[jb.hl.com]

...what? What the hell are you on about? It may have cost you 200 dollars, it however probably cost someone else less. More to the point, no amount of money can change the fact that it is STILL JUST SOFTWARE.

In other news, the sky is blue

[pabster]

Move along folks, nothing to see here. DRM was found to be "bad" for the consumer YEARS ago. Unfortunately, money talks.

There's a solution to the DRM

[Zorque]

Don't buy the music through the iTunes store. It's really that simple. Buy it from another service, buy the physical CD, even pirate it, whatever. You don't have the right to complain about DRM if you buy products that implement it when so many other services are available.

Re:There's a solution to the DRM

[cowscows]

Exactly. This guy can yell to us about how Apple is hurting us with the iTMS until his face turns blue, but it doesn't matter. Most people don't have more money than they can spend, so they've tended to develop a pretty good sense of when they're getting screwed over. Apple's sales numbers clearly demonstrate that plenty of people don't feel so completely bothered by this little thing that keeps Mr. Doctorow up at night.

And most of those that don't feel like the convenience of the iTMS makes up for its limitations don't spend money there. Cory Doctorow is taking a purely ideological stand, and condemning others based on his reasonably extreme stance. He's a reasonably smart guy, he has to understand that just because he thinks the something should work a certain way doesn't mean that everyone agrees. And the neat thing about a capitalistic system is that you can try to sell things pretty much any way you want, and the consumer gets to decide. It sounds like he's just upset that the average consumer has other things to be concerned about besides how many times they're allowed to burn the same CD over and over. In other words, he's upset that the average person isn't more like him.

Anyways, that's enough Cory Doctorow bashing for now. The dude just seems so whiny at times.

Re:There's a solution to the DRM

[IntelliTubbie]

It sounds like he's just upset that the average consumer has other things to be concerned about besides how many times they're allowed to burn the same CD over and over. In other words, he's upset that the average person isn't more like him.

That's exactly it. It sort of reminds me of Richard Stallman trying to convince people that proprietary software makes them into slaves, when their software decisions are based on criteria other than (his idea of) morality. They just can't fathom that it's a matter of preference, and not people being duped out of their freedoms. To the average person, this sort of thing sounds like someone saying, "Yes, I know you *think* you prefer vanilla ice cream, but you really want chocolate. In fact, who cares if you like vanilla? You must have chocolate! Vanilla is EEEEEEEEVILLLLLLLL."

Cheers,
IT

Re:There's a solution to the DRM

[IntergalacticWalrus]

I agree. Some people seem to think use of iTunes and/or iPod forces you to use the online store. For fuck's sake, iTunes even has built-in CD ripping.

Re:There's a solution to the DRM

[Ohreally_factor]

I think the hyperbole is even worse than that. Let me try:

If you eat vanilla ice cream, you're dooming your children and all future generations to only eating vanilla ice cream! That's why it's EEEEEEVIIIIL!!!! If you give in to the evil proprietary ice cream companies now, someday you'll only be able to taste ice cream, but you won't really be able to eat it! That's EEEEVVVVVIIIIILLLLLL!!!!!!

OK, I think I went too far. . .

=)

"Borrowing" = Stealing

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you disable your ability to listen to the "borrowed" tunes for the duration, ethically, that is stealing.

Re:"Borrowing" = Stealing

[linuxrocks123]

> ethically, that is stealing.

Mentally, you are retarded.

Re:"Borrowing" = Stealing

[91degrees]

Good for him.

What's the problem with stealing anyway?

Re:"Borrowing" = Stealing

[ben there...]

It's the same thing that people used to do with mixtapes. The RIAA never seemed to have a problem with that. It was an accepted and popular activity. I still remember some of the mixtapes I gave girlfriends and others. Back then, you would have been laughed at for accusing me of stealing music by making mixtapes for a friend.

It clearly--without a doubt--helped the music industry. Most of the bands that my friends and I liked were shared interests of ours because of those mixtapes. That meant more music purchases. It still does. But somehow, over time, the RIAA convinced you that it's wrong.

Re:"Borrowing" = Stealing

[cpt kangarooski]

The RIAA never seemed to have a problem with that.

What, are you kidding? They hated home taping. There were campaigns against it, and ultimately they pushed through the AHRA which allowed it, a little bit, but they got a lot of things in return, like SCMS and money.

Re:"Borrowing" = Stealing

[ben there...]

I almost left out that line, because I had never even heard of the RIAA until after Napster and mp3s. Well, in that case, they didn't do a very good job caring about it.

My point was that, culturally, it wasn't an issue to share music with your friends when it was mixtapes. Can you imagine random people popping up all over the place accusing you of stealing every time you talked about how you're going to spend the evening making a mixtape or two for your friends?

Nobody's going to rewrite history for me. I know what the climate was like when everyone was making mixtapes at home. It was nothing like today.

Re:"Borrowing" = Stealing

[cpt kangarooski]

Culturally, no one cares about sharing music online other than RIAA et al and a small number of self-righteous people with sticks up their asses. I'm a copyright lawyer and I know no end of copyright lawyers, other lawyers, ordinary people, members of Congress, etc. who couldn't give a crap about online filesharing when they, or people they know, engage in it. And really, who have no objection to it generally, either.

The climate hasn't significantly changed. The laws are worse, and the bad guys are pushing their side of things more. That's about it.

Competition in DRM technology: good for consumers

[argent]

Without Apple's DRM it'd all be "plays4sure" by now.

Which is stronger than Apple's "nudge-nudge-wink-wink" honor system DRM, and (since it's all under Microsoft's eye) has the potential of becoming as invisible and ubiquitous as DVD encryption.

Competition from Apple makes sure that DRM remains fragmented, difficult, and ineffective. And that's good for consumers even if they don't think so right now...

From the TFA...

[dracken]

...."Word is protected only by market forces, while iTunes enjoys the protection of a corrupt law that gives Apple the right to exclude competitors from the market" and "For example, in the software industry, it's legal to reverse-engineering a file-format in order to make a competing product."

The article seems to be a generic troll by a recording industry lobbyist and his arguments are allover the place.

My Gripe no 1: ITunes does not need DMCA to hide behind and "market forces" does not make microsoft's products superior. What if ITunes patented the DRM file format and licensed it for 1000$ per track ? It would effectively kill competition. (can you patent a file format ? well yes and yes).

My Gripe no 2: Apple may be interested in ripping you off when you buy an Ipod, they certainly arent interested in ripping you off when you buy a music track. The article's title should be "Apple's DRM is bad for Ipod consumers", taking it a step further, if apple didnt have DRM it is bad for music consumers, because if apple didnt keep the recording industry in check, they will rip you off. Remeber the whining about variable pricing ?

Bad for who, when

[SuperKendall]

DRM is bad for business: True, unless you are the winner of the DRM lottery being the distributor of the DRM everyone is actually using. It creates a moat which makes it really hard to compete against. The deal is that there was an unwritten pact bewteen the music industry and Microsoft that the people sitting in luxury behind that DRM moat was supposed to be Microsoft.

So DRM worked just as intented inthe effect it had, it's just that the "wrong" company currently benefits from it.

Consumers: Actually they are better served than it would appear at first glance. Sure right now consumers have a harder time switching away from ITMS than they would have otherwise without DRM. But you have to consider the alternatives:

1) Someone else holds the DRM (say Microsoft). Do any of you think that prices would be lower or terms MORE lienient if anyone but Apple had a stranglehold on DRM? Think back on the no-burn restrictions of early online music stores. Given that, the Apple system is about the best (for the consumer) DRM system we could hope to see.

2) No DRM in place at all. An ideal world, that studios will not buy into - so this is the equivilent of saying there would be no major online music stores. Well what's the difference between that world and the one we have right now? I can still download songs via P2P if I like, or buy from eMusic (which I am a subscriber of). The only difference is that I can also "buy" songs with slightly more encumberance from Apple if I choose. It does not really reduce the choices that would exist if DRM did not exist, it only adds to them.

Furthermore, Apple's lock on digital music distribution can possibly lead to the desired end-state of large music companies distributing msuic free of DRM. It's the only way a music company has of avoiding Apple store fees by going direct to the consumer with a format that will still work with the iPod. Here, see Barenaked Ladies and other Canadian artists. I can also buy those songs on ITMS but I can buy plain MP3 (or even FLAC) BNL songs and concerts from thier site. In theory bands being successful with this approach along with the music companies desire to get out from under the thumb of APple to try thier own "creative" pricing models could drive studios to non-DRM formats sooner rather than later.

Thanks to apple, DRM is mainstream

[RLiegh]

We can thank all of the "but it's only a LITTLE DRM" users too. Now, DRM is on the rise and in the future you will not be able to obtain any mainstream music (IE, anything other than crappy folk) that is not rife with copy protection.

This situation may have been inevitable (then again, I think it may not, too), but the apple zealots certainly helped push it along.

There's a time and a place for fanatacism; four years ago was that time, DRM was that place.

Thanks for selling us all down the river, Jobs!

Re:Thanks to apple, DRM is mainstream

[Moofie]

Right, because if it weren't for mean ol' Steve Jobs, there would be purity and freedom and puppies for everybody.

Uh huh. I'm sure Microsoft would have just gone ahead and not built their own DRM system.

Given the choice between Apple and Microsoft, I'll take Apple every time.

Re:Thanks to apple, DRM is mainstream

[RLiegh]

Microsoft didn't have the hipster cred that apple did; so the industry would have done something, but that doesn't mean that apple isn't responsible for the advancement of it, for the wide acceptence and even the embrace that it has gotten.

Apple put their image behind DRM and made it credible; that's something that MS could have never done on their own, and other companies would have had a much harder time pulling off (sony may have been able to do it, but I wouldn't say for sure).

Again, Apple made it 'hip' to be locked in; that's what I blame them for.

Sidenote: the whole "if I hadn't done something bad, someone else would have" argument is what leads to crap like Enron in the corporate world. Just because someone else is going to do something bad does not make it ok for you to do it.
--
--
Argent actually had far better points, all things considered.

I doubt that splitting the industry was Jobs' intent, and the argument has been made that had the itunes scheme become the defacto standard it would have become as strong as MS' known2play (or whatever).

Regarding DVD CSS being the actual foot in the door...you could well be right; I hadn't thought about it that way so I'm not sure wether I agree or not. I think one fact to consider about CSS is that it was easily/quickly hacked, and that nothing that has come since (which is harder to crack) has become the de facto dvd encryption standard. Of course, at this point I'm just thinking aloud and that may have nothing to do with anything. :)

Re:Thanks to apple, DRM is mainstream

[Moofie]

"Microsoft didn't have the hipster cred that apple did"

The cart, she's before the horse.

Apple's offerings became popular because they were well designed, and easy to use. This created the "hipster cred" you refer to (I guess...I don't really know if I'd recognize "hipster cred" if I saw it).

Apple saw an opportunity, and took it. You still have the option to not do business with them. Everybody is free to act as they please. What's the problem?

Re:Thanks to apple, DRM is mainstream

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple's offerings became popular because they were well designed, and easy to use.
...I don't really know if I'd recognize "hipster cred" if I saw it).

Now you're just trolling.

Re:Thanks to apple, DRM is mainstream

[Anonymous Coward]

You only like the bands you like becuase the record company has marketed them to you. Fact. So it's hard to complain when same record companies decided to profit from you as much as humanly possible. A demand has been created and they control the supply. Tough.

It's like complaining about the price of a soda in Disneyland- you want the rides so you can't complain too much about the fact that Disney is making a $ or 2.

Why not vote with your wallet and instead of buying an itune go to a nearby bar and listen to a local band, who'll appreciate your support and maybe sell you a CD for $5.

Why not go the whole way and set up an opensource record label. See how far that gets you.

Re:Thanks to apple, DRM is mainstream

[sm62704]

Now, DRM is on the rise and in the future you will not be able to obtain any mainstream music (IE, anything other than crappy folk) that is not rife with copy protection.

Have you had the radio on lately? The record companies have no clue about music at all! If you tune in a "rock" station you hear whiney loser shit like "Staind". Meanwhile, my elderly dad complains that the country stations play rock and roll. Go out and hear cover bands, and you'll see twentysomethings on stage and in the audience, and it's 70s and 80s and 90s rock they're playing.

Meanwhile, those same local bands are recording CDs of original material. Some of it sucks and some of it's good, but it isn't DRMed.

The established players are doomed.

Amazing!

[Venim]

This just in, smoking is bad for you too!

Pre DVD crack DRM

[hpavc]

Remember when DVD's were not cracked? Man that sucked. I don't seen Apple's DRM anywhere near something like that. Infact it has not ever been a problem for me functionally.

MOD PARENT DOWN

[nick.ian.k]

I myself am so incredibly tired of people making "lesser evil" concessions and not phrasing them as such.

Apple's popularized the notion that music by popular artists can only be distributed online if the end users rights get saddled with enough limitations to utterly negate the cost savings and convenience. They've done little more than meet the bad guys of the music industry halfway, then used the stylish appeal of their products and branding to get the hip folk into it. And when the rich & cool are doing it, *simply everyone* wants to do it. This is one of the big reasons the industry was willing to deal with slightly lesser revenues than they'd originally anticipated. Afer all, how could Apple -purveyor of iPods, maker of sexy white boxen,favorite of artistic types, and champion of all things smug- fail in their endeavor to get the masses buying their music through their service?

That's it. It's really just a case of marketing leverage, and they got the bonus of duping the likes of yourself into thinking they've done something revolutionary yet again. It's still a cop-out.

Why "Apple" topic?

[Swift2001]

Apple didn't invent DRM. They're not the only ones who use it. Then this topic belongs on the Main section. "DRM is bad for--" I'm in absolute agreement.

What am I missing here?

[LotsOfPhil]

Why do these articles always talk about burning the tracks onto a CD and then ripping that CD to get mp3s? Can't you just use FAAC/D?
I don't have an mp3 player and have never used iTunes. If this means that I == dumb, I'll only need this explained to me once.

Apple doesn't want or need DRM

[Frobozz0]

Apple is not the one to blame. The entire industry has DRM'd music if it comes from a profitable record label. It's not just Apple. Apple is targeted by alarmist articles like this because it happens to be the most sucessful. It happens to be the most successful because of a couple critical things:

1) Apple invented the industry of digitally distributed music from big labels.
2) They have software and hardware integration that is rivaled by no one.
3) They are "cool."

Apple doesn't have a need for DRM'd music, aside from it being the ONLY WAY for them to sell the music in the first place. Without DRM'd music, the labels won't sell their music to consumers. However, it's pretty retarded for a couple reasons:

1) People who want to steal will always steal regardless of method or industry.
2) People who will pay will always pay.
3) People who are on the fence will steal if they can not get affordable options.

The majority of people would just buy the damn music for 99 cents and be done with it regardless of weather they got it illegally or legally, if it was of the quality they wanted. That is what paying for your content will get you, though. Less viruses, higher quality compression, and freebies, and discounts on volume (record versus song.)

Re:Apple doesn't want or need DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

2) People who will pay will always pay.

I'd take issue with that. If the gates at the parking lot work, almost everyone will pay, except for the occasional guy who drives out over the curb, etc. If one of the gates is stuck open, how many of those people will chose to exit via that gate in lieu of paying the $10 parking fee? The availablity of a illegal but convient alternative will definately affect people.

Re:Apple doesn't want or need DRM

[nick.ian.k]

You've got to be kidding! Apple has plenty of reason for DRM. The iPod was quite popular before iTunes. However, it's become extremely popular since the advent of iTunes. iTunes only became successful because of the content offered. That content -tons of songs by artists on labels that mostly bristled at the notion of offering *any* content online- exists because Apple agreed to use DRM. Without that content, far less people would be interested in iTunes, and the folks who just want to get that new pop song for $0.99 with minimal effort wouldn't own iPods.

They *are* to blame, because they popularized the business model, and did it successfully with songs lots of people would actually want to buy, and with DRM. Yes, otherwise we'd be blaming someone else (Microsoft or whomever else), but we're talking about reality and not hypothetical situations here.

Re:Apple doesn't want or need DRM

[hawkeye]

Indeed. DRM, in and of itself, is a bad thing. There's is no such thing as good DRM.

What's bad about Apple's success is that it's delayed the inevitable changes (that are desparately needed) in the "mega/multi-media" industry. Apple, unfortunately, has given more ammo to the pinheads who are defending DRM/DMCA/etc.

Re:Apple doesn't want or need DRM

[argent]

What's bad about Apple's success is that it's delayed the inevitable changes (that are desparately needed) in the "mega/multi-media" industry.

You think?

Rhapsody seems to work as well as iTunes. My wife is happy with it. It supports Microsoft's DRM. So does everyone else. Do you think that Microsoft wouldn't have been able to leverage Windows to provide lock-in on another market without Apple's help? I find that... unconvincing.

The only inevitable change Apple has delayed is the solidification of the music industry around Windows Media Players. I don't see that as a bad thing.

Re:Apple doesn't want or need DRM

[cyberbian]

Clear fanboy rhetoric.
What you fail to recognize is that the DRM prevents your use of the music in different contexts. When you 'purchase' music from iTMS you either use it in iTunes or on your iPod, or you break DMCA by circumventing the DRM and use it elsewhere.
Music labels have been ripping off artists and punters alike since the invention of recording music. Ask some of the bands from the 50s how little they received for their hard work. Profiteering has long been the bane of the industry... only studios profit with DRM, artists seldom see the benefits.
Ironically, with digital production methods, and sampling, the cost of putting together a solid offering has gone down considerably, without (of course) the appropriate price adjustment for each album or song.
I'm for one glad we live in an analog universe. No matter how hard they try, it's still an analog world, and they can't plug the analog hole with any number of bits. Those who know how will be able to record music in this way for their 'personal scrap book of rememberances'. The futile efforts of all manner of coders and moguls alike will never undo our right to our own thoughts and rememberances. Isn't it about time we were entitling ourselves to the 'Intelligence Augmentors' that Doug Engelbart (via V.Bush) envisioned, and (even better) using them to be our place for our digital scrapbooks?

Re:Apple doesn't want or need DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

As per a previous Slashdot article[http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=0 5/03/22/136207] Apple has said they would continue to use DRM even if it wasn't required by the recording industry. That pretty much blows big holes in the notion that Apple is implementing DRM against their will to get the music industry to sign on to iTunes.

Technically, you can break your own locks

[Sloppy]

It doesn't even matter if you're the creator of the work the lock controls! You can't even access your own work on your own terms if you need to break a lock to do it.

This is a little off. 1201(a)(3)(A) defines circumvention as bypassing the controls without authorization from the copyright holder. If you, the copyright holder, authorize yourself to bypass the lock, then bypassing is not circumvention. This actually leaves some loopholes open, though I don't think they've been tested yet.

The problem is with tools. 1201(a)(2) and 1201(b)(1) prohibit trafficking in tools that are primarily intended to circumvent (and this is a subjective judgement call, so you can pretty much expect a hostile judge to rule against you), and 1201(b)(2)(A) defines circumvention differently so that the tool is illegal whether you have copyright holders' permission or not. (By a super-strict reading of 1201(b)(1), all DRM players for copyrighted content should be illegal, even the "blessed" ones such as iTunes or DVDCCA-licensed DVD players.) Thus, breaking your own locks on your own content with your permission, still might be pretty hard, since the necessary tools will be "underground."

Re:Technically, you can break your own locks

[SeanMon]

If you, the copyright holder, authorize yourself to bypass the lock, then bypassing is not circumvention.

You are not the copyright holder if you have bought a song/CD: the copyright holder is the artist who recorded the song, and/or the record label. If the musician/record label hasn't given you authorization to circumvent the DRM, then you are not allowed to.

Re:Technically, you can break your own locks

[Sloppy]

The article said:

It doesn't even matter if you're the creator of the work the lock controls! You can't even access your own work on your own terms if you need to break a lock to do it.

He's talking about situations where the user is the copyright holder, and that is what I quoted and responded to.

Why does Cory want DRM to work?

[argent]

From TFA: no one but Apple can sell you proprietary file-format music that will play on the iPod.

From me: Good!

Christ, Cory used to go on about how DRM was fundamentally unworkable. This kind of problem is one of the reasons why DRM is fundamentally unworkable. Why's he telling us that this is a bad thing?

Reverse psychology?

Exactly

[Anonymous Coward]

If Cory Doctorow said it, it must be true.

Who the FUCK is Cory Doctorow? Just some intellectually dishonest lefty mod on Boing Boing.

How did this get greenlighted? Can I write an opinion piece and get it linked on /.?

Just Apple?

[necro2607]

Err... why single out Apple? They have the most fair DRM sceheme I've ever witnessed (not that that is saying a lot). If someone is going to get all up in arms about DRM, let's take a look at some of the major DRM players. Microsoft, Sony, for example...

Re:Just Apple?

[MKalus]

Because the "cool kids" aren't cool anymore and they want to be "better" again? So they move on and bash Apple now which they praised in high terms not a year ago?

Blind worship is bad, blind defiance "just because" isn't any better really.

Re:Just Apple?

[Tsiangkun]

Because, (and this is from the article, not my opinion )

Companies can only use apples DRM if they pay the licensing fees because the DMCA prevents
reverse engineering of the DRM scheme. (Then the guys cries, rubs his eyes, and screams)
"It's just not fair *sniffle*". (Refering,of course, to people who showed up 3 years late for Dinner,
and felt justified in bitching about someone taking food off their plate )

Re:Just Apple?

[Billly Gates]

I am signed in o a different user for my Ipod since I synced it to my gf's computer to hear her music.

Here is the problem. My system is fried and all my music is on the hard drive. I can't listen to my own music on the Ipod and if I replace the systems mainboard which is fried it will require another installation of Windows. Itunes will never create teh same user again even if its the same name. Therefore my collection is drmed and encrypted and unaccessible.

What a pain in the ass?

I think I will try to to use my failed installation of Windows as a seperate computer that the tunes are licensed too. Assuming that will even work??

I will never buy an Ipod again

Re:Just Apple?

[Anonymous Coward]

stay calm.
the ipod is just a firewire hard drive, with a OS that knows how to find
a particular area where you girl friends music is at.

Mount the iPod as a drive.
Copy your music library onto the device.
Go to your girl friends computer.
Add your music to her library,
sync your iPod.

GO back to your new computer.
Mount iPod as drive.
use iPodRip to recover your data
and repopulate your music library.

Call apple and let them know you had a computer
crash. They will give you the information to migrate
your music to your new computer.

All your ITMS purchases can be re-downloaded
if you call apple too. They do keep records.

Oh, the DRM is driving me crazy !

Re:Just Apple?

[Anonymous Coward]

You've got a couple of options. If your motherboard is fried, then you will probably want to replace it anyway, right? If your hard drive is still fine (i.e. you didn't kick the whole damn thing out the window in a fit of rage) then your music is still fine. When you replace the motherboard, you'll probably need to reinstall Windows. It often gets very confused if the hardware changes. But, before you do that, have your friendly neighborhood geeky friend come over, pull out your hard drive, copy your music files to another safe location -- for example, you could just burn the files themselves to a CD.

Once you've got your computer back up and running, you'll want to reinstall Windows, reinstall iTunes, and then copy your music back onto your PC. Just try to play any of your iTunes music, and iTunes will ask you to authorize your computer. Type your username and password, and hey presto! Your music will play again. Apple keeps everything you need to unencrypt and play back your music on their own servers. When you authorize your computer, Apple sends you the bits you need to play your music back.

By the way, if you hadn't synced your iPod using the music in your girlfiend's copy of iTunes, you would have been able to avoid some of this frustration. Once you have your computer back up and running, there are tools out there that can transfer your music from your iPod back onto your computer. It is a good idea to keep a backup of the music you buy from iTunes, just because it is frustrating if one of them dies. I generally keep all of my music on both my desktop and my laptop. That way, if one dies, the other still has a usable copy of the music. If you don't have two computers, don't sweat it. Just make sure you keep your music on your iPod, and you can always recover it later.

Re:Just Apple?

[StrawberryFrog]

Err... why single out Apple? ... If someone is going to get all up in arms about DRM, let's take a look at some of the major DRM players.

And who are the major players in online sales of DRM-protected music? Apple iTunes is the major players. In portable music players? The Apple iPod is the major players.

Re:Just Apple?

[Ohreally_factor]

If ever a comment deserved +5 insightful, the one above is it.

Think of how it must chafe to go to a blog conference, maybe even be a featured speaker, and now almost everyone has a mac laptop just like you. Or worse, a newer model!

Re:Just Apple?

[Ohreally_factor]

Have you contacted Apple Customer Support, told them honesty what happened, and then seen if they could help you sort it out?

Re:Just Apple?

[gnasher719]

'' Here is the problem. My system is fried and all my music is on the hard drive. I can't listen to my own music on the Ipod and if I replace the systems mainboard which is fried it will require another installation of Windows. Itunes will never create teh same user again even if its the same name. Therefore my collection is drmed and encrypted and unaccessible. ''

I can't quite see your problem. Copy the files over to the new computer (or reuse the harddisk), start iTunes, and authorise that computer with your apple id. You can authorise up to five computers at a time. The only problem is when a computer is destroyed and you cannot deauthorise it (you need the computer itself in working condition in order to deauthorise it); in that case you send an email to Apple and they deauthorise _all_ your computers, and then you can authorise five more computers again.

Re:Just Apple?

[necro2607]

I said major DRM players, not major digital music players. Apple aren't using hardcore DRM on every single thing they touch, in refreshing contrast with the likes of Microsoft and their draconian ilk...

Fair Use

[Zelbinian]

My biggest problem with DRM is that, if I shell out the money for their product, I should be able to do pretty much whatever the hell I want with it after that as long as I'm not making money off it. Whether or not I should care if what I'm doing is 'costing the company money' is debateable, because the legality of that has not been fully dredged out.

It's already annoying that I can only change the region encoding on my laptop DVD drive a limited number of times. I can't think of any logical reasoning behind that besides trying to pigeon-hole me into a market segment. How is that good for me as the consumer? "The more you tighten your grip, the more starsystems will slip through your fingers." It's true here, as well. IMHO, the more ridiculous restrictions goverments/corporations put on media via DRM, the stronger (and likely, smarter) the piracy movement will become, because people will no longer want to deal with it. And I'd say downloading an mp3 or ripping a rented DVD arguably falls under the domain of civil disobedience.

As far as mp3's in particular go, why should I pay roughly the same price for compressed, often proprietary audio as I'm paying for unadulterated WAV files on a CD that also include cover art and liner notes? Wired had it right a few years ago: slash the prices on mp3's and they'll make it up in volume.

Re:Fair Use

[Anonymous Coward]

i have already abondoned content industry (still do not have DVD and use old CDs instead)
i have no problem with content industry selling DRMed content but i want to know what i am offered and what freedoms i will be ripped off. It is important because the product price depends stringly on it (different DRM rules make different value product)

It is not enough to label the product as DRMed because i want to know what freedoms exactly i lose.
I'd pay 10 for single non DRMed song and i would not pay a dime for the same song with DRM that restricts me to sharing it with my friends. Both options deserve to be on the market but i want the means to distinguish between them so i know what i pay for

Already ben tried ...

[Dhrakar]

They have already tried to do this with the audio DVDs. They have better audio than CDs, include videos (lyrics too?), etc. but have flopped in the marketplace. Why? For the same reason that something like your HDCD would: compatibility. There are many millions of CD players out there and any new format that is not compatible with all of them will need to be orders of magnitude better in order to displace them. I doubt that that will happen any time soon...

You have that backwards.

[argent]

Without Apple, it would be even more mainstream.

Instead of having two confusing and conflicting DRM schemes in use, we'd have one, licensed by Microsoft, that everyone used... like CSS on DVDs. It's CSS, more than iTunes, that opened up the "only a little DRM" floodgates. I'd love to believe that Joe Sixpack would care enough about DRM to refuse to use encrypted music files if Apple hadn't made it easy... but Joe Sixpack doesn't actually care that iTunes is "only a little DRM", he only cares if it works for him

By forcing the industry to accept his "second best" solution, Jobs stuck a huge stick in the muzzle of the DRM beast, because now they can't pick the most popular option and force every player to use it. He might have done it because he wanted to control the market and because didn't want to pay license fees to Microsoft for WMA, but no matter what the reason... it's kept DRM in everyone's face.

And that's bad for DRM's acceptance, long term. And that's good for consumers.

Pity the conglomerates, servants to Apple?!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Apple's DRM makes media companies its servants."

pity the poor media conglomerates, whose shareholder- and executive-bonus-driven business model determine which artists we will hear, and consigns the rest to obscurity.

Apple's entry into music distribution if anything has somewhat leveled the playing field and has a tendency (if only slightly) to keep the old-line media companies honest. Now they have competition. Apple is "David" and Warner and the traditional giants are "Goliath" here.

For the sake of what WE get to hear... and for the artists out there who may or may not be able to prosper as artists, depending purely on business and monetary factors outside their control... we want a David to go up against that Goliath.

There would be no legal online distribution of music without some kind of DRM. The question is how to make it as user-friendly and the least onerous possible. Perfection has not been attained. Lots of people will only think it's perfect when the music literally costs nothing. That is not a winning or acceptable solution. So let's talk within the scope of what will be acceptably beneficial, or at least spread the costs around fairly, to the audience, the artist and to a middleman where one is necessary.

argumentum ad hominem

[leoxx]

Do have an honest counter argument or is insulting him the best you can come up with?

If it weren't for Apple, Creative Labs or Sony or Microsoft would be the #1 DRM'd music vendor, and we'd be bitching about their implementation instead. And the honest ones among us who dislike DRM no matter who makes it will still be doing what we have always done, buy our music from cool non-DRM'd labels and occasionally in that old fashioned "CD" format.

Re:argumentum ad hominem

[QuantumFTL]

Do have an honest counter argument or is insulting him the best you can come up with?

Apart from insulting being fun, the ad-hominem attack is very effective. Why is this? Is it a quirk of human nature "I hate this guy so I don't listen to anything he says," or is it actually rational? I've mentioned this earlier on slashdot, and I'd like you to think about this for a moment:

If one takes a Bayesian view of probability (probability represents one's degree of belief in a proposition, not a frequency of occurrance), then if one is a rational Bayesian agent, one must incorporate all "relevant" information when ascertaining the belief of a hypothesis, through the chaining of probabilities. Starting with a prior on a statement (unfortunately what prior to choose is often unclear, and is perhaps even arbitrary), one modifies the belief by multiplying by conditional probabilities as gathered by evidence.

One can easily make the claim (the "proof" for this shall be left as an exercise to the reader) that given the sum of experiences one has collected over their lifetime, (direct experience or transitive experience through discussion, books, and other media) one can infer that there is indeed a conditional probability connecting the probability that entity A is a "zealot" and that information from entity A is incorrect.

Bayesian reasoning/inference differs significantly from "pure" boolean reasoning in that it captures this information in a way tha tis actually useful in real life. For instance, the statement "if someone is pointing a gun at you, they will kill you" is obviously false under boolean logic systems, however in real life it is prudent to infer that it is likely enough that htey will kill you that you should take it into account in your planning process. Similarly with the "ad hominem" attacks. The following statements are all valid in a Bayesian framework (when one takes into account the independence of these propositions from other information known about entity A):

1. Entity A is a zealot/crackpot, therefore assertion X made by A is more likely to be incorrect.
2. Entity A is a well respected, unbiased source, therefore assertion X is likely to be correct.
3. Assertion X is known to conflict with deep laws of science/politics, or is a minority viewpoint which is considered to be "fringe thinking"/"crackpottery"/un-preferred worldview (i.e. over-unity devices, fascism, tinfoil-hat), therefore Entity A is likely to be an untrustworthy source.
4. Assertion X, Y, Z, etc have proven to be correct and are in-line with generally accepted theory, therefore Entity A is more likely to be a trustworthy source.

All of these statements are fairly vague (I'm sure one can find a far more rigorous discussion of this somewhere online), however I trust you can see that independent of all other information on Entity A these statements are correct.

That leads me to conclude (in an albeit simplified fashion) that because information on a subject/individual/particular point is highly limited (indeed, with things like global warming, etc, even having a PhD in the field is only a reasonable start, not a comprehensive, authoritative educaiton), one must consider all information about an argument (and weight it according to statistical correlation) when one makes an inference (once again assuming one is a Bayesian, which is a strong assumption, but definitely closer to human reasoning under uncertainty than pure boolean logic, or frequentism). Therefore ad-hominmen attacks are actually important - if you must extend "trust" to a source (you are trusting their reasoning or their data), you must first ascertain the level of trust you should extend. Ad-hominem attacks are therefore effective precisely because they provide evidence (often very unbiased, but sometimes not) that the data should not be trusted. This does not in any way prove that the data or reasoning is wrong, merely that is should have a reduced weighting in the final inference of belief.

Re:argumentum ad hominem

[bit01]

Or to put it more succinctly but less logically: If you throw enough dirt some of it is likely to stick.

As marketers and astroturfers have known for ages.

---

Marketing talk is not just cheap, it has negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.

Re:argumentum ad hominem

[FeloniousPunk]

Do have an honest counter argument or is insulting him the best you can come up with?

He did. I invite you to go back and re-read his post, starting with this part:

Apple's DRM has done more for the availability of music on the internets than anything except bittorrent. If it wasn't for Jobs having the cojones to square off against the music and movie congloms we'd all be renting our music by now. Without DRM iTunes would be eMusic.

See? Of course you don't have to agree with his argument, but there it is, all bottom-line-up-front like. The insult that came after may have been gratuitous but it was not his main argument (FWIW I've only read one novel by Cory Doctorow - Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom - but it was sufficiently awful for me to decide to never read anything by him again).

Re:argumentum ad hominem

[tm2b]

I agree - I'm going to try to condense your argument down, in my own words. Bayes is hardly necessary unless you want to get all formal (and Bayesian views suffer from the fallacy of equivalence for initial conditions, anyway - though natch, that's kind of inevitable).

Here's the thing: the flip side of the fallacy of ad hominem is the fallacy of equivalence, the notion that one should initially consider every single argument equally.

Yes, arguments should be considered on their merits and not upon their origins. However, in the absence of the complete picture (and truly, it's rarely possible to have that complete picture) it is often useful to consider the source and their ability to think clearly and without prejudice. This is especially true in complex matters such as global climate change, and highly speculative and ideological matters such as the impact of DRM.

So whether it's purely logical or not, it's certainly reasonable to give more consideration to a statement about evolution that came from, say, Stephen Jay Gould over one that comes from Pat Robertson.

So, in short, argumentum ad hominem should be viewed with suspicion but is not without its uses.

Oh yes - and Doctorow is kind of a self-important twit. If I want his opinions, I'll read his freakin' blog, I don't need it on /. too.

Re:argumentum ad hominem

[QuantumFTL]

Actually I think that Bayesian statistics is appropriate here, because the only alternative (at least that I know if) is frequentism, which makes no sense when talking about singular events - what is the probability that I am a good poster, for instance? Either I am, or I'm not, there's only one me.

I think one can take the view that probability reflects the degree of belief in an assertion (i.e. the odds one would be willing to bet) without rigorously using things like bayes views and priors... I am aware of the various paradoxes and conundrums associated with priors (especially Bertrand's Paradox), but I do think that Bayesian reasoning much more closely follows the approximate human inference used by people.

I would also say that, as a natural consequence of using the chain rule, a poverty of evidence requires one to put a lot of weight on information about the source, whereas more information on a subject will diminish this effect, which, I believe, is the correct behavior for maximizing utility when making decisions under uncertain conditions.

I will agree that more irrational people will tend to discard ample amounts of evidence because of putting too much weight to attacks on the credibility of a source or groups of sources, however this is logical under the belief that errors between multiple sources are correlated (read: conspiracy/groupthink/indoctrination).

I will say that ad hominem attacks by themselves are probably the least preferred method of persuasion, but considering the they are used in our justice system to great effect, I believe they are still vital when employed properly.

Re:argumentum ad hominem

[Ohreally_factor]

FWIW I've only read one novel by Cory Doctorow - Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom - but it was sufficiently awful for me to decide to never read anything by him again

You actually made it all the way through? You must have the patience of a saint. At the time I tried to read it, I sincerely wanted to like it, seeing as how CD was taking a new approach, publishing it on teh intarweb. I'm not even sure at which point I gave up in disgust, but it was nowhere near even the halfway mark.

At one point Doctrow was interesting because he had a good eye for trends, and he'd point them out to others. Now, however, instead of pointing out a bandwagon, he's climbed aboard in hopes that he can further his career. There really is no other explanation for his disingenuous twisting of arguments and facts.

Hard to judge in hindsight

[beemishboy]

Sure, I hate drm. However it was Apple that opened the field for digital music. They used drm as the carrot for the record companies. What would have happened had there not been drm? Well there was and that was the only way anyone was able to get the record companies to play ball. Now drm is viewed as a panacea to "protect" content from unlawful use.
Personally, I see drm as merely a stepping stone from the old generation of technophobes to the next generation of truly flexible content.

Re:Hard to judge in hindsight

[cyberbian]

Are you new?
Napster (and others) opened the field for digital music.
What annoyed the labels (read RIAA) was that they hadn't thought of it first, and WORSE weren't profiting by it!
It's truly not difficult to see the collusion and corruption at the heart of this scandal. To draw parallels: Jack Valenti said that VCRs would be the end of movies. Well, that's partially true if you consider the mainstream HWood crap they're shovelling, but it still hasn't stopped great film from being created. In fact EXPOSURE has gone a long way to increasing the size and scope of the industry. Creativity was actually increased through VCR tech.
Intellectual Property would be acceptable if even one of the industry heads demonstrated they had intellect, and weren't just money grubbing pirates themselves. I remember quite well the 'Jolly Roger' flying high in the Macintosh Dev Group...

Re:Hard to judge in hindsight

[Ullteppe]

Yes, what would have happened? Without DRM, the record companies would have had no alternative to just starting selling MP3s (or perish). If the record companies hadn't played ball with Apple, had this resulted in any worse situation that we have today?

Free Music

[gravy.jones]

Step 1) Goto library
Step 2) Check out CD's and DVD's
Step 3) Rip
Step 4) Return media to the library

I am starting to agree with Cory

[MarkWatson]

I have blogged several times in the last 2 years about how much fun the iTunes music store is: spend some time, listen to free clips, and buy a track or two.

The problem, which Cory points out, is that when you de-DRM songs by burning an audio CD, and re-import as MP3, you have to manually re-enter meta data. I don't mind the slightdrop in quality doing this round-trip, but the meta data manual entering is a nuisance.

This also annoying when loading songs on my Linux laptop and desktop PC: when I rip my store bought music CDs, the meta data is there - but not for the iTunes exported audio CDs.

Re:I am starting to agree with Cory

[sm62704]

The problem, which Cory points out, is that when you de-DRM songs by burning an audio CD, and re-import as MP3, you have to manually re-enter meta data. I don't mind the slightdrop in quality doing this round-trip, but the meta data manual entering is a nuisance.

I rip my vinyl to CD and MP3 and find that you can get really obscure albums on Wikipedia and copy and paste the metadata right in to your MP3s.

Re:Competition in DRM technology: good for consume

[spirit of reason]

Invisible? To everyone with an iPod, but what if you'd like to play music on another player? Or what if you use Linux exclusively?

Apple does a lot of great things and it has certainly done an awesome job of bringing the music industry to online distribution. However, my major beef with Apple is that it is rising to a monopoly and dictating who can play what and where. I wouldn't care so much about the DRM if I actually had access to the music in my OS and if Apple licensed the format to other hardware suppliers (which of course, isn't really a good decision when you're in Apple's position, but still...).

Simply put, Apple is a trust by mating their software and hardware together in one package. In reference to OS X, it probably helps them to support less hardware. However, I do not want Apple closing me off to choosing the hardware I want to use, not for my media player and not in my computer. Am I making any sense?

Ummm.....guys?

[DaveInAZ]

As usual, I saw something completely different in that story than everyone else seems to have seen. Of course, that could be because everyone else is so sick of this issue that they didn't really read the article. Wouldn't surprise me. Personally, I haven't been paying attention because I already decided it was bad the first time I heard the phrase.

But, the thing that caught my eye was this statement; The DMCA makes it a crime to circumvent "effective means of access control." To me, the key word, there, is effective . As far as I'm concerned, if I can circumvent it, it isn't effective, Q.E.D.. Ok, I'm a bit of a geek, or I probably wouldn't be here, right? But I'm no bigtime cracker, and there are plenty of security measures I can't circumvent. I consider those measures to be "effective". Anything else seems to be fair game, according to that act. I suspect most judges would agree, if it were explained that way. At worst, it would depend on the outcome of one heck of a battle over the definition of the word "effective".

Re:Ummm.....guys?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The DMCA makes it a crime to circumvent..."

And the Fair Use Act gives you the right to make personal copies. So the these 'Acts' are in conflict with each other. Which one wins?

Re:Ummm.....guys?

[CastrTroy]

If that's the wording of the law, and how it would actually be interpretted, then the law is meaningless. As soon as someone is able to break the DRM, it becomes ineffective, and ergo, does not fall under this law. Breaking the DRM proves the ineffectiveness. I fail to see how this law could be broken taking it's meaning as you have described.

Re:Ummm.....guys?

[cpt kangarooski]

The DMCA makes it a crime to circumvent "effective means of access control." To me, the key word, there, is effective . As far as I'm concerned, if I can circumvent it, it isn't effective, Q.E.D..

I'm going to take a guess here: you don't really know anything about the law, right?

Not only is that not what it means, but no judge would ever think that your interpretation is correct, for the following reason:

It is a rule of statutory interpretation that Congress never intends to pass a meaningless law. Laws all must do something that wasn't already being done, because there are no useless laws. So only interpretations where there is some use to the law, some real meaning, are valid.

If it is illegal to break access controls that are effective, where effective means that they are unbreakable, then the law is meaningless. No one ever could break it, because it would be impossible to do so by definition. This cannot possibly be what Congress intended. Therefore, effectiveness must mean something else, something that permits a TPM to be broken, yet still be considered 'effective.' Maybe the word doesn't quite match the dictionary definition, but the law frequently uses words in a specialized manner. (Think of how various fields created their own definitions of words like 'computer' or 'broadcast' or 'network' or 'drive' or 'memory.')

What it actually turns out to mean is that it has any material degree of effectiveness against nearly anyone at all. ROT13 is likely not effective, but analogue Macrovision probably would be.

Your argument would get laughed out of court. You're coming across like one of those schmucks who rejects the authority of a court due to trivialities like the flag in the courtroom.

Re:Ummm.....guys?

[Anonymous Coward]

Laws all must do something that wasn't already being done, because there are no useless laws.

I know that your statement makes the most sense. However, don't give lawmakers too much credit. There are plenty of useless laws, though I'll grant you that most of these are from times bygone.

Sure, this didn't have a whole lot to do with the topic, but reading through some of those stupid laws can give you quite a few good laughs during your lunch hour!

(I'm not really an Anonymous Coward, but I'm at work and don't have my login info saved here.)

Some goodness

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not a fan of DRM in general, but, there are some good points:

    1) No DRM for music will ever be worse than Apple's is now, cause, if it were, it would loose out in the market place to iTunes
    2) Apple's DRM isn't going to install spyware on your computer (the way Microsoft's does) or rootkits (the way Sony's does)
    3) Consumers now have more leverage against the Studios due to Apple's DRM, through Apple by proxy, than they ever had

Loada Hooey

[Fringe]

I favor protection of my rights, obviously. I favor making archival copies. I also favor reality over holding my breath until Utopia appears. And the reality is that the article wasn't about your rights!

Cory's argument is that because of DRM, protected by the DMCA, iTunes puts Apple disproportionately in charge of their devices by preventing labels selling music for it directly. But that's just not true. It only stands up if you assume that AAC (the iTunes/Apple format) is the only format supported on the iPod, or that all tracks on iPods come from iTunes. But all iPods play MP3 files. And most podcasts are in MP3, which strongly implies that users do not feel constrained to AAC/iTunes files.

I don't know how Cory became an RIAA schill, but his whole argument is predicated on DRM being a requisite to selling music on the iPod. In short, despite his headline, he is arguing not that DRM is bad, but that single-source DRM is bad. Nobody but Sony is preventing Sony from selling their music hits in MP3 format.

Re:Loada Hooey

[MKalus]

Not to forget that AAC is not an Apple format but as "free" as MP3. So nobody is prevented from giving their players AAC capabilities.

Now the FairPlay DRM is a different story, but that has nothing to do with AAC and that you can get around it was shown by RealNetworks.

Re:nice

[Architect_sasyr]

Excuse me for going offtopic, it's not normally something I do.

What is the obsession with first post? Do you think it makes you look cool? It always intrigues me to surf /. at -1 for when I moderate so I tend to see a lot of this... what is the obsession? On the rare occaision I see a decent first post, the poster isn't screaming 'w00t w00t i gt fpst!' he is actually commenting on the article...

So I ask you, in a legitimate non-flaming manner: What is your obsession with first post? And why do a lot of you feel the need to post as an AC?

Re:Competition in DRM technology: good for consume

[spirit of reason]

oops, forget the invisible part... I somehow mistook which DRM you were talking about

Re: Revisiting Copyright Logic

[TaoPhoenix]

I am have been thinking lately about innovative ways to revamp that "classic" copyright argument. Under the classical distribution model, we get the following:

1. Work Created.
2. Copyright acquired.
3. Work sits quite nicely on the third shelf waiting for something to happen.
4. Creator grudgingly enters a contract with a Major Label, who rakes them over coals. Label acquires work, sells some copies, then buries it the following year. No one ever sees work again.
5. Artist is lucky to receive a pittance for their effort.

Well, we've SOLVED the distribution part. What we haven't solved is Cash-To-Artist part. EMusic is a good start. Other strange business models could be possible.

If the ARTISTS AND BUYERS unite, then the DRM media companies will croak. I currently avoid both Ipods, and all but the essential paid music. I am content for the moment with free tracks, remix communities, and I'm studying Emusic.

Re:nice

[XFriday]

First Response!! WOOT!! (Sorry in advance.)

DRM Removal

[americamatrix]

Tunebite FTW!

Breaking vinyl's DRM

[sm62704]

I wrote an article about it- How to rip from vinyl or tape

Good article but...

[Anonymous Coward]

"If Apple doesn't want to give in to Warner's terms, what's Warner going to do? Withdraw its iTunes licenses? Sell exclusively over Rhapsody or Yahoo Music? Lots of luck selling music that won't play on the world's most popular music player."

This article overlooks the obvious route that the music industry would take if they really thought DRM was bad for them. They can sell their music without DRM. Ever heard of this thing called MP3? With mp3, they have ALL distribution channels open, including Ipod. They just need pull their heads out of their asses and realize that restricting the use of music does not hinder piracy in the slightest.

I sincerely believe that the music industry consist of morons that are hurting themselves. They actually believe that they'll make more money with DRM. How many other industries FEAR their customers?

Until the music industry decides to drop DRM and support mp3, i will NEVER buy a single tune over internet. And I'm not the only one. And for those who do buy ipod-crap today, remember that the industry is probably one mp3-player generation away from pissing off a large part of their legal customers that didn't initially grasp the implications of DRM. /melot

Apple and Media Companies; Wed to DRM

[Shihar]

There is a complex relationship going on between Apple, media companies, and DRM. Apple and media companies are both "winning" with DRM. They battle between Apple and the media companies is not if DRM is good or bad, but what form that DRM will be.

Media companies like DRM for obvious reasons - they feel that it slows down piracy. To a media company, the ultimate form of DRM would be one which is pirate proof and that works in all devices.

Apple has a slightly different objective. For Apple, DRM is useful for locking people into their proprietary hardware (iPods) and their media delivery mechanism (iTunes). To Apple owns a monopoly share of the MP3 player and legal online music delivery market (~80%). They want DRM that will help keep their monopoly share of the market. For them, they want a DRM that is unobtrusive on their own products, but which is utterly unworkable on other products. Further, they want their products incompatible with other music services. Apple has done exactly this. If you buy from iTunes, you can only use an iPod on your MP3 player. If you have an iPod, you can only download music online legally from iTunes or places selling raw MP3 files. Seeing as how the media companies all but demand DRM, raw MP3 files are rare (legally) from online services.

The idea is simple, once you are locked into Apple, their DRM keeps you there. You can't use Rhapsody or Napster which offer competing services and pricing alternatives (notably, they have all you can eat subscriptions) because the iPod only uses Apple DRM. Rhapsody and Napster can't sell using Apple DRMed music because Apple won't let them. Further, once you start buying from iTunes to fill your iPod, you are locking yourself into the iPod. Your Apple DRMed files won't work in your Creative Zen, so once you have a large collection of Apple DRMed music, you need to give up a hunk of your music collection to leave the iPod. Apple has you locked into both their hardware AND their music service via their DRM.

The interesting companies to watch will be Napster, Yahoo! Music, and Rhapsody. Those are three companies that desperately want a piece of Apple's pie. They can't offer their services to iPod users which make up the majority of the market so long as Apple refuses to let them use Apple DRM and the music companies refuse to let them sell DRM free music. They are being squeezed by Apple on one side and the music companies on the other side. Look to them to try and make some sort of move against DRM, as they have the most to lose from it.

Yahoo! Music in particular has already tried to float some DRM free music in an attempt to show its viability to music companies. Rhapsody on the other hand has reversed engineered Apple's DRM and is actively looking for a chink in Apple's DRM armor.

Re:Apple and Media Companies; Wed to DRM

[mgabrys_sf]

re: "you buy from iTunes, you can only use an iPod on your MP3 player."

Huh?

Apple's iPod can play any Mp3's including those you rip from your own CDs - which means it's both a DRM/AAC player and an MP3 player. Your sentence implies you can play Apple's Mp3 player on your (non-apple?) Mp3 player. This makes no sense. I know this is probably just a typo - but I have no idea what you could have ment otherwise.

Re:Apple and Media Companies; Wed to DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like he meant "if you buy from iTunes, you can only use an iPod as your MP3 player". Music downloaded from iTunes will only play on Apple's portable music players, not any other brand.

Re:Apple and Media Companies; Wed to DRM

[mgabrys_sf]

Bingo - didn't go through the conjunctions. Was focused on either of the two subjects. Course I was also coked up on folgers...

Artists

[skingers6894]

"Apple's copy-protection technology makes media companies into its servants"

and all the artists say "see how that feels"

WHat would be different without Apple

[SuperKendall]

Fine, let's say Apple had never built a music store. What then do you think would have happened?

Either some other DRM would have been in use, but probably less popular. Fine, so you could simply steal music or buy non-popular music from smaller online music stores that did not use DRM.

So how is that any different than what we have today. It's not like eMusic died because of ITMS. It's not like I can't use P2P to download any popular music I like.

You are angry at Apple simply because they have been successful please consider that few aspects of the world would be better off even if they had not been - or at least describe what you think would have been better about the world today without Apple.

Do not forget that by making a very popular online music store Apple has also given some much smaller labels alot of recognition to really good artists. Woould you truly give away Apple's form of DRM for a lot of other smaller DRM bases just as annoying, without a neutral online party sellign music to give smaller labels a chance?

Re:Mod Redundant

[nude-fox]

taste the irony

Sci-Fake

[Anonymous Coward]

Sci-Fi author? Hah! The guy needs to learn how to carry a plot with something actually worthwhile..and stop trying to imitate Palahniuk.

So start a stockpile of CDs now; you'll need them

[bobalu]

That's exactly what I'm doing. Let's face it, I'm old. I can pick up most of the music I ever really loved on CD before they get whacked by DRM.

The rest I'll just have to live with.

iTunes seems to remember it for me...

[argent]

The problem, which Cory points out, is that when you de-DRM songs by burning an audio CD, and re-import as MP3, you have to manually re-enter meta data.

Some of it, I guess, but this just didn't seem to match my memory... so I just did this as an experiment.

I took my latest 80 minutes worth of protected ACC files, putthem in a playlist, burned it, imported the CD.

Sure enough, all the ID3 information is intact. The only thing I lost was the cover art. I can live with that. What are you and Cory talking about?

Re:Competition in DRM technology: good for consume

[argent]

Invisible? To everyone with an iPod, but what if you'd like to play music on another player? Or what if you use Linux exclusively?

Yes, that's why it's good.

That's the great thing about competition for DRM. It means you have to deal with the DRM.

If Apple didn't stick their foot in the door, It *would* be invisible, because everyone would be doing their cooperative cross-licensing until they were all doing whatever Microsoft did, just like they do with Office documents and everything else where the format matters.

However, I do not want Apple closing me off to choosing the hardware I want to use, not for my media player and not in my computer.

Neither do I. I've used a generic Mp3 player, and an iPod shuffle, to play the music I downloaded from iTMS. And the music I've bought from eMusic, or from the artists, or the samples I've downloaded through MP3blogs, or the CDs I've ripped, because there isn't a common DRM standard.

I hate having a stupid style-over-function Macbook to get a laptop running OS X, and I'll be right up there with you pushing for a decently priced generic OS X (I reckon $500 a copy would probably work). But when it comes to DRM, the worse the better.

No, they can't.

[mrchaotica]

The copyright holders think they can impose any restrictions they like, and the market has been letting them get away with it, but that doesn't mean it's true in any kind of moral sense.

Misses One Big Point

[rspress]

He claims that Apple iTunes works only with the iPod and while that is true it does not take into account one big fact. Nearly all Microsoft WMA music providers work with Windows only. They make no provisions for people with a non-iPod using a Mac to get and play their songs. These are the same companies that are trying to convince us that renting is better than buying.

Overall I think things are pretty balanced the way they are. Apple has done things right with the iPod/iTunes package. I think there are a lot of sour grapes from other MP3 player and music vendors. The guy pretty much hits that right on the head. I am sure Microsoft is pissed that they did not come up with it first and Apple has left them no way to copy it, so the only move Microsoft can make is its lame "Plays for sure" tactic. From what I have heard it should be renamed "Plays for sure, mostly".

Ideas CAN'T be stolen!

[mrchaotica]

If I give you property, I don't have it anymore. My wealth has decreased; yours has increased; the net difference is zero.

If I give you an idea, I still have it. My wealth has stayed the same; yours has increased; the net gain is 100%.

Ideas aren't property and they can't be property. By failing to realize that fact we are only hurting ourselves. It's as simple as that.

Re:Ideas CAN'T be stolen!

[FeloniousPunk]

If I give you property, I don't have it anymore. My wealth has decreased; yours has increased; the net difference is zero. If I give you an idea, I still have it. My wealth has stayed the same; yours has increased; the net gain is 100%. Ideas aren't property and they can't be property. By failing to realize that fact we are only hurting ourselves. It's as simple as that.

Music isn't an "idea." It is the result of creative effort on the part of artists who provide a service - the creation and performance of music - as well as that of a host of technical people and business people (sound engineers, marketeers, etc. etc.). They provide consumers with a service and have every right to compensation for that service, just as if they were performing their music live.

You are an apologist for thievery. You just mock virtue when you try to make your greed look like something it isn't with specious arguments. It's as simple as this: you're a cheap bastard who wants something for nothing at the expense of others.

Re:Ideas CAN'T be stolen!

[ben there...]

You are an apologist for thievery. You just mock virtue when you try to make your greed look like something it isn't with specious arguments. It's as simple as this: you're a cheap bastard who wants something for nothing at the expense of others.

It's like the difference between burglary and robbery. Most people don't know the difference. But it's pretty important. In one scenario, the robber used a weapon, likely a gun. The charges for robbery are greater than for burglary because of the increased (chance of) harm done to the victim.

It's a point worth arguing even though I'm neither a burglar nor a robber. Maybe you should stop accusing people of stuff just because insist on using correct terminology.

Re:Ideas CAN'T be stolen!

[I'm Don Giovanni]

"If I give you an idea, I still have it. My wealth has stayed the same; yours has increased; the net gain is 100%."

Wrong. Your wealth decreased, as you no longer have exclusive rights to the idea. The value of the idea (i.e. the as yet unrealized potential of it) decreased.

Here's another example:
Let's say Company A hacked Company B's computers to "steal" Company B's trade secrets (business plans, blueprints, etc). Such is referred to as "stealing" trade secrets, even though Company B still has the info that was obtained by Company A. The notion that "ideas can't be stolen" is something made up by IP pirates looking to sleep better at night.

Here's the bottom line:
If someone puts IP on the open market for sale, and you take it (or copy it) without authorization (i.e. paying for it), then you've done something immoral. You can rationalize it all you want (well, the seller didn't lose any tangible thing, so it's OK to just take/copy it), but you know deep down that you're in the wrong.

Re:Ideas CAN'T be stolen!

[TecKnow]

Music isn't an "idea." It is the result of creative effort on the part of artists who provide a service - the creation and performance of music - as well as that of a host of technical people and business people (sound engineers, marketeers, etc. etc.). They provide consumers with a service and have every right to compensation for that service, just as if they were performing their music live.

The sort version: By the time you have the chance to buy or steal a CD, the artist and all the technical people you mention above have already been paid for the performance recorded on that CD, and most probably won't be paid for it again no matter how well it sells.

The long version:
As a software engineer the way my work is treated isn't that different legally or culturally from the way that music or movies are treated and I doubt the argument you use above is any more valid for music than it is for software. When I write software I only get paid once for my time and all those 'technical people' you mentioned probably also only get paid once as well. Since I have already been paid by the time anything I work on can be bought or stolen (and those 'technical people' have probably also already been paid by the time the CD is finished) it is dishonest to say that illegally copying my product deprives me of compensation and I find it equally unlikely that copying a recorded song dprives anyone directly involved in the recording of that song of compensation.

Also, the statement "Just as if they were performing live" rings hollow. Concert tickets and a CD don't cost the same amount. A shrink wrapped product doesn't cost the same amount as hiring a team of software developers to make the same product for you from scratch. They aren't the same, considering that the majority of the people directly involved in the performance recorded on the CD have probably already been paid for that performance the one and only time, they are barely even related.

Lastly, just because something takes effort to develop doesn't mean it isn't an idea. Lots of work has gone into the idea of object oriented programming, or the idea of relativity, and they are even more clearly ideas than a recorded song in that they lack any specific physical or sensory form. (I'll actually grant you that a recorded song might not qualify as an idea.)

You can call me greedy if you want, but remember I stand to lose exactly as much from software piracy as most analogous people in the music industry stand to lose from music piracy, which from my perspective is: Nothing. Piracy, even F/OSS and the creative commons may have other effects on software, music, and the market in general both good and bad, and I'd be happy to talk about that if you want, but as a 'content producer' I have a real problem with people complaining piracy deprives 'content producers' of payment, in my experience that's almost never true.

Re:Ideas CAN'T be stolen!

[mrchaotica]

It is the result of creative effort on the part of artists who provide a service - the creation and performance of music

So charge for the fucking service instead of forcing society to invent an entitlement for you!

You are an apologist for thievery.

And you're a tutu-wearing midget. But just saying it doesn't make either statement true!

It's as simple as this: you're a cheap bastard who wants something for nothing at the expense of others.

Well, then Thomas Jefferson was a cheap bastard too:

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body.

Re:Ideas CAN'T be stolen!

[mrchaotica]

Your wealth decreased, as you no longer have exclusive rights to the idea. The value of the idea (i.e. the as yet unrealized potential of it) decreased.

Let's say Company A hacked Company B's computers to "steal" Company B's trade secrets (business plans, blueprints, etc). Such is referred to as "stealing" trade secrets, even though Company B still has the info that was obtained by Company A.

The only crime in that case was the computer tresspass.

You can rationalize it all you want (well, the seller didn't lose any tangible thing, so it's OK to just take/copy it), but you know deep down that you're in the wrong.

Who the fuck do you think you are, to tell me what I do or do not know?!

I'll tell you one thing: not only am I not wrong, but I'm backed up by quite a few great thinkers from history who held exactly the same opinion!

Alert the Media

[bensode]

Aggressively beating one's self on the head repeatedly with a blunt object is not good for you!

This subject is being beaten to death can we move along to another story already? There are those on the iTunes bandwagon, then there are those that chose not to jump on the iTunes bandwagon. Good grief what's next? Debate the finer arguments of smoking vs non-smoking in public? Wait bad idea ... smoking around non-smokers causes them to die too.

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend"

[mrchaotica]

...and that's the only reason I don't bitch and moan about Apple's DRM more than I do: without it, the overall situation would be even worse.

Re:nice

[JAppi]

If you don't understand FP, you should just leave right now.

The same rights granted us in the AHRA pal..

[plasmacutter]

what "rights and freedoms" are involved in not being able to "borrow" copyrighted music?

On legal grounds:
the same rights and freedoms granted to me by the AHRA of 1992, in which these record companies have explicitly exempted private copying using recording devices in exchange for a blank media levy. And NO, you didnt specify "over the internet" or "through use of computers".. the AHRA applies to all else, and does not apply to computers only because of a convenient loophole and some bought judges.

On moral grounds:
the same rights and freedoms involved in me being allowed to tape the same copyrighted music from the radio (functionally no different than "borrowing" it from a friend)

On idealogical grounds:
the same rights and freedoms involved in me being allowed to measure and build a copy of my friend's lazy boy recliner, lawn chair, high boy, or garden shed. (that is.. to spend your own money producing it rather than the record company's money.. if they dont pay for the pressing of the CD they have no right to bitch, and that's capitalism)

are there any more grounds which need to be covered?

Re:The same rights granted us in the AHRA pal..

[cpt kangarooski]

On legal grounds:
the same rights and freedoms granted to me by the AHRA of 1992, in which these record companies have explicitly exempted private copying using recording devices in exchange for a blank media levy. And NO, you didnt specify "over the internet" or "through use of computers".. the AHRA applies to all else, and does not apply to computers only because of a convenient loophole and some bought judges.

Actually, they didn't exempt it, they made it non-actionable. There is a subtle, but important difference, which comes into play when you consider the precise wording of 17 USC 109.

Also, AHRA is quite narrow with regards to what it applies to, both in terms of works, as well as media and devices. But be glad it doesn't apply to computers, since otherwise computers would be required to implement SCMS, etc. The RIAA went after computers and mp3 players in the Diamond case, and we're all much better off with them having lost, and the courts having decided that computers and peripherals like mp3 players were not covered under AHRA.

the same rights and freedoms involved in me being allowed to tape the same copyrighted music from the radio

That would be AHRA again, or fair use when ARHA is inapplicable. And in some cases, that's just plain illegal. Not all home taping is a fair use, after all, nor is it covered by AHRA.

On idealogical grounds:
the same rights and freedoms involved in me being allowed to measure and build a copy

That one doesn't really jibe with copyright policy generally.

s/bittorrent/napster/

[ben there...]

Apple's DRM has done more for the availability of music on the internets than anything except bittorrent.

I think you mean Napster. It changed music on the web more than any other technology. It popularized the mp3. It created a market for the first mp3 players. It made WinAMP popular, which had a huge effect on later players, and was the first time that people had a reason to use their computer for music. It caused the RIAA to take the position they have.

Music on the web didn't start with Apple, and it didn't start with BitTorrent. Both were fairly late to the game.

Not Apple's doing...

[eclectic4]

If it were up to Apple, they would rather sell high quality music files for 75 cents un DRM'd. It was the music industry that mandated some sort of "protection", and iTunes was the compromise (thank you Steve). I would hate to see what the music industry would have done if they had taken a shot at it themselves... *shudder*

And don't get me started on subscription downloads. At least I own the music I get from iTunes, can burn CD's that play everywhere (which I can then re-rip to get unDRM'd songs). I have yet to have an experience where the Apple DRM has gotten in my way. Not once. This is not about Apple, the only reason they are a target is because they have the largest market share due to customers liking their system the best. How is this Apple's fault again?

Another vote against an apple conspiracy this time

[heroine]

It isn't Apple which imposes DRM. It's the content creators. It's the same way with Blu-Ray. The studios won't release anything unless they're certain the DRM works. The only advantage gained by Apple is the ability to lock out competing players by controlling access to the DRM. That's why Blu-Ray players won't go down in price the way DVD players did.

Why even burn a CD? Cut out a step.

[The MAZZTer]

Just record straight from your media player into an MP3.

In Windows, go to Volume Control, Options, Properties, select Recording, check all boxes, hit OK. Check "Select" under Stereo Mix (it might be called "What You Hear"). Now any program that records (even if it says from microphone, usually it will respect this setting) will record anything that comes out of your speakers (so be sure to mute/close other apps and don't go doing other stuff while recording).

And that is pretty much the main reason DRM will ultimately have no impact on piracy. If you can hear it, you can record it. If you can record it, you can record it free of DRM.

Apple's DRM work-around

[Mantrid42]

I know that if you want to get around the DRM that Apple uses, you can burn to a cd, and then rip it from the cd. So why can't this process be virtualized? I mean, in theory, couldn't you burn it to a virtual cd drive (i.e., make an iso), and then rip it from that, and then take this whole thing and put it into one neat little packaged? At that point, you could automate it, so it would automatically "burn" a disk, rip it, delete the disk, and start over with the next group of songs. Right?

Re:Apple's DRM work-around

[argent]

Well, iTunes won't burn to an ISO, but it'll burn to a CD-RW and you can erase that.

And Applescript or Automator can automate it. I'm sure there's some kind of scheme on Windows to do the same thing.

Just don't forget to copy the album cover over. The rest of the track info remains intact.

Mod Parent BOOYA!

[slyborg]

Yes...yes he is. We need a Doctorow checkbox now to add him to Dvorak, Jon Katz, and the whole pantheon of self-important blowhards making a living blowing smoke.

Apple's response to Consumer Council on DRM

[Been on TV]

I have posted a summary of Apple's response to the Norwegian Consumer Ombudsman's complaint filing on Apple's terms and conditions in iTunes, where they also are asked to defend their position on DRM protected content. The response is a 20 page letter of which parts have been blocked for view by the public on request from Apple. I have also provided a link to the response letter which is in Norwegian.

I think you have one thing wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

"Apple's DRM has done more for the availability of music on the internets than anything except bittorrent"

And that's the problem. See, you think the internets are a dump truck, but it's more like a bunch of tubes. And my internets were waiting for your itunes and apple is making money off my internets.

I don't like it one little bit.

Ignore Cory Doctorow

[Anonymous Coward]

The guy has made a name for himself by being prolific, not smart or intelligent or high quality. He wants to be the next Michael Moore. Someone like him deserves to be ignored, not treated as an equal.

Why don't you leave Apple alone alright?

[coralsaw]

Now I'm not an Apple fanboy, and I've never owned a Mac in my life. But I got this beautiful, reasonably priced, wonderfully sounding iPod 60G that plays my old sitcom DVDrips and music. DRM sucks, for all given reasons. But Apple has managed what noone else has in this market: To make legal MP3 music go mainstream. That means getting record labels to release their tracks online (even with the damn DRM), and creating a standard way (i-tunes) for Joe Public to buy/get music for his gadget without having to read a tome of howtos or web pages. And that's priceless in my book. Going DRM-less, that's going to be step 2 in the CD->MP3 transition for the record industry. It will come, the free market (and us techies) will make sure this happens. Because DRM has zero proven economic value for the industry, and immense economic value for DRM-making companies. Do you think record labels would ever license their music for i-tunes (or x-tunes for that matter) without DRM at all? Wake up people! One step at a time. So just leave Apple alone, alright. It's moving the industry forward.

Re: Revisiting Copyright Logic

[noewun]

1. Work Created. 2. Copyright acquired. 3. Work sits quite nicely on the third shelf waiting for something to happen. 4. Creator grudgingly enters a contract with a Major Label, who rakes them over coals. Label acquires work, sells some copies, then buries it the following year. No one ever sees work again. 5. Artist is lucky to receive a pittance for their effort.

You're conflating copyright and distribution, which aren't the same, although both are equally fucked in their own ways. The dividing line is 3/4: the artist doesn't have to sign with a major label or publisher. There are other options.

If the ARTISTS AND BUYERS unite, then the DRM media companies will croak.

Not really. Even if I self-publish, I will would like a way to be remunerated for my work, and to make sure I am the only legal owner. So, I don't know if the DRM media companies will 'croak', although there may be a much-needed realignment.

I currently avoid both Ipods, and all but the essential paid music. I am content for the moment with free tracks, remix communities, and I'm studying Emusic.

I don't know why you avoid iPods, unless you do so because you don't want any attachment to a company which uses DRM. My iPod is about 95% DRM-free music, which the 5% the few albums I have bought off of the iTMS. Like you I download mostly from the remix community, although not for any political reasons. It's just the music I'm listening to right now.

What has changed for the typical user?

[zpok]

I'm not a fan of DRM in general, and don't want to defend Apple in specific, apart from pointing out that today's solutions should be cross platform, mac, windows, linux.

But go back 20 years.
Some of us would spend hours making tapes. It would be quite hard to mix and match. It required skills you had to learn and technical hurdles. And you had to be careful not to degrade your material too much.
And it was illegal. So you would just give your tapes to your friends and that's it.

Now, you can do the same thing with digital music. It takes skill and there are technical hurdles to overcome, but you can do it, and you can still pass on the results to your friends. And today, without degradation, if you know how...

While I don't like all the restrictions, there is one thing I can't argue with: the right for musicians to be paid. I'll be the first to shout that the current model isn't musician-friendly, but that's more a redistribution issue than a real DRM failing.
So what I'm really saying is: who has a better idea? One that's nicer for consumers and is better for musicians?

Re:What has changed for the typical user?

[Anonymous Coward]

"who has a better idea? One that's nicer for consumers and is better for musicians?"
put singer's bank account number into mp3 file comments tag so that listeners know where to send their donations

Re:What has changed for the typical user?

[zpok]

That's an idea, but not a good one.
Ask donationware authors how many people donate, even for the most popular apps. Music is worth even less than software in most people's eyes.

To compete with iTunes, forgat all about DRM

[ladadadada]

Finally. Someone who read ALL THREE pages of the article.
The point of the article was not that Apple's DRM is bad. (Like the Slashdot headline says.)
The points of the article were:

DRM is bad.
Apple's DRM isn't as bad for consumers as other DRMs are.
Apple's DRM is worse for record companies than other DRMs are.
Apple's DRM effectively locks users in to iPods.
Most other DRMs are just there to get the record companies to hand over the content.
iPods are so popular now that record companies can't play hard ball with Apple any more.
Apple became the most popular by providing a better service, not because of their DRM.
The only way other providers can get their music onto iPods is to remove DRM.
The only way other comapnies can compete with iTunes is to provide a better service.

Most comments here seem to indicate that the Slashdotter only read the first page of the article; the bit about DRM being bad and how Apple's DRM is easily circumvented. We already know that stuff... it's been on Slashdot for years. The insight only comes on the third page where Doctorow suggests that the only way forward is to forget DRM altogether.

I suspect that point is aimed at record company execs and not at Slashdot punters. I particularly like the way he connected the failure of DRM (to be useful to consumers) in DVDs to Blueray and DVD-HD in an article about DRM on music sold at iTunes.

He's really asking record company execs to connect the dots; if you want to be as successful as iTunes/iPod then you need to forget DRM.

Re:To compete with iTunes, forgat all about DRM

[dangitman]

But what reason would anyone have for reading the rest of the article. It is so poorly written that it doesn't really warrant reading any further. How about we find some tech commentators who can actually write, and thoroughly consider issues, instead of these screechers who know nothing of either style or substance?

Re:To compete with iTunes, forgat all about DRM

[ladadadada]

We're starting to get quite off-topic here but it needs addressing.

The reasons for reading the entire article vary from person to person.

If you are a slashdot editor the it's your job to read the entire article.
If you're an iTunes user then it may be in your best interests to read past the first page.
If you are a record company exec then your future job may depend on it.
If, like me, you realise that the author intended the whole article to be read in one go and, as most authors do, put the most salient points at the end (the conclusion) of the article then you'll press on even if the writing style is bad to get to the point of the article.

People who have novel and interesting ideas are not necessarily good writers and good writers often have no novel and interesting ideas. In fact, good writers often take a bad article that contains good ideas, rewrite it in their own words and make an absolute mint out of it. That's not to say you can't find both qualities in one person, just that such a combination is exceedingly rare.

I've made this point about University lecturers before. Every single one of my lecturers at University were very smart people but only two or three of them made good lecturers. Most of them were simply going through the motions of teaching a subject they didn't care about so they could get the funding to do the research they did care about. Corner one of them and bring up a topic they did care about and you could learn volumes of information from them but sitting through lectures where the stooge out the front reads the text book to you is a waste of time.

The job of an editor of a news aggregation site is to find the articles that have ineteresting views and summarise the view in such a way that you are given enough information to decide whether you want to read the full article or not but there is still a point to reading the full article if you decide to.
After this, the quality of the ideas in the article is what matters and not so much the quality of the writing.

Re:To compete with iTunes, forgat all about DRM

[dangitman]

After this, the quality of the ideas in the article is what matters and not so much the quality of the writing.

As I said, the content was very poor, not just the writing. From the outset, it was clear that there was very little insight, and no good ideas. Basically, "DRM is bad" and "Apple is bad." When the ideas and the writing is at a such low level, why waste your time with drivel?

The Media Companies wanted Copy Protection

[LKM]

Apple's copy-protection technology makes media companies into its servants

That may be true, but Doctorow is conveniently forgetting that it was the media companies who wanted the copy protection in the first place. If Apple could have sold unprotected AAC files, they probably would have done that instead, even if it technically kind of divorces the iTunes Music Store from the iPod - in the user's mind, the two would still be connected due to the integration between iTunes and the iPod.

If you want the best experience (usability-wise), you buy an iPod and use the iTunes Music Store, regardless of the DRM.

Re:The Media Companies wanted Copy Protection

[Anonymous Coward]

exactly- they got that wrong its the other way around or more to the point- the media companies want to make the consumer their servants.
    its they who are the problem, and their lust for complete domination over the choices of the consumer. its bad for competition because it secures their dominance in the market and they dont have to compete for sales, the gov. has basicaly made it law that we have to pay them(media co.s) money to have permision to do anything related to things we own, while they lazily sit back and reap the benifits of their coruption(the media co.s via the gov.).
id like to see less laws helping big busness aquire/maintain more power, and more laws protecting the individual/consumer.

His logic is flawed.

[Tetard]

He states: "That obvious restriction: No one but Apple is allowed to make players for iTunes Music Store songs, and no one but Apple can sell you proprietary file-format music that will play on the iPod".

As far as I know, it's the other way around:

"only the iPod can play the proprietary file-format music that you can buy on the iTunes Music Store."

No one is forced to buy music from iTMS -- the iPod plays MP3s fine.

Re:His logic is flawed.

[Warlock7]

Not exactly true. The Motorola phones with iTMS support will also play FairPlay encoded files and any computer you have authorized to play the tracks you purchase through the iTMS will also play those same files.

Re:His logic is flawed.

[Workaphobia]

Er, the original quote is correct, you only restated half of it. He says both that the only method to play Apple's DRM'd files is through an Apple music player, and that the only DRM'd files an Apple music player can play come from Apple. Although the iPod plays MP3s, they don't count as a proprietary format.

Re:His logic is flawed.

[dangitman]

He says both that the only method to play Apple's DRM'd files is through an Apple music player, and that the only DRM'd files an Apple music player can play come from Apple.

No, read the article. He does not say that the only DRMed files an iPod can play come from Apple. He says the only proprietary files an iPod can play come from Apple.

Although the iPod plays MP3s, they don't count as a proprietary format.

Seeing as MP3 is a proprietary format, then why wouldn't MP3 count as a proprietary format?

Re: Revisiting Copyright Logic

[TheRaven64]

How about a system which plugs into an existing music player, and tracks how many times you listen to a track (or watch a show). You could write such a thing for iTunes in about 5 lines of AppleScript. Every month, you pay a fixed amount, and this is awarded to the copyright owners according to the amount of time you spent enjoying their work. Ideally, it should tie in with your ratings of the content, so if you watch two films once, but rate one at 1 star and one at 5 stars the second will get more money.

This wouldn't require intrusive DRM, and could be entirely opt-in. The pay-off for opting in would be that you would have the legal right to any copyrighted music or video. This could only be introduced with government support, but it is entirely feasible. Russia has laws somewhat similar that allow allofmp3.com to operate.

Without copyright, artists would find other ways.

[jotaeleemeese]

Painters, sculptors have it the easiest, they have a name, an style and they can authenticate their works (some artists are fingerprinting their works with their own DNA in several ways). If anybody copies a painting, big deal. If this happens after the artist is dead, who would be harmed then? Nowadays any plastic artist worth its salt will catalogue their work with excruciating detail. So this group would not be affected by a lack of copyright law.

Musicians? Performers are creating nothing, they can go and fsck themselves or do what they are suppossed to do: go out there and perform. Composers? Music circulating around would be the the advertisement for new tailored comissions or performances if they can play.

Writers? They could sell books in advance. I am pretty sure that good writers could announce they will write a book, request remuneration before publication and then publish. After they had made the money, who would care that the work is copied ad nauseam (actually that would be free advertisement for their next work). So no copyright needed.

I could go on, but I am pretty certain that artists would find ways to keep earning a living, bussiness models would change, but at least we would not starve the spreading of culture with draconian artificial constructs. Thing that many things created early last century are still untouchable. That mkes us all poorer culturaly because we cant create new works with them.

But you'd hate to be Cory Doctorow

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's remarkable that Cory has written anything, given his deranged mental state.

He has a lot of um, issues - this parody nailed it:

ALERRRT! Listen up: this seems suspicious: The copyright maximialists the RIAA - the guys who want to put a chip implant in my brain - and the Library of Congress sez they've done a deal where you can swap as many MP3s as you want. K3WL! Yes? No?! BASTARDS! Or... maybeee!?!

The boy needs sedatives, and he needs to get laid.

Yes, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Write to your French greengrocer! Write to your Congressman - mention MEEEeee. KopyrightKrusader! Stop the copchip remote. The EFF has more. Bitchslap!

... he's one hell of an angry idiot.

"Other copy protection technologies"?!

[Theaetetus]

Other copy-protection technologies, like Blu- Ray and HD-DVD, are just as bad.

Gosh, I could've sworn that Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are high density storage mediums. If they're only "copy-protection technologies", then why are they making goofy claims about holding 25 GB on a disc?

Re:"Other copy protection technologies"?!

[argent]

If they're only "copy-protection technologies", then why are they making goofy claims about holding 25 GB on a disc?

"Lossy Encryption"

It's bad karma!

[Sirfrummel]

It's quite simple, if you score a First Post, then all the bad karma you've gathered on slashdot is reset to 0.

Turnabout is fair play

[Old Man Kensey]

So what?!

What our society seems to have forgotten is that the consumer does not have a God-given right to have product! ...We, as a society, will be much better off if we remember this fact, and the sooner the better!

What exactly are you proposing? Distorting the market to try and push publishers out of existence, out of some misguided idea that you'll suddenly get all your music for free? The market (by which I mean the suppliers and the consumers) has arrived at the current distribution model over time. If major publishers die off, the result will not be today's music distribution system with artists at the top instead of publishers: it will be something radically different and much smaller.

If you take away major record labels, you destroy the economies of scale that allow them to efficiently move product to the mainstream music consumer. As a result, every brick-and-mortar record store would be in critical danger of going out of business -- even independents, whose model often depends on moving large quantities of mainstream product to stay alive and allow them to serve the niche markets in their community. At a minimum the cost of music would rise in proportion to the missing efficiency. Even online services would have a rough time, because instead of negotiating agreements with a couple of major labels, they'd have to go to thousands of individual artists. Artists would have to assume all the costs of their individual touring budgets, which means a lot of artists who currently tour nationally as openers for mainstream acts would never tour at all.

In a scenario like that, what happens? Artists start forming collectives to negotiate distribution agreements and split touring expenses. Over time, that's going to evolve back to record labels, who will then consolidate into a few majors and assorted minors and niche or vanity labels... just like today.

Face it: music is a commodity. Economics tells us that in the absence of outside intervention, commodities in a free market end up controlled by a few large players who shape the business landscape, and lesser players who serve niche markets and never grow beyond a certain size as a result.

Re:Turnabout is fair play

[mrchaotica]

What our society seems to have forgotten is that the consumer does not have a God-given right to have product!

No, what we've forgotten is that there are more important things than "products," and that calling someone a "consumer" is a bad thing!

What exactly are you proposing? Distorting the market to try and push publishers out of existence, out of some misguided idea that you'll suddenly get all your music for free?

The music is already free, and always has been -- it's called the Public Domain (or, as my high-school English teacher called it, the "Great Conversation of Ideas"), and it's the natural state of things. Copyright is an artificial construct created out of the notion that we needed extra incentives to get people to create. That might have been true when it was originally conceived, but between the plummeting cost of creation and distribution and the fact that copyright law has mutated into something insane (150 years?! that won't encourage creation because the artist will be long dead!), it's no longer true now.

Copyright, as it is today, is no longer useful. In fact, just the opposite -- it's a drain on society, funneling capital to middlemen that could be better spent elsewhere. Because of that, it should be abolished (or at least greatly modified).

If you take away major record labels, you destroy the economies of scale that allow them to efficiently move product to the mainstream music consumer.

Unrestricted Internet distribution has infinite economies of scale. And who is resisting that? The record labels! Your argument is bunk.

As a result, every brick-and-mortar record store would be in critical danger of going out of business -- even independents, whose model often depends on moving large quantities of mainstream product to stay alive and allow them to serve the niche markets in their community.

Then the brick-and-mortar record stores should go out of business, because they've been rendered obsolete. This is not a problem. All the money and manpower that went to running those stores will be reallocated into doing something more useful. (If you think otherwise, look up the "broken window fallacy".)

Even online services would have a rough time, because instead of negotiating agreements with a couple of major labels, they'd have to go to thousands of individual artists.

Are you kidding?! Online services (including iTMS) do this anyway already! In fact, some services carry only music from "unsigned" bands. They aren't having a problem now, and they won't be having a problem later.

Artists would have to assume all the costs of their individual touring budgets, which means a lot of artists who currently tour nationally as openers for mainstream acts would never tour at all.

So maybe we'll have more regional artists, at the expense of national ones. Whoop-de-do.

In a scenario like that, what happens? Artists start forming collectives to negotiate distribution agreements and split touring expenses. Over time, that's going to evolve back to record labels, who will then consolidate into a few majors and assorted minors and niche or vanity labels... just like today.

Even if artists did form into collectives, there's no way they could acquire the same kind of control over distribution that the RIAA labels have today.

Re:Turnabout is fair play

[Old Man Kensey]

Copyright, as it is today, is no longer useful. In fact, just the opposite -- it's a drain on society, funneling capital to middlemen that could be better spent elsewhere. Because of that, it should be abolished (or at least greatly modified).

Modifying copyright is a position worth pursuing, but I think your ire at the vast music publishing industry conspiracy is a bit unproductive. If you look at what it is and why it is, you can get a lot of useful things done without causing collateral damage to everything in your path.

Unrestricted Internet distribution has infinite economies of scale.

Absolute bull. That's only true if bandwidth is infinite and/or free, neither of which is or likely ever will be the case.

As a result, every brick-and-mortar record store would be in critical danger of going out of business -- even independents, whose model often depends on moving large quantities of mainstream product to stay alive and allow them to serve the niche markets in their community.

Then the brick-and-mortar record stores should go out of business, because they've been rendered obsolete. This is not a problem. All the money and manpower that went to running those stores will be reallocated into doing something more useful. (If you think otherwise, look up the "broken window fallacy".)

Congratulations, you just killed thriving local music scenes in thousands of American cities that are based around local independent record shops. Despite what many in the so-called Internet generation seem to feel, there is value to physical presence, physical possession, and physical rarity. I'm not sure what you're trying to argue with reference to the broken windows fallacy, since no one is being forced to buy music a priori the same way the shopkeeper is forced to buy a new windowpane -- they're only being forced to pay for music they wish to own. And what's your replacement for indie record-store culture? Streaming audio? Podcasts?

Even online services would have a rough time, because instead of negotiating agreements with a couple of major labels, they'd have to go to thousands of individual artists.

Are you kidding?! Online services (including iTMS) do this anyway already! In fact, some services carry only music from "unsigned" bands. They aren't having a problem now, and they won't be having a problem later.

Until they want to grow to serve more customers. Those services can never pass beyond a certain size unless there's a top-down consolidated distribution infrastructure for them to tap. iTMS does the vast, vast majority of its business with mainstream music customers buying mainstream music. A major reason iTMS can exist is because Apple was able to negotiate with half a dozen record labels and tap a catalog of hundreds of thousands (millions?) of tracks. If they had to go to each one of the artists instead of the label, iTMS would be about where some of those "unsigned-artist" services are today, instead of a service millions of people use daily.

Artists would have to assume all the costs of their individual touring budgets, which means a lot of artists who currently tour nationally as openers for mainstream acts would never tour at all.

So maybe we'll have more regional artists, at the expense of national ones. Whoop-de-do.

No, what you'll see is no national acts (barring the occasional dark-horse national sensation like the Dave Matthews Band breaking out of Charlottesville, VA in the early 90s) and very few acts that even tour multi-state. Basically your local music scene will be whoever lives in your town, and whoever happens to already be rich enough to drive there from wherever else they are.

In a scenario like that, what happens? Artists start forming collectives to negotiate distribution agreements and split touring expenses. Over time, that's going to evolve back to r

Re:Turnabout is fair play

[mrchaotica]

That's only true if bandwidth is infinite and/or free, neither of which is or likely ever will be the case.

It's true on the supply side. All the artist has to do is upload it once to a BitTorrent tracker and, if it's popular, the listeners will handle the rest of the distribution themselves. Sure, they're still paying for their own Internet access, but they'd be doing that anyway.

Besides, in the long term the Internet could very well consist of a huge wireless mesh, with each user running their own node and routing traffic for their neighbors. Then, if they powered it with solar power or something, it really would be free!

Congratulations, you just killed thriving local music scenes in thousands of American cities that are based around local independent record shops. Despite what many in the so-called Internet generation seem to feel, there is value to physical presence, physical possession, and physical rarity.

Now hold on a minute! Either there's value, or there's not. If there's value (and the business manager is competant), then the store will find a way to make money and will stay in business. If there's not value, then the store will go out of business and nobody will miss it.

You can't have it both ways.

I'm not sure what you're trying to argue with reference to the broken windows fallacy, since no one is being forced to buy music a priori the same way the shopkeeper is forced to buy a new windowpane -- they're only being forced to pay for music they wish to own.

What I'm saying is that keeping the status quo to give record stores business is like going around breaking windows to keep window makers in business. It's a stupid reason in either case.

Until they want to grow to serve more customers. Those services can never pass beyond a certain size unless there's a top-down consolidated distribution infrastructure for them to tap.

Huh?! That doesn't even make sense! There's no reason whatsoever the music services can't scale even with courting artists manually. And there's not even a reason to do that -- just come up with a few standard package deals (e.g. X amount of promotion for Y% of revenue), let the artists sign themselves up for whichever package they want using a website form, and manage the whole thing automatically with a database. It's not that hard!

No, what you'll see is no national acts (barring the occasional dark-horse national sensation like the Dave Matthews Band breaking out of Charlottesville, VA in the early 90s) and very few acts that even tour multi-state. Basically your local music scene will be whoever lives in your town, and whoever happens to already be rich enough to drive there from wherever else they are.

Like I said, "whoop-de-do." You're saying this as if it's some kind of horrible thing, and it isn't.

Not in five years. Not in ten, maybe. But give them the hundred-plus years that are behind the history of today's recorded-music industry and it's all but inevitable.

So what? Then my great-grandkids will just scrap it and start over again! The hypothetical idea that it might get just as bad again later is no reason not to do it now. Making things better temporarily is still making them better!

Re:Turnabout is fair play

[Old Man Kensey]

It's true on the supply side. All the artist has to do is upload it once to a BitTorrent tracker and, if it's popular, the listeners will handle the rest of the distribution themselves. Sure, they're still paying for their own Internet access, but they'd be doing that anyway.

Like anything else, the Internet will cost more when there is scarcity. When the "pipes" are so choked with music downloads that service degrades, the providers will charge more and more money until they find the point at which demand = supply.

Besides, in the long term the Internet could very well consist of a huge wireless mesh, with each user running their own node and routing traffic for their neighbors. Then, if they powered it with solar power or something, it really would be free!

I doubt that will happen on any kind of practical level. If it does I doubt it will happen in either of our lifetimes. Besides, you're omitting the cost and environmental impact of solar cells...

Now hold on a minute! Either there's value, or there's not. If there's value (and the business manager is competant), then the store will find a way to make money and will stay in business. If there's not value, then the store will go out of business and nobody will miss it.... What I'm saying is that keeping the status quo to give record stores business is like going around breaking windows to keep window makers in business. It's a stupid reason in either case.

There's value, but what I'm asserting is that the value of being a physical record store is not enough in itself to sustain an independent shop financially. There has to be a constant flow of large volumes of mainstream product to provide the majority of the support to keep that business alive. If you dismantled the major labels tonight, the independent record store would be dead by next week.

There's no reason whatsoever the music services can't scale even with courting artists manually. And there's not even a reason to do that -- just come up with a few standard package deals (e.g. X amount of promotion for Y% of revenue), let the artists sign themselves up for whichever package they want using a website form, and manage the whole thing automatically with a database. It's not that hard!

No, it's not hard. But it's hard to deliver high-quality content reliably. It takes a lot of money to pay for the infrastructure to do that even if you yourself aren't shipping every bit. Akamai makes tons of money just shipping bits for popular websites. And what happens when those services do manage to grow? They have huge investments to protect and huge costs to pay for. In effect they become the greedy distributors they replaced.

I'm not advocating "keeping" mainstream music in business as though it were some sort of corporate charity -- I'm saying that eliminating mainstream music distribution would have far-reaching effects that most of those who do the "fight the man" thing don't even consider. My initial comment was a response to your assertion that the distributors don't have a right to get paid. Well, no, in an absolute sense they don't -- they have a right to get paid for what they produce, in a free market transaction. Currently the law is structured such that they have a right of exclusivity over music copying and distribution, by law and by contract. But if the laws change to abolish copyright and they don't get paid, they will cease to exist -- and that will take down a whole host of other "good" music-related commerce that people want.

So I'm not asserting that they are good or bad, per se -- I'm asserting that they arose as the inevitable result of economic forces, and that the existence of these other "good" things like indie artists touring and indie record shops selling those artists' work and yes, even online services selling those indie artists' work is totally predicated on the existence of this gigantic flow of mainstream crap (if you will) that mainstream consumers trade their dollars

Re:Turnabout is fair play

[mrchaotica]

There's value, but what I'm asserting is that the value of being a physical record store is not enough in itself to sustain an independent shop financially.

Well, if there's not enough value to sustain it, then there's just not enough value. Maybe some people will miss it, but apparently they won't miss it enough to put in the effort and money to save it.

Of course, that's assuming it tries to stay a "physical record store." I imagine if this were to happen a lot of these shops would change and survive. For example, I can imagine them specializing in vinyl, or selling memorabilia, or even becoming a coffee house/performance venue or something. There might be fewer shiny discs, but the community would still survive.

No, it's not hard. But it's hard to deliver high-quality content reliably. It takes a lot of money to pay for the infrastructure to do that even if you yourself aren't shipping every bit.

Oh, I thought you were talking about the business side of it. For this issue, I have only one word: BitTorrent.

And what happens when those services do manage to grow? They have huge investments to protect and huge costs to pay for. In effect they become the greedy distributors they replaced.

Yes, that's possibly an issue. However, that's something to worry about later -- and even if it did happen, it wouldn't be any worse than it is now anyway.

...and that will take down a whole host of other "good" music-related commerce that people want.

If people really want it, it'll come back.

the existence of these other "good" things like indie artists touring and indie record shops selling those artists' work and yes, even online services selling those indie artists' work is totally predicated on the existence of this gigantic flow of mainstream crap

Wow, what economic theory is this? I've never heard about it, and I'm very skeptical of it, but if you've got some evidence that this is the case I'd be very interested in reading it.

I'm mostly just bouncing things off you because a lot of people saying the things you initially said assume that "the music industry - EVIL BIG MUSIC DISTRIBUTORS = everything I like stays around and I get music for free!" But market forces will dictate that that honeymoon's going to last about a month, and then the die-off will begin.

What it comes down to is you can have fresh music and pay for it, or you can quit paying and quit getting lots of the things you now enjoy. And if no one's legally required to pay (by copyright law), no one will pay -- or at any rate, not enough people to sustain much of a music industry. If you make your peace with that, set course and full power to the engines.

Ah, I think we're pretty much in agreement, then -- the only difference is that I'm more optimistic about the cost.

Re:Turnabout is fair play

[mrchaotica]

Sorry for the duplicate reply, but wouldn't you know it -- I read this just after I posted the previous one!

Besides, in the long term the Internet could very well consist of a huge wireless mesh, with each user running their own node and routing traffic for their neighbors. Then, if they powered it with solar power or something, it really would be free!

I doubt that will happen on any kind of practical level. If it does I doubt it will happen in either of our lifetimes. Besides, you're omitting the cost and environmental impact of solar cells...

Solar Wi-Fi To Bring Net to Developing Countries

Am I psychic, or what?

Re:Turnabout is fair play

[Old Man Kensey]

There's value, but what I'm asserting is that the value of being a physical record store is not enough in itself to sustain an independent shop financially.

Well, if there's not enough value to sustain it, then there's just not enough value. Maybe some people will miss it, but apparently they won't miss it enough to put in the effort and money to save it.

Yeah, that tends to be the case with a lot of things. It amazes me how many people gripe about say, Wal-Mart putting local stores out of business but still shop there.

Of course, that's assuming it tries to stay a "physical record store." I imagine if this were to happen a lot of these shops would change and survive. For example, I can imagine them specializing in vinyl, or selling memorabilia, or even becoming a coffee house/performance venue or something. There might be fewer shiny discs, but the community would still survive.

It's a possibility. In fact it's a strong possibility that some would go that way. People would probably still complain about "how it used to be" but myself, I'd actually like a coffee shop/record store better than what most of them are now.

No, it's not hard. But it's hard to deliver high-quality content reliably. It takes a lot of money to pay for the infrastructure to do that even if you yourself aren't shipping every bit.

Oh, I thought you were talking about the business side of it. For this issue, I have only one word: BitTorrent.

BitTorrent won't solve all bandwidth problems. Even if you're no longer bottlenecked by a single site as the origin of the data, there are still bottlenecks like the ISP's head end for most people (even with massive networks like Sprint or AT&T, there are peering points and local NOCs to consider). The Internet as it exists today is not ready to carry music, TV and movies to every single household -- the reason it works for a few people is that it's still a relatively tiny few who do that kind of stuff. No matter where the data is coming from, the fundamental issue is still the volume of data. This is a solvable problem, but one that will still take a significant amount of physical deployment to solve.

...the existence of these other "good" things like indie artists touring and indie record shops selling those artists' work and yes, even online services selling those indie artists' work is totally predicated on the existence of this gigantic flow of mainstream crap...

Wow, what economic theory is this? I've never heard about it, and I'm very skeptical of it, but if you've got some evidence that this is the case I'd be very interested in reading it.

I'm not sure what kind of formal treatment it may have in economics, but it's a pretty well-known effect. The classic example in modern times is Starbucks vs. smaller chains and independent coffee houses. Until Starbucks came along with some slick marketing and made fancy espresso drinks a part of yuppie culture, the coffeehouse business was about dead and coffee itself was an also-ran drink. Along came Starbucks and created demand where none previously existed, and in the process the entire industry underwent a business renaissance. At the same time Starbucks has very much an adversarial relationship with those independents and smaller chains that its creation of increased demand allows to exist. Sometimes it manages to kill them with clustering tactics, sometimes local sensibilities win out.

I can't find the original article I read about this, which had quotes from coffeeshop owners about their love-hate relationship with the Green Straw, but there's this article in the New Yorker that touches on it in terms of the decline and re-establishment of the coffee industry. If Starbucks goes away tomorrow, it potentially throws the entire coffee industry into a tailspin (especially since coffee prices have been a bit unstable in recent years).

Your one-time pay depends on previous sales

[Old Man Kensey]

TecKnow wrote:

By the time you have the chance to buy or steal a CD, the artist and all the technical people you mention above have already been paid for the performance recorded on that CD, and most probably won't be paid for it again no matter how well it sells.

They wouldn't get paid at all if no one stood to make money from creating and selling the music.

1. If the consumer environment is such that people download music for free instead of paying for it in some way, no money flows back up the chain and no more music is made on a scale that pays any of those people. The music industry contracts to what individual artists can support out of their own budgets.

2. If the record labels make a reasonable effort to keep people from enjoying their product for free, then they can justify charging money for it to the people who are willing to pay. This is where we are now.

3. If, on the other hand, some people pay, and a large number of other people don't pay, and the producers allow that to exist without fighting the people who don't pay, eventually no one will pay and you're back in scenario 1.

Re:Your one-time pay depends on previous sales

[TecKnow]

All that is doubtful, and irrelivant to the question at hand. Eliminating potential future work is not the same as depriving someone of just compensation for work that has already been performed. From the perspective of the performer there's no garuntee that money generated from the sale of their CDs will be reinvested into that performer, so you aren't even eliminating probable future work for them. More importantly, just refusing to buy something isn't theft. If nobody bought their music, the RIAA would be in a spot weather anybody downloaded it illegally or not, and that's not criminal in any way. Just as people will continue to want new and different software regardless of how much they pirate, movies and television shows will still need actors and musicians, professional orchestras and choirs will continue to exist, as will theaters, and the world will still need music teachers, wedding singers, church musicians. For piracy to have an effect on that, recorded music would have had to destroyed the market for live performances and I just don't think it has.

Re:Your one-time pay depends on previous sales

[Old Man Kensey]

That's faulty logic. If no one bought any product, the producers of it would be in the same "spot", but that doesn't justify stealing a hit artist's CDs from Wal-Mart or the latest bestseller from Barnes & Noble any more than it does downloading the same books and music online. And in the book case, the middlemen have already been paid when that book is stolen, but I'll bet you they still care about "shrinkage".

No matter what arcane rationalization you dream up, there's no justification for refusing to buy something offered for sale and taking the benefit from it anyway. The only legally supportable position is to refuse to pay money and do without.

Re:Your one-time pay depends on previous sales

[TecKnow]

No matter what arcane rationalization you dream up, there's no justification for refusing to buy something offered for sale and taking the benifit from it anyway. The only legally supportable position is to refuse to pay money and do without.

The logic above is pretty faulty, but it's also entirely off topic, so in an effort to avoid dragging us further away from my point, I won't address it. As I said before, I might agree with your premise that piracy has negative consequences, it is your arguments in support of that idea that I have a problem with and that's all I'm talking about right now.

Lets put it another way. As a software developer or other content producer in what way am I harmed when people pirate something I've worked on? Be sure the address the fact that open source developers give their products away for free, and can still be paid.

Re:Your one-time pay depends on previous sales

[Old Man Kensey]

Lets put it another way. As a software developer or other content producer in what way am I harmed when people pirate something I've worked on? Be sure the address the fact that open source developers give their products away for free, and can still be paid.

Ask any shareware developer who ever struggled to pay their bills knowing that millions of people downloaded their software and used it every day but never paid for it. Even for people whose benefit from sales is indirect (i.e. paid on a fixed salary instead of per-sale in some way), the fact that you can't show significant harm from a single lost sale doesn't mean there's no harm done from millions of lost sales.

Open-source developers choose to give their software away for free. In effect they've set the price at $0.00 and people are paying the asking price. Other developers do not choose to do so, and it's their right to choose that option. To force them to give you their software for free by pirating it is disrespecting their right to dispose of the product of their work as they see fit. If someone wants to buy millions of copies of a piece of commercial software and give it away, fine -- the first-sale doctrine protects them and I'll support them all the way. But to buy one copy, and give it away to millions for free on the Internet, thus costing the developer at least some portion of sales, is ethically and legally indefensible.

There is also the concept of intangible "harm", such as trespassing. It's illegal to trespass on private property even when no measurable damage is done, and if you refuse to leave after the owner tells to to, the police can and will haul you away. It's still grand theft auto even if you bring the car back before the owner misses it, washed, waxed, oil changed and with a full tank of gas. So your insistence on focusing on direct financial harm is irrelevant anyway, unless you also want to abolish all privacy and "quiet enjoyment" and exclusive-access property rights.

Re:Your one-time pay depends on previous sales

[TecKnow]

The first thing that comes to mind is that in many cases first sale doctrine does not protect your right to buy software and then resell or even give it away. Software vendors argue that they're not really selling you the software, but a limited liscence that (often) doesn't include the right to resell. The courts don't always support this position, but neither do they always come down against it, nor is it clear that they should because eliminating limited liscences may eliminate open source along with that.

While some open source developers work for free, those who wish to be paid charge for their time. As a 'content producer' that's all I or anyone can really sell and it is best to get the money up front.

I've focused my arguments in this discussion not so much on 'direct financial harm' as 'reduced utility to the producer of content.' because I take issue with the statement that piracy hurts those people. These people should be paid for their time if they wish to be, and they are. Indeed it's hard to see how you would convince them to take up microphones, instruments, keyboards, or other tools of their trade without paying them for thier time. Given that many content producers are current paid only once, the only remaining potential harm that I can see is that piracy will cause a reduced demand for their time. That's kind of what you're implying with many of your arguments above, as far as I can tell, but I haven't seen any evidence showing that piracy has or will decrease demand for new content. People continue to want new and different movies, music, and software, and pay for them to be created, as well as to attend live plays and concerts. If content producers will be paid for their time, and their time will continue to be in demand, I don't really see how piracy can hurt them. Can you show that piracy decreases demand (or even payment) for the time of content producers? If 'millions' of 'lost sales' can amount to significant harm through the power of calculus, then where is that harm?

I can't think of any meaningful intangible harm that can come to someone as a result of piracy that isn't otherwise protected against, explicitly allowed, or couldn't come to them for selling the rights to their work as is currently customary anyway. Published works are subject to all manner of fair use clauses that would legally allow any embarassing content to be spread far and wide in summary, critique, and parody, and for the creation of derivative works such as those that might be hurtful to the creator. The creator has little power to stop this even within the law, just ask Butch Hartman. By the same token the original author is not generaly repsonsible for the content of derivative works or the way in which their work is used.

That is what we're talking about here, published works, nobdy is talking about raiding people's diaries or personal programs. For piracy to be a concern, the creator had to be willing to sell it to someone in the first place, which means he or she has given up many rights.

The ethics are not so clear cut as you may think. It can be argued that creators should have rights over thier creations, but it can also be argued just as well that creating artificial scarcity is unethical; that the mechanisms both legal and technical used to enforce the rights of copyright holders are themselves unethical; that market models founded on bad faith where the prevailing strategy for dominance has nothing to do with best fulfilling the needs and desires of customers should not be permitted to exist; that copyright and royalties decrease overall utility by allowing the best producers to rest on their laurels and stop producing earliest, creating a reverse-darwinian situation; or any number of other equally reasonable things. I'm not going to argue any of those things, I'm just going to ask what I asked before. Where is the harm to me or other content producers? I sell only my services, I care only for how many people want them and how much they're willing to pay.

Re:Your one-time pay depends on previous sales

[Old Man Kensey]

Given that many content producers are current paid only once, the only remaining potential harm that I can see is that piracy will cause a reduced demand for their time. That's kind of what you're implying with many of your arguments above, as far as I can tell,

Precisely.

but I haven't seen any evidence showing that piracy has or will decrease demand for new content. People continue to want new and different movies, music, and software, and pay for them to be created, as well as to attend live plays and concerts. If content producers will be paid for their time, and their time will continue to be in demand, I don't really see how piracy can hurt them. Can you show that piracy decreases demand (or even payment) for the time of content producers? If 'millions' of 'lost sales' can amount to significant harm through the power of calculus, then where is that harm?

Do I have sales figures? No, I'm not in that industry and their own figures on piracy and the impact from it are highly suspect in any case. But the nature of the current consumer culture is that there are a significant number of people who, given a choice between free downloads and paying for it, will download it. (There are also a significant number of people who, given the choice between downloads of sketchy quality, safety, and legality, or legal downloads of decent quality, will pay for the legal quality -- that's how iTunes makes money, and plenty of it.)

So it's more of a process of induction: if the people paying for the content to be created see (rightly or wrongly) a higher risk of not getting their investment back through subsequent sales, they're less likely to take the risk in the first place. It's the same force that has led to the decrease in long-term artist development -- why spend all that time and money developing a deep, complex artistic talent that people might not even like enough to let you break even, when you can have several Top-40 hit singles from another instant pop star who's forgotten next month (but not before you make a pile of money off him/her)?

I'm not arguing at all that the big media conglomerates are shining white knights -- I have as little patience for their legal and political tactics as most other people I know. Mostly I'm arguing on consequential grounds -- the choice is that piracy is legal or it is not. If it's legal, anyone can engage in it (and it's not piracy any more). If everyone does so, no money flows back to the content producers, so they have no money to finance the creation of new works whether they want to or not. To take an example, live music is a subset of the music industry, and I don't think if the recording industry went *poof* that there would be nearly the demand for technical audio folks as there is now. As far as wanting "new and different movies", etc. -- yes, they will be wanted, but whether enough people will be willing to pay for them to make them worth producing may be another matter. We're already at the point where movie theaters are taking a loss on ticket sales (and have been for years) and making up the difference in concessions. If enough people quit going to the movies in favor of just downloading them off the Internet, that concession revenue doesn't flow to the theaters, so they close. Then the ticket revenue quits flowing to the movie studios, so they have to jack up their prices to the rental trade (which they hate but are legally forced to tolerate anyway). The death-spiral either ends in rental prices going up to absurd levels, spurring rampant piracy and the final collapse of both rental outlets and movie studios, or the movie industry contracting so it can survive on rental income with the occasional art-house showing independent films in limited distribution. Everybody loses a lot in the doomsday everyone-gets-it-free scenario.

You also point out that various laws and consequences of sale of rights exist, but those differ from piracy in the concept of consent: a creator who sells the rights to their work does

Then came the .mp3 file - almost perfect,....

[jotaeleemeese]

....but no good for distribution - at least not if the publisher wanted to make money.

This is completey untrue. There are companies making money today (emusic, magnatunes) using MP3 for distribution.

Naxos (classical music) is releasing all their stuff in non DRMed MP3 files.

The format has no problems, the ones with the problme are the big 5 that have got a mental block. People value convenience over many other considerations, most people could not care less about sharing something that is not copied.

Most people would share a non DRMed file with a few of their friends. how that would be a treat to the big 5 recording companies is a mystery.

Napster != mix tapes

[Old Man Kensey]

It wasn't perceived the same, because it wasn't the same. If you make a mix tape, chances are you own the original item (record, cassette, CD, whatever) that the songs came from. You're also putting some degree of time and artistry into selecting and arranging the songs on the tape, and maybe even making a nice label and case liner. You're also doing it one time for one person. It's a very personal expression -- "here's some stuff I think you'd like" -- and if the person does like what you give them, they'll (presumably, in at least some cases) go out and buy more of it themselves.

Online music downloading is completely different. There's no art to it at all. It's not one-to-one where both people know each other and it's a one-time exchange. There's no guarantee that the person you get the song from paid for it themselves -- in fact rather the opposite probably tends to be true. Likewise somebody downloading stuff for free, and finding a track they like, is just going to go download more for free. So of course it's perceived much differently than mix-tape trading.

Re: Counting "Listen sessions"

[TaoPhoenix]

Blue Skies, no.

However light or fierce, or non-existent distribution protections are, I for one count upon being able to listen heavily to "workhorse" tunes, to make up for not being able to dabble like the Wild Days of '99.

I often have a single song playing for five hours solid, as a background to work or projects. I can't imagine what THAT would cost. : (

As for the post 1 level up, I tried to parody the "bad old" distribtution model. That other options NOW exist in the digital age was precisely what I hope to explore.

--TaoPhoenix

We weren't talking about online downloading

[ben there...]

The AC that started this thread a few posts up said that "Borrowing = Stealing", referring to allowing a friend to copy some songs off their Zen Micro....

That equates more to mix tapes than to online downloading.

Apple replaces Cable TV, Dish, Hollywood with self

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple sets itself up first as a servant to help media companies sell,
Then eases into 'exclusives' selling iTunes only content from performers,
Then discards media publishers all together,
anyone who can make a song, can load it up on iTunes and sell it to everyone.
From #1 top 40 singers to local bar bands and poetry readers.

Who needs the profit eating publishers of outdated CD technology anyway?

P.R. marketing and file distrubution with a built in ability to collect money is all that is needed.

For 'beginner' singers, they may be paid 25 cents per song the sell,
but as a .25 credit in buying more tunes from itunes...

iTunes will grow to replace music publishers, TV stations, Hollywood and Bollywood, Radio stations, Blockbuster and Amazon.com

'Embrace and extend' can be played by more than just one company...

Re:Competition in DRM technology: good for consume

[Scudsucker]

However, my major beef with Apple is that it is rising to a monopoly and dictating who can play what and where.

How so?

I wouldn't care so much about the DRM if I actually had access to the music in my OS and if Apple licensed the format to other hardware suppliers (which of course, isn't really a good decision when you're in Apple's position, but still...).

Why not buy the cd's and rip them yourself?

Am I making any sense?

Not really. You can buy the same music found on the iTMS in other online stores or on a physical cd. You can buy other mp3 players that are similar in size to the iPod lineup, for similar or lesser prices. If you don't like Apple, there is nothing stopping you from having the same portable music experience with some other player while getting your music from some other source.

Re:Competition in DRM technology: good for consume

[spirit of reason]

OK, you're entirely misunderstanding the problem here. CDs and downloaded music are two very different methods of distribution, and they should be regarded as entirely different markets. With CDs, you are forced to purchase an entire album even if there is only a song or two that you like, and you either have to go to a store or wait for shipping to receive it. Additionally, the volume of the medium is so much larger that CDs just cannot be placed in the same realm as downloaded music. CDs are just much more of a hassle.

Downloaded music, OTOH, is nearly instantly delivered to you, and you have much more freedom over what you buy. You have instant access to far more music than is in any one store, and it is at a much better price. This is the market in which Apple is rising to a monopoly, and Apple severely limits consumer choice by only allowing one to play iTMS songs on an iPod. This isn't necessarily a crime, but it's just bad for the consumer in general.

As far as the other online stores go, AFAIK only MSN Music offers a music download service that could really be considered similar to iTMS ($.99 per track, a la carte downloading). Since MS actually licenses its DRM out, you do have more choice on the hardware end. But my point was, if Apple gains any greater hold on the digital music market, consumers would have NO choice but to use their hardware and iTMS if they wanted to have those conveniences.

That is all.