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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."
... 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.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
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...
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...
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.]
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."
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
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.
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.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
"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.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
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.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
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 !
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.
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.