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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."
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
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...
...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.
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.
I'm not wrong. You haven't thought about it hard enough.
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?
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.
> ethically, that is stealing.
Mentally, you are retarded.
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
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.