Slashdot Mirror
Yahoo Music Chief Comes Out Against DRM
waired writes "It seem that a trend has begun in the music industry after Steve Jobs essay. Now a senior Yahoo chief has spoken out in favor of Apple CEO Steve Jobs' call for major labels to abandon digital rights technology (DRM). It points out that consumers are getting confused and that the Microsoft DRM "doesn't work half the time"."
Monkey see, Monkey Do
nce one major corp came out gainst DRM other would begin to speak up as well.
These people are not dumb, and slashdotter's aren't the only ones that understand the folly of DRM.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
So, when is itunes going to be drm free? With all of jobs' crusading against drm, you'd think he would start within his own company.
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
wow... that's about 25% better than I had expected.
It's the end of the world as we know it! Yeeeeeah yeah yeah...something like that. It was only a matter of time. If it takes Steve Jobs to kick start an industry wide backlash against DRM, then so be it.
I like to think of online DRM as something akin to a college -- you pay for lessons until you learn something.
I've never understood why tech companies listened to the music industry in the first place.
If they had stood firm against DRM in the first place, these online stores would have never happened.
Now that they've demonstrated that these stores work, and the public is transitioning to them, they can start making demands.
You have to get your foot in the door.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
I think you underestimate the power of the music industry. They may not be worth quite as much as the tech industry, but they're still worth a ton and they were smart enough to lobby the politicians to be on their side (DMCA, **AA lawsuits, etc.) from the beginning. We should also hold accountable the people in the tech industry who supported them by coming up with these ridiculous DRM schemes in the first place and convincing the music/movie industries that they would be "unbreakable" when they know damn well there's no such thing. If the tech circle had held their ground in the first place and said "we can't create something that won't be broken, it's impossible" every time they approached them, I bet they would've given up long ago.
I like to think of online DRM as something akin to a college -- you pay for lessons until you learn something.
What bothers me the most is that we had to wait until these corporate executives spoke out. What we needed, at least in the United States, was every Jill and Joe American speaking out against having their rights "managed".
The very idea of "managed rights" flies in the face of the Constitution, the ideals of the Founding Fathers, and what it truly means to be American. It's difficult to say for sure why most people didn't take a far more active stance against DRM. The first reason is no doubt because it'd take effort to do effectively, and most Americans would rather watch the NFL or American Idol instead. The second reason is perhaps because they just don't give a fuck, and that's quite dangerous a stance to be taking.
Regardless, the American people as a whole should have stood up and said NO! to any sort of "rights management" system. DRM is just plain un-American.
Noone claims Jobs invented anti-DRM, but it's a bigger deal when a major player comes out against it than when a regular guy does. I mean, someone like me has no soapbox, and someone like Cory Doctorow has only a small one. Steve Jobs can command a major audience. Additionally, he's about the only guy benefiting from DRM. If he wants it gone, that says something.
They're like telcos: you can only hurt the RIAA/music licensors in one of three very basic ways:
1) legislation/lawsuit (unlikely as they own the legislatures and have armies of lawyers)
2) have a massive clientele defection (unlikely because they're a monopoly like the telcos) or
3) have their talent pool stop making revenue (crappy quality music, and so on-- also highly unlikely).
Bottom line: he's sucking up to his clientele (us, supposedly) and Wall Street, especially Wall Street who wants to pound the crap out of them for other foollish moves. They should have demanded that Mark Cuban stay with them for a few years after they bought his Broadcast.Com.
It's all PR. Nothing to see here.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Hey! I just upgraded to Slashdot Vasta "Bedroom Premium" edition and your post came out:
(The second one was a false positive for "Let it be")
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
I hated DRM before it was cool.
I read the internet for the articles.
I've never understood why tech companies listened to the music industry in the first place. Perhaps I'm wrong but I was under the impression that the tech companies are far bigger in monetary value and hence far more powerful than the music industry in the first place so don't understand why these companies supported, rather than fought DRM from day one.
I can explain this to you. Your problem is that you are a rational human being. You must understand first of all that the music industry is irrational. Imagine the following conversation, which illustrates the problem:
Tech company: We'd love to sell your music in non-DRMed format.
Music company: We're not interested in selling it without DRM.
Tech company: We're not going to sell it with DRM!
Music company: Fine. Don't sell it. Get nothing. We can live without online sales. If you want a piece of the pie, you have to sell it with DRM. No negotiations. No exceptions. That's how it will be done. Take it or leave it.
Yes, the music industry really is that dumb. They would rather not sell it at all then sell it without DRM. Remember, their goal is to rip you off. They have proven time and time again that they would rather sell one CD for $18 than 3 for $10 each. This is irrational behavior, but they have been very consistent in it. If they can't sell you something at their price and on their terms, then they don't want your money. They really don't. It truly is "their way or the highway". So when you realize that the only deal that could be made was to sell music with DRM or not sell it all, is it any wonder that Yahoo and Apple and everyone else agreed to DRM? There weren't going to be any sales without it. Besides, they were able to make the major labels take the heat for DRM, which is totally fair, so it wasn't a difficult business decision to sell DRM music since they could make money off it and they wouldn't have to answer to pissed off customers who don't like DRM since it wasn't their fault the music had DRM. It really is that simple. Make money off selling DRMed music or make nothing.
Remember too that I am talking about the major music industry companies and smaller labels or individual artists have a more rational outlook. How rational is it to decide "We'd rather sell one at $18 than 3 for $10 each", but that is exactly how they operate.
It's all fine and well for both Jobs and this guy to come out and say cast down the DRM, but it really is just pandering to the masses. If a deal to drop DRM is ever to be worked out, it will be through backroom deals, not in the tech press. I think we all know DRM doesn't work well and is a pain, but it is not up to these delivery vehicles (iTunes et al) to drop the DRM. It is a condition under which they are allowed to sell the licensed product. No DRM, no product to sell. It's that simple.
A lot of this is just saying, "it's them, not us". Fine for geek politics, but it probably is not going to make a pig's fart of difference to the RIAA/MPAA cabal.
I want DRM to go away to, but it isn't going to happen through these feel-good speeches. It's going to happen through things like the recent EMI announcement (which frankly only applies to a chunk of their catalog that isn't selling anyway).
Jobs finally decloaked, and stood up against the RIAA. Now Yahoo. And all I see is... people... calling them names.
Apparently nothing can satisfy you? Are you all just terminally apolitical? The enemy of the enemy is our friend. Back them the hell up.
[TFA] points out that consumers are getting confused and that the Microsoft DRM "doesn't work half the time".
...
So Microsoft's standard approach of writing software that confuses users and doesn't work very well is telling the public that this is what all DRM is like. We see this all the time, for example with viruses which are invariably reported as infecting "computers", not just "Microsoft computers". Similarly, the difficulty of learning to use the little beasts is a property of "computers", not of any particular brand.
It reminds me of the old saying: "Nobody is all bad. They can always serve as a bad example."
In this case, though, MS could well be doing us a service. By convincing the gullible public that "DRM is confusing and doesn't work very well", they are inadvertently helping in the fight against DRM everywhere. Even if someone will come up with DRM that works (for some value of "works"), it won't be used, because it won't run on Windows (and on non-MS systems, the crypto geeks will break it within hours of release). Most users will just accept that MS's DRM is what DRM is like, and will oppose its use anywhere as a result.
Of course, one could argue that a correct implementation of DRM is probably intractable. This is mostly because determining which "fair use" rules apply wherever the use might live is a seriously difficult AI problem. It can't actually be determined by a human-level intelligence, as demonstrated by the need to ask the courts rather than just reading the law books. So we need an AI that's much more intelligent than any team of human lawyers, and has deep understanding of all the "IP" laws of every jurisdiction in the world. Of multiple jurisdictions, actually, when Net transactions are considered. We won't likely see this level of AI in our lifetimes.
Discuss amongst yourselves
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
In the article it is stated the DRM free MP3 tracks sell faster.
In a well duh moment, they figured out the installed base of equipment that can play MP3's is just about everyting. A MS or Apple format locks out all other format players. People don't buy incompatible formats. DRM in any format is incompatible with the majority of media players out there. Before you jump on the iTunes bandwagon... Do you have a DVD player? Do you use Linux? Do you have a MP3 player? Do you have a CD player that can play MP3 CD's in your car or as a portable CD player? iPods are everywhere, but not nearly as everywhere as MP3 players.
Selling MP3's is a much bigger market than selling something that will play on a Windows PC and Plays for Sure devices or just iTunes on Apple and PC platforms and iPods, or worse yet Zunes.
The truth shall set you free!
"...and that the Microsoft DRM "doesn't work half the time" "
In other new, the Earth is round and the Sun is really far away.
What you're asking for is uniformity in stance by all developers, a group that historically does not play well together, and a large percentage of which is mercenary (consultants). Those consultants' only concern is how to extract money from their customers. They'll promise them anything to get in the door, and if it's impossible, that translates into continuing revenue streams. Thus your posted position is at best a figment of your imagination.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
They own it, regardless of who created it. It's their's in the controlling ownership sense, not by any creative mastery. Letting their product out of the door without loking it down would be as foolish as, say, letting people own their phones. Phones will always be leased becuase that's the way the phone industry works and there's just no way to run a successful telecom company otherwise. Oh, right. Thought I was back in the 1970s again.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
But they all live in the real world.
What's that supposed to mean? The real world, like the one 20 years ago where anyone could duplicate a casette tape? It wasn't as fast as downloading a song and compiling a CD if you have broadband, but it wasn't that hard to do. And yet the publishers didn't go out of business.
The ONLY reason "DRM" exists is because they think they're smarter than me and they can make MY computer prevent me from copying, so they try to do it. Everything else is BS.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The very idea of "managed rights" flies in the face of the Constitution, the ideals of the Founding Fathers, and what it truly means to be American
I don't think those things mean what you think they mean. "Digital rights management" != inaliable rights as laid down by the U.S. Constitution and liberal political theory. Lets be clear here, the two have absolutely NOTHING to do with each other. Digital rights management is essentially a technology mechanism to enforce (or hinder the breaking of) contract law. The only thing it flies in the face of is consumer convenience. DRM certainly annoys me as a consumer, but I think things like no-knock warrants, the drug war, idefinite detention without trial, and asset forfeiture laws fly in the face of the Constitution, the ideals of the Founding Fathers just a tad more.
For the record (pardon the bad pun), David Goldberg from Y! Music was asking the labels for No DRM, Please last year (February 2006.) It's good to see more executive types speaking out about the idea, in my opinion.
Ok, Jobs saying no DRM in iTunes is a good thing, but DRM in OSX is a bad thing?
Read what you said:
"Pirates who want to breach the OSX EULA and run OSX on non-Apple hardware. That's the only real DRM contained within OSX to my knowledge (You can safely remove iTunes, and plenty of other apps as well). As much as we hate their decision, it is part of their license."
Well, if music has no DRM then it will have a license agreement as well. That means that it is up to the consumer to respect the EULA. So why can Jobs not do the same thing? Oh yeah I forgot, Jobs wants to make sure that he can sell overpriced hardware! Just like the Music producers want to make sure that they sell multiple copies of their music! There is no difference between DRM'd music and DRM'd OSX. The only difference is "who's getting the advantage perspective."
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Microsoft DRM does not work 100% of the time on any of my linux boxes.
Got Code?
'How rational is it to decide "We'd rather sell one at $18 than 3 for $10 each"'
Unfortunately, if you look at it from their perspective, it's entirely rational. Their model is built around maximizing revenue on a per-album basis (see monopoly price setting). Selling _more_ albums means selling more varied albums, which in turn dilutes the efficiency of marketing, fractures the market, spreads more money to the producing segments like artists and composers, entails more risk, and which all have to share play time on the radio.
As each album and song is its own little monopoly, and they all 'compete' (see monopolistic competition) for more or less the same dollar in the pocket of the consumer, even with the other albums in the labels catalogue, they maximize their profits if there was only one album (minimizing per-unit production costs) and it cost all the dollars available for spending on entertainment. Of course, even the media corps cant quite accomplish that, nor control peoples taste to that extent, so we got the best they could do in the form of a grossly limited and tightly controlled 'pop' culture.
Of course, no matter what they do, they're doomed. Social music network sites are vastly superior in mediating music fitting personalized taste, with in turn will utterly fracture the market, destroying that model, drm or no drm.
I would agree, although not with your assessment of him personally, he's about as stuck as anyone. If he did though, and he could, it would place put tremendous pressure on the talent to complain to their distributors, *loudly*, and on consumers to do the same, because iTunes is now at the unique position of being topdog on legit download music. If they put up a notice that affected parties need to be proactive as well and lobby for unencumbered music,so as to be reintroduced to iTunes, it would get global press coverage and really put the whole DRM issue under the spotlight. And yes, the entire idea of DRM is blatantly illegal as to the original sense and design of it going way way back, as material "protected" by DRM will never come out of copyright in a legitimate useful and practical sense, as copyright, as long as the term is, is still supposed to be limited in time and eventually go to public domain/open.
Last century's business models are no longer useful or fair, and need to be radically changed. The cost of duplication now is incredibly cheap, they should adapt to changing technology and therefore offer *very cheap* copies to reflect tech changes, and make their profits on huge volume sales.
I have a friend used to own a lot of gas stations, but gas at the retail level only makes a few pennies a gallon, a rather pitiful small amount, yet he made lots of cash.. The deal is, he made a lot because he sold millions of gallons a year.
The music and movie industry could easily do the same, rather than trying to make those huge markups on each "unit" they push. Charge much much less, sell way way more, actually make more money than now and have happy customers with cheaper prices.
I know why they haven't done it yet either, simple psychology. Millionaires make the ultimate pricing decisions in those industries, they live at the highest end of the economic food chain, and simply have lost touch with what a ten or twenty dollars means to the other 99% of the population who aren't multi-millionaires, to them, a ten or a twenty is like one or two cents. They think it is about free-no frame of reference they can relate to. Sure, semi intellectually they might be able to consider it, but realistically, no, they can't, it is obvious. They really think 15-20 bucks for a plastic disk is some kind of "deal", or 10 bucks for a download ten song album is somehow a deal. Nuts, it is not, it is a huge markup over manufacturing costs. Maybe to their country club drinking buddies it seems a deal, to about everyone else it is a blatant pricing gouge. I am amazed they sell what they do now frankly.
If you live in a universe where there is only one widely known operating system, then you have an expectation that everything else will work the same way and zero tolerance for anything different. Switch operating systems suddenly and, after any initial "wow factor" the next response will always be frustration and disorientation.
Now, if you've just dropped $2000 for a new Mac, you have a pretty strong incentive (plus a dose of new-computer-smell intoxication) to get over that hump.
If, however, Joe User has acquired a copy of OSX "have a go with" then - even assuming it runs reliably on a 3-year-old Dell - he is likely to "have a go" for ten minutes, get frustrated (which includes discovering that - oh noes - the Finder sucks a bit) and dismiss Apple entirely. At least with DRM that copy will have to be an obviously hacked DVD-R.
Now, if there was free competition in the desktop OS market then maybe:
...meaning that someone like Apple could sell an operating system that would run reliably on all "PCs" and actually stand a ghost of a chance of getting some market share. As it is, well, BeOS is dead for practical purposes, Linux - successful in a few niches, but crap marketshare considering its free, then there's NextStep, which showed what happened last time Steve Jobs tried selling a stand-alone operating system.
For pitys sake, even Windows Version N can't compete with Windows Version N-1 without breaking a sweat...
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Everyday Americans have been speaking out. I'm such an American and I haven't been waiting for executives to speak on the issue. I've been speaking out to anyone who would listen/read on my local community radio station (I had a show for a few years until the station became remarkably undemocratic), on my blog (which I maintain to this day), to Jack Valenti's face in front of an audience (when he came to my town on his anti-"piracy" tour) and related letters to the editor, and with my friends while we discuss media matters (virtually weekly at a local bar).
Americans use a lot of non-free operating systems and software (which digital restrictions require), but if you take the time to teach them to value their freedom they'll listen and learn. On my radio program, I found it interesting to take a wide angle—people found it interesting to discuss how copyright and patent issues intersect with their everyday lives.
It's critical to not give up the freedom talk and not give into the people who would have you compromise your values in order to placate proprietors. There is a deep thirst for substantive talk and action about issues that matter.
Digital Citizen
...the Slashdot crowd?
Over the last five years, not a week has gone by that there hasn't been an anti-DRM screed posted to this forum. Yet, when finally some industry leaders come out publicly against DRM, the mostly highly modded posts are those claiming it's nothing but a cynical ploy.
You know, I'm just as cynical as the next guy when it comes to proclamations from the CEOs of giant multinational corporations. But, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes a statement isn't some carefully crafted strategic move based on hidden motives. DRM is a big pain in the butt to online music distributers and equipment manufacturers. The leaders of these industries are now making public statements on this matter. That's a good thing. If you are reading more into it than that, you've got too much time on your hands.
.... that the big lables will not play that game? I'll do it again, in case the previous 1000 have not been enough.
They will sell only on fully DRM crippled shops.
They are not stupid, they use their cartel power in order to ensure a product with a clear competitive advantage does not share any "shelf" space with their wares.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I think you missed the parent poster's point, probably because you are not American or old enough to remember when the phone company was a monopoly (AT&T) and required you to lease all of your equipment from them. Back in the late 1960s my dad hooked up an old phone in our basement with the ringer disabled. He said that that was the only way they could detect how many phones you had installed -- and he designed phone switching systems for Bell Labs so I assumed he knew what he was talking about.
I think the parent poster's point was that opening up the American phone system to allow customers to own their equipment was beneficial for the consumer -- and didn't prevent phone companies from making a profit. I think that this point also applies to most European locales, as well. I seem to remember that connecting a modem to a land line in Europe was a big deal as recently as the late-eighties.
> Digital rights management is essentially a technology mechanism to enforce (or hinder the breaking of) contract law.
Not exactly, as there is usually no binding contract involved.
Should be:
"DRM is essentially a technology to enforce restrictions of use."
The restrictions do not align with the law (DRM knows nothing of fair use, or copyright limits).
The DRM restrictions do not align to some contract either.
These restrictions are a mis-place effort to increase sales from an ill-conceived notion that controlling use and clamping down on copying would increase interest and sales.
Digital Restrictions Mechanism
A 90+ year publishing monopoly, enforced with $500,000 FBI threats is already too much of a restriction.
More restrictions are obviously not necessary.
It is really not possible to show how DRM is necessary on legal grounds, starting with the constitutional purpose of copyright.
It is really not possible to show how DRM is necessary on moral grounds, showing how it helps the advancement of society.
Oh yeah I forgot, Jobs wants to make sure that he can sell overpriced hardware!
This is just not true--at least not anymore. The price of any Apple Computer is completely in line with an equivalently equipped Dell, Gateway, etc. Sometimes, the price of the "PC" is even higher. True, Apple does not have a computer that competes with a $300-something dollar Dell price-wise; however, Dell's computers that do compete with Apple's computers feature wise are often more expensive than the Mac offering. Sometime ago, Apple sold hardware that could reasonably be called overpriced. Now it's just a troll to say so.
The rest of your argument is fallacious as well. Apple does not force consumers to buy a new Mac to run a new version of OS X. The most recent version of OS X runs just fine on Macs that are 5+ years old. Conversely, the RIAA want you to re-buy all of your music every 5-10 years when it becomes available in a different format. What Apple does is not even comparable.
my pet machine