Slashdot Mirror
The Recording Industry's Failed Digital Strategy
An anonymous reader sends us a link to the Toronto Star, where Michael Geist has a terrific article on how the record labels got the Internet completely wrong. While somewhat specific to Canada, the article' arguments are more broadly applicable. The article links together the misplaced reliance on DRM and the Canadian industry's advocacy for increasing levies on blank media to demonstrate just how wrong-headed this strategy has turned out to be.
TFA:
So now what? A tax on internet access? Charging per port?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
EMI sounds like some smart CIO refreshed their memory on the failures of DIVX; introduced in part by Circuit City to negate the early years of an open DVD format. If you wanted to "own" your movie, you just purchased a "silver" status (at more or less the same cost of a DVD) but were only able to view it on your DIVX player (and other hoops to jump through). Sound familiar? You do not need these lock down schemes to part my money from my wallet. Just look at my DVD and CD shelf. Really, you don't need DRM.
I hope, when they die, cartoon characters have to answer for their sins.
AACS was the advertised poster child of "perfected" DRM. Everyone kept holding that up as the end of DRM cracking. It is dead now, and suddenly nobody in the media is mentioning it.
Trusted computing is the last on the table, though I don't really classify it's completed implementation as DRM.
Because the "ideal" trusted computing platform is built to refuse to run unsigned code period, a "trusted computing" compliant computer really cannot be classified as general purpose any more than a box wrench could be classified as a screwdriver.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
I am for it. Bump that levy. And make it apply to ALL digital content, and not just music.
Given that I just got a cease-and-desist for sharing "Click" (my network was), and I don't want to have to bother with it -- I want movies treated the same as music is here in Canada.
Unfortunately, I predict that the Candian Recording lobby will "convince" the government to eliminate the levy, and put in strict DMCA style regulations; you know, to conform to the American model.
Maybe I am alone here, but, on reflection, I LIKE the levy. The idea of spending a bit more up front to keep the weasels away appeals to me. I don't really want the government trying to introduce "micro-payments" (I am sure they would REALLY fuck that up). I don't want an "on-line" levy -- because a lot of on-line activity is NOT for "copyright material". But media commonly used for that purpose? Sure, give them the levy.
Just my opinion.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
While the existence of the Blank Media Taxing is mentioned in the article, it doesn't mention the slightly hilarious side effect of this tax - it makes it extremely difficult to go after copyright infringers because, after paying this tax, it would be covered by Canada's double-dipping laws ;)
:(
As an Aussie - I'm considering a contracting stint in Toronto. Those Canadians might have flappy heads and a penchant for saying "eh" a lot, but they do have one of the most liveable cities in the world, and more sensible copyright laws.
Oh an a decent temperature - it was bloody 40 degrees C last weekend
3laws: No freebies, no backsies, GTFO.
I just heard an interview with Bob Ezrin. He just did a presentation at the East Coast Music Awards where he basically ripped the industry for being clueless. "It's like they're fighting the atom bomb with muskets and swords." He told the story about talking with an industry executive and asking him where his computer was. The guy said he didn't need one because his secretary opened his email. Ezrin's reaction was something like: "You're so dead." There has been serious carnage in the music industry and it isn't over yet.
From the conference website: "The conference program will include a presentation from legendary producer Bob Ezrin. Having produced, mixed and played on legendary albums by Alice Cooper, Nine Inch Nails, Lou Reed, and KISS, Ezrin is perhaps best known for his production work on Pink Floyd's seminal The Wall. He is currently working with Universal Music Canada on talent development and the creation of a next generation music company."
"Can anyone here at /. come up with a different solution for them?"
Sell music in an open format at a guaranteed quality level with access to their entire back catalogue at a reasonable price (i.e. not $1 a track)? In other words, give their customers what they want at a price they'll pay?
Nah, that would be too much like hard work.
If they think they can force draconian DRM on people who won't accept it, then their sales will just decline further and they will not fix any of their current problems.
;)
I wish you we're right. I just imagine my mum coming up against these artificial restrictions. I bet she will just assume its a technical limitation. (DVD region coding was "probably something to do with the southern hemisphere" for her - maybe they spin it backwards
Education of all your mates is important - but you run the risk of sounding like a whiney evangalist. Normally when I get asked about some use thwarted by DRM I just say "yeah, mate, your player could do that, but the movie publisher wont let you". Then if they ask I can drop an explanation.
3laws: No freebies, no backsies, GTFO.
DRM may be on the way out, but watermarking will be on the way in.
I.e. you can do whatever you want with the file, but there is a digitial hash somewhere in the file that uniquely identifies you, so don't share it, else we will sue.
In Canada, as the law stands now, I cannot give you a copy of the music (this is illegal distribution), but you can take a copy of my music for yourself (fair use under the copyright law). This explicitly also applies to making a copy for myself of online music.
I buy a newspaper almost every day, although if I wanted to save the 50 cents, I could surely find a discarded newspaper or ask a friend to give me his copy after he's done. Or I could hang out next to a newspaper vending box and piggy-back on somebody else's coin to steal a copy for myself. But the convenience of picking it up from the vendor or the box without having to look around or ask around is worth more to me than the money that I could save.
RIAA? How about RAAA? (that is, Recording Artists Association of America). If the artists would just get together and form a group like this, *they* could distribute the money to themselves, leaving the labels (at least on the basis of the 'ol "artists should get paid" argument) out in the cold.
Understanding is a three edged sword. - Ambassador Kosh Naranek, Babylon 5
I read two issues in TFA: 1) listening to Jobs and rumours about a DRM-free EMI, DRM is on the way out and 2) the copying levy in Canada is also on the way out, albeit not so quickly, and maybe to be replaced by something else. I'm thrilled by the first, but less optimistic (and possibly less enthusiastic) about the second.
What pisses me off about DRM is that it is not just about ensuring that content cannot be distributed to anyone holus-bolus, but it is about restricting use far and beyond current practise. It is useful to think about DRM not just in the context of say music distribution, but rather in terms of its impact on content distribution and sharing in general. A good example is Stallman's The Right to Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html; I don't think there are many people out there who will dispute that I should be able to loan you a book to read, but the current climate and direction of DRM is to indeed to restrict that practise. 'The Right to Read' might have seemed a little far-fetched in 1997 when it was written, but it sure doesn't look all that unlikely now, does it? DRM is no longer (and maybe never was!) about saving content producers from low-effort, high-volume piracy - it is now about fundamentally changing the consumers rights regarding the use of that content.
The copy levy in Canada was intended to recover dollars lost to producers and distributors as a result of technology that facilitated easy copying and the resultant alleged lost revenue. My problem with this is that we don't know whether any revenue actually is lost, and even if we accept that some is, quantifying the lost revenue is not really possible. Well, I guess you can make numbers up, but that's about it. :)
The levy has turned out to have a useful legal side-effect in Canada in that it has provided a basis for stopping P2P downloading from being identified as illegal, much to the chagrin of the distribution industry, who lobbied for the levy in the first place. Extending the levy to other devices I don't like the sound of quite so much.
However, as other posters have noted, we really haven't addressed the problem of compensation for the admittedly low-effort, higher-quality-that-cassette-mixed-tapes digital piracy that abounds today. If I download a song from my P2P network of choice, the artist hasn't been compensated. I'm suspicious of the levy being used as a mechanism for such compensation, because it is so circuitous, but I don't see the industry letting this one go now that they've got it, unless they are blindly pissed off by the legal side-effect.
As long as the levy lets me download music without fear of reprisal, and if those levy dollars could be used as a rough justice method to compensate artists for piracy that does occur (and yes, I do know this may be difficult/not possible), then I'm okay with the levy. I may even be able to live with an extension of the levy
Are there any other ideas out there about how we can fairly compensate artists for uncompensated distribution of their work?[17] Leary, T., White, C., Wood, P. R., Bhabha, W. D., and Wirth, N. Lambda calculus considered harmful. In Proceedings
No, but once you report having been robbed of said item, you are no longer liable. Same thing with gun laws. If your gun is stolen and found to have been involved in a crime, you are not liable. Unless you are the one who actually committed the crime, but that has to be proven.