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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
Anyone can see it. If EMI is preparing to offer DRM free downloads, and everyone but the other majors want to do away with it, it's only a matter of time before it's eliminated. As much as the content industry might hate it, consumer demand is more powerful than their distribution policy. 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.
It took them years to allow internet distribution in any format. It might take a few more before they will allow it in a format which will gain wide acceptance, but ultimately it's in their best interest as well as the consumers'.
The greed of these companies is astounding. They are willing to tax anything that might possibly be used as a medium for Music, just to make sure they get their cut. I don't understand how self-centered and greedy some people can be.
"I'll see you next time." - LeVar Burton
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
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."
I know RIAA is enemy #1 here on /., but please realize that their entire business model has evaporated, and they are evaporating too. The treatment here on /. is like whipping a dying horse.
/. come up with a different solution for them?
Music and song were thriving for thousands of years before the recording industry.
The only thing that brought the music industry to life was the ability to control distribution due to -cost of equipment- (recording studio, vinyl production, radio stations)
with technology advances, this control has gone away, and their entire business model has evaporated.
They really have no choice but to try to artificially create a business model based on DRM and legislation, but obviously, these measures are bound to fail.
Can anyone here at
"Fix it"
Oh an a decent temperature - it was bloody 40 degrees C last weekend :(
You'll trade that for -40 C? You aussies are nuts, eh?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Your solution would effectively cut out the distributer/label with the current model. Any other effective model would require a complete paradigm shift in the distribution/control aspect; this is what the RIAA and MPAA are worried about- distribution rights as a business model, and they have lots of cash to throw at our lawmakers to help keep that outmoded business model viable.
I completely agree with you, but until the money involved changes drastically, this is what we are stuck with.
Some things can be done, as in supporting indie's from their direct sales (thus bypassing the RIAA), supporting inie filmakers that put their stuff up for download, make your own, etc.
Admittedly, this is a limited option, but keep in mind how quick youtube.com, google.com, etc. grew.
The 'people' or John Q. Public can be a powerful force occasionally.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
It's truly comical to see how completely music company executives ignore reality. Watch MTV for an hour or two, and it quickly becomes apparent that music simply doesn't matter much to its primary target demographic. Based on how little air time it now gets, sales should be down much further than they are. Somehow the executives blithely ignore this, however, and blame their troubles entirely on file sharing, p2p, and so on.
They need to concentrate on finding some real talent. Right now they seem to concentrate primarily on finding second-rate wannabe-models, and then try to cover their complete lack of talent with lousy recording, lots of digital processing and when that doesn't work, attempt to distract from the mediocrity with synchronized dancing.
Once they've found some talent, they need to do a good (not over-produced) job of recording them, and sell the recording at a reasonably fair price. Here again, they've fallen down badly -- at one time, the amount of work and machinery raised enough barrier to entry that prices are recordings were at least partially justified. That's just no longer the case. Photocopiers haven't hurt the book market noticeably, simply because most people prefer a nicely printed and bound book to a photocopy, and a photocopy generally doesn't save much (if any) money anyway. The recording labels don't want to compete similarly because it would cut their profit margins -- but it's the only route that has any chance of being truly viable in the long term.
The fact is, if you want to sell something, you have to start by providing something that people actually want. Then you have to set a price that people will accept. These are simple facts the record companies have to face. Until they do, neither DRM nor lawsuits will improve their situation -- or even noticeably slow the rate at which it deteriorates.
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.
It's so easy to poke holes in how awful the industry's current strategy is... but I haven't heard anyone convincingly lay out a better strategy. It's truly harder to come up with a good original idea than to rip other people's ideas to shreds.
I will just say this: I think the industry's paranoid, DRM-pushing strategy is based on them hugely misinterpreting the data of recent years.
"Piracy is increasing!"
"Our sales are declining!"
Flawed conclusion: Sales are declining due to increased piracy!
Flawed course of action: Get more strict about stopping piracy!
Reality: Very few instances of piracy are lost sales; most people pirate just because they can, but if they couldn't, they sure as hell wouldn't go out and buy legitimate copies of everything they've pirated. People will pirate anything regardless of quality, but most people won't pay for content that sucks and just keeps getting worse. Also, you can't expect people to keep paying $18 for a pre-pressed audio CD when they know damn well it only costs $2 to make (since they can do it themselves at home on a PC and know what's involved).
Correct conclusion: Sales are declining due to decreasing value proposition (overpriced sucky content on increasingly cheap media).
Correct course of action: Aggresively seek out (or create!) better content and promote it; stop promoting crap; drop price-per-unit.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
But will this new strategy really keep piracy at low levels? If I know that one of my friends has a hot new track that he downloaded from a site that lets the users download MP3s, it would seem stupid(in my opinion) for someone to fork over a dollar for the track. If I can get a good from free(from the friend), why in the world would I pay for it?
Convenience.
We (at least in the first world) are living in an age of unprecented personal wealth and great laziness. People are lining up to throw away their disposable incomes on things like mobile phone ringtones, bottled water and therapists. Of course they'll be happy to spend money to buy songs online if it's quicker, easier and safer than pirating them.
Peter
Downsize DC Today!
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.
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
I have a collection of about 500 cds mostly purchased at full price from chain stores. You do the math as to what that put in the pockets of the RIAA.
Most of these were purchased before DRM existed and include numerous full-catalogue purchases. I have no ripped-off material.
I have about 3 or 4 DRM'd cds. They SUCK. They all give me problems on older players that I have, or refuse to play on my PC through the speakers. That's not trying to copy them or anything fancy, they just don't F'n work on sub-optimal equipment, where everything else does.
End. I don't buy music anymore. Not if it has a DRM logo on it. Neither do I steal it BTW, I just don't consume music anymore, except for some local homegrown bands who cut their own slugs, sell direct and pocket the income.
Goodbye RIAA.
But will this new strategy really keep piracy at low levels? If I know that one of my friends has a hot new track that he downloaded from a site that lets the users download MP3s, it would seem stupid(in my opinion) for someone to fork over a dollar for the track. If I can get a good from free(from the friend), why in the world would I pay for it? Would it not become even easier to share copyrighted content?
Rewind back to the 1970's with LP sales and easy access to cassette tape recoders. Fast forward to the 1980's and Cable TV and VHS and Betamax VCR's. Why would anybody subscribe to cable TV when someone gets something off HBO and passes the tape arround. Fast forward to today with portable MP3 recorders and Sirrus radio. How can they sell subscriptions?
New content without DRM in a reasonable format at a reasonable price is more convienent. Only overpriced content gets pirated in mass. Most people buy their own DVD's instead of copy them on VHS or DIVX. Most people who listen to subscription radio do so with their own subscription. Most people who watch pay tv have their own subscription instead of passing along the latest HVS tape.
But will this new strategy really keep piracy at low levels? Good question. How does Blockbuster and Hollywood video manage when people can just go online and download it for free? Good price, convience, and high quality....
DRM-free content with the same parameters will sell. Good price, Convience, and High Quality.. Don't forget it. It's called Value Someday, the RIAA will get it.... Maybe.
The truth shall set you free!
what happens if my ipod is stolen with all watermarked (i.e. linked to me) songs? the thieve publishes to some p2p networks, and I am liable for millions of copies (i.e. billions of dollars)?
watermarks solve nothing, you cannot sue anyone for being robbed.
Because the "ideal" trusted computing platform is built to refuse to run unsigned code period
This is a common /. meme, but it's incorrect. A TCPA TPM has no ability to control what code can or cannot run on the system. It's just a little device that sits on a bus (usually USB, though I think there may be PCI implementations) right next to all of the rest of the devices on your system. Like all of the others, a TPM is controlled by the OS and applications, not the other way around.
A TPM does four basic things:
An operating system can refuse to run unsigned code, but it neither needs nor really benefits from a TPM to do that. What a TPM offers (through the PCR hashing and sealing of keys) is a way to make data inaccessible unless the machine is booted with a certain set of software as well as a way for a machine to prove that it is running a certain set of software.
By itself, a TPM isn't a very useful tool for DRM, and it certainly doesn't have anything to do with making a machine not a general-purpose computer -- you can always boot a different set of software that does whatever you want, because the TPM has no way to stop you.
NGSCB/Palladium needs one more component to be able to implement really strong DRM: Hardware-supported virtualization, using Intel VT or AMD-V. The result would enable strong DRM, but only within specific virtual machines. Other virtual machines would still be fully general.
In theory, you could implement strong DRM with only a TPM and no virtualization. The process would require you to boot into a "trustworthy" OS and then use remote attestation to prove to the content provider that your machine is "trustworthy". The content provider would then give you a key which would be sealed to your trustworthy state by the TPM. This key could then be used to encrypt media which you could only play when booted into the trustworthy OS.
The problem with that is that the TPM attestation process only attests to a single hash value, meaning that all the various permutations of "trustworthy" configurations would have to be enumerated and the content provider would have to know the hashes. For several reasons, that's impractical. Workarounds based on attestation chains, where the TPM attests to PCR values at multiple points in the boot process, can be used, but those "prior" attestations are weak. There are also real problems with how to manage changes in the software stack (e.g. security patches), which would completely change the PCR values of the running system and disable access to the sealed keys unless an error-prone key migration dance was successfully performed during each update.
Not only that, such an approach would only work if the OS had no exploitable security defects that might allow a user (usually with administrative access!) to bypass DRM checks in the running system. Securing a whole, general-purpose OS against the system administrator is exceedingly difficult. Look how much trouble we have securing OSes against code downloaded from random places and run under non-admin accounts in restricted sandboxes.
The solution proposed by Microsoft in the Palladium design is to simplify the problem by having the OS boot up first (unhashed), then enable virtualization, installing a hypervisor underneath the OS and shifting the OS from running natively on the machine to running in a VM under the hypervisor.
Given that state,
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