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UK Music Retailers Beg, Drop the DRM
thefickler notes that consumers aren't the only ones carrying "Death to DRM" placards. UK music retailers are telling the recording industry enough is enough — that the industry's obsession with copy protection is hurting, not helping, profit. Kim Bayley, director-general of the UK Entertainment Retailers Association, said that the anti-piracy technologies are not protecting industry revenue but instead "stifling growth and working against the consumer interest." The ERA hopes the industry will drop DRM in time for the holiday season. Good luck with that.
Good.
Does the holiday season not start today? If so, I cant see it being dropped, erm... yesterday. Or am I wrong?
FYI, ERA asks BPI to drop DRM ASAP.
We don't have thanksgiving, this refers to Christmas. I am sure most of the DVDs, etc. expected to sell at Christmas are already produced so it is still an impossible target.
You set up an unfair system and many people fall while some people avoid the trap.
After a while everybody knows about your trap and starts crying foul.
That's the time you have to prepare your next unfair system.
I fear the time when record labels say "We hear our customers and are removing the DRM system." followed by "Piracy is rampant! The only solution is...".
...but in the states, this is very apparent. Not only do we have big outlets like the Virgin Megastore closing down in big cities, but long-standing "mom-and-pop", independent record stores are not making it. I see this with a lot of my old favorite record stores in the midwest, but also some of my favorite stores from when I lived on the left coast, like Aron's Records, an veritable institution I never thought would close down.
Now, it may be easy to blame "downloading," but ask anyone who supported these record stores for years and there's two main reasons: 1) Lack of compelling content these days; and 2) general lack of trust for the record industry. When the old hippie burnout down the street is afraid to buy a CD because it might "have a virus on it," you know the MAFIAA have shot themselves in the foot. Unfortunately, they continue to find ways to make money, while the artists and record-shop owners are the ones being put out of business.
:q!
It can't be good for business if making a purchase becomes this difficult and piratism is actually much easier. Some weeks ago I was actually looking for a song in online music stores, and I found what I was looking for. Then trying to buy it was the problem, some were not selling to Europe, some had some ridicolous protections, weird formats. I was supposed to install some plugin/program to even listen to the music I just bought. For me that was too much to ask, and I after some time I just gave up.
The ERA hopes the industry will drop DRM in time for the holiday season.
Which holiday? The next appearance of Halley's Comet?
They don't need DRM because security cameras in the UK are everywhere and they can see and hear each song that they listen to.
rewriting history since 2109
...I can't see DRM making much difference to brick and mortar stores but this DRM hurting physical CD sales attitude is caused by the same mentality that piracy is to blame for the major record labels current downfall.
;)
Still, it's nice to see the music industries oversimplified logic and ignorance of reality working against it for once of course so I'll keep my mouth shut and pretend they're right and it's all DRMs fault because in a strange twist of fate it can only be a good thing having the distributors against it
The unfortunate truth is that most people don't actually care about DRM, and the **AA knows this, and knows that even with DRM the discs will sell very well. People half expect the systems to be protected, and half don't care at all as long as they get their music and movies. Only the more educated users can even think that they should be able to make personal copies of these things, but they don't care enough to go out and get programs or media that allow that. This is the unfortunate thing that people like RMS neglect to account for -- consumers don't really care about freedom, they just want entertainment and flashiness.
Palm trees and 8
I think a small holiday would be in order no matter how long it takes to defeat DRM.
I don't know how many time I have read this but it is still as stupid of a read as the first time. Fuck off, troll-bot. Come back when you have an original opinion.
Heh, I haven't seen this old chestnut for a while. I wondered when someone would dredge it up. This makes it at least the 4th time I've seen it on slashdot:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22as+a+record+store+owner,+my+business+faces+ruin%22&hl=en&filter=0
My business: Farstrider Studios.
Modded interesting? I think "troll" is more appropriate for something this old.
Well, if you're trying to be funny, you're failing.
If you really do own a record store and you're trying to stage a one man battle against well, everything, you're failing.
If you're bringing up kids like that, you're failing and not because of a lack of money.
Ever thought of going into government?
> Why is no one buying CDs? Are people not interested in music?
I thought this should be obvious: people like music, so they buy music. But they don't like CDs, so they don't by them. Most people I know have a CD player somewhere, but it is collecting a layer of dust. They listen to music on the iPod, the mobile phone and the computer.
The problem with stores is that they are not very good in selling virtual goods. I think that web stores do a much better job for this.
> So they were out to destroy the record industry from right under my nose?
The record industry already went the way of the Dodo, and the CD industry will follow soon. As usual, content survives, media don't.
As to the rest of your post: time to chill out, dude!
Thanksgiving? The Christmas sales/media blitz is in full swing on November 1st here. Once Halloween is over, it's Christmas season.
You mean to tell me this isn't the case in the rest of the Western World? Like, they wait until somewhere in December to do the Christmas thing? How civilized.
Few people really care about DRM on DVDs. All DVD players will play the things. It's easily circumvented. It's more or less invisible to most people. DVD recorders are still quite rare amongst non-techies.
I think they're mostly talking about DRM for downloads. This is more of a problem. People expect their music to be portable, and don't want any complexity or compatibility problems transferring music to their mp3 players.
"Please, stop this DRM crap as we're NOT prepared to put up with a new year rush of postal (as in out for blood) consumers returning christmas presents that won't play in their xbox 360's!" Last time I looked, any CD player will play Redbook audio. DRM does NOT conform to Redbook, ergo any DRM CD CANNOT be advertised or sold as an audio compact disc.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Are you the same AC who keeps posting this every time DRM crops up?
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Most of the marching morons never even realize there's a problem, because most of them never try to copy a CD. They give the disk to their "computer hero"...the friend who can plug in a USB cable and all that other complicated stuff...and get back a nice copy for their car or cottage or whatever. When their kid gets dragged into court for downloading MP3's, it's everybody else's fault for allowing this outrageous behaviour to occur.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
I have just now started buying downloaded music because Amazon has started selling non-DRM'ed higher bit-rate mp3's. Up until now I would not buy music downloads due to the DRM or because it was not available in a format that I wanted to use and I wouldn't buy CDs because I will not buy the new disks that look like a CD but isn't really a CD.
Two and a half years ago, I forgot to lock my truck.
A thief came by and stole:
1. A cup of change (for the meter)
2. A fresh pack of Kamel Red Lights
3. My entire wallet of CDs -- a ratio of 90% store-bought CDs and 10% assorted collections of mixes from parties, birthdays, longs nights of ecstasy, and the kind of presents girls with too much time on their hands make for you.
I went to ye olde Wal-Mart, bought a satellite radio, and I haven't bought a single CD since. I can record off the radio legally, the songs save on my radio for ~90 days (XM just imposed some time limits on the songs), and I can also put MP3s on the unit with a USB cord (the little trapezoid type). I haven't downloaded any music in ages, as I can get all the popular crap on the radio and I feel justified in re-acquiring the CDs that I had previously purchased on the Internet. Whether due to my own incompetence or not, I'm not going to spend another $1000 dollars replenishing my lifetime collection of CDs.
I can only imagine how some of the older folks feel. Who the hell wants to replace their collection of records, tapes, 8-tracks, et cetera everytime a new medium is embraced by a bloated industry in order to SELL more copies. It's not about the music!
Viva la revolution!
P.S. XM is 12.99 a month, so it's not like I found the free solution, but it has the wonderful ratio of entertainment hours per monthly fee as those crack-like MMORPG games (UO, WoW, EQ...)
A whopping 120 characters to take your mind off topic. Tested in MS Word.
Apart from my workplace, the overwhelming majority of people i come in contact with around on streets, anywhere dont have a fucking clue as to what's DRM let alone the issue's involved. Nobody ever bought copyrighted content, which they're starting to buy in droves just lately. Its kinda weird :O
The reason the bookstore is doing well, but the CD store isn't, isn't because of piracy. It's because people want to read books (not just stories, but stories in books), but they want to listen to music, just not music on CDs. They'll buy their music from iTunes, Napster, etc because they can then listen to it on the move, on their 'portable music device'.
The only reason for anyone under 40 to buy a CD now is so they can rip it and put it onto their portable music device... Since record companies are trying hard to stop this, it means that less people will buy CDs. Anyone who does rip a CD is made to feel like a music pirate anyway - so they may as well go the whole hog and download it off the Internet - if you're a pirate for buying a CD and ripping it, why not be a pirate by downloading it, and save yourself a fortune at the same time.
Most people do NOT want to pirate music, but if that's the easiest way to get hold of the music to use as they want, that's what they'll use. If it cost £0.50 to buy a music track and was easy to do, and they could use it as they wanted (eg on all their music players) that's what most people would do - especially if they knew that £0.40 went to the artist/composer, rather than £0.01 to them, and the rest to the record label.
The problem with any 'how much piracy is around' surveys today is that they are looking at the situation today, when it's really hard to get a useful downloaded music track legitimately, and it's even harder to find a decent CD. So, people almost HAVE to pirate music to get what they want. Fix that, and there'd be less piracy.
How is that "outrageous behavior" at all? Copying CDs, DVDs and the like number 1 is protected under fair use for backups. Number 2, it should be a moral right and really should be embraced by the *IAA if they want to not go bankrupt. Most people won't buy a song, not even "illegally" download a song if they have no clue what the music is like, they had to hear it for free at some point or had a friend tell them about it. Think about radio, you can listen to all the free music you want in a DRM free format, record it if you like and share it with others and many many many people listen to the radio or Internet Radio. When it is easier to "illegally" download a song then to go through the hassle of buying it you have a problem. Sure "illegal" downloading will get people for the price and such, but most people want to spend the money if they can get it in their format with no DRM that means that I should be able to download a song in .ogg, MP3, FLAC, WAV, AAC and such, not just have to download an MP3 or WMA that can't be played on Linux legally in the US without "illegal" codecs. Not to mention how some MP3 players can't play say WAV and AAC so it makes no sence to distribute them as only WAV and AAC. People will buy as long as their rights aren't trampled. And most people I know, know how to rip CDs to their iPods and the CDs that don't rip they either rip them off of YouTube/Google Video or "illegally" download them.
There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
people like music, so they buy music.
That's a pretty good observation. In my case, I do buy the CDs, after hearing stuff on digitalgunfire.com and rantradio.com that I didn't know about and want. Usually, it's an artist on Metropolis Records like And One, Funker Vogt, etc. that has never received a single minute of airplay in our top 50 population market. Even having switched to XM Radio since I can't stand the pathetically poor programming on our local stations, XM's variety doesn't cover this genre as much as I'd like.
But before you shell out $20 on a CD, you really want to hear at least two or three more tracks by the artist to make sure what you heard is representative of their sound. Jump onto P2P and pull down a few tracks and verify.
I've probably bought no less than 100 CDs from Metropolis Records this year alone, and thank them every time for supporting streaming shoutcast stations of their music. They recognize nobody would ever hear their artists outside of Europe, NYC and LA if they didn't support these efforts, and have numerous artists who are benefiting from streaming audio and P2P fileshare music promotion. Clearly, there are labels and artists who embrace modern promotion and distribution approaches.
So who rejects this approach? Only labels with large portfolios of tired artists and an unviable financial model that doesn't compete without regulatory force. If you really want to put an end to DRM, completely stop purchasing music from artists on RIAA labels. Vote with your wallet - it seriously works, as SCO found out (it's hard to continue senseless litigation when your revenues disappear). Otherwise, quit complaining about it as your purchase continues to signal them that you support their efforts.
you idiots, instead of paying people to post idiotic statements like the above (he insulted a customer because he was about to post a CD online, that will surely increase his clientele), why don't you open your damn hapless, cataract-full eyes to the unpleasant truth: your business model is D E A D! Now reform, or perish...
Exactly, most people want to buy music "legaly" but when they can't rip CDs or get the downloads in the format they want (.ogg, MP3, AAC, WAV, FLAC) they will find it someplace else which is usually online.
There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
My stepmother is NOT tech literate. Not in the slightest.
She likes shiny things and the other day she asked me to put her "Shakira" CD on to her MP3 player.
The DRM on it prevented me from doing so, not by any program (I know to hold down shift!) but by the method of the tracks being dodgy and extra data in place to throw off CDROM drives. Well anyway, long story short CDEX wasn't having it and I had to go and say to her that it couldn't be done because the record company have put some protection on there that stops you copying the data to your computer and mp3 player.
Now, whether she went away from that exchange thinking that computers aren't as good as people say, or that this whole MP3 business is a croc, or she went away thinking that copying it for personal use is illegal anyway, or whether she actually got the point that the record companies were preventing her from using the product she purched in a legitimate way, I don't know.
Either way though, she's going to buy less CDs because they're not as useful to her as she thought.
November? The mince pies, xmas cake, and xmas puddings, were on the shelf in the local Tesco at the end of September this year.
I'd heartily support a ban on all Xmas activity until December, if it wasn't such a nanny state thing to do.
I don't know about you guys but when I go to a record store, be it a small independent store or a chain like HMV, Virgin, Sanity etc, and buy an album I can do whatever I want with it. I can copy it, I can rip it into .mp3, FLAC, .aac etc etc for any music player I might have. I buy quite alot of music varied from old school jazz to new rock, indie, hip-hop, metal and I'm yet to encounter any forms of Digital Rights Management ie. I've never been restricted from doing what I like to music on a legitimately purchased CD.
So the ERA arguing that DRM is costing them in sales is just passing the buck. Maybe people aren't buying more new music because they don't like it?
It's not readily apparent, on reading it, that it's old. I think it's not unreasonable to be unaware of that fact. Apart from the fact that it's just copy/paste nonsense, it's not a terrible post. Scary thought... are the trolls getting better at what they do? *shudder*
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
here's a working link to the actual article (not blog) from the nominally subscription-only financial times:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6ed6dd08-970a-11dc-b2da-0000779fd2ac.html
- js.
Here in Canada, I really don't think music publishers will want to drop DRM. We're THE place in the world where the Federal Authorities (RCMP) said "Go ahead, copy your music, don't buy it, anyway we'll never go against you".
Anyway, I personnaly buy every song I have on my computer. I think artists put hard work in creating songs, and I reward them by buying their stuff. If I don't like it, I don't buy it, and I don't download it either.
The only thing that upsets me with DRM is the fact that I can only use the stuff I bought on a limited number of devices, even though all these devices are mine.
SO I BUY PLAIN OLD CDs!
It's also worth remembering that more ISPs are throttling our bandwidth based upon the type of traffic. We may win a battle and still get creamed in the war.
It's important that we codify Net Neutrality right away. We have to press the issue now because although the Democrats are talking a good game at the moment (at least some of them), as soon as they take back the White House and increase their margins in Congress, they're gonna suddenly remember who paid for all their expensive election campaigns. Then, we're gonna see 'em go right back to giving Big Telco a backrub while the Internet becomes little more than a delivery system for our wealth to the corporations.
Honestly, if you're reading this, you've got a pretty fair understanding of how this thing works. You also know how to communicate and probably have a little money in your pocket, (even though you've been played by the best and have a hefty balance on that MasterCard from all those things you "need"). Chances are you're also younger than the US median. That all means you're prime candidates for exercising a little political power. Remember, politics is just social engineering, so your mad skillz are probably quite useful. Figure out who's really on your side and go to work, bitches. And don't sell yourselves cheap.
And bless you all you iconoclasts and free-thinkers this Thanksgiving Day. And tomorrow, instead of spending 20 bucks in gas to save 18 bucks on some geegaw (running up your MasterCard even further and increasing your Serfdom), spend some time learning how be become an insurgent in what may be our last battle for independence from total corporate control of our lives. And be good to one another - the best investment you can make is the one you make in family and friends.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It wants its Winter Solstice celebrations back. (For the un-edumecated, that is the year before Constantin unified the Roman religions).
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Optical Media == Buggy Whip
I had to chuckle when I read this from the article:
"believing instead that the near-ubiquitous practice of file-sharing can be abolished with more draconian copy protection mechanisms"
No no no. The people running record companies are not stupid. They're smarter than most people. They know they can't stop file sharing; it's impossible. But like all businesses, they invest money to protect revenue. DRM is not an attempt to stop copying, it's an attempt to shore up revenue.
To put it more simply, the record companies must believe they are better off revenue-wise putting on copy protection. If they spend $Z to get DRM on every CD, they'll stop X% piracy leading to $Y more revenue. If Y is greater than Z, then it makes sense to put on DRM. If Y is less than Z, then the DRM won't be put on.
It's really that simple.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
So, just like the US citizen was wrong in thinking the rest of the world starts the holiday season with thanksgiving, you are wrong in thinking that everyone else starts it with Christmas.
Even the title of the article refers to the UK - this story is about a UK industry body calling on the UK recording industry to drop DRM.
I think I can be forgiven for pointing out that the holiday season referred to in TFA is Christmas, as over here in the country the story is about that's the next holiday in the calendar... Yeah ok, so I shouldn't have said "everywhere else", I should really have said "in the UK".
It's official. Most of you are morons.
There is something about the way the DRM clique go about things that makes me think it isn't so much a question about money as one about not being able to tolerate that there are people in the world that listen to music and enjoy themselves. I mean, if it was only about money they would have dropped DRM and all the other draconian efforts that will, in the long run only alienate their customers.
I don't buy my music anymore I've given up... I don't like to download it illegally either. Can't buy cds because I'm too lazy to actually change disc, I want my music digital. So where do I get my music:
:)
Usually I listen to internet radio, particularly last.fm. Then I record/rip it, which is luckily perfectly legal in my country (Denmark).
Once in a while when there's this track that I've just got to have I'll try to see if I can buy without DRM, that fails I spend 10 min. adding it to my last.fm playlist and then I'll rip that afterwards
I don't want to buy all my music, but once I a while there's this track that I've just got to have, and then the music industry would actually be able to sell me digital music... I'm pretty sure I'd buy DRM-free albums at a fair prize if I could. But the DRM-free selection in Denmark is rather small, Amazon haven't yet opened their music store to Europeans..
By the way, I did actally buy a CD a few months ago, listened to it for a few days. Then I tried to rip, which of course failed, now I haven't heard that cd since...
Like many others, I have always looked for DRM free music and will go to the best source that can give it to me. Sometimes that ends up with the artist being paid and sometimes it doesn't.
Once there is a way to buy all music without DRM, I'll use it because I want the artists to get paid for their work.
Unfortunately though, through their insistence on using DRM, particularly for inline sales, the industry has so far forced the customer to go elsewhere for DRM free music. Over time this has led to the establishment of very efficient and convenient ways to get most music. Now that people are using such methods, it will be very hard to lure them away to a paid alternative unless the industry can offer something better.
What could they offer though? Maybe they could provide files in flac format, since those are slightly harder to find on existing sites for some types of music. That could persuade some users. I can't think of much else, but whatever they do they need to make it better than what the fans already get for free and they need to do it fast.
They won't though. They won't even try. They'll continue to bury their heads in the sand and moan about how they think piracy is hurting the artists.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
(which is where they are) they probably behead you for using BitTorrent.
Also, I'd rather she be the one to decide to make the leap to the dark side, or be pissed off with the record companies. I don't want to be a dodgy abstraction layer!
>> Why is no one buying CDs? Are people not interested in music?
> I thought this should be obvious: people like music, so they buy music. But they don't like CDs, so they don't by them. Most people I know have a CD player somewhere, but it is collecting a layer of dust. They listen to music on the iPod, the mobile phone and the computer.
I heartily agree with this statement. I recently downloaded an album (a decent -preset fast standard VBR MP3 rip, located with mininova) and I like it a lot. I would love to be able to buy this album online in the same or similar format - as always, the artist deserves remuneration for their work. However, the only format available for purchase online is AAC on iTunes. I don't have iTunes installed and I don't want to install it, I don't want DRM and I don't want to have to transcode lossy to lossy (my Sony MP3 player is great, but it doesn't play AAC).
So I'm stuck - I don't really need the CD (which would cost me about $22) but buying the album on iTunes (for $9.99) gets me an undesirable media type. Thus the only reason I would buy the album online would be to get some cash to the artist, essentially in appreciation. If I did this by buying the iTunes version, though, I'd still be using unlicenced media (the MP3s). On top of all that it is still not lawful to transcode a CD to another format here in Australia, so I simply cannot win.
Clearly the music distribution industry needs to do better to provide a simple and effective way to get music licenced (read: paid for), optionally converted from WAV/CDDA into the format I want (if not FLAC), and into my possession.
( Redundancy is ) ^ n
The fact that CSS is broken is the reason they started screwing with the disc itself, and the VOB format, giving it bad cells etc.
This is just as bad, and in fact worse, because now DVDs DON'T play in every DVD player.
Once again I insist that our community stop calling it copy protection. Does it protect my copies? No. We also need to stop calling it DRM. Does it manage my digital rights? No. (In fact it does the opposite of that, it cripples my digital rights -- DRC.)
We should call it what it is, which is Playback Prevention. That's what the technology does, it prevents playback. Both the consumers and the producers can agree that's what it does, although we will disagree about whether or not that's a good thing for technology to do.
Tag this story !copyprotection !drm playbackprevention.
Also, see http://www.riaaradar.com/
Carey
Everyone knows how ridiculously cheap it is to make copies, either on disk or downloadable. The major *insist* on a pricing model from like 20 years ago, if they don't make so much a "unit" they throw a hissy fit. instead of acknowledging new cheap replicator technology, they use it, but they don't get it, they operate in a forced intellectual vacuum where they think consumers-potential customers-aren't aware of tech advances so they can keep getting gouged. It's stupid, if they would have just dropped prices radically they could have upped sales numbers and actually have made more money than they are now. Instead they chose the course of adding DRM and suing potential customers.
Music CDs should be a dollar, DVD movies 2 or 3 dollars, and that's about it. They'd still make all their upfront production costs back quickly (that's for the trolls who always say it costs money to produce, well ya, it does, but follow this please) and still make more over-all net profit, just not "per unit". They need to drop per unit profit margins and increase total sales of units. That's it, it is that easy.. Gouging people for thousands of percent profit (whatever, some big number) over costs is just lame. If you look at the hardcopy pirates, you can see the actual business costs of replication plus profit. If the music majors went just a little cash over that level for their legit copies, to cover production costs of course, that would be the proper pricing point. Like 10% over, not 1000%. Heck, they could just double it, 100% over bare bones duplication, and still come out ahead and the consumers would get a much better deal.
Too late now though, they made their bed, the public responded with download for free instead. Now I don't do either, no downloads nor do I give the entertainment bozos a single penny for any new produced content, I boycott them. I buy used only or severely marked down closer to a realistic pricing model, but full price, first asking? Nope, that's being price gouged, like paying 10 bucks for a cup- of coffee, just not worth it unless you just like throwing your money away for fun to look cool or something..
I started buying music in the 50s and they lost me as a customer because of their incredibly stupid pricing models, I simply cannot countenance getting gouged like that.
Computers have dropped in price and gotten steadily better, pre recorded "entertainment" goes up in price counter intuitively to major tech advances we all see, and gets crappier quality wise for the most part, plus they added in DRM and bribed off the legislative arena to the point that you won't see anything produced today go out of copyright in a normal lifetime, which is completely against the original intent of having a "limited" copyright so the stuff could get into the public domain.
November? The mince pies, xmas cake, and xmas puddings, were on the shelf in the local Tesco at the end of September this year.
We weren't going to tell you, but I feel I have to let you in on the secret. We allow you to thing that you're having a "Thanksgiving" early just so you don't see our true reasons.
You're actually just our food tasters checking for poison. Never can be too safe.
Do you Gentoo!?
Surprisingly enough, its not just us techies that notice this and dislike it. Ordinary consumers are getting fed up with CDs that will not play in some CD players, downloaded legal music that will only play in the player they are registered to etc. And I don't think the dream of music rental is quite as well received as some would like to think. Especially once the customer realises that they can loose their music collection the minute they cancel their subscription...
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
DRM doesn't work effectively, because it makes legitimate users feel oppressed, violates their fair use rights, and is always possible to work around. But would you rather have lawsuits for discovery of infringment? Yes, I would. DRM stops people from doing illegal things (like sharing a song with 100 "P2P friends" online) which is good, but also stops people from doing legal fair-use things (like using that data on a different device, or editing it)... In contrast, lawsuits against suspected infringers really takes on only the suspected infringers -- definitely a step in the right direction. I hate making an example of anyone, and I think the justice system also doesn't like the concept of increasing someone's punishment for the sole reason of deterring others, the system-wide punishments could me made high enough that it acts as an effective deterrent.
Suggestion to the music industry: kill DRM, and aggressively pursue individual cases of infringement through the legal system.
--
Educational microcontroller kits for the digital generation. Great gift!
...whether they're talking about brick and mortar stores, digital stores, or both.
I live in the UK, get through a fair amount of music and gave up on brick'n'mortars years ago - buying online is more conveneient in every conceivable way for me (no crowds, no cramped and sweaty ride on the tube, no having to hunt down a member of staff to find out where they keep their Classical Nu-Bhangra Trance, no queues to pay, no queues to listen to a possible impulse buy, reviews a few clicks away, no bein gharassed by the security guards when I set off one of the bleepers from my supposedly deactivated security tags) and if the need arose I can easily circumvent any "copy protection" on the not-CD. As it is, I spend my money on MP3's, FLAC's and AAC's from Bleep, Tunetribe, 7Digital and 4AD, or buy a boatload of DVD's from Play or Amazon to have them arrive three days later.
If there's e-tailers as part of TFA, I'm glad - I've sent several letters to the Tunetribe and 7Digital asking what the likelihood of artists XYZ being available in MP3 and have always been given a "when the labels let us" response; the digital sellers are aware that many people who shop for choons online are aware that WMA support is far from universal but that MP3 works with everything with no restrictions.
Heck, I had my dad call me the other day asking me what the hell "failed to individualise" meant in relation to some tracks he'd bought from Napster (digital versions of all his old 7" singles from the 60's which he still owns) - he'd been speaking to Napster tech support and they'd eventually given up and told him to call Microsoft, which has pissed him off something pretty rotten. I said I hadn't a clue, and if Napster wasn't working he should just look elsewhere for MP3 versions, or just try and remove the DRM via that FairUse4WM tool. Napster are even reticient about refunding the money, saying there's no problem at their end (although I sense this'll fall foul of the Sales of Goods Act as "not fit for purpose" if they want to argue about it).
Moral of the tale? DRM is mucking up all of the users now, not just the techie ones. Drop it from digital downloads for your own sake.
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
Long ago, people used to play their own music on musical instruments or just sing to entertain themselves at home (the rich could attend a concert). Then along came the record player and people could sit back and rest a few minutes before having to get up and change the record. Then along came the automatic changer that would lift the needle arm and move it aside so the next record could drop and be played automatically. When the CD came along, people had to change CDs manually, but very soon there were automatic CD changers that would let you have somewhere from 5 to 100's of CDs inside. Still, it was a bit of a hassle to manage the CDs in there and the time gap between them was annoying. Not to mention, carrying a portable multi-disk player around was also not practical.
Listening to music was work. It has become less work through the ages, so it is clear that people strive to avoid the work.
Computers and derived products like the iPod changed all that. By copying the music to a larger collective storage such as a hard drive or flash memory, it was possible to not only play the music back with very little work, in many forms it became practical to also carry music around with you. So people started copying their favorite tracks from CDs to their devices. At the same time, music was becoming available online (whether legal or illegal) and people found that to be even more convenient than having to handle and store a bunch of CDs somewhere.
The work associated with listening to music has been reduced significantly by computer technology and the related devices. CD sales are down for a wide range of reasons. The work of copying them to the computer, and the issues in DRM trying to prevent that, are a couple of those factors. CD sales never will recover, even if DRM is removed, although they could go back up some, as EMI has found (people can again easily copy the CD into their computer).
Selling CDs in a store is not the business to be in. The CD is for so many people no longer a playback medium. It is a transfer medium ... as is the internet.
And the DVD is headed in the same direction.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I just brought a disk that won't play on my DVD player. The other day we got one from the library with a warning not to play it on a computer because it will install a virus (No it wasn't sony). I find it particularly ironic with movies, since I almost never pay more than 10 Euros for a movie and mostly pay less than 5 Euro (less than a movie ticket). Why would i want a DVD shrink copy with all that effort of downloading when i can buy them for that. In other words, movies are cheap enough that buying from the shop is more convenient *until* they break compatibility like this.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
After I heard Marija Serifovic's Molitva, I went to iTunes to try to purchase it for my portable music players.
It was only available in Europe...not in the States.
So rather than try to simulate a European IP address, I snooped around and found that she had placed MP3s of the various forms of the song on her Web site.
Now I'm looking for more of her material and finding...I can't get it. I just can't, unless I go the download route. I don't want to go that way.
Make it hard to purchase material, and you lose sales. How is this so hard to comprehend?
Quite true. I possess 2 copied DVDs. One I couldn't find anywhere in the shops but if I do I shall buy it immediately. The other I went to the effort to copy because I find the anti-piracy message that annoying. And editting DVDs with basic free software tools requires a fair bit of fiddling with settings.
"I think it's content,content,content. Why does the second hand CD shop in our town flourish (in fact, has expanded) when the new releases are slowly going down the tubes? Because, I suspect, quantity has proven the end of quality."
Well except for one small flaw (I know slashdot has a short attention span). This forum is always going on about the "new and improved" business model's triumph over the "old and busted" model. However I'm not seeing a corresponding rise in the uptake of this "new and improved" model, but simply more consumption of what the "old and busted" model has already produced regardless of the source.
"If the music industry is a volume box shifting business, it has to rely on high volume low margin. It cannot expect the buyers to pay a premium price for singers and musicians who will be forgotten after they've had their Warhol (that's 15 minutes of fame)."
Except for the reality check that quite a few musicians last longer than fifteen minutes. Some even last for decades (how many dead-heads are here?).
"It's like the car industry. The margins on a BMW are high because it costs a lot to persuade you to buy it. The margins on a European supermini are minimal because it costs almost nothing to get people to buy one, but people won't pay a high price for it."
And lets pretend when discussing a physical product that a BMW doesn't cost more to build than a supermini.
It's also worth remembering that more ISPs are throttling our bandwidth based upon the type of traffic. We may win a battle and still get creamed in the war.
I doubt that. If the ISP industry moves to general bandwidth throttling and not allowing their customers to use what they're paying for, they will keep profits up for a little while, and then ultimately lose for exactly the same reasons Big Media's DRM-based strategy is doomed.
There are trivial technical ways to circumvent bandwidth shaping, just as there are trivial ways to circumvent DRM. If most ISPs impose restrictions then those who continue to provide what customers actually want at a realistic price will have a competitive advantage, just as is the case with DRM. It will start slow may get bad before it gets better, but eventually large numbers of people will understand how they're being screwed, just as with DRM.
The only major difference is that providing high bandwidth really does have a significant marginal cost for the ISPs, so people who think paying 20 quid a month for "up to 8MB" broadband and effectively unlimited bandwidth is realistic are in for a nasty shock. It won't be economic to support that service at that price when everyone starts wanting to use it for real, and no amount of consumer whining will make commercial ISPs offer a service long-term when that service is loss-making. I expect that we'll see some stratification in the offerings from the ISP industry, with providers offering packages for light, moderate and heavy use, but with prices to match.
We might also see a return to metered charging, though obviously at much lower rates than in the old modem days. That in turn would lead to pressure for ISPs to do more about the spam problem and malware so people's allowance wasn't wasted, which would be no bad thing either.
Anyway, the bottom line is that for this sort of issue, the market is mightier than the courts. Consumers will always win this sort of battle for as long as necessary, because ultimately they control the purse strings (and no amount of ISP lobbying is going to get governments who want to be re-elected to impose obviously punitive taxation policies on their electorate for very long).
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Few people really care about DRM on DVDs.
It depends what you count under the "DRM" umbrella. Does unskippable content at the start of a DVD count? Because I know plenty of people who now outright avoid buying any DVDs from brands who have taken this too far. Seriously, why do I need to sit through 30 seconds of US-based copyright warning that doesn't even apply to me here, and a load of disclaimers about interview content when there are no interviews on the DVD?
I even know people who have taken DVDs back to the shop in extreme cases and demanded a refund on the basis that the weren't fit for purpose. The shops usually point at some policy that says they don't refund opened DVDs etc. Without exception when my friends have started talking about the Sale of Goods Act and asked to speak to the manager, a refund has quickly been forthcoming, though, which gives you some idea of how much the managers think their disclaimers are worth.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I assumed they were talking about the broken CDs that were all the rage a few years ago, and that were still being sold in Euroland (I think they are still sold here, but I buy all my music used so its hard to tell what new cds are like).
The Sony root kit disaster, and the like are what I thought this was about and again it had to do with the ability to rip it to an MP3 player.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
And us old fogies are into vinyl, so CDs are really in trouble. My Grado Reference cartridge blows away any of your digital to analog con verters, sonny. Now get off my lawn so I can get back to listening to Zeppelin the way it was meant to be heard.
Loose lips lose spit.
"Most people do NOT want to pirate music, but if that's the easiest way to get hold of the music to use as they want, that's what they'll use."
Oh you know full well you have no evidence to support this (the first part). Although you're right about the "easy" part.
"If it cost £0.50 to buy a music track and was easy to do, and they could use it as they wanted (eg on all their music players) that's what most people would do - especially if they knew that £0.40 went to the artist/composer, rather than £0.01 to them, and the rest to the record label."
One iTunes. Two I don't buy the "think of the..." argument whither it comes from this forum or a politician. The means to pay an artists directly have been around for decades. The means to create a fair middleman have been around just as long. When it comes to walking the walk instead of talking the talk, this forum and others are severly lacking.
"The problem with any 'how much piracy is around' surveys today is that they are looking at the situation today, when it's really hard to get a useful downloaded music track legitimately, and it's even harder to find a decent CD. So, people almost HAVE to pirate music to get what they want. Fix that, and there'd be less piracy."
No they don't HAVE TO. They just don't want to do the hard work the alternative demands. Asking someone else to FIX ME isn't going to work.
I've bought a few discs that I've had trouble playing. A couple of them I just took straight back to the shop for a refund, but the others I was able to get working after some irritating fiddling around. Playback from the discs either failed or had impossibly juddering sound. My copy program (K9copy) wouldn't rip either disc properly from one DVD drive but succeeded with my older drive so I was able to watch my DVD's directly from an iso file. All of the DVDs were from Optimum Releasing, so they lost out on a couple of sales when I took them back unplayed. The two I kept were Princess Mononoke and Pan's Labyrinth. I don't know what protection is on these DVD's but it's very irritating and I've learned to check whether a DVD is from Optimum Releasing before I buy it.
And I'm holding off buying music until I get a decent DRM free download store. There's 7digital but their selection is pretty poor for the MP3 stuff. Whoever is first to offer quality MP3's from mainstream artists is going to get a lot of money from me.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Once there is a way to buy all music without DRM, I'll use it because I want the artists to get paid for their work.
Buy the music without DRM that you can buy. If the options are DRM or nothing (or unauthorised copies) then you can always go with "nothing".
You can get legal DRM-free music from iTunes, eMusic, and Amazon.
These retailers at least think that they have a viable market and that spending a lot of money to make the product worse hurts their sales.
The interesting part is not that the retailers realize this but that the records fail to realize this. While you're at it you might want to look into wether or not I'm willing to give my money to you so that you can sue my friends.
+1 Agree -1 Disagree
I haven't followed the DRM wars much because I believe the market will win in the end. I was recently amazed to find out that BR/HD DVD players don't do component video out at high def. Wow. No sale.
Similarly, I still haven't bougth any music via download, because i don't want to sort out this DRM mess. I'm hoping DRM on downloads vanishes so I can start spending money (and not accidentally end up with some DRM nonsense).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
How exactly is DRM'd music 'corporate control of your life'? Make your own music or buy some of the copious amounts that isn't under DRM.
Nobody's forcing you to buy Britney's lastest 'masterpiece'.
What we need is for CD makers that *don't* use DRM to get together and make a "MP3 friendly" logo.
Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.
At the current rate of consolidation, we're soon going to have maybe 2 or 3 choices of ISP. Then, it's just a matter of using the MS/Apple model of a binary choice of getting fucked or screwed. The whole point of corporate consolidation is to limit the consumers' choices. Then, they can do whatever the hell they want. You're dreaming. There is no such thing as "the market". All that's there is corporate power setting the rules. The only power we can exercise is to not play the game.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Excellent :-) someone else! Thanks for the two radio links, I'll look at them later.
:-( ]
In about January I downloaded a mix-CD from The Pirate Bay of about 20 tracks, most of them would be available from Metropolis (not sure, I'm in Europe so I don't look at the Metropolis site much). After saying "wow!" a lot I annoyed the hell out of my flatmates by playing Combichrist, Panzer AG, Funker Vogt, Rotersand, Suicide Commando and the rest of the mix CD on repeat for about a month. Then I looked for similar stuff online, I bought Aviator (Funker Vogt) from play.com, but couldn't find much else on there. Then I got a subscription to e-music.co.uk (DRM free) and bought lots of music from there, they had almost everything I wanted. I cancelled that subscription a couple of months later, and started buying CDs, I think I have about 25 so far. I'll probably take the e-music subscription back if they'll sell me lossless music; CDs are nice but I always rip them (to FLAC), look at the booklet and put them away somewhere.
I'm still a student with no income though... at the moment, the very weak dollar means I can buy CDs from amazon.co.uk Marketplace for about £6 each, which is very good (they come from the USA). I bought a few CDs from Resurrection Records (an actual shop in Camden, London) as they were on special offer, but they were £12 there, £14 normally. In fact I bought three, two I knew I wanted and one impulse-buy, but I didn't like the impulse-buy CD -- that wouldn't have happened if I'd looked online first. It was nice to go in a shop and recognise lots of bands and listen to the kind of music I was about to buy though. Before the dollar plummeted I bought 10 discs from the record label's online shop in Germany, they were about £10 each.
I went into HMV (massive record shop chain in the UK, similar to Virgin) at the weekend since I was waiting for something and there was nowhere else to go, I'd not been in one for years. The "Metal" section was narrower than one stretched-out arm, and had a lot of not-metal in it. I couldn't find any industrial/ebm bands in the whole shop. CDs ranged from £16 (the latest Iron Maiden CD) to £3 (last years' old hit), most were £14. A quarter of the shop had "iPod speakers" on show, and other electronics.
[The something I was waiting for was Hocico, Spetsnez etc playing in London. I was waiting around for two hours because the show was delayed after Hocico were refused entry to the UK
"Europe, NYC and LA": I don't have a radio, so I don't know if these artists get airplay on any stations. I don't think they do. They do get some play in some nightclubs though (http://www.slimelight.net is best if anyone's interested).
The only power we can exercise is to not play the game.
<shrug> Sometimes, the only way to win is not to play... particularly if doing so completely kills your opposition.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
What is even worse are unskippable adverts on the DVD that I just fucking paid money for. It's not enough that they get your money, but they make you pay to watch their adverts.
This is why I started pirating films. They rip me off and so I'll do the same back to them a thousandfold.
Not really. The vinyl scene is still alive and well, though occupying a much smaller niche than before. Vinyl is still indispensable for DJs, for example.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
Yes. I am the exact same guy.
No, I'm not the exact same guy.
The christmas lights are up, and there's christmas stuff in the shops. However, the holiday season doesn't start until about mid December.
But I, on the other hand, *might* be the exact same guy.
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
I can't suffer drm tripe. I'm not an avid kleptomaniac, all I want is to listen to my stuff anywhere: on my ipod, my home mac or the business laptop I was given both in ubuntu and xp boot. I've bought stuff on itms only to torrent it just to get a drm free file compatible with my life. I've known people that kept libraries full of music raped off napster and they never listened to it... the collection was all that mattered, butterflies or white noise would have made no difference. I love itms when it says "your dld will be upped to 256 (your 30 gig 4th gen is obsolete, dood!) drm free for free!" because it will play on my equipment anywhere anytime. It's hard enough to find that tune at the right time without feeling a goof, tech shouldn't get in the way.
(participating to this long standing polemic makes me feel a broken record, an old dope... drm is going... we were right, and we won... kids don0t even understand why we heat up so much over the argument. This we I'll be slacking, my background music playing, my company around, that's my perspective, nothing else matters... that's why I'm an old fart)
e
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
"Princess Mononoke" That's interesting, because I had problems copying Howl's Moving Castle with DVD Shrink. Got there in the end, but it took some fiddling.
Why did you leave out Linux?
... and then they built the supercollider.
I recently discovered the joys of ebooks on my Nokia N800 tablet. I wasn't aware of the multiplicity of formats and DRM schemes. Luckily, there's Project Gutenberg and Baen, and at least some ebook DRM is easy to crack. At least now, the DRM is starting to crumble for mp3s. Will book publishers learn anything from music publishers.
Why is all the good stuff already modded 5, when I have mod points?
Really?
I have a modest collection of DVDs, all of them legally bought. I live in Europe, most of them are region 2, but some of them are region 1...I prefer to watch DVDs using my PS3 - which does an excellent job of scaling for my full-HD TV - but for the region 1 DVDs, I still need to use my old region-free player, which is kind of out-of-date in other ways.
This really, really sucks and I'm considering starting to actually pirate content instead of buying it because of this ridiculous discrimination.
I disagree with you there.
The iPod is being bought by millions of people, not just the technically literate. And iTunes does support ripping music directly from CD to a compressed format (which can be AAC or MP3) - at least until DRM stops it. You buy a CD, you get it home, put it in the PC and iTunes complains that it can't be ripped - which for many will be the first hint that they've bought a DRM-infested CD - what are you going to do? It's pretty likely your first assumption will be "damn, they've sold me a faulty one".
Thank you very much, sir.
Now I am having to choke back a masturbation reference.
Oh wait...
Crap. What did the new CSS do with the "Post anonymously" option??
I agree with webmaster404. I bought a .wma file from Yahoo! Music and want to convert it to .mp3 format so that I can download it to my IPod. iTunes cannot convert it to mp3 b/c it is copy protected. So I have to find a solution - use converter (for example MelodyCan (http://www.convert-any-media.com/index.php)to remove drm-protection. Cause I legally purchased music and want to hear it where I want.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.