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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.
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.
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
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
Indeed. I think the DRM fight is the first battle that will be won by "internet inhabitants", the "blogosphere", and most of the free-thinking people of the online world. It is happening, and this article is just the sign that we are one step closer. This is a battle in which we are already seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, although far away.
Now we have several more battles to fight; F/OSS software over propietary, breaking Microsoft's monopoly, net neutrality, copyright law reform, etc...
Let's get back to work.
Tis women makes us love, Tis Love that makes us sad, Tis sadness makes us drink, And drinking makes us mad.
> 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!
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.
Ummm....no.
I, and many of my friends, haven't purchased a CD in a long time now because there is an increasing chance that it will not work on our equipment. They still stamp CD on discs that do not follow the standard, and their label of "Contains copy protection blahblahblah not work with all blahblah" is a cop out. I was burned a few times with this, on both older and new players.
That's your effect - we don't trust the media enough to purchase it, whether from the risk of a non-functional product or some piece of auto-run crap that will attempt to install on my Windows box when I try to play it there. Yes yes, "Run linux", and I do - but not on all of my machines, and I shouldn't have to disable autorun just because the *AA wants to maintain draconian control over a dieing business model.
DRM breaks stuff -> People don't buy it -> Stores go out of business.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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.
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.
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
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...
>> 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
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.
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?
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'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.
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.