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Sony BMG Dropping DRM
Lally Singh writes "BusinessWeek is reporting that Sony BMG is planning on dropping DRM from their music. Salon's Machinest had an interesting take on this; 'Actually, what's happened is quite ironic. It was the industry's own DRM mandates that tied many music-lovers in to Apple's music storefront (we all had iPods, and the only way to buy digital music for the iPod was from Apple). Now Apple's become too powerful for the labels. They need an alternative distribution channel — they want to get music to our iPods, but they don't want to go through Apple to do it. The only way to do that is to offer retailers like Amazon the chance to sell songs as plain, unrestricted MP3s, which are iPoddable.'"
This should be a nice switch, I've already been purchasing from amazon's mp3 store and find the ergonomics, the quality, and price all to my liking. And, if I find something I really like I purchase the real deal, the CD. I for one welcome our former DRM overlords into the fold.
This only widens and expands the music industry's audience, it is the logical conclusion to a stupid experiment. I suspect there are other efforts in the works to try and keep a grip on their "property", but this is yet another death knell to the music industry as they (the execs, etc) know/knew it. Wait until some breakthrough artist figures out they no longer need to be beholden to the record labels for their livelihoods.
Now, if only we could see some of this sanity become contagious and spread into some of the other media. DRM is a pain and it's ineffective. Just 2 days ago I watched on DVD a movie still only in theater-release -- I won't say where (it wasn't at my house), and I won't say who (it wasn't someone I knew). I would never do this, but it's obvious DRM only makes life more difficult for the honest consumers. (Wasn't there an article recently here about someone's collection of media getting wrapped around the DRM axle because he bought a nice new monitor on which to watch his movies?)
Is hell freezing over. Good thing I have my ice skates handy.
Guns are for wimps... Use a crossbow.. this way you can pin them to their chair when you go postal.
Back when Sony was putting root-kits in it's music CDs I felt justified in pirating their music.
Now I just feel OK about it.
What does it mean, Apple's become too powerful, so Sony needs another distribution channel? Is Apple driving the prices up? Is Apple restricting Sony to only sell DRM'd music? Is Apple incapable of supporting non-DRM formats? Does Apple not reach sufficiently worldwide.
Like a guy who's murdered his parents pleading mercy as an orphan - Sony pleading innocence over where they're at with ecommerce of their music.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Hopefully the industry will learn a broader lesson about proprietary formats, including physical ones.
Apple convinced them to sell per-song downloads, then got so successful at it the big record labels had to abandon DRM to spite them.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
they could have built their own portals in 1999. they didn't. they filed lawsuits against soccer moms and college kids instead
apple came, gave college kids what they wanted many years later, and so the big publishers, by denying reality of the changing business they were in, effectively handed apple all of the power they previously had, and could have retained
they screwed themselves
no sympathy
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This plainly shows what was obvious to those who wanted to look, that any monopoly Apple has on electronic music sales is because the record labels chose to give them one. Since they seem to be having second thoughts about that choice, they are looking at an alternative: selling straight mp3 downloads.
If Apple ever locked down the iTunes application so that users couldn't import mp3s, then we'd have a reason to whine. But, there would still be Sandisk and the rest, as well as places to buy music for them. Choices still! Imagine that.
Luke, help me take this mask off
What I find ironic is that the very thing that some of us were complaining about (iTunes DRM) might end up being the very thing that saves us in the end.
Well played itunes, well played.
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
I was hit by the Sony Trojan when my daughter played a BMG title she'd bought from the music store she worked at at the time (she manages a Gamestop now).
I'll never EVER buy a Sony ANYTHING again, and the only way I'll get a Sony-BMG CD is used. And the only way I'll download any BMG artist is from P2P "piracy". That God damned rootkit was a damned stupid move. Someone should have gone to prison for it. If I rooted their computers I'd be with Linda; well, actually not since Dwight is a maximum security women's prison, but I'd be behind bars.
And all she did was have some dope on her, she didn't hurt anyone, threaten anyone, or cost anyone any money.
If you own Sony stock, please do me a favor and sell it. Sony is EVIL in all capital letters.
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Is anyone surprised at this? Let us examine the Sony portfolio of media...
Betamax - fucked themselves - now deal with VHS gear
Minidisc - fucked themselves - now deal with CDs
Memory Stick - fucking crap - everyone else deals with SD, waiting for them to realize they are fucking themselves
Blueray - nothing exciting - everyone is still basically on DVDs with no incentive to change
Now we can add
DRM digial music - fucked themselves - now drop DRM to sell more.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
This is why Apple wouldn't license their FairPlay DRM to competitors. Kudos to Steve Jobs for pulling this off. He's always said from the beginning that DRM is a bad idea.
How will this impact Apple? Sales through the iTunes Store may dwindle a little, but sales of iPods will continue to climb.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
We have secured the enemy intelligence!
So if Sony is the last holdout in the DRM space, what's the point of the RIAA again?
Sure, iTunes works great and is very easy and all, but the Fairplay encrypted tracks only play on Apple branded devices (appart from PCs with iTunes installs). Now I like the iPod just fine, but maybe two or three years from now I like a player from another company better. Or a Linux PC better than Windows or Mac. Or more pertinent, maybe I like another music phone better than the iPhone. If I have have a significant collection of Fairplay encrypted tracks, it forms a barrier to switching, as I'd have to rip/reencode all my purchases or hunt for cracks of the encryption. So yeah, unencrypted iTunes+ tracks: great. Fairplay DRM tracks: bleh!
Getting rid of DRM is excellent, but going to MP3 is kind of like offering GIF instead of JPEG. Sure, it works and all, but AAC is the improved successor to MP3. Apple is going to have the audiophile* edge by selling unencumbered AACs if its competitors like Amazon.com stick with MP3. Not sure if that's going to be a big sway, but I personally prefer AAC.
*I'm aware of flac, et al, and the audio purity arguments, but I'm talking about dominant market conditions.
I'm losing track of what each companies policy is currently. I believe EMI was the first to offer DRM free music and then I think was someone else and now Song BMG. I also know there's a the "big 5" music labels, but I can't name them off the top of my head. Can someone who knows the details make a Wikipedia page and link to it so we can keep "score" of who's given up on DRM and who's still to go? It would be helpful for everyone.
Thanks!
AllofMP.com has been pioneering the model all along.
It's funny, I went to Amazon the other day to see what was available for DRM-free download. Do you know what the answer was?
Nothing. For some strange reason, the service is only available to those in the US. The rest of us are still stuck in 2000 or something.
Still, at least the light bulb is starting to glow. Next, you'll be telling me I can buy legal DVDs that don't make me sit through several minutes of tedious anti-piracy drivel that doesn't even apply in my jurisdiction, just like all the illegal ones I could have bought more cheaply instead...
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
They want to protect their intellectual property, which is understandable (although I'm sure some slashdotters will argue this point). But I think fundamentally we're going to have to accept one of two mechanisms by which they can do that. The first is DRM, and the problem is that it undermines lots of legitimate (fair, free) uses of the content. The second is lawsuits for civil or criminal copyright infringement, which have significant statuatory damages.
So I'm happy that people are waking up to the problems with DRM, and that companies are realizing it too. But realistically this means that more enforcement burden will be on legal action, which tends to be economically burdensome on individuals, although it is more likely to produce a socially acceptable result (allowing certain cases of fair use).
--
Educational microcontroller kits for the digital generation.
What I don't understand is why the labels have such influence in the sales of music. Contrast it with retail sales and you will understand what I mean. In typical retail sales, the retailer purchases X items from a distributor or direct from the manufacturer and sells the for whatever they choose, allowing the retailer to compete and allowing the manufacturer sell the items for their desired profit margin, the only people who's profit margins are influenced by competition (of the same product) are the retailers.
In the online music world, the Label places all kinds of stipulations and requirements on the seller. Wouldn't they simply be better off selling X licenses for Y cents per license to as many online sellers as possible and let them duke it out over selling as many as possible. You would see Apple's, and many other sellers', profit margins drop as competition raged. Consumers would be buying at lower prices, which would increase overall sales, and advertising would increase as different sellers tried to attract new buyers.
Overall, a simple Manufacturer -> Distributor -> Seller -> Buyer structure where the manufacturer is hands-off on the sales end would probably make the most money for them. Even with piracy raging in the background, I guarantee that if I could pick up a bunch of music for $.25 per song (with $.24 going to the label), I'd be all over it. If the label want's more money for a newer track, simply sell it to the distributor/seller for a higher price and let them figure out how they want to move it.
I would imagine you would see 2 for 1 deals, free downloads, and all kinds of other schemes where sellers would take a loss on the low cost music to see higher profit margins on the higher cost tracks.
All I can say is... stop letting the labels set the retail prices, let competition and demand dictate the price. It's worked for almost every industry since the dawn of trade and there is a good reason, it makes everyone happy because they feel like they are getting a fair deal.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
Unless they didn't get the memo, there must be something else at play here, likely just adding channels.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Sony realizes that suing your customers is not a sustainable business model.
If you go to Nine Inch Nails website you'll find the results of an experiment they just ran through. They offered an album for free with the option to pay if you felt like it. To cut to the chase, 18% paid for it (at $5 a pop). That may sound like a poor result and it would have been if it was fifteen years ago. Today however, the game has changed, the music industry used to be based around the concept of scarcity. They had a physical product and the only method of distribution involved moving that product around. Today, information can be replicated for almost zero cost instantly world-wide. Scarcity as a assumption in the business model no longer applies. So if traditional media companies are to save themselves they need to radically change their mode of operation or go extinct. Without scarcity, the only other tangible benefit they have to offer is the experience itself. This means shifting where they expect to get the majority of their revenue away from what is no longer scarce - the music itself - to what is still in short supply: live concerts, t-shirts, mugs, unique (signed?) physical items and such. The music itself can almost be written completely off as a promotional expense to attract business to the items that for are still scarce. Information networks have completely changed the rules of the game in many areas and media companies are just the people to experience it first. If they lack the vision to capitalize on products and services that are still scarce then they will remain as relevant as the steam engine. And there's nothing they can do to stop it - no matter how much "protection" they place on their wares there is a whole new generation of artists growing up right now that don't really see a pressing need to sign with a big label in the first place so if the labels don't adapt and continue to offer something of value then, well, economics is a bitch.
Shh.
They'll have to give everything to both. If it's not available at the preferred merchant, people will just pirate it.
How is Apple being monopolistic? You can play straight MP3s on an IPod. As much as I think the Apple fanboys are pack of twits, the Apple anti-fanboys are every bit as stupid.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
So they either shaft the consumer with DRM, or shaft Apple by removing DRM. Granted the latter is friendlier to the consumer, but when will the labels put and end to shafting people and just give their customers what that want without ulterior motives? Probably when their shit turns purple and smells like rainbow sherbet.
I recall sometime back there was an article here about how Apple wanted to go DRM free if it could charge a bit more for the songs, but they'd also be higher quality, and something to the effect that record companies didn't jive with that. So if my addled memory is correct that would imply that Apple was/is perfectly willing to go DRM free. I suppose with Sony going DRM free Apple could just follow suit and retain its strangle hold on the digital music market. Which when you think about it would be a well deserved kick in the teeth to Sony.
I have nothing compelling to say
you get a free Sony Rootkit with every order. This rootkit is freely distributable among all computer on the network or through any user created CDs or DVDs so you can share this rootkit with your friend and family. Now the computers of your friends and families will be fucked up along with yours just like you used our rootkit infe^h^h^h^h enhanced CDs but much better.
I've read far too many comments with this sort of tone:
"iTunes may have DRM, but it is a good thing now because the labels don't want to be tied to iTunes! YAY APPLE, YOU DID IT!"
Do not oversimplify the issue. There is nothing good about DRM of any sort. Legitimate customers always get screwed by it eventually. Just because Apple uses permissive DRM does not make it any better: telling the customer to remove the DRM via burning to CD and re-ripping it is a waste of everyone's time. No, the record companies are doing this as a means to make sure they aren't under anyone's thumb. It is merely good luck that there are no DRM formats that work on an iPod outside of Apple's, otherwise you bet your ass the labels would trying to use it.
If you are going to ascribe this to some sort of "master plan" by Apple or others, please present actual evidence. You know, the sort of thing you should be able to provide when you make grandiose claims such as those. Otherwise, you're just wasting everyone else's time with tripe that you hope is true.
In Soviet Russia, where the real hacking studs live, hackers soon will massively distribute DRM-ed versions of Sony's DRM-free music, just to show the world how much they hate the established music industry, irrespective of what it does.
In the US, some wannabe high-school hackers will briefly attempt the same, but will be sued into the ground by RIAA laywers intent on showing who still owns the copyrights to and patents on the DRM concept.
Linux user since early January 1992.
You have to admit, Sony must be a really _limber_ company, since they manage to fuck themselves so often...
WTF? This isn't 1992; CD-ROM drives are ridiculously affordable, and even Macs aren't locked into Apple-brand drives. This guy is wacked if he thinks iTMS is the only place where someone can buy digital music that can be loaded onto an iPod. Even Sony has been selling it. For decades. Without any DRM.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
I still have never seen a definitive answer to the AAC vs. MP3 debate other than that, for me, my 5 "Digital Audio Players" all play mp3's and none play AAC. AAC may be a better format, but is it in Apple's implementation in iTunes? I know you can pay more for higher bitrate songs now, but when iTunes first opened I went out and bought 20 songs. Just out of curiosity I bought a few I already owned on CD. I then burned them to a CD and ripped them back as WAVs. Then, I ripped the songs off of my CDs and encoded them to MP3 at 128kb with a good Fraunhofer MP3 encoder (not LAME or MusicMatch or some of the other crappy encoders most people used at that time, there is a big difference), and then converted them back to WAVs. And, to be honest, I couldn't really hear any difference. So, I played both WAVs (from AAC and MP3) through a spectrum analyzer, and the visual difference was obvious. The Apple AAC sourced WAVs were extremely clipped on the high end compared to the ones from the MP3s that I had encoded. Therefore, I have never bothered to try iTunes again. Things may be better now, but with all of the DRM free MP3 stores popping up, I will be going to them first.
Nevermore.
In context, I presume you mean pirating their work. Without getting into a moral argument, I do think you should consider the practical effects of your behavior.
We all know that labels screw artists and DRM is bad and blah blah blah, but what happens if your favorite action films cost $50 million to make, but suddenly all of the customers have "digital content wants to be free" philosophies?
Frankly, if nobody pays to see movies, no movies will get made - or at least, only cheap movies where the person making them can afford to eat the cost. No more magical Hollywood special effects. You're not going to see Lord of the Rings get produced under a Creative Commons license.
Even if the whole business isn't "respectable" by your standards, you obviously respect their work enough to watch it. To never pay is to vote for a world where that work is never produced.
Maybe I'm naive, but newspapers seemed to make money even though people left a handful of change on top of the papers....
and the newspaper machines WOULD allow you to take all of the papers, but not many people did, because there were always papers in the machines I bought from...
at 99 cents a song, it's not much different....the dishonest will be dishonest and continue to be, and the honest will still buy a 99 cent song even though they could get it for free from their friend...just out of fear that someone is watching.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Why do "we", which I'm going to define as society at large, HAVE to accept one or the other? How about if society decides that mechanical reproduction, and sharing, should be essentially free and that money should be made on live performances and original sales of physical media only?
It's people like you that leave me scratching my head. You have apparently forgotten that it's we, the people who make up society, that decide what the rules (laws) of the land are going to be!
When you buy a song from Amazon do you only get to download it the one time? Or do they keep track of which songs you've purchased and allow you do download them again anytime?
The later would be very nice.
Thanks.
i ran across the Terminator 2: Judgment Day ultra-mega-super-extra edition at wal-mart recently. $5. I was enticed by the hi-def windows media version of the film included on the 2nd disc. wellllllll. i still can't get it to play. i've tried every dvd player i can download, installed codecs and drm packages, googled. i finally gave up. it refuses to play and usually throws errors about drm this or that. who needs all that crap? it's funny that i can't get a legit movie in a microsoft format to play in a microsoft media player on a microsoft OS. thanks guys.
You can play straight AAC on iPods as well. Sounds better than mp3, specially at lower bitrates (=128)
Why do I need special downloader software from Amazon.com? Can't I just pay for it & then download the song or album?
The iTunes music store is a great motivator to get customers to get iPods. While Apple keeps a tight lid on it's operating expenses, most analysts, and plenty of slashdot "pundits" have said that Apple could not possibly be making any significant profits, if any, on the store itself, it's the hardware they make money on.
Okay so the iTunes music store becomes less relevant and is less of a selling point for Apple. Was it that relevant to begin with? Apple's next plan? Integration with Safari to download and immediately import new MP3s into iTunes for syncing with your iPod, and that's not hard at all, or perhaps being able to bring up music sites in iTunes and downloading music there. Maybe Apple will "sell" it's iTunes store software to prospective music sites. That would be awesome! We'll have multiple stores, competition in price, and no DRM. OMG, it's too good to be true, I'm so giddy!
PS: Apple was sued recently. The suit said that Apple had too much power "locking in" the iPod to Fairplay, and not allowing WMA DRMed files. If Sony BMG is dropping DRM, suddenly, this suit has very little meaning. Apple's lawyers are grinning like sharks in a barrel of tuna.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
You introduced cascaded sampling error, so the method was inaccurate to determine anything other than how (digital music -> undersampled -> higher sampled) fared under your particular conditions. Sorry.
Also, the bitrates for both AAC and MP3 increased since iTunes first went online, isn't that so?
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Everybody talks as if Apple dies or thrives on Itunes sales.
WRONG!
Most analysts agree and Apple has all but confirmed they make almost NO money on the itunes store. Rather it's just a vehicle to sell more hardware (ipods, iphones, isomethings). Geeks like devices that have lots of options, and we like to crap on the ipod due lack of this or that feature. Normal non-geeks have been buying the ipod and associated devices due to other reasons other than for the the online itunes store. The idea if itunes goes away the ipod will vanish into oblivion is crazy. If Amazon gets bigger than itunes and Apple can still make a player that sells better than the others it's a win-win situation for them.
... leverage.
It's their music, they want all the leverage they can get.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
The iTunes store already has DRM-free tracks available. It's called iTunes Plus and they're 256kb AAC tracks with no FairPlay restrictions. So far the only major taking advantage of this are EMI. Sony BMG could be using this right now if they so desired. Steve Jobs has said so.
What this is about is that Apple refuses to let the majors set the prices of the singles. One of the major selling points of the iTunes store since it began has been that the single tracks are 99. The majors want to charge more for popular tracks. Apple refused. A similar event already happened with NBC leaving iTunes over pricing control issues.
Sony BMC will come crawling back to the #3 distribution channel again once their own project fails. A quick Google reveals that Sony has an online store of their own called Sony Connect. Let's see... requires Windows and Internet Explorer. Well, looks like I'm out of luck...no thanks Sony.
I can foresee dropping DRM, for CRM.
SimonTek
but what happens if your favorite action films cost $50 million to make, but suddenly all of the customers have "digital content wants to be free" philosophies?
From your tone I take it that there must be some drawback that's escaping me?
Anyway, haven't you watched South Park? When you do that for music, Michel Jackson can't buy his 12th Ferrari. For movies, I assume the governator won't be able to buy his 12th Humvee, nor his reelection.
We already dropped DRM from Song BMG's music library ourselves fucking years ago. If anything this is just our changed moving upstream. Unfortunately for them they gave me about ten years to get good at music piracy, so I guess fuck them.
My question is, what is the poison pill in this deal?
Is Amazon now prohibited from selling non RIAA music?
I have no faith in their good faith.
Betamax - fucked themselves - now deal with VHS gear
I'll give you that.
Minidisc - fucked themselves - now deal with CDs
You're completely wrong on this one. MiniDisc flopped in America. It was HUGE in Europe and Asia. It wasn't intended to replace CDs, but to replace cassette tapes as a recordable medium.
Also, Sony co-developed Compact Disc with Philips, even if only in the later stages. So you may as well add that to their portfolio.
Memory Stick - fucking crap - everyone else deals with SD, waiting for them to realize they are fucking themselves
I don't see them abandoning Memory Stick anytime soon.
Blueray - nothing exciting - everyone is still basically on DVDs with no incentive to change
But it is leading the competitor, HD-DVD, by a wide margin.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
Now if only we could get them to... in no particular order...
1) sell lossless formats like FLAC instead of MP3 and then also provide the free down-sample as the customer desires, if they so desire. (I can downsample by my own self)
2) stop compressing the hell out of all the music so that the CD can be "louder" than its peers. It was truly problematic in the first days of the CD that some CDs were so quiet that you had to turn up the volume to "hiss and spit" to hear the music, but once they got loud enough to represent the sound without requiring the hiss, they could have stopped.
3) stop bankrolling the DRM in other formats (hello? Sony? Aren't you responsible for BluRay or some such?)
4) stop doing things that prevent Actual Artists from distributing their music without the corporate tax.
5) die in a corporate conflagration born of sudden, budding social conscience.
(Oh, well, I can dream... 8-)
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Ironically, this would not have happened if Apple had been willing to license its DRM to other retailers. Doing that would have allowed other sites besides itunes to sell DRMed music that works on ipods.
So, it looks like we end up with the best results in the end.
Now I hope that this sort of thing will catch on with movies. I for one hate (with a passion!) those god damned dvds that have unskippable advertisements. If I get a dvd like that from netflix then I'm absolutely guaranteed not to buy that dvd. In fact, those damned fbi warnings at the beginning of dvds make we want to jump out of my chair and go pirate something purely out of spite for their damn 30 second unskippable warnings.
Cow Cube
I'm curious. What makes LAME "crappy"? I don't know about low-bitrates like 128kbit and lower but I've done alt-preset-extreme VBRs with it for years and those mp3s sound as good as anything else I've heard. Even with decent amps and speakers, they sound about as good as the CDs I made them from. I'll grant the filesize is a tad large but all the music I've been collecting for 18 odd years still fits under 20GB.
This is really the poignant question to me. People can say whatever they want about buying music but if they are simply dumping DRM so they can bring back the old pricing schemes they are just going to piss off paying customers even worse. I assume they aren't stupid enough to try and drop "per song" right away but I seriously doubt they plan to leave things this way.
Apple is just as monopolistic as the rest of them. Way back it was Apple that was the big evil monopolistic market-domination-by -suing-the-pants-off-of-everyone-making-a-clone company, and IBM was the team player. That changed when IBM shot themselves in the foot by pushing Microchannel. That killed off IBMs market domination and clones ruled the roost for many years (maybe still today?). WinTel became the monopoly, which wasn't so bad because at least it's not one company making both hardware and software. Microsoft got a stranglehold due to lack of competition, (Intel has AMD to keep them from being abusive), and so we now have Apple as the LESSER of two evils.
The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.
P.S. I would be a rabid penguin fanatic if new games would run on Linux, so please don't pigeon-hole me as either Apple or Windows fanboi.
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
Juno had a budget of $2.5M and to date (after one month in theatres) has grossed $35M.
How about we make more movies, for less money, that are more compelling then the big budget drivel? If you actually make movies that people like they'll be willing to pay for them.
Apple was never in a monopoly situation. Having closed hardware does not make on a monopoly, unless has overwhelming market dominance. Some day you should buy a dictionary and learn what "monopoly" means, because it's clear you have no idea what it is.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Slashdot has changed. If this were on the front page 3 years ago the celebrations would have been massive.
:)
Hrmph.
Insert offensive troll-style sig here. Please mod or respond appropriately.
In a market full of DRM, you get both. They'll still be copying (because DRM is fundamentally a flawed concept) and lawsuits to 'close the holes'. I find the lawsuits ludicrous, but I'd rather have just them withouth the DRM. At least if they relent to the overwhelming pressures and provide a more fair system by which individual songs may be acquired legally, I would be happy to participate in the market significantly once again (of course, I currently abstain from acquiring music rather than illegally acquire music, as I think abstaining is the correct message to send).
The question becomes, though, could they cause great legal grief if they discover you have digital copies of a song on some media of yours, and you cannot readily prove how you acquired them? I would think it not possible/reasonable to even try a case unless they have evidence of you providing or acquiring it, but the way those lawyers have been, who knows what they'll try. And the sad fact is they can legally intimidate people into settlements who could defend themselves, but they lack those means.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I reject your choices. Eliminate DRM and make it 100% legal to crack by any means. Eliminate all statutory damages for free redistribution of copyrighted works. "Loss of sales" should not be a valid argument in court for damages unless it is a commercial piracy outfit which is making sales of its own.
I make a living creating copyrighted works, in my case software. The software I make has no real DRM, just a license code which can be trivially distributed to thousands of a person's closest friends by e-mail. My company does not sue people who pirate our products, does not use any real DRM, and does just fine when it comes to making money. These insanely popular musical figures do not need more protection than a small software company.
I had 160kbps MP3 for 2 thousand songs in my early days of ripping my collection. Then one day I got the itch to reencode it all as 128kbps AAC. Not only did the quality improve significantly (the psychoacoustic field has come a long way since MP3) but the size of my library reduced significantly since it was originaly CBR, now VBR and 128kbps instead of 160kbps. So now it's 4 years later and still we're forced to use MP3 from service like amazon. This makes no sense to me at all. I challenge you to find a new media player that is both worth paying for and does not play AAC.
Why can't amazon sell everything in multiple formats, are they hard up for disk space? Let us choose between 256k MP3 and 256K AAC, and perhaps even 128k of both, all ripped individually from lossless sources.
I read the script, and I think it would help my character's motivation if he was on fire. -Bender
Those of us who are not in the USA can't buy from Amazon's MP3 store, so they're still losing a huge market that will, as a result, continue to rely on file sharing services. I look forward to the day when there are no regional restrictions for digital media download services.
By reading this signature, you hereby agree with the content of the above comment.
Back in 2005, there was discussion about getting Apple to change its ITunes pricing:
...not being an ITunes customer I can't comment about whether the model has varied from the $0.99 per song but it doesn't look like it has.
EMI Says Apple's Jobs Will Change ITunes Pricing
http://www.forbes.com/2005/11/16/apple-emi-itunes-cx_pak_1116autofacescan08.html
So clearly, if Sony BMG move to using Amazon rather than ITunes, maybe they are going to get the differentiated pricing model that suits the "lots of money for recent hits" model that some people seem to be asking for.
6 months ago, EMI came out to sell DRM-less songs via ITunes:
http://lawvibe.com/emi-will-sell-drm-free-songs-on-apples-itunes-music-store/
Are there any other RIAA cartel members who aren't yet selling DRM-less material?
The crunch here will be if Song BMG can show that Amazon is more profitable for the labels and still keeps consumers happy than iTunes, it might pull EMI away from iTunes or in the very least give EMI move leverage with Apple.
A penny a song, and I'm there, baby.
Any more $ than that - it's not worth it.
As someone who has a Zen instead of an iPod, I can't use iTunes because their DRM is incompatiable with the player. I found Sony music very hard to find on other sites, so if I wanted to get it, I had no option but to download a copy. I didn't do that because I need to keep the player legal, so I just had to use music from other companies.
And quite frankly, I'm sick of you pushing for a distinction. ANYTHING with Sony in the name gets boycott from me: PC's, electronic devices, movies, music. Furthermore I encourage anyone who will listen (and all the people who trust me for their computer/electronics advice) to do the same.
The only way for them to get off my permanent ban list is to do a Donald Trump (publicly going "you're fired") to the people responsible for this, so that they serve as a stark reminder to anyone who ever considers doing something like it again.
$20 bucks in ripped MP3's this is just a social engineering attempt to drop another trojan on your machine.
Jesus christ what is wrong with people want murder die kill rawr....
Downloading music from the iTunes Music Store is *NOT* the only way to put music on the iPod, and anyone commenting on this story should fucking know that. Holy shit. Got an mp3 on your computer? Putting it in iTunes, and from there your iPod, is a matter of drag-and-drop. E-Z. Fucking morons.
Maybe these media giants will finally learn that?
Us Geeks know how to do some very cool stuff with media in our own homes with media servers, portables etc...
Just let us.
Dont worry, we'll see need to get the music and films somewhere. Most likely from the company that offers them at a fair price, without restrictions, and at the highest quality possible.
A good product is worth buying... as long as you're not trying to abuse the consumer.
These companies have been trying to control the consumer, when we the consumer know what we want... and we do not want to be told what to do with our media. We are intelligent enough to invent new ways, and we know what we want.
But they get it eventually if they're battered with a cluestick hard enough.
Here's my slashdot journal anti-drm rant from two years ago. Dead horse, me-too journal, yadda-yadda whatever.
It still holds for video, though. DRM'd content is toxic as far as I'm concerned.
Did they have to drag out the world's most notorious talking rectum to give the obvious quote? Could they not have Garnered similar insight from any shambling coke zombie on Wall Street?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
So the labels move away from Apple's iTunes Store, created to drive iPod sales, and move to other platforms that help them to reach iPod users. How exactly does Apple lose here?
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
But we saw the rise of the DRM protected content, and they were still doing lawsuit. Now they are dropping DRM protected content , and I don't think the lawsuit will continue forever.
Of course, the rest of the world is still screwed, because Amazon sells their digital music to the US only. I think you can expect that this DRM-free thingy is temporary until either
a) Apple agrees to license FairPlay to everyone else, or
b) WMA players gain market dominance (e.g through cell phones)
Since you seem to think about these issues carefully, I will try to argue similarly objectively here.
Before a start, let me explicitly agree with you that DRM doesn't really serve anyone's interests. Technologically, it doesn't work, or at least not 100%, which is what it would need to do its job effectively against "serious casual" infringement or professional pirates. In terms of market forces, it makes the legitimate copy of a work inferior to what someone could rip illegally from an on-line source, which is obviously not an incentive to buy the real thing. In terms of PR, the whole idea of trying to control content someone has already paid for so that it may not be used in ways that are otherwise legal is an own goal for Big Media.
That said, I respectfully suggest that your argument about whether content would still be produced in a different environment is based too much on absolutes. The world is not a binary system, where either content is produced and shared or it is not. There are issues of both quality and quantity, and each lies on a continuous, open-ended scale. There is a further issue of distribution, which is to say how many people benefit from any given work.
It is certainly true that artists have always made art. In particular, it is certainly true that some artists working on commission made a substantial amount of art before copyright existed, and it is also certainly true that some artists make and give away art today. Heck, I've done both myself.
The question I would ask you is: if we took the pro-piracy arguments to their logical conclusion and effectively abolished copyright, do you really believe there would not be a reduction in the quality, quantity and/or distribution of works?
I personally find that very hard to believe. If producing and sharing good works was as inherent in human nature as you seem to be suggesting, then would all these volunteer producers not be giving the world such works already?
If so, then where are the really great films from privately funded, independent producers? Sure, people have mentioned Clerks, but that's one film in several decades of film production, and however good it is, I doubt most people have ever heard of it anyway. Hollywood alone produces several blockbusters a year that millions find entertaining enough to pay to see them, even if any given person might prefer something more artsy and less based on a big name actor, special effects or whatever.
Where are the free TV dramas that people prefer to The West Wing or 24 or Lost? The sci-fi shows that more people enjoyed than Battlestar Galactica or Stargate — surely a world full of geeks so keen to volunteer their time must have produced one such work? The documentaries that beat Planet Earth?
What about light family entertainment, say Dancing with the Stars? I choose this example because it's slightly ironic: most of the professional dancers don't get paid that much considering the commitment they have to make to the show, and instead make their money by getting private teaching and demonstration gigs as a result of the publicity. That sounds a lot like it ought to undermine the copyright argument, by showing that good artists can make their money through one-off performances, but without the copyright framework that paid for the show in the first place, how many of those artists could have afforded to take four months out of their calendars speculatively? Pretty much none of them. And even without that, DWTS reaches millions of people, while all those follow-up performances reach only a few thousand combined, so the TV show is meeting the goal of sharing art more widely.
To give some other examples, where is the freely distributed book that entertains millions of children as Harry Potter has? Where are all the free textbooks good enough to use in schools — surely places that would much prefer to use high quality, low cost alternatives given their ty
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
to prove it was a failure. Now we're moving towards an era where you have to sell DRM-free music to compete. So it goes.
And to the critics who are going to flame me:
1. If you feel CDs have only one or two good tracks on them, then you're listening to the wrong music. It's that simple. Go & look for something new, you'll find it.
2. If you think CDs are too expensive, then buy online or in second-hand shops. A classic piece of music is usually worth every penny anyway, downloadable music is for "fashion fad" music designed to be thrown away after 6 months when something else more "cool" has come along.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
The rule of the majority in direct democracy, as you propose, must be rejected. For example, I suspect that we could get 50% of the people in a particular city to agree that the government should raid the car dealerships and give everyone a brand new car. But that doesn't make it right for that to happen. You're describing "might makes right", which is not the world I want to live in.
--
Educational microcontroller kits for the digital generation.
Capitalism is always banging about how great and good greed is.
But as soon as something that is infinitely reproduceable at very low cost is passed around freely by the proles, then all of the sudden we are told that to follow the path of less resistance based on greed is not good, it is immoral, blah, blah, blah.
Corollary: greed is good as long as you are not a poor sod without expensive lawyers.
In the real world you can't put exorbitant prices to a commodity. Bits in a piece of plastic is a commodity. The movie companies thought they had us by the proverbial little ones without realizing that going digital opened the era of plenty.
Now let me ask one question: would we worse off for not having movies costing $50m + ? I don't think so. "The life of others", winner of the Oscar to best foreign movie, was done with $1m , and it is immensely better than most dross out there.
So 2 things should happen:
1.- Movie executives should learn from the music ones: the public does not want to keep their extravagant habits, you will have to cut costs.
2.- The older distribution model may be dead. Come up with new ideas to make a profit understanding that the free sharing of bits is here to stay. 3D movies may be a start. But most likely services and patronage around movies will be the way forward. And I still want to pay for the cinematic experience, I am sure lots of people will continue to do so, so less reliance on DVDs and other digital distribution methods may become the norm (or not, I would gladly play for an easy way to put a movie in a format I can use freely on my hardware, *any* hardware I own).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Copyright infringement is the excuse to inconvenience the users.
DRM is a mechanism of control, all the bullshit about piracy is just a badly disguised attempt to make it palatable. ANd people don't like to be controlled and act in consequence.
The real issue here is the unrealistic expectation of companies going digital with their products, they want to embrace the advantages without any of the disadvantages. Have their cake and eat it as they say here in UKia.
And very often we are not talking about outright piracy, but just plain inconveniencing of costumers: why shouldn't I be able to buy a DVD, transfer easily its contents to my PC (Linux, Apple, Solaris, Windows, whatever) and from there to synchronize wiht my PDA, my mobile phone or my video player? And why shouldn't I be able to share the digital copy as long as there is no intent to profit from it?
This should be fucking seamless, it is not technically complicated, but instead of being provided with the tools to do this (at a reasonable price) I am interfered with at each step of the process. And even worst, the companies pushing this down our throats are perverting the deomcratic system by literally buying legislation for their nefarious ends (sorry, but I really don't remember when the popular clamour for DRM was first raised by the people in Western Democracies).
Sorry, but I sympathize with anybody that can't be bothered to follow the line, in spite of myself having decided to vote with my wallet as you suggest.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
<sarcasm> Right. And a real engineer just loves bridges. And a real teacher just loves teaching. And a real carpenter just loves building. None of them need to get paid for their work, or they are frauds.</sarcasm>
The fact is that passion for your work and needing a paycheck are not incompatible. I'd also argue that a real artist wants to devote most of his/her time to his/her art - not be stuck doing unrelated work 8 hours a day. It is this passion which drives the desire to make a living at artistic work.
Again, from a pragmatic point of view, most of the really great artists/musicians you can name have this in common: they made a living from their work. Therefore, they were able to devote most of their energy to doing what they loved, and we all benefit from their increased output.
Regardless of how the money gets made - sales, patronage, t-shirts, product placement, etc - it's odd to say that, just because a musician or moviemaker's work CAN be copied, and a carpenter's or sculptor's CAN'T, that therefore the musician or moviemaker SHOULDN'T be paid.
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries"
In the American consitutional system, copyright and patent prerogatives are a grant of grace from Congress ("The Congress shall have Power... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.") The whole thing could be abolished tomorrow, and it wouldn't infringe anyone's guaranteed rights in the slightest (whether it would be bad public policy is a separate question).
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Copyright would be an incentive if its terms were strict and short lived.
On it's current form is the abating of monopolistic practices payed for by media companies via political contributions (bribes by another name).
Homo Sapiens has existed for 200 000 years, give or take. We did perfectly fine for 199 600 or thereabouts without copyright. Hint: one of the traits of our success as a species was the sharing of ideas. Plenty of ideas developed without it, plenty more would have continue to develop because it is the way we are, we intrinsically want to do things and share them with others.
Copyright goes against the grain of normal human collaboration. That is fine, but as any social construct, it has to be fair in order to be acceptable.
People, without realizing or not, have the feeling that they are getting a raw deal and are acting in consequence.
Any abusive tax (because at the end that is what copyright is, in a natural state of things nobody would have to pay for using somebody else's ideas, people living in more primitive conditions simply don't have such a concept) will be opposed, worked around and avoided by any possible means by many people.
So is copying illegal? Well, maybe yes, but politicians are been bought to make things illegal. So is it immoral? The people are speaking by their actions, and they are saying it isn't.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You could as well are how art and science would develop if aliens landed or if we became pigs.
We can't know how people would decide to make money out of their creative talents in a copyrightless modern world.
Buit since you like speculation allow me to speculate, from examples in the past most likely works that are now copyrightable would be created via patronage of some kind.
So do you want a good book? Somebody powerful would commission it, but by somebody powerful I don't mean only rich people or corporations, unions or cooperatives of regular people could band together for this purpose.
Lets say JK Rolling would have released her first Harry Potter on the Net, people most likely would have liked it, and many would have requested that she writes a new one, to which she could have put a price *prior* to writing it. Or somebody interested in exploiting the book in new and different ways, could request a new book. Who knows, the possibilities are endless and people, driven by greed, would find ways to make money out of their creative talent.
As for the movies the process would be similar. Up to a point the process today is pretty similar: everybody and his dog knows what a big movie is all about, so people could pay in advance if they find the idea interesting. Or perhaps all would be advertised supported, in the way "this movie was brought to you by" etc. Perhaps the system would not give to finance $100 million blockbusters, but would we really lost that much if that was the case? I mean is not having Titanic and Jurassic Park really such a great loss?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Property is in principle irreplaceable. Give me the keys of your car. Now you have no keys (and maybe no car). That is property.
Now give me a good idea to share music. The Internet? Cool. Now you have the idea, I have it also, and I can pass it around. But you still have it.
Now, tell me how do you stop me sharing the idea, doing things with it, creating new ideas based on it. Well, the only way is creating a social construct enforced by the society.
Without that you can't do squat about it. Even giving me a beating (in the very remote case that you could survive my mad karate skills) would not extract the idea from my brain.
Once I have an idea it is mine, any social constructs that abuse the natural state of things are doomed to failure, because they only work if you and I accept that it is fair for you to profit from the idea having occurred first to you, but the moment you want to screw me (with outrageous claims about owning ideas for 100 years and stuff like that) then I will try to go back to my natural right of use any ideas as I see fit.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Lets see, 50 000 000 at 10 per head, you would need 5 000 000 people to fork a tenner in advance.
Is that unrealistic? I don't think so.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
What I meant to say was that they exhibited the characteristics of companies that are aggressively pursuing or maintaining a monopoly, which is why I used the term monopolistic.
That said, I could also argue that while it is true that they did not have the monopoly on computers, they did have the monopoly on hardware that would run Mac OS *. If they were to achieve a monopoly on home PCs (i.e. achieve market domination over the clones) we would have a huge problem with the price/performance. Apple would charge ever increasing premiums for PCs because they would be the only company that made them.
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
I was not calling LAME crappy, particularly the current VBR implementations. The key phrase was "at that time". And, at that time, Fraunhofer was better.
Nevermore.