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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.'"
So when will the drop DRM for video? When will I be able to rip a DVD in iTunes and put it on my iPod?
One step at a time. This is a good step but not the last I hope.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
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
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.
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.
Too much of the world owns iPods. The iPod does not support any DRM system other than the one Apple controls. If Sony wants to sell music that these people can buy, they have 2 choices- release as a DRM-free format, or roll over and sell on the ITMS on Apple's terms. There are no alternate electronic music stores that can be used as leverage when negotiating with Apple, and there are no alternate playback platforms that would make cutting out the iPod audience a serious option.
The music industry lost the chance to dictate the future direction of media formats because Apple has done it already. The only feasible ways to release electronic music now are the ITMS, plain MP3, and plain AAC.
With the rise of e-commerce and it's new sales methods, is there any reason not to think that a lot of shopping in the future will be like using eBay? Sports teams and event venues are already experimenting with it, since ticket brokers have shown that they can take more profit on popular events than the organizers themselves. Will we see this sort of thing for initial releases of future products? Say, instead of Nintendo doling out Wii consoles to retailers while supplies are short, hungry buyers bid on them directly from Nintendo?
Apple's reluctance to allow variable pricing does seem weird. Why not do it? The only reason I can think of is the extreme price sensitivity of online shoppers. Even just a small increase in one song over another may result in increased piracy at the most or lowered customer satisfaction in the least, but who knows? It seems like such an easy thing to try out to determine the price elasticity of songs and videos based on their ever-changing popularity. Change prices each week based on ratings and expected purchase volumes. Even just a few cents change can add up.
Actually, the whole thing is kinda scary and may be subject to price discrimination laws, but IA soo NAL.
Such an idea would work if they were to create a limited supply of the content. That's why it works with venue tickets, hardware and the like. There is only so much available, so consumers compete for it. With digitally distributed content, there is no such limitation.
Now if Amazon started a new program where they would only release x copies of a song a day at a starting bid of 1 dollar, and people had the option of bidding to try to get one that day, or to wait until the next day to bid. Yes, there might be a market for such thing. And prices would likely be high to start as everyone tries to get the latest greatest and they would tapper off as more and more of the demand is satisfied.
But in reality, such a system would bomb horribly. People who are buying music online usually want to listen to that music right away, so having to bid and wait until the end of the bidding cycle to get the music would turn off a huge portion of your clientel. Not to mention that the purposeful limitation of content for which you are the soul distributor of when no limitation is required could lead to some form of legal liability or monopoly rulings.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
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.
Labels have decided that temporarily, dropping DRM is better than Apple's terms...
The odd thing is that when you read the executives of the big 4 complain about Apple, what you hear about is how Apple's DRM isn't strict enough and their prices are too low. So their solution, apparently, is to move to a company with no DRM and even lower prices.
As a consumer, I'm not complaining. Still, it seems strange, and I haven't heard anyone come up with an explanation that satisfies my curiosity. What's the plan here? Run Apple out of the business? Then what?
No. No pirating necessary.
I'll use Sony as an example. When a client comes in, engage the standard /. rant on Sony. There's MORE than enough material there to hurt their bottom line without a single CD/DVD rip. Remember, folks, people many times trust our decisions on technical matters. If you tell 'em that Sony's not a brand to buy {and why}, many times they'll take that as gospel. Let 'em know where the problem is and why... they'll listen.
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
Here's the thing: copyright is a balance between the insanity of allowing ideas to be owned, and the insanity of few people creating art because we need to eat.
Here's the thing: it's nothing like that at all.
Copyright is primarily an economic tool. It provides an incentive for people to create and share new works.
Arguments like yours are put as if the alternative to copyright is a world where all the same works are created and shared freely, as if you can eat your cake and have it too. But the problem is, most of the time, you can't. It takes time, skill and often significant amounts of cash to make worthwhile works. If you don't provide a sufficient economic incentive for people to make that commitment ahead of time, the alternative is that you don't get most of the work at all.
So, reality check, please. The amount of work created and shared under the current incentive scheme, regardless of its flaws, is vastly greater than either the amount of work created and shared on a voluntary basis today, and than the amount of work any given member of society had access to under the old work-for-hire economics of yestercentury.
In this context, the idea of a temporary control over the distribution of a work (which isn't really ownership, of course) isn't insane at all. In fact, it's no more insane than actual ownership of real, physical property: it's a legal convention, which society by and large adheres to because on balance it's in society's interest for everyone to do so. Heck, the same is true of just about any law, for that matter, particularly any law related to economics. Copyright is no different and no more artificial.
Unfortunately, the content creators don't feel the need to honor the deal--they just want to own the ideas outright, forever and ever. I don't particularly blame them--everyone's always looking out for number 1--but the fact remains that they're violating it every time they ask for extensions.
It's not unreasonabe to wonder why one side should agree to a deal that the other side is violating.
That's just one big straw man. We're not talking about copyright extensions here, we're talking about DRM and the ethics of piracy. And right now, give or take the current imbalance between fair use doctrine and technological protections (which is recent and mainly confined to the US), the use of DRM doesn't inherently break any part of the deal and piracy clearly does.
For the avoidance of doubt, I don't like DRM. I think it sucks for everyone involved, and I'm not at all sorry to see the back of it. I've been arguing for some time that it was dead and just didn't realise it yet, but also that things had to get bad enough for significant numbers of people to get stung and become aware of the issue before things would start to improve. But using DRM isn't in itself a violation of the basic principle of copyright.
The key is that it has nothing to do with the content. A boycott is generally useful for when you don't like what someone is saying, or even how they're saying it. Copyright is a weird beast that really doesn't fall into either of these areas.
I'm sorry, but I don't see how your concluding paragraph even makes sense, and I don't see how any possible interpretation I can think of is necessarily true.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Copyright is not an incentive for people to create and share works. You should put the flavor-aid down.
Before copyrights and the concepts of IP, people were creating & sharing works. People naturally have a tendency to create, sharing is more of a cultural thing.
Copyright is there is enrichen the public domain(and thus human culture) by granting the author exclusive distribution rights for a limited time.
Copyright is basically a social contract between authors and society. Copyright has been perverted and no longer benefits society. It has become too one sided.
Is it really any surprise for the party being ripped off in the social contract, to start to disregard the social contract?
DRM is an under the table extension of copyright terms by the author both in length of the copyright and removal of the end user rights.
DRM doesn't know when a work's copyright expires, so this effectively puts the work under an never expiring copyright.
DRM also limits what the end user can do with the work; e.g. time or media shifting.
DRM and piracy both break the social contract of copyright. Kettle meet Pot.
If you get a chance spend some time hanging out with groups of artists(little kids, music, writers, coders, actors, etc). They're naturally creating stuff all the time, some good, some bad.
If the govt becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law, it invites man to become his own law, it invites anarchy
Unfortunately this has NOTHING do with those idiots at all. Not even remotely.
The MafIAA is funded in part by the record labels, but it does not specifically have anything to do with DRM being implemented by said record labels.
The MafIAA is only defending the copyrights owned by those labels from infringing use by the public at large. Just another TOOL (used by tools themselves. lol) that the labels use to beat us into submission. Getting rid of the DRM, just got rid of another tool that Sony could use to enforce their will on us all.
Sony did NOT have an epiphany after some hard soul searching and decide to stop deep dicking all of their customers with DRM. They made a business decision to protect shareholders interests. They certainly have not stopped funding the MafIAA and will continue to use them. Even if all of our music becomes DRM-less, the MafIAA will still come after those that are sharing it on Kazaa or some other type of P2P that has a shared folder in its implementation. That's how they found that guy, who famously, created the shitstorm surrounding the, "You can't RIP CDs" scandal.
I got some bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad news for you too. When the MafIAA DOES finally go away, it will ONLY be because they finally bribed enough US Senators to enact laws far more reaching and scary then the universally hated DMCA.
It's all profit driven remember? When they get their DRM transferred into actual LAWS that allow them to do what they want, why would they need to still spend money on the MafIAA? They will just refer infractions to the local district attorney.
What's scarier than the MafIAA? The Department of Intellectual Property Protections (DIPP). Invading your ISP's and personal machines to search for content. Guilty before proven innocent AND at risk of having your property seized and auctioned off.
This is a slow evolution to an inevitably terrible final solution. It's like watching Skynet becoming self-aware and launch the missiles, or abusing antibiotics till the superbug ravages the planet. Judgment Day is coming and it will have far more reaching effects on us all. When all is said and done we will WISH for the days of easily bypassed DRM, and happy days of P2P.
Can we stop them? Probably not. I have not seen a single instance in which the citizens have had their rights and interests win over the VERY WELL LOBBIED rights and interests of major corporations, the military industrial complex (it does exist outside of the X-Files), and Government control freaks.
I'm actually worried by this. What is up Sony's sleeves? I cannot possibly believe they had a real change of heart. They deliberately lost a battle, but how do they still plan to win the war?
Lets ALL remember these are the PEOPLE who brought us the ROOTKIT. People that dishonorable, unethical, and just pure EVIL.
Almost everything you do would be unrealistic if everyone chose to do the same.