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Chronicling the Failures of DRM
Barence takes us to PCPro for a look at the failures of DRM and a discussion of its impending death. Quoting:
"Luckily, DRM is dying, at least in the download sphere. Napster's Dan Nash believes that DRM-free is 'the general way things are going.' In his opinion, record companies 'have no choice but to adapt;' those that 'stick to DRM on a pay-per-download basis will not remain competitive.' In the US, Napster has joined Amazon in selling DRM-free content in MP3 format from all the major labels. ... Going DRM-free makes sense not just for consumers, but for the industry. Deutche Telekom says three out of four technical support calls its Musicload service had to deal with were the result of DRM. And when it offered a DRM-free option to artists they saw a 40% increase in sales."
It's spelled Deutsche Telekom, not Deutche.
They pretty much own the audiobook download market, and DRM has been an important part of their strategy from day one.
I'm pretty certain its what keeps getting them new titles to release. Book publishers aren't exactly keen on digital formats if they aren't protected from instant dissemination.
As for myself, well blow me if the drm doesn't 'fall off' within ten minutes of my purchases.
Not that I then share them, in spite of the horror stories spread by the drm producing companies.
I paid for them, and I don't see why anyone else should have them for nothing, it's just that I don't see why I should keep the drm around, restricting my ability to play them back on any device I choose when I am in all other respects abiding by the end user license.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
But before I get modded down as a troll, it's true: DRM turns your purchases into glorified (read: overpriced) rentals since the companies that so graciously allowed you to pay them to use their product can STOP you from using it any time, for little or no real reason (see: Mass Effect and BioShock's DRMs, Steam, the Yahoo! Music store debacle, Zune not "PlayingForSure" after all, etc.) And consumers may finally be getting fed up with be treated like the criminals - especially when the DRM-free pirated versions are vastly superior to our legitimate ones.
....is, it's about time.
The companies that are using DRM are finding concrete, solid evidence that people will pay if they STOP using DRM. The stereotypes of users that they felt were accurate, and reinforced by entities such as the MIAA and such, are, in fact, inaccurate, and now they can start taking that realization to the bank.
Common sense begins to prevail. Imagine that.
There are three things I want from an online music store.
So far the only store to do that was allofmp3.com, now mp3sparks.com. Sadly even when mp3sparks.com is up you have to travel some strange paths to fund your account. Magnatune.com has the right idea as well, but their catalogue is much more limited.
Loose lips lose spit.
It's about the cost. Most people would pay for legitimate music. But then again, when you have to pay for gas, rent, food, etc..., entertainment is way low in one's list of priorities.
If music was made more affordable and/or reasonable, it wouldn't be much of an issue, most people would pay, I'm sure of that.
The problem started off as "Music was too expensive" CDs where like up to 30$ a CD at one time during the peek years.
When the internet kicked in and the MP3 format was created, eventually download sites and peer-to-peer was the way to go for cheap (and free) music, so, obviously, the music industry lost revenues.
Instead of understanding and adapting their price model, they used DRM, and it made things worse.
So, it's coming full circle, they don't have much choice anyways. If they want to have a music industry, they have to work with the system and they need to adapt their pricing.
Basically, this is what's I've always understood about protection schemes in computing: It's made by man, it can be broken by man.
Copy protection and DRM will never work in the long run, there is always someone out there who can figure out how it is done and break it.
...as a matter of fact, this week.
Had a customer come in with a problem. His old computer was dying (hardware, bad capacitors on the MB), we copied his data to a new PC he purchased, set him up and out the door...
Boomeranged. seems he had audio files, some purchased, some of his own creation, in ATRAC format. Of course, he could not play them on his new PC. Seems that Sony recently dropped ATRAC and shut down their licensing servers, too.
Fortunately, we were able to resurrect his old PC, which was still in our boneyard, and run it long enough to export his DRM'ed files to WAV. Lost his meta-data, cost him a couple hundred $ in labor, but we got his stuff. He left happy, and we talked with him about DRM and how it hosed him.
When It Counts.
This is on topic: this is what DRM is like!
The thing I find most galling about DRM is that we've already been through the same thing, in the early 1980s, with the software "copy protection" wars.
Vendors of copy protection systems would sell their snake oil to software companies, the new uncrackable copy protection would get cracked within months of release, everyone who wanted warez could get copies, but the idealistic suckers who paid for theirs clogged support lines with problems, when the not-quite-standard disk formats turned out to be not-quite-compatible with many diskette drives.
On August 19, 1986, The New York Times reported that "At best, copy protection does nothing good for legitimate users and only annoys software pirates. At worst, it makes it difficult to install software onto a hard disk and to make backup copies that are vital if the original is lost or destroyed. It slows the performance of some programs and causes snarls in others. It can be a pain for networks of PC's hooked together to share data and peripherals. And, worst of all, there have been reports that some ''killer'' protection schemes have destroyed hard disk files, inadvertently or otherwise.... Software makers who have abandoned copy protection this year seem to be avoiding bankruptcy, and they have certainly gained goodwill. When the goodwill comes from big corporate buyers (including the Federal Government, which has refused to buy copy-protected software), it is likely that the losses from pirated software can be offset."
By the end of 1986, all major software publishers had abandoned copy protection, including the longest holdout, Lotus... but not before the failure of Lotus Jazz, a Mac program, which, according to John Dvorak, failed in part because its copy protection was too hard to break.
Why do we need to go through all this again? As the saying goes, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
What Apple has really done is they have killed DRM. Because they hold such a command on portable players (i.e., ipods) and they are the only ones that can provide legal music for their players, the record labels are forced to negotiate with Apple in order to have online sales. But with Apple it is their way or the highway - the labels don't like this. So in order to undermine Apple, the labels now offer DRM free music to other providers. The hope is that with multiple providers they will not have to worry about Apple forcing upon them term that they don't like.
It is because of DRM (or more specifically, DRM that they did not control) that the labels were forced to do this. You can bet that if they could do it all over again they would still use DRM, but it would be licensed for use with multiple retailers and devices.
It's funny - they force Apple to use DRM and now Apple has put them into a position where they have to allow non-DRM sales. Imagine if Microsoft won the format wars with their "plays for sure" format? We would all be stuck with it forever as it allowed for multiple different device manufacturers and music retailers.