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Will People Really Boycott Apple Over DRM?
Ian Lamont writes "DefectiveByDesign.org is waging a battle against DRM with a 35-day campaign targeting various hardware and software products from Microsoft, Nintendo, and others. On day 11 it blasted iTunes for continuing to use DRM-encumbered music, games, TV shows, movies, audiobooks, and apps with DRM, while competitors are selling music without restrictions. DefectiveByDesign calls on readers to include 'iTunes gift cards and purchases in your boycott of all Apple products' to 'help drive change.' However, there's a big problem with this call to arms: most people simply don't care about iTunes DRM. Quoting: 'The average user is more than willing to pay more money for hobbled music because of user interface, ease of use, and marketing. ... Apple regularly features exclusive live sets from popular artists, while Amazon treats its digital media sales as one more commodity being sold.' What's your take on the DRM schemes used by Apple and other companies? Is a boycott called for, and can it be effective?"
It will never be effective. The average Joe coulden't tell you what DRM stood for let alone boycott it.
No
What about the huge numbers happily using iTunes and an iPod to playback their MP3 collection? You don't have to buy your media from the ITMS...
Most internet users can't tell the difference between firefox and IE, it's unlikely they'll understand what DRM even is. Those who do understand DRM, probably never bought from the itunes store in the first place.
MABASPLOOM!
iTunes plus has been $.99 (same as iTunes minus) for quite a while now.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I, for one consumer, already have. I don't buy Apple products because of the DRM. Creative Zen MP3 player, Dell, and Fujitsu laptops, and Samsung i760 cellphone. My ex uses a Mac Mini. My best friend sweears by his iPhone and a couple Macs. Nice machines! Apple looks like a good OS but this danged DRM is the showstopper.
Bah! Come on Apple, lighten up. You seem to think all yer customers are sneaks and thieves, like Sam's or Best Buy.
"The average user is more than willing to pay more money for hobbled music because of user interface, ease of use"
Why should it be surprising that people are willing to pay for ease of use? it can mean the difference between actually being able to use something and not being able to.
Most people can't use most of most software.
Apple DOES offer iTunes Plus.
Yes, it is sold at a premium price.
No, it's not. It was when Apple introduced iTunes Plus, but now the DRM-free tracks are sold at the same price as those with DRM.
However, for those concerned about DRM, it at least affords an alternative that is higher quality and DRM free.
Unfortunately, still only part of the catalogue is offered as DRM-free tracks...
"Apple regularly features exclusive live sets"
I think this sort of thing prevents the uptake of Free Software in general. People want to be part of an "in crowd", and seek ways to believe it's true (eg. Da Vinci code, fashion, nerd snobbishness, etc). People will pay for this feeling, and I reckon it was used to help prop up the monarchies (and now demonarchies*).
I mean, how "exclusive" is a live set on iTMS? Anyone can buy it, right? This is where marketing comes in. Grass-roots arts and software producers don't want to come across as "here's some scones that my mad-great-aunt made (they make great hearth-stones), all proceeds to the parish..."
*typo intended, exscuse the piss-take ;-)
DefectiveByDesign would have better luck picking on Microsoft or some of the game publishers. Apple has managed to find the sweet spot between user freedom and DRM. Yes, Apple still uses DRM but it doesn't encumber a majority of Apple iTMS users.
Let's run through Apple's DRM:
I hate DRM as much as the next /'er but the above "restrictions" are pretty darn loose. When iTMS and its uber-convenience is added into the equation, Apple's DRM becomes a minor annoyance. Point-Click-Purchase? One-click purchases? Recommendations based on previous purchases? It becomes pretty easy to overlook the little bit of DRM that is involved.
I'm not an Apple fanboy either:
[me@mydesktop ~]$ uname -a Linux my.rhel.desktop 2.6.18-92.1.18.el5 #1 SMP Wed Nov 5 09:00:19 EST 2008 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
The average user is more than willing to pay more money for hobbled music because of user interface, ease of use, and marketing.
There is an escape from Apple's DRM: just burn tracks on music CD.
On other side, many companies really disregard the time. The time user has to spend on doing something silly and stupid. Apple was always good on removing the artificial barriers and negotiating compromise where it doesn't hurt users. (But it's not that Apple is clear on all DRM charges.)
From my personal experience, I would easily overpay for something what requires little of attention and just works. Though most of my friends prefer to spend time searching for better deal, spend time getting into the deal and then spend even more time trying to make it work in the end.
IMHO, good accessibility is also feature and I do not mind paying extra for it. Though you never find accessibility on official list of features.
Right now iTMS holds really little of advantage over other stores, so the point of RTFAs stands. Yet, now the time Apple invested into building user loyalty is simply paying back. iTMS competitors shoot themselves so many times in all the possible foots and they would need considerable time to gain the trust back.
P.S. And thanks to misleading **AA campaign many believe that Apple's DRM is norm of life. And that I believe is bigger problem.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
If only Amazon would sell MP3s to people who don't live in the US. Are the Canadian arms of the American music companies really that different?
I buy my music online from the likes of Magnatune and the "iTunes Plus" store (DRM-free, and higher-quality files than the regular iTunes store). When I can, I buy directly from the artists online.
Sure Apple is enabling idiotic behaviour from the music companies, but I'm not sure we should blame them; would the music companies have even allowed them to sell music without the DRM? You could show your "appreciation" for the DRM'd music by buying something from the iTunes Plus store...
- chrish
People don't care about DRM per se, they care about whether they can use what they buy any way they like.
In the case of music with DRM bought from the iTunes store: I can play it on my computer with no problems at all. I can burn it onto CDs without any problems at all. I can play it in my car (by copying it onto my iPod) without any problems at all. I can't give it away to friends to play on their computers (which would be illegal, which I might or might not care about, and I can give CDs with the music on them to friends, which is just as illegal, which again I might or might not care about), and I can't convert it to MP3 which would allow me to put it onto a cheap 4GB memory stick which can be played in many places, or onto a DVD which my DVD player can play.
Most computer users that I know would have no idea how to put _any_ music onto a memory stick or a DVD, so I don't think there is very much of a limitation at all. On the other hand, the music is easy to buy, and looking in other places is effort as well.
In the case of movie rentals, DRM might very much keep people from using a movie in the way the intend, but it's not in their way when they try to get what they paid for out of a movie (at least with the Apple store).
On the other hand, years ago I tried to buy some eBooks, which came with DRM. Paid for four books (but only a few Euros), had to download bloody Adobe eBook reader software, the software crashed during the download, and all in all I was able to read one of the four books I paid for. I don't dare thinking about what hoops I would have to jump through to make these books readable on my current computer. So in that case, DRM was most definitely in my way and kept me from giving them any more of my money for years. They now sell the same books in unprotected PDF files, which means I can read them on a Mac using Preview, and they will be usable forever.
So the summary: I am not going to boycott DRM if it is implemented well and I trust the company doing it. And if it is implemented badly, you don't need to ask me to boycott it.
1) The iPhone is the biggest selling single phone on the market, hell they've a 1/3 of the whole market with one device
Bullshit! They're nowhere close to 1/3 of the market. In 2007, over 1 billion cellphones were sold. Assuming a similar rate over the last year, we can compare that to Apple's iPhone sales (roughly 4 million) and it becomes evident that Apple has 0.4% of the market.
Even in the U.S, they only have around 5% of the market.
I think it's the U.S. touchscreen smartphone they've got 1/3 of the market of.
THIS! Defectivebydesign has shown themselves to be just another group of ill-informed asshats. Apple does not have control over whether or not they put DRM on music. The labels do. EMI has DRM-free tracks. So do a lot of indie labels. The other big three would need to greenlight DRM-free tracks for Apple to sell them. This has been known for a long time, but of course DBD chooses to ignore it in favor of sensationalist crap. DRM sucks, but they're blaming the wrong person here. Now, Apple has some DRM crap that's no fun, but they need to stick with stuff that's legit.
Well, it has, at least with me.
I got an AppleTV a couple of years ago, and I had a video iPod already. Of course, the first thing I did was buy a whole bunch of my favorite shows so that I could use the AppleTV kind of like a Tivo, sans commercials and at higher quality video.
I still have my AppleTV, but it didn't take long to exceed its capacity. So I started storing my television shows on my computer. A couple of computers (and iPods, for that matter) later, I've moved my stuff around so much and dropped and reauthorized stuff to the point where the shows I bought when I first got my AppleTV are, for all practical purposes, gone forever unless I want to re-buy them.
So nowadays, I buy all of my stuff on DVD, period, and I rip it to my computer. I put the discs away forever, and I can watch it on anything I want any time I want. If I get a new computer, I copy the files over, I'm done. No reauthorization, no fuss, no chance of losing my stuff or having to re-rip them. Don't get me wrong, I still love my AppleTV. I rent movies on it once a week or so, and I watch a lot of the stuff I rip on it. I just don't buy video media from Apple iTunes any more.
Apple has always been a master of ease-of-use. I just think it's a shame that they, along with other companies in whose vested interest it is to make things as easy for the consumer as possible, can't use their retail power to shed all of this silliness. The technical capability is there for any video or song that you buy from Apple or anyone else to be extremely easily portable and transferrable. If they made it so, would piracy go up? Sure, no doubt. But you know what else would go up? Sales. And isn't that really the goal?
The reason BitTorrent and other illegal means of acquiring video and music is so popular is because it fills a gap that Apple and other RIAA/MPAA-colluding companies never will be able to, the ability to let people watch what they want, where they want. I'm sure the "free" thing is a factor too, but really, for me, it's not. If Apple announced tomorrow that they were dropping DRM on all music and all video, they'd have a loyal customer for life, and I would spend gobs of money in their store. As it is, though, they're losing my business to stores like Amazon.com that sell all DRM-less music and physical DVDs.
Acknowledging DRM is bad to the core, there are just economical and business factors that can't be overcome in a single step from DRM to DRM-free. iTunes is doing a good job bridging the gap, providing a fair comparison between tracks that are protected and tracks that are not. It's also getting around or minimizing MOST of the problems that DRM causes. iTunes right now is the most consumer-friendly form of DRM available.
It's unreasonable to assume in any debate that the other side is just going to toss up its arms and say I GIVE UP YOU WIN and concede the world. That's what this "defectivebydesign" group is trying to achieve, and it's never going to work that way.
iTunes is probably the best thing going for the anti-drm movement right now, and that I mean even above non-drm music. It's easing the music industry into free music at a pace it's willing to go. It's something that the consumer can tolerate, and something the industry can tolerate. Right now, drm-free isn't something the industry can tolerate, and drm-lockdown isn't something consumers will tolerate.
The consumers will never accept lockdown, but the industry eventually should accept fredom of format. Just need to give it some time in the middle with things like iTunes to make them warm up to it.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Way back in the Napster days, I told several people that my threshold for paying for downloaded songs was $1 per track. Dang if Apple didn't do just that. I've actually bought tracks off iTunes rather than find an old CD that I own and rip it myself...very similar to the way I used to use Napster. My opinion: iTunes is a good service, the price is right, and the DRM doesn't interfere with my particular use of the product.
Evil is the money of root.
You can deauthorize all of your machines and then re-authorize the one's you actually use: About iTunes Store authorization and deauthorization
And it seems silly to boycott a company that provides the most easy to use DRM and is working to phase it out as fast as the labels will work with them: iTunes Store: iTunes Plus Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Some privacy policy Slashdot.