Posted on - January 27, 2004 [at] 4:10 pm by Brad
Tagged in - link
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Here’s a good ranty call to arms by Cory Doctorow regarding Digital Rights Management on digital media. The basic gist is that DRM sucks and people shouldn’t be complacent and allow it to creep in.
As my album is now on iTunes I guess I can weigh in on the subject. I personally can’t imagine why anyone would want a restricted copy of my songs and I can’t imagine buying stuff with DRM on it and not busting it wide open just for the security. I wouldn’t buy a CD that could only play in one or two CD players so I don’t know why I’d buy media that behaves the same way.
That being said, if it turns out that consumers are A-OK with DRM and I once again am just an outsider nerd who’s fussy about things most normal people don’t care about, then I guess that’s okay too. Brad the music buyer will probably continue to resist, but Brad the musician probably can do nothing but benefit from this dumb imposed barrier.
Cory wants DRM dead and I don’t blame him. Microsoft and Apple want their brands of DRM to succeed and I don’t blame them either. I’m just interested to see what happens. If I had to bet, I’d bet on DRM becoming commonplace but with a huge underground that happily violates it.
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12 Comments on this post
Rob F on DRM
January 27, 2004 at 6:06 pm
Brad, I followed the link and it didn’t seem to link to the right rant. It’s a blog belonging to Robert Scoble who says, among other things, that there’s DRM, and then there’s *DRM.* That is, you lock yourself in to DRM when you buy Apple’s version of music, but oh-ho, not when you buy yourself a walloping amount of choice with Windows Media (Scoble works for Microsoft).
Certainly is ranty, though.
Congrats on getting your songs onto iTunes, by the way.
Brad on DRM
January 27, 2004 at 11:34 pm
That’s what I get for experimenting with Movable Type front-ends. Should be fixed now. Cory’s rant was in reply to the Scoble rant.
Adam Lasnik on DRM
January 28, 2004 at 6:18 am
I already noted this on Scoble’s recent entry, but I suppose it bears repeating: DRM is not here to stay, Corey’s rants aside.
Those intent on breaking the DRM for nefarious purposes (sharing their purchased tunes with their 500,000 closest KaZaA’ian friends) can easily… EASILY break the DRM on both AAC and WMA today.
Those less technically-savvy people who are — imagine this — the recording industry’s key constituency are contrastingly stuck with pain-in-the-ass DRM’d files, and are quite likely pissed about it. It’s a lose-lose proposition long term for the recording industry and — as even one of the RIAA lawyers conceded in a chat with me — DRM is not likely to be around indefinitely.
With that said, I wish MS had used its 100 ton gorilla status to basically give the finger to the entertainment industry and tell them where they could stick their DRM fetish. Alas, it was not to be. Yet.
MikeXpop on DRM
January 28, 2004 at 6:22 am
Hmm. I’m looking now at your iTunes page, and while it’s fancy, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to buy your music there.
I mean really. I’d be paying $0.99 for a version of something I could download free off your website legally. Not only that, it’d be a lower quality file that would be crippled with DRM. Not to mention they’d be in AAC, so anyone with a non-AAC mp3 player would be out of luck unless they want AAC x MP3 compression, or a .wav filesize.
Or I could pay $10 for the album. There’s so much wrong with this I’m not quite sure where to start. For $10 I get to download 12 of your songs with said crippling DRM. Or I could download all of those off your website for free legally. If I wanted you to benefit from the situation financially, there’s a nice shiney paypal button on the right column. Or if I wanted to buy something from you, the entire CD with shipping is $5.
You said, “…but Brad the musician probably can do nothing but benefit from this dumb imposed barrier.” All I can say is, how? DRM is fine for the boys of Metallica who are well known and well bought enough that they need DRM to prevent their music getting out. You’re a little less known. Say you didn’t have those mp3′s for free at your site, and I happened to find you via iTunes. Say I bought the album and really like it. Now I have DRM’d copies I can’t share with anyone. I can’t share them over p2p applications, and I can’t FTP them to my friends to listen to. Because of this, you’re losing a larger audience. An audience which may very well would have boughten your music.
Hmph. Well, okay. I’m done my minirant.
-Mike
Mark Gardner on DRM
January 28, 2004 at 10:58 am
I think CD Baby is also supposed to be getting your music on AudioLunchbox.com, which sells unprotected MP3 and Ogg Vorbis files. That sounds more like the way to go.
thegreathal on DRM
January 28, 2004 at 1:14 pm
I guess no one here will be buying this on iTunes. However, having anything up there is quite badass, and certainly professional / will get your name out.
Brad on DRM
January 28, 2004 at 8:35 pm
> Hmm. I’m looking now at your iTunes page, and
> while it’s fancy, I can’t imagine anyone wanting
> to buy your music there. I mean really. I’d be
> paying $0.99 for a version of something I could
> download free off your website legally.
You’re assuming every person who sees my music on iTunes will make it back to my site and see that there’s a cheaper, nicer alternative. But that’s just not the case. And as I said in my DRM post, I can’t imagine why anyone would want restricted versions of my songs, but maybe they don’t care.
> You said, “…but Brad the musician probably can
> do nothing but benefit from this dumb imposed
> barrier.” All I can say is, how?
>
> I can’t share them over p2p applications, and I
> can’t FTP them to my friends to listen to.
> Because of this, you’re losing a larger audience.
> An audience which may very well would have
> boughten your music.
Well, I’m working from the assumption that I’m going to keep on doing pretty much what I’m doing already, ie. releasing DRM-free MP3s and CDs. In which case I can happily play both sides. I can give out and sell my music so that it’s easy for people to distribute and also throw my junk on iTunes where people who have no issue with DRM or inclination to look elsewhere for music can pay twice the price for my album. It may be stupid, but I can’t deny that that benefits me.
Bingo on DRM
March 30, 2005 at 9:09 am
I recently subscribed to Napster’s To Go monthly service as I liked the idea of ‘Try Before You Buy” and playing music (albeit only 128Bits/Sec) on my Hi-Fi at home. Of course having tried to play DRM WMA files on my KiSS player, I have realised the error of my ways. Napster (aka Roxio), Microsoft and Apple all have a monopoly on the world’s digital media. Subsequently I am joining forces to petition the EU Commission and Washington, as the companies must not allowed to have a monopoly and, more importantly, must not be allowed to suffocate the music and media industries. These companies are going the right way to alienate themselves still further. The public should not have to use Windows Media Player and should certainly not be FORCED to adopt one company’s media file format (ie. WMA). Competition is about choice not a world of dictators.
Does anyone know of any other rights campaign activities in this field in Europe and/or North America.
Regards,
Scott on DRM
May 2, 2005 at 3:34 pm
Want to see the future of drm?
http://need-name.com/drm/
Scott
Allison on DRM
June 5, 2005 at 4:35 pm
I HATE DRM!!!