Big Music vs common sense
p2pnet.net News:- The tide is slowly turning against the entertainment industry.
More and more mainstream media stories are questioning the approach of the major record label and movie studio cartels to the `problem` of file sharing, a ‘problem’ they created in the first place by refusing to acknowledge they`re in the digital 21st century and not the physical 1990s.
A lot of attention has been focused on Apple / Steve Jobs, on the one hand, and public-spirited hackers Jon Lech Johansen, Travis Watkins and Cody Brocious on the other.
The former`s iTunes has a DRM application which locks up ‘product’. So the latter developed PyMusique a free alternative iTunes interface which lets people download songs without restriction, and play them anywhere.
As new media pioneer Bill Thompson wrote:
The result is that you pay Apple the money, but in return you get a digital music file that can be freely copied, burned to CD or streamed over wireless networks to speakers around your house.
Instead of having to accept the limitations that Apple has placed on what you can do with the music you have purchased, you can use your own judgment as to what is fair and legal.
Apple does not like this, as one might expect, and it has quickly moved to block the first release of PyMusique from working by making everyone use only the latest release of iTunes when shopping.
Jon and his friends figured out how to get around this” and a working version of PyMusique was released within a few hours, to be snapped up by disgruntled iTunes users.
Who can blame them? asks Andrew Kantor in his USA Today column. By adding restrictions to music, Apple is going against decades of an understanding between music makers and music buyers.
Imagine buying a music CD at the mall, bringing it home, and playing it on your stereo. Then you play it on your car’s CD player driving to work. But when you get there and pop it into the little player on your desk, you hear a voice say, `We’re sorry, but you are only authorized to play this disk on up to two CD players. You have now exceeded that. Thank you`.
And that`s the size of it. But Apple isn`t alone in forcing DRM digital rights management down customers` throats, even though the concept is patently ridiculous.
If you can see it or hear it, you can copy it by one means or another. End of story. But, That’s exactly how iTunes and most of the other legal online music service work, says Kantor.
When you pay for and download a song, it comes with various built-in restrictions. Maybe you can only pay it while you’re subscribed to the service. Maybe you’re limited to playing it on certain machines. Maybe you can’t copy it to other media (say, a CD to play in your car).
And people wonder why music piracy is so rampant.
He also makes another excellent point:
[...] the music industry, led by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), forgot a key phrase of capitalism: What the traffic will bear. Clearly the market didn’t bear $15 CDs with one or two good songs. As soon as an alternative was available, people jumped. That it happened to be a free alternative only helped, and that it happened to be an illegal alternative didn’t matter.
Kantor says the industry was incredibly slow to catch up, but finally embraced – in a tentative, distant-cousin-at-the-wedding sort of way – services such as iTunes and Napster (v.2.0).
Both are doing well, but neither is doing as well as the peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, even though music from those is likely pirated, and downloaders are likely lawbreakers.
Actually, far from doing well, Apple has only just begun to break even, and Napster is floundering.
The p2p networks, on the other hand, are thriving and one of the reasons is: although the Big Music cartel may have ‘embraced’ cerrain ’services,’ they’ve done so as if it was an arranged wedding they wanted no part of.
They made that clear by charging 65 to 75 cents wholesale for each track, and they even want to increase it. This means services such as iTunes and Napster couldn’t charge a fair and reasonable price, even if they wanted to.
Very few people are going to pay $1 for an mp3 that’s fundamentally worth only a few cents.
The music industry seems clueless, or at best stuck in the 1980s, Kantor goes on
They seem unaware of what the traffic will actually bear. They are suing their users. (Yes, they’re suing pirates. But those pirates are also the people who support their artists, buying everything from T-shirts to concert tickets, and yes, music.)
The RIAA’s empty-headed, heavy-handed approach to business continues, and consumers will continue to get the shaft. Adding insult to injury, Orrin Hatch, the Utah senator who once suggested remotely destroying the computers of people suspected of pirating music (due process, schmue process) is now head of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Intellectual Property.
And his conclusions nicely sum things up.
Unfortunately, it’s a battle everyone is losing,” he declares. “Music sales are falling. Teenagers are facing jail. Music lovers are stuck with either restrictive licenses or taking the pirate’s way out.
But until the RIAA wakes up – as well as their brethren at the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) – this is what we’re stuck with.
Yo-ho-ho.
(Thanks, Ted)
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<-----Computers will never replace human stupidity-—->
See:-
USA Today – Hard to lower pirate flag while legal alternatives still lacking, March 25
March 27th, 2005 at 9:29 pm
Just to be fair –
Apple had to go with the DRM terms that the RIAA would allow them to get away with. Without DRM, the RIAA would rather not sell through iTunes, and there wouldn’t be enough of a catalog to make an iTunes Music Store worthwhile.
I’m not saying that it’s the way it should be — it’s just how it is now.
March 27th, 2005 at 9:30 pm
Your sources had a few errors that caught my eye. I agree with the general premise that the music industry is viewing this problem with analog eyes. Despite illegal file sharing the industry isn’t being significantly hurt. Despite incresing legal downloads their CD sales increased last year despite the article’s comment.
Another problem was citing Apple as initiating their DRM restrictions. Their DRM was required by the industry to enable a web site distribution in the first place. Apple worked hard to convice them that it’s more flexible DRM was acceptable. If Apple removed it or didn’t attempt to block those circumventing it the industry would withdraw their music from Apple’s site, period! Besides, Apples DRM allows unlimited CD buring as long as new playlists are created. It also allows broadcasting your songs which is used intesely within college dormitories.
Robert Boylin
March 27th, 2005 at 9:54 pm
As everybody knowsâor should knowâthe DRM is a contractural condition forced on Apple as well as other on line music stores by the music lables in order to sell their music. That Apple has no desire to license their DRM to other music stores is within their rights.
Disableing the DRM by hackers for their own purpose could eventuallyâif allowed to continueâput Apple in a possition of loosing the ability to sell any music from ITunes.
Loosing Itunes as a source of music simply to inflate some geeks ego is not something I care for and I’m sure there are millions of music buyers who share my sentiment.
I hope that Apples lawyers can find a way of disableing DVD Jons ability to create havoc as well as that of any other juvenile idiots.
March 28th, 2005 at 1:57 am
We would all pay a few cents for our choice of music.
We want to same choice as we have always had. You buy CD’s and you pick out your best tunes, burn them onto a compilation and play them or share with your friends.
Everybody has always done it just like everybody has always copied movies and series off TV.
The RIAA and MPAA have gotten greedy and seen a way to force more restrictions on everyone than existed before – long may they fail to achieve their goals.
Reference Apple – They should be praised for taking a risk and launching ITunes. Long may it be a big success.
Instead of DRM – why doesn’t the copywrite holder get a user registered when they pay for music and hence they have a lifetime license for as many personal copies on as many different formats as they want – what’s so bad about that. If I have a legal license for a single or album then I can feel good about it being mine for fair use and the RIAA can feel good that i have paid for it. This would also allow me to then transfer that right if I chose to sell it just like selling a old unwanted CD and the new owner can register it.
March 28th, 2005 at 2:37 am
for(i=0; i < 1000, i++) printf(”thank you usa today\n”);
March 28th, 2005 at 8:37 am
“I hope that Apples lawyers can find a way of disableing DVD Jons ability to create havoc as well as that of any other juvenile idiots.”
I count you as one of those juvenile idiots.
March 28th, 2005 at 9:28 am
We’d all pay a few cents for music? Yeh and we’d all pay a few dollars for a ford motor car, shame its the market and not people who don’t really want to pay for the commodity they’re abusing that set the price for things.
March 28th, 2005 at 9:29 am
Just hearing your view does not make balance. How about these people explaining how taking someone’s property amounts to anything other than stealing?
March 28th, 2005 at 10:29 am
DRM is not there to protect the artist, it is only there to protect the Distributors/Suppliers Ass, so that they make more sales.
The artist when they sing in a concert, they do not give a pair of headphones to the audience so that who payed the most would hear all the concert, and who payed less would hear less songs!.
Wheter p2p is used for illegal purposes or wheter its used to encourage and flourish a more broad,larger,vast music catalog, for anyone to hear is something, which is not central to this story.
The moral of the story is this here, DVD Jon,this time in a certain way is breaking the law, because lets admit it, the people who are paying for ITUNES are not the technological type (90% of them), and I believe most of them,they just found ITUNES preinstalled on their computer,so they have not heard about Phywhatever. And what I meant by the last sentence, is that these “donkeys”, will accept whatever Apple will offer them, even if e.g. Apple only let them hear the song once only once, they will accept it.
But DVD Jon is giving a message to a the Distributors/Suppliers conglomerates, that they are not the Pharohs of the digital world, anymore. Now the mere mortals are powerful also, and as the Roman, Engyptian and any other empire fell, the same will happen to these Companies/Corporations, IF they does not decide to play ball, and give more choices to their customers, etc.
March 28th, 2005 at 4:58 pm
If the Music artel withdraws permission for Apple to sell its product, then ITunes customers will simply turn to peer to peer networking causinf not only Apple to lose money but also the cartels. Us geeks give the consumer a chance to become a customer again. We do not get paid money to do this. We get paid by the sense of accomplishment for writing good code. I am glad that for a change, smarts can win out over big money. I am glad that finally, the average person will be in control of what he or she is willing to pay for music.
I do not buy the argument that peer to peers is killing music sales. But if it is, then the music cartels obviously should change the price of their music to what the customers are willing to pay. Even if the argument that peer to peer is killing the music business is true, I’m glad. I am sick of all the smut I see on the telly and hear on the radio. I enjoy the clean sound that comes from many indie musicians. If the cartels are weakened enough, then maybe the indies will have a chance to compete.
I personally would like to see code added to LimeWire that would give an address or paypal account number of the artist so that those who want to pay for their music could have a way of transferring the money. It would be great if money could be transfered anonymously as well for the legal protection of the buyer.
March 28th, 2005 at 5:12 pm
What property was taken? None. When a CD or cassette is bought, the ownership is transferred to the customer. If I bought a dog and a bitch from a breader, am I legally required to pay money to the breader whenever the bitch produces puppies? NO I AM NOT.
Copies of music are the offspring of the originally puchased CD (dog and bitch). I own the music just like I own the animals. And if someone takes away the puppies my bitch produced, then they are the ones stealing. The same would apply if I stole the bitch from the breeder or if I stole the CD from the record store.
Ironically, it is the policy of the governments and cartels to demand a greater penalty from someone who downloads a copy than from a thief who steals from a record store. Imagine a breeder prosecuting a customer for selling or giving away puppies. Absurd, isn’t it. Cyberscan
March 28th, 2005 at 5:49 pm
not really… it’s called price setting. And in the past with no other choices, people paid the price. Now there are choices.
March 28th, 2005 at 10:59 pm
Come on guys – waken up.
MP3 sucks from an audiophile point of view
Why would you pay for a sub-standard product ???
Isn’t the industry always looking to increase fidelity ?? i.e. DVD-Audio.
Unless they make the swap to Loseless codecs (which don’t have DRM at present I think) I would not even dream of buying a song online, which is potentially 1/8 of the quality of the CD (which is pretty poor also)
Long live Vinyl !!!!
March 29th, 2005 at 2:35 am
I see the shills are here.
Most of the “comments” here are being made by people employed by various companys being discussed.
YOU are part of the problem you know. maybe if you all got off your lazy asses and did a real job instead of feeding the bullshit machine people might care about your companys financial well being.
At the very least you wouldnt be such wastes of space.
March 29th, 2005 at 11:32 am
I’ll takes the pirates way to getting music f**k the RIAA, They are complaining about music sales dropping, well they are the reason it.
March 30th, 2005 at 8:13 pm
Is it just me….or are all the music companys printing the cds making the most money…..and artists get the least. I wonder why all the artists try to start their own label :X
March 30th, 2005 at 8:39 pm
heh