p2pnet - rss feed: DRM, The Dream
p2p news / p2pnet:- A while back, it’s too soon to predict how DRM is going to affect people who use iPod and iTunes, said Michael McGuire, research director for GartnerG2.
But he also went so far as to say it could prompt some to stop buying CDs and go online for their music purchases
Quoted in the Mercury News, “Are these people likely to write angry letters to the editor or to Sir Howard, registering disgust?” – he asked rhetorically, referring to Sony’s new chief executive, Howard Stringer.
“No. They’ll find it somewhere else.”
But it doesn’t really matter either way. iTunes exists only in the Never-Never Land of corporate online music where a small band of loyal, dedicated people pay $1 and more for lossy, compressed music tracks peddled by the Big Four music label cartel.
The Mercury story treats DRM as though it really exists: as though it’s possible to stop people from using one of the many available on- and offline analog or digital techniques to copy what they can see or hear, no matter what it is or where it comes from.
Because what’s at issue is ‘casual piracy,’ “a practice that surpasses Internet file-sharing as the single largest source of unauthorized music distribution,” says the story.
The rest of it is a long, colourful description of all the marvellous technoligies that are available to the cartels to protect their product.
Cough, cough.
If you want to see what DRM is really all about, check out the EFF’s (Electronic Frontier Foundation) The Customer is Always Wrong here, or our re-publication here.
If there’s something you think we should know, contact us - tips[at]p2pnet.net
See:-
Mercury News - Music industry eyes `casual piracy’, August 31, 2005
September 3rd, 2005 at 3:31 am
DRM won’t work. Someone will simply crack it, and release the code. Then someone else will incorporate the code into easy to use software. Then the rest of the public will use the software, without knowing there was DRM in the first place.
Simply won’t work. Why won’t the MPAA / RIAA try producing quality products at reasonable prices. Sure, they won’t make extravagent money like suing their customers — but, they’ll be making an ‘honest living.’
September 4th, 2005 at 6:08 pm
It is always important to analyze DRM from the perspective of 3 different classes of people.
Technically sophisticated lawbreakers — DRM has no affect on them as the “key” to unlock any DRM encoded content is always within any “authorized device” (the DRM player). If they are willing to break copyright law to copy/distribute the work without permission, making it illegal to extract the key without permission has no meaning. There isn’t any magic here — a “lock” can’t protect against someone who has easy access to the key.
Technically unsophisticated lawbreakers — DRM has no affect on them as each piece of content only needs 1 out of 6.5 billion people to be a “technically sophisticated lawbreaker” who is then willing to distribute the DRM-free files that result. For the rest of the population they are just sharing DRM-free files just as if DRM never existed in the first place.
Law abiding citizens — DRM ties the enjoyment of legally purchased digital content (DVD’s, so-called “legal downloads”, e-Books) to the purchase and use of specific “authorized access tools” (devices, software, services, whatever you want to call them). This technique is known in competition policy circles as either “tied selling” or “refusal to deal”, a technique which should be understood as illegal under section 77 of the Canadian competition act. It is illegal because it is extremely harmful to the economy to allow monopolies to control markets by tieing the purchase of one good/service to the purchase of a separate good/service.
This is important to think about in the context of the 1996 WIPO treaties, and Canada’s Bill C-60. Not only should governments not be legally protecting DRM with radical changes to copyright law, but they should be adequately enforcing existing competition law to outlaw DRM. It is not enough for the bit-heads here to say that DRM can’t work from a technical standpoint as this isn’t what is important. What is important is the massive additional regulation on the lives of law abiding citizens, and the fact that these laws will drive more and more people into quite legitimately breaking this ill-conceived law.
Go to http://KillBillC60.ca to find out what you can do to help stop this insanity!!