Hard News: Another nail in the coffin of music DRM
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You could go to emusic.com and get it as part of your no-obligation 25 free downloads. You'd have enough for Prince Fatty too -- I'm sure you'd dig that.
Good idea, I might have a look at that.
I've kept buying music in CD format up to now apart from the odd tune grabbed from elsewhere, but the new addition on the back of our place had spanky big bright CD shelving designed by me and built in and when I got the whole collection together I'd pretty much filled it from day one. I decided that I couldn't really justify filling up more and more of our house with the things so I should make more of an effort with online music. Especially if it's decent bitrate/lossless etc...
I have a reasonable amount of vinyl storage left mind you so I could just go back to that...
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...either way I have trouble attaching such a desription to Carl Craig, and cartainly not David Holmes or Adam Freeland. imho. for what its worth.
You're probably right although I think Carl Craig might fit the bill. I mean big happy house music that all folks can have fun with. Not dumb or stupidly repetitive hopefully but there might be a little bit of that.
Several years ago we had 9 Sydney gay blokes staying with us in our little house in Brightwater, a very conservative logging/farming town south of Nelson (they were doing a frocktacular holiday rampage down the South Island). A couple of the guys were really into music and one of them, Max made the comment that he didn't expect to find such a lot of big gay house music in a tiny little village in the South Island. Then he chucked on a Darren Emerson mix CD, so there you go.
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Interesting artile in saturday's (19/01/08) chch press by Kimberley Rothwell titled making free music pay.
It touched on a number of the themes discussed in this thread.
Mark Kneebone commented on the short term verses long term effects of piracy.
"the short term slightly naive viewpoint is that record piracy doesn't really effect these artists (established artists who make more from publishing and performance than from cd sales) as they aren't making much money from record sales anyway, but the long-term effect is that if people pirate records, those artists and labels have less money to reinvest in the next records marketing and promotion which means invariably the bands become less popular and earn less from their live shows"
Barnaby Weir (he of the black seeds) commented - "Its fair enough for bands to give away music for free.... but at what point do we say 'I'd love to record, but I'm on the bones of my ass because no-one pays for music anymore"
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Just watched "Steal this film 2" - a good summary of the state of piracy.
I don't think any us of know the "right" answer to the question: how will musicians and those in associated industries earn a living in 2020?
But the digital age and internet have changed things- there's simply no way to re-invent the past. That's what DMR seems to be trying to do, and that's why I'm happy to see it die. From a digital point of view, it just doesn't "get" reality.
I'm pretty confident there ARE business models that will work, tho. Music ain't going away.
And there are remarkable benefits for new artists, as well the drawbacks.
Living in a time of change is painful and exhilarating. But more exhilarating for some, more painful for others. Hope you are ok, Rob! -
That's what DMR seems to be trying to do, and that's why I'm happy to see it die.
Thats one possibly way of looking at it but the other is the reason you're happy to see it die is because it gets in the way of uninhibited theft or that the brainiacs that invent these things have been completely crap at pulling it off. DRM is hated as much for its failures as for stopping us get away with a "victimless crime".
If reality was free for all shopliftng then the cops and security cameras would be the ones who weren't "getting reality"
I'm pretty confident there ARE business models that will work, tho.
its been a few years now, napster was 1998 wasn't it? that's ten years and no realistic solid model. (isn't the messiah due to return too sometime?)
Hope you are ok, Rob!
I'm bloody good thanks me stowell, enjoying the digital free for all as much as the next guy for now, but my point as backed up by comments from the quoted article is that this is all short term, in the long term I know that our unchecked piracy is going to have an impact and its more interesting to speculate on that than get into a lather about the demise of a necessary regulating force.
some of the alternatives are far less tasty than DRM. how bout a monitored and regulated internet? I think i'd like that less than a fully implemented DRM
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its been a few years now, napster was 1998 wasn't it? that's ten years and no realistic solid model. (isn't the messiah due to return too sometime?)
That's because every time somebody's offered what customers actually want (Napster, Kazaa, AllOfMP3 etc) it's been deemed a threat by the industry and sued to hell and back, and the artists have never made a dime off it. The absence of equally good competing services has been something of an obvious omission from the attempts at building a working digital business model, no?
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That's because every time somebody's offered what customers actually want (Napster, Kazaa, AllOfMP3 etc)
That's because those aren't customers finn, their shop lifters.
using our shop example, what the 'customer' wants is stock on helves out of view of the teller, no security cameras and not a cop in sight.
as someone else said, since when is it your right to get something for nothing.What you are right about is there has been fuck all effort put in to developing models for legalised music sharing.
did you know that amcos requires you to have a compilers license to make up best of discs for your shop, regardless of whether you own the original discs. Yeah, they've got a long way to go on making that past time a reality, but that still doesn't negate the illegality of piracy nor remove the far reaching long term consequences of it which pro free for all exponents continually over look. -
looting is a good analogy
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That's because those aren't customers finn, their shop lifters.
I don't disagree with what you're arguing Robbery. I just think that the horse has well and truly bolted, and it's only getting faster. Currently it's music, but storage and internet transfer is getting good enough that movies will be next. Currently some people get quality video from the internet, few years from now, it'll be the new napster - we'll all be doing it.
Music companies will keep on fighting it, and they'll win some battles and lose some. The battle won't be won on technical issues though, that's a loss leader. If they win anything, they'll have to win on moral issues and convince people who can afford to buy, to do so. I think the way they're going to do that is making themselves smaller in the picture (and return) and making sure that a significant amount of money goes to artists rather than what they are, which is middle-men.
It's either that, or significantly rethink what the music industry means. I'm waiting for a major band to release a live-only album - release a cover, song list, insides etc, free over the internet, put out a single, and then say if you want to hear the actual album, you have to come to the concert. There's bands that really make their name on their live performance, I think theirs is the next move.
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Robbery, you keep asserting that everybody just wants to steal - but one of the examples I gave above (AllOfMP3) actually involved people putting their hands in their pockets and paying up. They aren't an acceptable solution because they pocket the artist's share due to some dubious Russian legal grey areas, but they were actually offering a service that the major labels have never bothered to develop: A volume-based DRM-free download service, coupled with an iTunes-like massive catalogue.
Want it cheap? Buy it in a heavily compressed lossy format. Want it in top-notch quality? Pony up and pay for the extra download. And people went there and paid money, in quite some numbers. All that revenue was lost because the industry left competing on quality to services that ripped off the artists, while they instead tried to compete with regulation and software that took control of computers away from their owners.
There's all kinds of pricing and delivery models for music that have never been tried for legal services. File sharing? Nope. Quality-based pricing? Nope. DRM-free music? Just being tried, ten years after everybody got used to getting it free on Napster.
You most definitely can compete with free, but you can't compete with free and better. It's a bit rich to complain that none of the majors have found a successful digital business model in the 10 years since Napster when you can't point to a single service that actually competed with the illegal digital alternatives on quality of service delivered, or with CDs on price in a way that realistically reflected the differential in distribution costs. It's a bit like trying to sell three-week old rotten vegetables in a fancy package and then complaining that all your customers have buggered off to the market down the road. It doesn't mean that selling packaged vegetables isn't a viable business model - it just means that you're crap at it.
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Currently some people get quality video from the internet, few years from now, it'll be the new napster - we'll all be doing it.
its happening now and its great fun kyle but realistically if it carries on there are going to be effects.
I personally think it will get to a stage where internet traffic will be monitored and controlled.
They're doing i now to a certain extent with traffic shaping of p2p programs. They (in NZ) figure that if you're sending and receiving large files then you're trading in music and film and aren't a legit user so they dumb your speed down. it happening already.They know you're doing it, its only a matter of time till they act on that knowledge.
legit media traffic on thenet will have a authorisation code,
legit users (media producers etc who have real reason to be sending and receiving large files) will have a license.
the end result of the free for all will be an excuse to monitor traffic, and the reduced privacy that comes with that. they won't be able to monitor home copying of discs though.
The live only album is a novel idea but it is really just like all the other solutions presented so far, novel, but not solid and longlasting, it'll work for one or 2 artists but not the whole industry.
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point to a single service that actually competed with the illegal digital alternatives on quality of service delivered, or with CDs on price in a way that realistically reflected the differential in distribution costs.
does buying a bar of chocolate compete with slipping it in your pocket and walking out the door? how can you compete with that, there is no competition. you're not offering a legal alternative.
(AllOfMP3) actually involved people putting their hands in their pockets and paying up. They aren't an acceptable solution because they pocket the artist's share due to some dubious Russian legal grey areas,
hahaa finn you aren't actually giving me this as a valid example are you. there is one thing so much worse than stealing for personal use and thats stealing for personal profit. so a bunch of ruskies have got themselves a big catalogue of music and their country isn't yet towing the line on policing piracy so they can get away with selling pirate copies of music, just like any thai or malaysian market stall.
That's not something to be admired.interestingly in bangkok they have the MBK shopping mall which is a nice air conditioned typical big city mall and it had a bunch of stalls that sold every piece of pirated software dvd and cd you could want, all with nice colour photocopied covers and disc art.
The Thai police finally raided the lot of them and closed it down. They were sitting out their in plain view just like any normal shop and normal purchaser would go up and make their orders like buying a legit item and the police left them alone. till last week.
I agree someone should develop a model that caters to the joy of sharing music legal with your friends at an affordable price. as it has been pointed out, its part of our culture and should be able to be done at an affordable rate. and you're right the remaining majors have kept their price to high and download prices are too high for a reduced quality product. I completely agree with you.
But no DRM is helping no one in the long run. yes it has been invasive to normal use and that is more to do with inferior drm design than that DRM is the problem.
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I personally think it will get to a stage where internet traffic will be monitored and controlled.
This is another technical solution, which won't work. The 'internet' as an entity is breaking these things, because it crosses national barriers, and our international laws are very weak in this regard. Music files will just be encrypted, broken down into smaller packets, delivered via torrents etc. The physical nature of the net makes this possible, and makes stopping it impossible.
Rightly or wrongly, the battle is lost, they're trying to win at an old world game in a new world.
If governments came together and dictated that the internet would be controlled in this matter, then someone would just write a new protocol and we'd all switch over. 'The internet' wouldn't accept it, it would adapt, and overcome.
Just like the borg really :)
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Robbery, sometimes I do have to question your ability to read what people have written on this subject over and over again.
There is no superior DRM design, because the idea of DRM is a specification for a problem that cannot be solved without completely re-engineering the modern PC. It cannot be done, because PCs are not designed to keep secrets from their owners. A PC that did keep secrets from its owner could probably be designed, but it would cost more to buy and be worth less to consumers.
Again, it's trying to compete with something that people actually like by putting "worse and more expensive" on the table as an alternative. Markets don't work like that.
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If governments came together and dictated that the internet would be controlled in this matter, then someone would just write a new protocol and we'd all switch over. 'The internet' wouldn't accept it, it would adapt, and overcome.
that's a very romanticised view of it all but as I said, its already going that way. your internet traffic is controlled already. and they can control it more. and they're doing it at the bottle neck that you at present can't get past. which is your internet provider. There is absolutely no reason why your internet provider if required to couldn't shape your use of the internet more. they already do it in other ways by filtering out objectionable newsgroups, turkey is presently filtering out all of you tube because it has content that is critical of one of its founders. its totally doable and is being done to some extent everywhere, its just not done to the level that would completely control piracy, although the filtering of P2P traffic is an obvious step in this direction although not for legal reasons, just cos IPs want to keep traffic volume down.
The Customer won't adapt, they'll take what they're given and what they are allowed to get away with. at the moment a level of priracy is possible, it won't necessarily always be that way, but for now it is.
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Robbery, sometimes I do have to question your ability to read what people have written on this subject over and over again.
I've no problem reading what you write finn, I'm just dissagreeing with it and giving you multiple examples to illustrate my point.
There is no superior DRM design,
yet, as I said, there is no good DRM, that doesn't mean the concept of DRM is bad, it means the implementation of it is. you're trying to push the view that just because companies have failed so far they should give up completely. go for this mythica other model of steady income that no ones managed to outline properly yet, in over 10 years of trying.
re-engineering the modern PC.
no thats your concept of what drm needs to do. Remember reasonably effective drm exists on modern dvds. it is bypassable but its a minor hassle. I'm sure if music manufacturers could make drm that worked and was a minor hassle to bypass they'd be happy. just because they haven't found that solution yet doesn't mean they won't.
Expanding on Kyle's live only album They could make music delivery on a format that doesn't play on pcs. some different device that can only be downloaded direct inot your ipod (which remember is a one way device, you can not up load off an ipod, so they successfully blocked that piracy hole already)
it's trying to compete with something that people actually like
and you're failing to grasp it doesn't matter what you like doing, its what you're allowed to do. presently piracy is illegal, but it efficently unpolicable for now.ie you can get away with it, sort of.
there are a number of much worse implementable measures that could be taken (the afore mentioned internet traffic monitoring and control, and remember the internet is a much more policable beast than it used to be. they know how to track ip addresses and filter content now, and they didn't 15 years ago)
disregarding all of that though one of my main points is that it is short sighted to think that a free for all is good for anyone in the long run. as both mr kneebone and mr weir said in their statements. its unsustainable
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Robbery, sometimes I do have to question your ability to read what people have written on this subject over and over again.
I've no problem reading what you write finn, I'm just dissagreeing with it and giving you multiple examples to illustrate my point.
There is no superior DRM design,
yet, as I said, there is no good DRM, that doesn't mean the concept of DRM is bad, it means the implementation of it is. you're trying to push the view that just because companies have failed so far they should give up completely. go for this mythica other model of steady income that no ones managed to outline properly yet, in over 10 years of trying.
re-engineering the modern PC.
no thats your concept of what drm needs to do. Remember reasonably effective drm exists on modern dvds. it is bypassable but its a minor hassle. I'm sure if music manufacturers could make drm that worked and was a minor hassle to bypass they'd be happy. just because they haven't found that solution yet doesn't mean they won't.
Expanding on Kyle's live only album They could make music delivery on a format that doesn't play on pcs. some different device that can only be downloaded direct inot your ipod (which remember is a one way device, you can not up load off an ipod, so they successfully blocked that piracy hole already)
it's trying to compete with something that people actually like
and you're failing to grasp it doesn't matter what you like doing, its what you're allowed to do. presently piracy is illegal, but it efficently unpolicable for now.ie you can get away with it, sort of.
there are a number of much worse implementable measures that could be taken (the afore mentioned internet traffic monitoring and control, and remember the internet is a much more policable beast than it used to be. they know how to track ip addresses and filter content now, and they didn't 15 years ago)
disregarding all of that though one of my main points is that it is short sighted to think that a free for all is good for anyone in the long run. as both mr kneebone and mr weir said in their statements. its unsustainable
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and they're doing it at the bottle neck that you at present can't get past. which is your internet provider.
Well for starters, people will just start their own internet providers and hook straight into the main trunk line. You want to see underground ISPs start to flare up, you start directing mainstream providers to poke into what people are doing online.
And it's very difficult to disrupt P2P traffic. It can skip through the port ranges. It's not possible to control it by volume for music files, because the files actually aren't that large. Internet packets aren't necessarily identifiable by themselves, so you couldn't even set up a filter and sniff each packet as it went past. Even if they found a way to sniff it, some geek will just design a music format which will beat the sniffer, and it'll become the new standard.
If music companies thought they could win this battle by modifying the internet they would be. They'd be demanding the internet version 3 with routers with compulsory software at hubs and it would all just shut down illegal transfers. They'd be in front of parliament demanding laws to apply to ISPs and the major cables going between countries. They know that's not going to work, that's why they've been jumping through hoops trying to control the CDs, and the distribution networks that people use.
And I bet, if Turkey is filtering out youtube, people in Turkey are finding other ways to get the videos. Someone will be running a server that they can pass through with another address, or they'll be parsing the files into MP4s and torrenting them into the country and setting up a local server with copies of you tube files, or people will be adding other addresses to the youtube dns to keep one hop ahead of them.
The internet was specifically designed to withstand these sorts of things - primarily nuclear attack, by routing around things that prevent access and maintaining an open network. Once you add people that use the internet, and are going to help it work around it, the war's already over, people are just still fighting the battles.
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I did a 10 second search on the Turkey youtube thing, and yes I was right, people have found umpteen ways around it, including a couple I guessed at.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/03/howto_evade_tur.html
If they want to stop the internet, they should get a big pair of scissors and cut the line.
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yet, as I said, there is no good DRM, that doesn't mean the concept of DRM is bad, it means the implementation of it is.
Um, no. What I'm trying to explain to you is that the concept is so bad that implementation of a system that isn't broken is logically impossible given current market variables like the design of the consumer PC. You've not provided any argument against this, so I can really only assume that your concept of the nature of DRM is either totally flawed or you have a very different idea about what the word means from me.
What is DRM? Why is it useful in any way? That might be a good place for us to start to get this sorted out.
<no thats your concept of what drm needs to do. Remember reasonably effective drm exists on modern dvds. it is bypassable but its a minor hassle. I'm sure if music manufacturers could make drm that worked and was a minor hassle to bypass they'd be happy. just because they haven't found that solution yet doesn't mean they won't./quote>
Are those the same DVDs that are all over the file-sharing networks and available over the counter from every pirate in Asia? How exactly is that a working DRM system? What does it do or achieve? I'm very confused as to what exactly you're holding up as positive attributes, given you yourself admit the system is breakable and the content leaks onto file-sharing networks anyway.
<quote>and you're failing to grasp it doesn't matter what you like doing, its what you're allowed to do. presently piracy is illegal, but it efficently unpolicable for now.ie you can get away with it, sort of.
No, it decidedly does matter what people like doing. The reasoning you're taking here is pretty similar to that which backed the USA's failed attempt at prohibition: this thing is wrong, and if we make it illegal then people will stop doing it. I take it you recall how well that worked out.
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Note to self: use preview....
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What is DRM? Why is it useful in any way? That might be a good place for us to start to get this sorted out.
why don't you answer that question first.
I'll get you started though finn.
digital rights management.what do you think it is and why do you think it might be useful?
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drm doesn't work, rob, because bits that are streamed into a device that turns them into sound and/or pictures can be streamed into some other device that captures them and presto, there's a digital copy. I don't think there's a techncal way around it.
You've cited the dvd model: if that's safe, give me peril...
But you're right in a braoder sense- what is going to happen may well not be good. Or good for some, not so good for others. Or disasterous, musicians dying in the gutters.... or tremendous and amazing, new and incredible music springing up everywhere. I dunno, I think there will be some of all the above, and more... What seems most unlikely is that things won't change much.
For what it's worth, I like the emusic model. If they had a bigger and better back catalogue, I'd be theirs for life. As it is, some monthes I've forgotten to dl anything for my US$9.99. Other times, I get the full 30 songs, a song a day for the month, not bad.
And yeah, I know it's all out there for free. But that's for the movies and television, heh.
The flipside is how inexpensive (not easy, ever!) it is now to record, mix, mangle and put out music. -
You've cited the dvd model: if that's safe, give me peril...
I'm not saying its safe, I'm saying it makes it slightly more difficult than it is without it. ie you have to have a dvd stripper program and have some knowledge of how to deal with the resulting material.
in some ways after all the hassle of stripping a dvd, buying a dual layer dvd burner, going through miss-burns etc, you're better off buying a legit copy.The ideal for Music would be to make it just difficult enough to take the simple as "shop lifting with no one watching, and no security cameras" angle away.
I can think of a number of ways that might work. developing a delivery medium that is not easily stripable in a computer would be a start, yes you could do a real time a to d copy of it, but the bummer bout that is it takes time, its a hassle.
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move towards the light Rob
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