MESSAGE
| DATE | 2007-04-13 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] DRMs last day - dont bet on it
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The dying days of DRM
By Duncan McLeod, Financial Mail, 13 April 2007 Print || Discuss Digital
rights management (DRM), designed to prevent the piracy of digital
content, has failed. The sooner the entertainment industry recognises
this fact the sooner it can get on with reinventing itself for the era
of digital distribution.
SA IT billionaire Mark Shuttleworth, the man behind Ubuntu Linux, says
DRM is a stupid idea. In a recent post to his blog, Shuttleworth decries
attempts by the music and movie industries to build restrictions into
music and other digital content that people buy legitimately online. DRM
prevents them from copying content they have purchased to play back on
devices of their choosing.
The entertainment industry has taken on Luddite trappings as it tries
to protect its analogue business model in an increasingly digital
world. Instead of embracing the Internet, the powerful Recording
Industry Association of America, a US body that represents the major
music companies, has stuck its head in the sand and taken to suing the
customers of the companies it represents, among them young children,
for copying music from online file-sharing networks.
The lawsuits are shortsighted and have inflicted enormous PR damage on
the music industry, which is now widely regarded as being avaricious
and unwilling to embrace the future. As Shuttleworth says on his blog:
“The content owners need to be thinking about how they turn this
networked world to their advantage, not fighting the tide. [They also
need to be thinking about] how to restructure the costs inherent in their
own businesses to make them more in line with the sorts of revenues that
are possible in a totally digital world.â€
Shuttleworth points out that DRM can never work, because it’s so easy
to circumvent. New strategies are needed. “The truth is that, as the
landscape changes, different business models come and go. Those folks
who try to impose analogue rules on digital content will find themselves
on the wrong side of the tidal wave.â€
The message finally seems to be getting through. Last week, Apple and EMI,
one of the big four music companies, reached a landmark agreement whereby
EMI’s music will be sold on Apple’s iTunes Music Store without any
DRM infections. The EMI deal comes just weeks after Apple CEO Steve
Jobs decried DRM schemes and said he’d switch to selling DRM-free
content “in a heartbeat†if he could. It was a PR coup for Jobs,
who has won plaudits from consumer rights activists.
DRM has alienated law-abiding consumers. Some have turned instead to
file-sharing networks where they can get music that is free of DRM
restrictions. The entertainment industry is also losing the battle to
hackers, who quickly reverse-engineer whatever DRM schemes the industry
comes up with. It’s already possible to copy the latest high-definition
Blu-ray discs and HD-DVDs, for example.
Says Shuttleworth: “For any given piece of content, all it takes is
one unprotected copy and you have to assume that anyone who wants it
will get it. Whether it is software off a warez [online piracy] site,
music from an MP3 download service in Russia, or a file-sharing system,
you cannot plug all the holes. Face it, people either want to pay you
for your content, or they don’t, and your best strategy is to make
it as easy as possible for people who want to comply with the law to
do so. That does not translate into suing grannies and school kids,
it translates into effective delivery systems that allow everyone to do
the right thing, easily.â€
Therein lies the rub. Most people don’t want to steal from the artists
who make the music they love. They want to pay for the music they listen
to and movies they watch. It’s time the entertainment industry stopped
treating its customers like criminals.
-- http://www.mrbrklyn.com - Interesting Stuff http://www.nylxs.com -
Leadership Development in Free Software
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town that Brooklyn, like
Atlantis, reaches mythological proportions in the mind of the world -
RI Safir 1998
http://fairuse.nylxs.com DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS -
RI Safir 2002
"Yeah - I write Free Software...so SUE ME"
"The tremendous problem we face is that we are becoming sharecroppers
to our own cultural heritage -- we need the ability to participate in
our own society."
"> I'm an engineer. I choose the best tool for the job, politics be
damned.< You must be a stupid engineer then, because politcs and
technology have been attacted at the hip since the 1st dynasty in
Ancient Egypt. I guess you missed that one."
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