I still believe that DRM succeeds in its ability to make online content “sticky”, even if it’s not a 100% solution. By pricing online music at a comfortable level, and making the DRM-ripping process annoying (think burning a CD and re-ripping in iTunes), that will effectively keep the general public from revolting and throwing stripped copies up on P2P.
While I do agree that the current DRM system is not optimal, I don’t believe in the alpha geek solution of doing away with DRM altogether. The industry that produces all this stuff does deserve some right to protect it; even if it’s an argument for sustainability of the market. Afterall, only some artists were happy to see the chaos known as Napster.
I think the ability to burn your protected AAC files to CD gives you the backup that your “fair use rights” warrant.
It seems to me that this anti-DRM campaign is being run by the radical alpha-geeks who, if they get their way, will destroy an industry.
Afterall, when you currently buy a CD from the store and you scratch it, will the store give you another copy for free? Not to mention, if you buy new music in the DVD-Audio format, you can guarantee it won’t work in your 4 year old CD player.
Apple’s taking the brunt of the anti-DRM campaign because they are the biggest seller in the online-music market; meanwhile, protections on copyright are a reality of modern life.
If artists truly believe their product should be freely available, they can setup a myspace website or get a Creative Commons license and distribute it at will.
As a group with a beef to settle, the alpha geeks should instead focus on pushing companies to adopt a similar approach to “fairplay”. A brief look into the future, and we see the Microsoft Argo promising to do audio and video. I’m willing to bet that PlaysForSure will be all over it.
DRM works for me!
Just wait a bit…
Here’s a piece you might enjoy reading:
http://daringfireball.net/2006/06/drm_interoperability
I still believe that DRM succeeds in its ability to make online content “sticky”, even if it’s not a 100% solution. By pricing online music at a comfortable level, and making the DRM-ripping process annoying (think burning a CD and re-ripping in iTunes), that will effectively keep the general public from revolting and throwing stripped copies up on P2P.
While I do agree that the current DRM system is not optimal, I don’t believe in the alpha geek solution of doing away with DRM altogether. The industry that produces all this stuff does deserve some right to protect it; even if it’s an argument for sustainability of the market. Afterall, only some artists were happy to see the chaos known as Napster.
I think the ability to burn your protected AAC files to CD gives you the backup that your “fair use rights” warrant.
It seems to me that this anti-DRM campaign is being run by the radical alpha-geeks who, if they get their way, will destroy an industry.
Afterall, when you currently buy a CD from the store and you scratch it, will the store give you another copy for free? Not to mention, if you buy new music in the DVD-Audio format, you can guarantee it won’t work in your 4 year old CD player.
Apple’s taking the brunt of the anti-DRM campaign because they are the biggest seller in the online-music market; meanwhile, protections on copyright are a reality of modern life.
If artists truly believe their product should be freely available, they can setup a myspace website or get a Creative Commons license and distribute it at will.
As a group with a beef to settle, the alpha geeks should instead focus on pushing companies to adopt a similar approach to “fairplay”. A brief look into the future, and we see the Microsoft Argo promising to do audio and video. I’m willing to bet that PlaysForSure will be all over it.
I think we’ve argued about DRM enough, we are just going around in circles and I don’t think you’ve addressed my earlier arguments or concerns (http://www.tunerds.com/stuff/content/blog/2006/03/21/im-with-france-on-this-one/ and http://www.tunerds.com/stuff/content/blog/2006/03/24/9/ are the first ones that come to mind).
In then end, we’ll just have to agree to disagree, I have my point of view, and you have yours. I think that wikipedia can summarize a lot of the argument for both of us: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_restrictions_management