Music, please, not machinery

No, music is art, regardless of how the listener chooses to listen to it. And there's no question that the medium changes a listener's relationship to music, in the case of downloadable music, in a very direct way - if DRM gets its way, most listeners (those who aren't tech savvy) will find their rights to play that music on anything but the machine they downloaded it to are extremely restricted. This is why MS is putting so much effort into Windows Media, and Apple into iTunes - it isn't about finding new technologies to improve the "downloaded music experience", it's about winning the battle to implement DRM; for the software companies, the license fees for winning that battle are, potentially, hugely lucrative. For the ordinary consumer of music, it's a grim prospect, as DRM offers precisely nothing positive to us. Those complacent enough to see the future as simply a brave new world of shiny technology, ever onward marching, miss the fact that, as GTM says, technology can have its negatives. To talk about the negatives isn't to be a luddite, it's a social responsibility.

-- Ian

 

ian,
you and i both know that most protection systems aren't worth a damn they are cracked or circumvented within weeks if not days. yes drm is a pita but not the almighty awfulness that you seem to think if someone with the ability to download music in the first place wants to use it on another pc it'll be easy enough to find a way with a bit of googling. if it does become a big deal then people will stop using these services and they will go the way of qudraphonic vinyl, dat and minidisc.
yes talking about the alternatives is a responsible thing to do but the author of the first article struck me as a particularly vehment clog chucker.
at heart i'm a subjectivist so i'll have to disagree that music is art to everyone.
cheers


julian

 

Sure, they're crackable, but in the near future it's very likely you won't actually own the music you've bought, but merely have a license to use it on designated machine(s). Cracking the protection, if only to be able to play it on another machine, will make you a criminal.

Personally, I think this prospect is A Very Bad Thing.

-- Ian

 

if i understand correctly this is the case already - it certainly is for computer software anyway. it's illegal for me to have minidisc copies of a cd in my car, it's also illegal for me to have my server full of music. your hd server is also probably full of technically illegal music too (although it's a grey area of reasonable use etc.). however this has never been the target of the recording industries efforts to stop copying it's when you give your mates a burn of the music or put it up on kazaa or bit-torrent that they become interested. allowing one and stopping the other is tricky.
drm is a pita but there are more evil things in the world than a few companies trying to protect their profit margins.
anyway it wasn;t this that i was objecting to. it was the suggestion that the evolution of how peope listen to music was in some way wrong.
cheers

julian

 

It isn't about copies. At the moment you can buy a CD and play it on any CD player you like. This isn't true with downloaded DRM protected music, and, if the record companies get their way, the restrictions will become ever more onerous.

-- Ian

 

To offer music as a digital recording... giving flexible, portable, downloadable solutions is brilliant.

Not supporting previous mediums of music, forcing people to purchase new music mediums just to be able to get the music they like is a heinous crime.

Willingly designing new music formats and supporting them against competitors, full in the knowledge that one/more will become redundant is selfish and bears little thought for your customers.


Those are my thoughts on music formats.

Chris

 

DRM is whatever Microsoft says it is although other ways to distribute content do exist but at the end of the day it is down to the artist or business corporation to decide what technology and laws apply to the distribution of their work. I would suggest the Microsoft model does look tempting considering the number of MS systems in consumers homes across the world if you are looking to maximise your profit derived from you own interlectual propertry. Once someone tries to circumvent DRM mearsures that are in place for a bit of music, an image or maybe and idea then they may well be open to legel action.

I wonder if our member in Switzerland has any views on DRM?


auric

 

ian,
which drm system are you referring to? there are quite a few out there. iirc the one sony use with minidisc allows one copy to be made which i think is a good compromise.
i'd have thought that some way of burning to cd as a wav for playback on a standard player would be allowed - the major threat to profits is the redistribution via p2p networks like those i mentioned before. a simple replay lock for the file itself on a few computers would solve this problem and i believe that this is what apple is proposing.
i have no knowledge of micro$ofts scheme.

auric,
the image of a major music co going after a 35 year old because he burnt a cd that he could play in his car is rather funny to me. quite unlikely though.
cheers


julian

 

iTunes (the online store rather than the app), for example, will only allow you to play back stuff you've bought and paid for on a limited number of Macs or PCs. Recently they changed the number of machines that are allowed. This seems to me to be a testing the water scenario.

Digital copying restrictions are a different question to the fundamental one: whether we own the music we buy, or just have a license to play it on a few devices, our rights to do so dictated to us by a few conglomerates. At least if I buy a CD I don't have to register all the CD players I might want to play it on with BMG or Sony.

-- Ian

 

As I said earlier in the thread, I'm with Ian on this one. Julian, DRM and copy protection might be currently, mainly aimed at trying to stop mass distribution via p2p and not hitting the individual user but that is the eventual master plan, to be able to totally control how and how often an individual can listen to a piece of music which they will only have a license for instead of owning. I'm quite sure that the eventual aim is so that the only way you'll be able to listen to music in the future is, in effect, pay per listen.

I'm optimistic still that the systems will be cracked and breaking them won't put ordinary people at risk of prosecution but the laws in this area are getting more and more draconian eg the Digital Millenium Copyright Act in the US which is incredibly wide reaching and makes illegal reverse engineering of copy protection/DRM technology in order to circumvent it.

Michael.

 

guys,
fair enough - i don't agree with your blanket response that drm is wrong or the articles' underlying assertion that technology should stop at a level that the writer is comfortable with. i'd love to see drm for computer software (games) as this directly effects my earnings and i would be hippocritical in the extreme to not extend this to musicians. a decent, international fair use policy needs to be made for use of music / software. certainly i'd rather see this than the draconian measures that michael imagines happening. however at the end of the day the record co is the one who owns the music and it's their perrogative to release it in whatever form they feel like. as consumers our only power is to vote with our wallets.
cheers


julian

 

Sadly, musicians don't benefit from DRM, that's the spin record companies are putting on it, but major labels' recording contracts are the main cause of the f*cking over of musicians, not home recording or even P2P.

I'm against DRM, and, indeed copyright in general, but that's probably a different question.

-- Ian

 

ian,
the way that the record industry works with advances against royalties and recoupment of those advances against initial sales currently means that it takes 2 or 3 hit albums before a musician or band actually starts to see any royalties from their record sales - most of their income comes from selling their 'images' - posters, t-shirts etc. if drm is successful in curbing casual piracy like the p2p networks then surely this will benefit the musicians - in the long term.
(please note i exclude the manufactured boy / girl bands who are on a wage paid by some pop svengali)
i'd agree that the yin / yang of copyright is beyond this discussion however i'm of the opinion that if it didn't exist no one would really bother creating music as we know it as they'd not be able to make a living from it. there would just be bands playing the old favourites and maybe one or two new songs a year.
cheers


julian