Digital Rights Management (DRM) and its place in the music chain

You cannot understand or fully appreciate 'digital rights management' without considering at least two musical recording formats before the digital music format MP3.

With a series of frank admissions its relatively simple to rack up a slew of copyright infringement offences. Your twelve years old and your Sony Ghetto blaster has a twin tape deck..It came factory shipped with the ability to copy from one deck to another. Yet each Our Price (remember them) bought cassette came with a 'copying is a crime' disclaimer. That in tandem with my penchant for spending my evenings sitting & listening for the song I liked to be played on the radio so I could record it on blank cassette. Only to have the nauseating Dj jabber over the end of track..

Move on from that and CD to cassette copying was the next method of collating free music.With some strategically placed cello tape borrowing albums from friends or ahem the town library, it was high times..

It was at this point that I bought a Sony Discman and actually spent about five years paying for the privilege of hearing my grunge classics on Compact Disc…There was no substitute for the comparatively stellar quality of the recording…My appreciation of music at this point blossomed.

I'll admit I was running behind the train with MP3..Napster and Audio galaxy etc.. It wasn't until University where a friend played bohemian rhapsody on his pc as I stood dumbfounded at the open cd tray and accompanying swirly visualiser on his windows pc music player 'Sonique'… These were heady days. Where it was possible to download entire back catalogues of artists not just the odd song.

Its at this point that we reach a critical mass. We have the likes of the IFPI Worldwide Enforcement Structure, formed in 1997 as a direct response to the global proliferation of CD piracy. They're affiliated with the RIAA formed in 1952... You can read an enlightening article on the history of these folk at wiki : [linky]

So here we are as you've just read, In repost to 15 years of various format piracy we have the reactionary DRM. Digital rights management. [linky] the method in which companies providing content can limit the manner in which it is used.

The argument being that if the digital content is 'open'..It's free to be duplicated at a financial loss to the artists, producers and distributors.
File sharing networks like Napster/ Gnutella/ E donkey and Bit torrent were/are platforms for content distribution on an unprecedented scale. Your not borrowing a cd from your mate anymore, you have the entire web as a source of free copyrighted content. The scale and severity of the legislation and limitations are equal to the scale of the availability of the copyrighted works.

In essence file sharing networks threatened the financial viability of the music and film industry to an extent where they are now willing to make public examples by suing 12 year old children thousand of dollars/sterling in addition to limiting the use of content to ensure they reign in this virtual albatross.

Including closing down the spear head of file sharing networking Shaun Fannings NAPSTER founded in June of 1999. [linky] ironically the downfall of napster was instigated and led by the supposed iconoclast band Metallica. The band responded in 2000 by filing a lawsuit against the Napster service for a demo track being found available on the network. You could argue that the music industry failed to take up digital formats early enough. If they had. The idea of free music/film wouldn't have taken route in the public consciousness the way that it has. You now have an entire generation having grown up with the internet and music and film content is there to be taken, not saved up for and purchased. You could argue that this is affecting our treatment and appreciation the now 'disposable' musical/film content as it has no Monterey value to the consumer.

Now we have iTunes digital music format AAC with digital right management FAIRPLAY being used not only to limit the consumers options with copying the content but locking them in to an in-house hardware/software pairing. The iPod/AAC to prevent piracy is nothing more than a convenient excuse for naked profiteering.

The use of DRM is understandable if not appreciated. There is no sound basis for Apple's reluctance to licence their AAC/fairplay drm to other companies to allow them to sell the format or allow their hardware to play it. They have behaving irresponsibility and ultimately this will be their downfall in the eyes of the consumer. Plain old fashioned greed.

The digital rights management employed by windows media WMA tracks is equally excluding. As a Mac user I am unable to utilise any windows drm files, be it video or audio. What does this accomplish. Nothing.
Windows media DRM needs reigning in for an entirely separate reason. Napster/ MSN music stores amongst others do not sell music. They rent it. When the end user stops paying his subscription the files become unusable…imagine purchasing a cd from virgin/HMV... Going to the till and the counter assistant casually confirming that your purchase will be £8.99….For the rest of your life…or otherwise we come around your house and smash the cd with a mallet….

The counter argument being that most popular culture music/film is that such disposable tripe that the rental model is more appropriate for the pap they sell.

In closing the future of free content can only be assured by the responsible of the content by the consumer. At the moment we are comparable to scolded unruly children. A lack of 'parental' corporate trust has led to us falling into the clutches of a iron lady nanny state and until we can prove that the consumer can be trusted, DRM may be an increasing fact of life.

Tim