DRM – sort of

Gone the way of the horse and buggy

The author of this article has more of an idea about what the music industry should be doing, quote:-

“Indeed, if the record companies could be persuaded to stop suing their
customers for 10 minutes, it might dawn on them that their best chance
for survival conceivably lies in buying interests in “stores” like the
Sam’s flagship and giving the music away for free — in an environment
where the customer, while he’s filling up his terabyte thumbnail hard
drive, is kindly given the opportunity to buy overpriced coffee, beer,
books, audio equipment, digital storage and concert tickets. But
instead they seem content to die from what amounts to a hunger strike
against the existence of the Internet“

Why I love DRM

What is it with the folks at Electronic Frontier Foundation? Why are they so worried about DRM?

I just don’t get it. Here’s why:-

You can make all the laws you want but if they are not enforceable they are not worth a light. And if newcomers to your business can offer the same product but free from the risk of penalty there’s going to be change. I say let the record and film industries keep trying with DRM: they’re just putting a noose around their own necks.

Why do I say this:-

In the 1950’s there was a boom in pop music. The post-war baby boom coupled with the rise of TV and the availability of record players created two things: the teenager and the pop/rock industry.

In the 60’s and 70’s pop and rock music exploded. Millions upon millions of singles and LPs were sold. The record company model, at least as I see it was, primarily about the control and production of plastic discs and the sale thererof.

It was the discs that made the money. Secondary to that was the ownership of band brands; the promotion of which had the effect of shifting these plastic discs. But it was the margins on the sale of the discs that really mattered not the tour buses, guitar solos, flared trousers and “deep and meaningful” lyrics.

The result of the massive growth in pop music and the millions of discs sold? Record companies got rich and so did popstars.

Somehow, “the kids” could watch an event like Live Aid and not be disgusted by the sight of, pampered multi-millionaires exhorting the ordinary folks to cough up and save the starving. Well I wonder if Jack Welch would have been welcomed by the crowds in London or Phildelphia that summer. I doubt it, he would have been seen as part of the problem. And yet some popstars are so rich they resort to becoming tax exiles in Switzerland just like Phil Collins did.

Makes you wonder eh?

The record industry has made a boat load of money and wants to keep it that way. Over the years, aided and abetted by radion and TV, it has churned out over-hyped, sterile, crapola for years, and having no other outlets to choose from, people have bought it by the truckload.

Nowadays, teenagers are getting into new music in other ways; the web is the driving force. DRM free downloading of new material which is being given away by bands to promote gigs is just one example. New bands, from a myriad of genres can do this because:-

a. The costs of producing a record have dramatically decreased. I can today make a fairly nice sounding record using Garageband which was bundled free with my Mac.. I could spend a few hundred pounds and updgrade to LogicExpress or Logic Pro and really sound professional. Even if I don’t have a computer I could buy a portable studio for less than £200 and churn out a decent impersonation of a 32 track studio. Much is the same for video production.

b. Distributing music on the web is easy. That must be the key. Of course bands still need to gig, promote and the like and that’s were the record companies still hold all the aces, particularly with their close ties to TV and radio. But the web is not only a means of distribution it’s also a means of promotion.

The record industry still has a massive PR machine that hooks teenagers into bands. But it’s mainstream, and most teenagers really don’t want to be mainstream.

I have no idea how the music industry will will change, but it will. For some reason we have looked kindly upon wealthy pop stars. But I doubt people will when they finally wake up and realise that the reason they can’t rip a song from one computer to another is because, somebody somewhere, thinks playing the guitar gives them a right to be ferried everywhere in a LearJet.

The fundamental model the record industry has used is irrelevant. The industry’s response has been to swaddle itself in DRM in the hope that this would preseve the old model in electronic aspic. Licensing how we use music that we have purchased is a fundamentally silly and illogical concept. It cannot survive.

Perhaps record companies and pop stars better get used to the idea that they are going to face more competition and that the pickings are not going to be as rich. I know the likes of Madonna and George Michael like to consider themselves artists, well maybe they will have to get used to what a real artist expects as an income.

So, EFF, relax these fools are committing commercial suicide.

A good tech lawsuit

Blizzard, the developer behind the phenomenally succesful MMPORG World of Warcraft, has announced it is bringing a lawsuit against a gold selling company.

It’s about time they did something. Blizzard can ban players for buying in game gold for “real money” but until now appeared to be doing nothing to stop the growth in such websites. Not only that these sites often use Blizzard copyright materials such as images, logos and the like. And no, not all the gold sellers are based in China.

The first defendant is, peons4hire.com, I just tried to have a look at their site but as Safari was in the process of opening the page it crashed. I tried a few more times but the crashing continued, not only that Quicksilver and Mail crashed too. Perhaps Blizzard have AOE’d the site.

Off topic – Rachel Carson

Excellent post on American Thinker that, to me, encapsulates what the Green Movement has achieved.

Zombietime’s latest undercover photo’s from an Al Gore lovefest really do sum up for me the absolute hyprocrisy of many rich westerners when it comes to green issues: just count all the SUVs.

Wish I had thought of it….

This is a great blog:

passiveaggressivenotes.wordpress.com