Music recordings used to be something to treasure. Something to own. Something you could pass on to your children. Or if you had good taste, you could sell your one day for a huge profit.
Now music is becoming as worthless, disposable and temporary as a paper plate… thanks to DRM (digital rights management) the limitation scheme that is quietly being embedded into music players, high-definition videos players, ITunes and Windows Vista.
DRM is not actually an anti-piracy copy protection scheme, as record labels and Hollywood studios would have you believe. It is actually a financial squeeze campaign designed to make you pay more for the rights you used to have.
When you buy a CD, it’s yours to keep with no strings attached. You actually get something for your money. You can loan it to a friend, or make a backup copy (how many CDs have you lost or scratched over the past decade?), or mix a track over your home movie.
But with DRM, you don’t own anything for keep and pass on. You basically rent copy-protected music from a corporation. And the corporation can disable or change the licensing rules at any time they see fit.
The Customer is Always Wrong is an excellent article by the Electronic Freedom Foundation that throughly documents the multiple lies of DRM.
They try and get us to swallow DRM with doublespeak Orwellian marketing. They brand it with sweet-sounding euphemisms like Mircosoft’s “Plays for Sure”, and Apple’s “FairPlay” digital restriction schemes.
Well it only “plays for sure” on some devices that have paid off Microsoft. Most ironically, PlaysforSure (sic) doesn’t even work on Microsoft’s own device, the Zune (!!) The Zune has its own incompatible which DRM nightmare lurking inside it. Apple isn’t any better: you have no choice of a device or music player software at all. They try and lock you into iPod/iTunes forever.
This is an iffy business practice, that runs counter to the basic currents of a free market and customer satisfaction. Apple has a huge share of the music player market now, and they could totally own the music market by being trusting and generous. Steve Jobs recently said he would do away with DRM, but he claims the music labels are forcing him to stick with it. Apple seems to have a huge problem with other corporate bedfellows calling their shots, such as with Cingular’s monopoly on the new iPhone.
People would gladly buy more high-quality digital music for a fair price (e.g., half the price of a manufactured CD) – as long as it it is not jinxed and shackled. All the restrictions sour people on buying online music and encourage them pirate.
I love music dearly, and I firmly believe in only taking steps forward with it – higher fidelity, more flexibility, more freedom, more choices. DRM is an insidious, defective by design attempt to make us pay more for the rights we used to have.
So, I won’t buy or support DRM music. However much I’d like to move on into 21st century, I’m stuck right where I was in 1995 until this tech nightmare collapses or sorts itself out. I will keep buying CDs and ripping my own .MP3s until a real lossless, non-DRM digital music alternative comes to light.