I know this one is a bit old, but being Sunday, I decided it was worth talking about anyway :)
So…BoingBoing found this article, in which the ars technica people talk about one of the largest online music stores in Europe, Musicload (owned by Deutsche Telekom), which has said that they don’t like DRM/C.R.A.P., and…why don’t they like it? Well…it seems to be creating 75%, yes, seventy five percent, of their support calls. So…C.R.A.P is screwing 3/4 of their clients, and, therefore, making Musicload’s support costs four times as expensive as they should be. From ars technica’s article:
According to Musicload, DRM “makes the use of music quite difficult and hinders the development of a mass-market for legal downloads.” The lack of interoperability is unfair to customers and prevents true competition between music services, in other words.
So…what’s supposed to be the benefit for the music stores? Highest support costs? That makes absolutely no sense to me.
On the other hand, heise online has the originating article in english now, and there’s other interesting stuff there, like Musicload saying:
Musicload says that the big question is when the first major label will react to the changing tides. Music portal based in Darmstadt says that it cannot imagine any of the majors completely renouncing copy protection at the moment. At the same time, copy protection is not the same as DRM. MP3 songs can also be protected and tracked using, for instance, digital watermarks like those developed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology (IDMT).
I have absolutely nothing against protecting music from piracy…but C.R.A.P. sucks planets through capillary straws…it makes life hell for us, the users, and now we find out that it also makes life hell for the digital music stores….so…we need to go with a different way to do things.
What do you think?
Technorati Tags: drm, c.r.a.p, musicload, online music store
Tags: Security, Thoughts
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Comments
This entry was posted on Sunday, March 25th, 2007 at 4:53 pm and is filed under Security, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Artist should control pricing of their content as well as the format (drm or no drm) and distribution points. There are DRM formats available to content owners, so the issue of drm or not is one that is up to the content owner not one that should be made by any technology that is used to distribute the content. The decision to use drm is one that the content owners must make based on many factors. The key point here is that there are choices available and that the content owner should and can make this decsion.
I think that we should write off any current music that the major labels own as content that will never be in an open format playable on any device. We should also understand that more than likely this content will only be available at distribution points and at prices that the label; not the artist or their fans have anything to do with. We must accept this and move on to the next phase of digital content distribution that will give artist and content owners the freedom to decide their own destiny.
As far as the Myspace love fest. It needs to end. Artist, fans, and consumers of content must know and understand that any revenue generated for Myspace (A Newscorp company) is going to continue to fund the operations of fox news ( http://www.foxnews.com/oreilly/) as well as the continued dismantling of independent media around the world. If as an artist or a fan or a user of the Internet you support any social issues or an independent and free media then myspace is not the place to become a member. By doing this you give them continued revenue and power.
Yes, artists should control pricing of their content, as well as restrictions by C.R.A.P. if they want it or not. But with the current music distribution model, that is out of the question. The labels control everything, the artists control between absolutely nothing and a bit more than that…the artist that controls his destiny is either huge or independent…everybody else, bows and licks the proper boots.
On the other hand, I am a firm believer in the uselessness of C.R.A.P. for its intended purpose, which is (supposed to be) to stop piracy. What it *has* done is annoy music buyers, and little else. I buy music to be able to play it on any player that accepts the distribution format. If I buy CDs, I want to be able to play them on anything that has a CD player, and not need to install crap or buy a special player just for the maker of said CD…that’s bullshit.
And don’t get me started on the Sony-like crap of having to install spyware in my computer to be able to play a CD there…specially since I don’t have a windows computer, only linux in my home and work…so…Sony CDs with the C.R.A.P. they were using just doesn’t play here at all…and I’m not buying windows to be able to play a music CD, no way, no how.
As for myspace…I have no account there, know nothing about it and care even less about it :)