Restrictive DRM

Kelvyn Taylor expressed concern (PCW November 2007, Editorial) about the possibility that music protected by digital rights management (DRM) systems may become unavailable to a legitimate purchaser because of the failure of the supplier or some other similar event.

I share his view that DRM is, as a principle, fine, but that the DRM mechanism used should not be intrusive.

Better still, it should offer advantages to purchasers. To date, just about every attempt at DRM appears to create problems for users at one level or another.

But I wonder whether DRM is a fair focus of his concern. All media has a finite life, usually as a consequence of the carrier media. Nowadays we buy a copy of a tune on a CD, or a film on DVD, but at some point the disc will break down or the equipment to play the disc will fail and replacements will have become obsolete.

But this is nothing new; when I was younger I was puzzled by the older members of the family who were sad that they could no longer play the boxes of 78s that now resided in their lofts. A few years on and I have similar boxes of LPs and 7in vinyl records sitting gathering dust.

Maybe one day in the future we will only be playing high definition DVDs and my current collection of standard DVDs will join the vinyl.

If we buy something on one format, we don’t automatically assume that we can obtain a copy of the same material on a different format. It might be a nice idea to be able to buy a copy of a film that we originally purchased on Laserdisc on DVD, or to replace DVDs with high definition DVDs, at the cost of the media, but sadly the companies that own the rights don’t agree. So if a DRM system renders some media unplayable it seems little different to the situation where a player fails and a replacement is no longer available.

Of course, if a DRM system enabled us to purchase the rights to view or listen to media on whatever device is convenient, or whatever format happens to be available to us at the time, that really would be an advantage.

And I would be at the front of the queue to buy my media, safe in the knowledge that it would be likely to outlast the technology that I am using today.

Gary Beaton

October 18, 2007 in Digital Music | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

iTunes woes

Having been a fan of iTunes for a long time, I wouldn't  touch the new version with a barge pole!

I downloaded and installed it, and it promptly re-organised all my music files by adding superfluous information, changing the  names and, worse, completely changed the file structure on my hard disk renaming  all the folders and file names.

How dare Apple think it knows better than me how I want to find my music. It has taken me two days so far to uninstall it and reorganise my data back to how I want it. But worse, anything that it didn't recognise has just been changed to "unknown" - so I have to decide again what it all is.

I am now trying Music Library instead.

Andrew  Jolly

October 6, 2006 in Digital Music | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Will it all come out in the wash?

Although the prospect of of walking around wearing your PC/phone/media player rather than having to find pockets to shove the above equipment in is appealing, one subject I rarely see mentioned when this comes up is how well these things are going to wash!

Mixing your socks with your shirts now just leaves you with a strangely coloured shirt collection, but if mixing your washes wipes out your music collection I can just imagine the backup problems!

John Fairhurst

June 27, 2005 in Digital Music | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The great music pirating debate

I am against illegal copying of music. I do believe it deprives artists of income. The fact that it deprives the fat cat record executives of all their 'pleasures' I do not see as a problem. However these executives will not sign up new acts unless they are making good money out of established acts.

These same executives do the debate no favours with their alarmist figures. I believe they probably assume that every person who downloads is doing so instead of buying the CD. How do they calculate how many people download what? If they have the method of detecting music travelling the net then they could surely stop it. I suspect they use extrapolation. This makes their loss figures doubly dubious.

We are also being sold a second rate service at a high cost. Consider the change from vinyl to CD. At the time CDs were priced at a premium because it was new and considered to be a superior product. Frankly downloading poor copies of a CD and paying the same for it is an insult to peoples' intelligence. That is without taking into account the limitations that DRM place on music downloads.

Finally we should expect a more equitable treatment from the record companies. I get really angry to find a CD that I paid £14 for when released available less than a month later in the cheap racks. Either keep the price low or don't sell it cheap. Is it any wonder that so many people go to the supermarkets!

What is needed is a degree of common sense. I would consider it acceptable to copy my CDs to keep a copy in the car rather than having to move copies back and forth. I would consider it acceptable to make MP3 CDs to play in my car. I would consider it acceptable for a friend to make me copies of CDs they think I will like knowing that I will buy the CD if I like it. All these examples should fall into a category of reasonable use.

Now don't get me started on software....

Mike Bennett

May 20, 2005 in Digital Music | Permalink | Comments (62) | TrackBack

Digital music licence rip offs

It's good to see articles on digital music as it is clear this is of huge interest to us all. I am worried though about the Digital Rights Management used by music download services - or more particularly the way it is used.

I've spent a lot of money on downloaded music from MSN Music, which was great until I looked a bit more carefully at the licence details. The cost and usage of the product is severly restrictive compared to owning a CD. I am being ripped off here and so I will be using up any remaining credit and not returning.

For a start there are the unfair licence conditions, such as backup licences (I can copy the music, it's just worthless without the licence), and the fact that music can only be be played until 2099 - fine for me but what about my children inheriting a music collection. 

It is unclear when you buy music what the conditions are - you have to do a bit of digging.

Worst of all, if you upgrade your computer you have to re-issue the licence - for most of my music this is around 3 times and the initial purchase counts as one.  Suppose I want to keep my music for another 60 years - I have many tracks I bought 10 years ago that I still listen to today. What they are saying is I can't upgrade my computer more than once again in my lifetime (as I have recently already upgraded once). The thought that I might be using the same computer in even 3-4 years let
alone 60 is quite perverse!

All I want is a way to legitimately tranfer my music collection to a new device, and remove it from the old one. There doesn't appear to be a way to do this yet.

Or how about if my computer is stolen, destroyed in a fire or just plain broken - suddenly I have lost my entire music collection. I wonder what the insurance company will make of a claim for hundreds of pounds of digital music?

This is copyright gone mad fueled by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (and we don't even live in the US). The rights of the big companies have become too great and the rights of the individual have been completly eroded. Not in the spirit of copyright law at all. The big music companies talk about theft of music though copying. This is rubbish, it is copyright infringement and should
be treated as such. Just because someone takes a copy of a music track does not mean the original has been taken or lost - it is not theft and should not be treated as such.

I have no interest in duplicating/distributing copyright material or breaking the law but I do want to be able to enjoy freely what I have paid a fair price for.

Graham Parkins

March 16, 2005 in Digital Music | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack