Cross-posted from the Revver Blog. Head on over there and show some comment love.
In his recent Information Week column, internet superhero Cory Doctorow bashes Apple’s Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology and its protection under the DMCA because it’s bad for consumers, artists and the music industry.
Apple’s copy-protection technology makes media companies into its servants. Other copy-protection technologies, like Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, are just as bad.
The Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) prevents circumvention of technological measures used to protect copyright. This means it’s illegal to crack the DRM built into most commercial software including iTunes. Doctorow says this legal protection has given Apple the ability to build its monopoly on digital music distribution.
We all love the iPod. I don’t think I have one friend who doesn’t own one. I love mine. Because the iPod is connected to iTunes and iTunes to the iTunes store, it’s just so easy to buy music that way. The music I buy through iTunes is only playable in iTunes. I can play it on up to five computers (and their partner iPods). It will not play on mp3 players other than the iPod. Sure, there are ways to work around the DRM but the more music I buy, the more arduous this becomes. The more my music library grows, the less likely I’ll be to switch to another system. If and when a music player comes out that’s better than the iPod, I won’t be able to transfer my music to the new player. I certainly don’t feel like repurchasing all the music I already own so I guess I’ll just stick with the iPod.
At the end of the day, though, we customers can always vote with our wallets. That’s what many of us have done: P2P file-sharing of infringing music is the fastest-adopted technology in the history of the world. Even loyal iTunes customers are not filling their 10,000-song iPods at $0.99 a track (nor does the average 10,000-song-iPod-owner have a thousand CDs waiting to be ripped at home). Creative Commons-licensed music, public domain music and other freely sharable content accounts for some of those hard-disk sectors to be sure. But the customer has decided, by and large, to avoid Apple’s lock-in by not buying anything at all — they’ve joined the majority of Internet users in decided that copyright infringement is your best entertainment dollar.
But Doctorow says who Apple is really screwing is the music industry.
The music industry doesn’t have the option of avoiding commercial decisions. They have to sell music — that’s what they’re in business for –and that means that they have to go where the distribution channels are. The biggest, most successful, most powerful of those channels is Apple’s. Apple has sold more than a billion of the music industry’s tracks through that channel, and it controls it from top to bottom.
According to Doctorow, the actual owners of the copyrighted music have no control over its pricing or its distribution – Steve Jobs does. Copyright Law is intended to encourage creativity and to protect the authors of creative works. In this instance, the DMCA is protecting the monopolistic business interests of a software company.
There’s no good answer to designing a “good DRM.” Or rather, no DRM is good DRM. iTunes is instructive again in this regard: Apple sold a billion tracks in three years in spite of its DRM, not because of it. No Apple customer bought an iTune because of the DRM. What’s more, every track in the iTunes music store can be downloaded for free from P2P networks. Apple proves that you can sell music without DRM all day long — all adding DRM to Apple’s music does is give Apple the ability to abuse its customers and its partners from the labels.
The issues are the same in the film industry (Blu-Ray, HD DVD) and across all media. If you upload your video short to a site that locks it down into its player, that’s DRM. Why should anyone who wants to see that video have to do it on that website? Why should that website be the beneficiary of the interest/web traffic generated by your video? Shouldn’t you, the artist, be able to share your video how YOU want to?
We believe in unlimited unconditional access to media. If you buy a CD, you should be able to take it to your friend’s house and listen to it. Much the same way, you should be able to take a Revver video and watch it wherever you want – on any computer, online or offline. As long as you don’t alter the video without the creator’s permission, you are free to share it however you please. In fact, we encourage it because the widest possible distribution of Revver videos benefits everyone on the network.
For more information on the DMCA, check out EFF’s summary here or download the PDF from the US Copyright Office.