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Category: DRM
July 17th, 2009
Amazon gets bullied, pulls purchased e-books from Kindles
Imagine buying a DVD at Wal-Mart and then, a few days later, someone from the Hollywood studio that produced that movie breaks into your house, takes that DVD out of your collection and leaves a refund on the dresser for you - all because that studio suddenly decided that it didn’t want Wal-Mart selling its DVDs.
Sounds crazy, right? But, in theory, that’s exactly what Amazon is doing with two electronic books sold for the Kindle e-book reader. Apparently, the publisher that supplied Amazon with George Orwell titles - specifically Animal Farm and 1984 - decided that it no longer wants to sell through Amazon. So they had Amazon remove them - even though they’d been legally purchased by Kindle owners. (Techmeme)
Just like that.
I can’t begin to put into words just how creepy this is. Amazon says that it’s “rare,” but just the fact that it can happen at all is worrisome on so many levels. If Amazon can do it with books, what’s to stop a movie studio or music label from doing the same thing to someone else, say Apple and its iTunes store.
Bad PR move, Amazon. Don’t you have some sort of binding legal agreement with the publishers that could prevent something like this from happening? Where were the lawyers? Where was the PR team? And why didn’t anyone warn the customers ahead of time?
It will take some real PR magic for Amazon to deflect the negative publicity of this one. Right now, Amazon looks like the egghead kid who caved to a bully and gave up the lunch money to avoid a fight. It sure does make it hard to earn any respect when you come across looking like a punk.
January 9th, 2009
The end of Zune? It's not just the music anymore
Is this the beginning of the end for the Microsoft Zune? In a story about Microsoft’s quest to beat Google, the Financial Times writes that Steve Ballmer seems “all but ready to throw in the towel on the Zune,” which hasn’t come close to being an iPod killer. The piece hints that Ballmer is more interested in the music player business from an angle that Microsoft knows well - software.
As products like the iPod Touch and iPhone hit the scene - as well as the Blackberry Storm and other smartphones with media playback capabilities - it appears that the push is toward general purpose devices that can not only play music but can also run apps over a WiFi or 3G connection. Like making phone calls, playing music becomes simply one element of a device - not its sole purpose. That’s not to say that anyone should expect a Zune phone anytime soon. Ballmer tells the FT: “You should not anticipate that” but adds that the company will stick to its strategy of developing software for a range of mobile devices.
Also see: Mary Jo Foley: Microsoft to wait until February for Win Mobile show-and-tell
Are partners willing to stick by Microsoft in this space? After all, weren’t partnerships the core of that short-lived “Plays for Sure” initiative, the one that’s become “Certified for Windows Vista.” 
Some argue that partners like MTV pulled the plug on Urge because Microsoft abandoned Plays For Sure. Regardless, in this climate of consumer spending, Microsoft is probably better off cutting its losses on the Zune and shifting its focus to areas where it can have an impact - software and online services.
It reminds me a bit of what happened with Creative and its Zen player. No, Creative didn’t abandon its line of music players. But it also recognized there was an opportunity to offer what it does best - high-quality sound systems - and tie into the iPod. Today, Creative still has music players in its lineup but it also has iPod speaker systems. Just this week at CES, Creative continued the “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” push by introducing SoundBlaster for iTunes.
That’s not to say that someone out there still can’t unseat the mighty iPod. But it just might be Apple that does it first - by launching new variations of the iPod Touch instead of the iPod Nano. Remember: DRM on iTunes is soon to be a thing of the past; variable pricing is the future of iTunes; and downloadable apps are where the real growth is. It seems that Apple has a jump start here and others - RIM’s Blackberry, Google’s Android and now Palm’s Pre - are right behind.
Has the track become too crowded for Microsoft to gain any ground in this race?
January 6th, 2009
Apple expands DRM-free music selection [video]
At Macworld 2009 in San Francisco, Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of marketing, announces a new music price plan and an expanded selection of digital rights management-free songs in its iTunes Store. Users will be able to strip their existing DRM-wrapped music of the controversial copy protection software, but doing so will cost 30 cents per song.
Also see: Apple’s final Macworld: Schiller delivers, disappoints
November 20th, 2008
Video Is Not The Future of the Internet. It’s the Present.
Auto companies may be going out of business. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is shrinking dramatically, by the day. Consumer confidence is at a post-war low. But Internet traffic is unabated.
Notably, it’s led by consumers. And video.
“We are living in unprecedented times,’’ noted Kelly Ahuja, senior vice president and general manager of the service provider routing technology group at Cisco Systems, at the UBS Global Technology and Services Conference Thursday. But, he soon added, “there is lots of traffic growth.”
“The majority of the traffic growth is occurring in the consumer space, driven by consumer Internet or video, whether it is IPTV or frankly even video over the Internet,” he said.
Here are Cisco’s basic numbers, from a study released in June.
Consumer traffic is more than double business traffic and will be more than triple business traffic in 2012.
And traffic generated by consumers on the open Internet will nearly quadruple in the next four years.
So, by then, video will be the dominant source of traffic, right?
Right. But it also already is.
Cisco doesn’t include peer-to-peer file sharing when it says that video will account for a quarter of consumer traffic on the Internet this year. But that’s hardly the case.
Roughly the equivalent of 500 million DVDs are being shared every month over P2P networks. If you figure 65 percent of the 2,361 petabytes of data that are being shipped each month from peer to peer comes from video sharing, there is no question that video now dominates Internet traffic.
The following chart takes an estimate from Cisco senior market analyst Arielle Sumits that 65 percent of P2P traffic in 2008 is due to consumer sharing of videos. And it uses her estimate that 95 percent of P2P traffic will be derived from video in 2012, when high-definition video has taken greater root.
Web browsing, email transport and basic data exchange will account for just 16% of traffic (not shown). It’ll be roughly the equivalent of the amount of traffic generated by Internet video going directly to TV screens. And video going to PC screens and file-sharing will far outweigh what is perceived today to be the fundamental uses of the Internet.
Video in 2012 will account for more than three-fourths of all consumer traffic on the Internet. But that future is far closer to now than you may think. More than 60 percent of today’s consumer traffic is from video, in all its forms of transit.
Now, the economy has taken a nose dive since this study was completed. And Internet service providers have not been hesitant to tell Ahuja what they think of the study’s traffic growth projections.
‘The smart ones look at us and go, well, you’re right. But you’re way off. They think we’re conservative,’’ he said.
Now, the more traffic the better for Cisco, so it should hope that’s right. It’s been kind of a tough week and bad month for John Chambers and crew.
So, if it’s true that the hour between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. at night is now becoming the Internet’s prime time, too, that could help its comeback from this latest economic bust. The Internet can’t be a collection of dumb pipes, at this point, argues senior manager of service provider marketing Thomas Barnett. Providers of Internet access will routinely have to prioritize traffic — read: in favor of video — if they are going to provide a “quality of experience” that allows them to charge for that access.
And somehow competes with the experience being provided by the closed networks of cable and satellite TV.
After all, nearly 80 percent of the traffic they handle will be coming from video when Barack Obama (backed by his cadre of the Web savvy) runs for re-election as president.
Of course, 60 percent already does.
November 6th, 2008
YouTube: Does your video ID system really work?
It’s been a little more than a year since YouTube announced the launch of its system to identify videos uploaded to its site that contained, without authorization, copyrighted content from television program and movie producers. And it won’t be until next year that the $1 billion suit filed by Viacom that alleges continual infringement of its intellectual property by the video-sharing unit of Google gets heard in court.
Viacom still believes thousands of videos infringing on its content get uploaded to YouTube every month (about 12,500). And in the intervening period, YouTube is doing basically nothing to broadcast itself. It does not discuss its system with the press. It has not posted any new videos on how it is policing itself since this short clip, posted on Feb. 2, and since watched about 10,000 times.
Download: YouTube’s video ID system: Is 75 percent accuracy good enough? Video ID system cost benefit and revenue calculators. (15-page special report includes: Executive checklists, YouTube’s vendors and analysis.)
Meanwhile, Viacom seems to be indicating it may like to monetize pirated clips with its copyrighted content in them. Only it’s not doing it with YouTube. It’s doing it with YouTube rival MySpace and a start-up called Auditude. MySpace “negotiated a reasonable business deal” with Viacom, said one industry executive Wednesday about the deal. “YouTube never has.”
Off the record, YouTube tries to intimate that it is now catching about 90 percent of infringing videos, as they get uploaded. Maybe more.
But, absent any kind of public demonstration or publication of verifiable statistics, YouTube has left its efficacy to be left to outsiders to define.
The good news: The content producer which first witnessed and unintentionally abetted, the YouTube phenomenon is now convinced that YouTube’s content identification system works, works well and is getting better. It was this “Lazy Sunday” digital short from Saturday Night Live which n 2006 that got millions of views, from an audience not too lazy to share it over YouTube. This is not now on YouTube.
Attesting on YouTube’s behalf is NBC Universal, whose general counsel Rick Cotton is on record as assessing YouTube’s ability to find infringing videos at 75% to 80% of uploads. NBC’s experience is covered in a Special Report, ZDNet Undercover: The YouTube File (PDF download).
But the testaments go both ways. Anvato, a Mountain View, Calif., company which supplies a version of video identification technology that it claims mimics the way humans see images, watched for any and all uploads to YouTube (and three other sites) from July 29 to September that included content that infringed on 12 NBC prime time shows, ranging from “The Office” to “Scrubs” to “30 Rock” to editions of “Law & Order.” It found 1,235 infringing videos. And it found that only 37, or 3%, got taken down.
Results for CBS and ABC are also in the Special Report.
Meanwhile, the vice president of business development at The Copyright Clearance Center, Miles McNamee, is even less convinced of the efficacy of YouTube’s system, more than a year after it was introduced.
“I don’t think they’re doing anything at all,” he told ZDNet. “I think they’re full of it.”
YouTube says it doesn’t have to talk about how well it’s doing. Its content partners are happy. Its users are happy. And it knows, it says, that the system is highly effective.
But for a company that urges all its constituents to reveal the most trivial aspects of their lives to the world –”Broadcast Yourself” — it’s revealing that it reveals so little about itself. How difficult could it be to publicly demonstrate what it can catch, if it can catch just about everything, at this point?
Google appears to be trying to cast doubt on Viacom’s ire. According to this report, Google, in court filings, says Viacom deliberately (but secretly) had video clips uploaded to YouTube, for promotional purposes, by BayTSP, its “copyright policing service.”Uploading videos is easy.
Then comes the fun part: Determining if they can effectively be policed.
YouTube: Broadcast yourself.
October 15th, 2008
Livin' La Vida Linux
[The opinions expressed here are mine alone, and not those of Google, Inc. my current employer.]
Last weekend I finished a home project I’ve been slowly working on for several months. I finally finished converting all the CD’s in my collection from physical media to digital files. It turns out that every CD I ever bought, which now comes to somewhere around 400, fits within 160 gigabytes of storage. It’s hard to buy a new disk that small these days, that’s how much storage capacity has increased.
All the photos I’ve ever taken with my digital cameras fit within 20 gigabytes (I haven’t had a digital camera for very long). I have a flatbed scanner but haven’t yet spent the time to scan in all my old photos from paper. I’ll probably start that task some idle weekend. I’m starting to look at my DVD movie collection with a view to doing the same. A couple of terabyte disks should cover that I think.
My world is slowly but surely moving online, and I’m not alone in that change. Read the rest of this entry »
September 30th, 2008
RealDVD officially launches, so do lawsuits; Is it 'StealDVD'?
Update: RealNetworks announced Tuesday that its RealDVD software, which allows you to rip and burn DVDs easily, officially launched. And the lawsuits weren’t far behind.
In a statement (Techmeme), RealNetworks billed RealDVD as a “watershed” product. The software, which goes for $29.99 on sale, allows 
you to rip, burn and organize your DVD collection, which usually is armed to the hilt with DRM restrictions. The RealDVD software encrypts DVDs so they can’t be shared or stolen, but that’s not likely to allay concerns from Hollywood. Headline of the day–Sue. Rent. Rip. Return–goes to John Paczkowski at AllthingsD’s Digital Daily.
The movie industry didn’t waste time suing RealNetworks. In a statement, movie studios sued RealNetworks alleging RealDVD violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The argument from Greg Goeckner, General Counsel for the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA):
RealNetworks’ RealDVD should be called StealDVD. RealNetworks knows its product violates the law and undermines the hard-won trust that has been growing between America’s movie makers and the technology community. The major motion picture studios have been making major investments in technologies that allow people to access entertainment in a variety of new and legal ways. This includes online video-on-demand, download-to-own, as well as legitimate digital copies for storage and use on computers and portable devices that are increasingly being made available on or with DVDs. Our industry will continue on this path because it gives consumers greater choices than ever. However, we will vigorously defend our right to stop companies from bringing products to market that mislead consumers and clearly violate the law.
The MPAA is looking for an injunction and damages.
Meanwhile, RealNetworks issued a statement on a pre-emptive lawsuit:
In response to threats made by the major movie studios, RealNetworks this morning plans to file an action for a declaratory judgment against DVD Copy Control Association, Inc., Disney Enterprises, Inc., Paramount Pictures Corp., Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc., Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., NBC Universal, Inc., Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., and Viacom, Inc., in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. The lawsuit asks the court to rule that RealNetworks Home Entertainment, Inc.’s RealDVD software, made available to consumers today fully complies with the DVD Copy Control Association’s license agreement.
However, the damage to RealDVD may be already done. As a consumer I’d hang back on RealDVD as the courts sort this out. Given how the music industry has gone after consumers do you really want to poke Hollywood too?
September 22nd, 2008
Ready to buy albums on a memory card? I didn't think so
SanDisk on Monday rolled out
-albums sold on microSD memory cards.
The argument (statement, Techmeme): SanDisk, which is trying to fend off Samsung, will offer a new category of music. Instead of buying CDs, downloading songs and subscribing to services you’ll buy these little memory cards. The cards will be preloaded with DRM-free music from labels like EMI, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. And Best Buy and Wal-Mart will sell these things.
Now here’s the problem: Folks don’t buy albums. They buy singles a la cart and the future is downloading not buying some format. But even if you get over that issue there are other complications.
For starters, it’s a pain to plug these little albums into devices. Yes, it’s portable, but isn’t it easier just to have these things as files on a hard drive. How many slotMusic albums can I lose.
Vinyl albums are beginning to sell because it’s more of collector’s item. No one is going to carry around a microSD card and show it off to friends.
Pricing is yet to be determined.
September 8th, 2008
RealNetworks: Rip those DVDs (with a dash of DRM)
RealNetworks on Monday launched RealDVD, an application that allows you to rip DVDs to your hard drive with limits set by digital rights management software. The company announced the software along with the opening of DemoFall in San Diego.
RealDVD (Techmeme, statement, site) is supposed to make it easy to save DVDs to a PC or portable hard drive in a way that satisfies the entertainment industry and its concerns about piracy. That’s short hand for saying that RealDVD preserves the encryption that limits you from distributing the content widely and uses digital rights management software, or DRM. DRM puts limits on what you can do with content. Consumers can get RealDVD for $29.99 on sale (it’ll run you $49.99 usually). Additional licenses will run you $19.99.
RealNetworks is hoping that its software puts the company in the center of your desktop. If you begin digitizing your DVD library via RealDVD RealNetworks could create a decent halo effect for RealPlayer 11 and the music service Rhapsody. I might be exhibit A: I avoid RealPlayer in general, but would certainly give RealDVD a spin.
Among the key points about RealDVD:
- The software saves an exact copy of the DVD (it takes 10 to 40 minutes and 4 to 8 GBs) and you can watch and save a DVD at the same time;
- The DVDs you rip are encrypted so they can’t be shared or stolen;
- The ripped DVDs can be saved on a portable hard drive and played on 5 PCs with a copy of RealDVD;
- Watching a ripped DVD will save on battery power.
The catch: You’re limited to 5 licenses for RealDVD and Real Networks tethers your ripped DVD to its software and only a handful of machines. In other words, there’s a serious digital rights management component to RealDVD. That said RealDVD’s DRM model is similar to the limits that Apple deploys with iTunes. The big question is whether RealDVD’s user interface will be easy enough to allow folks to overlook the DRM worries.
April 1st, 2008
Google CIO to jump to EMI; And what does he know about music?
Google CIO Douglas Merrill will reportedly jump ship to EMI to become president of the music label. His mission: Figure out this digital music thing.
Merrill’s move–reported by John Furrier and confirmed at numerous other news outlets–is a curious move. For EMI, Merrill brings technical know-how and instant credibility in the digital 
world. EMI is the fourth largest record label, but has been in front when it comes to ditching DRM and figuring out how to make its tunes fly in the new world order. Google can find another CIO in about five minutes.
But once the headlines die down, I have to question how this adventure will turn out for Merrill. Why?
Merrill’s bio sheds little light on how he’ll fare in a quirky, bureaucratic and ego driven business like the music industry. Here are Merrill’s previous positions:
- Google CIO where he navigated all the regulatory hurdles involved with the search giant’s IPO. He also led an army of internal engineers and support staff. Let’s face it Google is a dream job for an IT forward thinker. Will Merrill be frustrated at EMI?
- At Charles Schwab, Merrill was responsible for information security, infrastructure, human resources strategy and operations.
- He was also at Price Waterhouse where he specialized in security.
The common thread: All of those firms are front-runners when it comes to IT theory and practice. Merrill is obviously well rounded–he has degrees in social and political organization and psychology.
At EMI Merrill may need more psychology than tech chops. He has to herd cats in an industry that is notorious for not getting this Internet thing. Merrill goes from an innovative industry to one where most of the innovation finding creative ways to sue people.
In a recent Information Week interview Merrill talked about cloud computing, “the best CIO job in the world” and driving innovation. Simply put, EMI isn’t Google.
Careerwise, the EMI gig is probably a good move. No sense in being boxed into technology, but it’s going to be interesting to see how this one turns out.
January 27th, 2008
Anyone doubt Amazon is serious about music downloads now?
Amazon announced Sunday that it plans an international rollout of its DRM-free MP3 music download service in a move that sets up a global scrap with Apple’s iTunes service.
Is Amazon’s service an iTunes killer yet? Not really. But there’s no doubt about Amazon’s intentions. I’ve downloaded more than a few DRM-free tunes from Amazon in recent weeks–most because I got a warning about burning more than seven CDs for a 5 year old’s birthday party (there was two songs purchased on iTunes).
Without that little warning I probably wouldn’t have tried Amazon’s service. But the four big labels and thousands of independent ones convinced me to give it a try. Amazon’s service is intuitive, easy and can compete with iTunes–even though Apple and Amazon have different takes on their service.
Now that battlefront is going international. In a statement, Bill Carr, Amazon’s VP of digital music, said:
”We have received thousands of e-mails from Amazon customers around the world asking us when we will make Amazon MP3 available outside of the U.S. They can’t wait to choose from the biggest selection of high-quality, low-priced DRM-free MP3 music downloads which play on virtually any music device they own today or will own in the future.”
I’d love to see more quantification on the e-mails. Was it 100,000, 10,000 or 2,000? We’ll never know, but the big takeaway is that Amazon has a complete DRM-free lineup and plans to use it as a weapon.
One problem: Amazon isn’t disclosing a timeline for this rollout abroad.
Also see: Techmeme and Knowledge@Wharton on DRM.
January 24th, 2008
Netflix plans streaming video service for Mac
Netflix is planning to roll out a Web-based streaming video service some time in 2008.
On Netflix’s earnings conference call, which was quite positive given the company’s results, CEO Reed Hastings outlined the upcoming service for the Mac and what has taken so long.
Today, Netflix is streamed to Windows PCs only. We’ve been very happy with the viewing of our content by our subscribers, particularly our younger subscribers. Web-based video viewing is becoming mainstream, as a wide range of content companies make their content easily accessible on the web. We hope in 2008 to be able to support web-based viewing on the Macintosh also. The hold-back has been a lack of a DRM solution on the Mac.
Translation: Settle the DRM issue and you have Web streaming on your Mac.
That Mac tidbit from the Netflix conference call was notable, but there were other nuggets worth noting. Netflix reported fourth quarter net income of $15.8 million, or 24 cents a share, on revenue of $302.4 million. Those results were ahead of estimates. The company also raised its outlook.
Among the notable points:
The competitive landscape. Hastings said Blockbuster Online remains a threat, but also singled out Redbox, a DVD kiosk operator. Hastings called Redbox a “double edged sword” that could be a threat, but could also be a real pain for Blockbuster. Dinging Blockbuster would help Netflix.
Netflix’s model is the difference. Hastings noted that Apple’s movie rentals are similar to cable video on demand. Other internet video services have similar economics. The difference for Netflix is the DVD rentals as a service approach.
He said:
As we grow a larger and larger DVD rental subscriber base, our ability to offer both online streaming and DVD rental at one low cost means that we have a great advantage over any stand alone Internet delivery service − at least for the next ten years, while DVD is so significant.
January 4th, 2008
Better late than never: DRM (in music) dies
Sony BMG Music Entertainment is reportedly planning to sell its songs without copyright protection. When a Sony–the company that brought you that infamous rootkit fiasco–calls it a day on DRM you can officially turn out the lights.
Actually, the death of music DRM is a bit late. I thought DRM would have been swept out before the year ended. Guess the hearse got caught in traffic.
According to BusinessWeek.com:
Sony BMG, a joint venture of Sony and Bertelsmann, will make at least part of its collection available without so-called digital rights management, or DRM, software some time in the first quarter, according to people familiar with the matter.
Sony BMG would be the last of the big four music labels to drop DRM. Warner Music Group was a holdout until December when it announced a deal with Amazon. EMI and Vivendi blazed a DRM free path in 2007.
The game plan for the music industry appears to go DRM free, sell tunes outside of iTunes and grab control of the recording industry away from Steve Jobs. Will it work? Probably not, but if we ditch DRM I’m all for the experiment.
September 20th, 2007
NBC.com to deliver free, ad supported shows; ABC pairs up with AOL to do same
NBC launched NBC Direct in a move to deliver its shows free and ad-supported through NBC.com. ABC is pairing with AOL to distribute its shows–and the ads that go with them–for free.
It’s a distribution land grab. For NBC, the initial reaction from most observers was “Huh?” What about Hulu, that joint venture between News Corp. and NBC?
Who cares? If you are a television giant the game right now is throwing multiple business models out there and seeing what sticks. Eyeballs matter. And actually having someone see ads matters even more. As a user, I don’t care how I get my shows. I’ll definitely try NBC Direct to watch a show or two on the train. I don’t need to “own” a show by downloading one on iTunes. I just want to see it–once.
That’s why all of this experimentation from the television studios is a good thing–and why these Hollywood types don’t want to be locked in with any one platform. Sure, there are hangups like DRM, but overall I applaud the moxie. NBC is already cannibalizing Hulu. ABC is cracking the toughest nut in broadcasting–inserting local ads online. Using geotargeting AOL plans to drop in a local ad to its Web broadcasts.
Let’s look at the two moves from ABC and NBC:
According to The Wall Street Journal, ABC is making a full version of its primetime shows available on AOL for free. ABC already plans to do this on its site. Why team up with AOL? Distribution.
ABC’s deal will be a few weeks ahead of Hulu. CBS already has a similar deal with AOL. The shows will go online after they air on regular TV. AOL and ABC will share ad revenue.
The most interesting thing in the ABC deal is geotargeting, which will bring affiliates into the loop–a hot issue among TV stations.
As for the NBC plan, there are a few hangups that may annoy users. The good news: You can download a full show on your desktop (Windows only for now). You can preselect the shows you want downloaded to keep tabs of your favorites. The bad news: The episode will work for one week and then expire. And there’s a player to download–although it appears it’ll only play NBC shows.
NBC plans to roll out NBC Direct to Macs and portable devices also. Future enhancements will utilize a peer to peer distribution peer. Never thought I’d write P2P and NBC in the same sentence.
Although there are tradeoffs with the NBC Direct model the average bear may not care. After all, the price is right.
August 21st, 2007
Wal-Mart hops on anti-DRM bandwagon
Wal-Mart is going DRM free too.
Wal-Mart said in a statement that it will offer DRM-free music for 94 cents a track from record labels such as Universal and EMI Music.
Universal was the latest to go DRM free and EMI made the move months ago.
With a huge music retailer like Wal-Mart lined up against DRM it’s likely other outlets and labels will fall in line. Soon DRM will be a music liability.
Wal-Mart noted that it will continue to offer its WMA-format music downloads. The DRM-free downloads will be at 256 kbps for 94 cents a track. WMA downloads will run 88 cents a track for a 128 kbps version.
August 10th, 2007
DRM: The hearse is right on schedule
Universal Music Group on Friday said that it will sell “thousands of its albums and tracks” without DRM for a limited time.
Universal said in a statement that its test will run from August and January and track “consumer demand, price sensitivity and piracy in regards to the availability of open MP3s.” And then when Universal finds that demand increases it’ll ditch DRM permanently (I added that last part).
But the writing is on the album cover (more on Techmeme). EMI is already doing the DRM-free dance. And others will follow. Sure Apple CEO Steve Jobs may have prodded things a little but DRM’s days are limited.
If the Universal and EMI experiments go well–and they probably will–other labels will view DRM as the handicap it is. Universal will also use Google’s AdWords to drive traffic to the DRM-free downloads.
Universal was sure to note that it “will continue to support innovative digital models such as subscription and ad-supported services which rely on DRM as an enabling technology.”
Of course it will. For the music industry one big appeal of the DRM-free movement is that it may break Apple’s dominance in the business.
In fact, this paragraph in the Universal statement is telling:
Participants including Google, Wal-Mart, Best Buy Digital Music Store, Rhapsody, Transworld, Passalong Networks, Amazon.com and Puretracks, will offer downloads to consumers in the DRM-free audio format of their choice in a variety of bit rates. For the most part, the DRM free downloads will be offered at standard wholesale prices.
One question: Where’s Apple?
May 30th, 2007
The DRM-free music era begins; What's next for Apple?
With Apple’s iTunes update, the DRM-free era officially begins. The big question is what comes next for Apple?
Apple move to sell DRM-free tunes from EMI may be a boon initially since other rivals are still saddled with clunky copyright protection schemes. Amazon plans to go DRM-free, but not until later in the year.
The longer-term picture is a little more unsettled. Here are a few items we’re about to find out about:
- Will music buyers pay more to ditch DRM? Apple is selling DRM-free music for $1.29. The DRM-free music sounds better due to a higher encoding rate, but ditching evil software is the big sell here. Will folks buy it?
- How many people will upgrade an entire DRM library to DRM-free with one click? Will some iTunes customers upgrade by accident?
- Will Apple’s dominance be weakened without DRM? Copyright protection software helped tether iTunes customers to the iPod. As the world goes DRM-free that lock-in effect erodes. It won’t happen overnight, but it is a risk. “While today’s news is a positive for consumers, we believe it weakens one of Apple’s long-term competitive advantages in the digital content segment. As we have noted previously, DRM-free content reduces the switching costs for consumers wishing to exit the iPod-iTunes ecosystem, which reduces barriers to entry for Apple’s potential competitors,” wrote J.P. Morgan analyst Bill Shope in a research note.
There won’t be answers to those questions initially, but it does bear watching. For now, it’s clear sailing for Apple–especially ahead of its developers forum the week of June 11. Morgan Stanley upped its stock target for Apple shares to $150 from $110.
May 17th, 2007
Podcast: Microsoft patents, Dell's Project Hybrid, DRM-free music and more...
This week on the Dan & David Show, we discuss Microsoft’s accusation that the open-source software industry has infringed 235 Microsoft patents and Dell’s Project Hybrid, which appears to be a plan deliver virtualized, plug-and-play servers for datacenters. We also Amazon’s new DRM-free music service, Google’s Universal search and the colonization of the Web.
This podcast can be delivered directly to your desktop or MP3 player if you’re subscribed to our podcasts (See ZDNet’s podcasts: How to tune in). For more the topics covered during the show, search our blog.
May 16th, 2007
DRM-free movement snowballs; watch those song prices
Amazon said Wednesday that it will launch a digital music store “later this year” that will feature DRM-free tunes.
The online retailer said it will offer millions of songs from more than 12,000 labels. EMI’s music catalog, which went DRM-free with Apple, will be included in Amazon’s store.
The official line from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos:
“Our MP3-only strategy means all the music that customers buy on Amazon is always DRM-free and plays on any device. We’re excited to have EMI joining us in this effort and look forward to offering our customers MP3s from amazing artists like Coldplay, Norah Jones and Joss Stone.”
Now let’s make a few leaps. What’s most interesting about the Amazon announcement is that it may preview the landscape once everyone offers DRM-free MP3s. Music stores will be everywhere and music will become a commodity.
How this shakes out remains to be seen, but commodity goods typically see a pricing race to the bottom. The wild-card is the music labels and whether they can control pricing. For instance, Apple charges more for DRM-free music (it tosses in better song quality), but that model may not hold up as more stores appear. If I can get a DRM-free song for 99 cents why would I pay more. After all, it’ll all play on the iPod.
For now everyone is in the same bed–labels and store owners (Apple, Amazon, Yahoo et al)–but what happens in a world where everything is DRM-free? It’s possible EMI could find itself with growing market share since it ditched DRM. It would only make sense for rivals to cut pricing to keep share.
The music industry fought tooth and nail to maintain the industry’s economic model. But the road may lead to free anyway.
April 3rd, 2007
Ding dong, the witch is dead
Yeah, I know it's a little early to declare the DRM 'witch' to be dead but EMI and Apple may very well put the first nail in her coffin!
Music piracy was born in the early 1970s. The cassette tape recorder was new and the Dolby B encoding (for reducing background 'hiss') was even newer. The 'state of the art' was long-playing records — made of vinyl, LP's had their own shortcomings but when new they produced surprisingly high-quality recordings. (Nearly as good as reel-to-reel tape – and far more accessible to consumers.)
Seeing the appeal of cassettes, record companies embarked on a two-tiered approach to selling music. The serious listener still bought LP's for their quality but portability made the cassette a superior choice for the 'on-the-go' consumer so the industry also sold pre-recorded cassettes of their record library. By and large, these pre-recorded cassettes were of clearly inferior sound quality.
It didn't take long to figure out that two or three people could share the cost of two LP's and a blank cassette and, using Dolby B encoding, make high-quality recordings of these brand new LP's while spending less than they would have on pre-recorded cassettes. Was this legal? Nope. But this kind of 'casual piracy' was tolerated by the music industry because they knew that high-quality reproduction was pretty-much limited to first-generation copies. With the development of the CD, in the 1980's, digitally-recorded music could be copied over-and-over with no loss of quality. Still, piracy remained 'in-check' in large part because distribution of digital music remained friend-to-friend.
Fast-forward twenty years and friends are still sharing the cost of music with their friends. The CD remains the gold standard for audio (as is the DVD for video) and the MP3 is the CD's 'lower-quality' sibling. Only now, the "CD-player" is a computer and copying a recording is as simple as copying a data file. If distribution were still friend-to-friend, the impact of this 'casual piracy' would still be small but today distribution is often peer-to-peer between computers connected to the Internet (and taking place largely without human intervention).
Unscrupulous peer-to-peer software vendors are turning their unwitting 'customers' into large-scale pirates subject to federal prosecution. What's worse, shortsighted recording companies are going after those same unwitting 'customers' instead of the real culprits — those making money off of the piracy of music (and video). Rather than embracing the distribution technology (and using it to their advantage to cut costs), the recording industry turned to DRM (digital rights management), a catch-all approach which does nothing to deter those 'pirates for profit' — yet makes enemies out of lots of paying customers.
In Steven Jobs' open letter of 6 February 2007, entitled Thoughts on Music, he points out that over 90% of the music sold today is on CD and therefore DRM-free already. So, how much impact can DRM have in stopping wholesale piracy?
NOT MUCH. After all, if most music sold is already DRM-free, piracy via peer-to-peer networks will continue to run rampant.
Is it really worth it to the recording industry to alienate so many customers by continuing to force DRM technology on us?
PROBABLY NOT. Defeating DRM today is no more difficult than defeating copy-protection schemes for software (and VCR tapes) was in the 1990's — but unlike those tools, simply possessing DRM-defeating tools is a felony, even if used legally. Forcing customers to commit a felony to use their own music in a legal fashion is not good for business. For most of us, all DRM does is alienate us by keeping us from playing our music wherever and whenever we want.
Well, things may be changing: EMI, Apple partner on DRM-free premium music. Finally, a major player in the recording industry (EMI) has decided to partner with Apple to sell DRM-free music via iTunes (granted at a premium price). To sweeten the pot for the premium price, Apple and EMI will distribute DRM-free music which was recorded at a higher bit-rate of 256Kbps.
Thanks EMI (and Apple) for recognizing that customer needs and desires are legitimate. It's time for the rest of the members of the RIAA to come on board. And its time for your congressmen and mine to repeal those portions of the DCMA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) which criminalize the use of DRM-circumventing technologies when doing so does not infringe upon the copyright holder.
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