Here’s a thought. I just had lunch with someone who works for a broadcaster and is wrestling with the idea of distributing content online and we both agreed that what’s missing from the whole DRM debate is a strong case for “just enough DRM”. He pointed me to Chris Anderson’s post about this from back in December, where Anderson says this:
The real question is this: how much DRM is too much? Clearly the marketplace thinks that the protections in the iPod and iTunes are acceptable, since they’re selling like mad. Likewise, the marketplace thought that the protections in Sony’s digital music players (until recently, they didn’t support MP3s natively) were excessive and they rejected them. Indeed, we were one of the first to criticize Sony in a big way for getting that balance wrong. And, for what it’s worth, Test and the rest of our reviews do take points off for intrusive DRM when we encounter it.
Anderson wrote the post in response to a remark by noted copyfighter Cory Doctorow that Wired was “going soft” on DRM by featuring reviews of media players with bad DRM implementations. He goes on to illustrate his point by saying he has installed Windows Media Center in his home (which has quite a lot of DRM and doesn’t, for instance, play Divx files) because, at the end of the day, he “and more importantly my wife” couldn’t be bothered with something that was more DRM-free but, essentially, a lot more geeky.
I’m not going to pick a fight with the Cory Doctorows of the world because they’re far more informed and cleverer than me, but let’s face it: we’re going to have to have some DRM. At some level, there has to be an appropriate level of control over content to make it economically feasible for people to produce it at anything like an industrial level. And on the other side of things, it’s clear that the people who make the consumer technology that ordinary people actually use - the Microsofts and Apples of the world - have already accepted and embraced this. The argument has already moved on.
Chris Anderson uses the iPod as an example of DRM which “the marketplace” will accept, but here’s my question: what are the best implementations of DRM out there, which balance the needs of the provider and the consumer without getting in the way of either? Does such a thing exist? And who is advocating it with as much conviction, homework and intelligence as the copyfighters?
UPDATE: This caused a small ripple of interest - I’m beginning to realise that writing about DRM is something that should only be attempted while in possession of a thick skin. In the comments, a bunch of people argued that the DRM argument is by no means won, something which I didn’t actually say. What I meant was that a lot of very big companies, and most of the world’s digital media users, were acting as if it were. I used imprecise language, certainly, but where on earth can you use imprecise language if not on a blog? One commenter (Tom Loosemore, of the BBC) raised the issue of business models, which got me thinking that perhaps current DRM is a product of shaky - or rather out-of-date - business practices, and perhaps it’s those we should be looking at. Out on the web at large, two Internet Gods, Doc Searls and Jon Udell, linked to the post, the first in despair (the most depressing thing he’s read in a long time, apparently), the second in disagreement but with some interesting things to say about talent abundance/scarcity.
And there’s a very good debate over at Burningbird, where the inability to spell my name correctly is more than compensated by the quality of the thinking.
But no-one - and I mean no-one - responded to the main question: is there an application of DRM (or at least something that looks like DRM) out there which actually works (and the implication in there, if you didn’t get it, was that every time I’ve encountered it it does not, OK?). The only sites referred to were emusic (which doesn’t use DRM at all), AllOfMP3 (which, as far as I’m aware, doesn’t send royalties to artists) and Wippit (which I believe does use DRM, just not everywhere, or at least with a light touch). It would appear that the answer to my original question is a resounding “no” from this little survey.
January 6th, 2006 at 5:50 pm
The problem with Anderson’s argument is that “the market” accepts the iPod’s DRM because “the market” generally knows next to nothing about it. It’s like saying the market accepted Thalidomide in the 1960’s, or cigarettes. People don’t actually know much about DRM and therefore cannot be expected to make a reasoned judgement about its side effects.
I don’t think we are the stage yet where we can agree that DRM is inevitable and necessary. Rather than lock down products and “content” we could, for example, try purely legal mechanisms or perhaps even voluntary social mechanisms (e.g. shareware) to return revenue to providers.
You could well be right that some DRM is necessary - I don’t know at this stage - but there must be alternatives worthy of consideration if we are looking to reward providers/artists etc without throwing out our ditial rights along the way.
January 9th, 2006 at 2:09 am
What DRM argument?
I enjoy both of Lloyd Shepherd’s blogs. His work blog, given that he is Deputy Director of Digital Publishing at Guardian Unlimited, helps me see into the world of commercial publishing and follow the developments at his paper. His most
January 9th, 2006 at 11:04 am
“At some level, there has to be an appropriate level of control over content to make it economically feasible for people to produce it at anything like an industrial level.”
Please justify and argue this assumption. Then go and look at AllOfMp3.com which sells MP3s with no DRM at an acceptable price.
Maybe what we actually need is for big media and big tech companies to produce lots of incompatible and unusable DRM and carve the market up into tiny pieces while installing the worst spyware possible. Maybe then the marketplace will reject all of it.
The best argument I’ve seen is the cryptographic one. You can’t give somebody the encrypted text and the keys and then tell them what they can’t do with the plain text. So DRM has zero effect on counterfeiters and simply upsets your real customers. Face it. DRM doesn’t work and it’s only effect is to upset your only source of revenue.
Just Say No To DRM
January 9th, 2006 at 11:05 am
You say that the Doctorows of this world are cleverer and more informed than you, yet you don’t appear to have actually listened to what they say, as evidenced by your tying together of the statements “we’re going to have to have some DRM” and “there has to be an appropriate level of control over content”. But the key point that Doctorow et al have been making is that DRM doesn’t give you control, it just gives the illusion of it. DRM doesn’t work - this is why Big Content is pushing for “Analog Hole” legislation as well. If DRM technology actually did what it was meant to, no extra legislation would be needed.
Anything that people really want DRM-free will show up on the darknets anyway. Its main purpose removed, all that’s left for DRM to do is get in the way of people who weren’t going to steal in the first place, and can now do far less with their purchased content than those who’ve torrented the unlocked rips. Why do we have to have this, exactly?
January 9th, 2006 at 11:50 am
Lee, the argument that ‘“the marketâ€? generally knows next to nothing about it. It’s like saying the market accepted Thalidomide in the 1960’s, or cigarettes. People don’t actually know much about DRM and therefore cannot be expected to make a reasoned judgement about its side effects.’ is spurious. Unlike the examples you give, the effects of DRM are upfront and immediate for the consumer, rather than hidden years down the line in academic studies. A consumer knows that he can’t play his FairPlay-protected AACs on another machine if he isn’t registered on that machine, because he’ll try it.
As for the argument that we should try shareware… if you were a record company, you’d take one look at the balance sheets of a shareware company, and one look at Microsoft’s, and make a pretty fast decision. The record company CEO that says “we’re going to reduce in size and give away our product” will be out of a job the next day.
Julian, please - don’t use the example of allofmp3.com if you’re trying to make a serious point. I’m yet to see any evidence that any money from that company makes it back to the artists. A better example would be Warp Records (www.bleep.com), which is a well-known company in the UK that’s chosen to sell unprotected MP3s. What’s more, Apple’s proven that DRM *does* work - it’s selling a lot of DRM’d product, at a fair price. Would it sell more if it was unprotected? Show me the business case, please.
January 9th, 2006 at 12:09 pm
Ian:
Apple’s proven that DRM *does* work - it’s selling a lot of DRM’d product, at a fair price. Would it sell more if it was unprotected? Show me the business case, please.
Certainly: Those who wish to steal rather than pay for unprotected MP3s already have many avenues for doing so. Almost every album that iTMS sells is on the darknets - those that aren’t are missing through lack of demand, not the benefits of DRM. iTMS’s sales figures have everything to do with ease of use and connection with the most popular digital music player, little to do with DRM. The only value that DRM has brought is in somehow persuading the major labels to license their music through the convenient fiction that FairPlay somehow protects it. But this is not a benefit of DRM, it’s just a symptom of how screwed-up the market currently is.
Also note that the music store at second place in the market is eMusic, which sells unprotected MP3s.
January 9th, 2006 at 12:34 pm
What you are missing is that DRM destroys value - it give paying customers less than copyright infringers get. By adding DRM you make a worse product, and will get paid less for it. Apple’s iTunes includes a circumvention device with it that will burn the bought songs to CD, thus restoring much of the value. For much more on this, see the Open Rights Group submissions to the APIG DRM enquiry:
http://www.openrightsgroup.org/orgwiki/index.php/APIG_DRM_Public_Inquiry
January 9th, 2006 at 12:36 pm
Some interesting points, here’s some responses from me:
- why do you think the music available on eMusic tends towards the smaller, indie side of the scale? Because these people are making a rational economic decision, swapping DRM protection for distribution on the eMusic platform. If they broke through to another level, those bands would be off eMusic and into DRMville before you could say “The Strokes”
- does the fact that DRM can be “broken” invalidate the concept entirely?
- if DRM doesn’t give you control, and the people who pay for the media we consume need that control, how will they get it?
January 9th, 2006 at 12:49 pm
All digital file formats become obsolete with time. DRM is designed to be incompatible and non-convertable, so the the real market test comes when people discover that all the multimedia they have bought is no longer supported by the newest hardware and that there is no easy way to convert it to the new platform when their old platform has been made defunct (for marketing reasons?).
Even now, though for example divorce and migration, a few people have already discovered some of the unexpected limitations of DRM’ed multimedia. The only bright side to all this is that as long there are programmable general purpose computers one can always convert multimedia from a limited and incompatible (DRM) format into a portable open format. (See Microsofts’ Darknet paper)
Lets just hope that DRM proponents don’t end up banning programmable computers and criminalizing DIY programming.
January 9th, 2006 at 12:54 pm
Lloyd, responses in turn:
1: I’m interpreting this point (possibly wrongly) as saying that the bands on eMusic are there because they can’t get distributed on iTunes and other services with DRM that charge more. In response I give you: Anthony and the Johnsons, The Pixies, Arcade Fire, Sufjan Stevens and a whole load more (admittedly mostly indie-ish) acts who are on both services.
2: Yes. Personally, I have not reverse-engineered much DRM myself - I haven’t needed to. The mistake that many in this business make is assuming that if it’s hard enough that 99% of users can’t crack it, then those users will have to pay for it. Nuh-uh! All it takes is one person to do it and dump the results on the darknets.
3: They already have it. It’s called copyright law. DRM is just a broken technical solution to a social and economic problem. It’s broken to the extent that the only people it really inconveniences are exactly the wrong ones - the people who were honest enough to pay for the content.
Okay, how about this challenge: Find me an album - one album - that has been kept off the darknets due to successful DRM (rather than, say, through total lack of demand).
January 9th, 2006 at 1:18 pm
Yoz - that wasn’t quite the point I was making about emusic. I know there are some big bands on there. What I’m saying is that the decision “not to use DRM” is a complicated economic one as well as an ethical one.
On the Darknet point, I agree - there isn’t one album that’s not on there. But I’m afraid the argument that runs “DRM is pointless, because it’s all on Darknet, so we should avoid DRM” isn’t a particularly strong one (just trying running it by the board of EMI).
More interestingly, I’d like to know how rationally big entertainment companies are “discounting” Darknet - how aware are they of it, and how much are they saying “it doesn’t matter, because only x per cent of our audience are ever going to go in there.” It’s quite easy for a company to do that.
Thoughts?
January 9th, 2006 at 1:44 pm
I agree that the success of the darknet isn’t the most compelling reason to avoid DRM on its own but it’s still pretty key. What I hope would be a better one is to prove that DRM has a more negative impact on the bottom line than positive, which totally defeats the purpose of it.
The reasoning goes like this:
a) DRM costs more money to implement (technology licensing, extra processing, technical support to users) than non-DRM.
b) DRM hits sales negatively by reducing the potential market size. If you use WMA rather than MP3, as many services do, you can immediately write off the majority of the digital music player market, since they have iPods - it’s, what, 60% or something, right? Similarly, Mr Jobs can write off the remaining 40% from being iTunes customers.
In order to make the money back from a) and b) you need to be able to account for the additional sales that you would not have made had DRM not been present. How do you do that?
So far, I suspect it’s either all been kneejerk “They’re stealing our music, it’ll be all over the internet and nobody will buy unless we protect it!”; or it’s been “all online sales are due to the success of DRM” which is similarly bollocks, because most of those sales are due to ease & immediacy of use rather than prevention of illegal copying. This is one of the reasons I’m so glad of eMusic: it’s successful despite a total lack of DRM, which shows that both of the previous arguments are nonsense.
January 9th, 2006 at 1:51 pm
Sorry, I didn’t address the second part of your question, mainly because I don’t really know the answer. I suspect that the entertainment companies in question must have a much greater fear of casual copying amongst friends than of the darknet, which I find somewhat bizarre, though more believable. Though I wonder who these magical users are who have the technical experience necessary to easily transfer large numbers of albums amongst each other whilst being clueless about darknets.
January 9th, 2006 at 2:16 pm
Personally I consider DRM not much more then collective wishful thinking of a very small elite.
A gris-gris: Something which they are convinced about to be true, while it’s not true. Even very shallow investigation shows that DRM does not work in any technical sense. It only works as a business model as long as we all continue to believe in it.
January 9th, 2006 at 5:55 pm
My idea of acceptable DRM is something I can easily defeat to do what I want with the content I’ve paid for. DVD copy protection fits the bill, because of the easy availability of libdvdcss. iTunes sort of fits the bill because I back up all my music to CD anyhow, from which I can make an unprotected copy. I was a lot more comfortable with iTunes, however, before they broke the latest version of JHymn.
I think your view of the copyfighters is extremely condescending. You admit you can’t defeat them in an argument, yet you claim the copyfighters have already lost the argument. You may not even really know what the argument is. Most of us don’t find DRM itself to be an outrage - we just don’t think it really works. What is an outrage is the DMCA anti-circumvention provision, and other laws and treaties around the world that outlaw the circumvention of DRM. Such laws are the worst kind of protectionism, designed to serve the interests of esablished cartels against disruptive technology innovators. Not to mention that they spit in the eye of consumer fair use. The world hasn’t moved on from the debate over these hideous laws, not by a long shot.
January 9th, 2006 at 9:42 pm
I am the ’some from a broadcaster’ to whom Lloyd refers above. I’m afraid I didn’t come away with the same conclusion wrt our DRM conversation. For me DRM remains a suite of technologies delivering negative consumer value, and as such I can only view it as a a short-term irritant.
In the long term, the near-magical ability of digital tech to make and share perfect copies at near-zero marginal cost will be embraced by successful media businesses - businesses which with probably employ wholly new business models.
That said, those new business models are looking decidedly thin on the ground right now. Thus, many rights holders are acting logically in demanding their content is locked up by DRM, as is perceived to be required to support current business models.
This ‘use DRM or nothing goes online’ reality leaves me with a quandry:
1) I could retire to the sidelines and wave ‘DRM is Evil’ placards. Some people I respect hugely have taken this option.
2) Or I could conclude that it is my employer’s best interests to ensure we use the least-bad DRM solution as a necessary evil. That way we’ve at least got a stake in what will be a very messy game, and millions of people will be able to enjoy online access to content which would otherwise not be available to them.
So I would restate Lloyd’s question thus:
If you’ve got to use DRM as a precondition to allowing access to content online, what’s the least-bad flavour?
The hardest questions are often the ones you hate being asked.
BTW, I say that if you still answer ‘none’ to the above, I say you’re copping out of the debate. After all, placard-waving is much easier if you can still access stuff via darknets. Most people can’t or won’t, so in effect you’re denying the majority of people any online access to content which you remain free to enjoy. Try explaining to your mum why she should be denied the chance to catch up on Eastenders online because DRM Is Evil. Meanwhile, of course, you’re sorted cos you have the skillz to point Azureus at ThePirateBay…
I’m with Tony every time on this one.
January 10th, 2006 at 12:19 pm
Of course there are entirely valid reasons for exploring least-bad DRM options, as Tom points out above. Presumably the answer lies in exploring Kevin Marks’ POV about the fact that DRM destroys value and makes things less usable. The least-bad DRM solution is the one that destrooys least value and contains fewest strings attached (thinking about Sony’s rootkit issues here). Whatever the answes, a debate is needed for sure.
As for Ian’s much earlier riposte to my initial comment, you have missed my point. Of course the basic restrictions of DRM products are (fairly) clear upfront to the user, but the long term hidden damage (hence the cigarette reference) is in the erosion of our digital rights.
The almost total lack of consumer knowledge about the DRM debate (ORG: where are you by the way?) is why we must not trot out classical economic fallacies like ‘the market will decide’ or ‘consumers seem happy wiith it’.
As for alternative models, what is wrong with looking at voluntary mechanisms for some implementations? We have the social tech these days to make it work, and for smaller distributions like software, it seems to have some value.
Anyway, as Tom says, it is not a time for placards and well-worn statements of position. On the one hand, we need a reasoned debate to involve the public in the story. On the other, those trying to fight DRM in its totality need to get their act together and think about how to bring about systemic change (hint: it is not through press releases to the Guardian, preaching to the converted or seeking to soften the edges of bad legislation ….. hmm …. where are those placards again….
Maybe part of the answer lies in not calling the least-bad implementations DRM, so we can differentiate between attempts to create mechanisms that open up new distribution channels and deliver value, and Hollywood’s drive to squeeze every last drop of profit out of an unsustainable business model and retain their position of economic power and cultural hegemony.
January 11th, 2006 at 12:52 am
This issue is clearly a very deep one from a philosophical standpoint, and it has a lot to do with the question of how an individual should be recognized by society for performing a Great Work, like a musical album or a movie. I think the discussion here demonstrates that most people with technical proficiency have concluded that DRM will, ultimately, fail to prevent unauthorized copying, but only impede it. In that sense, it is like a locked car door. The car can, of course, be stolen with a little more work.
But music and movies and other works of art or artifice are not products to be stolen — despite the music industry’s zealous proclamation to the contrary, music piracy is not stealing — not from the artists, not from the industry, not from anyone — but merely a licensing violation. DRM is an attempt to materially enforce a nonmaterial agreement.
I think the answer to Lloyd’s original question is that the elimination of centralized distribution will obviate the *need* for DRM, and that the right “kind” of DRM is thus the kind that encourages this (admittedly disruptive) paradigm shift. I can say that I have both downloaded movies illegally and ripped movies from DVD to my computer, and the fact is, putting all ethical questions to the side, watching the definitive version of a movie is simply more reliable than watching a pirated copy. When watching a DVD (or, presumably, a network-delivered video purchased from a legitimate source) or listening to music purchased from iTunes, I can be *absolutely sure* it will possess a high-quality encoding, free of glitches and imperfections, and contain all accurate and relevant metadata. Not so on any count for a pirated track, especially for rare material. With a movie, the danger of an imperfect (or even, when restricted to substandard video players [like, for example, Windows Media Player], unplayable) video comes at greatly increased time and effort cost to locate and download it, whereas a legitimate copy would be guaranteed to be free of defects and includes the bonus of ethical propriety.
I believe that when and as it becomes possible to download original material, in whole and uncrippled, DIRECTLY from the creator or the creator’s personally selected distributor, at a fair price, then both the Darknets and ‘negative-value’ DRM will disappear for lack of demand. Furthermore, the artist herself will be in command of the price of her work and the distribution vector, in short, how she feels she should be credited for having created it will be up to her. This decentralization is the great power of the Internet anyway, even its founding principle, if I am to believe a RAND paper I once read.
January 11th, 2006 at 10:01 am
Why Does iTunes Need DRM?
In a comment on the Preoccupations blog, Lloyd Shepherd contends that DRM is a sina qua non of legal digital media downloads, using the example of iTunes. I see statements like this all the time, and they always leave me baffled. Why is DRM essential t…
January 11th, 2006 at 1:47 pm
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January 29th, 2006 at 1:26 am
Of course DRM can be good, but the whole technology focus would need to change from limiting the consumer to truly empowering the consumer. I’ve been saying this for a while, primarily because I believe “free media for all” is not the answer and the only answer is productive use of technology.
It’s an argument that I don’t hear a lot, so I tried to describe my reactions to to the negativity about DRM in yesterday’s posting DRM: Assurances Not Limits. If the focus isn’t on consumer value, why are we bothering?
February 8th, 2006 at 10:09 pm
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