Hard News: Another nail in the coffin of music DRM
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There's no way that every isp in the world is going to clamp down on "high internet users". They'll look like idiots shutting down the information superhighway.
and yet that's what france is already doing. go figure eh, didn't see that one coming.
and true re costs. 15 gig for $10 is a good deal though, although in movie terms it starts to become marginal to download a full movie versus renting it.
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I was just expressing surprise at your 'do as I say but not as I do' approach to this issue.
There is a certain amount of sarcasm in my statements but if you read my comments I've never said that any individual stopping downloading is going to do anything to change the present situation. all my comments have been about looking at the long term effects of no constraints on copying. Humans are not going to change so you have to change things for them.
To take an Anti DRM stance and public push for it is a narrowminded and short sighted thing to do, regardless of how hard it may be to impliment a really good drm. Yes we can download any thing we want without paying for it and that might seem nice right now but its establishing a president that will have far reaching and potentially very damaging effects on the people who make the things we so much enjoy.
I'm just calling out the people who attack any attempt to control digital media. Yeah I get you want to get something for nothing but sooner or later if you keep stealing off the shop and try and stop it installing security cameras and safe guards, well the shops going to close. That's my point. and when there's no shop you'll feel a little bit stupid about crying cos someone made it hard for you to copy your cd to your ipod.
I'm not telling you to do anything like I do or otherwise or telling you anything about what I actually do in my life, I'm just trying to illustrating points to further thought beyond "they tried to stop me sharing my music so they're evil giant mega corps"
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They'll look like idiots shutting down the information superhighway.
That's kind of what nz internet providers look like at the moment with their piss poor service but you don't see them making any urgent plans to fix anything. so long as you're paying the maximum they think they can squeeze out of you a month and happily sending emails and looking at web pages they're quite happy, they don't seem to be so keen to offer much more than that to joe average at the moment.
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That's kind of what nz internet providers look like at the moment with their piss poor service but you don't see them making any urgent plans to fix anything. so long as you're paying the maximum they think they can squeeze out of you a month and happily sending emails and looking at web pages they're quite happy, they don't seem to be so keen to offer much more than that to joe average at the moment.
I've been with my current isp (actually, only ever isp) for 12 years now, they give me good service, I'm happy with what I pay, and I get good speed and they've never tried to constrain what I do online, even if I do things that are illegal.
If you're getting less than that, I'd recommend you change.
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I've been with my current isp
who u with?
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an article on a similar system I suggested for anti music piracy for people who think effective drm is impossible
To combat piracy, Cinea developed its innovative solution, which provides copy protection and piracy tracking for DVDs. Cinea’s solution includes the S-VIEW DVD player and encryption technology to safeguard content. The S-VIEW DVD player offers the highest-quality picture and sound. It also plays standard DVDs. In collaboration with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, Cinea has distributed the SV300 model of its S-VIEW DVD player to nearly 12,000 of the collective voting members. Recipients of the Cinea S-VIEW players simply need to install the player as part of their home entertainment system, as they would install a regular DVD player, and make a phone call or go online to register with Cinea.
Cinea encrypts each disc with a code unique to each member. The Cinea disc delivered to each member will play only on the Cinea S-VIEW DVD player registered by that member. A Cinea encrypted disc cannot be viewed on any other DVD player or computer. So you basically need to have a registered machine to play those review DVD copies, which are sent out to many film critics. You can’t play the disc on any other DVD player, so it’s impossible for a “scene-friendly” critic to share the disc with some release group, which would rip it and spread all over the internet.
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answer me this, if creative types can't control the distribution of their works and no magical business model appears after 10 years of piracy to establish a reliable income flow to keep the producers producing, what do you think is going to happen?
how do you see the future of art creation?
will their be long term developing artists or simply one off hobbists?Noone here I think is against musicians who create original work making money from that. I just can't see any way to put this particular horse back in the stable.
Still, I'm not sure, but I'd wager most professional musicians don't make their money from recording. And I think there are already viable alternatives (just some: emusic, the radiohead approach, the madonna deal), for all that the majors don't like them.
You are certainly right, tho rob, that things are going to change. And it might mean a period when very little gets recorded. I don't think so, however- because it's now so cheap to record stuff. I don't buy the "music is free hey it's nirvana!" line, but I'm also sceptical of your "this is the end, the final end" feeling.
will it hurt the incomes of many musicians? Probably. Will music stop? Of course not. Music has always been based on copying anyway... (all those covers bands have probably been technically "pirating" their income since forever.)
Vis-a-vis the technological approaches you mention: as people keep saying: they all offer the consumer less. And that's not a good selling point. The essential problem- and you'll remember the industry thought back in the 80s that cds would be the death of them!- as soon as one digital copy exists in the wrong hands- it's all over.
I don't think that can be stopped; you simply think that we haven't yet found the right mechanism.
(__In the coming recession- after the yuan becomes the dominant world currency :-) there will be no piracy laws anyway, but you will probably get shot for failing to follow them...__)
Maybe one of the big pushes of piracy is the ipod/personal music player, which itself is interesting: music is generally a public sound, and we want to share it. With the personal players, in a sense copying it becomes the means of sharing- rather than blasting your mate with the stereo, you dump it on his mp3 player. In that sense, the social nature of music is itself changing: recording a massive band sound can also be done by one spotty youf with a guitar or keyboard and a laptop- not even the need to assemble an array of musicians...
The sort of device you're describing above has to be fantastically crippled- they are giving it away for a reason. I can see the model where, perhaps, if you gave away the technology- and that's not so ridiculous, technology is still coming down in price- you might capture people for a while. But they'd soon throw it away if the content providied wasn't constantly what they wanted. And they wouldn't give up their ipods in the meantime. -
Noone here I think is against musicians who create original work making money from that.
That's clearly not true judging from some of the comments here and its whats makes this situation interesting.
Mostly people are swayed by misconceptions perpetuated by people who should know better.
Andrew Dubber and his "major record labels are evil and ripping people off so its time for them to get a little of their own medicine back" "none of the money goes to the artists" sctick (NZ Radio discussion group), and our own RB with the "another nail in the coffin of DRM" carry on as if an and all attempts to manage distribution of owned digital media should be frowned upon as it it was worse than people freely stealing it.
Some of it people should know better about and others bits they should think a little longer on and figure what the effects are most likely going to be. Remember some people let others do their thinking for them, especially with media types.
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an article on a similar system I suggested for anti music piracy for people who think effective drm is impossible
Um, so you're suggesting that people who want to listen to music will throw away all of their existing hardware and buy it all again just so they can be prevented from copying music with it? Sure, I can see myself really wanting to do that, along with the rest of the world. Sounds like it'll sell like hot cakes.
I keep telling you that it is impossible with the current hardware that is already out there. It is impossible because the existing playback hardware and media is not designed to be protected from copying, and ultimately at the very end of the line if somebody wants to copy a piece of music that can be played out of good-quality speakers then they can stick a frigging good-quality microphone in front of it and do some calibration/automatic processing to make up for the lossy nature of the process. Hello, DRM-free digital encoding of 2nd-generation analogue copy. That's better quality that most of the tapes I had in the 1980s, and certainly not necessarily worse than the lossy files that I can go pay for on iTunes right now.
You can't stop people copying. You can try, but it's a giant rubbish bin into which you will keep tipping money. There are people in business who will gain from this, but they're the snake-oil salesmen who try to convince you that preventing copying is impossible.
Now, as for all your questions about those wonderful creative arty people: I should point out to you that my background is in music. I don't have this religious hatred of musicians making a living wage, and in fact that would be a damn fine thing. It might allow me to stop working in IT so I can pay my rent, for example! Wouldn't that be nice.
My problem with your position is that it's based on fact-free fantasy about what is actually possible in the real world. DRM will not save a business model built on the key assumption that mass digital copying and sharing is impossible. It is possible, has been possible for a decade and it's going to keep being possible from now until the human race vanishes and/or returns to a pre-1990s level of technology. You can keep denying reality or you can work on a new business model that works in the real world.
What annoys me about your position is that this kind of denial is what is preventing the people with the chequebooks in the music industry from making the real investment they need to be making in order to not end up totally fucked. You're right, people having a popular sense of entitlement to music without paying for it is a bad thing. But there's no way you're going to stem that tide with some sanctimonious adverts and a competing product which doesn't even pretend to be better on a feature-for-feature comparison than the illegal alternatives.
You can stand in front of an incoming tidal wave and shout that you're going to sue it all you like, but don't be surprised when it just washes you away and flattens your house...
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Still, I'm not sure, but I'd wager most professional musicians don't make their money from recording.
I am sure and I know where musicians get their money from and how that has changed over time.
In most of the cases its not about earning income from recording, its about covering costs. You've said recording is cheaper than ever and in one way that's true. its cheaper than ever to piss around at home but if you're going to produce something that sonically competes that's still difficult and expensive. Every good sounding home recording was done on borrowed expensive equipment some where in the chain be it borrowed good mics, borrowed engineering skill, or extensively mastered by really good engineers.
and even then cheap is not that cheap. an mbox a good mic a good set of head phones some speakers will get you 1-2 channels of recording and set you back 2-4 grand, or more, but then you've still got to learn how to use it and when you give up you get your sound engineer mate in. etc.
if you want to do full bands drums etc you're up in another league with a mixing desk, more mics and stands cables etc. its the 10 -20 grand league at the low end.
Studios worth their salt start at $50 an hour and the better ones go for twice that or more. none of that's changed really.What has changed is the abilitity to cover those costs.
25 years ago musicians were pretty much guaranteed to recoup through sales and gigging the costs of making a record, it might take time but most could.
That's clearly not the case now with many wearing the costs out of their personal pocket and not coming anywhere near making a dent regardless of medium level success, and the general view is thats their problem, can I have a free one,
That's not the case the world over, japan has a completely different level of respect for their artists, and there are still the fan boys and girls out there who buy it because its important to them to send some money back to support the process, but there is a national mind shift not aided at all by stupid comments from.....
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For "impossible" in "copying is impossible." read possible... bloody late-night posting...
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And I think there are already viable alternatives (just some: emusic, the radiohead approach, the madonna deal), for all that the majors don't like them.
and don't forget david byne out walking the planks again.
but all of those are exceptions to the rule and the radiohead example was a disturbing reflection on either them or their fans with 65% of them paying nothing a further 28% paying fuck all and only a handful paying market rate or showing them some respect.The emusic idea I like. although I'd like it better if it worked more like a shared music collection where an entry fee gets you all the music you can listen to and record you want, kind of like full res you choose radio without ads.
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but I'm also sceptical of your "this is the end, the final end" feeling.
I'm not thinking that at all,
I just think the issue is wider and deeper than some almost cliche attitudes.
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Vis-a-vis the technological approaches you mention: as people keep saying: they all offer the consumer less.
Thats wrong too. you can't compare drm to what you get from an illegal downloads cos you're not actually entitled to the download and its not something you've paid for or are getting as a service. its something you're breaking the law for and at the moment you're getting away with it cos the powers that be haven't got their shit together to stop it yet.
But there are ways. The above posted article that the academy awards screeners now come with special software to play it and if you rip it its tagged with the owners name so if pirated copies do turn up they know it came from you.
What finn doesn't get is technology can change in the future. When you buy music in the future it could be encrpyted, only playable with a key, have the purchasers id put through it for tracking, be playable on devices that have no analogue output and no way of easily copying it other than an analogue microphone recording.
Internet providers could be required by law to assist in the stemming of file sharing as they just have in france. and a bunch of other things not yet thought of. and yes all of that might make music participation a little more difficult, or it might be transparent and the only difference you'll notice is you can't give you music to all your friends or more importantly let complete strangers download it from your share folder. and it'll be like that cos there will be no other way cos humans just aren't like they used to be, got no sense of fair play I tell ya. -
the radiohead example was a disturbing reflection on either them or their fans with 65% of them paying nothing a further 28% paying fuck all and only a handful paying market rate or showing them some respect.
I paid 1p for the Radiohead album. Not because I thought it was worth 1p, just that I a) hadn't heard it yet and b) didn't think that 160kbps MP3 was much more than try-before-you-buy quality. I'll buy the album in the proper (read: lossless) format soon.
Anybody who paid "market rate" (you mean CD price?) for 160kbps lossy MP3 with virtually zero distribution cost and no packaging or artwork screwed themselves royally.
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Robbery, the "offer the consumer less" is not about offering less than the illegal alternatives, it's about offering them less than they get now. I really do question your ability to actually read what people are writing to you.
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What annoys me about your position
finn, you've got to chill out man. learn to enjoy life a little more.
for all you know i might actually have some experience and insight into the industry, I have posted links to articles which have in the last few days done exactly what I said might happen (internet provders forced to stem downloaders, new drm for dvd, etc,) you on the other hand just get annoyed. stop taking things so personally and learn to discuss concepts and ideas to find the answer not merely satisfy your own need to win. -
Oh, and at risk of spamming the thread:
What finn doesn't get is technology can change in the future. When you buy music in the future it could be encrpyted, only playable with a key, have the purchasers id put through it for tracking, be playable on devices that have no analogue output and no way of easily copying it other than an analogue microphone recording.
Who's going to pay for those devices? The consumer? Why? And why would they buy a device with no analogue output given that uh... it would be impossible to listen to? Or are you suggesting a device that transmits music directly into our brains rather than needing analogue devices like headphones and speakers?
As for encryption and keys, do you even know what you're talking about? Yes, you can encrypt a piece of content to a key so only somebody with that key can decrypt it. The problem, as we keep explaining to you and as you appear to be mentally unable to grasp, is that you are giving the key to the listener in order for them to be able to listen to the media. If you don't give them the key in some way, they can't listen to it.
What you're suggesting with locked-down tamper-proof hardware is a possibility. But if the music industry wants to keep having billions of potential customers then they're going to need to make sure billions of hardware units are built. Who pays? Me? Why? I don't want it, it offers no benefit to me. It offers benefit to the music industry, but it's not going to be cost-effective for the industry to buy new CD players for everybody on earth.
As I keep saying to you, the solutions you desire involve the complete replacement of the modern PC as a media platform. It would need to be totally redesigned, and everybody's existing machines replaced. Who is going to pay for that? Are you going to buy me a new PC? Why would I want one that clearly sucks more than the design I have now?
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Maybe one of the big pushes of piracy is the ipod/personal music player, which itself is interesting: music is generally a public sound, and we want to share it. With the personal players, in a sense copying it becomes the means of sharing- rather than blasting your mate with the stereo, you dump it on his mp3 player.
Actually the ipod isn't the sharing device it once was. its a one way device that you can't upload off. you can only put stuff into it and that came about via negotiations with the music industry to stop a potentially bad piracy issue. and an ipod will only sync with its mother itunes or itunes will only sync with its ipod etc. these anti piracy sharing initiatives have already been put in place as a result of pressure from media owners.
The computer is the sharing mechanism.
personally as a previous taper I acknowledge the social importance of making tapes for friends, and there is a difference between that and putting music in your share folder in limewire and letting strangers grab it.
in the age of Digital Audio Tape (DAT) there was a serial copy management system which would let you make one copy from an original source. you could not copy from a copy unless you went analogue and converted again. that would be an interesting feature which would satisfy the share urge but limit the scope of it. all of that could easily be put into an audio file and player.itunes as a mp3 maker which is always upgrading could make it as part of its make up. you could stick with your non serila copy management version of itunes and never update again, but most won't.
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Who's going to pay for those devices? The consumer? Why?
cos they have no choice. why do they by ipods that won't let them upload tracks. cos thats a modification that was made to them at the request of music people and thats what happened. you have no choice.
if you want to play the music game then you play buy the rules of the people who provdie this stuff.And why would they buy a device with no analogue output given that uh... it would be impossible to listen to?
wireless connection, encrypted signal, lateral thinking finn, this technology is already around. you got wireless head phones haven't you?
it may not save the massive library of music already out in the ether but it could be applied to future recordings quite easily,
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You can stand in front of an incoming tidal wave and shout that you're going to sue it all you like, but don't be surprised when it just washes you away and flattens your house...
sorry to upset you finn. I don't know what you've been reading but its obviously not my posts cos I've been discussing the implications of long term piracy, advances in and changes in technology etc as well as this tidal wave unstoppable or not. you on the otherhand are stuck on this glorious wave thing. thats way to one dimensional so how bout you make it a little more interesting and open up the discussion a little. I've introduced quite a few different themes for you , linked to a few recent news items and insulted some media authorities, what have you bout to the table except the same rhetoric and a degree of annoyance. if you're so sure leave it at that, why should my comments unsettle you in your unwaivering belief.
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The problem, as we keep explaining to you and as you appear to be mentally unable to grasp, is that you are giving the key to the listener in order for them to be able to listen to the media. If you don't give them the key in some way, they can't listen to it.
come on finn, don't be a cock.
have you not used a computer game where the key is the disc you install it off. the game doesn't work without it.
of course you're giving them the key but then if you give a copy of the media to someone you also have to give em a copy of the key. one degree harder than just copying the media. I don't know what you do for a living but you don't seem to have much experience in a variety of already existing copy protect. -
As I keep saying to you, the solutions you desire involve the complete replacement of the modern PC as a media platform. It would need to be totally redesigned, and everybody's existing machines replaced.
why? let computers do computing, and remove them from the media playing platform. ipods are small enough for people to have a computer and an ipod or similar media player in the same space. why does a computer have to be your media platform too. yes they have intersected but they don't need to stay that way.
Who is going to pay for that? Are you going to buy me a new PC?
no, you'll keep your pc although you upgrade it every couple of years to keep pace with technology. you'll buy a media player if you want access to new music, if not, enjoy the same music for the rest of eternity (this is all hypothetical anyway finn, and you don't seem comfortable with that so I suggest you stick to the here and now, unchangable forever.
Why would I want one that clearly sucks more than the design I have now?
cos you're a pawn for corporations to make money off and you'll do what your told and take what you're given, just like you always have, just like the rest of us. What? you think you're special??
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Robbery, the "offer the consumer less" is not about offering less than the illegal alternatives, it's about offering them less than they get now. I really do question your ability to actually read what people are writing to you.
your reading comprehension is a little in question too. people have specifically said compared to what they can get for free off the net. I've addressed that specifically,
What is less about a DRM track. its what you get now, only you can work around it, ie the drm doesn't work, but it is supposed to be not copied, even though you can break the law and copy it you know that you are illegally copying it etc. (excluding putting it on your media players which I consider fair use and that seems to be the general trend of the industries thinking too, only the implementation of that makes it difficult for them to maintain control over their material at present. lets hope they fix that so you can all calm down.
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What you're suggesting with locked-down tamper-proof hardware is a possibility.
gee thanks, you conceded to one point mr king of all knowledge about technology. and that was bleeding obvious cos it was already something you should have known if you knew anything about what you say you know, which I'm seriously doubting.
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