DRM screwing you and your neighbour
DRM (Digital Rights Management) is one of those sore subjects that causes heated debates from all sides. Proponents of DRM (I’m telling you they do exist!) will argue that it prevents piracy, protecting the rights of the artists or producers of the entertainment that deserve money for producing quality entertainment. Those against DRM, the vast majority of people that I come across and often a pretty vocal bunch, say that it hinders your ability to use the entertainment you’ve purchased in the way you want by transferring it between devices. I believe both parties have a point. Artists who provide quality entertainment, be it music, movies or games do deserve our support especially in this financially hard time. On the other hand DRM in my opinion only hinders legal purchasers. Pirates will remove DRM and not even be affected by it. As soon as any copy protection is released it’s cracked and stripped in a matter of hours, history has proven time and time again that given an obstacle hackers will take to the challenge and remove it sooner rather than later. So it’s only the law abiding good citizens that get screwed by the DRM. Luckily I have managed to stay pretty clear of any DRM troubles in the past buying CDs and DVDs and with a little software magic getting those files where I want them. However within the last week or so I’ve come up against two very annoying situations that have taken me off the fence and into the DRM loathing camp.
A great Air album: Pocket Symphony
My first fight with DRM this week came in the form of a bonus track available for download from the OpenDisc Air CD Pocket Symphony. Everything on the CD was fine, no copy protection there and I was able to play and rip the CD on my Mac and transfer it to my iPhone. The problem came when I noticed an extra image located on the CD. OpenDisc is a method of ‘connection between Artist and Fan’. To be fair, the OpenDisc system, although a bit fiddley and annoying does have a Mac client and did connect me to a special owners only website that had wallpaper, images, videos and extra tracks to download which is precisely what it is meant to do. However when I got the bonus track downloaded I was looking forward to hearing it as the rest of Pocket Symphony had been really very good, but it was in DRMed wma format. Having not come across this format before I tried to play it. I’ve got Flip4Mac installed so why shouldn’t it work? Quicktime gives me an error, cannot play file, cannot acquire licences. Ok, this is not the first time this has happened to me. Before I made the switch I had a few files that require licences to play, but I’d never not actually been able to play them. So I decided to see if I could strip out the DRM using a Windows box. Having got boot camp running, I loaded up the track, it played once and was excellent another great track to add the album, but when I tried to strip out the DRM I just couldn’t get the damn thing to work. More error messages bombarded me about licence error and the whole thing got a bit more trouble than it’s worth. The only recourse would be to burn the track to a CD and re-rip the damn thing into iTunes which I have yet to do because to be honest I’m not sure I can be bothered. I’m absolutely sre that it’s not meant to be this hard to listen to the music you love. If your favourite artist wants to give you something extra then, for goodness sake give it in something that can be universally used. If you look at the rest of the stuff on the fan website, the image files, flash video etc, all of that is pretty easily used and put onto different devices. Some might say my problem is that I use a Mac and that unless you’re using FairPlay Apples’ own DRM system then there’s no DRM system built in to OS X. The thing is that even if I had been using a Windows box, then I still wouldn’t have been able to transfer the track to my iPhone, the device that I actually listen to music most on, the one I actually want to use to play it. If the track had been distributed as an MP3 file, then all would have been different. I would have downloaded it, played it, thought it was good and added it to my library, probably have converted it to AAC and transferred it onto my iPhone as a nice addition to the album already on there. I would not have uploaded the track to BitTorrent, distributed it via file sharing websites or in anyway have breached copy right, I would have just listened to the track as the artist intended. So you see, DRM only screws those who want to legally use their purchases and pays for the privilege.
A great CD yet set to ruin your day
My other brush with the DRM sword was just two days ago. Christmas for me is a time to go and see the folks, sort out any computer or electronics problems they have and stuff my face full of turkey, the usual garb. So having sorted out some wiring, fixed the router and got the PS3 updated I attempted to rip some of my fathers favourite CDs to his PS3. Having had many many CDs stored on his Bose LifeStyle system and had it crap out on him and have to be sent off for repair, I thought having some tracks on his PS3 might make the time without his normal music consumption system a little easier. So I have a stack of about 10 discs ready to rip to the HDD of the PS3, a fairly painless procedure, for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure, of sticking the disc in, grabbing the track information and hitting import. Five minutes later the CD is imported and it’s time for the next. All goes well, Leonard Cohen, Sting, Elbow and most of my father’s Annie Lennox collection ripped fine until I got to Annie Lennox Bare. A CD I know quite well having heard it many a time over the years at home. I notice the case says something about CD copy protection, but ignore it as I’m using it in a legal manner and only transferring the music to something my father owns and wants to listen to it on. On inserting the CD I grab the track listings, all looks normal. I hit the import button and it starts on it’s merry way. A minute later it spits out an error message and stops having only imported the first two tracks. My first thought is there must me dirt on the disc so I eject it, clean it and inspect it for scratches and defects. The disc looks fine no scratches visible and nothing on the inside tracks of the disc from which the PS3 would have been reading. So I think that it must have just been a one off, a finger print or something throwing the laser off. I put the CD back in and hit import again. Bam, same thing happens, two tracks nothing more. At this stage I’m getting a little irritated but I try again, three more times, just to make certain, but to no avail. The stupid copy protection on the disc is interfering with the ripping process on the PS3. In the end I had to make an image of the disc, strip the protection out and burn a CD from that stripped image, a process relatively easy for someone such as you or I, but a process totally unknown to my father, the legal purchaser and consumer of the CD. Another great example of DRM screwing those who choose to pay for media. It’s no wonder so many people pirate music when this kind of thing ruins the purchased experience.
Defective By Design
Having got the the end of my ramble the problem is this. DRM ruins the consumer experience. Time and time again we see this across all media formats, music, video and games included (take a look at Spore if you want a better example). It is true that a reasonable proportion of the consuming public have no concept of DRM and don’t even see it. That is DRM doing what it’s meant to, being invisible and working so you can have your media whilst the artists or publishers feel safer that your not going to pirate it. But most consumers these days, especially the more vocal ones, want the ability to use the media however they like, on whatever device they like and DRM definitely gets in the way of that whole process. A few places have started selling DRM free MP3 files, and thankfully copy protected CDs are few and far between and that’s a step in the right direction. I just hope that the entire media industry wakes up to the fact that if people want to pirate something they will. Regardless of how much protection you put on something you’re not going to stop them. All you will do is screw your loyal fans, the ones that spend their hard earned and now quite limited amount of money on supporting you. So please media industry, trust your consumers, release your entertainment DRM free and don’t inhibit their experiences, they’re the ones who want to support you so make it easy and painless to do so.
Let us know your experiences, good or bad, with DRM in comments, I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s been stung by the beast this Christmas. Feel free to rant, just try to keep it clean.
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The other day, my co-worker bought Rise Against’s album off of iTunes. He then came to me the next day asking help getting that album into his Blackberry. I told him the hard truth. I explained what DRM was and that he would not be able to play it on his Blackberry. He got mad and just downloaded the whole album again, but this time through Limewire.
It’s crazy isn’t it. I mean you never have problems like that with pirated copies because all the DRM striped out. It makes pirating more attractive because its painless and problem free