Tuesday, January 18. 2005
Rock-n-Roll, Cola Wars, I Can't Take it Anymore*
Lately it may seem that we are anti-Apple, and understandably so. We've written several consecutive entries detailing the reasons why we think people should seek alternatives to Apple's FairPlay DRM. We aren't altogether anti-Apple, but we are strong critics of digital rights management in general. Apple isn't only an easy target, but a good one. With its big name and exclusionist business practices, refusing to license their technology to third parties, Apple chooses not to exercise its market share and power to bring better quality and interoperability to an emerging market. However, our criticism extends to all practitioners of DRM, from the smallest garage-office to the largest corporation. So far we haven't seen a single DRM scheme that is well-designed while protecting the rights of both content owners as well as customers.
Apple recently released a new iTunes update that breaks the third party, Hymn, utility and prevents it from stripping away the FairPlay DRM. This comes only a week after Panda Labs reported a security hole in the DRM schema of Windows Media Player. Although Microsoft claims that it's not a flaw with the DRM per se, but rather simply triggered by a DRM-licensed file, we don't think that quibbling over semantics makes a difference. Both of these companies have or will invest many man-hours and dollars to keep third parties out, whether they be legitimate businessmen or basement hackers.
Thus, we arrive at the crux of another anti-DRM argument, that the whole model is flawed. Digital rights management relies on technology to protect the rights of content owners, and technology is fallible. Short of devolving this column into an existential discussion, humans are fallible, and thus anything that they build or create will be fallible. No perfect code will ever be written. Trojan horses, viruses, malware and exploits attack even the most heavily-funded and secretly kept code, such as Microsoft's.
DRM designers continue having to build and rebuild new versions of their software to fix those previous breaks. It winds up costing everyone more money in the long run, the DRM sellers, the copyright holders, and the customers. It's not even just small time hackers and individual downloaders who are breaking the DRM; legitimate businesses are making money by selling DRM counteragents, and they're not being stopped either. What results is a war of attrition, as technological walls are torn down and rebuilt, torn down and rebuilt, with each new exploit and new code release. It winds up costing everyone millions. Even the DRM vendors aren't making as much money as they could be because they have to rebuild their code all the time or risk losing business.
Much like a household security system, digital rights management gives the people behind its walls a comforted, reassured feeling but little more. But unlike a house alarm, there's no 24-hour monitoring service on the other end, ready to contact the cops. In fact, there are no cops. Despite the efforts of Congress to make DRM-breaking a criminal issue, it's still a civil one. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act may have made it illegal but it didn't create any committee or department to enforce it. In truth, the weight of enforcing DRM and copyright protection falls still on the shoulders of copyright holders, who must use the civil courts to find any justice.
Rather than trying to locate all instances of copyright infringement and hiring thousands of lawyers to bring these people to justice, they turn instead to what they think will be a cost-effective middle ground, digital rights management. If any DRM platform could strike a balance between all parties, DRMBlog would be its first and biggest proponent. But so far, all we've found are ones that eschew the rights of customers in favor of copyright holders, which we consider both unfair and unethical.
What copyright holders should do is take a course in human behavior, capitalism to be exact. People want choice. You can't treat customers like children, giving them more restrictions than rights, and expect them to stick around. People want to feel like they're getting their money's worth, and they want to give it to a company they trust will treat them right. Even though you're always going to have a group of uneducated consumers to which you can sell your barred windows, you're going to have a high turnover of the many who have learned the ropes and join up with your competition. As more and more people are born into the technological age, the more aware they become of the way the world, and DRM works.
Copyright holders need to learn from the pros, the soda companies, who have been playing this public relations game for over a century. Ask almost anyone what they think of Coca-Cola or Pepsi and most will have a very vehement opinion. Whole towns are classified as Coke or Pepsi towns. People are loyal to their soda-pop, and it has far less to do with taste than it does the enormous advertising budget that the companies shelled out.
Although I don't think that music and software and game companies should dive into an ideological PR war, I do think that they could benefit from some serious branding budgets. Companies should spend less money on DRM and more money on making a better product that will keep customers coming back. Look at Blizzard's fans who spend years buying title after title because they love and trust the company. That's one thing that Apple does do well; it has an unswervingly devoted customer base that doesn't just buy Apple's products but witnesses to new customers every day and brings them into the fold.
*Title taken from Billy Joel's song We Didn't Start the Fire.
Author: Ginger Cox
Apple recently released a new iTunes update that breaks the third party, Hymn, utility and prevents it from stripping away the FairPlay DRM. This comes only a week after Panda Labs reported a security hole in the DRM schema of Windows Media Player. Although Microsoft claims that it's not a flaw with the DRM per se, but rather simply triggered by a DRM-licensed file, we don't think that quibbling over semantics makes a difference. Both of these companies have or will invest many man-hours and dollars to keep third parties out, whether they be legitimate businessmen or basement hackers.
Thus, we arrive at the crux of another anti-DRM argument, that the whole model is flawed. Digital rights management relies on technology to protect the rights of content owners, and technology is fallible. Short of devolving this column into an existential discussion, humans are fallible, and thus anything that they build or create will be fallible. No perfect code will ever be written. Trojan horses, viruses, malware and exploits attack even the most heavily-funded and secretly kept code, such as Microsoft's.
DRM designers continue having to build and rebuild new versions of their software to fix those previous breaks. It winds up costing everyone more money in the long run, the DRM sellers, the copyright holders, and the customers. It's not even just small time hackers and individual downloaders who are breaking the DRM; legitimate businesses are making money by selling DRM counteragents, and they're not being stopped either. What results is a war of attrition, as technological walls are torn down and rebuilt, torn down and rebuilt, with each new exploit and new code release. It winds up costing everyone millions. Even the DRM vendors aren't making as much money as they could be because they have to rebuild their code all the time or risk losing business.
Much like a household security system, digital rights management gives the people behind its walls a comforted, reassured feeling but little more. But unlike a house alarm, there's no 24-hour monitoring service on the other end, ready to contact the cops. In fact, there are no cops. Despite the efforts of Congress to make DRM-breaking a criminal issue, it's still a civil one. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act may have made it illegal but it didn't create any committee or department to enforce it. In truth, the weight of enforcing DRM and copyright protection falls still on the shoulders of copyright holders, who must use the civil courts to find any justice.
Rather than trying to locate all instances of copyright infringement and hiring thousands of lawyers to bring these people to justice, they turn instead to what they think will be a cost-effective middle ground, digital rights management. If any DRM platform could strike a balance between all parties, DRMBlog would be its first and biggest proponent. But so far, all we've found are ones that eschew the rights of customers in favor of copyright holders, which we consider both unfair and unethical.
What copyright holders should do is take a course in human behavior, capitalism to be exact. People want choice. You can't treat customers like children, giving them more restrictions than rights, and expect them to stick around. People want to feel like they're getting their money's worth, and they want to give it to a company they trust will treat them right. Even though you're always going to have a group of uneducated consumers to which you can sell your barred windows, you're going to have a high turnover of the many who have learned the ropes and join up with your competition. As more and more people are born into the technological age, the more aware they become of the way the world, and DRM works.
Copyright holders need to learn from the pros, the soda companies, who have been playing this public relations game for over a century. Ask almost anyone what they think of Coca-Cola or Pepsi and most will have a very vehement opinion. Whole towns are classified as Coke or Pepsi towns. People are loyal to their soda-pop, and it has far less to do with taste than it does the enormous advertising budget that the companies shelled out.
Although I don't think that music and software and game companies should dive into an ideological PR war, I do think that they could benefit from some serious branding budgets. Companies should spend less money on DRM and more money on making a better product that will keep customers coming back. Look at Blizzard's fans who spend years buying title after title because they love and trust the company. That's one thing that Apple does do well; it has an unswervingly devoted customer base that doesn't just buy Apple's products but witnesses to new customers every day and brings them into the fold.
*Title taken from Billy Joel's song We Didn't Start the Fire.
Author: Ginger Cox
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