If you've used one of the plethora of online music stores which have popped up in the past couple of years, then you probably know what "Digital Rights Management" (DRM) is. DRM is the technology that prevents someone else from playing your purchased tracks on their computer or portable music player. But the problem is that DRM can also prevent you from playing your purchased tracks on your own portable music player.
Files you purchase from any online music store are "locked." They are encrypted and can only be played by a music player that understands how to decrypt them. And all of the current encryption mechanisms are proprietary and incompatible with each other. Apple's version of DRM is called "FairPlay," and it is only compatible with iTunes and the iPod. Apple won't license the technology to other vendors, and even if they did, it's doubtful that the other vendors would adopt it as long as the technology remains solely under Apple's control. So this means that any tracks you purchase from the iTunes Music Store can only be played by iTunes (or another QuickTime-based media player) or on an iPod. Microsoft uses their own brand of DRM, and unlike Apple, Microsoft's DRM is licensed to other vendors under a program called "PlaysForSure." Most online music stores, apart from iTunes, sell Windows Media Audio files which are compliant with the PlaysForSure specification. But, with the release of the Zune portable music player, Microsoft inexplicably abandoned PlaysForSure in favor of a new, incompatible DRM technology that only works with the Zune. This left users who had purchased collections of songs which used the previous PlaysForSure encryption -- not to mention most online music stores, including Microsoft's own MSN Music Store -- high and dry. Songs encrypted with the older DRM specification won't play on the Zune, and Microsoft isn't licensing the newer DRM specification. At least Apple is nice enough to make sure that songs you purchased using an older iTunes version will play on current iTunes versions or iPods. But the reverse is not true-- you cannot play a song purchased in iTunes version 7, for instance, on a computer running iTunes version 4.
This leads me to my main point, which is that when a technology gets in the way of a user doing what they want, the user will generally either find a way to bypass the technology, or they will simply not use the technology.
Let's take an example: most new car stereos, DVD players, and other consumer audio devices can play "MP3 CD's", which are simply data CD's that contain a bunch of MP3 files. MP3 is an open standard for compression of digital music. Generally, it can reduce the size of a digital audio track by 8 to 10 times, meaning that a CD which used to hold only 10 or 12 tracks can now hold 100 or more. And on most stereo equipment, there is no perceivable loss of sound fidelity incurred by compressing the track as an MP3 file (assuming that you use a high enough compression quality.)
But if I have one of these now-ubiquitous MP3 players, where do I find MP3's to put on it? Moderately geeky individuals may have already converted their old CD collections into MP3's. Even geekier individuals (like me) may have taken the time to burn these MP3's onto data CD's so that they can have 9 hours of uninterrupted music on long car trips. But honestly, most people don't have the time or the energy to do this. And what about new music? If I buy a new CD, I can "rip" it into MP3's and transfer those MP3's to my music player, but that's a bit of a pain. And if I buy music from iTunes or another music store, I'm SOL. I can't play that purchased music on my MP3 player. I have to have an iPod or a Zune or whatever music player is compatible with the music store's proprietary DRM format.
If I'm a really ultra-geeky user, then I can probably find one of the "DRM cracker" programs out there which unlocks the DRM encryption on my purchased songs, allowing me to convert them to MP3 files which can be played anywhere. And you'd think that I would be perfectly within my legal rights to convert a song that I purchased from an online music store into an unprotected MP3 file. This should fall under the "fair use" clause of the U.S. Copyright Act. This should be the modern equivalent of making a cassette tape from a CD I purchased. But thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), defeating any Digital Rights Management scheme is now illegal. So even if my intent is only to convert a song I purchased into an MP3 file so I can play it on my own MP3 player, technically I am breaking the law if I do this.
So is it any wonder that the CD is still the preferred format for digital music? It's just too cumbersome to deal with online music purchases, unless you have an iPod (or now, a Zune) that can play the files directly. If someone likes most of the songs on the CD, they'll probably go ahead and buy the CD. If they don't, then they'll sneak a copy of the CD from a friend or illegally download the tracks they like from a
file sharing service or, perhaps, buy them from a
slightly suspect overseas MP3 store. CD's and file sharing are still the most popular ways to acquire digital music, and maybe this is because current online music stores prevent the users from doing what they really want to do with their purchased music.
Music afficionados mostly don't mind paying a buck for a song they like, but they don't want to be locked in to playing that song only on certain devices either. They want to have the same rights with the downloaded song that they would have if they purchased it on a CD. That means burning as many CD copies as they want. That means playing the song on any music player, portable or otherwise.
This may come as a surprise, but unlike so many other technology gadflies, I am not necessarily anti-DRM. But I think that three things need to happen to DRM before it stops becoming a swear word in the mouths of users:
1) DRM should not restrict the fair use rights of the user. Rather than preventing the user from copying their music as they see fit, DRM technology should instead simply assure that any copy is always traceable back to the user that purchased the music. All existing DRM schemes can already do this, but there is in fact another technology,
digital watermarking, that could achieve the same ends without using DRM at all. When a user purchased an MP3 from an online store, it would contain a digital watermark that is embedded into the audio data. The watermarks do not affect the perceived sound quality, they are very difficult to remove (if not impossible, at least for most users), and they follow the audio wherever it may go, including onto a CD. The user can make as many CD's as they like, but the knowledge that their name is attached to each one will be a deterrant to giving the CD's away. Of course, someone will probably figure out a way to remove the watermarks eventually, just like they've figured out how to remove DRM encryption. But most people won't bother. The idea isn't to make the purchased music 100% secure from piracy -- that's a pipe dream. The idea is to make the users think twice about where and how they're copying their music.
2) If DRM is used, then it should be an open standard. That means that Apple and Microsoft (and anyone else who wants to play) need to sit down in a room and agree on a DRM scheme that is strongly encrypted and traceable to the purchasee but also open enough to preserve fair use rights. Or maybe they can just agree to use
the one that Sun has already developed ... Then they need to use this format for all new music purchases, provide a tool to convert all old music purchases into the new format, and license the format for free to any manufacturers of music players.
3) Breaking a DRM scheme for the purposes of preserving your fair use rights should *not* be illegal. Record companies and IT companies currently try to hide behind the DMCA and use it to prevent the spread of DRM cracking software domestically, but since most of that software is hosted on overseas web-sites, they have not been too successful in this endeavor. Apple has played a constant game of leap-frog with the iTunes DRM cracker, and this game of leap-frog has been partly to blame for making songs purchased with newer iTunes versions incompatible with older versions. Maybe Apple would be more successful in curbing the use of DRM crackers if users didn't feel like they had to break the law to get back fair use rights that never should've been taken away from them to begin with.
Most music piracy occurs in one of two ways:
1) CD copying. Digital Rights Management or watermarking can do nothing to curb this, but if people feel less "locked in" by purchasing music from online stores, then they will be more likely to purchase from such stores and less likely to buy CD's. Someone will think twice about giving a purchased track to their friend if their name is embedded in the track. But that same person wouldn't think twice about copying a CD they purchased. It's not that people want to break the law, but with CD's, there is nothing to remind them that they are breaking the law by sharing the CD. People don't choose CD's over online music purchases because they want to pirate the CD. They choose CD's over online music purchases because the CD's are more flexible -- they can be played anywhere. Give the users back some of this same flexibility with online music purchases, and you will gain some control over piracy.
2) File sharing. People primarily obtain songs from illegal and pseudo-legal sources because they want just a single song and they don't want to have to buy the whole CD. They would probably just as soon pay a buck and purchase the song from a music store, but the music store may not have the file they want, or (more likely) the music store isn't compatible with their music player of choice. Lest it be forgotten, the MP3's on file sharing services come from CD's. If more people buy from online music stores, where the tracks are traceable to the people who bought them, then fewer tracks will end up on file sharing services. But in order for that to happen, the music stores have to give the users back their fair use rights and allow them to copy the tracks to any device they choose.
Guilt is already the principal source of copy protection for most consumer software in use today. Back in the 1980's, software copy protection technology was popular, and some software publishers would even go so far as to use special disk formats which prevented the disks upon which their software was distributed from being copied. But, of course, this also prevented honest users from making backup copies. Many of them lost hundreds or thousands of dollars when their disk drives ate software that they couldn't back up. So, in response to this, many software programs were developed which did nothing but crack these disk copy protection schemes. In short, the industry took away the users' fair use rights, and the users figured out how to get them back -- with a vengeance.
Eventually, the users screamed loud enough and the software industry got tired of constantly playing leap frog with the cracking programs. In the 1990's, software developers figured out how to embed a form of digital rights management into their software: the registration key. You need a valid registration key to unlock all of the features of the software, and once you unlock these features, the software is then traceable back to the person who purchased it. Sure, there are those with too much time on their hands who crack registration keys, but for the average user who's just trying to get their work done, a traceable registration key is sufficient deterrant to keep them from sharing their purchased software with their friends or uploading it to the Internet. Users have little impetus to bypass this DRM scheme, because the scheme does not restrict their fair use rights. However, enter Microsoft, whose latest take on the "registration key" is a lot more intrusive. Now when I buy a new computer, I can't take the version of Windows I had installed on my old computer and install it on the new. This is a restriction of fair use rights, and it serves no purpose other than the tick off the honest users. The dishonest users will always find ways around it.
Making piracy more difficult has, historically, done little or nothing to curb it. It only makes the pirates more vehement. But the goal with DRM and other music protection schemes should not be to prevent piracy among hackers. It should be to reduce piracy among otherwise honest individuals. Generally, the reasons why honest people pirate music have a lot to do with (a) the restriction of fair use rights and (b) the lack of perceived value. Most CD's are, quite honestly, not worth $10. Some songs are not even worth the $1 you pay on iTunes. But users would be a lot more willing to pay that $1 if they knew the song could be played anywhere. Most people would rather pay a buck for an MP3 that they know has no skips, has the proper title and artist data, etc., rather than spend 20 minutes trying to find an error-free copy of that song on a file-sharing service.
The user community vehemently supports the development of DRM crackers, because these tools restore the fair use rights which never should've been taken away to begin with. But if the fair use rights are a feature of the DRM scheme, then cracking it becomes solely an exercise in piracy. The thought of crossing over this line that separates civil disobedience from true criminal activity is a sufficient deterrant for most and will relegate this form of piracy into the same dark alleys in which software pirates currently run. But right now, because the music industry is not selling the users what they want, otherwise honest users are often resorting to piracy to get it.
Restoring fair use rights by using a new, open, industry standard DRM format -- or using a technology, such as digital watermarking, which eliminates the need for DRM altogether --will go a long way toward preventing the spread of pirated music. But before this can happen, the music industry, the IT industry, and the end users need to reach some common ground. The end users need to accept that some form of DRM or other protection is probably going to be necessary and inevitable to move the industry forward, and "DRM" doesn't necessarily have to be a dirty word if it's done the right way. The IT and music industries need to accept that the harder they fight to restrict fair use, the harder the user community will fight to get it back. If a Digital Rights Management scheme takes away the users' fair use rights, then the users will figure out how to circumvent the technology or will spend their dollars on older technologies (CD's) which don't restrict their rights. Or the users will choose to spend their dollars not at all (by downloading tracks illegally.) In order to replace the CD as a universal music format, the music industry is going to have to replace it with another universal music format. The industry has the opportunity to make this format slightly more restrictive -- adding the ability to trace the purchased music back to the purchasee, for instance. But if it is too restrictive or it is not universal, then users won't buy it.