09/10/2003: How to circumvent DRM on iTunes Music Store downloads
Who is harmed by DRM? F**king _everyone_, Paul
So Josh is evidently annoyed.
What started out as an exploration of DRM as embodied in the iTunes Music Store and how to convert analog media to digital turned into a gripe about DRM, copyright, and their effects.
I see two related issues in his argument: copyright, defined as the ownership of the right to duplicate and distribute a performance; and digital rights management a/k/a DRM, a/k/a copy protection.
First of all, his project to restore copies of the Flying Karamazov Brothers performance at Lincoln Center has bupkes to to do with DRM. It wasn’t DRM that prevented the Brothers from obtaining copies of the work, it was copyright.
And if the standard procedure for these Lincoln Center performances is that there are only two broadcasts before the performance is archived, none of this should have been a surprise to anyone. (Since I’m getting this story secondhand, I have no idea how sanguine the Brothers are about this situation.)
Now while I’m sympathetic with the performers, if they signed away their rights, that’s where it ends. Hankies and sad looks all around, and we learn from our mistakes. Restoring a copy from a blackmarket videotape, while exciting and fun, is still a violation of an agreement signed by the performers. That’s acting in bad faith.
If copyright were restrained to more reasonable terms, like 10 years (the goals of the Eldred suit were to rein in the wholesale hijacking of public domain art), the Brothers or anyone else would be free to do as they liked with their Live at Lincoln Center performance.
If you look at the back of a CD, you’ll note somewhere the sentence “the copyright in this recording is owned by [fill in the name of the record label here].” This may change in future, with artists retaining the copyright to their work, instead of signing it away as part of the bargain they make to get their art distributed.
Now as for DRM: it is obviously related but that doesn’t make it identical. DRM is how copyright is enforced. Part of me wants to believe that an awful lot of the kvetching about copyright is really just complaining about not getting something for nothing.
<digression>At a startup I worked at, we had an mp3 server that was community property: anyone could add music to it, and while it was never defined (it was kinda secret), my hope was that no one would take copies of copyrighted material they didn’t own the rights to. When the company folded, many copies of that treasure trove were burned for personal use . . . . so much for my hope. </digression>
Josh’s complaints about Apple’s DRM are misguided, I think. As he notes, there are loopholes you could drive a truck through and I’m pretty Apple knows all about them. So the much-hated DRM is actually pretty weak in this case. And I’m worried that if enough zealots take the hardline view that *all DRM* is evil, regardless of any real nuisance value, that Apple or other providers might be pressured to pull the plug on the service by the RIAA cartel (see a related post on the Beatles record company taking a dim view — again — of Apple Computer trading on the Apple name in a music context).
One of Josh’s wishes is for a DRM-free music outlet that also supplied high-quality cover art so you could make your own CDs, just like the pros. Does that seem like something a recording artist is going to think is a good idea? If I were a recording artist, I’m sure I wouldn’t be all that thrilled with people making indistinguishable knockoffs of my work. There’s always been the risk of people making copies for their own use (permitted under Fair Use and reluctantly accepted by the cartel), but it’s never been possible to make *perfect* copies as it is in the Digital Age.
In this related article, the move from physical media to digital files, with the resulting freedom of use, is explained: this reinforces my hunch that some of the grousing about encroachments on Fair Use or the public domain is a smokescreen for the increased risk of being caught with un-paid for music. But it also points out that people don’t want to buy shiny disks anymore if they don’t have to, and if they could skip the intermediate step of buying the disk and converting it — perhaps just buying a player and loading it with tracks at a store as they can with their home PC — they would be willing to do so. [This was what I was alluding to when I mentioned the link between the iPod and the iTunes Music Store in the comments on Josh’s site.]
I have noticed some artists have opted out of Apple’s social experiment: the Beatles and Radiohead, to name two. Why? Their recording contracts didn’t expressly extend to digital distribution, so they aren’t playing. Fair enough. Their record companies need to work out an arrangement that’s mutually beneficial, as it should be. This is what needs to happen: the artists and music fans need to reframe the debate.
Perhaps baby steps like the iTunes Music Store will help alter the landscape so no one feels like they’re being exploited — neither the recording artists, the music fans, nor the hard-done-by music companies. But thinking that a DRM-free world is possible after the precedent of rampant file-swapping seems unrealistic. (And I differentiate between file-swapping of live recordings, condoned or encouraged by the artists, a la E-Tree, and appropriation of recordings available in any record store.) It would help if we could agree to differentiate between casual infringements (I make a copy of a CD and send it to a friend, knowing there’s a good chance she’ll buy a copy) versus systematized, wide-spread, and anonymous infringement, as the various filesharing networks make possible.
I’m also reminded that file-swappers, in general, buy more music recording than anyone else. But how much of the music they have stored on the hard drives have they paid for? And what would it take to make them pay something for it? What’s the price point for their acknowledging they want the *legal* right to listen to a specific track whenever they want?
I’d like to hear a DRM opponent offer a realistic solution to the issue of how artists and record companies can be fairly compensated for their work rather than offer dogmatic positions that don’t advance the debate.
And I’d like to hear some recording artists (other than Metallica) offer some insight into how this whole mess affects them. I know some, like Janis Ian, have. She raises some very valid issues (mostly having to do with copyright and how record companies control artists’ careers through their control of it). As I’ve mentioned once or twice, the record companies are sitting on a goldmine of back-catalog recordings that many of us would love to listen to, but their inability to understand a new business model means we — and the artists whose careers might be re-vitalized by the additional exposure — are to be deprived of that opportunity.
Ms. Ian also lists some excellent suggestions on how the RIAA cartel could use digital media to a) jump start their moribund industry b) rehabilitate their reputation, and c) make some money for themselves and the artists they represent, with some compelling statistics of how she has made money by giving away mp3s.
<update> While this was gestating, I found an article in the NYTimes that quotes some well-known recording artists. taking various positions. I comment on it here.