☆ ARE WE AT THE END OF DRM?
a recent article on cnet claims we are on the verge of the death of digital rights management, the stuff that stops you from playing sony playstation games on other consoles and from listening to iTunes tracks on other portable music players.
now i find most of the article a little hard to believe. i don't think that by the end of 2007 all information online will be free to be distributed, streamed and remixed. but he does make some interesting points about where things are heading.
the use of DRM has often been said to be anti-competitive, but primarily by (more often than not) left-wing internet groups such as the electronic frontier foundation. now it seems the cry foul over DRM is coming from the corporate content big-wigs themselves. the increasing discussion around non-protected mp3 files has seen a change of emphasis in some areas of the content industry. even so far as the article claiming, "...the music industry wants a strong competitor to the monster it created called iTunes." even though iTunes gave credibility to a market that users were sceptical of, its closed-door approach makes it difficult to compete with (as BigPond Music found out).
but of course, any would-be competitors would either have to sell music incompatible with the popular iPod (with a hefty marketshare) and concide to a reduced purchasing audience, or go forth and break apple's technical protection measures in order to break into the iTunes/iPod audience. we have seen such things before, but of course now under schedule 12 of copyright act given to us by the recent copyright amendments you may have committed a criminal offence.
it seems kind of ironic that now, in hinesight, the corporate 5 labels that went running to apple to get into iTunes and now having doubts about the long-term value of providing your music in a format exclusive to one music player. cnet outline five anti-DRM approachs coming up through some of the big players including Amazon, Myspace and Yahoo Music.
it will be interesting to see what will be the fate of DRM, but all i can really say to the lables is, you've made your own capitalist bed. now either remake it or lie in it.
now i find most of the article a little hard to believe. i don't think that by the end of 2007 all information online will be free to be distributed, streamed and remixed. but he does make some interesting points about where things are heading.
the use of DRM has often been said to be anti-competitive, but primarily by (more often than not) left-wing internet groups such as the electronic frontier foundation. now it seems the cry foul over DRM is coming from the corporate content big-wigs themselves. the increasing discussion around non-protected mp3 files has seen a change of emphasis in some areas of the content industry. even so far as the article claiming, "...the music industry wants a strong competitor to the monster it created called iTunes." even though iTunes gave credibility to a market that users were sceptical of, its closed-door approach makes it difficult to compete with (as BigPond Music found out).
but of course, any would-be competitors would either have to sell music incompatible with the popular iPod (with a hefty marketshare) and concide to a reduced purchasing audience, or go forth and break apple's technical protection measures in order to break into the iTunes/iPod audience. we have seen such things before, but of course now under schedule 12 of copyright act given to us by the recent copyright amendments you may have committed a criminal offence.
it seems kind of ironic that now, in hinesight, the corporate 5 labels that went running to apple to get into iTunes and now having doubts about the long-term value of providing your music in a format exclusive to one music player. cnet outline five anti-DRM approachs coming up through some of the big players including Amazon, Myspace and Yahoo Music.
it will be interesting to see what will be the fate of DRM, but all i can really say to the lables is, you've made your own capitalist bed. now either remake it or lie in it.