When Wall Street Journal tech columnist Walt Mossberg speaks, people in
the industry tend to listen. So, now that he's taken on Digital Rights
Management
in his latest column, does it mean all music sold online
will suddenly be freed from its DRM shackles? Probably not. What it may
mean, however, is that at least some record company execs who only
think of the anti-DRM movement as a bunch of scruffy pirates and
hackers may actually begin to realize that it's a more complex issue
(well, probably not, but I can dream, right?). But the fact is,
Mossberg makes a sensible argument, pointing out that, while some
rights management is pretty much unavoidable, overly restrictive DRM
hurts consumers more than it does pirates, and that "consumers should
have broad leeway to use legally purchased music and
video for personal, noncommercial purposes in any way they want -- as
long as they don't engage in mass distribution." He also suggests that
consumers boycott products like copy-protected CDs to send a
message to the industry. Sounds great -- though I've already stopped
buying CDs now that I get all of my music online!
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Comments
4
Subscribe to commentsGardiner WestboundOct 20th 2005 2:28PM
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When I purchased a new CD I would place a duplicate in each of our cars and keep the original at home. The advent of copy-protected CDs made this impossible.
In my view it is unreasonable for the record companies and the government to expect consumers to purchase several originals of the same CD for personal use. Now I use the free download websites for my music needs and rarely buy a new CD.
How does this benefit the artists, the record companies or the government?
RobOct 20th 2005 3:10PM
Tsk, tsk Marc - if you are anti-DRM (which maybe you're not) you should never buy music online. I'm appealing to everyone to buy music the old-fashioned way - 78 rpm Victrola discs. Kidding. But if we don't buy DRM protected content, they will have to rethink the system. So please, buy the (unprotected) CDs and rip them! It's better quality anyway.
Subliminal FusionOct 20th 2005 4:20PM
I made some similar arguments in a somewhat heated discussion at:
http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8723
(I'm SubFuze there BTW)
AFDOct 21st 2005 8:55AM
+1 on Rob's suggestion to rip non-protected CDs and not purchase DRM'd online music. Any WMA music tracks that I've purchased have proven to be sonically inferior to CD-ripped tracks adequately encode to MP3. The RIAA can sue all they want, but should not impose DRM (and poorly encoded music) on honest consumers.