Technologicology: Breakin’ The Chains Of DRM
After the jump, BJK bids a fond adieu to Digital Rights Management, but not to Lars Ulrich. Hell, no. Never!
Technologicology: Breakin’ The Chains Of DRM
On Sunday, Amazon announced their DRM-free mp3 service coming, ambiguously enough, this year.
It feels mmm mmm good.
For those unaware, Digital Rights Management is a system of copyright protection that is slapped onto just about every mp3, television show, movie and music subscription service you purchase online. Unless you’ve been fishing around the dark depths of Napster, there’s a damn good chance you’ve been buying your content from iTunes. The numbers prove it. But you haven’t really had any other choice, and gosh darnit, consumers like choice— and I bet there’s some numbers to prove that, too.
The announcement is trouble for Apple’s market domination, something that makes me pretty happy seeing as how they’ve been all over this column lately (to be fair, I should mention that they’ve recently announced their best financial quarter ever). Lately, I’ve had to keep my iPod hidden, only exposing it long enough to skip King Crimson songs that slip onto my playlists, just to avoid being called a fanboy. Although Apple and EMI jumpstarted the DRM-free movement, they can consider themselves sitting shotgun. Amazon went and got every last one of the Big Four onboard.
I have my personal reasons for wanting DRM free music, and it starts close to 8 years ago when I first started converting my music collection over to mp3s. Back when it was death or Winamp, digital music was a free land. We roamed the countryside drinking tea with sugar, mailing untaxed post, and debating whether we should risk the disk space for higher audio quality. Although player standards have always supported the un-wrapped music you rip from your own collections, it was only a matter of time before a companies started messing with our collections.
But to be honest, I’m gonna miss the little things that made the DRM battle so entertaining.
RIAA
Oh RIAA, how ye jest. After suing dead people, 12-year olds, and even, gasp, Drexel students, we still can’t get enough of the crazy shit you pull. Watching the RIAA try to appease customers and artists at the same time is like an episode of the O.C. You love us, you hate us, you talk softly and sweetly to your friends about us, unsure what of what to do. And you always turn to the “my dad is a lawyer” when the going gets tough. But guys, we love you. Who else would we have to make fun of in light of our own piratical denial?
FairUse4WM
To be honest, I’m not sure of the legal problems that may arise if by condoning the ripping of DRM-caked tunes, but I will say that the release of FairUse4WM on the Doom9 forums might have been the most comical to witness. As Microsoft continued to roll out fresher and fresher copies of its indestructible DRM tech, someone straight up destructed it. Month after month between August 2006 and November 2007, every time Microsoft would update Windows Media Player to circumvent the hack, the forums would reverse engineer the code days later. Napster cowered in fear that its all-you-can-eat music subscription service, which relied on the DRM, was hella close to eating something else. These little wars popped up all over the place, and Microsoft wasn’t the only company with problems. Thinking back, this was a lot more like the cute arguments that every couple experiences than either would admit.
Artists and Fans
The ongoing battle between those that create and those that consume can finally be turned down a notch. When distributors limited where we could put our music, fans pirated because they had a better idea where the distributors could put it: Ahem. When bands like Metallica spearheaded anti-piracy initiatives, it turned us off, too; we kept pirating because we liked to see guys like that get their panties in a bunch. Sure, the epic “what is intellectual property” philosophical debate will never die, but that’s a discussion for another time and another place.
It’s been a wild ride, friends. I’m proud to say that with Amazon playing the Mel Gibson in our The Patriot, we stand a fighting chance against the evils of DRM. Whether you’re rockin’ an iTouch, a Zune, or some GE mp3 player you picked up at CVS, heed no worries that your music is safe, and that no one can ever again judge you for buying a SanDisk.
Brian James Kirk is a writer and adventurer living in Philadelphia. By adventuring, he means occasionally to friends’ homes for games of Balderdash. If you know a Philadelphia technology scoop that would fit this space, you are graciously encouraged to get in touch.
Previously: Technologicology: You Can Dance If You Chiptune, You Can Leave Your Friends Behind
