Hard News: Another nail in the coffin of music DRM
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it was 5 copies and no pirating, then it was wear a few downloaders, ( a few sounds very friendly and non threatening) now its 10,000 downloaders (the correct ratio if we are to believe what we read).
Let's say a million freeloaders, but still 500 vs 50 sales. Same thing. The number of people who get it for free shouldn't matter if it means you sell 10 times as many copies.
And, by their own terms, nearly everyone already gives away music, via YouTube, MySpace, last.fm, etc. It's called marketing.
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our music, and will download it from elsewhere just because they think you're an arsehole for trying to force them to listen to it through your crappy player.
firstly, its not my music we're talking about, its the industries music. lets keep this theoretical eh. it could just as well be your music or RB's 4 th comeback album (mediaocracy),
secondly, we're talking concepts here, sure they could hack it in an hour but then it wouldn't be a very well design box then would it.
outside of the music industry I've come across unhackable digital media. and its remained unhackable. Ilok, logic audios version 5 (I think, the one before they backed off on their air tight policy to get more people hooked).
Thirdly I may well be an arsehole and thanks for pointing it out in a public forum, but I'm pretty sure the music industry will reach a point where they've been so demonised and lost so much income that they'll try anything. I personally think someone some where can come up with a completely incontinent and uncrackable way to deliver music. yes you could put a mic up to the speaker and re digitise it but that would be the same as a cam video on bit torrent.
to follow up on the uncrackable they would have to make pricing and convenience so easy that you wouldn't waste your time seeking copies.
and thirdly if only a few people are going to the bother sharing it makes them easily trackable (limewire is trackable, ip addresses are visible etc) and bottle necks it. it may not be an air tight drm but it might make it annoying enough to make the legit method more attractive.
and 4th, who says the player has to be crap. it could have dobly and go to 11.
speculation your honor, call to dismiss? fucked if I know,
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Let's say a million freeloaders, but still 500 vs 50 sales. Same thing.
its still complete speculation. who's to say its not zero sales every time from now on. You don't hear people saying to shop keepers they should give away chocolate bars to stop shoplifting.
The truth is you don't really know.I have heard of an experiment where a label who shall remain nameless gave away 2-4 songs of each artist on their label and advertised this fact.
There was no perceivable increase in sales and internet searches on the artists showed up discussion group talk on where to get the free tracks. no one talked about buying albums. they left it at the free.Thats my real world example. it actually happened. I think that trumps your speculation until you can come up with some figures to prove your point.
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Thats my real world example. it actually happened. I think that trumps your speculation until you can come up with some figures to prove your point.
Well, as I pointed out, major labels now willingly countenance the free delivery of music under circumstances their lawyers still insist amount to theft, because, in the end, it increases sales.
But let's take an example closer to home. I could restrict access to Public Address to paying subscribers -- and call it, say, "Public Address Premium Content". But then I'd devalue my proposition to advertisers, and to the people willing to pay, who would find the community contributing to discussions considerably smaller than had been the case. And someone would just find a way to get around it anyway.
So I give it away. And I actually give it away quite a lot outside Public Address. I talk to five different radio stations (at the same time as I make paid radio content) because it's good marketing. It's just network economics.
If I was in charge of an important New Zealand catalogue, I'd immediately lose any hangup about DRM, get it on emusic, give away a track or two at least once a month, and look at creative ways to add value. I reckon I'd make a decent go of it.
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Woah. QTrax. Freaky.
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This debate still dragging on? No convincing robbery.
In related news, the open source software developers of the world's most used blogging engine, Wordpress, just raised US$26 million.
Not bad when you consider they have been giving away their software for a while.
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I personally think someone some where can come up with a completely incontinent and uncrackable way to deliver music. yes you could put a mic up to the speaker and re digitise it but that would be the same as a cam video on bit torrent.
Completely uncrackable could be possibly using current encryption methods, but redigitising with a decent setup would suffer almost no degradation in quality, not even close to the same category as a theatre capture vs dvd rip. Particularly since your device would presumably have a wire at some point carrying the analog signal to the speakers, in which case you just plug it straight in to the line in/preamp - no microphone necessary.
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but it is changing. I gave you examples of it with the french situation as reported in the herald article
Which has changed what so far? Given that I don't think ISPs can stop this, saying that ISPs are going to try and stop this in France, doesn't disprove anything.
in a way yes, but more importantly for the radiohead example its a bad reflection on human nature. give people the chance to do the right thing and a large proportion of them will do the wrong thing.
Presumably if Radiohead had thought people paying zero dollars for their album was wrong, they would have set a higher minimum price.
Thirdly I may well be an arsehole and thanks for pointing it out in a public forum
"Your" of course means, whichever company designed your theoretic player.
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Some great commentary on The Register!
Have a read, robbery: eg "the world's dumbest filesharer" (warning, extensive use of the term "freetard"), AT&T talking cautiously about packet-sniffing, an article on the trend towards encrypting torrents- as well as the strange case of QTrax/SpiralFrog.
It's a weird wired world, etc. -
Which has changed what so far? Given that I don't think ISPs can stop this, saying that ISPs are going to try and stop this in France, doesn't disprove anything.
saying that all isps in france are required by law to curtail piracy changes a hell of a lot I think.
They're the connection controllers, everything online goes through them. if you're downloading a lot of content, they investigate, if it pirate content, bam!
That's pretty do-able and pretty final don't you think? -
but redigitising with a decent setup would suffer almost no degradation in quality,
you'd have to ask an audio engineer, and since I am on, converting digital to analogue and back repeatedly makes a grainy rough sound.
if you're not able to break the line circuit (see below) then you have to go analogue audio to mic, and that would be crap.Particularly since your device would presumably have a wire at some point carrying the analog signal to the speakers, in which case you just plug it straight in to the line in/preamp
well as I said I'm not building this thing, just hypothesizing based on known technology.
The designers of the box would have to deal with that. Wireless encrypted technology could deliver the source direct to your headphones or amplifier without any accessible line break.
if its a digital amp then even more so.there is a flaw in the link from amp out to speaker, or onto the headphone speakers. thats higher voltage speaker current coming out of there so you couldn't plug it in direct without a padding device but that is where you could tap the signal. it would be a downgraded signal carrying all the modifications in sound the amp has made to delvier the signal to your speakers, but it would be pretty clean, and as Robbie has said it only takes one or 2 to crack it and make it available. still its a real hassle to re digitise everything, normalise it, trim it, export it label it etc. quite a way away from the just rip it and send situation we've got now.
Its a theory.
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No convincing robbery.
Discussion isn't about convincing, its about debating all aspects of issues in depth. I've raised quite a few things most haven't thought about. because of me we can all now see ourselves as self justifying criminals, no better than shop lifters although open to penalties far worse if prosecuted. (its ok, you can thank me later)
We got the info on the first country to require their ISPs to control piracy.
We got to see through Radioheads h.y.p.e machine.
We know that hollywood demonised the corps cos it makes good movies but truth is there a many many more artists with incredibly boring and fair contracts than there are being ripped off and its not really a justification for theft.
As a light fingered consumer I'm more than happy with the way things are now, but unlike some I don't think for a moment its going to stay like this without repercussions. I also don't think that if I was a law abiding non shoplifting customer that DRM is my enemy, just that the implementation of it needs tweaking.
All I've been convinced of is that there are some really ill informed short sighted people out there, lacking in lateral thinking,
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Well, as I pointed out, major labels now willingly countenance the free delivery of music under circumstances their lawyers still insist amount to theft, because, in the end, it increases sales.
actually you didn't point it out specifically till just then and you still haven't delivered a link to back up your claim.
you also don't address the fact that these are desperate measures. They're not looking at this cos they think its good business, they simply don't know what else to do and are trying anything. you also don't prove that it actually works better.Back to your original question though. would I rather sell 50 and have control or sell 500 and have have a shit load help themselves.
if I was a starting artist, the second.
if I was a second tier artists who had made my first couple of records, said those important things that I needed to tell the world etc, and was trying to do music as my career, ..........
the 500 isn't going to cut it (and in nz its not 500 its about 150), I'll fall short of paying off the costs of making it, it'll cost me to make it and I still won't have paid my living expenses.
Real world NZ... a number of our better musicians who have had some success already are opting to just not make records any more. they still love their music but they can't justify the expense to themselves. So rather than selling 150 they're opting to sell nothing, give up and get a day job. If you email me privately russell I'll give you their names. And those 150 copies, that number is diminishing all the time.some of the creative marketing examples raised on here are indeed good ideas, but the reality is they only work for a few people, they're not a solid marketing model that you can base an industry that has no control of the distribution of its product on.
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re QTrax/SpiralFrog.
The company promises to share ad revenue with the song owners and claims that deals have been made with the four major record labels: Universal Music, Sony-BMG, Warner Music Group and EMI. Interestingly enough, those labels haven’t yet confirmed any plans.
apart from the majors not acknowledging cooperation yet I'm pretty sure music is produced by more than 4 top players, although I'm prepared to be corrected.
The service works by centralizing music from P2P sites and then reoffering the songs with some extra DRM attached. Songs are downloaded to the listener’s computer, but they can only be played back inside of the Qtrax ad-supported player. The player expands to fill the user’s screen, but don’t fret because you can still surf the web with a Mozilla-based browser inside of the player
so does than mean we'll see a heading "DRM coffin opened a little"?
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Ilok for protools offers no benefit to me but all their software and plugins that use it are uncrackable.
Nothing is uncrackable. It's just a matter of time and effort. If something has not been cracked it's probably because there is a limited return in doing so.
Plus, PACE/iLok is a terrible example as a) applications that use it HAVE been cracked, and b) PACE have an awful reputation for causing instability issues with many music producers, and I know plenty of people who actually download cracked versions of PACE-protected apps just to keep the protection software off their production machines. "Buy the box, run the crack" is quite common for PACE-protected software like the Waves suite.
Lastly, music is not software. Software applications can dedicate engineer time and effort to obfuscating the instructions which reference copy protection hardware for each individual application. Do you really think the music industry is going to start writing individual PACE-protected applications that are unique to each music file? If that's not the case then a single crack of a player is going to yield access to every music file, which is a totally different environment from the very limited world of specialist copy protection on music-creation software.
Oh, and who'd want to crack ProTools anyway ;)
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saying that all isps in france are required by law to curtail piracy changes a hell of a lot I think.
They're the connection controllers, everything online goes through them. if you're downloading a lot of content, they investigate, if it pirate content, bam!
That's pretty do-able and pretty final don't you think?It'll be final, and make a difference, when it's actually had any impact upon illegal music transfers.
The government can say that all they want, if it doesn't make any difference in reality, then my point is proven.
Without knowing French law, I suspect they'll be running into a privacy battle. You'd also struggle to get a search warrant to inspect someone's computer on the basis that they're downloading a lot from the internet in a lot of countries.
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The government can say that all they want, if it doesn't make any difference in reality, then my point is proven.
:) what was you're point anyway?
my point is that it is possibly to control what people download.
see turkey filtering all youtube, see choking high users in nz, see packet inspection etc.This contradicts people who say they can't touch us, cos quite obviously they can. its not a black box. its totally openable at their end.
your point will be proven when france gives up, but since they've only just announced the initiative maybe wait a couple of weeks before you claim victory :)
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my point is that it is possibly to control what people download.
see turkey filtering all youtube, see choking high users in nz, see packet inspection etc.Umm, see my posts about how banning youtube in Turkey isn't working at all, as people are getting around it. And my post about how if you're being choked, you should change isp.
your point will be proven when france gives up, but since they've only just announced the initiative maybe wait a couple of weeks before you claim victory :)
Actually, I think your point will be proven when it actually impacts upon people downloading in France. At the moment, as far as I know, people in France are still downloading a crapload of illegal music, which is what I said would happen. Until that changes...
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a crapload of illegal music,
DRM involves media, including film. so my points are not related only to music.
how banning youtube in Turkey isn't working at all,
missed that bit. I know they can filter content out at isp level.
maybe not watertight but again enough to piss off 75% of people.
ISP's have the ability to know where you're browsing and do something about it if they care to, or if someone insists they do.which is what I said would happen. Until that changes...
correct, but you're going to give it a few weeks to trial it first aren't you, since you're not like finn and think everything will always be how it is now.
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Nothing is uncrackable.
finn you're going to have to provide links and back up for your statements or I'm going to have to ignore you. so far you've contributed vague aspersions of your personal beliefs and for some that might be relevant but until you show us someone of respected knowledge ie not you, with some scientific data to back up what you're throwing around, its just meaningless....
as far as I know no one provided a crack of logic 5. lots of people were waiting and looking for it for a long time. also you're idea of crackable is based on the assumption that what you will be dealing with is some kind of software.
you also have a very dim view of the inventiveness of man (thieving scum though he may be) in your world there is no powered flight, the moon landing was a hoax (and maybe it was) and ...... you know what I'm saying. never say never.
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psst- someone provided me with a crack of logic platinum 5. To be fair on myself, I didn't ask for it- I just bought a emagic soundcard and the guy threw in a disc with a remarkable amount of cracked software.
I don't use it. I love logic- I have a paid-for versions- but the new dongle you need to run it does have me stumped. It's called a mac or something and they cost thousands... -
finn you're going to have to provide links and back up for your statements or I'm going to have to ignore you. so far you've contributed vague aspersions of your personal beliefs and for some that might be relevant but until you show us someone of respected knowledge ie not you, with some scientific data to back up what you're throwing around, its just meaningless....
Finn speaks the truth. And isn't the real reason you don't crack ProTools is because it comes with a large hardware desk interface? And anyway, as Finn mentioned it's irrelevant as media != software when it comes to locking it down.
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how banning youtube in Turkey isn't working at all,
(repost)
I did a 10 second search on the Turkey youtube thing, and yes I was right, people have found umpteen ways around it, including a couple I guessed at.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/03/howto_evade_tur.html
If they want to stop the internet, they should get a big pair of scissors and cut the line.
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psst- someone provided me
one of em was uncracked, people were trying for months and months.
I know cos I have shifty friends who were trying to acquire it.And isn't the real reason you don't crack ProTools is because it comes with a large hardware desk interface?
hmm, interesting bit of lateral thinking there
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If they want to stop the internet, they should get a big pair of scissors and cut the line.
could work, is that your best scenario option?
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