DRM is necessary and good, stop complaining

[ashalan]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

The music industry loved it when everyone re-bought their entire collection of records and tapes on CD.

What I liked 'best' about that shift was how records out of nowhere became 50% more expensive here and never returned to the price they were before.

Before Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' became the first CD available, LPs were 19 CHF (Swiss Francs). CDs hit the store for 29 CHF a piece. The higher price being justified by Philips and the record companies as being the result of more expensive production costs.

A good 20 years later and CDs never got any cheaper. While every John, Dick, Harry, Granny, Aunty and saliva driveling dog can burn CDs for less money than it costs to take a pee in a public toilet, the record companies earn 10 CHF on every CD without any justification whatsoever.

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by NatCh

No of course it wasn't! But they did make a bunch of money off the switchover. If they liked the taste of it, and didn't want to go back to only making money on plain, old-fashioned, first-time purchases ... well, can't really blame them for the sentiment.

But the fact that they didn't set out to make a bunch of money on the cassette to CD switch-over doesn't make it "okay" to try to force their customer base to constantly re-purchase everything. I think that's what Lemurion was trying to get at.

That was my point. What I think happened was something more along the lines of once the industries had gone through those switch-overs (both of which had at least some benefit for the consumers -- especially in the case of the transition to DVD) that after the fact there were at least some people within those industries who thought it would be a very good idea to see if they could replicate the situation, especially given that sales did start declining.

[NatCh]

Were they really declining, or just dropping back to "normal" levels after the spikes? That's what I wonder.

[Lemurion]

They were declining relative to previous levels-- even if those levels were artificially inflated, and that was probably enough for at least some people in the industry.

[Sparrow]

There was an item on the radio here yesterday about the Performing Rights Society (UK) writing to people saying they need to buy a licence if they play music in the office. Apparently you need a licence to play music anywhere outside your domestic environs.

http://www.mcps-prs-alliance.co.uk
"Who has to have a PRS music licence? Any location or premises, outside of home, where music is played..."
"whether the performance is played live or by such means as CD, radio, DVD, TV, karaoke etc, whether a charge is made for admission, or whether the performers are paid, a PRS Music Licence is still necessary."

People have been listening to radio music in the workplace for decades - now they're being told they've got to pay for the privilege and they're not happy about it.
Some people will turn their radios off; but I imagine most will just carry on listening and become 'criminals'.

[Darqref]

Originally Posted by ashalan

What I liked 'best' about that shift was how records out of nowhere became 50% more expensive here and never returned to the price they were before.

I normally favor classical music, with a bit of jazz and other similar genre. One effect of the digital shift on the industry was that, while the prices stayed rather high, the access to second and third-rate recordings vastly increased. On LPs, you could always get the great orchestra's recordings, but if you wanted smaller or regional performers, they weren't always available.

In my home town, the Seattle Symphony would never have been able to record as much on LPs. On CDs, they have a rather large catalog. Similarly, I found a lot of recordings of more obscure music by good quality but lesser-known orchestras from Eastern Europe. My personal list of "must have standards" increased in several ways.

So, I can say I've bought MUCH more music on CD that I ever contemplated on LPs.

[hidari]

After PAYING HIGH prices in the 80's and 90's for OVERpriced CDS..It is a PLEASURE to see sales od CDs reducing by 8 percent of more a year. I hope some of the companies go the way of the Dodo bird.

Originally Posted by Lemurion

They were declining relative to previous levels-- even if those levels were artificially inflated, and that was probably enough for at least some people in the industry.

[JohnClif]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

And yet Microsoft is a billion dollar company. Cue sermon about greed. Cue sermon about monopolistic trade practices. Cue sermon about their DRM already having been cracked. Cue sermon about their impending downfall to Linux.

How about "cue sermon about how Microsoft, as a $50 billion company has as much right to be compensated for their products as they did when they were a $5 million company?"

Why do some people think that it's okay to steal from a rich person/company? Stealing is stealing, and stealing is wrong. Microsoft's property rights are not linked to the size of its bank account, and neither are peoples' ethics.

If Microsoft has broken the law (and I disagree that it has... if you want to see a monopolistic company look at Airbus, or Apple), then it will be punished. Too many people want to sic the power of the state on Microsoft, though, not because Microsoft has done something wrong but because they've done something right (made products that people want to buy, and that make it hard for other companies to compete).

[JohnClif]

Originally Posted by hidari

After PAYING HIGH prices in the 80's and 90's for OVERpriced CDS..It is a PLEASURE to see sales od CDs reducing by 8 percent of more a year. I hope some of the companies go the way of the Dodo bird.

I think that CD sales are dropping for three reasons:

• Most music being put out today is especially banal
• New music distribution paradigms, like Apple's iTunes store, allow consumers to download and pay for only the songs they like, so they're not forced to buy a whole CD just to get the couple of songs they really like
• CDs being released by good artists are being ripped and redistributed widely

I'll ask another question: why is $14.95 or $17.95 or whatever too "high" of a price? Maybe it's higher than you want to pay, but that's the way the market works. If the consumer thinks that CDs cost too much, then sales go down. Companies respond by lowering their price, until they are selling as many CDs as they want at a price which is acceptable to both buyer and seller.

Something else to think about: why is it that artists release albums instead of singles? In the 'old days' of records, artists would release an album, and then singles ('45s') would be released to get airplay for the album, to provide a source of music for jukeboxes, and to seed the market and create demand for the album. That model went away with the CD, although mini-CDs were tried (they didn't sell well, probably because they were too expensive, and consumers didn't want 4 or 5 songs, they wanted 1 or maybe 2 songs).

I think that the iTunes model has been transformative in that it lets consumers pick, and pay for, only the music they want, instead of having to purchase an entire CD to get the few songs they want. As the iPod's popularity has grown, there is no reason to buy CDs anymore; people make their own playlists from a variety of artists' works to produce what they want instead of what the CD producer wants them to buy.

I don't see this happening successfully in the reading market. Companies have tried to sell selected content, e.g., the New York Times setting a per-article price, but haven't been successful. IMO it's because news is no longer unique, and neither is news opinion. We have the WWW and blogs to thank for this! And, selling a single chapter out of a book makes no sense either. However, Amazon's allowing Kindle owners to download sample chapters in order to build interest in a book does work, in much the same way as listening to a single on the radio builds interest in an album.

[rationalbiker]

I concur with the original poster that DRM is good and neccessary. He hits the nail on the head that property rights are the cornerstone of a free republic. It is sad today the level of entitlement folks seem to feel about taking that which they have not earned.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by rationalbiker

I concur with the original poster that DRM is good and neccessary. He hits the nail on the head that property rights are the cornerstone of a free republic. It is sad today the level of entitlement folks seem to feel about taking that which they have not earned.

Since copyright is not a property right this comments seems a bit irrelevant.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by rationalbiker

I concur with the original poster that DRM is good and neccessary. He hits the nail on the head that property rights are the cornerstone of a free republic. It is sad today the level of entitlement folks seem to feel about taking that which they have not earned.

Okay, what about the customer's property rights?

PaperbackDigital went out of business, They used to sell DRMed ebooks. The device authorizations cannot be updated; eventually the customers will lose the ability to read the ebooks they purchased. What about the customer's property rights?

There is a new problem with Quicktime. If you use Adobe After Affects to create a clip, Quicktime will pop up and tell you that you don't have permission to view that clip. What about the customer's property rights?

Adobe DE 1.0 had DRM that prevented the customer from saving a copy of a legitimately purchased ebook. This was one of the things that was fixed in 1.5. What about the customer's property rights?

At least twice this year, one of Microsoft's Windows DRM servers had a glitch, and decided all copies of Vista were illegal, so they stopped working. What about the customer's property rights?

P.S. Each of these incidents affected only customers who legitimately purchased a product. They did not affect the pirates. How exactly did the DRM protect property rights?

[rationalbiker]

Originally Posted by tompe

Since copyright is not a property right this comments seems a bit irrelevant.

Intellectual property should be protected just as much as real property, particularly in this day and age. I realize people want to be able to leech off producers without having to pay for things so the producers need ways to try to prevent that. Stealing is stealing, whether it be intellectual property or real property.

[rlauzon]

Originally Posted by rationalbiker

Intellectual property should be protected just as much as real property, particularly in this day and age.

There's no such thing as "intellectual property." If it's intellectual, it's an idea and cannot be property - and, therefore, cannot be owned.

The term "intellectual property" is something coined by the copyright maximalists to get people to think that ideas are property.

Originally Posted by rationalbiker

I realize people want to be able to leech off producers without having to pay for things so the producers need ways to try to prevent that.

Oh, you mean like publishers who are still printing, under copyright, works where the authors are long dead?
Or companies like Disney, who are still distributing movies made by people long dead?

Oh, yes, these people are not leaching off of the producers.

Originally Posted by rationalbiker

Stealing is stealing, whether it be intellectual property or real property.

But "copyright violation" is not "stealing".

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by rationalbiker

I concur with the original poster that DRM is good and neccessary. He hits the nail on the head that property rights are the cornerstone of a free republic. It is sad today the level of entitlement folks seem to feel about taking that which they have not earned.

Originally Posted by rationalbiker

Intellectual property should be protected just as much as real property, particularly in this day and age. I realize people want to be able to leech off producers without having to pay for things so the producers need ways to try to prevent that. Stealing is stealing, whether it be intellectual property or real property.

Are you familiar with Godwin's Law? We have a variation of it here called mrkai's law. It goes something like this:

If a DRM debate goes on long enough, somone will accuse people who have purchased, or want to purchase legitimate content of being pirates.

I think you have just demonstrated mrkai's law.