Removal of DRM May Prevent (Some) Music Piracy
Researchers at Rice University and Duke University said that the level of piracy in digital music could possibly be decreased if intrusive copy protection features were removed.
It was Napster that sent the music industry, some artists and especially the RIAA down the road of piracy paranoia. For the better half of the last decade, every owner of a computer was labeled as a potential music pirate by default and the industry chose a path to lock down its music rather than innovate and catch up with a changing music distribution model.
Various approaches of digital rights management (DRM), a euphemistic description of copy protection, were taken and often seen as a trial-and-error exercise to find out how much copy protection the consumer was willing to accept. In the end, there may be a chance that most copy protection will fade away, at least if the conclusions Rice University and Duke University have published.
According to their result, "only the legal users pay the price and suffer from the restrictions," as they are prevented from making backup copies, for example. Even if users are willing to pay for music, DRM can be a turn-off and promote music piracy. Digital music without DRM could be a natural way to decrease piracy, the researchers claim.
"Removal of these restrictions makes the product more convenient to use and intensifies competition with the traditional format (CDs), which has no DRM restrictions," said Dinah Vernik, a marketing professor at Rice University. "This increased competition results in decreased prices for both downloadable and CD music and makes it more likely that consumers will move from stealing music to buying legal downloads."
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DDDDUHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
1$ a song for beatles or rolling stones or chuck berry... or 1$ a song for the latest crap it shouldn't work that way. good music should be more costly than crappy new pop songs.
Finally somebody has made a hopefully sound study to prove the obvious...
Even if piracy rates remained the same or increased slightly, you save money by not including DRM. No development costs, no license fees and no class actions.
Never bought a track with DRM, never will. I support the artists I like by going to their gigs and getting their T-shirts. Most of the bands I like aren't signed to RIAA labels anyhow so their whining means nothing to me.
About time.
Actually, all of them are, half of those just don't realize downloading free MP3s off the web could be illegal
I don't give a flying toss about music, but at least get rid of those STUPID and ANNOYING adverts on many DVDs and Blurays you are forced to sit through before you can get to the content you actually willingly paid for!!
One recent disk I purchased, you know, GAVE the distributor my money for, forced me to sit through a[bleep] ad for a chocolate bar and another for something else I can't remember (what an effective ad) sandwiched between 3 non-skipable movie trailers and the usual 'don't copy our [bleep]' warnings!
When the industry treats its customers like that its no wonder that people revert to piracy, or at the very least rip and copy JUST the part of the disk they want, you know, the bit of it thats the ACTUAL MOVIE minis the stupid warnings and adverts for [bleep] I don't freaking want or need or am even slightly interested in!
Edited by moderator: please do not use insults at Tom's, thank you.
It took researchers to figure that out?
lol, what a crock study. DRM, or a lack there of, has little to do with piracy. People pirate because they don't want to pay for something. DRM only slows them down for a few days every time they find a new way to encrypt the product.
What causes people to steal music is that they have absolutely no moral compass in this area. They have no concept of the difference between the crap like that stupid Friday song, and real music. They see absolute tripe out there for free, and then think all media should be free. Add to that a system that is truly and utterly corrupt (at least in the music industry) and it just gives people an excuse to justify their actions. If the industry cleaned up their act and paid the artists what they deserved, and the artists weren't so clueless about how to run a proper business and not get raped by the big publishing houses, it would go a long way to allowing cheap readily available music which people would WANT to pay for.
I personally had aprox 40GB of illegal music (on top of what music I owned), and got rid of it about 8 years ago. It has nothing to do with the industry. It has everything to do with personal integrity, and being a man instead of a whining little selfish brat.
lol, what a crock study. DRM, or a lack there of, has little to do with piracy. People pirate because they don't want to pay for something. DRM only slows them down for a few days every time they find a new way to encrypt the product.What causes people to steal music is that they have absolutely no moral compass in this area. They have no concept of the difference between the crap like that stupid Friday song, and real music. They see absolute tripe out there for free, and then think all media should be free. Add to that a system that is truly and utterly corrupt (at least in the music industry) and it just gives people an excuse to justify their actions. If the industry cleaned up their act and paid the artists what they deserved, and the artists weren't so clueless about how to run a proper business and not get raped by the big publishing houses, it would go a long way to allowing cheap readily available music which people would WANT to pay for.I personally had aprox 40GB of illegal music (on top of what music I owned), and got rid of it about 8 years ago. It has nothing to do with the industry. It has everything to do with personal integrity, and being a man instead of a whining little selfish brat.
LOL
I don't give a flying toss about music, but at least get rid of those STUPID and ANNOYING adverts on many DVDs and Blurays you are forced to sit through before you can get to the content you actually willingly paid for!!One recent disk I purchased, you know, GAVE the distributor my money for, forced me to sit through a fucking ad for a chocolate bar and another for something else I can't remember (what an effective ad) sandwiched between 3 non-skipable movie trailers and the usual 'don't copy our shit' warnings!When the industry treats its customers like that its no wonder that people revert to piracy, or at the very least rip and copy JUST the part of the disk they want, you know, the bit of it thats the ACTUAL MOVIE minis the stupid warnings and adverts for shit I don't freaking want or need or am even slightly interested in!
And people always say that the pirates don't see that warning
I have no problem paying for a movie, music, or software if you make it WORTH it.
Wanna know what increases value?
Ease of use (no DRM - duhhhh)
No Advertisements (this is why I'm giving you money in the first place)
Wanting all of my information for a simple transaction.
I'm glad I stopped paying for movies - seems the latest scam is even if you spend 20 bucks for a DVD or Blu-Ray, you get to sit through more ads. Sorry, but I'll keep my money and find a different source for what I want if that's the way it's going to be. Same thing with the actual movie theaters -- for two people it usually costs 50 dollars for a night at the movies. You would think for that much money the movie starts on time and without 20 minutes of advertisement.
When a business stacks the deck and treats me like a criminal for using a product I paid for in the manner I want to use it, they lose my business for life. I work hard for my money and I'm not going to waste it helping line the pockets of a company that treats everyone like crap.
Put it this way -- what if you buy a standard nice car for $20,000 and every time you get in it to go to work/school/etc the GPS screen pops up and forces you to sit there for 60 seconds watching the latest advertisement for service or other crap?
lol, what a crock study. DRM, or a lack there of, has little to do with piracy. People pirate because they don't want to pay for something. DRM only slows them down for a few days every time they find a new way to encrypt the product.What causes people to steal music is that they have absolutely no moral compass in this area. They have no concept of the difference between the crap like that stupid Friday song, and real music. They see absolute tripe out there for free, and then think all media should be free. Add to that a system that is truly and utterly corrupt (at least in the music industry) and it just gives people an excuse to justify their actions. If the industry cleaned up their act and paid the artists what they deserved, and the artists weren't so clueless about how to run a proper business and not get raped by the big publishing houses, it would go a long way to allowing cheap readily available music which people would WANT to pay for.I personally had aprox 40GB of illegal music (on top of what music I owned), and got rid of it about 8 years ago. It has nothing to do with the industry. It has everything to do with personal integrity, and being a man instead of a whining little selfish brat.
pirate a game - no system breaking (some drm is) drm, and ability to play it without being connected to the internet (ubisoft)
pirate a movie (lets include ripping your own copy here as mpaa sees it as the same a pirateing) - don't have to deal with any bs dvd menus or waiting 1 minuted for the dvd to load, another 2 minutes before it gets to the options, and after all that another 2 minutes for the "dont pitate this" crap. and thats if you dont get a dvd with those unsinkable trailers....
pirate music (include ripping your music, as riaa sees it as the same as pirating) - you get it in a format of your choosing, that isn't limited to a cd player, or only one mp3 player (i have 3, one for my car, one for my home stereo and one for me taking with me to places.) and in the case of ripping i can rip to flac and get a higher quality than mp3 version of the music. and i also dont like buying a lower quality (mp3 acc whatever other formats) and i dont like buying the uncompressed because those usually have even worse restrictions
i just listed many reasons for pirating/ripping/cracking, without going into cost. which you can do, and it would usually be a very valid argument, like why does a pure digital format costs much if not more than the physical when you are getting less for your money.
1$ a song for beatles or rolling stones or chuck berry... or 1$ a song for the latest crap it shouldn't work that way. good music should be more costly than crappy new pop songs.
Except that good music is entirely subjective so you can't do that. Some people can't stand the Beatles at all and say their music is not good and NOTHING you say can change their opinion, just like nothing will change your opinion that they are good.
Still won't stop me
No shit..
Can you still get music with DRM in it? As far as I know its just the digital rental stuff now like Zune or Kindle library lending, so I'm curious if this study has just proved whats already happened.
Games could certainly benifit from removing DRM though, I was kicked out of Assassins Creed 2 about once an hour and my nets fairly stable. If I would have just pirated it I wouldn't have had any issues.
Actually, all of them are, half of those just don't realize downloading free MP3s off the web could be illegal
You are accusing me of stealing. I have never downloaded an MP3 I didn't pay for. I also wont buy music with DRM.
Remove you DRM crap or keep it, no file is getting onto my storage media unless I have complete control over it. I'm not interested in what protection methods you will or will not come up with; they won't affect me either way.
That said, artists should earn from performances/live shows/DJ sets. Look at Infected Muchroom's schedule, for example - fully loaded. That's how a musician must earn money.
That's right.
And record companies can frankly go to hell. All publishers can, be it books, games or music. I don't understand why some POS company like EA or a music "label" can own the rights to the art work and why do artists need them on the first place.
The DRM was never meant to stop piracy. Piracy is just the excuse they use to convince the gov to enact silly laws, and to play with the media. Napster scared the music industry silly because it was a new business model they didn't foresee, and couldn't control (they were going to lose their monopoly). The whole piracy charade is a red herring, a good excuse, so that the laws/coutrs/media are in place when another technology they don't foresee hits, they'll have the capability to shut it down before it becomes a threat. The music industry (and movie industry) doesn't want a free/open market with fair competition and consumer choice. And that's what this whole song and dance is designed to eliminate, a few pirated songs is the least of their worries.
Honestly I would buy digital music if 1) it was available in any format for download, even uncompressed formats and 2) if when I purchased that track, they kept a record of that purchase and allowed me to download as many times as I need to, ie. something like Steam for music having it for movies would be great too allowing us to upgrade our collection to a higher resolution when it comes out rather than paying a premium for them to put it on a new disc. 3)if there were deals on music that I actually enjoy, I am not a mainstream music listener and a lot of the time I can barely find a cd I am looking for anywhere let alone them having a deal on it. 4) I was free to do what I needed to with that music, meaning no DRM. 5)
How hard is it to figure that out? Put DRM on a product, put in tons of annoying ads for products I don't give a crap about (DVDs and Bluray discs), and of COURSE I'll go to bittorrent. Oh wait, then there's more piracy even though DRM was designed to PREVENT piracy. Again, screw the user who plays legitimately, the pirates get around it anyway. Happens every time.
Put it this way -- what if you buy a standard nice car for $20,000 and every time you get in it to go to work/school/etc the GPS screen pops up and forces you to sit there for 60 seconds watching the latest advertisement for service or other crap?
One day I went to a gas station and guess what? While filling, the screen on it (a color LCD, wouldn't a cheap monochrome one work?) was playing ads. Get rid of the screen, save a bunch money (that helps make up for the lack of ad revenue), and then you won't piss me off, making me more likely to buy gas there.
Lol, "researchers."
It would be good if what they say would happen would happen, but I doubt it as every musian would want every single cent that is owed to them.
!Edited by moderator: please do not use insults at Tom's, thank you.
So why don't you crack down on all the others that do??
Finally, they realized.
Media need to:
- find a distribution model which cuts out the layers of waste called big content.
- this allows the price to drop by a factor of 10 or more (go look at the money distribution for common CD's and check which parts goes to the artist.
- be as easy to get; this includes not having to wait longer than half an hour or leaving my couch.
- be as easy to use; this includes watching it on any device/method I can think of and more.
- should get rid of any and all hindrances like warnings, ads, etc
- be available at the same time as the hype begins; this includes making movies at the same time in all regions AND at the same time as it hits the movie-theaters.
There was a Russian site, allofmp3.com, that actually sold drm-free mp3's for a very nice price (about 3 euro per album). At that time I actually paid for my music, and I was willing to pay even more than 3 euro. But as always the RIAA didn't like it and put it out of business. After that I started downloading my music from torrent sites.