EX RIAA Laments Apple’s DRM Strategy
EX MUSIC GESTAPO PULLS A HOMER
May 09,
2005
Hilary
Rosen Laments Apple’s DRM Strategy
Posted
by Ernest
Miller
2005
Hilary
Rosen Laments Apple’s DRM Strategy
Posted
by Ernest
Miller
Rosen, formerly head of
the
has a most hilarious column on the new
Post. I double checked
the date on the post, and it isn’t April Fools. Miss Rosen is complaining that
she can’t buy music for her
that doesn’t come from
(
Jobs, Let my Music
Go):
I
spent 17 years in the music business the last several of which were all about
pushing and prodding the painful development of legitimate on-line music. Now,
the music fan is on the cusp of riches in their options - free of the viruses of
the pirate sites. There are lots of places you can go for great music at good
deals and with a deep catalog of songs from over the last 20 or 30 years.
MSN.com, Rhapsody.com, aolmusic.com, even walmart.com. There are little players
to make your favorite music even more portable than ever starting at as little
as 29 bucks. Most every player device works at every one of these
?stores? and it is pretty easy to keep all the songs, no matter
where you got them, in a single folder or “jukebox” on your computer. Hello?
This was and is an obvious consequence of your DRM-ed world, Miss Rosen.
is simply doing what comes natural. Having insisted on the means for exclusion
being legally protected (i.e. DMCA), Apple is using those means to exclude
competitors. The only reason that the other companies mentioned aren’t doing the
same thing is because they are struggling to gain marketshare. Were they the
dominant players in the market, they would be doing the same thing as Apple. The
problem is that the iPod only works with either songs that you buy from the
on-line Apple iTunes store or songs that you rip from your own CD?s. Well,
only if you ignore the many smaller companies that sell unencumbered MP3s to
their customers. But those other music sites have lots of music that you
can?t get at the iTunes store. And they haven’t licensed to Apple, why?
Whose fault is that? Is it Apple’s? Or is it the fault of your former clients?
If you are really a geek, you can figure out how to strip the songs you might
have bought from another on-line store of all identifying information so that
they will go into the iPod. But then you have also degraded the sound quality.
How cruel. Cruel? Miss Rosen is one of the main people who insisted on creating
the environment for this cruelty. In any case, if you know what you’re doing,
you don’t have to lose much in the way of sound quality … unless the systems
are designed to make such stripping of information result in poor sound quality.
Then, of course, you could always strip the DRM, but that would be a crime,
thanks in part to Miss Rosen. But keeping the iTunes system a proprietary
technology to prevent anyone from using multiple (read Microsoft) music systems
is the most anti-consumer and user unfriendly thing any god can do. Is this the
same Jobs that railed for years about the Microsoft monopoly? Is taking a page
out of their playbook the only way to have a successful business? If he
isn?t careful Bill Gates might just Betamax him while the crowds cheer him
on. Come on Steve ? open it up. Is it the only way to run a successful
business? No, but it is a very good way to run one. Jobs isn’t going to open up
his system until it makes business sense. Unfortunately, Miss Rosen hasn’t
provided a single argument as to why it makes good business sense for him to do
so. Is DRM anti-consumer and user unfriendly? Heck, yes. But that didn’t stop
Miss Rosen for lobbying on its behalf. Why am I complaining about this? Why
isn?t everyone? Many of us have been complaining for a long, long time. Of
course, our voices may have been drowned out to a certain extent by all the
propaganda emanating from the RIAA that music without the encumbrances of DRM is
tantamount to piracy.