And so onto another issue I’ve been thinking about.

“Digital Rights Management”.

DRM is the big buzzword that’s been running around, especially around anyone whose been using iTunes recently. In case you are not familiar, for iTunes, you buy the music as an “album” for about £7.99 (or 79p per song, which is ridiculous, as most albums have way over ten songs these days, and a 79p per four minute song works out at 20p per minute).

Now for that 79p iTunes files, what do you get? First of all, it’s in the proprietry AAC format : a format that only works on an iPod. (There are file convertors out there, and I have one, but it was a bugger to find, and no doubt iTunes will suppress all such freeware shortly). So whilst you can save it as an AAC file onto a CDR, you can’t use it to burn the music file onto a music CD, or much else.

It being an AAC file, it’s also assigned a ‘special’ activation key that ties up with your iTunes account and your iPod. Want to play it on your CD player? Want tp transfer it to a different iPod when your old one dies? No chance.

Imagine then, you buy a DVD. Not only does that DVD only play on your DVD player, but that you can’t even dump a copy of the content onto a video tape. (Anyone who has children and a DVD of a kids film will know how frustrating this is).

As far as I’m concerned, when you pay for something, it’s yours. You own it. You have the right.

Like any management bullshit, “Digital Rights Management” is no such thing. DRM is precisely the opposite : the restriction of rights to a narrow band of what can be described as – at best – restrictive use. This is why I am, until it is generally no longer possible, buying “hard” format CD’s and downloading non-restrictive MP3’s : there I own the song, and I can do what I want with it. If I want to put it onto a CDR compilation for a friend I can. If I change iPods, I’ve still got the music.

(and home taping isn’t killing music, it’s selling music : like Nick-O-Teen, a homemade compilation gives you a taste for free).

The big problem comes up in a couple of years, when iPods start to die, and people have to buy new ones. People will find huge amounts of their music will be unplayable. Expect an enormous backlash and also decoding/cracking programmes to runa round the net like wildfire. (At the moment, for example, the unreleased studio tracks from “The (IN)complete U2” iTunes box set are racing over the net : it can be done, and there’s no way in hell I’m paying £119 to get 10 unheard songs. I’ve downloaded them, and they’re not very good songs, full stop.)

A friend of mine has bought about a thousand songs over iTunes. What happens to those songs when he changes iPods is going to be a major issue for him. Unless of course, iTunes work out a way of assigning “user numbers” for individuals to iTunes instead of iPod/machine/PC specific ID codes. As far as I’m concerned, if you’ve bought the music, the music is yours. If friends of mine want to drop in and add any CD I own onto their iPod they can do : I know them well enough to know they bought the vinyl albums in the 80’s, the cassettes and the CD’s in the 90’s : did you buy “Murmur” on cassette in 1985? You bought the songs then. Have them now. They’ve still got the music. The iPod is a frame : That’s all it is. Another playback mechanism. Cassette, CD, 8-Track. I don’t care : if you bought the music then, you can copy it off me now. Because you paid for the music.

And music is what it’s all about.

- posted by Mark @ 1:19 pm