Fantastic, indignant article by John Naughton in the Observer (part of the Guardian UK) yesterday about the evils of DRM, and the outrageous smear campaign of media companies against their own customers:
…technical measures introduced by [media] industries to protect digital content are called “digital rights management” (DRM), a reassuring term implying that the user is managing something that is rightfully theirs. In fact, they are really digital restriction measures whose sole purpose is to constrain the consumer.
Right on! From now on, “digital restriction measures” is in my personal lexicon. I feel a rant coming on….
Fighting their own best customers
So: why do these companies call downloaders “pirates,” when in fact we’re their best customers? It’s because they miss their old, ridiculous business models that allowed them to gouge us for 18 bucks per CD, and if you didn’t have the money, no music for you. Remember that?
Whatever they tell you, don't get in the DRM van
And then, when they get unmasked as markup artists, they have the audacity to accuse their fans of “piracy.” In all likelihood, the guy who downloads a free copy of a new album often does so because he’s already spent more on media than is fiscally responsible, or because he’s never heard of the band before, and wouldn’t pay you for it anyway. And don’t forget that the music he already bought and paid for is chock full of spyware posing as security.
DRM is not about maintaining profits, no study has ever proven that downloading decreases the profits of the distributor. DRM is instead about restricting the audience of every piece of media. Downloading increases the number of people who can experience any piece of media, and that pisses the big companies off, because they’re jerks.
Remember, you can always go to the library to find any of their media for free.
The effect on ebooks and ereaders
Mr. Naughton points out that DRM only, only restricts the rights of the consumer. Brace yourselves, Kindlers, because the restriction of DRM
is about to become very clear to the consumers now stampeding to purchase the new generations of eBook readers, such as the Amazon Kindle. They will be nonplussed – not to say infuriated – to discover that the DRM in such devices generally prohibits passing on downloaded books to friends and family. “Buying” an eBook does not mean that you own it: all you’ve bought is a licence to read it.
And, as Mr. Naughton points out, the DMCA makes it a crime to get around this. If you want to get real reactionary, reports abound that companies are using DRM to spy on their customers. And then they arrest you.
This is not just insulting and frightening, it’s sad. In the excellent introduction to his novel Little Brother (which I’ve quoted before), Cory Doctorow tells this story:
I recently saw Neil Gaiman give a talk at which someone asked him how he felt about piracy of his books. He said, “Hands up in the audience if you discovered your favorite writer for free — because someone loaned you a copy, or because someone gave it to you? Now, hands up if you found your favorite writer by walking into a store and plunking down cash.” Overwhelmingly, the audience said that they’d discovered their favorite writers for free, on a loan or as a gift.
DRM doesn’t just affect how we get our books or music, it changes the culture of art and entertainment from a community audience into an archipelago of restricted islands. Plus there’s no actual downside for distributors: if media companies supported a rich, borrowing, appreciating, discovering culture, they would make much more money than by criminalizing borrowing, and vilifying those who love their writers, or musicians, or filmmakers.
Anyway, it’s good to see a journalist expose these shenanigans and decry the backslide of ebook DRM. Most of the time, at the first whiff of the DRM scare campaign, they roll over like David Pogue does.
Remember the good old days, Amazon?
I’ll be posting more about this soon, probably after we see if Amazon is going to continue to be as totalitarian in enforcing their DRM-content-only policy on the new Kindle 2.0. (I realize that publishers are most to blame for insisting on this “protection,” but you can’t convince me that, with ereaders still in the adoption phase, Amazon doesn’t like having the biggest ebookstore selection, which no other device has access to.)
One last thing: Mr. Naughton credits Apple for being at the leading edge of the move away from DRM-crippled music. Actually, one of the first major companies to release DRM-free music was Amazon. How the worm has turned.
Hopefully, someday soon “DRM” will be a dirty word to every media consumer in the country, if not the world. Until then, we should re-reframe this debate to target the real criminals. I’ll start:
DRM SPYWARE ROBBED ME AND POISONED MY DOG!
[read the original at the Observer. really, do. it's great. there's good stuff about the ridiculous state of American copyrights that I didn't mention at all.]
