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Last Major Label Gives Up DRM
Back in December 2005, we announced the beginning of the end for DRM on music. Well, two years later, we’re getting close to the end of the end, with Sony-BMG announcing that it, too, will be giving up on DRM for music downloads (at least for some of its catalog). Sony-BMG is the last of the four major labels to take this step.
It’s about time. As online music retailers have been pointing out for years, DRM has only held back the authorized downloading services in their efforts to compete against the unauthorized world of P2P file sharing.
This isn’t quite the end of DRM on digital music, however. The last hold out is DRM on subscription services like Rhapsody and Napster. Some have argued that DRM is necessary for the subscription business model, an argument that I think doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. After all, anyone with any motivation can convert their Rhapsody “streams” into downloads, DRM notwithstanding. So it’s not the DRM that keeps people paying their monthly subscription bills — it’s convenience, inventory, and other features that add value to the experience (DRM, on the other hand, is about subtracting value from the fan’s experience).
But there is also evidence suggesting that DRM on streams may be dying, as well. Leading next-generation streaming music services, like iMeem, are using FLV (a streaming format with no DRM) for their music offerings. And iMeem is licensed by all of the major labels, so it appears that DRM is no longer a requirement for authorized music streaming, either.
Next step (and I hear that at least one major label is considering it) will be a blanket license for music fans — pay a small monthly fee, and download whatever you like, from wherever you like, in whatever format you like. This is the inevitable end-game in a world where file sharing remains hugely popular and the labels want to prevent new retailers (like iTunes) from controlling distribution.
2008: DRM continues to punish paying customers
Just three days into the new year, we have another example of DRM punishing paying customers, rather than “pirates.” Netflix subscriber Davis Freeberg ran headlong into an incompatibility between Microsoft DRM and … Microsoft DRM.
The trouble all started when Freeberg bought a new monitor for his Vista computer. When he decided to watch streaming movies from Netflix, Netflix documentation warned him that the recommended means of fixing a problem with DRM-restricted Netflix programming “may remove licenses to other content using Microsoft DRM” — including, in particular, restricted programming he had already purchased through Amazon Unbox. Trying to resolve this problem just got Freeberg a tech-support runaround, with each company involved pointing the finger at another.
Tech support problems are not unfamiliar to PC users, but where did this problem come from? Freeberg was just trying to use a new monitor with his computer; his reward, apparently, was broken DRM software, which couldn’t be sure the new monitor met movie studios’ arbitrary requirements (or perhaps just couldn’t be sure whether it could be sure). Furthermore, the DRM industry — which has already spent countless engineer-hours making “approved” and “licensed” products (seemingly at the expense of “compatible” and “interoperable” devices) — couldn’t even offer Freeberg a clear path out of this jam.
Is this mess stopping copyright infringement? Nope — it’s still easy to copy media and easy to find unauthorized copies. In fact, one commenter points out that the easiest “fix” for Freeberg’s trouble appears to be downloading the movie from an unauthorized torrent tracker.
Freeberg’s conundrum is likely the product of the Protected Media Path (PMP) (mis)features that have been added to Microsoft’s Vista operating system. Thanks to PMP, Vista computers can now “audit” the video outputs, supposedly to ensure that only “authorized” (aka DRM-laden) video boards and monitors can receive Hollywood content. Unfortunately, these kinds of (mis)features generally (1) don’t stop pirates and (2) result in compatibility headaches for paying customers.
Key Open Government Reform Legislation Becomes Law
In one of his last official acts of 2007, President Bush signed into law the first major overhaul of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in more than a decade. The Open Government Act of 2007 makes much-needed changes to the FOIA process that will give Americans better access to information about their government at work, such as:
- Ensuring that freelance and alternative journalists are considered representatives of the media, making it less expensive for them to get information from the government.
- Providing for attorney fees when a requester’s lawsuit prompts an agency to change its position on a request, even if a court doesn’t order it.
- Creating a tracking system to help make sure that FOIA requests don’t become hopelessly tangled in red tape.
- Establishing the Office of Government Information Services, which will be tasked with helping to resolve conflicts between agencies and requesters.
- Penalizing agencies that don’t process FOIA requests on time.
- Making it clear that requesters can get government records maintained by private contractors, not just the agencies themselves.
- Imposing greater reporting requirements to let Congress and the public know more about how agencies handle requests.
The changes made by the OPEN Government Act are a hard-fought victory that will help EFF and other requesters make better use of the FOIA and keep the government accountable to the people.
In the past few months, EFF’s FOIA requests have uncovered illegal government demands for phone customers’ “communities of interest” and revealed details about the FBI’s misuse of National Security Letters. Our work was also cited in a congressional call for an investigation of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. To learn more about EFF’s FOIA efforts, visit our FOIA Litigation for Accountable Government (FLAG) Project page.