Vox Polis

Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, has written a piece outlining his thoughts on the current state of online music delivery and digital rights management. In the piece Jobs suggests that it is time for an end to DRM:

The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.

So far Apple have been unsuccessful in pursuading the music labels from whom they license music to agree to DRM free downloads but there are signs that change may be coming. EMI have said that they will no longer use DRM on CDs perhaps after seeing the damage Sony suffered after their use of rootkits to secure CDs came to light. The sooner the big four record labels see sense on this we can get back to a far more sensible world where digital files work as they should.

In a report released today the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) recommend changing UK copyright law to allow fair use copying. Currently activities such as copying a CD to an iPod are illegal in the UK due to the lack of a fair use provision in our copyright law (such as that found in the US). In addition they recommend keeping the copyright term for sound recordings at 50 years after the date of recording and allowing the British Library to circumvent anti-copying measures for archival purposes.

Given how much illegal activity there is, giving us fair use rights is long overdue. Having a law that is so widely flaunted weakens public understanding of (and adherence to) copyright law as a whole. Provisions for the British Library are also a good thing, although exactly what DRM encumbered fluff they feel the need to archive is a bit of a puzzle. As for leaving the copyright period alone I am personally of the opinion that the current terms are far too long but there doesn’t seem to be much public appetite for a change.

Update - the full report is available at the IPPR website.

There have been a couple of stories relating to the levies on blank digital media this week. The levies are used to “compensate” copyright holders for the rights infringements that sales of blank CDs etc. will result in. Having read that you might well wonder “what about the numerous non-infringing uses of blank media?”, I’ve wondered the same thing and come to the conclusion that like a lot of copyright law it’s best for my stress levels not think about it too much. After all we’re guilty until proven innocent, right?

The first story was the news that Europe is planning to put a stop to the levies on MP3 players and other electronics. Of course the devices will have to incorporate DRM to ensure that they’re not used to breach copyright. The worrying aspect of this is that there could be pressure put on the electronics manufacturers to only support DRM crippled files which would be a disaster for independent content producers who are happy to see their work shared.

Second was the news today that Spain are adding levies to blank media. This comes in spite of an EC report claiming that increased use of levies (and the broadening of their use to, for instance, broadband connections) would provoke resentment amongst consumers.

It seems unlikely that the UK will get similar levies any time soon seen as officially we have no fair use rights so all copying is illegal. A levy to compensate copyright holders would be a tacit acknowledgement that the existing law is almost universally ignored.

Seen as we keep going on about how DRM is a bad thing it seemed like it’d be a good idea to provide some suggestions about to actually go about avoiding it. Luckily Peter Kirn at Create Digital Music has done most of the work for me in this article. Some of the suggestions are accessible to the non-geek crowd which is going to very important in breaking iTunes Music Store’s very easy-to-use but FairPlay crippled stranglehold.

I’m glad to see that Sweden are going to discuss the issue of intellectual property rights during their election this year. In January the Pirate Party was formed to push the agenda. They’re policies at first included abolishing all patents and decriminalising internet file sharing. This is based on the argument that if you can’t enforce it, then don’t legislate - and as we all know it is very difficult to enforce copyright on the Internet.

However as the General Election has been approaching they’ve moved towards a softer line -with the policy to reduce the lifetime of patents from 25 to 5 years. Sounds sensible to me. Looks like the kind of grouping we could do with in the UK - especially as people like Sir Cliff Richard are pushing for longer royalty payments (as we reported last month).

This is what I like about the European democratic system - if you’re annoyed by something, or don’t just think your politicians are listening to you, you don’t just write a letter to your MP or moan about it in the pub. No, you form your own political party. And the chances are you’ll win a few seats (see Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands). Ok, so it doesn’t make for good government (look at the mess Prodi’s in) but you can make a point. Similar attempts in the UK (Referendum party, Veritas) always seem disappointing to me.

New laws have been passed in Germany that set the sentence for filesharing of copyright material for private use at 2 years. The sentence for those caught profiting from filesharing could be up to 5 years. Somewhat obviously the new laws are the result of some serious lobbying by the German film industry. I say obviously because it’s hard to imagine a democracy that claims to represent its people passing a law that according to the Federation of German Consumer Organisations “criminalises consumers”.

The signs of industry lobbying are clear in the comments of Günther Krings of the Christian Democrats:

“There should be no legal distinction between stealing chewing gum from a shop and performing an illegal download.”

The characterization of file sharing and theft has been a device used by the film industry for some time - watch a enough DVD trailers and you’ll see it in action. The problem is that file sharing is not theft as it doesn’t involve depriving a party of the possession of something (UK readers will be pleased to hear that the BBC have realised this). The crime being committed when you download a movie is copyright infringement which is a completely different thing. The counter argument used by the industry is that the act of copyright infringement deprives them of the money that would have resulted from a sale. The problem with this argument is that these ‘lost sales’ from file sharing are nebulous at best, indeed the Canadian record industry have begun to dispute these claims themselves.
Time will tell whether the new legislation will reduce file sharing but what is certain is that it will ordinary German citizens into criminals. The effect of turning a large percentage of a countries population into law breakers can only be to dilute respect for the law and disenfranchise voters.

Via The Times.

Today’s IHT has some reasonably thorough coverage of the proposed legislation to decriminalize online music sharing/piracy. Seen as this doesn’t seem to be going away I thought I’d add a bit more to my previous comments.

In my opinion, the IHT article fails to cover two points that are important in the debate. Firstly in it’s focus on reaction from politicians and the industry it fails to mention that the new leglislation is great for consumers. No longer will you have to wonder whether that track you downloaded will play on your brand X portable player. DRM does nothing for music listeners at all, it exists solely to protect big business and anything that bring it’s death closer should be welcomed.

The second thing that seems to have been forgotten in the furore is what effect the legislation will have on music distribution at a grass roots level. The proposed method of artist compensation under the new system is to divvy up a tax amongst the major labels with the size of the slice based popularity (there’s a conspicuous absence of technical detail on how to measure popularity in a downloading free for all). The labels will then continue to pay their signed artists according to whatever agreement they signed up to. My worry is that this results in is a system where consumers expect all music online to be free and almost all the money is still feeding to the major labels. If people looking for music online expect it to be free it makes it very difficult for individual artists or very small labels to operate a donation based system of compensation that bypasses the majors. Instead of damaging the big labels (which they seem to be very worried about at the minute) this could end up giving them a government sanctioned iron grip.

Either way, interesting times are ahead.

Today’s Guardian has an article by Adam Webb on the state of DRM protection in the UK. There was rightly outrage when Sony BMG used a rootkit-based system to enforce copy protection on a number of CDs. Thankfully the record labels have yet to make much use of DRM on CDs for sale in the UK. The article doesn’t manage to come to a clear conclusion as to why this might be. The labels are certainly unforthcoming but will say that they have been testing the technology. Hopefully the backlash caused by Sony BMG’s action has caused them to have a bit of a rethink and finally reach the conclusion that DRM only serves to make things difficult for people who are trying to do the right thing by paying for music.

The All Party Parliamentary Internet Group met today to hear oral evidence to help it prepare a report into Digital Rights Management.

I don’t have high hopes for this mainly because the government don’t have a very good record on understanding technical issues or standing up to big business. The report in April should be interesting reading at least.

More at The Register.

The BBC have put a selection of questions on the subject of digital rights management (DRM) and file sharing to a panel of “top executives” in the music industry. The full set of questions and responses can be found on the BBC website. A selection of the best/worst responses can be found on The Rock Show site.

Pick of the bunch for me is from Peter Jamieson of the BPI on DRM:

DRM is the technology which makes all kinds of exciting new ways of listening to music possible.

Sigh…the management side of the music industry haven’t had an exciting idea for 40 years, the idea of them becoming gate-keepers for ideas in the future is repellent. The solution to the problem is to boycott DRM encumbered music until they see the error of their ways. Good starting points for this are here and here.