AP to Place “DRM” on the News

In what I am betting is one of the AP’s final death throes, the organization has come up with a far-ranging plan that they claim will stop the rampant theft and plagiarism of their content and will finally force us freeloaders to make micropayments to read the news.

PaidContent parsed their FAQ:

—The registry will use a microformat platform AP developed; it was endorsed by the London-based Media Standards Trust earlier this month.

—The “microformat” puts content in content in a “wrapper” that includes a digital permissions framework “that lets publishers specify how their content is to be used online and which also supplies the critical information needed to track and monitor its usage.”

—The registry will provide metrics on content consumption, payment services and enforcement support.

—AP says the registry could support its previous idea of building search pages as “authoritative sources” by requiring links “to search optimized news pages that guide users to timely, authoritative coverage. AP continues to research the concept.”

Is it just me or does this sound an awful lot like the awful DRM that plagued the music business until only extremely recently.  While the music labels have all but completely abandoned DRM, realizing it did nothing to curb policy and a lot to piss off customers, it looks like the AP is going to give the same failed effort a spin.

It’s sad to see how little the various major content industries have been able to learn  from each others’ mounting failures.

Michael Jackson SELLS 2.6 Million Digital Downloads

I’ve never really given much value to the absurd figures thrown around by the RIAA when it comes to revenue lost due to piracy.  Aside from being based on guesses and estimates, it always fails to take into account revenue generated due to the same piracy (increased sales for concerts, etc).

Most importantly, with iTunes going DRM-free and the general accessibility of legally accessible music on the rise, I just don’t believe that piracy is the real problem at all.

One good example of this is:

…based on preliminary sales numbers from Nielsen SoundScan, 2.6 million Michael Jackson (his work with Jackson 5 and the Jacksons included) digital downloads were sold in just one week.   LINK

Yup, even though Michael Jackson’s music is readily available on all the major torrent sites, it looks like most people just went ahead and paid to download the music.

Why? Well, first, they knew exactly what they were getting. Unlike trying out a new band and wishing you didn’t need to plunk down the better part of $20 just to check them out, everyone buying Michael Jackson tunes did so with full knowledge.  Second, they wanted it immediately and the truth is that, for the vast majority of computer users, the intricacies of bittorrent are just too complicated.

So, while I am sure plenty of people downloaded themselves some free Jackson this past week, it doesn’t look like they are going to bring down the whole system.

The Kindle is Ripe for Replacement by Superior Products

I’ve never been a fan of the Kindle.  While I have never owned one, due to the fact that Amazon never sent me a trial version, I have played with the Kindle on a number of occasions.

While the eInk screen is nice to look at, the entire experience reminds me more of my Atari 800 than a gadget for the 21st Century.  Even disregarding the obnoxious DRM that means you never truly own your purchases, the whole thing is just limiting.  Aside from being able to carry a few hundred books at once, something we all do now by hand, the device has very little use in today’s society.

PSFK’s Piers Fawkes, who actually does own a Kindle, seems to agree:

Amazon’s Kindle doesn’t work for me because it doesn’t fit my reading, sharing and working habits. Over the last five to six years the way I consume text, imagery and other content has changed. Like the most of you I spend time everyday reading content across newspapers, magazines, blogs and other news feeds. I use that news (from 850 sources). I cut extracts, I send links, I copy images, I share it to Twitter and Facebook, I just let stories hang around deep in my open tabs possibly to be looked at before. And I want to do all this in as little time as possible.   LINK

This tells me that whoever can combine the readability of the Kindle with the facility of an iPhone and price the whole thing at $199 will make a bundle.

Kindle Users Learn Difference Between Licensing and Ownership

In the simple days before the internet and digital technology the concept of buying a book was pretty simple.  You went to a bookstore and you gave the bookseller money and he or she gave you a stack of bound paper with words (and sometimes pictures) printed on the pages – a book, if you will.  Once the transaction was complete that book was yours forever.  You could resell it any price the market supported.  You could trade it or loan it or use it as toilet paper.  It didn’t matter.  The book was yours.

Unfortunately, as ArsTech points points out, in the current time of eBooks, the idea of buying a book is not quite so simple:

Amid the general love-fest over the Amazon Kindle, its DRM is beginning to bite some users in the butt as they are getting locked out of their accounts and, subsequently, their e-book purchases. The incidents highlight once again that the customer doesn’t really own the content when it comes to DRM; even when it’s so loose that it’s not apparent day to day, it can still hurt you in the long run.

Whether due to a change in “terms of service” or due to violating exisiting agreements, Kindle-owners have found themselves actually locked out of accessing books they had already purchased.  I like ArsTech’s metaphore:

A bookstore that locks you out because you treated it like a library doesn’t take away the collection already sitting on your bookshelf, after all.

There is a reason that even iTunes has given up on most DRM for music and it won’t be all that long before book publishers will have to follow suit or find themselves fighting a similar losing battle against “pirates” who think it is unfair for a company to control access to content once the customer has completed their purchase of said content.

LINK

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Wired Aids and Abets Piracy

Here is what makes the whole DRM issue so absurd.  All these companies claim that, for one weak reason or another, they “need” DRM to protect their property.  The problem is that DRM simply doesn’t do anything to stop people from copying the content and moving it to other formats.

In addition, it seems that nobody minds breaking the terms of service, and maybe even the law, to remove the DRM from products that they have bought.  Case in point is this recent article in Wired magazine that details how to make DVD from movies you’ve bought via iTunes.  Just remember:

Because movies and TV shows purchased from iTunes store have DRM copy-protection, you have to remove the DRM protection before burning them to DVDs for playback on your home DVD player.

Now, here’s the kicker.  Nowhere in this well-written and easy-to-follow how-to article is there any mention that there is anything wrong with stripping off the DRM that was included, one assumes, as a way to stop users from doing exactly what this article demonstrates.

Is this an case of Wired giving out detailed information on how to break the law or is it simply more proof that DRM is a broken system that should be retired poste-haste?

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NBC Direct – One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

One of the few things that keeps me downloading TV shows from “illegal” P2P sites is that the networks, while offering up great content via streaming, have been quite stingy when it comes to downloading shows for viewing on portable devices.

NBC is trying to move in that direction with the introduction of NBC:Direct.

Windows only: Sure, almost all the offerings on NBC Direct can be watched at streaming site Hulu. But if you’re an HD fiend and want offline access, NBC Direct’s player might be worth checking out.

NBC Direct is definitely powered by DRM and ad-powered software, so if you’re not cool with that, well, you probably know a few other places to look (like, er, Hulu). But if you dig the idea of subscribing to, and downloading higher-quality videos of your favorite NBC shows, it’s not a bad way of getting them guilt-free. (via)

There are still ad breaks, which is fine, but the continued presence of restrictive DRM, being Windows-only and far from “one-step” means that it is unlikely to stem the tide of pirates.

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DRM Bites Publisher and Readers in the Ass

I love this story via BoingBoing’s resident awesome guy Cory Doctrow about a publisher who locked up their ebooks with DRM, limiting how their customers could interact with the book they thought they had bought.

Unfortunately, the company that handeld the DRM has gone out of business and taken the license keys with them.  This has led to the following F*ck-You from the publisher to their customers:

However, as noted above, other formats are delivered through third party aggregators. We do not have legal control of those third party servers. If those third party servers “go dark” for one reason or another, we have no way to continue delivering those files.

Yup, once again proving why any company who uses DRM cares less about their customers than they do about over-protecting their market-share.

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EA’s DRM for Spore = BIG FAIL

These are the sorts of stories that must scare the hell out of big media corporations.  According to TechDirt, Spore, the hugely anticipated and horribly DRM‘d game for Electronic Arts, is now the number one most pirated videogame in the world.

Yup.  As TechDirt puts it:

“In other words, EA’s “antipiracy strategy” backfired almost completely. The company got a huge PR blackeye which probably only encouraged more people to download the game via file sharing. Can someone explain, again, why any company thinks DRM works?”

I think of this as a rhetorical question, but, honestly, can anyone explain it?

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As E-Book Popularity Grows, So Do Legal Questions

Image by dailylifeofmojo via Flickr

There is a piece in Wired about the growing popularity of reading E-Books on the iPhone.  At the same time sales for Amazon’s Kindle continue to grow rapidly (even though the device itself is far from perfect).

I love so much about E-Books, from their obvious portability to the potential for hyperlinking everything from definitions to other readers comments.  Plus there’s the whole zero-environmental impact as compared to the printing and distribution of an actual paperback.

The biggest problem I have with E-Books is that current DRM-related issues and publishers general terror of the future means that is now almost impossible to read a great E-Book then give it to your friend to read.  My bookshelf has long been a source and resource for friends looking for something great to read and it gives me great joy to share my books.

Now, it appears those days are numbered unless the publishers figure out what the music labels were late in learning – sharing increases sales.