An answer to our music pains?

If you've been reading this blog at all for the last few weeks, you should know by know that I absolutely hate DRM and everything it stands for. DRM stands for Digital Rights Management, and it refers to a slough of different methods being used to "protect" music rights online so that files can't be shared between owners.

The idea isn't bad, but the result is usually a loss of complete ownership rights by you, the user, and causes things like iPods which delete their music files if you don't have a backup copy stored on your computer, only being able to use your iPod with a select 5 computers, not being able to play your iTunes-bought music in any player other than iTunes, etc. I hate this because I want to own the things I pay for - if I buy your songs, they're mine, and I should have the right to play them in whatever player I want, store them in whatever format I want, and generally use them in any way I want as long as it doesn't result in me infringing on your right to sell your music.

Another complaint is that DRM isn't about protecting music or the musicians - it's about market share, and about allowing big companies to dominate the music industry. The idea that DRM protects musicians is a complete lie - it protects Apple, or Microsoft, and that's about it. The iPod is a perfect example - it forces you to use iTunes, which leads users to using the apple store, which sells only songs infected with a brand of DRM that can't be decoded by any player other than the iPod. Microsoft's Zune will enforce the same system. Both companies support the RIAA in keeping non-DRM music files off the internet under the auspices of protecting the rights of artists, which results in a market in which small companies can't be profitable.

Anyway, a German company called "Akuma" has perfected a technique of "watermarking" songs with subtle sounds that are undetectable to human ears but easily perceived by machines. This allows music retailers to mark songs with an identification tag traceable back to the person who bought the music, and gives them someone to hold liable if the song shows up on a file-sharing system or the internet at large.

This is a huge step in the right direction, as it removes all of the experience-hindering ownership problems of DRM while enforcing a strict way to track music purchases, but raises an entirely separate set of questions. First, what about privacy rights? What sort of data will I have to give the music company in order to buy their songs, and how much if it will be stored in the songs themselves, and how secure will that data be? Second, how breakable is this? It seems like it'd be pretty easy to write a filter program that removed the sort of digital watermarks they've made so far. Lastly, who's going to police it, and how? Who's going to wander the p2p networks, scanning the watermarks, and then going after the owners, and when they do, how are they going to prove it was the owner's fault that the music arrived on the p2p network? It seems reasonable that someone could steal my mp3 player and upload all of my songs to limewire, so good luck trying to hold me responsible. It's sort of like those cameras taking pictures of people running red-lights: sure, you can prove that someone in my car broke the law, but good luck proving it was me.

To conclude, I think this is a great step in the right direction, but I think there's still some huge issues that need to be resolved before we'll see this replace DRM. The biggest advantage this system has for users like me is that I no longer WANT to break it. I download songs from iTunes and immediately strip the DRM, either by burning a CD and re-ripping the songs to MP3 or using some DRM removing software to convert the iTunes files directly. Since I don't want to engage in piracy for piracy's sake, I have no desire to remove the watermark on an MP3 I can already play unhindered, savvy?

If those idiots at the RIAA weren't idiots, they'd champion alternatives to impairing DRM like this in the hopes of making the system work and improving their absolutely horrible image.