Digital rights management (DRM), designed to prevent the piracy of digital content, has failed. The sooner the entertainment industry recognises this fact the sooner it can get on with reinventing itself for the era of digital distribution.
SA IT billionaire Mark Shuttleworth, the man behind Ubuntu Linux, says DRM is a stupid idea. In a recent post to his blog, Shuttleworth decries attempts by the music and movie industries to build restrictions into music and other digital content that people buy legitimately online. DRM prevents them from copying content they have purchased to play back on devices of their choosing.
The entertainment industry has taken on Luddite trappings as it tries to protect its analogue business model in an increasingly digital world. Instead of embracing the Internet, the powerful Recording Industry Association of America, a US body that represents the major music companies, has stuck its head in the sand and taken to suing the customers of the companies it represents, among them young children, for copying music from online file-sharing networks.
The lawsuits are shortsighted and have inflicted enormous PR damage on the music industry, which is now widely regarded as being avaricious and unwilling to embrace the future. As Shuttleworth says on his blog: “The content owners need to be thinking about how they turn this networked world to their advantage, not fighting the tide. [They also need to be thinking about] how to restructure the costs inherent in their own businesses to make them more in line with the sorts of revenues that are possible in a totally digital world.”
Shuttleworth points out that DRM can never work, because it’s so easy to circumvent. New strategies are needed. “The truth is that, as the landscape changes, different business models come and go. Those folks who try to impose analogue rules on digital content will find themselves on the wrong side of the tidal wave.”
The message finally seems to be getting through. Last week, Apple and EMI, one of the big four music companies, reached a landmark agreement whereby EMI’s music will be sold on Apple’s iTunes Music Store without any DRM infections. The EMI deal comes just weeks after Apple CEO Steve Jobs decried DRM schemes and said he’d switch to selling DRM-free content “in a heartbeat” if he could. It was a PR coup for Jobs, who has won plaudits from consumer rights activists.
DRM has alienated law-abiding consumers. Some have turned instead to file-sharing networks where they can get music that is free of DRM restrictions. The entertainment industry is also losing the battle to hackers, who quickly reverse-engineer whatever DRM schemes the industry comes up with. It’s already possible to copy the latest high-definition Blu-ray discs and HD-DVDs, for example.
and HD-DVDs, for example.
Says Shuttleworth: “For any given piece of content, all it takes is one unprotected copy and you have to assume that anyone who wants it will get it. Whether it is software off a warez [online piracy] site, music from an MP3 download service in Russia, or a file-sharing system, you cannot plug all the holes. Face it, people either want to pay you for your content, or they don’t, and your best strategy is to make it as easy as possible for people who want to comply with the law to do so. That does not translate into suing grannies and school kids, it translates into effective delivery systems that allow everyone to do the right thing, easily.”
Therein lies the rub. Most people don’t want to steal from the artists who make the music they love. They want to pay for the music they listen to and movies they watch. It’s time the entertainment industry stopped treating its customers like criminals.
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