RIAA, MPAA In Denial About The Death Of DRM
from the good-luck-with-that dept
As a bunch of you are submitting, at a panel discussion down in LA, an RIAA representative claimed not only was DRM not dead, but that it was making a comeback. However, the statements show a fundamental misunderstanding of what's happening in the marketplace. RIAA technology guy David Hughes made this statement:"I made a list of the 22 ways to sell music, and 20 of them still require DRM."Well, David, I just made a list of 22 ways to sell transportation mechanisms, and 20 of them still require a buggy whip -- but it doesn't mean anyone will buy them. Then, even worse was the statement from the MPAA's Fritz Attaway:
"We need DRM to show our customers the limits of the license they have entered into with us."Well, there's your problem Fritz. The second you focus on how to limit your customers, you've lost them. No one wants to be limited these days. They want to be able to do what they want and they will reward those who allow them to do so. Treating your customers as people to be limited (i.e., people who you offer less value to) pretty much guarantees that they'll go elsewhere.
![Hide This Hide this](https://ii.techdirt.com/s/t/i/topclose.png)
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: david hughes, denial, drm, fritz attaway, mpaa, riaa
Companies: mpaa, riaa
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
tpb
Now, why is consumer morality irrelevant? Because, the corporate morality is long since gone. Consumers have stopped caring about the corporations, as they are tired of being subjected to the corporations immoralities.
Making your product less valuable than the alternative is just not a good idea.
If RIAA(/MPAA) want to complain about lost sales, then they need to point the finger at their own decisions. Adding DRM to iTMS reduces sales. They could sell far more music through iTMS if they would give apple the license to sell without DRM. Giving this right to Amazon to spite Apple, and then complaining about lost sales is just utterly stupid.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: tpb
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: tpb
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: tpb
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: tpb
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: tpb
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Anyone can do it better than those who have done it
Then why don't you do just that?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Anyone can do it better than those who have done it
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Retort
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Ummmm...
Jeeez....These people **are** dumber than a bag of hammers.
Well, what with that substitute teacher being fired in Florida yesterday after being accused of, get this..."Wizardry", I suppose there must be something in the water these days that is actually making people stupid.
Uhhh...Ohhh... Am I becomming stupid too?
How do I know if I've become stupid?
Why don't I know how to tell if I've become stupid??
OH DAMN. I'm getting STUPID too!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Ummmm...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
RIAA and MPAA Now Appearing at Digital Hollywood as Monty Python's The Black Knight
In a panel discussion at the Digital Hollywood conference, the content world established that it still lives in a completely different world than its customers. While the rest of the marketplace continues to successfully move towards business models for the digital age, David Hughes, who according to CNET heads up RIAA’s technology unit, effectively ridiculed the progress that international music labels – and RIAA member companies – EMI, Sony BMG and the Universal Music Group, and major retailers Amazon.com and Wal-Mart have made by readily making DRM-free music available to consumers. The MPAA seemed more concerned with limiting its customers’ rights than actually doing business with them.
Meanwhile, back on earth, the rest of us have already figured out that digital freedoms equal digital profitability. Giving consumers what they want – digital music – the way they want it – without burdensome DRM (digital rights management) software that locks them up – pays dividends to all stakeholders in the digital world – including the content industry.
The Digital Freedom Campaign is compelled to remind these big content companies that consumers have also rights in the digital age, and those rights include the ability to enjoy the content they legally purchase. Content and consumer rights are not a zero sum game.
DRM has suffered far more than a flesh wound, and we’ve all crossed the bridge into the digital age. Hey content companies – wake up!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: RIAA and MPAA Now Appearing at Digital Hollywood as Monty Python's The Black Knight
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Sales?
Why? Not because I want to copy the content, but because I want to enjoy it. The point of DRM is to restrict me, I don't appreciate that. the day I can buy movies and music from the major corporations without regional and/or usage restrictions at a reasonable price is the day I start doing so.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
drm = no sale
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
If You're Going To Steal Software, Steal From Us...
I have no idea how they got there, but it's not tough to imagine early on, the team took a gamble that paid off, similar to what we did.
Myself, I'm in the business of making delicious cakes, and my business started when my main oven didn't heat evenly and full-sized, sheet cake came out 20-25% burnt. My head baker looked at the problem carefully. Unwilling to change the recipe (it won awards), the head baker researched, researched and researched. After several days, she realized the oven was to blame. It was responsible for burning the cake.
We worked together and turned the problem into an opportunity by building smaller versions of the cake (now frequently known as "Coffee Cakes") that were smaller and didn't get burned when going through the main oven.
We learned that the smaller bakeries, like my business, wanted to make sheet-sized cake themselves, but didn't want to segment into a business of making these smaller cakes. With my great Sales team, CakeCo, worked with cafeterias at schools, colleges, and select retail locations. "If I made Coffee Cakes, They would go stale" was a common complaint.
So with my blessing, my Head Baker, equipped with an 80% working oven, decided to start focusing on the untapped Coffee Cake market, and started selling them to college-age crowd thru the many storefronts who didn't want to get into the Coffee Cake business themselves. The target demographic (students) started buying the single-sized cake (complete with award winning butter-based icing) at a price they could afford. The gamble started paying of on multiple levels. In fact, upon graduation, the Full-sized Cake- Office CoffeeCake Extranet Global Economy Edition, enjoyed great market share, as well as great brand recognition, partially due to how I took care of my customers in College.
Yes, burned cake has multiple causes. If 20% of the cake is burned, make it smaller. Knowing or understanding needs of customers, is critical to get to the end goal. If it's not available, then it's a missed opportunity and everyone looses.
Besides, anyone can make and sell cake these days and put it on CakeTube, but your cake needs to be #1 before Duncan Heinz starts selling "At Home" boxed kits!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Best line of this post
This sums up a lot of tech issues that I read about: DRM, invisible ISP download caps, Windows Genuine Advantage, etc. In some cases, it's hard to go elsewhere, such as switching away from Windows, or there's nowhere else to go, such as a Comcast local monopoly. But in other cases such as music, the switch is extremely easy, and unless you take care of them, they're gone in a flash.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
RIAA and MPAA must be idiots
They punish their paying customers with insane DRM schemes while pirates get to enjoy DRM free music. That is exactly what happens. Believing otherwise is total stupidity.
Also, they say they are losing huge amounts of income to piracy, but they have yet to prove that those pirates would have bought the content if they didn't pirate it. How can it be "lost" income if it was never going to be income to begin with? You can only lose it if you actually had it. From what I've seen the pirates are mostly kids who can't afford to buy the crap anyway.
Meanwhile they punish and anger people like me, who bought literally thousands of dollars of their content, to the point where I have boycotted their products for years now.
To the RIAA (and MPAA):
1. Why do you hate me so much that you feel compelled to constantly lobby for my consumer rights to be even more restricted?
2. Why do you feel like you absolutely MUST control how and when I play the media I purchased from you? All I want is to be allowed to play the media I purchase on devices I own without feeling or being treated like a criminal. Why is that so difficult to understand? Why is it too much to ask?
Sure, go find the people who are duplicating and selling your work, but holy crap people, leave your paying customers alone, will you? We're all sick of it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: RIAA and MPAA must be idiots
2. They're used to having control for years. It is the only technique they know. Thus, they don't care if they treat you like a criminal. Or conversely, they've never had to learn how to treat their customers right.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: RIAA and MPAA must be idiots
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: RIAA and MPAA must be idiots
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: RIAA and MPAA must be idiots
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Money for nothin'. Chicks for free.
Overblown analogies can be found all over this web site. Mostly from the like-minded majority posting here.
Seems to me that many contracts in the retail marketplace are full of limitations (Tax, tag, title not included.) Insurance companies limit their exposure and your benefits. There are speed limits on the highways. How about "Limit two per customer" in the grocery store on a two-for-the-cost-of-one can of peas? Laws get passed all the time with limits of some kind built into them. What is so special about music that says that makes you believe that you can do with it what you will without limitations?
Why don't you advocates for free music advocate free operating systems, free office software, free books, free gas for your car, mortgage-free homes? I mean, free is the new business model, right?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Money for nothin'. Chicks for free.
Seems to me you are pointing out a weakness in the retail marketplace, waiting for a new competitor to enter that removes these limitations and empowers their customers. Those that empower their customers (and can demonstrate the benefits of that power) will dominate. Unfortunately, the masses currently are of the mindset that low-price-beats-all-other-benefits. That will change.
For someone who posts that they've real "all over this website", you seem to have missed some pretty critical basic points.
We aren't advocating "free" anything, we are simply pointing out economic realities: supply and demand. When an item costs nothing to reproduce (i.e. its marginal cost is effectively zero), then its price tends towards that cost. This is a market reality.
Free music, free software....this site discusses these things in great detail.
Free gas, free homes? This doesn't make any sense. There are hard costs to the fabrication/reproduction of these items, they are a scare resource, so their price will tend to the actual cost of production plus the premium fetched by the demand of this scarcity (i.e. it cost me $100000 to build the house, but 5 people want it so I can keep raising the price to the point where just 1 person wants it).
I don't buy the phrase "No one wants to be limited these days" in this article. Personally I think that no one ever wanted to be limited ever, but that people have accepted limits in order to have other benefits (e.g. lower price, immediate availability, etc...). Eventually our society will come about to realize that stuff is nothing but stuff, and then the focus will be on quality rather than quantity. Personally I've stopped purchasing from stores/companies where I've found limitations to be unreasonable (sales pressures, bogus warranties, fake "lowest price comparison" offers where they simply tweak a model num, etc...), but I currently do put up with some inconveniences (e.g. crowds, longer wait times) if a store/company services me well in the long run.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Money for nothin'. Chicks for free.
This is a case where the contract is being changed to our detriment. If I buy a CD, I can rip and copy it, lend it to friends, play it in any CD player and then resell it if I want. DRM is a way of removing all of the above rights, at no discount. I object to that, for pretty obvious reasons.
"Why don't you advocates for free music advocate free operating systems, free office software, free books, free gas for your car, mortgage-free homes?"
As I type this on my Linux system, which has OpenOffice installed and access to gutenberg.org, all I need is a way of getting free gas and a free home, and I'm set!
To state the obvious - this is NOT about "free as in beer". Most of us are still willing to pay for music, we just don't want to pay for the incredibly restrictive trash that's being offered in the above statements.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Money for nothin'. Chicks for free.
There's a difference. First of all, as others pointed out correctly in the comments, in this case it's about *increasing* limits (taking rights away from users). Second (again as others correctly pointed out), those limitations simply are opportunities for competitors. In the case of music, those competitors have already taken the opportunity.
But, most importantly, I didn't say limitations, by themselves, were the problem, but the fact that the industry seems to thinking that *focusing* on limitations is the way to create a new business model.
If the key selling point you have to offer is your limitation, you're dead.
Why don't you advocates for free music advocate free operating systems, free office software, free books, free gas for your car, mortgage-free homes? I mean, free is the new business model, right?
Hmm. Scorpiaux, I thought we went over the difference between scarce and infinite goods before. It's disappointing that you're making the same basic mistake all over again.
The "free" business model has never been about offering everything for free. It's about recognizing that by offering the infinite goods for free, you make money selling scarce goods. It's also about recognizing that if you don't do that, someone else will -- and then you'll be in real trouble.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Money for nothin'. Chicks for free.
When I buy insurance I'm not purchacing a product, I'm negotiating service. My provider and I have contrasting interests and we must agree on a level of service which I'm willing to pay for and they are willing to provide. This is almost wholly different from purchacing a product and limiting the use of that product.
When I buy a CD or DVD or whatever that comes with DRM I have purchaced a product which limits the usefulness of that product with no advantage to me, the customer. I can't play it in my device of choice, for example. This reduces the value of the product. And if I can find a comprable product without DRM, that other product has more value to me.
Do you see the differences?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Money for nothin'. Chicks for free.
Free OS = Ubuntu
Free Office Software = Open Office
Free Books = Called the library
Free Gas for your car = (Well this doesn't exist yet but will in time)
Mortgage-free Homes = AKA Apartment
We do!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Money for nothin'. Chicks for free.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
On the flip side, if people are just licensing DVDs....why do they keep buying/licensing them (bad usability and all)?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Who da man?
As EA is about to discover with their DRM fisting of Mass Effect and Spore, when you persist in treating your paying customers as if they are criminals, they may start to live down to your expectations.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Why do musicians deal with these idiots ?
Why do musicians deal with these idiots ?
Why do musicians deal with these idiots ?
Why do musicians deal with these idiots ?
Why do musicians deal with these idiots ?
Why do musicians deal with these idiots ?
Why do musicians deal with these idiots ?
Why do musicians deal with these idiots ?
Why do musicians deal with these idiots ?
Why do musicians deal with these idiots ?
Why do musicians deal with these idiots ?
Why do musicians deal with these idiots ?
Why do musicians deal with these idiots ?
Why do musicians deal with these idiots ?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Because right now, the alternative looks like a harder problem.
Give it another year or two, as the RIAA continues to flounder and bands like NIN show everyone new ways to make money with music, fewer and fewer artists will be dealing with these idiots.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Preach it!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
RIAA/MPAA in denial....
http://www.tvweek.com/news/2008/04/guest_commentary_lloyd_kaufman.php
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Ive said it before and well
Nuff said
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Let 'em rot.
The RIAA can F*** off. Let them die. We don't need another bullshit, repetitive, stereotypical, pop wannabe, that plays on rotation every 30 mins on the radio. Little originality wouldn't hurt either, RIAA. Anyone here who is defending record companies, let them waste the money. They'll get a nice collection of CD's and when they run into Walmart to buy more someone will break into their car and steal all of them. But, because of DRM they won't have any backups. Awwwwwww... Call your insurance company, but wait there is a $500 deductable. Damn, what a waste.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Let 'em rot.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]