15 key articles on DRM
When a subject (like DRM) is talked about and analysed to death, it can be hard to see the forest for the trees. DRM has gotten its fair share of coverage here at franticindustries, but I always feel the need to reiterate certain points due to the music and movie industry constant barrage of hypocrisy, confusion and false information on the subject.
While doing some research I’ve searched through my backlog and bookmarks to find the info that really shed the right light on DRM during the years. The result are the following 15 articles on DRM, which I think anyone interested in his digital rights should read. The articles are presented in chronological order with the latest being on top:
- 2007, TechDirt: An Economic Explanation For Why DRM Cannot Open Up New Business Model Opportunities - a great explanation of how DRM can only be a hindrance to a successful business model.
- 2007: TechDirt: Saying You Can’t Compete With Free Is Saying You Can’t Compete Period - again, great article from TechDirt, explaining why competing with something that’s free is exactly the same as competing with products with higher marginal cost.
- 2007: Steve Jobs on DRM: Thoughts on Music - whether you believe his anti-DRM arguments or not (and you have reason not to, since Apple probably did more for the spreading of DRM than any other company), Steve Jobs’ memo might go down in history as the beginning of the turn of the tide.
- 2006, Technocrat: Is DRM Just a Consumer Rights Issue? - a quick and to the point article explaining why DRM affects more than just your record collection.
- 2006, The Register: Lessig, Stallman on ‘Open Source’ DRM - Richard Stallman explains his argument against open-source DRM.
- 2006, The Guardian: ‘A lawyer who is also idealist - how refreshing’ - an interview with Eben Moglen, one of the founders of the GPL software license, in which he explains the concept of open-source DRM. A similar article can be found on ZDnet.
- 2006, Ars Technica: Hacking Digital Rights Management - a very in-depth article explaining how different types of DRM protection were hacked.
- 2005, Freedom to Tinker: Is DRM Good for You? - an analysis of why agreeing to DRM is not the same as agreeing to copyright laws (featuring both sides of the argument)
- 2004, NYTimes: Share the Music - one in the long line of proofs that music sharing does not hurt CD sales, contrary to what the major record labels would have you believe.
- 2004, Boing Boing: Cory responds to Wired Editor on DRM - the finale of the interesting exchange between Wired and Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow, who criticized Wired for not taking DRM into account when reviewing some multimedia players and for being lax on DRM in their article on BitTorrent. Cory brings a number of important points, most important of which is the fact that “DRM isn’t protection from piracy. DRM is protection from competition.”
- 2002, The Register: File swap nets will win, DRM and lawyers lose, say MS researchers - an interesting study coming from no other than Microsoft which concludes that DRM doesn’t stand a chance against the “darknet”.
- 2001, Wired: Licensed to Bill - Wired has been known to give good and compelling commentary on current IT issues. Not on the topic of DRM. This article from 2001 predict DRM’s future and it’s an interesting read because of how naive and wrong it is from today’s perspective. The only part of the article that looks right to me is this quote: “In the short run, whether consumers embrace the paradigm (of using DRM) barely matters.“.
- 200x, Downhill Battle: The reasons to get rid of the major record labels. - an outline of reasons why we should simply ditch the major labels, together with a list of related articles.
- 2000, CNN, LinuxWorld: Meet the kid behind the DVD hack - an interesting insight into the mind of Jon Lech Johanssen when he was only 16 year old and facing hacking charges for his reverse engineering of CSS and the release of the DeCSS tool.
- 199x, Negativland: The Problem With Music - a great insight into the inner workings of the music industry by one of the greatest music producers ever - Steve Albini. Many more articles related to copyright can be found here. A similar in-depth rant about the music industry was written by Courtney Love for Salon.com back in 2000.
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Besides these 15 articles, you might be interested in the coverage of DRM-related topics here at franticindustries:
The solution to the DRM problem
Can DRM ever be good?
Why pirated software is better than bought software
Of course, if you know any other great articles related to DRM that aren’t listed here, please post them in the comments.
March 6th, 2007 at 9:08 am
[…] Original post by Stan Schroeder and plugin by Elliott Back […]
March 7th, 2007 at 1:37 am
[…] FranticIndustries has a useful post containing links to articles about DRM. One day I will catch up with DRM and its implications for the future of the internet… […]
March 9th, 2007 at 8:05 am
[…] Link […]
March 28th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Why do we need the labels ? Why don’t the artist sell their music on their own and keep all of the revenue from their music along with the rights to distribute and sell it where and at whatever price they want (This can be done using Darmik as well as many other places on the internet). DRM is not the issue; control of distribution channels and revenue from holding the intellectual property of artist is the issue. For many major labels it seems that their strategy is to own or shut down any and all independent avenues to sells and distribution for the artist. In my opinon the major labels want to make sure that the artist has no choice in who sells and distributes their content; and that the fans have no choice in price and format. The Majors want to be the only game in town.
I think that we should no longer look to labels for the solution to freeing music from its old world model. We should look to the artist and to the fans that purchase the music. The artist should be the group that charts their own destiny as far as price, format, and distribution point. The fans that purchase the music should be allowed to purchase the music in a format that works uniformly on the devices that they use to play the music. If the artist gives their permission fans should also have the ability to resell the artist content for them, and in exchange receive a portion of the revenue. Neither the artist or the fans needs a label or a technology company to force a model or a format on them. I think that if we asked the artist and their fans what they wanted as far as music formats, pricing, distribution and ownership that we would more than likely already know the answer.
Artist should control pricing of their content as well as the format (drm or no drm) and distribution points. There are DRM formats available to content owners, so the issue of drm or not is one that is up to the content owner not one that should be made by any technology that is used to distribute the content. The decision to use drm is one that the content owners must make based on many factors. The key point here is that there are choices available and that the content owner should and can make this decsion.
I think that we should write off any current music that the major labels own as content that will never be in an open format playable on any device. We should also understand that more than likely this content will only be available at distribution points and at prices that the label; not the artist or their fans have anything to do with. We must accept this and move on to the next phase of digital content distribution that will give artist and content owners the freedom to decide their own destiny.
April 2nd, 2007 at 1:04 am
[…] Over the past couple of months, I’ve written a lot about DRM. Simply put, I think that DRM is awful. It should be ditched and forever banished to the dark depths of IT history. It reduces value of the content, it’s annoying, it’s insulting to users. Read some of what I’ve written on DRM here, here, here and here. […]
May 14th, 2007 at 5:13 am
[…] 15 key articles on DRM […]
March 12th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
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