The usual canned introduction:

The original Napster corporation has been destroyed, its trademarks
now owned by an authorized music retailer which does not use
peer-to-peer technology.  But the Napster paradigm, in which computers
and networks give ordinary people unprecedented control over content,
continues.

This is another quarterly installment in a series of weblog and
discussion about the deconstruction of the music industry and other
copyright industries, with side forays into "intellectual property,
freedom of expression, electronic media, corporate control, and
evolving technology," as polygon once phrased it.

Several years of back items are easily found in the music2 and music3
conferences, covering discussions all the way back to the initial
popularity of the MP3 format.   These items are linked between
the current Agora conference and the Music conference.

26 responses total.

Perhaps someone with a bit more time than I have right now
would like to discuss the announcement today that EMI is 
going to try selling digital files without DRM.
 
This may be motivated by simple desperation.  EMI's 
financial situation is the worst of the Big 4 music companies,
according to music biz blogs.

what is DRM?  

 Digital Rights Management.  Basically copy-prevention technology.
 As with previous copy-prevention technologies, time has shown that
 the people most affected by the DRM turn out to be the paying
 customers.  The filesharers and other infringers either defeat the
 DRM and provide unlocked copies, or share copies derived from media
 that were never protected to begin with (e.g. CDs.)

 But industry-mandated DRM has had a surprising effect not anticipated
 by the record labels who insisted on it -- it has shifted the balance
 of power in the industry *toward* Apple Computer and away from the
 content producers.  [Briefly, the phenomenal twin successes of the
 iPod and the iTunes Music Store have become self-reinforcing and the
 FairPlay DRM technology Apple uses to "protect" iTunes content is a
 big part of this, thanks to the fact that digital music tracks 
 purchased in Apple's proprietary DRM format will not (without a lot
 of hassle) play on other manufacturer's equipment (such as Microsoft's
 new Zune, Sandisk's Sansa players, etc.)]  Since Apple controls so
 much of the player market, record labels who want to sell music tracks
 online are strongly motivated to deal with Apple (on Apple's terms)
 and since record labels are selling music through Apple in formats
 only Apple's players can play, it reinforces Apple's control over the
 digital music player market.

If I read the article correctly, they'll be selling albums without DRM at the
same price as protected albums. I will certainly take advantage of that if
I want to buy a whole album. However, the 30% increase in cost for single
tracks won't affect how I get singles. Currently, I just "rent" them on
Rhapsody, which makes them extremely cheap.

Hmmm. I just found out about a site called ruckus.com that has free 
downloads for anyone with an *.edu email address. 

It looks like they have a decent selection. I guess I will finally get 
on this music downloading bandwagon after all. 

Interestingly, Steve Jobs posted a long opinion piece online a few weeks 
ago stating his wish that the big records would abandon DRM in the 
interest of interoperability among music players.  Here's the last 
paragraph:

  Much of the concern over DRM systems has arisen in European countries.
  Perhaps those unhappy with the current situation should redirect their
  energies towards persuading the music companies to sell their music
  DRM-free.  For Europeans, two and a half of the big four music 
  companies are located right in their backyard.  The largest,
  Universal, is 100% owned by Vivendi, a French company.  EMI is a
  British company, and Sony BMG is 50% owned by Bertelsmann, a German
  company.  Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others
  DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace.  Apple
  will embrace this wholeheartedly.

The full text of Jobs' essay is here:
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/

It looks like EMI took him up on it.

Mike is correct that the balance of power in the music biz shifted towards
Apple because of DRM, but neglects to mention that Microsoft is also
interested in controlling digital information, and thus far has shown
absolutely no interest in downplaying technologies, like DRM, that allow it
and its partners to control information, instead of that control being in the
hands of the information's owners.

twenex:  "owners"?   :)

Bloggy reports, citing music trade magazine Billboard, say that Apple
paid EMI $5 million for an exclusive window in which Apple's iTunes
will be the only store selling EMI tracks without DRM.

see music.cf for an expose of how the redording companies fscked 
up the entier industry ... jerks.

Sony appears to be endearing itself to consumers again.
Slashdot carries reports that three recent Sony DVDs, including 
the new Bond film "Casino Royale" and "The Holiday", won't 
play in numerous DVD players.  A quick scan of the user reviews
on Amazon for "Casino Royale" shows numerous confirming reports.
 
According to the stories, Sony is telling the consumers who 
complain that it is a problem with their DVD players.
Sony has added something new to the copy protection.  One sketchy
report is that Sony is trying to defeat multi-region CD players.

tags: "flog," "deadhorse," "haha"

Caveat Empty

I am *so* far behind here.   I am going to try to round up a lot of 
pointers to recent news stories over the weekend, when I'm not sitting
outside watching trees bloom.

First:  Responding to RIAA pressure, Congress is demanding that 19 US 
universities, including the University of Michigan and Michigan State
University, explain and justify what they are doing to stop copyright
infringement on their networks.
 
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070503-congress-to-universities-curb
-piracy-or-we-will-be-forced-to-act.html
 
The implications are that Congress is looking to legislate to force
the universities to stop copyright infringement, regardless of collateral
damage to privacy or educational uses of the net.   

My speculation is that the Universities are being singled out because 
the RIAA sees the U's as the main source of high-speed uploads into 
file sharing networks.  Most dorm residents have symmetric 10 or 100 
megabit connections; home cable users cannot transmit anywhere near 
that rate, even if they have download speeds approaching 6M.

 re #14:  I, too, saw the Slashdot headlines today about "Congress" demanding
 universities explain what they're doing to stop file-sharing.  My question
 was:  is it really "Congress" who's doing the asking (or even a committee
 concerned with the matter) or is it a few congressmen?

The two names in all news stories are 
   Howard Berman (D-CA), chair, Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, 
      the Internet and Intellectual Property
   Lamar Smith (R-TX), ranking minority member on the 
      Judiciary Committee
VARIETY's coverage says other signatories also come from the 
Intellectual Property subcommittee, or another Judiciary 
subcommittee on educational matters.  It is a bipartisan group
of Representatives who have the assignments to make legislation in this
area, both from the intellectual property side and from the 
education side.

Michigan's Democrat John Conyers, the Judiciary committee chair, 
did not sign the letter.   No information about why.

Here's two stories which nobody else (so far) has put together.
 
A guy named Hank Risen had a curious piece in The Huffington Post
about a week ago about the threat posed to American creative 
industries by stream ripping software:
 
"Art and Invention Stream Ripped Away"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hank-risan/art-and-invention-stream-_b_47496.
html

Though crafted as an essay, this is really a press release -- Google shows
several other sources for it -- and Mr. Risen is demanding that 
Congress mandate the use of his company MRT's digital rights system, 
X1 Secure Recording Control, as part of the pending Congressional
bill lowering Webcaster royalties.  (Which is a whole other topic...)

Now, skip forward about eight days:

http://www.forbes.com/business/feeds/afx/2007/05/10/afx3708595.html

Risen's company MRT, along with a company called Bluebeat, have 
served cease and desist orders to:
   Microsoft
   Apple
   Real
   Adobe
threatening to sue these companies for violating the DMCA by not
using MRT's X1 Secure Recording Control system -- the same system
introduced in the Huffington Post essay -- to prevent copying.

MRT appears to be claiming that because these companies have refused
to use X1 Secure Recording Control, each of their products should be 
treated as one designed to infringe copyright, and therefore the 
companies should be liable for fines of $2000 or so on every sale.

This is rather a novel application of the DMCA and I do expect it to 
be laughed out of court.

 I don't expect it to be laughed out of court, but only because I
 don't expect it will ever make it to court.  But yikes..  Whether
 he's stupid or just a scammer, either way he's quite a piece of work.

The Virgin Megastore outlets in Chicago and Salt Lake City will 
close this summer.  Virgin will have closed seven stores in the 
last year, leaving 11 in the US.   They remain a major music 
retailer in Britain, with about 100 stores there.
 
I used to quip that a Virgin Megastore was like Tower Records, only
without the customer loyalty.  The Chicago Virgin was a fabulous 
store when we visited it around 2001 -- its classical department, in 
a separate room, was one of the best I ever saw, and the world music
section was quite well stocked.  (You all see where this is going, 
don't you...)   A year later, the classical room had been turned 
into the DVD room, and the classical stock had 
been cut by maybe 2/3rds and mostly jammed into a back corner.
We made no further visits.

 Recently Doonesbury has been doing a series of strips lampooning
 a music industry trend.

 In the recent strips long-time minor character and 70s-era rock star
 Jimmy Thudpucker (who is often Trudeau's means of commenting on the
 music industry) is being interviewed in conjunction with the release
 of his most recent album, which Thudpucker describes as being on a
 bold new kind of record label.

 It turns out that his latest record is being released on Burger King
 Records, and gets promotional play in Burger King women's restrooms
 (women's, because (as Thudpucker says) "that's my demographic.")

 Pretty clearly the strips are mocking the trend of aging rock and pop
 stars releasing albums through national retail chains and places like
 Starbucks.

Mock away, but non-traditional retail outlets are selling CDs better
than just about anyone else in brick-and-mortar land.
 
---

Somebody over on velvetrope.com dug out this Wired article from
1997.  Opening quote:  "It's been a tough stretch for the US $40
billion music industry.  The Internet is about to make it a 
hell of a lot worse."

CD burners were just being perceived as a problem for the industry,
as prices were down to about $400 for a burner.
 
http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/1997/10/7943

---

Ars Technica reports on Congressional hearings held this week, again,
on the subject of file sharing on universities.  The thrust of the 
hearings seems to be that Congress is going to mandate that universities
install a technological fix to address the issue, whether the fixes
are any good or not.
 
"Congress, RIAA and Universities prepare for P2P 'arms race'"
 
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070607-congress-riaa-and-universitie
s-prepare-for-p2p-arms-race.html

The wild claims for the Clouseau system from Safemedia look 
like pure snake oil.
 
University of Utah claims to have achieved a 90% reduction in 
file sharing with a combination of Audible Magic's filtering system
and a 2GB cap on a student's outgoing traffic, though they report
that they are blocking some users of the internet phone system
Skype.

via Ars Technica:  The LA Times reports that AT&T is announcing 
intention to keep copyright-infringing files off of its parts of the 
Internet, which will include large chunks of the network backbone.

"The San Antonio-based company started working last week with studios
and record companies to develop anti-piracy technology that would target
the most frequent offenders, said James W. Cicconi, an AT&T senior 
vice president."

http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-piracy13jun13,1,5531531.story?ctrac
k=1&cset=true

As the Ars Technica piece points out, even the tiniest false positive rate
is going to drop an awful lot of innocent packets on the floor.  This 
would also seem to require spying deeply into user traffic ("deep packet
inspection") but what the heck, AT&T is probably already doing that 
for the NSA.

One also wonders whether this could increase their liability for the
inevitable copyright-infringing material which slips through their dragnet.

Sounds incredibly stupid and liable to backfire if they really go through with
it.

Continuing the theme in resp:21 and resp:22, in which the copyright
industry is pressing with renewed vigor for ISPs to control their 
users, regardless of collateral damage:  NBC Universal's general counsel
wants the FCC to focus on getting ISPs in general to control unauthorized
copying by their users.  
 
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070618-nbc-wants-more-isps-to-spy-on
-users-reform-safe-harbor.html

Sadly, it appears that Comcast has drunk the kool-aid. This is an 
actual email that I received after my brother downloaded software.
____________________________

From: "Comcast Network Abuse" < abuse-noreply@comcast.net> 
To: "Comcast Internet Subscriber" <dchambers@comcast.net > 
Subject: Notice of Claim of Copyright Infringement. 
Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2007 11:05:44 +0000 

Notice of Action under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act 

Abuse Incident Number: NA0000003528625 
Report Date/Time: Tue, 12 Jun 2007 08:20:14 -0700 


DEBORAH CHAMBERS 
xxxx x xxxxx xxxx 
YPSILANTI, MI xxxxx 


Dear Comcast High-Speed Internet Subscriber: 

Comcast has received a notification by a copyright owner, or its 
authorized agent, reporting an alleged infringement of one or more 
copyrighted works made on or over Comcast's High-Speed Internet service 
(the 'Service'). The copyright owner has identified the Internet 
Protocol ('IP') address associated with your Service account at the 
time as the source of the infringing works. The works identified by the 
copyright owner in its notification are listed below. Comcast reminds 
you that use of the Service (or any part of the Service) in any manner 
that constitutes an infringement of any copyrighted work is a violation 
of Comcast's Acceptable Use Policy and may result in the suspension or 
termination of your Service account. 

If you have any questions regarding this notice, you may direct them to 
Comcast in writing by sending a letter or e-mail to: 

Comcast Legal Response Center 
Comcast Cable Communications, LLC 
650 Centerton Road 
Moorestown, NJ 08057 U.S.A. 
Phone: (856) 317-7272 
Fax: (856) 317-7319 
E-mail: dmca@comcast.net 

For more information regarding Comcast's copyright infringement policy, 
procedures, and contact information, please read our Acceptable Use 
Policy by clicking on the Terms of Service link at 
http://www.comcast.net. 

Sincerely, 
Comcast Legal Response Center 

Copyright work(s) identified in the notification of claimed 
infringement: 

Evidentiary Information: 

Notice ID: 1550732 
Asset: Macromedia Studio 
Protocol: BitTorrent 
IP Address: 68.40.140.135 
DNS: c-68-40-140-135.hsd1.mi.comcast.net 
File Name: Macromedia _Studio_v8_Full_Version_with_Key 
File Size: 471517475 
Timestamp: 12 Jun 2007 00:40:28 GMT 
Last Seen Date: 12 Jun 2007 00:40:28 GMT 
URL: http://85.17.40.41:80/announce 
Username (if available): 

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