Consumerist
Does DRM drive even honest well-meaning people to piracy? Yes, of course it does.
Reader and music lover Jarrett tried to send the following "detailed, passionate complaint letter" to Rhino, but their only reply was:
450 Server configuration problemGood for us, because Jerrett decided to send his letter to us. So, without delay, here is "How I Become A Music Pirate" by Jarrett.
Jarrett writes:
How I Became A Music Pirate I thought I was the music industry's dream consumer.
As a 40 year old male with a long-standing passion for "all things music," I've spent a bundle on my collection. In college most of my waking hours were spent wandering around record stores, swap meets and record conventions, much to the dismay of the women I was ostensibly dating. Then again, the fact that I also worked as a DJ at the radio station and hung out with obsessive record collector types probably didn't help matters in the romance department.
Then while in grad school in the 1990s, I became busy replacing many of my vinyl releases with CD's. At the same time, entrepreneurial music industry types began to exploit the market for out-of-print recordings by reissuing long out-of-print records on CD formats, which of course I instantly snapped up.
So here I sit circa 2007 with a house filled with over 1000 vinyl records and around 800 CD's. If you figure about $12 per recording as an accurate average, that's somewhere around $20,000. Not a bad chunk of change for the music business, I say.
Last week while I was busy importing my CD's into iTunes so I could listen to them on my iPod (a most tedious task), I hopped on the internet. iTunes was busy importing a Luna CD, one of my favorite bands, so I decided to see what they were up to since they disbanded a few years back. After a few clicks in Google, I found a blog site describing a posthumous, internet-only release of a collection of covers the band had recorded throughout their career. While I already had many of the songs (they were often featured on b-sides and imported singles, etc.), I couldn't resist tracking down this compilation. As I read further on the blog site I encountered a link to a .zip file containing the entire collection ripped as 128kbps mp3's.
While I must admit being tempted to simply click away and download the collection, I though to myself, "Well, if I buy the music it's only $10, and this way I will get high quality .WAV files. Besides, it's not like Luna were getting rich off of their careers, they could use the money..."
So I headed to Rhino's online store, purchased the music, and downloaded the files.
A little later that evening, I tried to move the .WMA files into iTunes, when I received an error message telling me that iTunes could not import them because they were copy protected. I downloaded the files again (which took another 12 minutes) and again, the same message.
So I called Rhino customer support and after an 8 minute wait spoke with a representative. She informed me that the files were indeed copy protected so that I could only play them on specific music players, most notably not iTunes.
"You don't understand," I said, "These files were not copied or pirated, I actually purchased them."
"Well" she responded, "You didn't actually purchase the files, you really purchased a license to listen to the music, and the license is very specific about how they can be played or listened to."
Now I was baffled. "Records never came with any such restrictions," I said.
She replied, "Well they were supposed to, but we weren't able to enforce those licenses back then, and now we can"
She later went on to explain that I could burn the songs to a CD and listen to them in a regular CD player, but I would need an additional Windows based music player to listen to them on my computer. But either way, she suggested there was no way the files could be played on my iPod.
Frustrated, I hung up and began my search for a Windows application to allow me to burn the music to a CD. After downloading Nero and firing it up, imagine my frustration when I receive another error message telling me it cannot locate the licenses for the music I purchased.
I call Rhino again, and this time speak to a young male CSR. He explains that I need updated licenses in order to burn the music and often the problem is that many firewalls will allow the music to pass through the firewall, but not the licenses because of their encryption schemes. Lest you think I am exaggerating, I included below the following text from their website (apparently this is a big enough problem that it warrants mentioning in their FAQ):
1. Temporarily disable all firewall and pop-up blocker software you may be running on your computer.
2. Attempt the download again
If the Licensing portion of the download is still hanging, please update the Digital Rights Management (DRM) component on your computer via the following URL: http://drmlicense.one.microsoft.com/Indivsite/indivit2.htm
The friendly CSR representative then suggests that I try once more to download the files and licenses and if I still have no luck to try accessing the internet from other providers such as a local coffee shop, library, or work computer.
"Basically, just keep downloading the music until you find a gateway that let's your licenses through without problems"
While I would like to say I responded with something witty, I must admit to being completely flummoxed. There I sat, a loyal music fan who has shelled out actual money to a business that is supposed to be having financial problems, and the best they can do is tell me to wander the streets of Seattle looking for different internet providers who might allow me to download the music that I have already paid for, music that I have spent the better part of three house trying to listen to, and which is still unusable?
How on earth have things come to this?!?!?!
Honestly, if this is the best you can do, you're business is in really, really serious trouble.
I mean, could you imagine the consumer response if Coke could only be consumed from specific Coke-approved equipment, and then only in the specific ways that the folks at Coke wanted the product to be consumed. "drinking Coke with fast food is no problem, but we must warn you that your license forbids the mixing of Coke with any alcoholic beverages..."
In the end, I never was able to get the music to play on anything—my computer, on a CD or on my iPod. I invested $10, several hours of my time, and my reward was, well, nothing.
I'd like to say I was outraged, but in the end I must admit to feeling remarkably sad and deflated over the whole process. See, the thing is, I was raised on music. I was saved by music. I (used to) live for music. Lester Bangs wasn't my idol, he was my soul mate (in a matter of speaking).
I've devoted a not-inconsequential chunk of my life to collecting music; to tracking down obscure records, cassettes, 8-Tracks and CD's of all genres and styles. And now apparently that is all but over. Music has somehow evolved from tangible things into amorphous collections of 1's and 0's guarded over by interested parties as if they were gold bullion. How so very sad.
I would like to think that someone at a place like Rhino would care enough to not let these kinds of things happen. But alas, my suspicion is that anyone who would have been cool enough to work at Rhino in their heyday some twenty years ago would never be so callous, foolish or shallow to allow these kind of absurdities to occur.
Since I've resigned myself not to waste any more time with the music business, I suppose I'll have to resort to purchasing used CD's & records, or having my friends occasionally make me a copy of one of their newer CD's.
Call it piracy. Call it whatever you want. But at least I tried. I gave you several chances and you failed miserably at every level.
Jarrett
Well, it's a good thing you stopped Jarrett from sharing his files on the internet. Imagine! Losing a good customer! Oh wait. It's not free music that drives some people to piracy, it's the lack of a quality product from legitimate music sources. —MEGHANN MARCO
(Photo: Burnsland)
Comments
God, do I feel that pain. It's like going into a Verizon store with $300 in cash screaming PLEASE TAKE MY MONEY, and watching the all of the reps fumble over themselves for an hour trying to uncomplicate their system for someone who honestly "just wants what they sell"
So sad indeed
I havn't bought a CD in years. What the MPAA and RIAA are doing to their industries is sucking them dry until they are no longer needed.
I don't mind paying for music, but when I do, it's mine. I can put it in my house, my car, or my office and zen. I don't care what you license says, I paid for it, im not giving it away or selling it so get over it. People are sick of being taken advantage of. I just with the federal government would do something to the MPAA/RIAA for suing everyone they can find. Even last week, a woman was sued and she doesn't even own a computer!
I have a sirius radio, i get all the music i want from there, no more buying CDs for me.
FYI - if you can burn those wma's to an audio cd, you can use itunes to import the cd into itunes. (of course, you will have to enter the artist and album information yourself)
it's funny, but itunes itself has the capacity to break its own DRM.
Back in the day, during an interview Prince said what he loved about Napster was that you were able to get music that you would not be able to get anywhere else because that music is considered no longer financially viable.
For example, a friend was able to download Eddie Hazel's Games, Dames & Guitar Thangs... this was an album that was not available for many years... yet, he was able to find it on Napster.
The great thing about finding these tunes online was that you heard the needle drop and the faint scratches of a vinyl record. Someone took great care in recording these tracks.
knowledgeable and passionate music lovers are NOT "the music industry's dream consumer."
Their dream consumer is someone who buys James Taylor and Nora Jones CD's by the fistfull at Starbucks for 18.99 a pop.
Same thing happened to me with a purchased CD. Would not play except on Windows-based hardware that could handle the WMA encryption. The solutions was as someone posted above: burn the disc (the encryption allowed that) and then re-encode the files as MP3. Lost a little mojo along the way no doubt, but it worked.
For the record, that one cd was the only one I have ever encountered with that DRM on it, and that was several years ago.
i really feel for the guy, and it's really indicative of how sad the music industry has become. overprotective, alienating, and filled with a kind of "it's mine and will never be yours" mentality.
This is why I refuse to buy from itunes, and why I rarely buy CD's anymore. I just don't want to deal with the hassle of buying something I can't use because of DRM. I don't own an iPod or a real stereo, just a junky, out of date 8 yr old laptop, a cruddy radio/cd/tape/record combo player, and whatever I plug my flash drive into. I have to buy music that can play anywhere AND be burned onto cd's (for in the car). I also want to put in a plug for emusic.com, the only service I use at the moment:
http://www.emusic.com/about/index.html
"eMusic caters to music lovers of all types in the underserved 25-54 demographic. It does so by cultivating a vast catalogue from the world's top independent labels that spans every conceivable musical genre, by offering unrivaled music discovery tools and by providing tracks in a high bit rate (192K VBR) MP3 format with no DRM. It all adds up to a pro-consumer experience that gives subscribers the ultimate in flexibility, and just as importantly, ample opportunities to discover new, exciting music.
eMusic sells music in the universally compatible MP3 format - the most widely utilized digital music format, used by hundreds of millions of consumers, and the only one that offers all the functions of physical music products such as the CD. The MP3 format allows consumers to play tracks on any device, burn CDs and make as many copies as they like for personal use."
@thejobs: you've hit the nail on the head. I have a wealthy family member; she received a long lecture from another family member last xmas about the supposed evils of DRM, and her response was: "I. DON'T. CARE. This is convenient and I don't have to think about it. I get what I want for a price I'm willing to pay. In fact, I've paid for songs two and three times to put them on my childrens' iPods. I don't want to play with computers the way my other siblings do."
We computer nerds can hardly understand that people like this exist on the same planet as us, but they are out there as an economic force -- a force that has spoken in dramatic fashion with their overwhelming adoption of the iPod and "Starbucks as Music Store."
Barf.
Shawn Fanning and Napster really changed the face of...everything. I remember getting high-speed Internet in late 1998/99 and just going absolutely crazy on Napster. All the songs I ever wanted but couldn't afford to buy the albums, all right there, almost instantaneously. It was wonderful and exciting, and a completely new way of connecting with other fans.
The music industry has never stopped overreacting to that "event." It is sad and deflating, that the unrestrained excitement of music search and discovery has been distilled down to lawsuits against 10-year-olds.
Sure, I buy from iTunes. I have an iPod. I also use BitTorrent and SoulSeek to check out a lot of bands I'm not going to spend my money on without hearing all I want from them.
@JohnOB1: "Back in the day, during an interview Prince said what he loved about Napster was that you were able to get music that you would not be able to get anywhere else because that music is considered no longer financially viable."
This is why copyright is sooooooooo ridiculous today -- there is no possible reason on God's green earth why Britney Spears's music should be protected for 70 years after her death. The commercial life of 90% of her music is less than 5 years, after which it will languish in obscurity for maybe 130 years, copyright protected, commercially non-viable, and non-listened-to; putting it in the public domain afer five or ten years instead of holding it hostage for 130 would mean that her music would gain renewed relevance, and probably would boost the sale of her other, still-protected works. And releasing her "dead" works into the public domain would mean she'd have more impact on music as a whole (is that a good thing?); otherwise, her work just goes out of circulation.
If Rosseau's work were under today's system, his Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, written in 1754, would have been under copyright until 1848 (70 years after his death in 1778), drastically reducing its distribution both within and outside France, and Rosseau's impact as a revolutionary thinker would have been tiny. His impact on the French and American revolutions would have been dramatically reduced. His works would have become available to the public at large again in 1848, right about when another wave of revolutions wracked Europe -- but would they even have done so had Rosseau been trapped under restrictive copyright of ridiculous length? If there had been no public domain Rosseau UNTIL 1848, could there have been revolutions OF 1848?
Artists who release their commercially non-viable material into the public domain will have a lot more influence over the next 100ish years as radio stations, television stations, publishers, and internet content providers try to find free content. Artists who refuse will be culturally interesting for five years, then unknown and culturally ignored until 70 years after their death when their non-viable works (and pop music in particular gets less viable with time) re-enter the public domain.
Eventually, all of this nonsense will become a good thing. I foresee a future where people are actually afraid of industry music, and look to local bands and venues for their music fix. Since most indie artists don't use or care about DRM, the music is yours once you take it home. Since you as a consumer actually have a chance to meet these artists, you might even be a bit more respectful with their content.
I honestly think this whole thing boils down to that: respect. The artists that we "know" and love, we'd never steal music from them...
that was painful to read. :(
It isn't an accident that iTunes can burn protected ACCs to CD. It is a deliberate, calculated exception negotiated with the record companies.
Although you can burn the WMA to CD or an iTunes song to CD and re-import it you'll have to compress the previously compressed file again unless you want to waste a lot of room on your HD. This new file will have been serially degraded by the 2x lossy compression. Bad sounding and Bad deal.
The ability to burn to CD is not really "breaking" the DRM. Breaking the DRM is the ability to remove the lock and use the WMA or ACC like a regular WMA or ACC using its original compression.
CDs are still the best format for future proof music. You can always re-rip into a better format as HDs become cheaper and formats become better. DRMd music, not so much.
i love you jarrett---you are my hero
So...basically he buys an iPod/iTunes combo and then complains to Rhino about WMA and his own inability to use a computer.....WTF?
Dude..if you're dumb enough to purchase iTunes/iPod then live with the consequences.
20k? Shoot. They could make more money off of you by suing you. You are not a profitable customer for the recording industry unless you are downloading music. Why should they care for somebody who spends 20 grand in their lifetime when they can just sue you for much much more?
I hate to bring it up, but listening to music is not a basic human right; it's a privilege. While I can understand that for $10 the author should have gotten a working product, it is between him and the retailer to resolve the issue. This has clearly failed, and the retailer is to blame, but it still doesn't give the author the license or moral justification to download pirated music. The answer to DRM-protected music is listening to DRM-free music from more user-friendly stores (which usually carry independent artists who need more audience) or not to listen to new music at all, not pirating music.
@thisiskspraydad:
Yeah, how dare he be so dumb to get the same brand of mp3 player as 80% of the market.
The fact of the matter is that a lot of people simply don't understand the differences between file formats, license restrictions, burning and re-ripping, etc. Nor should they have to! The level of restriction and incompatibility is infuriating.
Back in the day before computers had broadband internet access, I belonged to a couple music clubs. Anybody remember Columbia House, or BMG? I spent hundreds of dollars on cd's every year.
Then in my early college years it hit me. Most of the albums that I had were udder garbage. One or two tracks worth listening to, the rest is rubbish.
Fast forward to 2007. The only CD's that I have purchased are ones that I bought at a bands live show. This way I know the money is going directly to them, and not some greedy record company.
Amusingly enough, Slashdot/Ars Technica just had an article about DRM causing 75% of support problems for a major European store. Independent artists who forgo DRM have seen a 40% increase in sales since December.
@ryan..
My POINT is that if he is truly was a "40 year old male with a long-standing passion for "all things music" he should have looked into the technology he was buying FIRST instead of bitching about its restrictions AFTER.
Just because Apple is the market leader doesn't make the iPod the best solution for someone with a 'passion for music'.
The greatest thing about this letter is that it shows how non-techie people are running into these brick walls now. I was up on this issue and annoyed with DRM several years ago. However, within the last 6 months or so, I have had to explain to my mom, my dad, and my older brother (all of whom are fairly inept around computers) why they couldn't buy something from iTunes, something else from Rhapsody, and another thing from the Zune store and be able to play all of them using one program on their computer, or one MP3 player. Now they are getting just as ticked off about it as I have been for years.
Same thing is now happening to guys like Jarrett. If enough non-techie people get pissed off enough about this, then maybe change can take place.
is that the Subway guy?
@thisiskspraydad:
I get what you're saying, but given how almost all of these devices are called "digital music players" and not "wma players" or "aac players" etc, I can certainly understand why someone who's a plain old music fan (and not necessarily a tech savvy person) would never even realize that there's an issue to look into.
Caveat emptor and all that, but given the amount of confusion in the market (see Karl's comment), something needs to be done to help people understand that these issues exist before they buy.
@ryan....
I liken it (rightly/wrongly?) to game consoles. They are all called game consoles but they use different DRM (programming acts as the DRM in this case) if I want EA NHL 07 (I'm a Canuck don't ya know) I have to buy one specifically for the system (the DRM scheme) that I own.
If some other company wants to make a hockey game for only ONE system (Rhino only making file available as .wma) that is THEIR foot that is being shot.
As a consumer...why should I buy a PS3 (the iPod in this story) and then go out and buy Wii software (the Rhino record) and then complain that it doesn't work! (though in this case you actually CAN make it work by burning and re ripping).
The solution for those that don't want to be 'stuck' is to stop buying DRMd music and supporting ecosystems build around DRMd music.
Here is a neat idea in England:
AIME St...MP3 music that is free to .98 cents (pounds) depending on popularity...solves another issue about old music that isn't 'popular' still demanding the same $ as new music. Only indie now but it is an interesting concept.
Sorry...here is the link to AMIE St.
http://amiestreet.com/welcome
Can't it be both?
*Sigh* I've been there too. I once bought an album online by the duo "Deepest Blue". I chose to download the album from their website because I knew I wouldn't be able to find their CD anywhere near where I lived, especially because they only had one song that at all popular, and mostly to a particular niche.
I had the songs and they worked great- only in windows media player though. I put up with that. But later on, I needed to reinstall windows. I made sure to save every song file, and licenses (backups too) to a cd-rom so I wouldn't lose them. After the reinstall, the mp3's wouldn't work. No help from the distributor either.
Bummer. Damn DRM.
I can really see both sides of the argument about his ipod purchase. On the one hand, if he HAS been so interested in music forever, you'd think that he would have known how encumbered the ipod/itunes is. My wife bought one at my behest, and ended up taking it back because of hassles like this.
The problem is, ipods have become so pervasive that its hard to believe for the average consumer that any of this is true. I know I have a hard time believing that something like 70-80% of this market has bought into buying a product that regulates how you can use it after you buy it. Some marketing team somewhere is pure evil genius.
I'd like to think that the music industry is headed somewhere better, but its been 10 long years now, and they seem content to continue making all their money off of a few lawsuits than a lot of records.
It's a shame that there is not some kind of federal protection for citizens against being sued by corporations this big, thats an unfair abuse of the court system.
I love how the CDs I WANT to buy are either impossible to find, or far too expenisve to buy since I need to pay for exchange, shipping, taxes and all that good stuff.
I love video game soundtracks. Hell I OWN these games for the most part. But to get the damn soundtracks 99% of the time you need to import from Japan! Starting at 30$ a peice, some go for over 1000$.
Mind you far as I can tell the RIAA isn't in on these so it's not anything they care about. Still...
Not that I don't want to buy these CDs, but who the hell has all that money to spend? (BTW, I'd be looking at US prices, so I need to convert to Canadian dollars, and shipping can be over 20$ a CD.)
@thisiskspraydad: The glory of music is that it can be enjoyed by anyone and everyone. The bands, the fans, and even the record labels want consumers to be able to purchase their favorite music and play them back for their own enjoyment. Consumers should not need to be microsoft certified to listen to their favorite band.
I'm guessing that most of us reading The Consumerist are fairly technically adept. Our friend Jarrett (and millions of others) may not be. All he wanted was some songs he couldn't get anywhere else, and wanted to play them back in what he thought was a bona-fide mp3 player. You couldn't expect him and everyone else to 'just know' or even know to do the research regarding DRM licensing just so he can hear a specific song. I'm sure there was no warning label on his download, or his iPod, that said "Warning: May not play back all legally purchased music."
The crux is that instead of being able to walk into a music store, plunk down your cash, take the CD home and do what you want with it we are now required to constantly carry a magnifying glass to read the fine print on the license. There is no standard (WAVs on CD = standard) for music anymore and it's hurting anyone who doesn't immediately know the difference between WMA and WTF i.e., the vast majority of the music-buying public.
They've already made techies and privacy-philes unhappy, now they're working on the average consumer.
This is bullshit. I have heard this argument used over and over (the MPAA also uses it to defend region encoding). When I go to the store, I don't see a license displayed for all customers to view, I am not given a contract to agree to.
These people honestly prey on the ignorance and unawareness of their customers. No one knows this before they purchase their products.
What a well written email, too bad it's absolutely useless. I am sure he feels better for writing it but welcome to the 21st century. It's a harsh reality out there and if you just now found out that you've been taking it long and hard from the RIAA then my sympathy for you does not stem from your inability to burn a CD but rather the complete fog you've managed to live in while remaining a fan of music.
You should have realized long ago that the champion the musical cause should mean a dedicated message of NOT supporting the RIAA or its member organizations. Any medium that pays a license fee to play an artist under the RIAA, any venue who pays the ASCAP fees for music to be played are supporting the RIAA and their restrictive measures.
But who really cares, this is not about the RIAA for they are nothing more than the pimps to whom the whore musical artists have pledged allegiance to. The artists themselves create the content that the RIAA can protect. The artists should be ostracized from your daily grind. Enlightened consumers should look to truly independent artists for their music. Reject the corporate ideals that tell you the next 42 bands who sound like Dashboard Confessional are great and listen for yourself to the true range of musicianship that exists within this world. Don't worry, for the 42 bands who were cloned from Dashboard Confessional and actually made the RIAA's hot list, there are 420 who sound the same and did not. You can still get your music, just do it wisely.
@TheName...
Just for fun I just went to RHINO and put an song in a basket...and lo and behold, right in the middle of the page and in bright red
Important Note: WMA files are NOT compatible with your iPod.
Click here to read the Terms and Conditions and check your Media Player compatibility.
By clicking on PROCEED TO CHECKOUT you are agreeing to our Terms and Conditions and acknowledge that you have a Media Player that can play the file(s) you are attempting to purchase.
Seems pretty clear to me...and probably to a non techie too...
http://rhino-expresscheckout.com/store/order.basket.asp?ms...
back in the heyday of napster & before p2p became a honeypot for junkware, i remember saying over & over again that if the industry would simply charge a reasonable amount for their product & make what the consumer wants widely available (instead of spending billions trying to tell the consumer what they want), pirating would not exist. i mean, it's not like pirating was exactly easy back then. napster was notorious for incomplete files, downloads hanging, mismarked tracks....often times you had to download the same track a half dozen times to get the actual track. it's just that it didn't cost $20 to get a single song that you wanted to hear. that made it worth it. plus, there was access to tracks you couldn't find anywhere else - new music, unreleased bootlegs, live shows, etc.
fast forward to the advent of itunes, emusic, napster (for a fee), rhapsody, etc. - it's evident that people don't mind paying for music, they just don't want to get hosed. drm is a waste of time, money & aggravation that will cause an already paying market (such as jarrett) to lapse into "piracy".
hell, if i were him, i would've gone back to that *.zip after i bought the "legal copy". IANAL, but the courts seem to be enforcing the "as long as it's one use" idea of digital rights (at least that's the card i'd play).
I know the legality of it is somewhat (ahem) questionable, and I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be shut down by now, BUT:
My favorite service will always be www.allofmp3.com
They charge by the gigabyte download, so each song is about 12 cents.
I remember back when I was a teenager and all the music was on cassettes. My tapes wouldn't play on my friends boombox, because I hadn't bought an extra license for that. And my aunt got a threatening letter accusing her of dubbing cassettes and offering a settlement amount, which was funny because the only cassettes she owned were those horrible Time-Life compilations they used to sell on tv and 'Stop Smoking with Hypnosis'.
I too was the ultimate music consumer. I bought everything, sometimes in multiple formats. The only problem was taping records so you could listen to them in your car or the other associated digital hassles. Then Napster magically appeared and everything I ever wanted was there. I could burn a cd of Assfactor 4 songs - I could make a cd of all the Jawbreaker obscure songs. I downloaded fast and furiously. I would have paid for the opportunity, but damn if I hadn't paid $25 for one song on some bootleg.
I am a member of emusic, which I enjoy and I download occasionally from Itunes. But, napster changed everything and there is no going back. The music industry didn't kill the golden goose when they stopped singles or raised prices. Napster was the golden opportunity to make money. One place to get it all...and they kill it.