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Miscellaneous

by Mike Masnick

Thu, Jun 6th 2002 10:30am





Customers Don't Want DRM

from the well,-duh dept

While the government, the music industry, and the tech industry spend all their time arguing amongst themselves about the whole digital entertainment "problem", they keep forgetting about the most important people: the consumers. The consumers are willing to pay for music, but they don't want digital rights management technologies telling them what they can and can't do with their entertainment. They don't want to be limited. While I agree this is most likely true, this article bases the entire argument on the anecdotal evidence of one (yes, one) consumer. It would have been more interesting if they had some numbers to back it up - or at least spoke to a few more people. Either way, I'm beginning to run out of ways to try to explain to the entertainment industry that trying to block people from doing what they want to do isn't generally a good business strategy. Giving customers what they want is a good strategy. How difficult is this to understand?

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  1.  
    identicon
    Mgallagher, Jun 6th, 2002 @ 10:56am

    Give me a product I want, and I'll buy it

    Wow, they could have been writing about me instead of Davidian. Like him, I buy my music, I don't use trading services, and I love MP3s for my portable players (try taking 100 or so CDs to Europe for a few weeks). And I hate the idea of anyone telling me where, how and for how long I can listen to, read or view the things I pay for.

    I've been buying a lot of used CDs lately, for the same reason as Davidian isn't buying new: the current product stinks. If there were interesting things being released, I'd buy them and listen to 'em on the JB6000 at work.

    Why might CD sales be seeing a drop? Well, how about bad products that don't allow me to use them the way I want. Seems like pretty basic product planning errors are at fault, not Napster clones or anything else. I have no problem paying for what I want...it just needs to be a good deal for me.

     

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  2.  
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    Digital Pirate, Jun 6th, 2002 @ 11:38am

    Sick of the BS!

    I am sick and tired of the DRM schemes that hollywood is coming up with. Sick of the limitations, sick of the accusations, sick of GREEDY, fat-faced execs complaining. My response to all the BS is to download as many copyrighted files from Kazaa, et al, as I can possibly get! I like getting stuff for free, therefore, I'll download as much as I please. We're talkint 5-10 gigs a day, y'all. Note to Hollywood: you can never stop file sharing!!!

     

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  3.  
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    Anonymous Coward, Jun 6th, 2002 @ 1:33pm

    Re: Give me a product I want, and I'll buy it

    >I hate the idea of anyone telling me where, how and for how long I can listen to, read or view the things I pay for.< br>
    Ditto. Back when we had rights there was an something called "Fair Use".


    >If there were interesting things being released, I'd buy them and listen to 'em on the JB6000 at work.

    I stream my mp3s off of my iMac using netjuke.


    >Why might CD sales be seeing a drop?

    You forgot to mention the economy. Most people would rather eat than buy a CD... even from their favorite band.

     

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  4.  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Jun 6th, 2002 @ 1:44pm

    So tell me...

    Let's say that everything Hollywood wants for DRM becomes law... Music CD's are encoded and new computers monitor you to make sure you don't break a Hollywod Law. How is that going to stop the OLD computers? How will they prevent me from capturing the sound as it exists my computer from going into a recording device? Seems to me recording video and sound would have to be illegal. Those devices could be used in order to curcumvent audio and video protection schemes. Looks like camcorders, voice recorders and old computers will have to be rounded up at taken from the citizens.

     

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  5.  
    identicon
    Ed, Jun 6th, 2002 @ 1:51pm

    Re: So tell me...

    In this scenario, your old computer would still work, but you wouldn't be able to run the latest version of Windows (let's call it Windows DRM) on it, because it would only support 'secure' hardware. New music CD's would have something akin to DVD encryption where all players, hardware or software, would have to be licensed, and the software would only exist for Windows DRM.

    I'm sure that in this scenario, bootlegs would still exist, but they'd vary in quality, much like they did before the days of Napster. They'd either come from recording an analog source, or smuggling a digital copy out of a recording studio.

     

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  6.  
    identicon
    Duffman, Jun 7th, 2002 @ 12:46am

    Re: So tell me...

    The point would be to drive it back to a niche of people - that's part of the reason (not all, the basic fundamentals do make for a good debate) that this whole thing started. Joe Sixpack could buy a computer and download all types of music with Napster with almost no effort. I'm sure the industry hates all of this publicity and would rather remove it from the 'popular' media where it's fighting with a lot more people than just the 'geeks' and fair use arguers.

    If people wanted to get older computers and use analog recording technology, they're free too, but Joe Sixpack referenced earlier probably would see that as too much effort for a less that 100% product and not bother.

     

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