Will People Really Boycott Apple Over DRM? 664
Ian Lamont writes "DefectiveByDesign.org is waging a battle against DRM with a 35-day campaign targeting various hardware and software products from Microsoft, Nintendo, and others. On day 11 it blasted iTunes for continuing to use DRM-encumbered music, games, TV shows, movies, audiobooks, and apps with DRM, while competitors are selling music without restrictions. DefectiveByDesign calls on readers to include 'iTunes gift cards and purchases in your boycott of all Apple products' to 'help drive change.' However, there's a big problem with this call to arms: most people simply don't care about iTunes DRM. Quoting: 'The average user is more than willing to pay more money for hobbled music because of user interface, ease of use, and marketing. ... Apple regularly features exclusive live sets from popular artists, while Amazon treats its digital media sales as one more commodity being sold.' What's your take on the DRM schemes used by Apple and other companies? Is a boycott called for, and can it be effective?"
iTunes Plus (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Just 1 or 2% (Score:4, Interesting)
For several reasons no (Score:4, Interesting)
1) The iPhone is the biggest selling single phone on the market, hell they've a 1/3 of the whole market with one device
2) The iPod is the biggest selling digital music player by a mile
3) iTunes is one of the easiest to use ways of managing your digital music collection
So will the vast majority of people give any sort of hoot about DRM when all they can see is their ability to share the music between their PCs and their digital music player? No they will not.
All this will do is demonstrate how pointless the actual demonstration is, thus meaning that Apple will be less likely to be concerned.
For most people the question isn't DRM-free its "playable on my iPod".
accessibility (Score:5, Interesting)
The average user is more than willing to pay more money for hobbled music because of user interface, ease of use, and marketing.
There is an escape from Apple's DRM: just burn tracks on music CD.
On other side, many companies really disregard the time. The time user has to spend on doing something silly and stupid. Apple was always good on removing the artificial barriers and negotiating compromise where it doesn't hurt users. (But it's not that Apple is clear on all DRM charges.)
From my personal experience, I would easily overpay for something what requires little of attention and just works. Though most of my friends prefer to spend time searching for better deal, spend time getting into the deal and then spend even more time trying to make it work in the end.
IMHO, good accessibility is also feature and I do not mind paying extra for it. Though you never find accessibility on official list of features.
Right now iTMS holds really little of advantage over other stores, so the point of RTFAs stands. Yet, now the time Apple invested into building user loyalty is simply paying back. iTMS competitors shoot themselves so many times in all the possible foots and they would need considerable time to gain the trust back.
P.S. And thanks to misleading **AA campaign many believe that Apple's DRM is norm of life. And that I believe is bigger problem.
How is it "hobbled"? (Score:5, Interesting)
In the case of music with DRM bought from the iTunes store: I can play it on my computer with no problems at all. I can burn it onto CDs without any problems at all. I can play it in my car (by copying it onto my iPod) without any problems at all. I can't give it away to friends to play on their computers (which would be illegal, which I might or might not care about, and I can give CDs with the music on them to friends, which is just as illegal, which again I might or might not care about), and I can't convert it to MP3 which would allow me to put it onto a cheap 4GB memory stick which can be played in many places, or onto a DVD which my DVD player can play.
Most computer users that I know would have no idea how to put _any_ music onto a memory stick or a DVD, so I don't think there is very much of a limitation at all. On the other hand, the music is easy to buy, and looking in other places is effort as well.
In the case of movie rentals, DRM might very much keep people from using a movie in the way the intend, but it's not in their way when they try to get what they paid for out of a movie (at least with the Apple store).
On the other hand, years ago I tried to buy some eBooks, which came with DRM. Paid for four books (but only a few Euros), had to download bloody Adobe eBook reader software, the software crashed during the download, and all in all I was able to read one of the four books I paid for. I don't dare thinking about what hoops I would have to jump through to make these books readable on my current computer. So in that case, DRM was most definitely in my way and kept me from giving them any more of my money for years. They now sell the same books in unprotected PDF files, which means I can read them on a Mac using Preview, and they will be usable forever.
So the summary: I am not going to boycott DRM if it is implemented well and I trust the company doing it. And if it is implemented badly, you don't need to ask me to boycott it.
It just works. (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's a major difference between Apple's iTunes DRM and other companies:
it lets people do what they want with it.
No, not what YOU want to do with it, what the average iPod/Mac owner wants to do with it.
Most people who are buying songs through iTunes have an iPod or iPhone, many have a mac, and the songs and shows are designed to work just fine on both. They don't want to sync with anything else, so why would they care about the DRM?
Something that restricts you from putting music on your iPod, yes that's going to piss the users off, but something designed to integrate with it? Not so much.
Re:people want software they can use (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Unlikely (Score:3, Interesting)
Listen to it on Linux no, but my brother, a very average computer user, was quite disappointed to learn that he couldn't listen to his iTunes purchases on his generic MP3 player that his wife got him for his birthday. He has no idea what DRM stands for, but now that I've had a talk with him he DOES understand that the songs he now buys from Amazon.com work fine on that player.
Whether or not he understood DRM or not, Apple still lost a customer in this case. I'm sure it won't be their only one. The question is simply the point at which the revenue that DRM loses outpaces the revenue that it brings in.
Re:Unlikely (Score:5, Interesting)
But what if the recipients reject the education? One response I regularly come across with the norms is "This really doesn't matter to me at all. Why should I need to be aware of an issue that I couldn't care less about?" This generally appears on topics such as this, along with net neutrality, Phorm, Nebuad and the likes and just how much power and information Google has. Really, hardly anyone cares.
The bottom line is that some of us will eschew DRM because it limits our rights. That's our group and we can realistically only change OUR behaviour and decisions because we're a minority and, the way things are going, we will remain such. Then there will be those that protest against DRM because they think it makes piracy more difficult. This is the hardest of the three groups to understand because DRM does not make piracy harder, it simply restricts the rights of those who try to play fair. The norms will consume without a thought simply because they don't care. That's the vast (and, looking around me, I really do mean VAST) majority of people. There are advantages to both of the sane points of view, most notably that we tend to have lower blood pressure despite the stress of trying to swim upstream ;o)
My solution to DRM is and probably always will be to buy polycarbonate frizbees and rip to FLAC for my music collection. Not only do I get a very acceptable quality recording, I also have something tangible to wave at the copyright policeman when he starts giving me hassle. I really don't see a better alternative despite the Internet's potential to revolutionise music distribution. I either put up with a crap recording on a lossy, proprietary codec and pay nearly the same as I would have for DRM-free, lossless audio with a nice master backup if I lose my collection, regardless of whether it's DRM free MP3 or not, or put a little effort in to do it this way. The advantages are clear. I also refuse to use P2P applications and share the results. Sorry, I paid for these. You want them, you know how to get them: The same way I did.
Before anyone points out that audio CDs are mostly copy protected these days, not when you don't use Windows and autorun, they're not. A track is still a track on a standards-compliant CD. There are also some rather nice FLAC enabled, inexpensive personal media players coming out of the Far East right now, for example this [ricco.tv] is a rather nice little gadget if you're more interested in quality audio than being seen with white earbuds on the bus...
In other words, the revolution that replaces the current music industry will probably not be based around the Internet at all unless some folks change their ideas. Piracy is NOT acceptable, regardless of the Robin Hood wannabe crowd. Accepting low quality crap that removes your fair-use rights is also not acceptable. People need to realise these facts. The likelihood of that happening, as the GP poster suggests, is slim.
Re:Sorry... (Score:3, Interesting)
But on the other hand, I wouldn't hesitate to get an Apple player, or even non-DRM tracks from iTunes. (Granted I never actually have, but that's because I like devices with more features, and don't care all that much about the UI so long as it's passable).
Re:Sorry... (Score:5, Interesting)
...and their friend might well tell them just to burn their music tracks to CD and rip them back in to strip the DRM. They might think it's a pain in the arse, but they'll at least know how to get around the restrictions.
IMHO this is a damn sight better than SOME of the DRM employed by other companies which even lock out other operating systems (Windows MediaSlayer I'm looking at you)
That being said, Apple made a big hoo-hah about their DRM-free tracks (and the increased price tag... grrr), and I seem to recall they were claiming that they were going to offer more and more tracks without DRM which prompted many to assume they'd be dropping the practice not long after, but here we are many moons later and it's still the dominant practice for iTunes purchases. In fact, I'm not even sure how many tracks you can get on iTunes without DRM now.
Given enough bad press DRM will eventually go away, but it has to be made as public as possible in a sustained campaign for this to have any effect at all - or a cheap mp3 download service making a BIG deal of not having DRM and getting decent media coverage. Competition from a serious contender that the public begin flocking to (and away from iTMS) will be a more effective engine in driving Apple to drop the DRM in the long run. I don't think people are stupid enough to believe that mp3s they download from other sources can't be used with their shinyPod (despite the BBC's best efforts to repeatedly claim the iPod can ONLY play tracks from the iTMS and vice versa that tracks from the iTMS can only be played on the iPod).
Well, it has with me (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, it has, at least with me.
I got an AppleTV a couple of years ago, and I had a video iPod already. Of course, the first thing I did was buy a whole bunch of my favorite shows so that I could use the AppleTV kind of like a Tivo, sans commercials and at higher quality video.
I still have my AppleTV, but it didn't take long to exceed its capacity. So I started storing my television shows on my computer. A couple of computers (and iPods, for that matter) later, I've moved my stuff around so much and dropped and reauthorized stuff to the point where the shows I bought when I first got my AppleTV are, for all practical purposes, gone forever unless I want to re-buy them.
So nowadays, I buy all of my stuff on DVD, period, and I rip it to my computer. I put the discs away forever, and I can watch it on anything I want any time I want. If I get a new computer, I copy the files over, I'm done. No reauthorization, no fuss, no chance of losing my stuff or having to re-rip them. Don't get me wrong, I still love my AppleTV. I rent movies on it once a week or so, and I watch a lot of the stuff I rip on it. I just don't buy video media from Apple iTunes any more.
Apple has always been a master of ease-of-use. I just think it's a shame that they, along with other companies in whose vested interest it is to make things as easy for the consumer as possible, can't use their retail power to shed all of this silliness. The technical capability is there for any video or song that you buy from Apple or anyone else to be extremely easily portable and transferrable. If they made it so, would piracy go up? Sure, no doubt. But you know what else would go up? Sales. And isn't that really the goal?
The reason BitTorrent and other illegal means of acquiring video and music is so popular is because it fills a gap that Apple and other RIAA/MPAA-colluding companies never will be able to, the ability to let people watch what they want, where they want. I'm sure the "free" thing is a factor too, but really, for me, it's not. If Apple announced tomorrow that they were dropping DRM on all music and all video, they'd have a loyal customer for life, and I would spend gobs of money in their store. As it is, though, they're losing my business to stores like Amazon.com that sell all DRM-less music and physical DVDs.
Re:Sorry... (Score:1, Interesting)
You miss the point. Why should I have to waste a CD or have to bother reencoding music and potentially lose quality. Why is this always an acceptable alternative. It works but what if you have a shitload of music that you want to un-DRM. Wouldn't you think the correct solution would be to not include DRM at all? It's not about it being easy or hard it is about the fact that it is there in the first place. What purpose does it provide besides assuming everyone is a potential criminal and that without DRM the whole world will go copy-crazy. As iTunes has proved, people will take the path of least resistance and they will pay for convenience and integration. Locking the files down is just another step in trampling on consumer rights. Now what if the following happens:
1) iTunes DRM servers go down or get transferred?
2) Under pressure by some new US legislation by the RIAA iTunes concedes and decides to disable CD burning
3) Some litigation ends in the RIAA shutting down itunes
I know point 1 and 3 seem unlikely but they aren't impossible scenarios. Going with the flow of DRM have much bigger implications than Joe user having to burn a CD for their music. Copyright laws are ridiculously bias on the side of big companies holding licenses wanting to control almost every single aspect of how a consumer uses something they purchased legitimately. Let's not just fold because "CD burning is easy".
One last question. What about apple purchased video? Can you burn that to CD/DVD?
Re:Sorry... (Score:4, Interesting)
My old MP3 player wasn't an iPod, so I very carefully transferred any iTunes purchases to MP3 via rewritable CDs. Fortunately I don't buy much music so it wasn't very tedious.
Since I've bought an iPod, I've continued the process. It is, admittedly, more difficult, which is why I buy from Amazon MP3 first if a song is available there, and only buy iTunes if not. I experimented with Wal-Marts's store when they dropped DRM, but I can't shop there regularly.
(You hear that, Apple? I like your products enough to own your stock, but I still don't prefer your music store.)
Re:No (Score:1, Interesting)
That is a bullshit argument. You equate DRM with something that prevent the whole world from committing mass piracy. Do you honestly believe some half assed attempt at locking down media is really keeping everyone and their 4 year old kid from copying mp3s for all their friends? Keeping honest people honest is a nothing but a euphemism for "everyone is a criminal".
So lets cut the crap and look beyond Quarterly profits or the fact that some kid got some music for free, to talk about what implications DRM really have for society as a whole. You allow DRM as an accepted thing in our media and you're talking the end of the public domain as we know it. Remember the public domain? Belonging to the people after a limited amount of time? How does DRM fit into public domain works? Copyright laws last for at least 120 years, do you think these DRM services will be around but then? How about fair use, what if I want to use a work legitimately in another work of mine that falls under fair use? I can't because I have to violate one law to exercise my right to another. DRM has little to do with piracy and has a lot more to do with the media cartel perverting copyright as some sort of perpetual enjoyment. If one person has all the keys, even after copyright is over they still legitimately have a monopoly over the work. Copyright isn't about a creator owning the content for ever and ever, it is about making a deal between the creator and us. They get to market and make money off their work and after a while, the work finally becomes ours to do as we please. So again I say fuck off with your thief analogy and your anecdotal evidence about someone getting a couple of tracks of music for free.
Re:I have (Score:3, Interesting)
Just to add to this, the labels are mandating DRM for Apple to cause exactly what DfD wants: the labels want people to boycott Apple. Apple is too big and too strong for the labels taste; the labels want to raise prices and use variable prices, they want to do away with individual tracks on hot items, they want to increasing the amount of advertising and payola at digital music stores. Apple will have none of this, and they're big enough to keep the labels from getting it.
Divide and conquer, that's the labels' plan. Boycotting Apple just helps the labels cut down Apple and get what they want. I'm not going to say to buy exclusively from Apple (because that's just stupid and Apple's not perfect by a longshot), but boycotting Apple over DRM right now is probably the most destructive action you could do to yourself and the consumer-friendly digital music market right now.
Re:Sorry... (Score:2, Interesting)
That would be an analog to digital conversion with too many variables involved to create a duplicate of even remotely the same quality.
The analogy fails.
At least with the iTunes burn to disc method, it's an all digital process involving a minimal amount of re-compression. Shooting a dvd from a television screen with a camcorder is a whole different ball of wax resulting in a VASTLY inferior product.
AAC > CD > MP3 is a minor loss of quality by comparison.
To take you example to it's logical extreme... What kind of camera are you shooting with? 1 chip? 3 chip? NTSC? PAL? 720p60? 720p50? HDV? XDCam HD? AVCHD? HDCam? MiniDV? DVCam? Red One? DigiBeta? BetaSP? VHS? 23.98 fps? 29.97fps? 25fps? 16:9? 4:3?
Does the camera have a refresh rate sync option? White and black point compensation?
Are you using a tripod or handheld?
Is the room in which you are recording all tungsten light or a mix of daylight and tungsten? All daylight? If a mix, how are you compensating for the variance in color temperature?
Fluorescents? If so, again, how are you white balancing and accounting for flicker?
Your analogy fails on many levels.
Going from AAC > CD > MP3 is a controlled and predictable environment in comparison.
Re:Sorry... (Score:3, Interesting)
Both of my kids know what DRM is - my son uses several "no-cd" cracks to play various games. They both have iPods, and my daughter is getting an iPhone for Christmas. In spite of my best efforts to get them to purchase from Amazon, they both insist on buying from Apple. Reasons I've heard:
- it's easier
- I'm never going to play them on anything buy my iPod anyway
- I'm not going to give my friends music that I paid for. That's illegal anyway.
So... They understand the restrictions, they understand that they're married to Apple, but "the system" works for them. I don't like it, but I can see their point...
Re:itunes may be the best compromise right now (Score:5, Interesting)
To take what you're saying a step further - Apple's DRM, being the "best available" option is actually *driving* drm-free sales. Apple's solution is quite robust and easy to use, but they're holding the price down as well and driving hardware sales.
However, the music companies want more money, and don't really *want* to do business w/Apple. After many attempts, they've finally realized they can't create a competing drm and sell it for more money - so to beat Apple's product they have to go DRM-free with amazon. In fact, I'm willing to say it's the only form of competition we've seen in this industry whatsoever (as of late).
Re:Sorry... (Score:3, Interesting)
Comparing music usage to video usage is specious at best. Were you ever legally allowed to make copies of VHS tapes? Even if you were, why would you? Analog copying of just about any media is like taking a hammer to it. It ALWAYS results in massive generational loss.
DVD's? They were designed with user copying not allowed in mind.
CD's came out before the massive proliferation of the personal computer and the Red Book standard made it easy for people to make byte for byte copies of the original. CD's got grandfathered into the current age of digital media as a result.
Everyone goes on and on and on about how their RIGHTS are being trampled. The simple fact is that your RIGHTS are not being trampled. This is commerce. Entertainment. This is basic free market stuff.
You don't own any of this stuff. You license a right to use it. Your rights to use it are determined by the issuer of the license. Now, if you don't agree with the terms of the license... well, you, as a consumer, have a right guaranteed by the Constitution to speak out.
Go back to the Constitution. Consumer rights are not mentioned anywhere. That is the domain of the states (though the Feds are of course tangled up in it) and it's incumbent upon educated consumers to vote with their dollars. Elevating this discussion of how you use ENTERTAINMENT MEDIA to the level of free speech, due process, etc. is plain ridiculous.
I'm tired of the /. crowd trying to intertwine entertainment with Constitutional concepts.
This is American Style Capitalism. It's flawed to it's very core, but legislating the crap out of it will only make it worse. Forcing Apple to provide DRM free music and movies, when it's not their call to make in the first place, is wrong. The underlying problem is the RIAA depending upon the protection of the Feds to uphold their oligopoly and ancient, failing business practices.
Amazon doesn't have the selection I want, nor the user experience I want. All the other digital music sites out their suffer the same failings... not putting the experience of the consumer first.
If someone doesn't like the workaround to Fairplay or simply doesn't know about it, well, deal with it. Apple would do away with DRM if they were allowed to and I look forward to a day when they are ALLOWED to do so, but for now, iTunes has the selection I want in a very easy to use way. I'm unapologetically voting with my wallet.
I, as an educated consumer, can protect myself against DRM servers going down, by simply knowing how to get around the FairPlay DRM in the first place, knowing full well, that I am not breaking the terms of my license in doing so.
This is all just so much whining.
Re:Sorry... (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't rage against the concept of copyright, it is sound.
It was sound 20 years ago, the world has changed. Every household in the country now has the capability to undertake massive copyright infringement without being detected or punished. Copyright is quite simply unenforceable. It makes no sense to have a law you cannot enforce. It does nothing but damage peoples respect for the law.
Yes, the content creation industry will suffer. They will have to adapt to the new information economy. Casual copying is not going away, deal with it. If the content creation industry has to scale back to what they can make on donations, that's life.
If you want even the slimmest chance of stopping a significant portion of copyright infringement you'll have to lock down every general purpose computing device tighter than an Xbox 360. In the end, you'll have to make it impossible to play any unauthorized media. This would be such a tremendous step backwards, essentially we'd be taking ourselves out of the information age. I'm pretty sure that would be worse than the death of the content creation industry, and it still wouldn't work. You'd just end up creating a black market for unrestricted electronics.
If I'm wrong, let me know where this analysis falls short.