First off, let’s start with the most obvious DRM burn: iTunes video. A few months back I was going on a longish flight with my girlfriend back to Dallas to see the family, and I decided to fill up my new video iPod with a few seasons of South Park. Now, I knew that the video was DRM’d but I felt like being a good little citizen and actually pay for the content since I didn’t own it on DVD. I grabbed a few seasons (not cheap) and downloaded them. They worked great, birds sang, whoopdeefuckingdoo.

Last week, I was home and my TV was in the shop (this tidbit is important because it plays into part II). Wanting to watch something while I ate dinner I grabbed my iPod and hooked it up to my LCD monitor via my MacBookPro. iTunes fired up and I tried to play an episode, and what do you know it wants me to authenticate the machine, since I didn’t buy and download the videos from my laptop. Fine… I knew this was part of the process. I choose my AOL account and try log in. EHHHHNT… oh I am sorry, you hit a whammy. It appeared that my password for the AOL account is invalid, which is fucking impossible since I used the password to buy my content and log into AIM all the time. But no, it doesn’t want to let me in nor is there a way to get my password.

Fine, be that way, I will just create an Apple account and transfer my account over to it. EHHHHHNT… wammy number two. Seems that the credit card I used on my AOL account expired and my new card doesn’t match the data on record. Shit. Now what? Okay… customer service. I have to actually call AOL to figure it out. I waited ten minutes on the phone and navigated through a bajillion options before I finally freaked out and said enough with this fucking ass backward piece of shit experience. I am actually a valid, honorable customer who had no intention of piracy, I had paid good money to use this content and now I am locked out!??! This is retarded. Meanwhile, all those other people can just go bittorrent the show and bam there you have it. And you wonder why people hate DRM and run to Pirate Cove?

Round 2. As I mentioned, my TV was in the shop. Why, because DRM strikes again. It appears that the Samsung 46″ LCD HDTV I have has a little HDMI issue. Some devices can not handshake properly with the mainboard (two hours of testing cables and research on the web led me to this fact). See, the way HDMI and HDCP work is that both devices have to verify that they are legal partners and can actually share data. The idea is to prevent people from ripping the content from the pure digital stream. Because of a improper mainboard design my TV could not talk to my new Oppo DVD player. Luckily, Samsung has awesome support and they sent out a TV repair team to review and then take my TV to the shop. This was all covered under warranty too. From what I understand, the issue with the mainboard is due to the lack of robust standards for HDMI/HDCP before HDMI 1.3. (I could be wrong on this, I would love someone to fill in the details) All because of DRM, and you know the worst part… people are ripping the digital stream no problem.

This is what gets me so pissed off. Billions of dollars are spent on DRM to prevent theft. Yet the “thieves” get what they want and the people that actually play by the rules end up getting fucked over. Right now is a really, really bad time to be dealing with new technology. Will my TV work with this video player? Will my receiver handle the new format for HDMI when it gets updated? What happens when they change the standard and I want to upgrade to a new HD-DVD player? Will my TV even work with it? And I do a lot of research and actually know a bit about what is going on. Can you imagine the pain an average consumer has deal with?

In the past I could buy a TV and it would work with any new devices I decided to add to my entertainment center for at least ten years (my Toshiba lasted 12). Today, if I try to go out and get a decent TV it may not even last five years… its totally, totally ridiculous what is going on and all of this to do what? To try and protect crappy media that I don’t even really want anyway. Seriously, spend the money on making quality material so that I feel like my purchases are worth it. Or lower the price so its to the point where I don’t feel like I am being ripped off if I don’t like what I bought and I will buy it because I do want to support the people who have the creativity to make the content. Don’t make me jump through hoops to get there when they honestly don’t need to be there nor make me look at the price and feel that downloading it is way worth it because the cost is out of my range. Well, at least my TV is back in time for Halo 3…

"The goal is to be one of the biggest digital music stores out there," MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe told news agency Reuters.
– "MySpace set to sell music online" BBC News

Initial reports are saying that it will still be a "trial" but with comments like this I have no doubt it will quickly go beyond trial and into full swing.  With the announcement that MySpace will begin offering music sale services they also announced a new partnership with Snocap to provide the service. PaidContent.org has stated that the deal with Snocap is not based around money but "to gain equity in Snocap as it drives distribution."

A while back (Novemeber 15th 2005 to be exact) MySpace and Interscope launched MySpace Records first volume compellation.  It was their intention to leverage the existing artist base and form a label to sell the artists music via physical distribution. The initial release drew a lot of press attention but in many peoples minds it was a flop and that was pretty much the last we heard of it.

It looks like they are re-approaching the same idea of leveraging the artist base. What is interesting to me is how they use Snocap’s services to do this. At the moment we don’t know how MySpace plans to integrate the services. Will it be an admin panel the artists enable via the site?  Do artists get to set the rate?  What is the percentage fee?  Does anyone get to use it?  How will MySpace monitor pirated material?  What about copyright infringement with samples?  There are a ton of questions for lawyers, but in my mind the biggest question is how easy will it be to use both as an artist and as a consumer?  I guess we just have to wait and see.

So this brings up another point… what is Snocap?  I am sure most of you have heard of it or at least know that it was started by Shawn Fanning (aka the inventor of Napster) but what does Snocap do?  Niki asked me that question yesterday and I honestly didn’t have an answer, so I decided to read up on it.

Snocap is what I like to refer to as a digital distribution service (DDS), they do more then that but this seems to be the best base description.  So what is a DDS?  It is a relatively new service that is actually based on the old distribution model.  In the old world (physical sales) you had this chain of command: artist -> label -> distribution service -> storefront -> customer.  The only way for a label to get their music to a store was through the critical distribution service.

In the new world there are is not any physical services… once the digital file is made it is an infinitely replicate-able product.  In theory, there is no real need for the middle men.  This was one of the goals of Fake Science, to create a store that allows artists and labels to directly sell to their customers and no longer have to deal with all the skimming before it gets back to the creator.

Unfortunately, old models are hard to change, theories don’t always work and companies really don’t want to lose their stake in an industry.  This means that a "new" kind of service has been created, the DDS.  Companies like The Orchard, IODA, and Snocap are coming into existence to help labels get content into the stores.  This is good and bad.  Bad because we once again have a middle man taking a percentage of the sales before it gets to the label and ultimately the artist.  Good, because the label now has only one point of contact to get their material into many different store fronts.  I have a personal aversion to DDS’s but I understand why they are coming into existence…  anyway, that’s a whole other topic.

Back to Snocap.  Snocap is a DDS that works with independent artists, indie labels and major labels.  They provide store licensing, track management, media type (between MP3 and WMA formats) and also optional DRM management (if they choose WMA).  Stores (or even p2p services) who use Snocap now have access to the catalog and can sell the music if they follow the Snocap requirements.  Snocap also provides the ability for an artist to create their own storefront and then make sales through Snocap.

At the core Snocap is a DDS but they also provide a lot of other services for artists and labels that many of the new DDSs are not (yet).  Overall its an interesting model, so much so that a lot of the Majors are providing content to Snocap, so I can see why MySpace has decided to go with them.  I will be interested to see if MySpace allows other DDSs to provide licensing rights directly to MySpace or if you have to go through Snocap.

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Over the last year I have talked about DRM and a few of the issues that I have with it, but most of my writing focus has been on how it impacts digital music. What many people don’t realize is that DRM is more then just a music issue. It is a much bigger issue that involves all forms of media, software and hardware. An example of hardware DRM meets media is Sony’s newest hi-def media device, the Blue-Ray DVD.

Another horrible example of DRM gone wrong is the HDMI image constraint token. The idea of down-rezing an image to protect the high-quality material source from being captured by an unauthorized device and then being able to redistribute without the DRM protection.

The irony of most DRM is that the people that it is trying to stop (i.e. pirates) often work around it within days of its release. A perfect example is the print-screen hack that allows full quality capture if hi-def video. Once again proving if there is a will there is a way.

I fully support what DBD is doing and I am a staunch anti-DRM opponent, albeit I have a bad habit of buying some DRM enabled devices cough iPod cough. Although, I don’t buy from iTunes nor will I because of FairPlay. Still, I am not as pure a anti-DRMer as I could be.

One of these days I will get motivated enough to work out a multi-day post on DRM and my thoughts about how it is impacting the music industry and how in the end it really just hurt’s customers. I will leave you with a quote from DBD’s homepage:

“If consumers even know there’s a DRM, what it is, and how it works, we’ve already failed” – Disney Executive.

Protect your freedom!

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