During my conversations with Mr. Stallman, he voiced his final opinion on the matter:
DRM is evil because it prevents sharing. But DRM is also evil since it produces things that can't be used without proprietary software.(Proprietary software is evil, too.) - Richard Stallman
I don't disagree with Mr. Stallman on this point, but I do believe he's missing a bigger picture. We're talking about a purely digital means for valuing an abstract concept like art. Since the aim of this system is to give an abstract construct an tangible monetary value, and money is the root of all evil, then by necessity this form of DRM is inherently evil.
It creates a system of control that restricts access to digital culture, perpetuating a system of private and public media, despite the fact that it can create a new valued media marketplace where everyone equally trade and participate in valuing a digital culture.
The real question is, which is the lesser of the necessary evils?
Do you allow private corporations to control access to emerging forms of media through patent acquisition and lobbying for more restrictive legislation to prop up their monopolies?
Or do you design a new system to minimize the ability of these same private entities to control access to online media and culture, and provide new means for generating an online participatory culture where everyone stands to profit equally?
Prop Culture or People Culture?
Difficult questions to answer... but they will resolve themselves over time.
But I will say this... spending your days thinking about the means for developing a more stable and long-lasting digital media distribution technology does not make you popular amongst friends. Most of the people I know don't think twice about stealing music.
Hell... neither do I. I'm one of the biggest pirates I know. I steal movies, music, video games, software... But that's only because it's the easiest and fastest way to get access to it. In some cases, there is no alternative media for these materials other than through non-legal channels.
How long will it take before the Old World catches up with the New One?
Someone linked this to a forum I was blogging in a month or so back. I thought it was pretty neat, although the person who created it was dead set against any form of corporate-DRM, no matter how beneficial.
I might get a t-shirt made with this printed on it sometime in the future.
During the past week, I've tried to reach out to various members of what I'd like to refer to as the "informed opposition." Despite my earlier failures in speaking with Russell McOrmond a member of the FLOSS/FSF community, I contacted Richard Stallman to see what he thinks of the idea. For those of you who don't know who I'm talking about:
I figured that despite McOrmond'sinsistence that I'd "Drunk the DRMKoolaid", Stallman might be reasonable enough to see the benefits of what I've been talking about. During a week of back and forth emails, we debated the benefits of a Free and Publicly accessible online independent media distribution outlet. He went to great lengths to enlighten me of the differences between the labels Free Software and Open Source. Once I'd explained the basics of the concept to him, he was much more receptive to the idea than McOrmond had been. However, he had this to say:
"I look at your proposal in terms of the ethico-political philosophy of the free software movement. This is totally different from the apolitical philosophy of open source. For more explanation, see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html. The basic idea of the free software movement is that non-free software is unethical because users must have control over the software they use. I think that your proposal involves using some non-free software on the DVD. One can buy audio CDs with free software, play them with free software, and copy them with free software. A system which requires the use of non-free software would be a change for the worse." (Stallman - May 20, 2007)
He was quite adamant at this point, and I'm pretty sure we'll choose to differ on this until I can more completely outline the system I'd like to help build. While it is possible to build a DRM-Free database online that sells music in standard formats, it does nothing for physical distribution. Nor does it allow a consumer to repost their DRM-Free versions to their own website, at least not without the chance of legal action from the artist for violating their rights.
There has to be a way to generate this additional value system, which relies more on a link to a unique database. Instead of punishing or seeking legal action against consumers who're posting their purchased media online, we create a new system where their registered file is given a unique identity within the online database. This was what Weedshare started out as, but it quickly became obvious that the system was tailored more towards the restrictive aspect of media distribution than was necessary. For example, one Kelly Clarkson track was released into the Weedshare system, Since U Been Gone (club radio edit alt version) for $1.09. However, this track couldn't be played in Canada, which only demonstrated how easy it is to enforce those kinds of restrictions.
These kinds of tactics also fall under the term DRM, but are more a form of Digital Restrictions Management. The moment this file was released, I knew that Shared Media Licensing Inc. was doomed to fail. Admittedly, they were just enforcing content protection rules put forward by the Record Label who owns the rights to Kelly's music, but any form of media distribution that exists to control access based on nationality deserves to cease to exist.
However, the physical distribution aspect of the technology, as well as the revenue pass-along system they created, should not be allowed to disappear into the realm of digital artifacts.
Why am I so interested in this aspect of the system? I was trying to make use of it myself with the Weedshare system. I had loads of ideas for marketing the music, and I was pretty vocal about sharing those ideas with other ICPs, as well as trying to enlighten bands to the potential inherent in the system. However, Shared Media closed it's doors much too early for anyone to really demonstrate how to use this technology.
The idea that anyone with a computer and Internet access could start making money from their taste in music appealed to me too much. I sat to try to think of as many different ways this technology could be implemented by anyone. One idea I had was starting a web radio station that can broadcast and resell purchased music. The artists would get a much bigger cut from this system than currently exists through traditional royalty payouts, and would allow web radio to subsist off something other than advertising. (It would also eliminate the whole 'cheque is in the mail' aspect of current systems like SOCAN as transactions and payouts would be instantaneous.)
I've really got to sit down and break all this down into the bits and pieces that will be required to make this technology work. I'll see what I can put together for the next blog.
This project, while conceptually laid out, will take a long time to come to fruition at it's present rate of development. All I can do at this point is try to raise awareness of whats available.
On a sidenote, I got my name in the Montreal Mirror.
Over 100 hours of music on one DVD, available for sale for $5. Want to hear the best tunes from every Indie band in Atlantic Canada? That's a 5 DVD set. $20. Listen to every song three times for free. Over 100 hours of uninterupted music per DVD.
After you've exhausted your DVD, you can keep listening, but you've got to click 'pay later' on the song on a pop-up every time. If you choose to buy a song, the account setup is a two step breeze. Username, email address and password. The email address is for paypal, credit card or online banking deposits for purchasing music.
If you choose to buy a track, you've got two options now available for exporting your music.
1. A Complete DRM-Free mp3 (or ogg vorbis, or whatever.) 2. Your own unique DRM record.
With the first option, you can listen to the tune on anything.
With the second option, you can post your music online or burn it to a new CD or DVD and sell it yourself. And if the OS community can pry the doors open on the Zune, you could just sit on a subway and share your taste in music with the world and profit from it.
Yes, you can also share your free mp3 with your friends. And the option to strip the DRM from each file on the DVD will probably be created at some point and duly ignored. But no one in their right mind would sell a $5 DVD packed with over 500 songs without having some tiny measure of protection.
Artists recieve a full 100% of the track price for every sale directly from these DVDs.
I've given this a lot of thought over the last few years, and the DRM container I'm going to pursue is one built on the Matroska container system.
The Matroska container system is currently completely cross-platform. It supports Linux, Mac, and Windows machines, as well as PDAs and cellphones. It's also open source, so ensuring complete cross-platform compatibility would be much easier.
I've been talking to a couple different agencies about the backbone database required to maintain this consumer incentive program for this file system, which is currently the patented property of Microsoft and Shared Media Licensing Inc. Although reverse engineering this database shouldn't be too difficult, it may prove costly unless more support shows up from the Free Software community.
