McGuinn on DRM

Our DFMI (Dispatches From the Music Industry) correspondent Roger McGuinn has told me for years that he's made more money operating outside the bounds of record labels and their restrictive practices, such as encoding on-line music with copy-protection software called DRM. This is Roger's take on the latest developments in DRM:

Everyone who knows what DRM (Digital Rights Management) stands for knows that it doesn't work. Most recent example: Kevin Rose. Kevin runs Digg.com and when he received a take down notice to remove the key which disables DRM on HD-DVD and BluRay devices from the Advanced Access Content System (AACS), a digital rights management organization, he complied.

Users of Digg revolted, posting the 32 number/letter combination hundreds of times to the point where Kevin relented and allowed the posts to remain on his site. He was willing to risk a law suit in order to maintain the integrity of Digg's democratic system. Now Kevin is even in a music video which contains the notorious key. A few years ago, the DVD key was discovered in a similar manner.

Every instance of DRM gets cracked sooner or later. DRM only gives companies a false sense of security for a short time before it's hacked by some enterprising 16 year old.

As an artist, I regard the free distribution of MP3s to be the "new radio." I got a Google Alert the other day that Snarfit.com had several of my CDs available for free download via BitTorrent. Rather than being dismayed, I thought it was great that my material was counted worthy of such promotion. When people download my music, they usually like it and want to see me in concert. Peer to peer file sharing is good publicity for most artists.

Steve Jobs in pushing EMI to allow DRM-free MP3s. His decision to charge even more for DRM-free MP3s than the normal 99 cents for regular songs on iTunes is a wise one that will bring record companies "kicking and screaming to the money tree." as Cory Doctrow novelist and EFF European Outreach Coordinator likes to put it.

Mark Shuttleworth, entrepreneur/cosmonaut, has also posted an excellent blog about DRM .

(Photo of McGuinn and Maney, by Mark Memmott)