Is Drm Dieing A Slow Death?

Heres something I ran across today.
So is DRM DIEING A SLOW DEATH??

Compared most other mainstream/big-music labels, EMI is about as progressive as they come. Their policies, at least recently, are more reflective of independent labels, as EMI has begun the process of liberating their catalog from the clutches of DRM infestation.

The move towards liberalization has been slow but steady. The process began last year when EMI launched several tracks that were DRM free. EMI made an exponentially more substantial move in April, when the music label announced a partnership with Apple that would sell its entire catalog DRM-free on iTunes. When the service goes live (it has yet to do so), the DRM-free music will cost $0.30 more than the standard DRM drone.

Building on last month's news, EMI has announced today a new partnership with Amazon.com, where again the music label's entire catalog will be released DRM-free (to be launched "later this year".) Similar to the proposed availability on iTunes, the tracks will be of higher quality than the typical $0.99 track. And unlike iTunes, the tracks will be sold in MP3 format, assuring the files are playable and transportable to just about any device imaginable.

"Amazon.com is synonymous with a great consumer experience, and they have become an important retail partner of ours," Eric Nicoli, CEO of EMI Group said in today's press release. "I applaud Jeff Bezos and Amazon.com for making this move. Amazon.com’s deep understanding of consumers and vast knowledge of music paves the way for a smooth entry into the digital arena. Their arrival in the digital music market will offer even more consumer choice and will be a big advance in addressing the lack of interoperability which has frustrated many music fans.”

Although short of a powerplay move on the part of EMI and Amazon, the partnership is significant nevertheless. Not because the tracks will be DRM-free, but because their availability will be in MP3 format - something sorely lacking at the iTunes camp. This ups the pressure on iTunes, who's AAC/iPod union has been successful in cornering the market. However the longevity of this philosophy may soon find its back against the wall, as EMI/Amazon's catalog will be compatible with all MP3 players.

http://www.slyck.com/story1471.html

Multi platform DRM would be a great benefit for everyone involved. Unfortunately these big corporations are all busy pissing on eachother to see who will dominate.. this is not good for DRM, at least not at this stage.

It's interesting that the music industries drm issues mimmick that of our industry. Those who implement it suffer because those who don't use it promote that fact. If all porn sites used DRM we'd make a lot more money don't you think?

DRM doesn't work.

It never will.

It's a waste of money and time.

No matter how many different layers of encoding stuff, there's a hacker who's broken the code in about 2 weeks.

Have a good site that people will pay to join and you'll do much better...

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Originally Posted by Jasun

DRM doesn't work.

It never will.

It's a waste of money and time.

No matter how many different layers of encoding stuff, there's a hacker who's broken the code in about 2 weeks.

Have a good site that people will pay to join and you'll do much better...

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I must agree with Jasun, The bottom line is that customers hate DRM. And we are in the business to give the customer what they want and to keep them happy.

The number of videos from various DRM paysites one can find on KaZaa or BitTorrent or Rapidshare are, I think, a clear indication of the ineffectiveness of DRM.

And... DRM tends to scare away good customers who happen to be Luddites and can't figure out how to view the files.

One of the more interesting - and promising - things is Digimarc's new technology that allows you to add code to the video that an individual customer downloads, allowing you to track exactly who downloaded it if it shows up somewhere. I would think that just sharing the idea that the file might be tracked back to the person who shared it would be at least somewhat of a deterrent toward piracy... but as Jasun said, good content is what ultimately will keep customers spending their $.

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Originally Posted by gaybucks_chip

...allowing you to track exactly who downloaded it if it shows up somewhere. I would think that just sharing the idea that the file might be tracked back to the person who shared it would be at least somewhat of a deterrent toward piracy...

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DRM has developed a bad rap really because customers hate the DRM process, not the protection itself. It is generally clunky and a pain to use – and we won’t even get into XP vs OSX platform issues.

We have offered Windows Media DRM for sometime at CCBill, and have watched the market changes closely - as well as the anti-DRM movement.
But sorry, I have to disagree that DRM is dead.

Personally, I do believe that support for DRM as a protection mechanism is fading, but to Chip's point, our customers are starting to use DRM as a tracking tool. It has the ability to track where and when, and how many times a piece of content is played, where it is sent, limit the geographic regions and if you set-it up right – the DRM process can be INVISIBLE to the end-user.

I have to think that Apple/EMI are somehow tracking the DRM-free content...

In our minds, DRM was never intended to be anything other than a speed-bump to piracy (the pros will always crack the code and steal it somehow), but I think that bad DRM systems really are what made it the scourge of the consumer.

It would seem to me that this kind of tracking could add to a good marketing and affiliate strategy.

DRM is dead, in its present form and how it has been currently used.

DRM technology however, shows a lot of promise if developed further to be a fantastic money making tool for affiliates and program owners.

Just imagine being able to load up the p2p networks with thousands of DRM protected video files, all of which carry an affiliate ID... Yours and all of these video files only allow 5-10 seconds (or right before the money shot) to play before requiring a login to unlock the full clip.

p2p networks would actually become something other than illegal filesharing, they would become a sustainable source of traffic that EVERYONE could afford to target, not just those with the money.

Hell, if technology like this for DRM was developed, sponsors could actually launch their own p2p networks, that they could let affiliates link to, full of millions of movie clips, images, audio files, etc, and every time a purchase was made, the affiliate could be credited for that sale.

People looked at DRM solely as a method of protecting their content and stopping pirating, which to some extent it is however, by doing this, the industry as a whole pretty much killed DRM protected content before it could even be given a chance to grow in to a much needed new billing and traffic generation method, that could have been phenominally huge.

Unfortunately, thats never going to happen, because of all the companies that loaded up their sites with DRM protected content and didnt let their customers use the content after a membership expired, i have seen content stop being usable seconds after a recurring membership is cancelled, even if the member still had weeks left on their membership, this is just another case where those who embraced this technology for the wrong reasons, fucked the rest of us who were looking at it for completely different reasons.

You only have to mention DRM now and surfers run as fast as they can in the other direction :(

Regards,

Lee

Windows DRM is still kludgy, no matter how well the front end and back end interfaces are implemented.

Unless I'm mistaken, the CCBill solution can only detect usage to the extent the DRM remains unbroken, because the way it tracks is by hits to the licensing server that unlocks the scene for viewing.

The Digimarc technology actually watermarks the content itself invisibly, and is capable of providing an individual serial number for each version of the content downloaded. The watermark is durable and can survive resizing, transcoding, and nearly all modifications to the video stream, which means that even if someone breaks the encoding so that the licensing server no longer needs to be contacted, if I find the unrestricted video somewhere, I can read the invisible watermark, decode the serial number, and figure out who shared the video.

That is light years ahead of the existing Windows Media DRM technology.

Mind you, it won't in itself prevent piracy, it isn't intended to do that... but it will trace piracy to its source and make it possible for members to be put on notice that if they share stolen files, they will be caught and prosecuted (or at least have civil action taken.)

We have been using the Digimarc watermarking technology for several years to add an invisible "adult content" watermark to our stills, scaps, and tour images. We don't track the still content individually as of yet, but if we decided to do that with video, it would be a cinch to add that technology to the stills as well.

music itself seems dead to me

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Originally Posted by gaybucks_chip

Unless I'm mistaken, the CCBill solution can only detect usage to the extent the DRM remains unbroken, because the way it tracks is by hits to the licensing server that unlocks the scene for viewing.

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You are right, Chip - Windows Media DRM only tracks if the DRM license is intact, but most recent customers are keeping the licensing process 'silent', and comparing ratios of purchased plays to stolen plays.

The Digimarc solution sounds interesting. Do you have a contact over there?

Also, we are looking closely at the new Silverlight, since it supposedly can handle Windows Media format and Windows Media DRM.
Any thoughts on Silverlight and DRM?

I agree with Jasun too.

Plus, I think members are far more willing to accept a movie with a logo sitting in teh bottom corner (like every TV show) than they ever will be with DRM.

Yes ultimately that can lead to content appearing in bulk on another site, but if its in moderation, that too is a selling tool. We just have to fight the bulk reposters of our content and have them shut down.

just my 2c

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So It looks like for the most part all say NAY to DRM.
Thats why we did not go for it with barebackmaster.com It just did not make any sense to us.

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Originally Posted by ccjax

You are right, Chip - Windows Media DRM only tracks if the DRM license is intact, but most recent customers are keeping the licensing process 'silent', and comparing ratios of purchased plays to stolen plays.

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Interesting. So this licensing must be extremely liberal, in not licensing the video to a single CPU, otherwise it would simply refuse to play when moved from the original computer to another... which sort of defeats the purpose of DRM entirely, except as a vehicle for determining the incidence of piracy.

But even with that, my concern would be that the ratio of legit to pirated plays would be deceptively low, since one would never know how many "drm-stripped" copies are out there floating around, and one stripped copy floating on BitTorrent or Rapidshare could equal thousands of plays.

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The Digimarc solution sounds interesting. Do you have a contact over there?

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The only contact I have is Mary Kuch-Nagle, mkuch at digimarc dot com, who is an account manager. She is the one that got ICRA to fix the broken link when the Digimarc adult content tool was on a broken page on their site, but she seems pretty knowledgeable and is obviously in contact with the ICRA people and therefore is connected with the adult community. I don't know her, we've spoken a few times over email.

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Also, we are looking closely at the new Silverlight, since it supposedly can handle Windows Media format and Windows Media DRM.
Any thoughts on Silverlight and DRM?

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Honestly I would MUCH rather see you talk to Adobe and Badpuppy, who have co-developed a DRM solution for Flash, and develop that instead.

Anything from Microsoft is never going to work right on Apple, Linux, or non-Microsoft thin-client technologies, such as Java Desktop, no matter what Microsoft promises. It's no secret that Microsoft is trying to squash Flash with Silverlight, but I am hoping that Flash is entrenched enough (something like 90% penetration on all desktops) that Silverlight will go the way of the .net framework, which was supposed to squash the Internet.

There are also several DRM technologies out there for Quicktime, which is also platform independent, but Quicktime has much lower penetration (except on Apples) and, additionally, the DRM tools I've seen are not very mature.

Overall, I see us (and a lot of other sites) moving away from Windows Media and toward Flash and Quicktime, to provide greater cross-platform support and more options for the member. I think this, and potentially the Digimarc technology, is where the energy should be going if you're going to continue developing DRM technology