The latest episode in the war between music companies and their paying customers (the one where Sony decides it’s OK to surreptitiously take over your PC so you can’t make a copy of the music you thought you bought from them) has finally pushed me over the edge.
I’ve been a big buyer of prerecorded ‘media’ for over 35 years. I have two or three hundred vinyl LPs, several dozen 45’s, a hundred or so audio cassettes, and roughly 60 prerecorded reel-to-reel tapes. They are jammed in my closet with a couple hundred VHS tapes, 450 CDs, and 500-odd DVDs. (Mercifully, I skipped the 8-track, Betamax and laserdisc formats.)
Part of my media collection
I have to believe the record companies and movie studios would consider me a good customer. But with every day that passes it becomes more and more obvious that the greedy bastards who run these media companies prefer to treat me (and all their customers) like criminals. They continually expect us to pay more for less, and even then they are not satisfied. They want to pretend to ’sell’ us their product, but they don’t want us to actually have it. Well I’ve had enough.
From this day forward I will never spend a another dime on content that I can’t use the way I please. If I can’t copy it to my hard drive and play it using the devices I want, when and where I want, I won’t be buying it. Period.
They can all take their DRM, and their broadcast flags, and their rootkits, and their Compact Discs that aren’t really compact discs and shove them up their bottom-lines.
Additional Thoughts
Nov 11 – 8:50 AM
I’m blown away by the reactions my little tirade has produced. A raw nerve must have been hanging right out there in the open.
But there’s a few points I want to add/clarify.
- I said I was going to stop buying content that is burdened with these ridiculous and futile restrictions. I did not say I was going to start stealing that content. My point is to patronize only those companies that treat their customers with some respect.
- I forgot to mention the looming disaster of HD video on disc. Both of the competing HD disc standards will come equipped with the most monstrous, invasive, and customer-hating DRM ever devised by engineers and lawyers. If you want something to boycott, that would be it.
- Finally, a further rant. How did this shit come to be called copy protection? It is clearly intended to be copy prevention.
Here’s another website that sells high-bitrate (320 kbps) non-DRMed mp3s:
http://www.beatport.com
My only gripe: their prices have been creeping upwards quickly enough to render their prices, in some cases, MORE expensive than the physical disc (the one that put me over the edge was the new Der Dritte Raum for ~$30).
The totally funny thing about this is that they blame their plummeting profits on people stealing music instead of buying it. However, they are the ones who are driving people to not buy their music. Whether it be crappy songs/bands, they persucting innocent people, their bad reputation, this sony DRM crap etc etc. The reason we’re not buying your music is because we have issues with you, your music, your business tactics etc. Make good cd’s good music, market it in an acceptable way. Either way, we’ll find ways around your bull poo and get what we want. I personally can’t wait untill more bands start putting their music up for sale on their own websites totally passing over all of the publishers. What’s funny is that they are digging their own grave. We ARE the future and we are trying to tell you how we want our music. When a company doesn’t listen to their consumers, they loose those consumers to a company that does listen.
DRM Sucks. I think the problems plaguing record companies now will be reset when they switch up to DVD audio and ditch CDs. With 24bit recording and at 4.3GB+ per CD raw, it should buy them some time until storage technology can catch up to make ripping/storing DVD audio practical to play on portable players.
Not to mention I’d much rather support the band that I like, rather than the money $luts who whore them out.
You DRM-haters should check out http://www.magnatune.com. They’ve got an amazing collection of music in open formats and you can choose yourself how much you want to pay for each album.
Oh, and they split profits 50/50 with their artists.
Not affiliated, just a supporter.
Well, got 11 shops and have already from the beginning understood that you will not survive if you f**k with your customers… A marketing campaign where I tell my customers that I consider them all as prospective thieves will probably not be of any big success…
Once upon a time, Sony was a big brand for us. As they have refused to accept new technologies (MP3) in time, still are stuck with MD’s etc, their sales have dropped severely during the years and are now down to a very low level compared to the golden era of Walkmans and Discmans. Besides this I have noticed a decrease in quality for their customer support, guarantee repairs etc.
This little affair with the root-kit and the Sony executives showing their true opinion about their customers will surely make me consider to continue with Sony or not… I won’t loose much profit but I will feel so much better not doing business with such a company!
Exactly right, and I have been practicing this already …not buying anymore media. Well at least reducing what I buy dramatically.
More people need to follow suite and at the same time STOP participating in illicit forms of downloading of content. When an illicit download happens, even if it is casual, it’s saying “this has value” and gives credence however small to the media companies claims that they are victims.
When the majority of their “paying” customers just decide to tune out then their content will cease to have any value. Legal or illegal they can’t make you listen or watch their crap …that is where the power really lies!
does anyone want to start a consumer revolution with me? seriously. We live in a consumer/commercial industry, but the consumer is the one getting the short end of the stick. If there’s already a consumer revolution group started someone let me know.
Totally agree with your stance. I’ve been refusing to buy copy-protected CDs since they came out, and have returned a number to the mail order store I purchased them from (as a general rule, the titles I’ve found copy-protected here in New Zealand I can buy with no protection from Amazon).
I own a large CD collection (> 1000 albums), and I’m not going to have a record company dictate where I can listen to MY music. Being a purist, I also hate the idea of ‘butchered’ CDs with deliberately introduced errors.
I’m currently ripping my collection to computer, so am very pleased I don’t have copy-protection to deal with. For me, this also signals my future albums will all be CD rather than copy-protected formats like SACD and DVD-A.
BTW, love your stories.
I stopped paying for the “sale” of non-reusable content some time back. I have not missed it. Perhaps music will return to the days when people played it for fun, and shared it with others because it was a social thing to do. The only real losers will be the corporate types whose limos and tax shelters depend on us who used to purchase.
I agree.. It’s just getting out of hand.. I buy a cell phone that I can’t use except with the network I first buy it on, I have movies I can’t burn, I have CDs that I’m not supposed to rip.. What’s worse is that in canada, even though there’s a levy on the purchase of all digital blank media (like blank CDRs and DVDRs) that is supposed to go to the record companies to offset piracy, for some reason it’s still illegal to copy music.
I think it’s complete shit, especially since the record companies and movie companies keep posting huge profits..
So do you embrace Thoreau’s idea of “civil disobedience” and encourage us all to quietly disobey the law by breaking DRM? If so, then I’m with you! I want to be able to use my media to listen on any player I like and possibly in one or two videos I make for family and friends!
Mike,
It’s wonderful to see someone take the stance I decided to take about 6 months ago. But I’m afraid you’re not going far enough. It isn’t enough to pick and choose ‘free enough’ DRM or whatnot. I believe it is important to send a message (in this case a very public /. message) to all the media companies AND STOP BUYING ALL ‘INDUSTRY’ MEDIA. No more movies (including theaters, DVDs which are protected by default), music (including as stated above, butchered CDs with errors in them), don’t even listen to the radio. These thugs aren’t getting dollar one. Read a comment (yes, this is most likely fake) from a celebrity to understand their ‘thinking’:
famous music artist Says:
November 10th, 2005 at 9:36 am
… “you need strong copyright laws and DRM. in fact i hope someone comes into your house and rapes your family, and then says it was ok because you could do it. same goes for all you little napsters….”
…”your generation is doomed to live like the street thugs you are.”
clearly the celebs have an IQ of 10
â€Most people, I think, don’t even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?â€
and execs have an IQ of 20
this means the industry has a combined IQ of 30.. which is about equal to that of a carrot. And do you know what I do with carrots? I shread them into little pieces and eat them in a coleslaw.. That’s what I think of the entertainment industry: coleslaw.
Sure DRM sucks. But the main reason the record companies treat us like crooks is that most of their patrons ARE crooks. Well, maybe not crooks, but at least ignorant. I don’t mean crooks in the sense of breaking DRM in the name of fair use. I mean crooks in the sense of not wanting to pay. Period.
I still remember the original Napster. Guys at work thought I was nuts because I wouldn’t download anything that I didn’t already own in another format. Usually there were two arguments. #1, the crook argument: Why would you pay for something you can get for free? #2, the ignorant argument: It’s perfectly legal. It’s just like taping a CD for a friend.
Well, duh, taping a CD for a friend is illegal too, whether you’re making money off it or not. It’s just not a very enforceable law, and it’s not near as easy as copying a digital file.
DRM is just a symptom of the underlying problem, which isn’t new. There’s newer, better, cheaper ways to distribute music than the current business models, which have been around since Edison. Just like big labor unions when automation led to newer, better ways of manufacturing, the music industry is fighting like a frightened cat because the need for the things they know is fading fast. One guy with a CD ROM and a beige box can do what used to take thousands of machine operaters, graphic artists, salesmen, publicists, managers, truck drivers, and on and on. Pretty much anyone you could name from board members of distribution companies to the pizza-faced kid stocking the shelves in what used to be your local music store is going to see a crunch as the industry contracts.
(BTW, remember that there’s more than empty suits and musicians working in the music distribution industry the next time you think, “The artists don’t make diddly off CD sales anyway.”)
Companies could still make money of music distribution, even with newer and cheaper ways of doing it, but right now they’re scared s***less over the attitudes of the vast majority of their customers, and I really can’t blame them. You and I might, on principle, make sure that we’ve paid for our music in one form or another. You and I might understand and stick to fair use. But the fact is that the vast majority of music consumers either don’t understand legal and moral ways of getting music, or they really just don’t care.
DRM, and I still agree it sucks, is just the industry’s attempt to deny the crooks, make things simpler for the ignorant, and buy time until someone can think up a better business model.
I totally agree. I’ve already made that vow after I bought the new Switchfoot album.
The worst part about the whole thing is that my non-technical friends don’t really understand or care about DRM. So this stuff moves forward without an outcry.