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The online music rip-off

Posted on 13 Aug 2008 at 15:53

It also doesn't help that Napster's PlaysForSure-based DRM model has its share of flaws. The biggest is that it needs to connect regularly to the service's servers in order to check subscription status. It's bad enough that Napster might demand authentication eight to ten times a week, as noted by US blogger Jason Dunn in one post. It's even more irritating when that process stops you listening to your music when it doesn't seem able to connect. Listen to Microsoft blogger, Mike Torres. "Two strikes, Napster is out. I am not waiting for a third, I play by my own rules. Which brings me to a declaration: the end-user should never, under any legitimate circumstances, have to worry about copy protection."

This is always the effect of DRM - it imposes limitations. The iTunes store, for example, limits you to playback from five computers, while Napster limits you to three. Use up your allocation and you're unable to play your library on a new computer without de-authorising one of your existing systems first. That would be fine, except that you might forget to de-authorise a system before formatting the hard drive or installing a new OS, or not even get the chance if your hard disk or PC goes kaput.

Now things get tricky. Napster will allow you to de-authorise a system without you connecting from it, but you can only de-authorise one system every 30 days. Install Windows Vista on your PC and drop your laptop in the space of a week, and you're going to have to do without Napster on one or the other. The iTunes store, meanwhile, needs you to de-authorise from the outgoing computer, unless you plump for the "nuclear option" of de-authorising all your machines at once - and this is something you can do only once a year.

It seems that everywhere you look, DRM is telling you what you're not allowed to do with your purchases and where you're not allowed to do it. Nearly all the major services have restrictions on how often a playlist can be burned to CD (seven times in the case of iTunes and Napster), and most have limits on how many times a track can be downloaded. Given that you might want to listen to your purchased music over a lifetime, not just a couple of years, it's likely that we'll all come up against the limits of DRM at some point in the future.

Of course, there are two ways to circumvent all this. The first is to only purchase music DRM-free. The second is to buy it on CD, rip the disc to MP3, Ogg Vorbis or one of the several lossless formats available, then keep the hard copy as a backup. Even given the fact that new CDs are usually more expensive than an MP3 download, this would seem the safest bet. You get a high-quality digital master in the world's most standard music format, giving you the flexibility to create new files in new formats as technology moves on. Even here, however, there are issues; not the least being that - amazingly - copying a CD remains technically illegal in the UK.

There's a proposed exception to the law to cover format-shifting: the process of creating a copy of a work you legally own. The bad news? The Music Business Group wants a licence governing when and how format-shifting should take place, and is asking the government to recognise that it has a monetary value, in the shape of a levy. Who would pay this levy? The hardware manufacturers, and through them - indirectly - us.

The death of DRM

Luckily, DRM is dying, at least in the download sphere. Napster's Dan Nash believes that DRM-free is "the general way things are going". In his opinion, record companies "have no choice but to adapt"; those that "stick to DRM on a pay-per-download basis will not remain competitive".