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BuyMusic.com's Achilles Heel?--Digital Music Stores and Digital Rights Management
By: Paul Cesarini
Based on a Wired article, it appears BuyMusic.com may have some serious drawbacks. Specifically, the BuyMusic.com folks have not been able to secure uniform licensing agreements from the Big Five record labels, which means the rights models for all the songs in their catalog are not consistent. This will likely mean that not only will there be numerous pricing tiers for different tracks, but numerous different restrictions on what you can or cannot do with a given track. Some may be burned onto blank CD media, some may not. The same goes for transferring purchased tracks onto any digital audio players.
However, since there are few additional details about this on the BuyMusic.com site, it's difficult to determine how some of these different rights models will surface. Will they impede the overall usability of this new service, making little more than another Pressplay or Listen.com? Time will tell. This isn't to say that the iTunes Music Store is problem-free in this regard, either, but it certainly represents a more progressive effort.
To me, it all goes back to a timely article by John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and former Grateful Dead lyricist. The article is The Economy of Ideas: A framework for patents and copyrights in the Digital Age. While Barlow wrote this over nine years ago, and many of the terms he uses are somewhat dated (particularly "cyberspace" and "crypto-bottling") much of the issues he described are currently affecting many of us. For example, the central questions he poses are:
"If our property can be infinitely reproduced and instantaneously distributed all over the planet without cost, without our knowledge, without its even leaving our possession, how can we protect it? How are we going to get paid for the work we do with our minds? And, if we can't get paid, what will assure the continued creation and distribution of such work?"
It's a bit long, but is certainly an interesting read. It calls to mind a quote by Robert Heinlein, from his 1950 short story, Life-Line. Nearly a half century before the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) became a reality, decades before Jack Valenti equated the VCR with a serial killer, and years prior to the RIAA declaring war on file-sharing networks, Heinlein stated:
"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or a corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back, for their private benefit."
Of course, the "strange doctrine" Heinlein mentions actually is supported by law now: the DMCA. Pending bills such as the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Protection Act may well become law, too, which is more than a little unnerving.
While it is perhaps easy to rail against the seemingly faceless recording industry, I am not suggesting we adopt one stance or the other. Artists have a right to be compensated for their efforts, and consumers have a right to use technology in flexible, convenient ways. Instead, I suggest we collectively adopt a critical awareness of the subject and whenever possible advocate a balance between content producers and content consumers. Issues pertaining to digital rights management (DRM) will likely continue to be one of the fundamental problems of this decade. The manner in which they unfold affects us all.
Published by Doug B. Landry and contributing staff. Trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc., and others reserved. ©2003 Delta Design. Publishing headquarters is located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Index version 1.1.2
