This breaking news just in: Consumers Do Not Care About DRM.
From: http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9972528-7.html?tag=nefd.top
Rivals have launched many an assault, but even e-commerce competitors as savvy as Amazon.com still face quite an uphill battle–sales of songs at 9-month-old AmazonMP3, the No. 2 digital music store, are only a tenth the volume of those at iTunes, according to market researcher NPD Group.
For all you writers and bloggers and tech pundits who have dogged DRM for so long in your comfy cozy seat on the Anti-DRM hatewagon, get a clue. If consumers really cared that much about DRM, AmazonMP3 would have done a wee bit better in regards to sales. My studies show that consumers equate MP3=Free.
DRM is not the bogeyman under the bed. It’s just a technology that companies like Apple use to sell Billions of music tracks.
That’s right you heard it here first:
From: MSN Music [communications@communications3.msn.com]
On April 22, Microsoft notified you that as of August 31st, 2008, we would be changing the level of support for music purchased from MSN Music, and while your existing purchased music would continue to play, you would no longer be able to authorize new PCs and devices to play that music.
After careful consideration, Microsoft has decided to continue to support the authorization of new computers and devices and delivery of new license keys for MSN Music customers through at least the end of 2011, after which we will evaluate how much this functionality is still being used and what steps should be taken next to support our customers. This means you will continue to be able to listen to your purchased music and transfer your music to new PCs and devices beyond the previously announced August 31, 2008 date.
Microsoft continues to recommend that you back up your music on CD or hard drive along with other important data.
Sincerely,
MSN Music team
In a typical press feeding frenzy against the violent insurgency of DRM, the New York Times pretty much threw Zune under the bus yesterday only to try to pull it back.
After Microsft made their announcement this week that the Zune marketplace will soon include monetized video for sale, the New York Times pushed this swill out via their blogsite:
If you like to download the latest episodes of “Heroes” or other NBC shows from BitTorrent, maybe you shouldn’t buy a Microsoft Zune to watch them on.
A future update of the software for Microsoft’s portable media player may well include a feature that will block unauthorized copies of copyrighted videos from being played on it.
NBC Universal is a big fan of copyright protection for their content and their CEO, Jeff Zucker, has been quoted many times recently in the press declaring this. Nonetheless this bold statement by the NYT would have been relevant and proper if only it had been true.
Later in the day Saul Hansell was forced to add this intro to his piece by I assume the NYT lawyers:
UPDATED | 10:25 PM Microsoft has posted an item on its Zune Insder blog related to this. See the end of this post.
Saul’s link through to team Zune Leader Cesar Menendez’s Blog began with this title:
Just So No One Gets the Wrong Idea. . .
where he states:
We have no plans or commitments to implement any new type of content filtering in the Zune devices as part of our content distribution deal with NBC.
We think some folks in the industry were expressing hopes for how the entire industry, not just Microsoft, would come to look at content distribution, and some speculation has ensued. Again, no plans are in place toward this end.
So apparently in their lust to decry the value of DRM, the realities of the content industry and NBC’s right to protect the value of their content, the New York Times mistakenly leveled what many called a serious social charge of crimes against humanity. I call it a product feature pre-announcement.
While NBC Universal and Microsoft’s Zune unit may not have immediate plans to load content filtering into the Zune platform, this un-announcement is an indicator of the complex legal, social and moral currents that swirl around the content protection dialogue. On one hand the New York Times was incredibly mistaken in their article but on the other hand we will more than likely see these kinds of CP implementations throughout the digisphere in the coming years.
Greg Sandoval is obviously a huge fan of QTrax and you are sure to find SongBird running in his system tray. Or not.
It’s funny how a company finally gets a major record label to let them distribute music for free to consumers and the best Greg Sandoval can do is position this lame piece with the exciting and compelling title: “Qtrax finally signs major record label.” It’s almost as though he is passing a kidney stone while composing this article.
You would think that something this revolutionary would be top billing at CNet’s News.com site but not if Mr. Sandoval is leading the press. Free Music=Big Story. Come on CNet loosen up and throw QTrax a bone.
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9937436-7.html?tag=nefd.top
[NOTE: QTrax is a customer of BuyDRM. Don’t hate.]
This just in. Some light humor from the UK. Well-known artist Peter Gabriel is missing his servers containing his “online music empire” after some chaps walked them out of the ISP where he hosts his website.
I have to admit this is an excellent situation where DRM might be helpful. Several large media companies I consult with consider this scenario completely manageable for their remote kiosks which are filled with encrypted media.
IFF only.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/05/peter_gabriel_server_theft/
That’s right I am back. After a long hiatus I have returned to my roost here at The DRM Blog. For the past five seven months I have completely immersed myself in a variety of industry events, customer deployments, new technology analysis and I even bought my dream house in Austin Texas.
For those of you who emailed me asking what was the status here I can only apologize for neglect. It has been a wild 5 whoops make that 7 months and as many of you know I have been busy on the boards and at panels and doing some follow-ups on anti-DRM biased writing. You can imagine how busy I have been with that right? 
Meanwhile I am going to be publishing twice a week to start for now and am looking forward to seeing all of your comments and your faces in person over the coming year. Next up Streaming Media East in New York May 19th-21st.
-Christopher
Business Week has an interesting article on Universal Music’s new rumored Total Music subscription offering which will assuredly use DRM. I guess this article couldn’t have come at a better or more relevant time in digital media. I just penned an article titled: DRM Demystified
last month for Streaming Media Magazine which comes out in less than a week saying the exact same thing in a lot less words [dang editors]. Of course I have been saying it at tradeshows and in forums and blogs for about 6 years now but now more than ever this story is coming to the forefront of the Monetization Mandate.
Apple looks to have used the charismatic ways of Steve Jobs to lure music executives at large into very pro-Apple business relationships with a complete lock-in on the portability of the content and ecosystem.
From: “Universal Music Takes on iTunes”
But before long, Morris [Universal Music CEO Doug Morris] realized he and his fellow music executives had ceded too much control to Jobs. “We got rolled like a bunch of puppies,” he said during a recent meeting, according to people who were there. And though Morris hasn’t publicly blasted Jobs, his boss at Universal parent Vivendi is not nearly so hesitant. The split with record labels–Apple takes 29 cents of the 99 cents–”is indecent,” Vivendi CEO Jean-Bernard Levy told reporters in September. “Our contracts give too good a share to Apple.”
It’s very clear that major media monoliths are moving away from the iTunes lock-in. These companys want to sell their content directly to users and cut iTunes and Apple out of the mix. Why pay 33% of your income to a partner when you can use DRM and sell it directly on your own site or sites to your audience? Makes perfectly good business sense and using DRM it’s easy.
Further proof that DRM is here to stay and a technology that is driving the growth of the pay-media industry at large.
Hard to believe but yet another company is laying claims to the basic fundamentals of DRM. Digital Reg L.L.C. based out of, conveniently enough, Tyler Texas, filed the lawsuit with representation in Longview Texas which is about 45 mins from Tyler.
- XBiz has a full writeup of the story here.
[WARNING: ADULT SITE. When I find a better story about this lawsuit I will post it. I am sure this week many mainstream ones will pick this story up.]
The lawsuit named Hustler, Playboy and LFP, Microsoft, Apple, Audible Inc., Sony Corp. of America, Sony Connect Inc., Macrovision Corp. and Blockbuster Inc. as defendants.
This trial will be held in the courtroom of Judge T. John Ward,U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in Marshall, TX.
If you aren’t familiar with Judge Ward, his courtroom has been the scene of some of the lowliest patent trolling in the history of our country. More background on him here.
Oddly enough, it looks as though the plaintiffs lawyer is the son of the Judge or in some random coincidence his name just happens to be John T. Ward Jr.
Click Here to View The Lawsuit Filing in PDF form.
Couple Notes:
1. It’s odd they didn’t sue InterTRUST. Why not? Big gaffe there. That would include suing Phillips.
2. They didn’t sue DivX or WideVine or IBM or Sun or EMC a variety of other companies that use DRM.
3. They didn’t use the correct name for Microsoft’s DRM solution calling it Windows Media DRM… which doesn’t exist.
Gang there is _no_such_thing_as_Windows_Media_DRM. Windows Media Rights Manager is the proper name for the SDK.
This will be very interesting to watch develop. Stay-tuned for more updates here from The DRM Blog.
I guess it came as no suprise that Viacom’s CEO Philippe Dauman said recently at an antipiracy summit hosted in Washington D.C. by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that the company will stick with using DRM and any copyright protection they see fit.
Kind of hard to imagine why anyone in the video space would move away from DRM unless they just want to give their videos away for free with no ads or payment. DRM is increasingly turning up in places where pundits claimed it’s imminent death just a short 6 months ago.
Without DRM there is no way to monetize portable content effectively while still managing the rights of content holders. Apple proved this. It’s just a matter of time before DRM is driving every mainstream model in the marketplace.
This is a pretty cool offering from Pando using an ad-supported model with DRM. User’s of the Pando application subscribe to the ESPN Video To Go channel using RSS and when a new clip is live Pando grabs it for you and pops it in your system tray. The clips are provided at 1.26 MBps using a 4:3 640×480 aspect ratio with, believe it or not, the ad at the _end_ of the video.
Click Here For ESPN Video To Go Site
Viewer’s get the DRM license silently and are able to watch the videos for a set period of time. Given they are news with a defined shelf-life and are not being sold the DRM makes a lot of sense. The ESPN content can be re-shared with non-Pando users via P2P networks, email and direct connections. ESPN maintains some level of ownership of the content while not being intrusive in the user’s viewing.
On the other hand, ESPN and Pando get granular wholistic stats of every view when the content is viewed via Pando or via some 3rd party distribution mechanism. User’s get free ad-supported video and ESPN gets a new form of distribution [Pando] with built in metrics for ad AND content consumption real-time. This is key. No data means no story.
It looks like 2007 is going to mark a dramatic change in how content owners deploy ad-supported media and right now DRM is critical to the success of this model. It has to be seamless and transparent and clean for the user or time and money will be wasted. Hopefully some of these models will start supporting portable transfers to phones and devices.
Pando is available here: GET PANDO NOW
BTW: This offering is powered by KeyOS.