Recently in RIAA Category

First thing's first. Let's establish exactly what we're talking about here. DRM is an acronym for "Digital Rights Management". "What's that mean?" you ask? I think About.com does a splendid job of explaining the term in a concise and understandable manner:

DRM is used by digital copyright owners to control who gets to access and copy their work. In particular, DRM gives programmers, musicians and movie artists some ability to remote control how people can install, listen to, view, and duplicate digital files. Although DRM is a broad term describing many different technical formats, it always involves some form of digital padlock on the file. These padlocks are called "licensed encryption keys" (intricate mathematical codes) that prevent just anyone from using or copying the file. People who pay for these licensed encryption keys are given the unlock codes to use the file for themselves, but are usually prevented from then sharing that file with other people.

Alright, so we know what DRM means, but now you might be curious of exactly how the technology is affecting our lives. Referring back to About.com (because it does an exceptional job of summarizing the subject), DRM is present in any of the following situations:

• You are using a WMA file;
• You are using an ACC file;
• You need specific software or specific music player hardware to play the file;
• You are limited to how many times you can download;
• You are limited in number of hours/days you can download;
• The number of different computers you can download to is limited;
• The number of times you can burn a CD is limited;
• You need a special password and/or logon ID before you can play the file;
• You need to reply to confirmation emails before you can play the file.

(Note: For this blog post and tomorrow's debate, we'll be focusing primarily on DRM's effect on music, as it is the area experiencing the most impact.) If you listen to music on a regular basis (as most of us do), it's difficult to avoid contact with DRM. And odds are you've been furious, or at least frustrated, with some of the limitations it's placed on your media. I think we can all agree that few of the items included on the above list cause us to jump up ecstatically and shout for joy. They're mostly just irritating and inconvenient.

Worst of all, DRM is incredibly ineffective and doesn't even come close to accomplishing its purpose (controlling access to, limiting uses of digital works, essentially protecting the illegal duplication of copyrighted material). There are plenty of well-known ways around DRM's, but those aren't even necessary for many people to obtain illegal copies of music. It only takes one individual to buy and rip a CD or crack a DRM, and then he/she can make it available to the rest of the Internet for free download. The organizations and companies promoting DRM are concerned with pirates, but this tech-savvy group still has a bag full of tricks to bypass the technology. Really, the people being punished most severely are those who legitimately purchase music. They might not even understand why they can't burn their newly purchased audio tracks to a CD or play them in their brand new Zune.

There's certainly no shortage of arguments against DRM, and I could go on for quite a while. However, because we've limited (for the sake of time and ease) tomorrow's debate to one main "offensive" argument per group, I'll direct your attention to that for the rest of this post...

In current practice, DRM usually translates to customers being bound to the company from which they've purchased music. Being Penn State students, most of us are aware that downloading from Ruckus, Napster or Apple's iStore will get you files that can only be played through the system that provided them. As mentioned before, this is hugely restrictive to customers. Just spent $12 on a new album from Apple's iStore and now you want to burn to to a CD to play in your car? Think again. That's a big no-no in the DRM world. Perhaps you downloaded a few tracks from Napster on your living room PC, and tonight at the party you're throwing, you want to play those tracks on the Mac you keep in your basement. Well, unfortunately Macs don't support Napster, so it looks like you're out of luck again. See where this is going? The trend is moving toward buying into a company rather than the music they provide. During a time when (almost) everyone is moving toward consolidation and universal standards, DRM's are tearing them apart.

There's going to be a point where people simply won't take any more. Those who used to purchase all their music legally are starting to resort to piracy and cracking DRM's, because the limitations are going too far. Organizations can't expect customers to continue to tolerate all of these imposed regulations, telling them what they can or cannot do with music that they legitimately purchased. Regardless of how much effort and money DRM-supporting organizations throw into the problem, it's not going to work. Music is a huge part of people's lives, and now that we've grown accustomed to certain freedoms with multimedia, there's no going back. As soon as everyone realizes this, we'll all be better off.

 

Before today, I had only been about 95% opposed to the RIAA's extreme anti-piracy tactics. After all, artists do make a (very small) part of the profit from legitimately purchased music, and they deserve all they can get…unless, of course, they’re Metallica or another group of pretentious [insert noun of choice] that have a knack for generating excrement.

It appears, however, that I might not have any reason for keeping my opposition level below 100% for long, as the RIAA (along with Apple, Napster, and the like) has officially given up on feigning any concern for artists (you know, those people that are responsible for the part of the product we actually care about). The RIAA wants to take the absurdly low 13% royalties that artists receive now for digital sales and drop it down to less than 9%. Apple, Napster, and company are shooting for 4%.

If trends in music distribution continue (becoming more digitalized), we may someday reach the point where online revenue is the only income that artists receive from recorded music. If this is the case and the bullies get their way, then artists will be making practically no profit from album/track sales. That’s understandable, though, isn’t it? I mean, think of the huge investments record labels need to drop into the physical capital and labors involved with mass-producing digital music. Oh, well... I suppose there really aren’t any costs involved with that. As far as I can tell, all the cash is going into advertising and the pockets of executives.

While this looks like a bad thing for artists and those that support them, it might just be the beginning of the solution. If royalties are dropped low enough, artists will quickly see that giving up the vast majority of their profits isn’t worth signing on with the big labels. They’ll release material independently or through smaller, more reasonable labels. In either case, prices should go down and what money is spent will be more directed to those who deserve it. At least we can hope this is how it works out.

As many know by now, the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has been leading a rather vicious attack on pirating over the past few years. By "pirating", I'm referring to the violation of intellectual property laws via the downloading and/or sharing of copyrighted music. By "vicious attack", I mean suing thousands of individuals (regardless of whether they own a computer...or have a pulse) for $750 or more per illegal download.

Digression
{

Recently, the RIAA has taken some much-deserved heat for charging such outrageous figures, and record labels are being required to "disclose their expenses-per-download" in order to rationalize the severity of these charges. As a result, offenders are now being encouraged by the RIAA to settle out of court for significantly lesser (but still excessive) charges. This approach is obviously beneficial for the individuals being sued, but it also diminishes the likelihood that the association will need to continue defending its widely disapproved behavior in court.

}
End Digression

The RIAA’s bullying continued (and still continues). Occasionally an important court case arises. Somebody decides to take the risk of being trampled and oppose the juggernaut, or the organization tries to push its powers even further over the line. In either case, the RIAA typically comes out on top.

But!

As the RIAA becomes more and more out of control, the association and the labels it represents seem to be experiencing more and more conflict…

Some artists have begun encouraging their listeners to use bittorrents and other means of pirating music to spite greedy labels and the RIAA,

EMI Records has threatened to discontinue funding to the RIAA (not because it is morally opposed to the RIAA, but because current piracy-fighting tactics aren’t working),

and perhaps the most impressive blow to the recording industry and the RIAA was Radiohead’s decision to ditch their label and release their new album (In Rainbows) independently, letting fans set the price of the music. If you thought the collection of tracks was worth 12 cents, then you paid 12 cents. The band trusted fans to be fair, and fans met the expectation. Radiohead pulled in $6-$10 million on initial album sales. Most artists, who usually make less than a dollar per album sale, can’t even compare to these kinds of earnings. Radiohead has proven that artists don’t need the backing of billion-dollar record labels to be successful, and when the giants (Universal, EMI, BMG, Warner, etc.) realize this, they should be motivated to change their behaviors and behaviors of the RIAA. This new concept of fairness just might eliminate a big part of the pirating problem. Who would have thought you could catch more flies with honey than vinegar?

With so much discontent being expressed and with so many novel ideas about music distribution floating around, some may have expected the RIAA to start working on innovative and less aggressive anti-piracy tactics that might result in happier customers, artists and labels…

Not so much the case.

In fact, it seems the RIAA is striving to be even more rigid and unsympathetic than ever. The association has recently announced the continuation of its College Deterrence Campaign into 2008 and the welcoming of former FBI Principal to command the West Coast Anti-Piracy Unit. I was somewhat surprised (but not really that much) to read this on my news feed, so I thought it would be a worthwhile topic to investigate for my first directed blog post concerning tradition v. non-traditional news coverage.

While I did come across a fair amount of non-traditional sources covering the recent actions of the RIAA, I had a difficult time finding any reporting by more formal/traditional sources. Below are the two that I settled on.

Traditional:
“RIAA Lawsuit Names 36 Students” by the Virginia Tech’s Collegiate Times

Non-Traditional:
“The RIAA Speaks – And It Gets Worse” by Don Reisinger on C|Net Blogs

My first impression of both of these pieces was that they were credible. Both articles make specific references/citations and any opinions are typically supported by facts. The non-traditional source (Don Reisinger’s blog) actually offers significantly more evidence (going so far as to provide the entire transcript of his interview with the spokesperson of the RIAA) than the school newspaper, and despite the newspaper’s affiliation with a university, I still feel more trusting of the non-traditional source. My opinion may be influenced by the length and depth of the blog (which is much longer and more thoughtful than the newspaper), the writing style (the blog being more eloquent), or by the assumption that Don Reisinger is an older, more experienced individual than the writer of the Virginia Tech Collegiate Times’ article (who I assume to be around my age). In any case, I find the articles to be trustworthy.

Concerning bias, I feel that the Collegiate Times’ article is completely impartial. Actually, I don’t believe there is a single opinion expressed in the entire writing. Don Reisinger’s blog, on the other hand, definitely expresses some of the writer’s opinions. When personal beliefs do appear, Reisinger usually supports them with direct quotes from the RIAA spokeswoman or by citing other legitimate sources. So, while the non-traditional blog undeniably conveys more of the writer’s ideas, I don’t feel that the bias leads to significant, if any, distortions of the truth.

The primary motivation of both sources, I believe, is attracting readers and providing the regular audiences with content that they find interesting and relevant. In these cases, the writers are attempting to intrigue/satisfy readers by informing them of significant happenings in the world of file-sharing that they (the readers) might find relevant. For the blog, most readers are probably fairly young (15-30, I would guess), computer savvy and may very well download music illegally. For the Collegiate Times, readers are primarily college students who have been personally sued by the RIAA, know someone who has been sued by the RIAA, or at least have been involved in a recent discussion about what’s happening to classmates because of illegal downloading. In either case, the RIAA’s approach to the violation of intellectual property laws is likely a topic on the minds of readers.

The content of the pieces is hugely determined by the audience and the medium.

Reisinger’s blog is targeting a larger, slightly more diverse audience. Therefore, he typically focuses on addressing the big concerns that effect a higher percent of readers. He takes a rather complex topic and summarizes it in such a way that readers can easily grasp the important ideas to be taken from the event. Because readers can choose to go elsewhere on the Internet to get information, writing style is important. Reisinger's blog is very readable, sometimes sarcastic/funny, and sometimes a little aggressive. It has a personality. This makes his piece more desirable, which is very necessary when publishing on the Internet, where readers have a lot of options available to them.

In contrast, Virginia Tech’s Collegiate Times is addressing a very narrow audience. Rather than focusing on the RIAA’s behavior on a larger scale, the writer primarily sticks to the effects on Virginia Tech students and how the college is handling the situation. Unlike Reisinger's blog, the Collegiate Times doesn't have to worry so much about competition. Few organizations would cover the topic with such a specific focus on Virginia Tech's situation, so as long as the newspaper delivers the facts, there will probably be a fairly high demand.

Traditional and non-traditional news sources both have a place in society at this point in time, but I have a feeling that the widely spanning traditional ones will be fading out pretty quickly. Organizations that put out locally relevant content (like the Collegiate Times) could hang around for quite a while, because such specifically targeted news would be hard to find elsewhere. Exactly how we'll receive this news, whether by conventional newspaper, online articles, or some new technology, remains to be seen, but I think the idea will endure. As for the non-traditional sources (like blogging), I think they have some growing to do on the whole, but they're maturing nicely.