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The Register is running a piece that indicates that Sony-BMG and EMI will begin rolling out copy protected Compact Discs (Music) to unsuspecting customers. *YAY* (not)

What these companies need to understand is that people don’t really want to steal music – they want music to be accessible and easy to use – thus the massive amount of Peer – to – Peer file sharing activity presently. Here are the issues as I see them:

1) Music is popular – people want to be able to listen to their music – in their bedroom, on their computer, in the car and on their iPods (look the iPod has a 75% market share and in my personal opinion the best MP3/Music player on the market today).

2) People don’t want to have to replace CD’s that get lost, scratched or stolen current market rates for CDs are not cheap considering how easily damaged they are.

3) People want to share interesting and hard to find things with their friends.

Record companies don’t CARE about the people that they sell their products too, they care about profit and they will go about it in the manner and way they percieve to be the best – in this case copy protection which will render disc’s incompatible with some systems (computer and component) and they won’t care – people will get pissed off and just download their music so that they dont have to screw around trying to get a $20 CD working in a $500 system.

Computer and Software companies are not helping this cause at all – look at Apple with their Fairplay DRM system – which allows for copying and limited sharing as well as burning of unprotected content (up to no more than 10 times) in the form of a Redbook Standard AUDIO CD. They won’t (or cannot) licence this technology to third parties – this is just plain STUPID – a common format that is not overly restrictive will allow people to use their music easily without vendor lockin – THIS IS IMPORTANT. Legitimate music downloads from the internet are common nowdays accounting for approximatly 35% of downloaded content (P2P/Pirated content is aroun 40% at present). A common format would be good for all people and would help launch online music distribution and allow it to become mainstream.

People like me will NEVER purchase Microsoft DRM based content because I personally find the WMA format to be crap, the DRM restrictions imposed overly restrictive and I am NOT a microsoft fan – I don’t like their business practices (ethically speaking) and I don’t believe that their software development practices are up to scratch. Which brings me to my next point – DRM systems need to allow for backward compatability for LONG periods of time – people still have CD’s from when CD’s were first released that work – DRM protected content SHOULD in theory contiune to work unimpeded from now until the end of civilisation as we know it, the bastards in the industries (both Music and Software) want you to keep needing to buy the latest and greatest so that is not going to happen, grrr.

Online music distribution needs two more componants to really be successful – decent rights backup/redownload abilities for when your HDD craps itself or your upgrade your PC. It also needs to have better quality formats – if we take Apple’s iTunes Music Store which is Fairplay DRM’ed AAC files at 128kBit – if they were 256 or preferably 320kBit the sound quality would be significantly better which means on high end car and home theater equipment it will sound good.

Australia is currently debating a “Fair Use Rights” policy which will allow Australian’s to legally back up their CD’s, DVD’s and other media, we can only hope that it allows us to break any bullshit copy protection shcemes designed to prevent us from backing up content that we (the consumer) have paid for.