4 ms·

All of that article is wrong. I used to work in DRM. I implemented, I believe, the first DRM for practically every major and minor record label in Europe and N

All of that article is wrong. I used to work in DRM. I implemented, I believe, the first DRM for practically every major and minor record label in Europe and North America. The only reason any of them stated to me that they required DRM was to prevent copyright infringement. Yes, I pointed out the insanity of their solution. The firm I worked for didn't have the muscle of the one that came on our heels (Apple) and managed to temporarily remove DRM from music.

shmerl 5y ago
Stated intent ≠ real intent. I doubt they'll openly admit real crooked reasons behind it. That's besides simple stupidity of some possibly indeed thinking that DRM increases their sales.
- DeWilde 5y ago
  Especially in large corporations where each level of the hierarchy lives in a bubble of sort, meaning that the people OP interacted might have actually believed it was to prevent piracy while the people in that corp some level above them had a different motive to getting DRM pushed.
  - kingcharles 5y ago
    We, as a company, interacted with people at every level of these labels. We had regular meetings all the way to the top. For the most part though, the staff were universally non-technical. They loved music, knew music, but their technical infrastructure was fairly limited. We had to rip CDs (250,000 of them) like everyone else because they didn't have any of their data in any easily accessible form. There was never any hint of any conspiracy or any other motivation than to limit piracy. They saw that DRM files could not be traded on Napster or any other file-sharing system du jour and that was all they wanted. Sales be damned.
    - shmerl 5y ago
      I guess sometimes lack of common sense is indeed the reason. But I suspect that's not the most widespread case. Here is an interesting related story: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/introducing_gogcom_drmfree_movies/post499 https://www.gog.com/forum/general/introducing_gogcom_drmfree...
      - kingcharles 5y ago
        Thanks. Sounds like the same resistance we met. I'll be honest, we didn't fight hard enough to get rid of the DRM. We had to fight really, really hard just to let the labels put the music online at all. They didn't want to cut into their CD sales and they thought CDs were forever. The only way we got meetings was by taking a celebrity musician with us (Peter Gabriel) who could open the door to any label. Once we'd opened the door to each label, Apple would breeze in right behind us and find no resistance. Later they used the Cult of Jobs as their leverage to get rid of DRM on their downloads. It looks like DRM is creeping back in again to their lossless and Atmos downloads now Jobs is no longer around to use his muscle to keep the labels honest. It's like an addiction for them, they can't stay away from it.
etaioinshrdlu 5y ago
Yeah, I find that looking for a conspiracy here absolutely hilarious. Why can't it just be as simple as copyright holders really, really, really hate piracy, and are definitely willing to make a technical mess to do it? They hate piracy because it does cost them. How complicated does it need to be?
- danuker 5y ago
  > They hate piracy because it does cost them. https://torrentfreak.com/eu-piracy-report-suppression-raises-questions-transparency-170922/ https://torrentfreak.com/eu-piracy-report-suppression-raises... > “In general, the results do not show robust statistical evidence of displacement of sales by online copyright infringements,”
  - kube-system 5y ago
    Read the next sentence too. > That does not necessarily mean that piracy has no effect but only that the statistical analysis does not prove with sufficient reliability that there is an effect. Absence of evidence != evidence of absence.
    - lstodd 5y ago
      Absence of evidence == there must be more study before any conclusions. Instead of the usual hypocrisy.
- midjji 5y ago
  Unwillingness to change, I think, is a important part of the explanation. The old music companies were unable to provide the service their customers now asked for, i.e. convenient online, streaming, etc. In order to do so they would need to fundamentally change every aspect of their industry, from production, to artist contracts, to marketing, to financing, to distribution, and sales. Now if you were an executive on any level on such a corporation, would you want to continue doing the minimum effort thing of keeping everything the same? Or would you recommend completely changing everything, including replacing you with someone with different skills. Itunes did not hire the same distribution of people as the old record companies had, not even close. They could not fight it forever, and the change is still in progress, with more artists than ever using alternate crowdsourcing, etc.

shmerl 5y ago

Stated intent ≠ real intent. I doubt they'll openly admit real crooked reasons behind it. That's besides simple stupidity of some possibly indeed thinking that DRM increases their sales.

DeWilde 5y ago
Especially in large corporations where each level of the hierarchy lives in a bubble of sort, meaning that the people OP interacted might have actually believed it was to prevent piracy while the people in that corp some level above them had a different motive to getting DRM pushed.
- kingcharles 5y ago
  We, as a company, interacted with people at every level of these labels. We had regular meetings all the way to the top. For the most part though, the staff were universally non-technical. They loved music, knew music, but their technical infrastructure was fairly limited. We had to rip CDs (250,000 of them) like everyone else because they didn't have any of their data in any easily accessible form. There was never any hint of any conspiracy or any other motivation than to limit piracy. They saw that DRM files could not be traded on Napster or any other file-sharing system du jour and that was all they wanted. Sales be damned.
  - shmerl 5y ago
    I guess sometimes lack of common sense is indeed the reason. But I suspect that's not the most widespread case. Here is an interesting related story: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/introducing_gogcom_drmfree_movies/post499 https://www.gog.com/forum/general/introducing_gogcom_drmfree...
    - kingcharles 5y ago
      Thanks. Sounds like the same resistance we met. I'll be honest, we didn't fight hard enough to get rid of the DRM. We had to fight really, really hard just to let the labels put the music online at all. They didn't want to cut into their CD sales and they thought CDs were forever. The only way we got meetings was by taking a celebrity musician with us (Peter Gabriel) who could open the door to any label. Once we'd opened the door to each label, Apple would breeze in right behind us and find no resistance. Later they used the Cult of Jobs as their leverage to get rid of DRM on their downloads. It looks like DRM is creeping back in again to their lossless and Atmos downloads now Jobs is no longer around to use his muscle to keep the labels honest. It's like an addiction for them, they can't stay away from it.

etaioinshrdlu 5y ago

Yeah, I find that looking for a conspiracy here absolutely hilarious. Why can't it just be as simple as copyright holders really, really, really hate piracy, and are definitely willing to make a technical mess to do it? They hate piracy because it does cost them. How complicated does it need to be?

danuker 5y ago
> They hate piracy because it does cost them. https://torrentfreak.com/eu-piracy-report-suppression-raises-questions-transparency-170922/ https://torrentfreak.com/eu-piracy-report-suppression-raises... > “In general, the results do not show robust statistical evidence of displacement of sales by online copyright infringements,”
- kube-system 5y ago
  Read the next sentence too. > That does not necessarily mean that piracy has no effect but only that the statistical analysis does not prove with sufficient reliability that there is an effect. Absence of evidence != evidence of absence.
  - lstodd 5y ago
    Absence of evidence == there must be more study before any conclusions. Instead of the usual hypocrisy.
midjji 5y ago
Unwillingness to change, I think, is a important part of the explanation. The old music companies were unable to provide the service their customers now asked for, i.e. convenient online, streaming, etc. In order to do so they would need to fundamentally change every aspect of their industry, from production, to artist contracts, to marketing, to financing, to distribution, and sales. Now if you were an executive on any level on such a corporation, would you want to continue doing the minimum effort thing of keeping everything the same? Or would you recommend completely changing everything, including replacing you with someone with different skills. Itunes did not hire the same distribution of people as the old record companies had, not even close. They could not fight it forever, and the change is still in progress, with more artists than ever using alternate crowdsourcing, etc.