BOC/BRAIN: more iCowbell

[Paul Mather]

On Thu, 2005-04-07 at 10:16 -0400, John Swartz wrote:
> >> No, but it does have a setting where you can hear in crisp detail your
> >> fair use rights being throttled by Apple's DRM... >:-)
> >
> >
> > I wondered over this until I remembered that iTunes is now a music store
> > to most people, rather than just the default Mac audio-player :)
> >
> > I've never bought anything from the iTMS -- partially 'cause of the
> > rights issues (when I buy it, it's _mine_ :) and partially 'cause I'm
> > not interested in buying something that will sound worse than a CD and
> > that, on a per song basis, costs about the same.
>
> I've bought a fair number of tracks and albums from iTMS and don't have
> a problem with the quality, but agree that cost-wise it's about the same
> as a CD and you will get the full quality there.

I've never used iTMS because I can't: I use neither Windows nor MacOS,
so I'm locked out of the shop.  I have a friend with an iBook who uses
iTMS and loves it, although she confesses its ease of use is a bit of a
problem at times because it's easy to spend a lot of money buying tracks
on impulse without realising it. :-)

> As for the DRM, there's a fairly easy way to be able to address that -
> the AAC files you get from the iTMS can be burned to CD using iTunes as
> audio (AIFF) files.  You can then do as you will with those files -
> including ripping them to MP3s (ironicly, also using iTunes).

As Carl pointed out, having to go from a lossy to a lossless back to
another (possibly different) lossy format (involving a redundant piece
of plastic as a temporary go-between) just so you can play your music
on, say, your MP3 player not only risks audio quality degradation, but
also involves jumping through hoops you shouldn't really have to (and
didn't have to before) just to exercise your fair use rights.

With DRM, the content provider holds all the cards.  The ugly reality is
that in a DRM universe you almost never own the content you buy: you pay
to have access to it according to the whims of the content provider.
The DRM conditions have changed over the current lifetime of iTunes, and
there's a catch-all provision that the terms and conditions can be
changed at any time.  It's not just music, either.  With Half-Life 2
creator Valve's Steam system, you can't be sure you won't be billed
after the fact for continued play of a game you bought because you need
Steam as a prerequisite to activate the game (and in some ways to play
it), and by agreeing to Steam's EULA you agree to this possibility.  You
are held hostage to Valve's desires enforced through Steam DRM.

> Case in point - I needed a "karaoke track" of Van Morrisson's "Brown
> Eyed Girl".  I had the original from iTMS - I buned it (along with a
> number of other AAC files) to CD, then used a freeware cross-platform
> program called Audacity to import the audio, and filter out most of the
> vocals (using a plug-in that can remove vocals panned to the center).
> Then I Van Morrisson's band backing me up so I could serenade my wife.

That's neat (I hope your wife liked the serenade)!  But, it's only made
possible because Apple currently allow you to interface with the non-DRM
universe, i.e., burn to CD-Audio.  (That's one carrot to get you to
become an iTMS customer.)  In a totally DRM-aware universe (for which
the content providers are pressing), DRM information would follow the
original bought tune everywhere.  Under that regime, Audacity could
easily be blocked from being able to load the re-ripped file (or from
being able to save the edited version).

DRM provisions and proprietary formats allow content providers unfair
leverage.  For example, the iPod is a wildly popular portable music
player/fashion accessory.  Apple have faced charges that they are
favouring iTMS by restricting the licensing of AAC.  By not licensing
ACC to rival online music stores, it favours iTMS by driving iPod users
in iTMS's direction.  (Sadly, people like me will always be squeezed out
of the party because companies won't license DRM technology for Open
Source operating systems.  That's why we have to use illegal hacks like
DeCSS to play our legitimately bought DVDs on those platforms.
Unfortunately, DeCSS is only possible because DVD encryption is easy to
break in real time.  It's unlikely this mistake will be repeated when
the standards for the next generation of DVD is written, rendering them
unplayable by those of us in the Open Source ghetto.)

Like killing a frog by slowly boiling it alive, people put up with DRM
because its real effects only become apparent when its too late (and
they've invested too much in DRM content to abandon it).  Also, the
concepts involved with DRM are somewhat abstract, because people don't
have as good a handle on intellectual property as they do physical
property.  For example, if you told someone that if they bought, say, a
Ford car that had the built-in restriction that Ford only allowed it to
drive on certain roads at certain times of the day, or it would only
work with petrol from certain companies, or could use only certain
brands of tyres---and that these Ford restrictions could change
arbitrarily sometime in the future, just when you'd got used to
everything as it was---then those people might rightly say "stuff it!"

If you want a view of what a ubiquitous DRM universe looks like, have a
read of security researcher Ross Anderson's "Trustworthy Computing FAQ"
at http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/rja14/tcpa-faq.html

"I think you will be very happy here.  Nobody has complained... yet."

Cheers,

Paul.
--
e-mail: paul at gromit.dlib.vt.edu

"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production
 deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid."
        --- Frank Vincent Zappa