DRM nightmare: Why $20,000 worth of gear won't play my 99 cent songs

[Jeremy Charette]

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=1911

"It's kind of screwed up if you think about it. In search of that zen feel where I can have the benefits of modern day audio/video in any room in my house, but without all sorts of unsightly equipment, wires, and splitters spilling out from the nooks and crannies of those rooms, I've already sunk nearly $20,000 into a state-of-the-art whole-home system and I'm not even done yet. Microsoft's Bill Gates may have the ultimate digital crib in the suburbs of Seattle. But, by the time I'm done, I won't be far behind. The sidebar to this story (perhaps for a different day or a different blog) is that the gear you need to do that home audio/video project the right way isn't sold by Microsoft, Intel, Apple, Dell or any of the other brand names that we've come to know and love (or hate) in the computer industry. Nor will it be. What they sell, and plan to sell in the coming years, are toys when compared to the gear sold by companies that specialize in home theatre..."



This is the biggest battle between corporations and consumers in the electronics industry today. Consumers want to be able to take their music, movies, and tv shows with them wherever they go. Corporations want to dictate what they can do with these files, how they can do it, and when they can do it. Encryption and fair use management have been seamless until now, and compatability has been guaranteed. CDs play in any CD player for a reason: Philips (the CD format licensee) guarantees it. They've sued several music companies recently because some of the new DRM'd music discs that have come out don't play in every CD player, therefore Philips won't let them use the CD logo and license. Corporations are intentionally trying to break compatability in an effort to carve out a market niche for themselves. Don't believe me? Just ask a high-end audio engineer, or the founder of the EFF.

[Jeremy Charette]

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=1911

"It's kind of screwed up if you think about it. In search of that zen feel where I can have the benefits of modern day audio/video in any room in my house, but without all sorts of unsightly equipment, wires, and splitters spilling out from the nooks and crannies of those rooms, I've already sunk nearly $20,000 into a state-of-the-art whole-home system and I'm not even done yet. Microsoft's Bill Gates may have the ultimate digital crib in the suburbs of Seattle. But, by the time I'm done, I won't be far behind. The sidebar to this story (perhaps for a different day or a different blog) is that the gear you need to do that home audio/video project the right way isn't sold by Microsoft, Intel, Apple, Dell or any of the other brand names that we've come to know and love (or hate) in the computer industry. Nor will it be. What they sell, and plan to sell in the coming years, are toys when compared to the gear sold by companies that specialize in home theatre..."



This is the biggest battle between corporations and consumers in the electronics industry today. Consumers want to be able to take their music, movies, and tv shows with them wherever they go. Corporations want to dictate what they can do with these files, how they can do it, and when they can do it. Encryption and fair use management have been seamless until now, and compatability has been guaranteed. CDs play in any CD player for a reason: Philips (the CD format licensee) guarantees it. They've sued several music companies recently because some of the new DRM'd music discs that have come out don't play in every CD player, therefore Philips won't let them use the CD logo and license. Corporations are intentionally trying to break compatability in an effort to carve out a market niche for themselves. Don't believe me? Just ask a high-end audio engineer, or the founder of the EFF.

[Felix Torres]

I find it interesting that an "audiophile" would actually spend money buying medium-quality 128kbps music. Or worry about lock-in *after* investing in a widely-known closed system. :roll:

That said, I see a collision of two separate dysfunctions here:

1- An architectural dysfunction between the client/server model behind the best DRM schemes (basically MS. If Open DRM ever amounts to something more than specs, it too would fit here) and the federated-module model used by Escient and the other high-end vendors. Where the DRMs come from the PC-Internet world where client/server is the established operating model and well understood, the audiophile world is accustomed to dealing with modular heterogeneous systems that integrated into a seamless whole by the front-end command and control system. The computer industry had a similar model in the late 70's/early 80's that was similarly broken by the emergence of corporate PCs in the late 80's; client server was the architectural solution adopted in the wake of the commoditization of computing power that corporate PCs brought about. I'm guessing the audiophile world will have to similarly re-architect itself, either by establishing integration standards that will allow the heterogeneous modules to seamlessly link and cooperate--think: an enhanced X10-type control protocol combined with a high-quality data transfer system--or, more likely, they'll join in the existing trends and adopt computer industry standards (TCP/IP, WiFi, DRM, etc) and build their federated systems that way. A third possibility would be to abandon federated systems and adopt client/server but that would require reengineering all their modules and expose them to the commoditization effects of the Media Center PC model. (It is worth pointing out that these systems are essentially super high-end niche products with audio specs that only dogs and "golden-ears" type can detect; even the highest-end PC-based systems fall way short of the specs and integration this market expects. Especially the specs...)

2- The second dysfunction is more common and better understood, but significantly less tractable: the well-known collision of user expectations and content provider paranoia created by the internet peer-to-peer music publishing craze. What makes it intractable is that the two camps are entrenched and completely uninterested in any level of compromise: the EFF crowd is philosophically opposed to *any* content controls, (even on private corporate systems for internal use!) while the content providers are convinced every customer is dead-set on redistributing their content for free on the internet the moment they get their hands on it. Not much to be done there or any hope of resolution any time soon. If anything, things are going to get worse now that politicians are getting involved in the DRM-standards debate. Expect things to get worse before they start to get better.

Will be interesting to see which way the audiophiles go and whether they choose to adopt open standards that would allow the trickle-down of high-quality features to the mainstream home media networks mere mortals can afford. :wink:

That said, my heart fair bleeds for somebody who can afford a US$20K audio system and can't get it to work right. :?

[Jeremy Charette]

Well said Felix (as usual).

I agree on the point about architecture. However that's not the whole solution. Some high-end audio companies are trying to migrate to a server/client architecture, but even so, DRM holders such as MS and Apple aren't providing them with the tools to (legally) decode DRM'd files. From David Berlind's original article linked above:

"In a phone interview earlier today, Escient president Bernie Sepaniak confirmed that DRM is not only a very significant challenge that his company and his customers must deal with, but that even if he did (or was able to) license the necessary technology from Microsoft and/or Apple, that the technology isn't even mature enough for most serious applications. "For example," said Sepaniak, "if you download something that's DRMed and then you want to stream it to a remote device where it must be decoded (a scenario supported by Escient's gear), you can't. If you tried to do this today, the stream would end up encrypted as a result of the DRM and you'd have to pass a key to the remote device. The software to do this doesn't even exist.""

So which comes first, the chicken or the egg?

I do agree on the second point entirely. It's going to get worse before it gets better. Just read the response by EFF's founder to see how extreme the no-DRM camp is. There's no compromise on either side.

[Jason Dunn]

A perfect example of why I still buy CDs, or buy/burn/rip to bypass the DRM the same day I buy the track. Things are starting to get ugly though - I've had two DRM'd CDs in the past month, and NONE before that. The music companies are starting to get gung-ho about pushing their pseudo-CDs. :roll:

[Jeremy Charette]

Let me guess, they were from Sony-BMG or BMI.

Here's a link to an article regarding Philips' defense of the use of it's CD logo on products that don't conform to the CD specification:

http://wired-vig.wired.com/news/mp3/...,50101,00.html

"Those are silver discs with music data that resemble CDs, but aren't," Philips representative Klaus Petri told Financial Times Deutschland.

Note that the above article was published in 2002. 8O

[Felix Torres]

Originally Posted by Jeremy Charette

From David Berlind's original article linked above:

"For example," said Sepaniak, "if you download something that's DRMed and then you want to stream it to a remote device where it must be decoded (a scenario supported by Escient's gear), you can't. If you tried to do this today, the stream would end up encrypted as a result of the DRM and you'd have to pass a key to the remote device. The software to do this doesn't even exist.""

So which comes first, the chicken or the egg?

I saw that and I was kinda scratching my head over it.
Cause Roku, Dlink, Pinnacle, Buffalo, and others have no insurmountable problem streaming DRM'ed WMA files across a home network. So the software (and licensing) clearly exists.

Best guess is he was talking about Apple Fairplay DRM and not MS DRM.
Cause nobody, not even Apple, can stream Fairplay'ed files to anything but iTunes. Also, later both Berlind and Sepaniak talk about MS making their spec available for licensing.

A bit ambiguous for sure, but then, heaven forbid anybody at CNET/ZDNET say anything good about MS and their products. :wink:

[Macguy59]

Originally Posted by Felix Torres

A bit ambiguous for sure, but then, heaven forbid anybody at CNET/ZDNET say anything good about MS and their products. :wink:

A bit like you and anything Apple :lol:

[Felix Torres]

Originally Posted by byteme

A bit like you and anything Apple :lol:

Oh, I'm not *that* contrarian.
I may regularly debunk their hype but I do defend their right to run their business the way they choose to, which is more than many Apple fans do.

CNET headline writers are singularly amusing in the way they seek to spin everything into bad news about MS, even when they are forced to report record MS profits...

[Macguy59]

Originally Posted by Felix Torres

Oh, I'm not *that* contrarian. I may regularly debunk their hype but I do defend their right to run their business the way they choose to, which is more than many Apple fans do.

Just some friendly chiding Felix.

***Excessive quoting deleted by mod JD***

[Jeremy Charette]

Originally Posted by Felix Torres

Cause Roku...Buffalo, and others have no insurmountable problem streaming DRM'ed WMA files across a home network. So the software (and licensing) clearly exists.

They've tried. I can say with certainty (having used a Buffalo Wireless Media Player) that the actual implementation is anything but smooth. Many of my DRM'd files won't play on the Buffalo device because it's not "authorized" by MS. I've had particular problems with internet-purchased WMA files, and WMV HD files. While MS has tried harder than Apple at licensing their DRM technologies, frankly, that's not saying much. Just read Jason Dunn's recent post concerning Windows Media Connect, as well as all the problems he's had with Roku's products.

Now, did Sepaniak mis-speak? Or does he not know about Windows Media Connect? Who knows. Either way it really doesn't matter, since WMC is buggier than the beta release of Windows 98. If he was speaking about Apple, then he's 100% right. It seems that audio companies are trying to work with DRM licensors, but they're hitting a brick wall.

This is a problem that isn't going to be resolved soon. I don't think things will change until some major publisher takes the risk of vowing not to use DRM, and sees increased music sales because of it. Unless someone leads the way, the rest of the industry will just keep going down this path.