Charlie Demerjian Says "DRM is a Lie"

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=29161' target='_blank'>http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=29161</a><br /><br /></div><i>"DRM is a lie. When an agenda driven DRM infection peddler gets on a soapbox and blathers about how it is necessary to protect the BMW payments of a producer who leeches off the talented, rest assured, they are lying to you. DRM has absolutely nothing to do with protecting content, it is about protecting the wallets of major corporations. The funny thing is they aren't protecting it from you, they are protecting it from each other. Let's look at the shattering success of every DRM solution to date. Every single one has failed. The score card is hundreds if not thousands against, zero for. Name me one song, movie or software title that is DRM infected that has not found it's way to the net within a week of release, usually long before release. There are none. To protect content, DRM is an abject and total failure, and will continue to be."</i><br /><br />A rather vitriolic article over at The Inquirer, but I can't say that I disagree with much of it. DRM has done more to hurt consumers, and content creators (musicians, actors, etc.) than it has done to help them. DRM only helps the middleman. Although I will say that the problem of one company creating DRM to not allow their content to work with other devices is really all about Apple and, to a lesser degree, Sony. When you buy a PlaysForSure device, it may have DRM on the audio tracks, but you can at least be assured it will play on any PlaysForSure device that you buy. A small step in the right direction, though I still bypass DRM whenever possible.<br /><br />Anyone have a good story about hellish DRM problems? Share your pain, I'm listening.

[Jason Eaton]

I'll guess I will start this one off right, by of course going the wrong way. My hellish DRM experience is coming from WMA. And it probably isn't what your thinking.

I started my Digital Music world with an iPod. A number of them in fact. However I never went the AAC root and stuck with good old MP3 and when I got a AAC DRM protected song I ended up spending some time to strip that off.

Moving along, and as small as the iPod mini at that time was I still had two things to carry along... a phone and music player. Stepping up to the bat I moved forward by purchasing a phone that could play MP3s.

So I have an LG 8100. Stick my mp3 onto a removable flash card and off I am listening to music, but the player isn't really up to speed. It can play back music, perform a very basic shuffle and that was it. However I was told that MS and Verizon were teaming up to update the phone with the VCast music service.

Stop in, upgrade the firmware (to also fix another problem) and presto. VCast music... but the phone will no longer play MP3 files and only WMA files. Imposed DRM... (sigh) okay... but the new features like albumn/artitist/genre/rated sorting, cover art, and more music player features is nice. So lets see where this path goes.

Upgrade the PC to have Windows Media Player 10 (before I was a iTunes User) and look around trying to find ways to convert my music from MP3 to WMA. I have a 'Rip' tab.... but I am not taking from a CD, a burn tab... a library that brings everything into WMP 10, but nothing I can find to convert to my new imposed standard.

Fire up the web browser... looking for MP3 to WMA conversion apps. Microsoft appears, yet it isn't built into their player they want you to buy another application called Windows +Plus to do this. I can buy a $30 kit from Verizon with cable and converter plugin... OKay skip around a bit looking for something free... here is one... what it doesn't bring ID tags over? Nope... another pay one that will do it with tags...

Bottom line, Microsoft and Verizon impose WMA file format and remove MP3 playback and then tell me I have to fork over more money to change to their format.

If anyone has some suggestions for an app to convert MP3 files to WMA while keeping ID tags AND having a bit rate higher then 96kbps I am all ears. Heck at this point I might even consider buying something if the price is low.

...

So I have to agree, DRM and file restrictions aren't helping me at all. Just helping someone else to make a buck. So add MS to your Apple and Sony list.

[Jason Dunn]

Ouch - that is a frustrating story, and a very different one from the normal DRM woes.

In terms of transcoding your files, give this a look:

http://www.ntius.com/default.asp?p=ripper/ripper_main

I haven't tried it yet, but at $9.99, it's a small investment.

The fact that you ripped to MP3 and now have to convert to WMA and lose quality makes me again think of loss encoding. Ripping ones CDs to WMA Lossless, then having the ability to transcode to whatever format you need later.

[ctmagnus]

dbPowerAmp (www.dbpoweramp.com) has an MP3 -> WMA converter (http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm). I used it to convert MP3s (my preferred audio format due to the ubiquity of it) to WMAs to throw on a 1GB SD card for listening to on my Pocket PC. But I only used it cuz I was too lazy to look for my original CDs. ;)