Posted by Gordon Sande on 02/08/07 18:30

On 2007-02-08 13:52:05 -0400, pack@users.forethought.net (Daniel Packman) said:

> In article <1ht8ee9.1bhr4vj1nakvb9N%jamiekg@wizardling.geek.nz>,
> Jamie Kahn Genet <jamiekg@wizardling.geek.nz> wrote:
>> Daniel Packman <pack@users.forethought.net> wrote:
> ......
>>> His arguments are reasonable about Apple continuing to closely
>>> hold and control its own DRM, but his argument that there shouldn't
>>> be any DRMs is a bit less strong. Sure, the majority of music is still
>>> sold via cds that are DRM free. But there is a dichotomy of use.
>>> If online music were free from DRM, it isn't obvious that this
>>> woulnd't affect user's habits of exchanging music.
>
>> It is extremely easy to bypass iTunes DRM to then go and pirate music
>> bought from the iTunes store. So how would removing this pointless DRM
>> substantially change anything? Pirates will continue being pirates and
>> other users will continue paying for the majority of their music.
>
> By easy you mean rip to cd and then slurp back in?
> I think there are psychological barriers. If these are modest, they
> still guide behavior. If they disappear, then behavior can change
> radically. Perhaps Apple has done some research on its own.

Once upon a time if you put on a seat belt as a passenger in a car it
was in insult to the driver as you were effectively saying that the
driver was not a safe driver. Then the laws changed and seat belts
became maniditory. Now "everyone" belts up as it is the correct thing
to do. Behaviour can be changed. There are still a few folks who
exercise their "right" to be severely injured if they have an accident.

The "defacto copyright infringement encouragers" scared the wits out of
the music business. Piracy is the symptom of the "defacto copyright
infringement encouragers". Most of their music material is from CDs that
has no protection at any stage. Eventually the "defacto copyright
infringement encouragers" will have to be discouraged. The problem is
how to effect that behaviour change with the music business still badly
spooked. If peer to peer file exchanges can provide catalogues of
copyrighted material to act as "defacto copyright infringement
encouragers" then the problem remains. Also the use of such sites
should cease to be "hip". The search engines would read anything and
everything initially but will now honour requests to stop robot reading
if a site puts up the suitable file names. The peer to peer file exchanges
need to do something similar. The search engines found that it was in their
interest to behave well. The pressures on peer to peer file exchanges are
different. Searching needs to be big and so is done by only a few. Anyone
can be a local "hero" by hosting/encouragaing a peer to peer file exchange.
Perhaps they need to be sued a few more times and the judges need to figure
out which defences are bogus. Some changes in various laws might make it
happen. It happened with seatbelts so it might happen with music and "digit
rights management".

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