Blackmoor Vituperative

eWeek reports that the Digital Rights Mafia is still bitching and moaning about how digital music is slowly replacing CDs, even though people still buy 10 times as many CDs as they download. The media robber barons blame so-called “pirates” — which is to say, their customers. They ought to look closer to home.

As long as the Big Four music labels and the Digital Rights Mafia insist on infecting their products with DRM, people aren’t going to buy it. Even Steve Jobs has finally realized what many of us knew back when he was pushing DRM in 2003 — that DRM is a colossal waste of time and money.

Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.

Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy. Though the big four music companies require that all their music sold online be protected with DRMs, these same music companies continue to sell billions of CDs a year which contain completely unprotected music. That’s right! No DRM system was ever developed for the CD, so all the music distributed on CDs can be easily uploaded to the Internet, then (illegally) downloaded and played on any computer or player.

In 2006, under 2 billion DRM-protected songs were sold worldwide by online stores, while over 20 billion songs were sold completely DRM-free and unprotected on CDs by the music companies themselves. The music companies sell the vast majority of their music DRM-free, and show no signs of changing this behavior, since the overwhelming majority of their revenues depend on selling CDs which must play in CD players that support no DRM system.

So if the music companies are selling over 90 percent of their music DRM-free, what benefits do they get from selling the remaining small percentage of their music encumbered with a DRM system? There appear to be none. If anything, the technical expertise and overhead required to create, operate and update a DRM system has limited the number of participants selling DRM protected music. If such requirements were removed, the music industry might experience an influx of new companies willing to invest in innovative new stores and players. This can only be seen as a positive by the music companies.

(from Apple.com, Thoughts On Music)

When the Digital Rights Mafia gives up on their jihad against their customers, maybe they’ll realize it, too. Then we’ll all win.

Don’t hold your breath.