Industry restrictions promote piracy
Several weeks back, when SGA announced that Tech would be participating in the Ruckus music service, I was apathetic at best. I have become accustomed to music downloading services having a poor selection, costing too much and being encumbered by annoying digital rights management (DRM) that makes it impossible to listen to the music the way I would like. To be honest, I was ready to slam Ruckus for all these faults before I even tried it.
In reality Ruckus is not immune to these problems, but because it is free for the school and for its users I am not so concerned about the shortcomings. It suffers from the same DRM problems as all the other popular music services and requires a local client for downloads and license validation. This client also shows an annoying Flash banner ad at all times, but I recognize that this is the only way the service can remain free. Of course, "free" does not hold completely true since the service still charges 99ยข to allow the track to be played on portable devices. If any download service wants to achieve the ubiquity of the compact disc, major changes must be made.
For one, even the most popular music sharing service, iTunes, does not offer tracks by artists like Radiohead or The Beatles because those bands refuse to move forward with internet-based sales. Some artists cite the inability to maintain the integrity of the "album" since most services allow downloads by track; others are not convinced that piracy can be controlled.
Like iTunes, all of the legitimate music stores that offer the most well-known artists restrict downloads with DRM, which limits the devices and players that are capable of supporting those downloads. iTunes downloads, for one, only play in the iTunes software and on iPods because Apple has shown no interest in licensing their FairPlay DRM technology to other manufacturers. It's hard to blame them when the iTunes Music Store is by far the most popular download service and the iPod is the most popular standalone player. However, I've known people who previously bought music on iTunes and were surprised to find that it would not play on their Creative-branded devices, which only support PlaysForSure, a DRM standard created by Microsoft. These little surprises send people running back to illegitimate sources that offer files that are not held back by such restrictions.
Unfortunately for all download services, the record industry (RIAA) refuses to support services that are not encumbered by DRM. They seem to believe that all music listeners will be ready to make millions (no, billions!) of pirate copies of downloaded music if they are allowed to purchase unrestricted MP3s (which do not contain DRM). In some ways this is probably true in the present day, but I think there is a solution.
Most music downloaders can be grouped into one of four categories: 1. People who only download music legally for moral reasons. 2. People who only download legally because they fear the RIAA's lawsuits. 3. People who download illegally but feel somewhat guilty. 4. People who download illegally and see nothing wrong with it.
The RIAA would like to move us into one of the first two groups, but it is clear that their immediate goal is to move everyone into Group 2. However, I think that group 1 would have much stronger staying power. In an ideal world, all users would be in Group 1 and DRM would be unnecessary. In this world, music downloads play on any device or player without annoying license renewals.
I think this utopia is attainable if the recording industry would simply take all the cash it spends suing its potential customer base and instead put it toward an advertising campaign that explains where all our money goes and how piracy hurts the artists. That assumes, of course, that the musicians actually benefit from our purchases. If that is not currently the case, then the music industry has other issues to solve before it can convince its customers that piracy actually hurts artists. Otherwise, the users will all move into Group 5: people who download illegally just to spite the recording industry itself.
Two weeks ago Ruckus president Mike Bebel thanked the student body for participating in the service's record day of music downloads. I am happy to participate in this experiment, and I encourage others to do the same. Until the recording industry learns to trust its users, DRM is here to stay, so I will use Ruckus to check out new artists but will keep buying those great used, DRM-free CDs on eBay.
