I’ve been following the fallout from Sony’s attempt at releasing DRM CDs this holiday season. What a complete and total debacle. For those of you who haven’t been following the story, here’s a brief (and hopefully not too technical) overview:
Earlier this year Sony began including DRM (Digital Rights Management) on several of their music CDs. DRM, in the simplest of terms, is the ability to control what you do with digital media you purchase. Sony and most of the other major music mega-corporations contend that when you purchase an audio CD, you are not purchasing the rights to do whatever you want to with the music contained on that disc. In their eyes you are a “content consumer” and not a “content owner”. Through the use of DRM, Sony is trying to limit what you can do with the music you purchase. For example, the DRM software Sony included on 50 of their CDs this year prevents owners from “ripping” them (converting them to MP3 format).
Don’t get the wrong idea; Sony isn’t against MP3’s. They offer dozens of different MP3 players, ranging from ones that fit in your pocket to ones that go in your car. What they are against (according to them) is the wide spread piracy which, let’s face it, is basically synonymous with the term “MP3” itself. But really what they’re against is allowing us (consumers) to buy music only once. Sony would prefer that you buy your MP3’s through Connect.com, their “Music Downloads powered by Sony” service.
Anyway, back to Sony’s string of gaffes this summer, which are so insanely ridiculous that no doubt someday they’ll be on the top of someone’s “50 stupidest things a major corporation ever did” list. The first thing Sony did was include new DRM software named XCP on 50 of their audio CD titles. XCP, it turns out, has been identified as a “rootkit”. This buzz term of the week basically describes a piece of software which is designed to avoid detection by users, operating systems, and even antivirus software.
We’re not talking about software here; XCP was installed on millions of people’s computers by placing a Sony MUSIC CD into their CD-Rom. Lots and lots of these people are people who listen to music at work, so thanks to Sony, hundreds of thousands of people’s work computers all over the computer have been compromised. IT departments across America thank you, Sony. And when it was determined what Sony was doing, they offered a method of uninstalling the software which requires installing ActiveX, visiting a website from the infected computer, clicking and downloading and waiting and dealing with a bunch of crap that people shouldn’t have to deal with. On top of all this, it’s since been revealed that the authors of XCP stole code from other open source projects. There are class action lawsuits against Sony popping up all over the place — some for infecting computers, others for the pain-in-the-ass process they’re providing to help clean machines, and a new one for the stealing of open source code.
When people ask me if I think DRM is a good idea, I always lean back in my chair (I’m usually sitting when people ask me this question) and tell them the story of DIVX. For those of you with short memories, let me remind you how DIVX worked. Created by Circuit City and billed as a “DRM friendly” replacement for DVD’s, DIVX used what is known as trusted computing. Owners of DIVX discs could place them in their DIVX players and watch movies, just like DVD’s. DIVX players had to be connected to a phone line, so that they could call back to that “trusted computer” (aka “the mothership”) and verify that you were supposed to be watching whatever you were watching. DIVX was hailed as the answer to all our problems. First run movies could be sold on DIVX format with a limit of three viewings — after the movie had been watched three times, the disc would no longer play. Movie rental sites could mail you disposable discs that would only play for a week and would then stop playing — no need to return them! So what happened? After one year, DIVX folded. Shortly afterwards the DIVX servers were shut down, leaving people were players that wouldn’t play anything and discs that wouldn’t work. That’s the main problem with “trusted computing” — I don’t trust them to remain in business!! Napster is currently using a similar business model. For a set fee, you can download all the music you want and listen to it all — as long as Napster’s online.
Anyway, back to Sony. What Sony seems to fail to realize, and I’m going to use bold to really stress my point here, is that DRM does not prevent piracy. A simple BitTorrent search this morning found two thirds of the albums from the list of Sony DRM-Protected albums. Most of those bands are not to my personal liking, but one of them is. Life of Agony’s album Broken Valley. How well did Sony’s XCP program work? The following is taken from the NFO (pronounced “info”) file included in the MP3 release of the album:
Band: Life of Agony
Album: Broken Valley
Today’s Date: 05-06-2005
Album Release Date: 06-14-2005
Yeah. RCN (the group who released the album) released an MP3 copy of the album over a month before the album was even available in stores. I’m going to go out on a limb and say anyone who A, likes Life of Agony and B, downloads music, probably got a copy of the album before it was ever available in stores. XCP did not prevent the piracy of this album. Let me say that again. XCP did not prevent the piract of this album. What it does do, however, is punish people who pay for music. I cannot convert my Life of Agony CD to MP3 format to listen to on my Sony-Brand MP3 player. At least I couldn’t, until I opened Google and searched for “defeat XCP”. Apparently Sony’s multi-million dollar DRM copy protection can be circumvented with a piece of opaque tape. Apparently, other programs such as Musicmatch Jukebox are also able to rip the XCP protected CDs. Nero can extract the tracks to WAV too, which can then be converted to MP3 format. In fact, by Googling for two minutes, I found half a dozen ways to circumvent their crappy protection.
Ultimately, Sony’s XCP DRM isn’t meant to keep people like you and I from copying their music cd’s. It’s geared to our parents, or people who buy music and can’t figure out how to rip it (or don’t care to). And guess what? Those people are going to die (sorry mom and dad). And when they go, they’re going to take the world of buying CD’s, especially copy protected ones, with them. Sony would do good to stop alienating the last dozen or so people on the planet who actually pay for music through retail outlets, because that format, medium, and even paradigm is on its last legs — and there’s about to face an entire generation of music fans who don’t trust them.