the air

Before everyone starts to argue that I am promoting music piracy, please know that I am in no way advocating the use of illegal tactics to obtain music. If you feel that this post advocates piracy, I strongly advise you to counter my arguments in the comments.

The RIAA is actively pursuing “pirates” who are illegally downloading the works of hundreds of artists through peer-to-peer networks such as Limewire, Kazaa, and the BitTorrent protocol. By no means is that an exhaustive list, however, you get the idea. However, I think the RIAA fails to understand why DRM, digital rights management, is a flawed concept that actually works against them. Their publicists and lawyers want you to think that DRM is a perfectly feasible model that is designed to give the user maximum flexibility. What they fail to acknowledge is the fact that DRM is actually a model that limits your flexibility to what the major corporations want.

We are all familiar with the fact that if you purchase your music on iTunes, you can only listen to your tracks using the iTunes software and/or the venerable iPod. However, what if your favorite music artist has an exclusive agreement with Apple and thus their songs are not available on any other service? Now let’s assume that most of your music has been purchased through Urge, a service by MTV and Microsoft that only supports the Zune portable media player. Such artists include both the Beatles and Elton John. In a way, this DRM infected world has now forced you to both abandon your Zune and purchase an iPod so that you may legally purchase and listen to your songs on an iPod while on the go. How is that offering the consumer more flexibility?

Now say if you engaged in music piracy and downloaded the songs off of some peer-to-peer network. Most likely, you will be able to select a player of your choice and listen to your “illegally” obtained music. The advantage here is the fact that you are not limited to any particular service or device. In fact, you are free to do what you want with the songs as you see fit. That is what I call flexibility for the consumer. Is that not what the purpose of every business should be? What I fail to understand is why the RIAA does not encourage companies to offer DRM in a format that allows total flexibility for the consumer and keeps them legal.

In essence, the RIAA needs to encourage companies to develop DRM technology that offers the same flexibility as illegally downloaded songs. What that means is that there should be a universal DRM format that every player will support. The competition will not be with the actual DRM technology but the hardware itself. Apple’s FairPlay DRM technology competes head on with Microsoft’s PlaysForSure and their new DRM scheme that only supports the Zune. By competing in the DRM technology market, companies themselves inadvertently are promoting illegal music transactions.

Before someone argues that the current state of DRM is a step in the right direction, realize that the current philosophy of DRM is simply flawed from the start. The RIAA is afraid of losing billions, yet they are not willing to take action to limit that loss by analyzing what is the root of the cause. Simply put, the main causes for piracy, in my opinion, are:

• The actual price of the product
• The ease of obtaining the product illegally
• The difficulty of actually using a legal version of the product
• The limitations of the legal product

I am certain that there are more reasons; however, I find that these four reasons constitute a significant portion of the roots of music piracy. Let’s face the music, pun intended, buying music is simply too expensive. Although you can buy tracks on iTunes for $0.99 each that can quickly add up if you purchase multiple tracks. Buying CD’s is not much cheaper either. Looking through the Sunday advertisements, I can see the prices range from $4.99 to almost $17.99 or even more for limited editions. You can buy albums on iTunes for the general price of $9.99. Occasionally, some albums are offered at lower rates, but they are still pricey compared to illegal means. As a college student, it is difficult to purchase the music I enjoy for low prices. The biggest advantage of iTunes is the fact that I can purchase those tracks I find interesting and not have to pay for the whole album that may be filled with crap music. Sure, $0.99 sounds like a fair price, but that can quickly add up if I decide to download 20 tracks. Heck, in one sitting, I can easily spend close to $50 and not even realize it until I see my credit card bill.

The cons of purchasing legal music versus downloading it illegally should be obvious by now. But what about the advantages of buying music legally? The only advantage is the fact that you will most likely not be sued by the RIAA. Do not give me the crap about supporting the artists because the major labels already have contracts with the artists and in fact, when you purchase the music, you are simply purchasing a license to listen to the music. What that means is that if the labels wanted, they can revoke or cancel the license at any time and not owe you a penny. Your money does not directly support the artist. In fact, your money pretty much pays for the extravagant marketing expenses and the lucrative executive salaries of the major music labels. But isn’t that a good thing? That depends on your point of view. I think that artists are not losing any money because their salaries are not directly proportional to sales. Most artists receive base compensation PLUS benefits associated to the sales. Rumor has it that most artists do not receive additional royalties from the sales of digital music tracks. Hence, if that rumor is true, then most artists are receiving royalties from CD sales. Therefore, if you are not purchasing CD’s and only buying legal digital music tracks, then you are also guilty of “hurting” the artist.

There is no easy solution to this problem. Companies will continue to waste millions of dollars promoting a technology that is encouraging rampant piracy. Stealing music simply makes sense because it gives you the flexibility to do what you want with the music without being forced to “buy” crap you don’t need/want.

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