5 Biggest Music DRM Debacles of All Time
Oct 31st in Web Roundups by Adam BrownThank God for DRM. Without it, the internet would be a cesspool of illegally pirated music, movies and software. Oh, wait, the internet totally is that, because DRM is, quite possibly, the most pointless innovation of the digital age. Companies spend millions of dollars each year coming up with new ways to protect their online content just to see some fifteen year old kid figure out how to circumvent it. Repeat as needed.
But DRM isn't just an exercise in futility. When you absolutely, positively, must anger every customer you have, few weapons are better than DRM. Take these shenanigans, for example...
5. RealNetworks Harmony Starts A Firmware War
RealNetworks made waves in July, 2004 when they announced that they had finally freed iPod users from the chains that bound them to the iTunes Music Store. Their new encoding technology, Harmony, would mimic Apple's Fairplay system, allowing RealRhapsody music store users to purchase songs that would work on the iPod. To entice customers to make the switch, Rhapsody immediately launched a three week long 49 cent song sale.
As revolutionary as this all sounded, there were a couple things RealNetworks failed to take into account. First, after the initial sale was over, people were mostly just "free" to pay 99 cents per song at a different store. That's freedom like being transferred from county jail to state prison is freedom. Second, Apple created the Fairplay technology, which meant they were probably capable of creating a way to stop RealNetworks from exploiting it. Upon hearing about Harmony, Apple issued this doom and gloom laden statement...
"We strongly caution Real and their customers that when we update our iPod software from time to time it is highly likely that Real's Harmony technology will cease to work with current and future iPods."And sure enough, a few months later a firmware update issued by Apple effectively stopped any Harmony encoded songs from playing on the iPod. RealNetworks promised to rework Harmony so it once again would work on the iPod, which would have no doubt led to a new firmware update to break it again. Realizing that they were basically promising their users that their songs would, like, totally sometimes work on an iPod (except when they didn't) RealNetworks eventually abandoned Harmony.
4. RealNetworks Releases Incredibly Useless DVD Copy Software, Is Promptly Sued
RealNetworks...these crazy kids just never learn. Apparently, angering the largest digital music store on the planet was not sufficient. A couple of years after the Harmony fiasco, RealNetworks returned with RealDVD, drawing the ire of pretty much all of Hollywood. The program, at a cost of $49, did the unthinkable...it made copies of DVD's. Eureka! Finally, a damn near fifty dollar replacement for all of those absolutely free programs that do the exact same thing, except much more effectively.
As if the thought of actually paying for DVD copying software isn't harrowing enough, RealDVD took the extra step of adding a delightful layer of DRM protection to your newly pirated disc which restricts you to viewing it only on the computer it was copied on. Despite this safeguard, the movie studios sued, citing concerns over their own copy protections programs being compromised. So far, RealNetworks has yet to be sued for blatant stupidity and horrid decision making, but give it time.
3. Sony Strikes Out On Its Own, Eventually Strikes Out Altogether
As copy protected digital music began to take hold, there were two formats that everyone used: Apple used Fairplay and everyone else used Window's PlaysForSure. Why just the two? Because in the world of digital music players, it's iPod against the world. The big selling point other devices have is that, unlike the iPod, you can use their digital players at almost any store except iTunes.
It was into this sea of relative normalcy that Sony dove headfirst with their proprietary ATRAC (Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding). Not content to just take on the iPod in the digital player market, Sony decided to take on everybody, producing a digital player that was only compatible with their Sony Connect music store. Unfortunately, neither the store or Sony's new line of digital music players were compatible with consumers' desire to spend money.
By late 2007, the Connect store's market share was less than Itunes, EMusic, Napster and even Urge. Urge! That's not a good sign. By March of the following year, the Connect store was closed. To their credit, Sony kept functionality for ATRAC encoded songs in place through its older digital music players and through SonicStage. Not every now-defunct-digital-music-store customer would be so lucky.
2. MSN Music Closes, Makes A Liar Of PlayForSure
It was no real shock when MSN decided to close its MSN Music store in 2006. When it was launched, the hope was that it would prove to be a viable competitor to the digital music giant that is iTunes. That never came to pass, and when they opened the Zune Marketplace, Microsoft found themselves with one more digital music store than they needed.
Fast forward to April, 2008. Unsuspecting former MSN Music customers received an email informing them that, as of August 31st, 2008, MSN would no longer be providing license keys for songs purchased from MSN Music. What this meant was that, prior to that date, users would have to decide not only what five computers to authorize their purchased tracks to play on, but also what operating system. With a change in operating system (XP to Vista for example) comes a need to update your song licenses. If those licenses are no longer available, those songs that you purchased will no longer work. If you try to transfer your song purchases to a new computer and the licenses are no longer available, the songs will not work. In short, anyone that happened to spend money at the MSN Music store (and I can't imagine who the hell that would have been) will see their investment go down in flames as soon as they buy a new computer. PlaysForWhatnow?
1. Sony BMG Extended Copy Protection (XCP)
With all of the debate that surrounds digital music and DRM, there is still one format that remains, for the most part, completely DRM free...the compact disc. In 2005, Sony BMG hoped to change this. By secretly loading malware to any computer that played their CDs. Nice!
Almost immediately upon releasing CD's with XCP software, Sony BMG was met with waves of controversy. For starters, the program itself secretly loaded to the user's computer before the End User License Agreement even appeared on the screen. Not that the EULA actually mentioned the software, but if it did, by then it was too late to uninstall the program. Not that you could actually, you know, remove the software. It included files that were hidden and thus impossible for the average user to remove.
Things only got worse when Sony BMG released a "removal tool" for the controversial program. To get the removal tool, users had to provide a valid email address which Sony basically stated would be sold to various third parties. The removal tool also required downloading an Active X control that opened up various security holes in a user's computer which could be exploited by a number of worms and trojans. All of this so people wouldn't make illicit copies of the new Our Lady Peace album. You know, among others, but still, Our Lady Peace?
Predictably, the surreptitious software led to lawsuits being filed in Texas, California and New York. Within weeks, Sony BMG issued a recall on all titles that included the XCP software and set up a website to provide details on how customers could exchange XCP discs for non-copy protected discs. But not before countless people had endured the hassle of having to uninstall XCP from their computer. Those who didn't hold down the space bar when they inserted the CD or hear about the scotch tape trick, anyway.
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User Comments
( ADD YOURS )Eric Shafer October 31st
Usually I’m not a fan of these, but this article is hilarious.
( )J Type October 31st
I hate the fact that so many companies somehow make you feel like a criminal, by limiting every single thing that you try and do.
In addition to the main article: I recently upgraded my phone, getting a new Sony Ericsson handset, on which are 4 new ‘games’. Bearing in mind that this handset is worth over £300 (if you buy it without a sim card, I got it free with my contract), these 4 ‘games’ turned out to be 4 demos, not full games. And not just demos (ie. a single level of gameplay), but time-restricted demos, that can only be played 5 times before they are locked until purchased. One of these time-restricted, play-restricted, level-restricted game demos, happened to be tetris. So I thought to myself, “hmm, I wonder what tetris will be like on a mobile phone?”… I managed to place about 10 of the tetris bricks, before the game informed me that the demo was in fact finished and that I should purchase the game, should I want to play any more of it.
Come on! Tetris!? So am I supposed to imagine that the profits from the game sales would go towards the lengthy, complex programming, scripting, QA, development, sound design and localisation involved in producing a spin-off tetris game? Hmm…
I don’t really care about the games on my mobile phone; that’s not the reason I own one and it’s not a feature that particularly concerns me. What does concern me however, is that even after showing over 4 years of loyalty to my mobile phone network and, in fact, to Sony Ericsson themselves, I have every feature and experience offered with my new phone restricted in one way or another; squeezing every last penny out of me just to be able to use the features that I already paid(pay) for.
Sorry for that rant, I just felt that it was a good a place as any to post it..
( )Diesel October 31st
What a hilarious article. Seriously well done. I can’t believe the amount of effort these companies go to to basically have it thrown back in their faces via lawsuits etc.
The funniest thing? If they didn’t do any of this LOCKED IN BS then they wouldn’t have been sued, and so they would have had more money and loyalty today! hahahaha
( )L1 November 1st
hmm, great article, but im pretty sure we are on a TUTORIAL site and not a random music BLOG.
I would like to see more tutorials as a pose to these random articles, they seem like filler to me,
( )Martin Harp November 1st
I 2nd L1’s comment. BUT… this was an interesting read.
a testament to my belief that EVERYTHING should be free. money sucks.
( )Eric Shafer November 1st
L1, Martin Harp: Every Wednesday is a ‘web roundup’ post, so if it seems like there’s a lot of them, that’s why. It’s just how AudioTUTS decided to handle their post schedule.
( )Andy November 1st
I will never ever buy any music from iTunes or any other trash mp3 crap websites with stupid DRM policies. NEVER! I really prefer to buy CDs instead. Yes, I BUY them. I mean, it’s completely nonsense to listen to music on your PC, with cheap plastic loudspeakers connected to a cheap soundcard, like most people do.
The article is really funny, by the way.
( )Joel Falconer November 1st
Andy: many CDs are not free of DRM, unfortunately!
( )MaestroRage November 1st
I am a firm believer in a DRM free universe! The damn things really do nothing for anybody. Though a little off topic i’m sure many people here are aware of EA’s recent screw up with their dictator like DRM terms for Spore.
My first check on any mp3 player or firmware is DRM. Does it have it? I made the horrible mistake of buying a Sony player with that atrocious ATRAC garbage. Never again.
( )Andy November 1st
Hey Joel,
( )Do you mean DRM or copy protection. As far as I’m aware of that’s not exactly the same, but I may be wrong. Last week I got a mail from my internet provider. They told me that I’m able to download the latest movies and music now. I checked it out and took a look on what I can do with those downloaded films and tracks. Well, to make it short, I’m not allowed to do anything with it. I’m not allowed make a copy on DVD / CD, I can’t transfer it to another PC. Great! Watching a film sitting on my office chair at my desktop.
All that DRM and copy protection is bullshit, especially for those who don’t copy CDs illegally.
Andy November 1st
Oh, the most important reason for me to buy music is that I don’t like this compressed mp3 format. When you do an A-B comparison, you really can hear differences.
( )John Dufus November 2nd
Wow dude, no doubt you picked some real good ones.
Jiff
( )http://www.anonymity.cz.tc
jack November 2nd
Hilariously written, great job
( )Travis T November 2nd
You make it sound like Our Lady Peace is a terrible group…
(Which, oddly enough, my copy of Healthy in Paranoid Times did not come with Sony’s fun lovin’ DRM.)
( )gigantor November 2nd
I buy vinyl only now. I love collecting it. A lot more vinyl releases are including digital downloads and sometimes a cd copy of the album with it.
( )Julian Bond November 2nd
“5 Biggest Music DRM Debacles of All Time”. What, Fairplay not included? Or was that a success?
( )Joel Falconer November 2nd
Andy: Copy protection is basically a form of DRM, depending on your definition I suppose! They all fall under the same banner, though: restricting what you can do, legally and fairly, with your purchases.
DRM is simply one of the suckiest “technologies” around—I love my Apple TV, it lets me watch my shows and listen to tunes from my lounge on a half-decent HDTV, and I love the ability to grab a show or movie from the iTunes Store straight from the couch and watch it in minutes—but until they remove DRM, it’s always gonna be ripped shows for me. This crap ruins everything, and it punishes the consumer while pirates enjoy a less restricted, more capable version of the same thing. Craziness! Where is the logic?
( )Razor512 November 2nd
DRM only encourages piracy
a pirate copy of music or a game has no drm crap on it so the only people who notice the drm and have to suffer with it are the people who buy the product
a pirate wont pay for the game no matter what, and DRM will only push legit customers to pirate in order to avoid the DRM.
( )Indian Stallion November 2nd
I buy all my music from Amazon’s MP3 store. It’s all DRM-free.
( )We7Steve November 2nd
Restricting consumers in any respect has never made sense. The only real way to address piracy is to offer people a realistic alternative which is easier and safer to use – cue ad-funded services like We7.
Steve Purdham
( )CEO – We7
http://www.we7.com
ntopics November 3rd
Record companies make more money on the Internet
than they do at stores. Otherwise, there would be
no Internet music business.
thanks from tony
( )Khro November 3rd
Hilariously written!
About the first place, how can you forget the quote of Sony BMG’s global digital business division President Thomas Hesse – “Most people, I think, don’t even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?”
( )Chris November 3rd
“Most people, I think, don’t even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?”
Wow. That’s like saying, “Most people in the poorest regions of the world don’t know what AIDS is, so why should they care about it?”
As an interesting aside: A year and a half ago, I posted a video on youtube of a video game. The music i put with the video was Glenn Frey – The Heat Is On. The video was only about a minute long, so the song faded out, and really had nothing to do with the video, it was just a funny song to put with it. A few months ago, Universal Music Group filed a copyright claim on my video and put ads on it. Was my video harming sales of Glenn Frey albums? I hardly think so. Whats next? Copyright claims on videos of parties where you can hear a song playing in the background?
( )sceptre0 November 4th
How about the fact that Microsoft’s own Plays for Sure technology does not even work on the Zune. Only songs purchased in the Zune Marketplace can be played on the Zune.
( )Adam November 4th
That is a great article, I enjoyed reading it, thanks TUTs =D
( )Adam November 6th
I feel compelled to post a comment now because the guy above me has the same name as me. I, for the record, did not leave a comment saying how much I enjoyed reading my own article. It is pure coincidence. And also, thanks Adam.
( )Music November 8th
the article forgot all of itunes — oh yea that needs more time to be a full debacle. Don’t think it will – 100s of millions of folks paying for DRM that only works on one device, just wait. The mother of DRM debacles in the making.
( )