For my topic I am going to present the case againt the growing norm of putting Digital Rights Managment on media, in particular, music. Music has a long history of problems arising from copyrights and usage, this stems from the fact that there are only 12 chords in western music, which creates a situation where copying is inevitable. Copyrights were established in the music industry to protect artists from unfair treatment, however, in today's musical society where it seems everybody and their brother has a band writing songs, the ability to write truly original music is almost non-existant as all possible combinations are being used in some way, shape, or form. The security functions that have been established in a growing digital community to serve similar functions as copyrights in these new arenas have become and incredibly tiresome and unnecessary annoyance. Digital Rights Management is particularly to blame, with it's insistance on only allowing the artists, record labels, and distributors to use songs in other entertainment mediums.
The common argument is that the DRM provisions are discouraging pirating. But figures can be found (which I will dig up) that show that DRM is actually increasing the amount of pirated downloads. In the videogame medium, games with little to no DRM have consistently shown massive sales and minimal pirates while games with large amounts of DRM have sold very poorly with massive amounts of pirates. Music is no different. There are statistics supporting this comparison which I will find and use.
I'm having difficulty deciding on the more broad copyright issue or the more specific DRM one, but I will no doubt end up addressing both.
Pros (for no DRM):
- decrease in pirating
- grass roots publicity
- increase sales
Cons:
- less security for artists
- no defense against would-be pirates
AJ,
ReplyDeleteWow, this sounds interesting (it's a topic I don't know all that much about, so I'm interested in learning more through your essay). I just read an article this morning about how Apple is using DRM on a lot of its downloads, ensuring a one-time use of them on the new Ipad format--so that might be something you want to consider as well. What really interested me, however, was what (if anything) in your mind constitutes actual copyright violation. As you point out, riffs from one song are often reminiscent of an earlier tune; and certainly, with the advent of hip hop style sampling, it would seem that 'fair use' has a pretty broad interpretation. By protecting copyright, couldn't DRM actually preserve revenue streams for artists--and thus ensure the perpetuation of their art (see Marcus' post above--perhaps you guys should get together and toss some ideas around).
Anyway, a good topic--and one I'm interested in reading more about.