Dave Matthews Band Gives Instructions on Beating Music DRM
The CD version of Stand Up, the release from the Dave Matthews Band, contains copy control technology that is ostensibly designed to limit or prevent copying. The technology doesn’t do a particularly good job at stopping copying, however, though it is very good at annoying consumers. Artists don’t appear to be fans either. The Dave Matthews Band has posted instructions on their website for how to work around the technology to copy the songs on the CD for playback on an iPod.
INFORMATION REGARDING DOWNLOADING STAND UP SONGS TO IPODS
Please follow the instructions below in order to move your content into iTunes and onto an iPod:If you have a Mac computer you can copy the songs using your iTunes Player as you would normally do.
If you have a PC place the CD into your computer and allow the CD to automatically start. If the CD does not automatically start, open your Windows Explorer, locate the drive letter for your CD drive and double-click on the LaunchCD.exe file located on your CD.
Once the CD has been burned, place the copied CD back into your computer and open iTunes. iTunes can now rip the songs as you would a normal CD.
Please note an easier and more acceptable solution requires cooperation from Apple, who we have already reached out to in hopes of addressing this issue. To help speed this effort, we ask that you use the following link to contact Apple and ask them to provide a solution that would easily allow you to move content from protected CDs into iTunes or onto your iPod rather than having to go through the additional steps above.
For Macintosh users such as myself, there is nothing additional to do, since the copy-control technology does not work on a Mac. For Windows users, there is no need to hack the program since making several permitted copies using different programs eventually leads to the songs ending up on your iPod. I’m not sure about Linux users, though I am guessing that the copy control doesn’t work on their systems either.
The Dave Matthews Band posting and its label’s use of copy-control technology raises several issues. The web instructions also highlight the continuing divide between the labels and artists (see the iTunes related reaction of Japanese artists to Sony Records for another example).
I’d like to focus on two other issues here though. First, the private copying implications. The Dave Matthews Band may support their fans copying their music onto iPods, but Canadian law still does not. Canadians that follow the band’s instructions appear to infringe Canadian law. Moreover, it is worth noting the recent remarks of RIAA CEO Mitch Bainwol. In a speech to NARM, Bainwol commented that the RIAA has “no objection to personal use burning”. This raises the question of why Canadians are stuck paying millions for the private copying levy, when the levy doesn’t cover the copying they typically engage in, the artists have only received a fraction of the money collected, and the industry itself does not object to the copying (and in the U.S. at least does not expect any additional compensation for such copying).
Moreover, consider these instructions within the context of Bill C-60 and its anti-circumvention provision. The provision applies to a “technological measure,” which is defined as “any technology, device or component that, in the ordinary course of its operation, restricts the doing . . .of any act” that would constitute an infringement of several different Copyright Act provisions. Section 34.02 of Bill C-60 provides copyright owners with a basket of rights against anyone who “circumvents, removes, or renders ineffective a technological measure” for the purpose of copyright infringement.
This brings us to the question of these provisions and copy control technology. First, leaving aside the private copying issue, consumers that follow the Dave Matthews Band instructions would not appear to run afoul of this particular provision since they are not circumventing anything. Mac users are proceeding as usual, while Windows users are using the functionality built into the copy control mechanism to make their desired copies.
Second (and more interestingly), does the copy control technology even qualify as a technological measure under Bill C-60? If it does, should it? I don’t think we have a clear answer here. Other jurisdictions focus on the effectiveness of the technological measure. Given the Dave Matthews Band instructions, it is hard to see how these measures are effective. In Canada, however, the bill speaks of “ordinary use.” The copy-control may be advertised as being ordinarily used to control copying, even if it does nothing of the sort. It should not be enough to simply characterize a technology as a technological measure and immediately enjoy legal protections. The failure to include an effectiveness standard in Bill C-60 is yet one more reason why Canadians should stand up to the proposed copyright reform package.
[thanks to shazari and michael geist via cc]
Andrew Gowers Responds to Andy Burnham’s Statement on Copyright Extension
Glyn: “Andrew Gowers has written a response in the Financial Times to Andy Burnham, Britain’s secretary of state for Culture, Media and Sport statement in favour of copyright extension. Mr Gowers was appointed by the UK goverment two years ago to do a year long review listening to all the evidence on copyright extension amongst other things, his final report said dont do it, it makes no sense. His comment on Burnham’s speech: ‘As political speeches go, this is pretty silly. A moral case? You might just as well say sportspeople have a moral case to a pension at 30.’”
Gowers is the expert who conducted the thoroughgoing analysis of the costs of extending copyright. Burnham is the politician who said that he didn’t care if the facts said that longer copyright on sound recordings was bad for Britain — he would extend copyright because of the “moral case.”
All the respectable research shows that copyright extension has high costs to the public and negligible benefits for the creative community.Consumers find themselves paying more for old works or unable to access “orphan works” where copyright ownership is unclear. Small businesses that play recorded music such as hairdressing salons and local radio stations face a hidden extra “tax” in the form of higher music-licence fees. Do they really need this at this time?
Mr Burnham will no doubt find such arguments uncool. But even on his terms, the case for extension does not work. Twenty years’ extra earning power in 50 years’ time does nothing to put more money in the pockets of struggling performers now: two thirds of lifetime income from an average compact disc comes in the first six years after release.
And it will not alter the incentives for creation one jot. As Dave Rowntree, Blur’s drummer, told my review: “I have never heard of a single band deciding not to record a song because it will fall out of copyright in only 50 years. The idea is laughable.”
There’s lots more — and every word of it dripping with learned, factual rebuttals of errant nonsense.
[via cory doctorow]
RIAA v Joel Tenenbaum: Million Dollar Lawsuit For Seven Downloaded Songs
Joel Tenenbaum was one of thousands, perhaps millions of teenagers. When he was 17, he allegedly downloaded seven songs from the Internet using a peer-to-peer file sharing program called Kazaa [Both parties appear to agree this is a downloading case, not (solely) an uploading case like many of the others]. Now, 10 years later, he is being sued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), along with Capital Records and Sony BMG. What does the RIAA want from Mr. Tenenbaum? $1 million.
But before we begin to think about the legal details and who is right or wrong, let’s think about why this is a problem. For starters, the current architecture of the Internet does not technically support copyright. It is different from controlled virtual environments such as Second Life, in which any object made by someone will forever contain the “watermark” of the maker. Items or programs in Second Life can be designated at birth whether or not they will be copyable or transferable.
That does not mean copyright has no meaning on the Web– only that the architecture of the Web makes it easy to exchange copyrighted material to a scale that cannot compare to what could happen in the physical world.
Is the Architecture of the Net Creating Problems?
These copyright issues are taking place because the creators of the Internet did not think like proprietary networks. As explained in Chapter 2, the people who designed the Internet were primarily academic researchers and corporate engineers who “had little concern for controlling the network or its users’ behavior.” When they first made the Internet, they probably had no idea that someone (actually two someones) would come along and invent a peer-to-peer file sharing program.
If the Internet were designed by the RIAA, they probably would have made it so that music would not be able to be shared by multiple people. We can make this assumption because one of the attempts made by the music industry has been to impose digital rights management, or DRM, on their products. DRM gives the media maker the authority to control what can and cannot be done with a song. For instance, a music file can be programmed so that it can only be played a certain number of times, or only on certain devices. While DRMs are increasingly fading, they still have a strong presence in much of the content available on online music stores like iTunes.
So what does that mean for an organization like the RIAA? It could continue its current mission of hunting down music downloaders/uploaders and suing them, hoping in the long run that this will discourage people from doing so. Or, it could look for an entirely different business model that still brings in revenues regardless of Internet file sharing. Or… it could try to change the Internet to one that is more controlled by requiring Internet service providers to impose filters.
That last scenario is something that concerns people like Charles Nesson, Harvard Law School professor and Mr. Tenenbaum’s legal representative. According to Prof. Nesson, the RIAA’s lawsuit against Mr. Tenenbaum is more about working to change the infrastructure to make control of content easier.
In the defense of the counterclaim he argues:
They do this, not for the purpose of recovering compensation for actual damage caused by Joel’s individual action, nor for the primary purpose of deterring him from further copyright infringement, but for the ulterior purpose of creating an urban legend so frightening to children using computers, and so frightening to parents and teachers of students using computers, that they will somehow reverse the tide of the digital future.
That is something we should think about. Will the Internet continue to run on the open infrastructure that it currently is? Do we, as users, have any say in what happens to it?
[via futureoftheinternet]
