This quote from MPAA & RIAA lawyer Steven J Metalitz is why I get so worked up about DRM systems:
We reject the view, that copyright owners and their licensees are required to provide consumers with perpetual access to creative works. No other product or service providers are held to such lofty standards. No one expects computers or other electronics devices to work properly in perpetuity, and there is no reason that any particular mode of distributing copyrighted works should be required to do so.
To recognize the proposed exemption would surely discourage any content provider from entering the marketplace for online distribution… unless it was committed to do so… forever. This would not be good for consumers, who would find a marketplace with less innovation and fewer choices and options.
The quote is taken from a discussion about whether content providers who coat their wares with DRM should be required by law to ensure that purchased media continues to work for perpetuity. Their argument of course is that no piece of machinery can be expected to work forever, and so bully to the customer who purchased DRM’d music or video. However, with all of the major online music retailers selling DRM-free Mp3s, many honest people (read: people who didn’t say fuck it to DRM and pirate all of their music – the very people that allowed big content to continue to survive in the digital era) are left with a significant amount of media that cannot be unlocked due to anti-circumvention laws, and must now be replaced as the old DRM servers are slowly taken offline.
Even after all of this time, the big content owners still don’t understand the digital age. Back in the era of physical media, when formats changed, customers had to purchase their existing media in the new format if they wanted to be able to continue to use it. Because physical media costs money to research, manufacture, and distribute, this makes sense – the customer was simply paying the cost of the record companies developing and manufacturing a better sounding medium. However, where digital music is concerned, none of these costs exist. There was no research to develop Mp3, because it is ready to be licensed. There were no manufacturing costs, besides the few CPU cycles that it took to re-encode the existing media. Likewise, distribution is essentially free, because in most cases, it is third-party retailers who host and sell the content, not the rights holders themselves, and it costs exactly $0 to make a digital copy of a song file. So what exactly are consumers paying for when re-purchasing their previously DRM’d content? The luxury of not being limited in where and how they can use their purchased content? Oh thank you Mr. Rights Holder, thank you! thank you! thank you!
You know how this issue should be handled? Every song that was sold with DRM is now sold without, right? Then a tool should be written and distributed that allows customers to strip the DRM from every file in their collection. For free.
Edit: Comment from Slashdot:
Ah, but a chair only has a finite lifespan. So if it falls apart after 3 years of normal use I would probably not be responsible for fixing it. Although you may tell all your friends that I make crappy chairs. On the other hand YOU can buy a screwdriver at any hardware (or most dollar stores even) to fix the chair.
The real issue is that I have persuaded congress to make it illegal for you to buy the screwdrivers that fix the chairs I sell. And now I am saying that I should not be expected to keep any of the screwdrivers around either. And even if no one has the right tools to fix the chair YOU still can’t build one.
