The Middlebury Campus

Issue date: 4/18/07 Section: Features

We grew up with the story of Napster. And most of us at one point used Kazaa. When Kazaa fell several options sprouted up, including Limewire, Soulseek and Bittorrent. This rather long list of software goes to show the popularity of what the music industry hates about technology - the ease with which music can be illegally downloaded. What has the industry done to try and curb music piracy, aside from creating a super tacky and annoying anti-piracy commercial? They've introduced Digital Rights Management.

Digital Rights Management, or DRM, was meant to curb the immense amount of illegally downloaded music that started with the advent of high-speed Internet connections and tech-savvy teenagers.

To prevent piracy, the music industry created codes that put certain restrictions on the music that users download from legal services, such as iTunes and Napster. In iTunes, for example, when a user purchases a song for 99 cents, they are given the rights to "authorize" the song to play on up to 5 computers, put it on authorized iPods, and burn the song onto as many CDs as they like.

There are several inherent issues with DRM, however, one of them being that it is ridiculously easy to circumvent most restrictions that are imposed. Never mind the fact that hackers will always be able to reverse-engineer restrictions placed on music, there are legal ways to do the same thing, making DRM restrictions more of an annoyance than a serious protective measure. To share a song purchased from iTunes, for example, all you have to do is burn the song to a CD-R, put it in a friend's computer, copy the music to your friend's computer, and, POOF, no more DRM restrictions.

The second main issue with DRM usage by the music industry is that it is punishment for the people who are buying music legally. It's no secret downloading a song or an album illegally is easy. So easy, in fact, that paying for music tends not to make sense. Why pay 99 cents for a song that is restricted when it would be just as easy to get it for free? DRM, then, hurts those that want to follow the law by making purchased music restricted when free, easily accessible music isn't. Shouldn't the music industry make it as easy as possible for those that want to buy music legally to do so?

DRM is retrograde on all counts. It's not effective and it is an added annoyance to those who purchase musical legally. At least one of the four big record labels, EMI, has gotten its head out of the sand and made a deal with Apple to sell DRM free music on iTunes.

The music industry had no issue with previous changes in the distribution of music (ie, cassettes to CDs), but digital reproduction seems to have made them lose their senses. Digital music is here to stay, and record companies need to adapt. If not, they won't see any change in the number of pirated songs because suing teenage girls for millions isn't really the best way to get people to feel sorry for you.

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