Canadian response to the CRIA (Canadian version of RIAA)
What does a Linux blog have to do with music, you ask? Our ability to purchase content of all kinds and then use it as we see fit once we've bought it is rapidly under attack world-wide. People happily purchase devices and software that heavily play into the movie and music industries' demands for Digital Rights Management, so we can be prevented from playing purchased digital content on a variety of devices or making backups for our own use. The Linux angle is this. One reason that multimedia is a difficult thing to set up in Linux is that a lot of this DRM is either not implemented in the first place, making it possible to play some things illegally by circumventing the DRM and making other things impossible to play), or that in open source, it would be very easy for individuals to simply rip out the DRM portion of the code even if it was otherwise in place. Add patent issues and the DMCA and it all gets suffocating pretty fast.
And no, I'm not just being chicken little. Subscribe to the EFF newsletter for a while and, well, you might get a bit depressed at how much time US lawmakers in particular spend trying to give Hollywood and the music industry unfettered control over the use of content we paid good money for in the first place. Unfortunately, this is not just a US movement. For every success in the US, the same industries try the same in other countries, trying to make them little content-handling clones. Fortunately, at least in one country, members of these very industries are starting to stand up and say that this is all patently (pun intended) ridiculous. In Canada, the CMCC (Canadian Music Creators Coalition) has been formed by big name musicians to object the attempt to start the same mass lawsuits in Canada as the RIAA has done in the US.
With mottos like "Suing our fans is destructive and hypocritical," groups and artists like the Barenaked Ladies, Avril Lavigne, Sum 41, and more are making a statement that I sincerely hope that US musicians and others around the world will take up as well. Let's not take this the wrong way ... I think downloading music for free through file sharing software, when that music was not put there by the artists/label, is theft, it would be hypocritical of me not to say so given that I'm a content creator and don't want people passing around pirated PDF copies of my books (which does happen, even though I have little things like a mortgage to pay). However, I also think that the music and movie industries have consistently missed out on what should have been an early approach to selling content online that would have prevented such large networks from forming, IMO. Trying to kill the technology instead of embracing it just shoots them in the foot as it causes people to care less and less about such thefts.
The book industry is watching, trying to decide how to handle things with their own content. There has to be a happy medium somewhere. Preferably something that doesn't lead to things like the Sony rootkit fiasco.
Anyway, this is a bit rambling, I hope it makes sense. Kudos to the CMCC for standing up and saying that fair use is a right that should be supported, not stripped away by increasingly draconian DRM and laws. All of this mega-corp insanity has to stop somewhere.
Comments (2) . Tagged: eff cmcc linux drm drm linux dmca linux cria linux riaa riaa . Category: Publishing News Commentary Technology Linux
Comments (2)
Well, I bought the latest album from Nickelback. I kinda like their music, and I am by no means an audiophile. I only buy a few cd's a month if I hear a good song or something, but when I got this thing home I tried to load it onto my Axim handheld. I don't have a seperate dedicated mp3 player, I mean it's bad enough I can't find a phone and a good handheld together, and one more device isn't something I want to haul around anyways. So I pop the disc in and I get this crap on the screen about a loader to install the music to my hard drive for backup purposes, and that it would content protect it. I think to myself, this is going to suck if I want to play it under Fedora while I'm working. And it did suck. There was no provision for the installer to run under linux. When I put the disc in, it got spit back out. Needless to say I was pretty upset. So then I thought that I might still be able to transfer the device to my Axim. No, that wouldn't work either. So I checked out all he info in their built in loader/installer they had on the disc and I found a feedback section. Great, I can report back at how shitty their disc is. So before I did that, I fired up Azureus and looked for a torrent of that album. Search time: 3.4 seconds. Download time: 9 minutes. Was this the right thing to do: No. Was preventing me from loading my music on my Axim or being able to play the cd in Linux: No. So I filled in the feedback on their disc and there was a specific question about whether I download music. I honestly answered that occasionally I do, but being an adult I happily purchase my cd's. I also went on to state that since their CD prevented me from using it the way I wanted with my devices, that I downloaded their album anyways, and that I would be returning the cd to the store. I got the impression that alot of the issues with this particular technology they are using is also incompatible with the iPod. There were many questions on that as well. I had a bit of trouble returning the cd to the store. I of course have learned a few things from my wife on returning items and I eventually got my money back on an opened item. I guess I should have looked at the CD a little closer to see that it would play on my stuff, because on the back it does say that it only works on Windows2000/XP and you need WMP 9+. It also said that it might not work on iPods. Yea, well I don't give a rats ass. A music CD should play on anything. Will I look next time I decide I might purchase a cd? Of course. Will I download the albums that won't work rather than purchase them: Definately. I think this is the wrong approach to DRM.
Closed source was developed for a closed technological society we never realised we had and opensource is definitely a threat to that society, hence the perceived need for "ist verboten - straight to jail laws" as a means of protecting the status quo. All we can do is to make our views known and hope for some sensible outcomes despite the barrage of complaints our elected representatives are subjected to in furtherance of so-called piracy/theft/copying industry keeps telling them is rampant and is hurting them. I sent emails to 3 of our European MP's arguing against software patent laws, however, I never recieved a single acknowledgement from any of them. It would have been nice to have at least got one that said my comments were noted. Our status is low, Bill Gates gets to weild influence in G8, neither Linus Torvalds nor the countries dissenting from software patents do not get a look in.