DRM-protected Content

What’s the value of a bit? It seems that going after folks who have traded songs or movies online is a huge expenditure of effort and money. Is DRM-protected content the way to go? If you don’t agree, propose another method for the distribution of digital multimedia so that content creators can still be compensated.


In chapter 6 of Blow to Bits, bits are valued pretty highly. In trying to place a dollar value on them, the RIAA decided $750 was the cost of one song downloaded illegally. I think the main point of those examples was that a bit does not have one set value, it depends on how it was obtained (one song legally only costs about dollar), who it harms, and other factors. All the information stored on a computer and transfered online is in the form of bits, so they do carry a large importance. Because most of our information and media is now online in the form of bits, it makes sense that such money and effort goes in to trying to keep these bits from spreading illegally without compensation. If the majority of people decide to steal music, record companies and artists would lose tremendously. Something has to be done, which is why individuals who have downloaded music from Napster, or suspected of it get law suits filed against them. Someone needs to be the example (Ableson et al. includes stories of people who have never owned computers getting investigated for illegally obtaining music from "their" computers).


I think, from the limited knowledge I have on the subject, that  DRM-protected media is more harm than it's worth. It seems ridiculous to buy a CD that is DRM protected, bring it home, and not be able to download it to your personal MP3 player because of the encryption on it. Many cars don't have CD players anymore, and just have an input jack for your MP3. The wikipedia article on DRM said that the Walmart online music store sold DRM protected music that was encrypted only to play on certain MP3 devices. If I buy anything, even if it's less than a dollar, I expect to be able to use it. 


I think one part of a better alternative would be education. Yes, for downloading music illegally online from sites like limewire, it's relatively known that this is illegal, but as for burning a CD for a friend, a surprising amount of people don't know that that's illegal. I was observing an elementary school classroom this summer and the computer resource teacher came into the class and asked who thought that burning a CD for someone else was wrong. The majority of the class believed it wasn't. I think that's the main problem. When people don't know it's wrong, they hesitate a lot less to actually do it. My neighbors back home used to rent videos from Blockbuster and use their VCR to make their own copies, thus paying only $4 for a movie most everyone else paid $15-$20 to own. My parents and others in the neighborhood knew about it and would always talk about how they were stealing and how that was wrong. Even though one family used technology to get out of paying full price, the majority of the neighborhood with the same technology wouldn't even consider using it for that purpose. There are always going to be people who are okay with stealing (whether from an actual store or movies online, many of which break DRM protected content to do it anyways), but I'd like to believe if everyone knew it was wrong, the vast majority of people would restrain and pay up. When buying songs online, I think it's still smart to have some sort of protection, like with iTunes you can't have your bought songs on more than three computers (or something like that) and when you plug in a new iPod to your computer, so all your old songs are replaced. I imagine it would be easy to reenter your own music if you own copies, but still these are two hurdles that would keep the "average joe" from giving numerous friends copies of songs or getting copies from others. The "non average joes" would probably be determined enough to find ways around DRM protected media anyway.