I'd be the last person to encourage anyone to trample the rights of people who own content. Heck, this is content, and I created it, and I don't really like it when someone else misuses it, or uses it with malicious intent, or for ill-gotten gains. Sure, it happens, but outside of casual use, I wouldn't be too happy if I found this article being used on someone else's site as if they had rights to post it, particularly if that site profited from the action.
Having said that, I am not exactly worried about it, and it isn't as if this column is going to shake up the Billboard charts. What's my point? Today, Tuesday 3 April, 2001 a Senate Judiciary Committee is investigating issues that are going to have a profound effect on the way you, me, everyone uses and manipulates their digital audio and video. Or, is it?
This is taken verbatim from the Senate Judiciary Committee Web site agenda for the 107th Congress
Copyright and Fair Use: Consumers and Creators in the Digital Age: Building on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings Act, and other landmark legislation developed in the committee to promote the availability of popular entertainment in digital form, the committee will examine the roles, rights, and responsibilities of the artists, the audience, and the entities, which serve to bring them together. As new technical issues and business models develop, basic questions need to be asked anew about the relationships between the artists and the media companies that market and distribute their product; about the rights of consumers and fans to use works in new ways; about the ability of technology companies and other mediators to deploy new products and services to facilitate those uses; and about the accessibility of works to scholars, teachers, students, or others for legitimate purposes. Additionally, the committee will continue to encourage an open and competitive environment for the production and distribution of digital content on the Internet and other media.
Interestingly enough, it appears that the National Committee on Information Technology Standards (NCITS) struck down the proposal for Copy Protection in Recordable Media (CPRM) for the ATA standard yesterday. Judging by some of the mail I received in the last two weeks not many of you will be shedding a tear for the organization behind CPRM, 4C Entity LLC. I can't say that I was too worried about the situation, but then I can live in blissful ignorance most of the time.
Anyhow, CPRM was only one battle that was won, or lost, depending on your view of the matter, but the war is far from over. There's a lot at stake, and there are a lot of people who hope to make money from the mere act of stopping you from using copyright stuff in any way but the way deemed by its distributor. When it comes to greed and avarice among corporations, and the desire of the public to get stuff without filling said corporations' coffers any more than is absolutely necessary, no one can agree on anything. I mean, the consumer electronics industry, the computer industry, and the recording industry, the movie business, all of these guys can't agree to agree. They'll be fighting over standards, or putting out competing ones for many years to come, and CDs, and MP3s are not going to go away for several years. See, every cloud has a silver lining.
So, let me take a different tack, and look at a technology that should be making its appearance in stores by the end of this year, and which I think is a harbinger of digital content security more than any number of attempts at copy protection through monopolistic standards. Warning. Don't berate me about this. Take it up in the Forums on the Community pages, and I'll dive in there at some point. I am still trying to catch up on all your feedback and suggestions from the last Second Hand Smoke.
How would you feel if digital content security was specifically tied to the media itself? Don't baulk. It's already the case with a lot of PC games, certainly with Nintendo cartridges on N64 and Game Boys, DVD, and there's an interesting twist from a company called DataPlay. DataPlay has developed an optical disk, closer to a DVD in technology terms, competitively a descendant of CD-ROM, physically an endomorph in the same vein as CompactFlash, and priced at around $6-7 for a five pack. Not to far off, it will cost cents to buy, and produce Gigabytes of storage. So, the vendor hopes.
I got a chance to talk to Ray Uhlir, vice president of marketing for DataPlay who had this say, "Our main value proposition is we are a universal media that is portable for every digital device."
Actually he had a lot more to say, but that's the quote I'll use because, it's the main reason why I like the DataPlay approach - the media is the thing. Media is the future of digital content protection, and it has absolutely nothing to do with a hard disk. Hard disks are not a lot of fun, or easy to port. They're expensive, and unwieldy, and not standardized. They're mostly stuck in PCs, too.
I held a DataPlay disk in my hand, it looks like a quarter in a jewel case, and had an epiphany. 250 MB single sided, or 500 MB double sided storage. The drive is licensed by DataPlay to third party manufacturers, and the company hopes to make money on the sales of the actual disks. You store eBooks on it (can hold about 500 novels), or MPEG4 video, about two hours worth of a movie. It's lower resolution than MPEG2, but it might be playing on a small 320x240 pixel screen on a handheld so, it's good enough. It may hold games for handhelds. It may be in a portable audio player, which connects to your PC through a USB cable, which acts as a disk drive for DataPlay disks for your PC audio, or data files. Hmmm. Like the sound of that. We'll all have file sharing parties where we pop DataPlay disks.
DataPlay has plans to work with the recording industry by launching music titles itself, and distributing them through its partners. Presently, those partners are Universal, EMI, and BMG, a formidable list. Add to that list of luminaries companies that have poured over $60 million into the company, companies like Sharp, Samsung, and SONICblue. Formidable, but I am not sure whether the risk of pushing the format initially itself, even with stellar distribution, is the right strategy.
After all, you pay for the content, and the DataPlay disk will your choice for the convenience, or the range of devices that support it. DataPlay has to play chicken and egg by getting the media into our hands while hoping that hardware that supports its format gets our attention, too. Daunting task. Who knows if they can pull it off. I love the idea of DataPlay, but I used to wear bell bottoms too so, what do I know.
There is also the issue of the encrypted content on the disks. For example, you might buy a DataPlay disk with 3 or 4 CDs worth of music. You get the first album with your in store purchase, and then, you can buy any of the other albums on the same disk by going to a Web site, and purchasing an encryption key. This would apply equally to DataPlay disks that may be used in handhelds to hold applications, or games. Same principle. Can't say that I believe that consumers are that motivated when it comes to the purchase process, which is where the whole issue of protecting digital content really breaks down for me.
Isn't the real problem with casual copying the fact that most of us don't know what we want, and are not willing to pay to experiment? Will a new format really get us excited to buy content, and then unlock more of it as we go along? I don't know. I think the beauty of Napster is that it gives us the freedom to browse, or rather it did, and that in turn made us more comfortable about buying new content. I think in the short term, something like DataPlay is the future of digital content, and even if it doesn't take off, something akin to it will. Whether it's a Memory Stick or CompactFlash, or a portable hard drive the size of a postage stamp.
However, securing digital content through media, doesn't really do much more than, for example, replacing CDs with something like a CD, but smaller. Maybe, recordable isn't all that it's cracked up to be. Convenience, ease of use, ease of access, all these things matter when it comes to content. Value for money, too. About the only time content generates consumer motion is a trip to the movies, or as is the common practice, a trip to the video store. Admit it. You hate browsing CD stores. You hate video stores, really, but what else are you going to do? Watch TV?
Maybe that's why the best casual copiers are students, or teens. They're motivated to get content because, it's a part of their vernacular, their peer dominated culture, and the lack of finances adds that extra kick. As we get older, we kind of realize that the being the first family on the block with the new Hole album is not necessarily as important as making sure we have enough antacid in the house.
Yeah, I guess digital content security, copyright protection, or whatever you choose to call it, is a cultural and social issue. It's a non-issue, too. Unless someone is running a business copying disks and selling them for a tenth of the retail price of a CD, it's all casual, and no business is being lost. I mean, I found an old Steve Arrington song on Napster once, and it's out of circulation. Used to listen to it about seventeen years ago. Thought it was cool that I could find it. Nostalgia, and all that. Was I even remotely interested in tracking the song down, and getting the Songs in the Key of Life album? Not really. Search, download, and play. Then, bye. That was business that never was, would be, could be, or should be.
I may not be a typical consumer, the kind that the RIAA is trying to corral. But, I do know one thing, whether it is swapping music files, software, or hundreds of PlayStation titles, if people hadn't been able to copy them, people would not have been doing anything with them including buying them. That's why it is called casual copying. It's casual bordering on apathy. Take it away, and no one will miss it more than the people who were truly motivated by it. The rest of us are moving on. No CD sales jumping through the roof, no video sales going exponential, no docile citizenry settling down to a quiet night of easy listening.
Anyhow, DataPlay isn't available until the end of this year. Formats for portable, universal content are going to have the greatest impact on securing digital content. Whether they perform from a technical point of view, we won't be able to tell for a while. Simple to see the logic behind it. AAC, WMA, MPEG4, MP3, all shrink the files so, then you have to shrink the media. At some point we will all start to rave about DVD Audio or Super Audio CD, and then the little portable media and all the copyright brouhaha of today will fade away to be replaced by angry citizenry demanding higher quality from the little audio players stuck in their ears. There's another future for you.
Meanwhile, most of you reading this will be ripping, and copying, and sharing, and doing all those things that politicians and industry cabals find so annoying. The only sure thing is that nothing changes, except the media.
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