August 2005 Editorial - The Wrong Kind of Copy Protection

[Anderton]

(Every month, a new editorial is posted in Sound, Studio, and Stage. Your comments and feedback are encouraged!)

 

 

The Wrong Kind of Copy Protection

 

What

[soapbox]

Well, seeing as this is my soapbox issue, I guess I'll trot out my old screen name...

 

As someone who switched the focus of my career from the record industry to film & television because of piracy, I can't condemn the practice strongly enough!

 

That said, I think that copy protection in all of its forms is the wrong response, because in all cases it penalizes the legitimate paying users. In fact, it often only penalizes paying users while illegitimate users enjoy free and trouble-free usage.

 

I estimate that I have lost a total of almost two weeks of my life at this point to copy protection hassles. That's time I'll never get back, and that's the hidden cost of buying software.

 

The software industry has alienated the very paying customers that are its friends by treating them with suspicion and forcing them to dance through copy protection hoops. The record industry would be foolish to use the software industry as an example, thereby disaffecting the few friends it has left.

 

In fact, it should be the other way around: the role model of usage that the record industry has traditionally employed should be imitated by the software industry. Just as I can import a CD I purchased into iTunes on my computer, and copy that onto my iPod, and then play the original CD in my car or my living room, or anywhere with a CD player, I should be able to install my software in every computer I own just as easily. I paid for it; I should be able to use it conveniently and portably.

 

I don't know what the answer is to piracy, I only know that this isn't it. You don't punish your friends for your enemy's misdeeds.

 

Best,

 

Geoff

[Anderton]

At least with dongle-based copy protection, you can run the software anywhere you like as long as you have the dongle and the installation disc. And NI's authorization scheme, where you can authorize and de-authorize at will, isn't too bad. Yes, they're inconvenient and time-consuming, but I do believe that these have helped slow theft somewhat.

 

But the thing that irks me about the CD copy protection plan is that it indeed FORCES the user to use a particular playback device. That's too weird. It's like buying a sequencer that runs only on desktops, not laptops. But what's even worse is that it prevents people from listening to music they like on the hottest, most music-friendly devices around. There's no doubt that the iPod has helped cause a resurgence in listening to music, and to disallow people from using that seems just plain nuts.

[AudioMaverick]

This has always been a difficult thing for me. It is, because the issue drills down to an individual's ethical justification to take something for personal benefit AND without the intent to compensate the proper entity/person for it.

 

I wish I could find what that solution is. I would not have had bicylces stolen from me when I was a kid. ANd, I wouldn't have clients that suddenly decide they can ignore the bil for my services.

 

Obsoleting the current thing and forcing a new standard on the populace NOT for technological, but for legal benefit... It just is wrong.

[soapbox]

 

Originally posted by Anderton: At least with dongle-based copy protection, you can run the software anywhere you like as long as you have the dongle and the installation disc.

 

 

Craig, I agree, as long as the dongle isn't lost, stolen, or damaged during transport, it is the most easily portable and convenient form of copy protection. Of course if the dongle is lost, stolen, or damaged (click here for my experience with a damaged dongle), then the situation is reversed and this form of copy protection becomes the least convenient to the end user.

 

 

Originally posted by Anderton: And NI's authorization scheme, where you can authorize and de-authorize at will, isn't too bad. Yes, they're inconvenient and time-consuming

 

 

I have some experience with this form of copy protection, having purchased Native Instruments' Komplete 2 package, East West Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra Platinum, and Garritan Personal Orchestra - all titles that use NI's copy protection scheme. The ability to authorize and de-authorize at will (as long as one has Internet access) is nice compared to other CP schemes. As you conceded, it's also inconvenient and time-consuming.

 

For example, last month my music drive's directory became corrupted to the point that I could no longer access my hard drive. After attempts to repair the situation failed, I reinitialized my music drive and restored it from its backup drive. If it weren't for copy protection, I could have started back to work making music immediately. However, it took almost a whole work day to reauthorize all of the programs on my hard drive.

 

I should add, however, that restoring NI authorizations was only a fraction of the authorization restoration process - I have a lot of software! I will also concede that this was the first time I was happy that some of my software was dongle protected, because the applications and plug-ins that used dongles were up and running right away.

 

 

Originally posted by Anderton: I do believe that these have helped slow theft somewhat.

 

 

I think you're probably right, but at what cost? How many potential customers have made alternate choices because they would rather not hassle with copy protection woes? A sale lost to theft and a sale lost to the competition is still a sale lost.

 

 

Originally posted by Anderton: But the thing that irks me about the CD copy protection plan is that it indeed FORCES the user to use a particular playback device. That's too weird. It's like buying a sequencer that runs only on desktops, not laptops. But what's even worse is that it prevents people from listening to music they like on the hottest, most music-friendly devices around. There's no doubt that the iPod has helped cause a resurgence in listening to music, and to disallow people from using that seems just plain nuts.

 

 

Craig, I couldn't agree more. The record industry acts as if it can turn back the clock, but time marches on. As you pointed out in your first post above, it's easy enough to circumvent this process that it's unlikely to discourage any serious form of piracy; and at the same time, it will severely inconvenience legitimate users.

 

This is a lose-lose scenario. I don't get it either!

 

Best,

 

Geoff

[Lee Flier]

Well I've said it before but I'll say it again... copy protection sucks, period. The dongle based stuff sucks too... not only because it's easy to lose or get damaged (especially if you swap it out a lot between several computers or use it on a laptop) but if you have multiple pieces of software running that uses multiple dongles... it's all just stupid.

 

CD copy protection is about the lamest of the lame. 'Course... I thought you could defeat it by running a magic marker around the edge. At least you could with Sony's multi-million dollar scheme. I haven't bought any copy protected CD's myself, because I've mostly stopped buying major label CD's anyway.

[soapbox]

By the way, Craig, I wish I had written from the outset how pleased I am about your announcement of monthly editorials.

 

When you wrote that you wanted to "take the forum concept to a new level," I wondered what form that might take.

 

This is a great start!

 

Best,

 

Geoff

[blue2blue]

I agree with every point Craig made and share his sense that "smart" copy protection that doesn't interfere with the legitimate rights of the licensee (music 'buyer') is fine.

 

I've said in the past that I'll refuse to knowingly buy any CD that can't be played and ripped for my own use. It's very rarely that I even play CD's themselves, preferring the convenience of either listening via my online subscription or, in those not entirely rare occasions when I want to hear something I have that they don't, from one of my hard drives.

 

The last choice, by far, is to trundle over to the CD's and paw through 500+ (now dusty) CDs. And, while I did (for a couple years, anyhow) have my 1200 or so LPs sorted and alphebetized, the CD collection has always seemed to defy that. (Okay... it's me. It's not the CD's. Sue me. I got burned out organizing the LPs.)

[soapbox]

Blue, what type of "smart" copy protection did you have in mind that "doesn't interfere with the legitimate rights of the licensee?"

 

Sorry to belabor the point, but I'm not aware of any form of copy protection that's immune from some scenario in which it locks the legitimate user out. Granted, in most cases, it's a temporary inconvenience that could be remedied in a matter of days, if not hours or minutes. However, that temporary inconvenience could create a failure to meet a deadline for a pro who relies on the software. That's not what I would call a lack of interference.

 

From a user's perspective, copy protected software is booby-trapped software. In this sense, a copy protected audio CD is actually better than copy protected software because the copy protected CD should never fail to play in its supported devices (traditional CD players).

 

Best,

 

Geoff

[Anderton]

When you wrote that you wanted to "take the forum concept to a new level," I wondered what form that might take.

 

Believe me, you ain't seen nothing yet But I do think we're off to a rather nice start...

[greendoor]

There is no protection scheme that works for any software or data. Where there is a will, there is always a way to get around it.

 

Which is why developers and musicians should simply seek to produce the best product and please their fans, and appeal to their honesty to keep them in business. Real fans don't steal from their idols. Disgruntled ex-fans will make a point of it.

 

All time and money spent on trying to develop unbreakable protection is absolutely pointless. And the more it interferes with the honest punters enjoyment or rights, the greater the negative effect on that products life expectancy.

 

Case in point: the recent Princeton 2016 Stereo Room VST. Fabulous product, endorsed by great engineers, cheap group-buy price. A recent poll at KVR of people who didn't buy it - 47% because of the PACE challenge/response madness. That was cetainly my reason. As much as I now appreciate this product - there is no way i'm buying software with a limited life expectancy (being, whenever Princeton decide to stop authenticating this software - 2010? Next year? Next month? Who knows).

 

The effect of all of Princetons marketing has caused me to investigate all available VST reverbs, and I will probably buy some good competive products that can do a similar job. Because I don't want to go without some of the Princeton sound, i'm going to deconvolve the best impulses for use with my convolution reverbs, and luckily that seems to work out fine.

 

If the hadn't been such pratts, they would have had my money by now, and I wouldn't have to batch process so many wave files. I expect the cracks will be available to the idiots who trust downloading from dodgy sites - at least I won't be going there.

 

All that effort for what? If they just let us buy the software, register with a registration code, there would be many more legally registered happy Princeton users singing their praises.

[greendoor]

And while i'm at it - i've had it with dongles too. I tolerated it with Logic and Cubase, but now Halion requires a dongle too i've had enough. I'm am agressively anti-AppleMagic for how they screwed their PC users. I was aggressively pro-Steinberg for how they rescued us PC users with Cubase SX. But now that Halion dongle thing has got me thinking that I don't need this hassel. There are alternative offerings from good companies who don't treat us like criminals and children. Next time I have to make an upgrade, I think I'll be taking a serious look at what is on offer.

 

Nobody can stop the pirates - but I'm the sort of guy who has spent thousands on good music software, and will still be needing to upgrade on a regular basis. The companies that have spat in my face are well noted, and the ones that trust me are also well noted. I'll be rewarding the people who make good software AND who still trust me not to rip them off. It's a two way street.

[russrags]

What irks me is having to deal with a companies normal business hours to authorize a piece of gear that "I OWN."

 

That's happened to me with Antaries ... and just before a session is starting in MY Studio ... I can't use MY vocal tuner that I paid for because Antarries isn't open !@#$%^

 

 

Russ

[whamtone]

"Thanks for purchasing your new car. If you would like to drive it, please call our offices any time Monday through Friday, 9AM to Noon, or 1PM to 5pm, Saturdays Noon to 6PM. We will be glad to send over one of our friendly User Enabling representatives who will verify your owner status and then start your new car for you, all at a nominal monthly charge debited automatically from your approved credit account."

 

any minute now...

[Dylan Walters]

Dongles suck. Period. If every application, plug-in, etc., required one then you'd need USB hubs coming out of your ass just to support them. I can't count the number of USB devices (especially thumb drives) that have crapped out on me over the years. There is no way in hell that I'd rely on a DAW that required a dongle to operate. I'd have to keep a cracked copy around just to be safe, which I don't want to touch. All of my stuff is legit and since my main app is Sonar, I don't have to worry about anything. At least with Sony Vegas and Sound Forge I have 30 days to activate my software, which I can deal with. Band in a Box doesn't even has a serial number, yet, people still are paying for it all of these years.

[nat whilk II]

Regarding the music and DVD movie end of the copy-protection dilemma:

 

iPods are all about access to music. Quick, convenient, customized access to large libraries of music all done up in a package with top-notch look 'n feel.

 

and iPods are expensive, folks. In terms of sheer markup, they demand a serious cash premium from buyers.

 

2 things here and evident: people really want access to music (and movies, etc) and they also will pay a premium if the right product comes along.

 

Do you love Netflix like our family does? Man we can't wait for the next three DVDs to show up. Two day turn-around (discounting weekends and holidays) is fast and the selection is humongous. There it is - it's simple access packaged and marketed the right way, and, skinflints that we are, we don't mind paying for it at all.

 

Now we could burn each DVD that comes from Netflix and we could already have a few hundred DVDs on hand to watch whenever we want. Here's the thing: with such access, choice, and convenience, we're not really even tempted to copy anything. Why not? 'Cause all we've got to do is queue up any movie we want to see again and it's on the way. That's faster, easier, and doesn't take any time at all. Sure, some people will rip off the Netflix DVDs, but my bet is that most Netflix people would say, "Why bother?"

 

So, to music. When the old illegal Napster was in full bloom, the music industry was hard at work erecting a monolith of blocked access to music. Radio had been dumbed down to a short, boring menu of tiny playlists thanks to the giant corporate owners with the tiny brains. CDs - too many songs for too much money. New music - good luck, don't quit your day job. Live music - dying a little more each day. Music TV I won't even bother to explain.....

 

An example: among other genres, I'm an ambient music fan. Ok, I don't expect the radio to help me out much (except for Musical Starstreams maybe). How in the world do I find out what's out there in ambient and listen to it? Amazon's 30-second clips are a real joke with ambient music: I mean maybe the first note will drift partially in before the clip ends. How many record stores carry ambient? I mean real, quality ambient, not just the whatever you find in the new age bin. Napster was one way to actually get to listen to ambient stuff you just couldn't get access to any other way unless you just got lucky or knew the artist already.

 

But maybe ambient's too weird an example. Doesn't matter - the idea is simple enough. If the music and DVD industry are smart, they will work at increasing access and not decreasing access. People will pay, for the most part I believe, if access is good enough, convenient enough, and fast enough.

 

Things are looking a bit better from the consumer end nowadays, what with Satellite radio making big strides, good internet sites like Launchcast, and outfits like Netflix.

 

Copying has always been around. Watch the movie High Fidelity and remember the old days when the music buffs made cassettes from albums and traded them around. It was a bit of work - doing the cassette thing, and your average joe wouldn't go to the trouble. It was only the speed and convenience of downloading that made internet music piracy into an epidemic - not the simple possibility that something could be copied.

 

So fight fire with fire, guys. Make it more convenient to pay for music and DVDs than to rip them (and store them and sort them and transfer them deal with new technology, etc) and you will win the game hands down.

 

nat whilk ii

[Kiwiburger]

I disagree that downloading mp3's is any easier than making casesette or video tape copies. Music and video has been freely available via radio and tv, and cassette and video tape copies have been such a normal part of life that maybe we forget how normal it was to copy stuff to tape in the 70's, 80's & '90's.

 

The argument that digital copies are more of a problem because they don't degrade like magnetic tape is also a bit of a crock, because MP3 quality is about as crap as tape.

 

Airplay and mindshare is what it's all about. An artist or record company should be deeply gratified that their music is being listened to by their market. If the record companies are too stupid to make mp3's available from them, that's not my problem. But ultimately, if somebody really digs a band they will buy merchandise. But that isn't going to happen unless they can hear their music first.

 

Too much greed and stupidity I feel.

[js1]

We've been suffering with copy protection CDs for a while in Canada - I think that they were using us as a guinea pig market. I can still get the music off to the IPod without too many hassles. The day that I can't do that is the day that I stop buying copy protected CDs.

 

Because I rarely listen to CDs any more. In the car, it's the IPod. In the kitchen, the IPod gets hooked into the mini system. At work, it's Itunes on the computer. Yes, if I'm doing serious listening, I'll resort to a CD (even if most of them are mastered to crap these days...).

 

I listen to music constantly, and 90% of the time, it ain't a CD.

 

js

[Boinker]

Slightly off-topic:

 

I copy CDs all the time. I work for a medical information publishing company, and one of the many platforms we publish on is CD-ROM. I have a Denon professional CD recorder (with an inoperable CD-R bay, warranty expired, grrr) with SCMS. When my company screws up the silkscreening on blank CDs, they give them away. And they record just fine. And the Denon unit can be set to ignore SCMS on the source disc, but it writes it to the CD-R anyway. I'm usually just doing one-offs, not bulk recording or selling bootlegs. That would be too much of a pain in the ass. Sometimes I borrow CDs from the public library, or from friends, to make a personal copy.

 

The other issue is when duping my original material; I should be able to make as much SCMS-free (or any other copy-protection) digital media as I want (without having to spend thousands on a studio CD-R deck).

[Rabid]

Call me paranoid but I ripped 1000+ CD

[Anderton]

You're not alone in that respect, I've heard that from many people.

[Base]

Are there any download services that don't include protection in the downloaded file?? I'd love to be able to use this, there are many tracks I'd like to buy without getting the album, but my mp3 player won't play anything protected, and I'm not wasting a blank cd burning it and re-ripping it!!!!!

[Kiwiburger]

If we really love a song, we will do whatever it takes to get a copy. Hell, we might even buy the CD!

 

You don't have to waste a CDR anyway - rip it to your hard-drive. I find that Cubase SX3 can rip most audio CD's to WAV.

[The Soundman]

I'm not surprised the major record companies got this wrong. We can add it to a pretty long list of things they've gotten wrong lately. While it is important to protect intellectual property, if that protection turns around and bites the hand that feeds you, it's not in anybody's best interest.

 

It has become pretty obvious that people are going to listen to, share and enjoy music in a myriad of new ways. This is a good thing for musicians and anybody else involved in producing new music. There's been a lot of bands that have gotten little or no airplay in the last couple of decades that have sold a lot of records or CD's due to a complete grassroots popularity.

 

So I think we will see a change in the revenue stream that drives the music business in general. Radio stations make money by playing popular music, and using it to support commercial advertising. And do the record companies or artists get a percentage of this revenue? No. The record companies PAY the radio stations to play the artists that they think will sell a lot of records. The average music lover picks up the tab for the whole buffet- payola, ad revenues and etc. when they buy the CD's at a 400% mark- up. Then your favorite recording artist goes on tour- supported by more advertising, and your credit card with a $100.00 concert ticket, service charges, merchandise...

 

Now who is getting ripped off here? The guy who downloads his favorite CD to his new girlfriend's Ipod? I doan' thin so Loosey. Lets look to the corporations who are lining their pockets with the proceeds from popular music to foot the bill for a change. And give the artist's who create it their fair share.

[Boinker]

 

Originally posted by The Soundman I'm not surprised the major record companies got this wrong. We can add it to a pretty long list of things they've gotten wrong lately. While it is important to protect intellectual property, if that protection turns around and bites the hand that feeds you, it's not in anybody's best interest. It has become pretty obvious that people are going to listen to, share and enjoy music in a myriad of new ways. This is a good thing for musicians and anybody else involved in producing new music. There's been a lot of bands that have gotten little or no airplay in the last couple of decades that have sold a lot of records or CD's due to a complete grassroots popularity. So I think we will see a change in the revenue stream that drives the music business in general. Radio stations make money by playing popular music, and using it to support commercial advertising. And do the record companies or artists get a percentage of this revenue? No. The record companies PAY the radio stations to play the artists that they think will sell a lot of records. The average music lover picks up the tab for the whole buffet- payola, ad revenues and etc. when they buy the CD's at a 400% mark- up. Then your favorite recording artist goes on tour- supported by more advertising, and your credit card with a $100.00 concert ticket, service charges, merchandise... Now who is getting ripped off here? The guy who downloads his favorite CD to his new girlfriend's Ipod? I doan' thin so Loosey. Lets look to the corporations who are lining their pockets with the proceeds from popular music to foot the bill for a change. And give the artist's who create it their fair share.

 

 

Funny you should mention concert ticket prices. I got tickets for the BB King tour later this month, and James Taylor, and the "best" seats for both shows were $85.00 each. And this is Coors Amphitheater in Denver, where a beer costs $8.00!! And the Stones are coming to Pepsi Center in November - can't remember the ticket prices, but I sure as hell couldn't afford them, even at face value. I guess whatever the market will bear...