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DRM Crippled CD: A bizarre tale in 4 parts

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE:  Ever come across something that only gets stranger and stranger the deeper you delve into it? That was my experience when I almost purchased a new CD -- a DRM crippled CD -- this weekend. 

This tale is part of a larger struggle within the recording and digital download industry -- not of P2P or piracy -- but one of innovation and competition. As you follow this odd story (broken into 4 increasingly strange parts), you will note that as it gets weirder, Artists and Consumers are the collateral damage. It makes one wonder just what the hell the Recording Industry is thinking about these days:
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Part I
A friend with whom I frequently swap Music and Film suggestions (as well as mixed CDs) asks me if I have ever heard of the band "My Morning Jacket." I have not. She suggests checking out the album Z. The album is very well reviewed. So I fire up iTunes, go to the music store. The band is rather interesting, not your typical pop fare. Sounds like a cross between Morcheeba and The White Stripes. (Rolling Stone heard elements of Radiohead, The Who and Lynyrd Skynyrd). Lush, ethereal, offbeat music, mixed with some electronica, but mostly straightforward fuzzbox-driven rock-n-roll. My kind of stuff.

I hop over to Amazon to read some reviews (mostly positive). I am about to purchase the disc, when I notice the DRM info. (See Amazon DRM reviews below.)

The reviewers note that Sony has crippled the disc with Sunncomm's latest DRM software. (You may remember Sunncomm's infamous shift key incident). The key restriction of this particular DRM is that it renders a disc nontransferable to the iPod. Nor can you make a backup copy, or travel discs, or a copy for the weekend house, or use any of the songs on a mixed disc. Oh, and it won't work with my iTunes Music software (and that also means no shuffle play).

Since the CD is incompatible with Apple iTunes, and the music cannot be transferred to an iPod, it eliminates about half of my legal uses for it. So I don't buy the CD, 'cause it won't do what I need it to do. Chalk up a lost sale to DRM.

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Part II
Here's where our tale takes a turn for the bizarre:  According to the Band/Label's website, these DRM restrictions were put on the CD without their knowledge or permission:

Information Regarding Our Artists' Music, Copy-Protected CDs and your iPod
We at ATO Records are aware of the problems being experienced by certain fans due to the copy-protection of our distributor. Neither we nor our artists ever gave permission for the use of this technology, nor is it our distributor's opinion that they need our permission. Wherever it is our decision, we will forego use of copy-protection, just as we have in the past.

That's simply a stunner.

The loss of good will and fan support must be significant to the band. That's a very real monetary damage to the band. (I wonder what their legal options are). It becomes even more absurd when you consider that "ATO Records permits audiotaping at our artists' performance." So this is a very forward looking, copyright-friendly bunch of folk.

I would hope that in the future, music agents and attorneys remember to address this in label contracts on the band's behalf.

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Part III
As odd as the story is so far, its about to get a whole lot weirder: It turns out that all Engadget (quoting Variety) notes that this DRM is not at all about making the CD immune to piracy. Instead, its part of a pissing contest between Sony and Apple:  Variety writes that "the new copy protection scheme — which makes it difficult to rip CDs and listen to them with an iPod — is designed to put pressure on Apple to open the iPod to other music services, rather than making it dependent on the iTunes Music Store for downloads."

You mean to tell me that this isn't even about P2P and unauthorized downloading? How annoying is that? Sony has their panties in a bunch cause Apple has been kicking their arses all over the innovation and digital music schoolyard? So the mature response from a major global conmsumer electronics corporation is to take their ball and go home?

DRM is now being used as a competitive economic weapon -- not as an anti-piracy tool.

As a music consumer, I find this ridiculous. Why I cannot use a legally purchased CD -- because Sony is miffed at Apple for creating the 2000's version of their Walkman -- is beyond absurd. I am very, very annoyed at this. 

In fact, I am so perturbed at this act of wanton stupidity, that two imminent purchases -- a Sony Bravia LCD big screen TV and the Sony Vaio notebook -- are now put on hold.

So far, Sony's lost business with me is now one CD ($10.99), one flat panel TV ($3,499) and one laptop ($3,199). That's  lost sales of approximately $6,710. If you are a Sony shareholder, you should be as annoyed as I am.

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Part IV
I saved the absolutely weirdest part for last.

I write Suncomm to complain about this DRM. Their website encourages people to write Apple and request them to "Open up their proprietary technology."

Yeah, spare me your lectures. Just because your client failed to create a digital music player and legal downloading store, doesn't mean that I have to get conscripted in your lobbying ploy. 

Just tell me where CD purchasers should send this crippled disc back for a refund, I ask them.

UPON RECEIPT, THEY SEND ME AN EMAIL TELLING ME HOW TO WORK AROUND THE DRM:

"If you have a PC place the CD into your computer and allow the CD to automatically start. If the CD does not automatically start, open your Windows Explorer, locate the drive letter for your CD drive and double-click on the LaunchCD.exe file located on your CD.

Once the application has been launched and the End User License Agreement has been accepted, you can click the Copy Songs button on the top menu.

Follow the instructions to copy the secure Windows Media Files (WMA) to your PC. Make a note of where you are copying the songs to, you will need to get to these secure Windows Media Files in the next steps.

Once the WMA files are on your PC you can open and listen to the songs with Windows Media Player 9.0 or higher. You may also play them in any compatible player that can play secure Windows Media files, such as MusicMatch, RealPlayer, and Winamp, but it will require that you obtain a license to do so. To obtain this license, from the Welcome Screen of the user interface, click on the link below the album art that says If your music does not play in your preferred player, click here. Follow the instructions to download the alternate license. PLEASE NOTE: This license is only necessary for playing the copied songs in a media player other than iTunes or Windows Media Player. If you are just trying to use iTunes, simply continue with these instructions.

Using Windows Media Player only, you can then burn the songs to a CD.  Please note that in order to burn the files, you need to upgrade to or already have Windows Media Player 9 or greater.

Once the CD has been burned, place the copied CD back into your computer and open iTunes. iTunes can now rip the songs as you would a normal CD."

So this entire rigamarole won't even protect the CD contents -- its merely a very annoying interference with my ability to enjoy the legal uses of a product I actually wanted to purchase.

But wait, there's more! As if that's not absurd enough, they remind me that none of this is necessary at all. As noted above, its nothing more than a swipe at Apple: 

"Please note an easier and more acceptable solution (to who?) requires cooperation from Apple, who we have already reached out to in hopes of addressing this issue. To help speed this effort, we ask that you use the following link to contact Apple and ask them to provide a solution that would easily allow you to move content from protected CDs into iTunes or onto your iPod rather than having to go through the additional steps above."

http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipod.html

If you think that this cannot get any dumber, you would be wrong. The coup de grace of this exercise in corporate stupidity is this:

"If you have a Mac computer you can copy the songs using your iTunes Player as you would normally do."

Words simply fail me . . .

 

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POSTSCRIPT:   October 31, 2005 6:08am

I am a buyer of CDs, and only rarelydo I download tracks from Apple's iTunes Music Store due to sound quality. I didn't spend an obscene amount of money on a home audio system to listen to the mediocre audio quality of MP3s. The not-even-remotely-as-lossless-as-advertised-compression algorithms are hardly any better. MP3s and iPod quality music is fine for the beach or my commute on a train, but its something else entirely in my living room.

My fair use: When I get a new CD, I rip it to iTunes, then transfer the music to my iPods; I make a backup copy (in case of loss). If I really like a disc, I make a copy for the car or the weekend house. If the disc is "youth-friendly," I'll make a copy for my wife's classroom. She teaches art, and I refuse to let her take any more original discs to school -- they have all gotten destroyed.

Incidentally, I am what the marketing people like to call an "influencer" (i.e., think of Netflix, TiVo or Macintosh). I do not copy entire CDs for people, but I like to expose frinds to news music -- I will give them a song or two, with the recommendation that if they like it, they purchase the artist's disc. I use P2P to check out stuff not available elsewhere, or to see if I want to purchase a full CD.  I also like to make mixed playlists, which get burned for the car or for friends who are looking to hear new music, now that radio is dead.

I believe all of the above is well within my rights as a consumer of the CDs that I legally purchased; If someone wants to try to convince me otherwise, please take your best shot.

 

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UPDATE:  October 31, 2005 7:02 am

This morning, I did a Google News search on "My Morning Jacket: Z," and I found 147 mainstream news articles from the past 30 days.

One -- only one -- mentions the DRM issue:

MUSIC:  Burning the Faithful
New copy-protected CDs screw over the only honest customers the music industry has left.
Eli Messinger
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/Issues/2005-10-19/music/music.html

There is a large and potentially fascinating story here that you folks in the tech press/music media are overlooking . . .

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UPDATE:  November 10, 2005 1:38 pm

Here's the biggest joke of all:  I actually got the disc, and ripped it to iTunes and the iPod -- on my G5 iMac . . .

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The Amazon reviewers DRM comments are below . . .

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Amazon Reviews of My Morning Jacket: Z CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTION

Reviewer 1:          GRT (New York City) October 25, 2005

Buy it on iTunes

Whatever the merits of the music, I tossed this disk in the garbage. Why?

1. Upon insertion in the computer, requires you to agree to a contract that restricts usage to approved devices etc and inserts software on your hard drive to monitor usage.
2. After agreeing it launches a goofy proprietary application to play the music instead of a media player.
3. You cannot play the files in iTunes
4. You cannot rip the files to you computer
5. You cannot play the songs on you iPod.

This attempt to restrict legal usage of the music is outrageous and should be tolerated. Is the band aware of this? Do they support it? It is bad business, bad publicity and done in bad faith.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

What a rip-off

Reviewer 2:          redbank2 (Red Bank, NJ) October 26, 2005

Repeating one other reviewer, if you want this on your iPOD, do NOT buy this...Plus on a PC the only way to play it is with it's own built in CD player...I like Winamp, sorry, it doesn't work with Winamp...Oh well...

the music is fine, but does not make up for the nonsense of putting up with this egregious display of lack of marketing skill...If someone wanted to copy and distribute it, they could, what foolishness on the part of Sony/BMG/ATO and RCA Music...And they wonder why corporate music is dying...

~~~~~~~

DO NOT buy this if you own an iPod

Reviewer 3:    David Klingenberger (Chicago, IL) - October 17, 2005

   
I'm not some 20-year-old music thief. I'm a 46-year-old guy who spends thousands of dollars a year on CDs. Thousands. (It used to be vinyl, 8-tracks, real to reels). And I'm being treated like a criminal. How wrong. How wrong.

Don't support the criminals who sell you "copy protected" CDs.

Don't buy this CD. Get it some other way.

And how sad. This may be the best CD of the year. (It's absolutely amazing.)

~~~~~~~

BEWARE - Copy Protected

Reviewer 4:    Scott Dyer (San Francisco, CA) October 4, 2005

Note that this CD is copy protected. The most significant implication of this is that you can only rip it to WMA which will not play on most portable music players including the iPod. There is no way around this. This CD relies on a much tigher version of copy protection than other CD's so tricks such as the ole' holding down the shift key to avoid autoplay do not work. If you want to be able to listen to this album on your iPod, purchase it from iTunes. The other advantage to this is that you get a bonus track not available on the CD version.

Monday, October 31, 2005 | 06:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (153) | TrackBack (24)
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Comments

Normally I might email this, but.... I've been using this site for ages, and occasionally publish many of my collection of (legally) recorded live shows. A quick search for "My Morning Jacket" turned up 6 live recordings. No DRM. Also, a good link to an excellent example of people using torrents legally.

eTree:
http://bt.etree.org/

link to "My Morning Jacket" shows:
http://bt.etree.org/?search=&cat=212

Posted by: Chad K | Oct 31, 2005 10:11:08 AM

On another note... What were your reasons for not purchasing those other Sony products?

Posted by: Chad K | Oct 31, 2005 10:14:23 AM

He's voting with his wallet, as do I when corporate entities piss me off. It's the only power a consumer has.

Let's say (to pick a recent example) that Target supports its pharmacists who refuse to fill morning-after pill prescriptions. (They do.) If you write Target a nasty letter, Target will fire off a boilerplate letter and add yours to their pile. If you fire off a nasty letter delineating the $1,000 you spent at Target last year, the $0 you shall spend until their policy changes and the 100 friends and acquaintances you plan to influence to do the same..

Well, your letter goes higher on the pile. Corporations are hard to influence. Still, if enough people do something that hits the bottom line, perhaps you help, on the margin.

Posted by: wcw | Oct 31, 2005 10:31:36 AM

I just want to say thank you for making me laugh out loud reading your post. As a high $ audio tech spender, I sympathize with your trauma.

Posted by: AC | Oct 31, 2005 12:11:53 PM

I'm not a historian, but what I think we are seeing is a "decadent" institution. In this case entertainment, but I think examples abound across industrial civilization. Like the late Austrian empire or many others, such as us in Iraq, it's as though they chose the worst possible choices.

We know that the media companies actually dream of technology that will let them examine all storage devices for copyrighted material and disable the system if any is found. Conservative (ownereship society) Republicans support this.

But of course these and iother measures are impossible to mantain. Basic digital technology is to fluid. Military grade encryption is availible all over the place, alternative formats easily devised. All that will emerge is underground standards. And those most devoted to various media and who currently buy the most will increasingly look upon the media companies as enemies.

Many of us who do not bother with the tricks will simply confine ourselves to what we have and to material that is offered freely.

Companies like Sony seem bound and determined to create the crisis and then try to inflict sterner and sterner measures. They do so from a position of weakness.

Posted by: ann | Oct 31, 2005 1:14:10 PM

With the full corporatization of radio limiting 98% of music to viral marketing, crippling CDs through the use of DRM further limits music from reaching a wider audience. Given the immense quantity of music available, if an album is prevented from making it onto the networks than its visibility would be severely reduced.

I feel that P2P is moving music consumption in a new direction, towards a 'try before you buy' paradigm. Just as you'd want to try out a TV set in the store to see its picture quality, or take a car for a test drive, I want full information before I commit to a purchase. As time passes, and as my discretionary budget allows, the digital copies of albums I find remarkable are slowly being paired by physical copies on my shelf.

Posted by: Bryan G | Oct 31, 2005 1:37:51 PM

I'm confused. Are there multiple editions of this album? I bought this album in the store (Borders in NYC) and have successfully ripped it to my iPod using iTunes on a Mac. No problems here.

I can play the CD in my Sony DVD player or on my Mac (iMac G5). Haven't tried it on a PC however.

Nothing but agreement from me here on both the long term impracticality and misuse of DRM. Ever since the record companies shutdown the original Napster - best creation ever for a music fan - instead of co-opting it and using Napster's huge subscriber base to their advantage, they've done nothing right.

Posted by: Josh | Oct 31, 2005 2:40:48 PM

read towards the end of the post:

If you think that this cannot get any dumber, you would be wrong. The coup de grace of this exercise in corporate stupidity is this:

"If you have a Mac computer you can copy the songs using your iTunes Player as you would normally do."

Words simply fail me . . .

Posted by: Barry Ritholtz | Oct 31, 2005 2:43:55 PM

One thing I find interesting is that as communication savvy corporations increasingly scan blogs and make responses; the music industry has not noticed or has pretended not to notice you. Yet you are an individual of some influence and you have made a consistent critique over time.

You are also open to reason as opposed to "the record companies are all ripoffs!" creed that I am sure appears elsewhere.

For this reason I will short Sony. The next few decades are going to be traumatic and we are seeing resistance not response to the change.

This is similar to the reason I shorted SBC. When I want to the Cingular web site (and I believe cellular is a big par of the future) it was very badly done. So how can one expect a decent evolution to our advanced Star Trek I communicators? Already in Asia they are doing stuff Kirk nevr dreamed of, but Cingular can't design a conventional webpage.

If Sony and other media companies chose to block themselves off from customers rather than engage in dynamic potentially product creating dialogue the odds of their thriving go down. And I expect this will be reflected in Sony's hardware products.

No Sony stock for me. I hold long term.

Posted by: investor | Oct 31, 2005 2:50:44 PM

Hubby works for Sony Playstation, and I gotta say he's as pissed off at Sony music for their stupidity issues as anyone. Sigh. Hopefully they'll get the next round of makeovers that Sony Electronics is currently undergoing...

This is what happens when good engineering companies get taken over by the marketeers. Time for an engineering revolt...

Posted by: donna | Oct 31, 2005 3:01:55 PM

... and I'm also on the Target boycott. And Walmart. Running out of places to shop rapidly. Thank goodness for Costco!

Posted by: donna | Oct 31, 2005 3:03:39 PM

"I make a backup copy (in case of loss). If I really like a disc, I make a copy for the car or the weekend house. If the disc is "youth-friendly," I'll make a copy for my wife's classroom. She teaches art, and I refuse to let her take any more original discs to school -- they have all gotten destroyed."

Don't know where to come out on this. You're arguing in favor of buying a kind of unlimited personal use license, which I sympathize with, but Sony seems to be following what every business does with their property: try and extract the maximum possible revenue stream from it. Within the strictures of fair use doctrine and copyright, you get the license they give you, a license that you obviously should reject if you absolutely have to have four copies of the CD.

Posted by: royce | Oct 31, 2005 3:26:13 PM

I don't need 4 copies: Just a back up (that stays filed away) and one I can use that I don't care if it gets destroyed or lost.

Meanwhile, when I get lazy, those are the discs that disappear / get damaged (ie., my Jack Johnson CDs)

Posted by: Barry Ritholtz | Oct 31, 2005 3:39:35 PM

Running out of places to shop rapidly.

And that is the inevitable problem with our modern retail landscape. Boycotting Wal-Mart? They don't care. In a lot of regions, there isn't an alternative. You're going to shop there regardless of whether or not you despise the company...it's the only place in town to get diapers.

And those that have choices? Well, then that's Target. And if you hate target...

;o)

Posted by: D | Oct 31, 2005 4:50:31 PM

I own My Morning Jacket's "Z" and had no issue at all with importing it into iTunes and onto my iPod. I read other sites about the DRM and was worried, but I love the band and bought it anyways. And I had no issues. Are there others like me?

Posted by: john | Oct 31, 2005 4:51:38 PM

This is why i steal music.

Posted by: Shizlak | Oct 31, 2005 4:55:09 PM

I thought you might like to know about this.

http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/10/sony-rootkits-and-digital-rights.html

So, if the software on the MMJ is the same (being a Sony brand) then anyone who has bought the CD and gone through the normal get-to-play-it steps might actually have been installing a ROOTKIT.

Lovely.

Posted by: jΩ | Oct 31, 2005 4:59:44 PM

I do love that Sony computer buyers can't rip the disc, but Mac owners can. Crazy. (Me, I have a Mac, but still won't buy these things; David Gray lost a sale to me because his latest album is infested with this stuff. Oh well.)

Posted by: Christopher Davis | Oct 31, 2005 5:11:24 PM

Downoad from iTMS (if you enjoy the sound quality like I do) and do a Google for "jhymn".

Or, buy a Mac! OS X is a wild experience - try it out!

Posted by: Adam | Oct 31, 2005 5:13:12 PM

"I feel that P2P is moving music consumption in a new direction, towards a 'try before you buy' paradigm. Just as you'd want to try out a TV set in the store to see its picture quality, or take a car for a test drive, I want full information before I commit to a purchase. As time passes, and as my discretionary budget allows, the digital copies of albums I find remarkable are slowly being paired by physical copies on my shelf. "

These arguments are just silly. Many stores used to have samples of songs - amazon has many samples of songs. If you are able to download a song via p2p you have no economic incentive to buy the CD. If you do, that's just you being nice and obeying a law.

Further, I think there are major stretches of the fair use law. For instance if you have a laptop and a desktop, you can install the same software on both machines. But, if your wife uses the laptop 100% of the time and you use the desktop 100% of the time (and at the same time) you need two lices.

Lastly, you think that you have special 'privillages' because you are 'an influencer.' No, you are not in marketers' eyes. You are a regular customer that spreads good WOM. If you were an influencer, you would get comps to pass out to people. Just because you spread good WOM doesn't mean you are above the law.

Sorry
Danny

Posted by: Danny | Oct 31, 2005 5:17:20 PM

So, in effect, Sony is telling you that the way to get full use from their CD is to buy a competitor's (Apple) computer?

Doesn't sound like good marketing to me......

But a good suggestion, none the less.

Posted by: Dr. Luba | Oct 31, 2005 5:20:25 PM

Seems like the best way to teach record labels to not pull this crap is to buy the CD - attempt to rip the music to the player of your choice - and if it doesn't work because of DRM copy protection - return the CD to the store where you bought it and say "it doesn't work". And if they refuse to take the CD back - they quickly see things my way when I tell them that I will be disputing the charge with my credit card company if they don't refund my money.

Then, the CD will get shipped back to the label.

Anybody have any luck over-riding the copy protection with a package called AnyDVD (http://www.slysoft.com)? It's what I use to make backups of DVDs - and it's supposed to remove copy protection from CDs as well...

Kevin

Posted by: Kevin | Oct 31, 2005 5:28:15 PM

When I first heard of this DRM stupidity, I wrote directly to the band. They responded with pointers on how to evade the copy-protection, and noted that they use Mac computers, and had no problems importing the disc into iTunes/iPods.

Posted by: Seth Anderson | Oct 31, 2005 5:30:13 PM

Its all about education of the consumer. We aim to educate the average consumer, the big record companies aim to hide and blur the issue and muddy the water. (I'm surprised the record companies havent managed to get the use of DRM circumvention slipped into some obscure anti-terrorism legislation - but i'm sure they've considered it.)

The argument boils down to this: How long will it take for the average consumer to figure out they are being ripped off.

It is the gamble the Apples, Sony's and BMG's are playing while they claw for market share: Just how stupid are their consumers?

Will they continue to buy DRM'd music because: A. they dont know any better, B. because they dont have a choice, or C. Because its good for the consumer?

We have a choice, and DRM is not good for the consumer, so the answer falls back to A. The mainstream consumer will buy it because they dont know any better. (Think Tara Reid, or What Would Ashton do?)

There will always (and needs to) be smaller companies out there willing to fill our NEED for open format music and players, and willing to sign up new Bands. The customer is there, and the market is only getting bigger as people become educated.

How many bands sign up with the major labels because they HAVE DRM? - (Metalica doesnt count)

Sure, I might end up listening to some 15YO kids garage band on my "Somy Opid", but I'll happily tailor my tasts while the music giants fight....

Its an education game, and the mainstream consumers will eventually get wise and start spend their money where the freedom is... open formats.

Posted by: nzruss | Oct 31, 2005 5:30:15 PM

Try before you buy isn't a 30 second snippit.

Posted by: Karmakin | Oct 31, 2005 5:34:18 PM

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