The Adventures of JStar88 on The Blue Marble

Downloading esthero, Ranting about DRM & a new Swedish law

KD from karaokediva.blogdns.com left a friendly comment on my blog a few days ago after I chided her (in the comments section of a blog entry) for writing about downloading esthero's new album and enjoying it. I said: "by downloading the album, I certainly hope you meant paid for and downloaded so you could support the artist and her work."

In her response, she said that she understood why I was concerned because I was "friends with her brother," but that she was going to buy the album after the sneak preview because she is a "big fan" and, it turns out, she just wanted to hear the songs before the live show in Seattle.
If that's how it always worked, then I would be a large proponent of unlimited filesharing. I imagine it working like this:

1. People could search for and download whatever media (music, TV shows or movies) they wanted to experience on legalized DRM P2P filesharing networks.
2. Seven days from first play and/or after five listens, if the files haven't been unlocked with a DRM key (available from inside physical product and/or from DRM licensing stores) the files should degrade into unplayable bits.
3. If a person finds media they like and wants to keep the files on their machine, they can either purchase a physical copy (which will always contain a DRM key), purchase a digital copy, or just buy a DRM license which unlocks copies available on the legal P2P networks.
4. This would probably incorporate a central registry for DRM certificates, to limit the number of digital copies that can be unlocked with a single license and/or to only allow unlocking of files on devices registered to the DRM license purchaser and authenticated using a network device's MAC address or mobile number.

If that could be the situation, then I would support opening the floodgates. Let's let trial periods for media be universal, accessible and free. Good music is like crack, and crack dealers always make the first taste free. As the music industry is like a huge conglomerate of crack dealers, the addicts they peddle to should also get free tastes of different flavours...

There are three points I'd like to make here:

1. People should only ever have to pay to license music once. When they've done that, they should have the exclusive, perpetual, non-transferable right to use it across any personal device.
   
   I've been meaning to write an article for NOW trashing Rogers for their INSIPID policy of triple-charging their customers for licensing music for personal use. If you have a Rogers music phone handset and you want to download a song as a ringtone, that will cost you $1.50. If you want to download that same song to your PC, the cost is $1.25. And if you happen to have the Nokia 6620, then you have to pay ANOTHER fee to have that same song be playable on your phone. While these three uses each require distinct music encoding and file formats, the premise is unconscionable.
   
   Half a brain from Rogers' legal team and half a brain from the CMRRA evidently got together and decided that each use represents a different mechanical reproduction and thus requires its own licensing fee. If their argument were based on bandwidth and delivery costs, then that (even though it would be ridiculous to charge this much for bandwidth) would be more reasonable than asking consumers to pay three fees to use one song in three formats.
   
   Anyway, that's my first point as it related to my utopian vision of free DRM-based filesharing networks.
   
2. Filesharing whole albums is wrong, especially when you really like what you've downloaded. And if you do like it and you keep it and you don't pay for it, then how do you justify it?
   
   When I stumble across a blog (or meet someone) and I learn that someone "loves" some art they "found" on the net, I always ask them if they have supported the artist who created it. Sometimes they say that they have, because they've told all their friends (or readers) about what they've found, and other times they say that they have because they've gone out and purchased a copy themself. I normally stop the conversation if I hear the latter...
   
   I would guesstimate that at least 5X as many copies of Breath from Another were downloaded as were sold in stores. The ratio is probably even greater than that, because of the social climate regarding downloading when the album was first released. If you cross-reference the number of fans she has worldwide and her greater buzz factor with actual sales, the imbalance is staggering. Looking for obscure singles is one thing, but stealing whole albums from an artist who could really use the money for rent is bullshit.
   
   I'm not going to get into morality lessons, but I will say that people piss me off when they steal from my friends.
   
3. Yes, this is personal.
   
   Her brother Jay and I go way back. I've known his little sis since she was about 13 years old. She was another one of the surrogate little sisters that all of us had. When she moved to t-dot, I used to go to the Free Times Cafe in Toronto and see her perform with Rob Joy playing guitar and the two of them singing some weird, beautiful music - including some crazy hat song. They were brilliant.
   
   Once, about a gazillion years ago, the two of them opened up for my band (FRUST) at some dive on Queen street in Toronto. We stopped playing shortly thereafter, but she kept at it and got much, much better (as evidenced by her new album).
   
   I've seen her play open stages, small clubs, big clubs, outdoor festivals (here's a pic I took in 1998) and TV shows. I've seen her come up from working at Future bakery on Bloor street to being attacked in the press for being the falsely-messianic Next Big Thing (Mike McCann wrote about this for ChartAttack and included a LTE I once wrote NOW). I've seen the flight of the Phoenix, and the rebirth.
   
   The things I've seen more than anything else are artistic growth, personal development and perseverance that would knock your teeth into the back of your windpipe with a glare.
   So when I ask if you've actually paid for it or not, you better have a fucking great excuse if the answer is no.

Now who the heck am I to even be talking about this? Well, I've been talking about it for about eight years now, and feel my perspective is valid. As a musician and member of numerous indie bands, and as a technologist, and as a music fan, and as the proprietor of KiTH, I've communicated with thousands of musicians and music fans over the years.

If you like art, then support the artist. It's as simple as that.

Now, in respect to the utopian DRM system I outlined above, it's obviously too little too late and probably a bit overly-simplistic, too. I've been thinking about it a lot over the past few days because of the incredible news about a new Swedish law that came into effect yesterday. As of July 1, it is illegal to share copyrighted material over the Internet in Sweden. Basically, the technologists failed to create a system that allowed artists and fans to co-exist peacefully and the heavy-handed imagination-challenged content industry pressured the government into creating strict controls that belie cultural reality. Of course, as I argue above, it's not completely bad, but I think it's unfortunate that things have come to this.

It could have been so much better.

posted by jstar88 @ 12:49 AM