EMI Considers Abandoning DRM on CDs

jOmill writes "EMI Netherlands has announced that it is considering no longer using DRM on CDs, because it isn't worth the cost. According to Reuters the company is still reviewing the decision. From the article: 'Critics have argued that the system has not worked as consumers could be driven to illegal sites to download music to the popular iPod instead. A spokeswoman for EMI said it had not manufactured any new disks with DRM, which restricts consumers from making copies of songs and films they have purchased legally, for the last few months.'"

Good...

...because when any "DRM" is used on audio CDs, they're technically no longer even "audio CDs"...at least, they don't officially conform to the Red Book Audio specification [wikipedia.org], and can't even use [wikipedia.org] the familiar "Compact Disc Digital Audio" logo. While certainly they're intended to be purchased and used as audio CDs, and everyone would still refer to them as such, they're at most an "audio disc resembling a conventional audio CD," or "audio that is incidentally stored on CD media".

Intrinsic to a Red Book Audio CD is the ability to extract the audio in its pristine digital form. While content owners may not appreciate that in today's digital marketplace, that's what an audio CD is. If labels want to add DRM or anything else not in the Red Book Audio specification to these discs, they are obligated to make it clear that they're not really audio CDs, and indeed, consumers have found the belated warning that they "may not play in all CD players" only too true, resulting in practical decisions like this one from EMI Netherlands. This is what you get when you screw with established international standards.

Especially humorous is that, any amount of DRM aside, all of this music will always be widely available on file sharing networks, mostly as lossy MP3s. Who is affected most, then, by not being able to extract audio from discs within one's own physical possession, given that the music is invariably already available any number of file sharing networks many times over? The individual consumer who simply wants to enjoy his purchase on another device, such as a computer or portable music player. While DRM is intended to prevent or reduce casual copyright infringement, it never will stop content from being copied, and DRM on "audio CDs" is just one of those wrongheaded ideas, given that it toys with a standard that has already been established for two and a half decades.

Until someone figures out how to alter properties of nature in such a way that physical property of audio or video being able to be in an analog state via sound waves or the electromagnetic spectrum can be eliminated, there will always be mechanisms for those who wish to violate copyright to violate it. In the meantime, DRM will mostly affect and inconvenience legitimate, paying consumers of content.

Re:Good...

"DRM is intended to prevent or reduce casual copyright infringement"

I'd like to point out -- though most people here probably know -- that casual copyright infringement very likely improves the bottom line of the music publisher. E.g. my friend casually gives me a mix CD of tunes he thinks I'd like, I'm X% more likely to buy one of those artists' discs later. That X% increase has a monetary value in the aggregate. I'd love a link to a scientific study of that value.

Re:Good...

Preventing casual infringement also depends on your definition of infringement. I bought the new David Gray CD. It wouldnt play in my computer for some reason, so I bought another copy. Then I found out it was copy protected. I don't *OWN* a cd player and I couldn't rip it.

I have two copies of the album and to this day I have only heard it via an mp3 downloaded illegally. In this case they just prevented me from legal fair use and its the last sony album I'll every buy.

Re:Good...

While DRM is intended to prevent or reduce casual copyright infringement...

I disagree with this. In my opinion DRM is intended to prevent lawful use of copyrighted material and motivate people to buy multiple copies of the same work by intentionally breaking interoperability with other devices. That is to say, content producers would like their customers to buy one copy for their home CD player another copy for the tape player in the car and another copy for their portable player. The industry is used to income from people periodically re-buying their favorite media in the new format or to replace the copy they have broken. They are terrified of the idea that a person could buy one copy and use it forever, handing it down to their children.

Media companies claim that they are trying to stop illegal copyright infringement, but they also claim accidentally posting a song on a file sharing network costs them hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue, and if not for file sharing networks 90% of the gross national income would be spent on music. Why anyone would believe such obvious liars is beyond my understanding.

Great Day

The second-greatest day will be when they report that sales dropped off not the slightest bit b/c of this change DRM only annoys purchasers. Not "pirates"

Re:Great Day

Yes I did. 5 months ago. 3 CDs from Virgin records via Amazon.

The wife wanted to listed to them on the MP3 player in her car and her Mac at work. None could play them. Even the "proper" Sony CD player had problems with 2 out of 3.

I ended up researching the matter and buying a DVD rewriter model with a known firmware bug (or feature depends how you look at it) which can rip through most current DRM with flying colours. So the "could not rip" lasted for 3 days in total. After that it was ripped and encoded in the suitable formats for usage on the devices used for listening in the house.

Frankly, Virgin and Macromedia can take their DRM and shovel it where sun does not shine and rotate it at 48x CD speed until they the torque pushes their heads out of their arse. What really pissed me off was the fact that I have purchased it legally, 2 out of 3 had a "CD digital audio" on them and they were unuseable on all devices in the house.

From the point of view of the average consumer this is perceived as "shitty and unuseable product" so I am not surprised EMI is considering abandoning the practice. It is costing them lost sales and handling returns from pissed of customers who after that go to "illegal" networks or AllOfMP3.

Foo Fighters: One by One

Has anybody actually bought a CD that they could not rip?
I've never seen one that I couldn't easily rip songs from....

I had a Foo Fighters CD that I got as a gift which was labeled as an "enhanced" CD. The first time I put it in my PC at home, I forgot to hold down the shift key, and I wasn't able to rip it on that computer (although the software on the CD wanted to "give" me a set of protected files for all of the songs, which I would only be able to listen to with their proprietary player). I ripped the CD under Linux on my laptop, then again on my work PC in Windows. Also with this CD, it was supposed to have some kind of bonus content that would connect to 'somebody' over the Internet to authenticate the CD in order to unlock the bonus content. That never worked on any PC I tried it on, the authentication always failed.

So there were two disappointments on that disc: 1) If you don't hold down the shift key, you won't be able to rip it (under Windows) and 2) the broken bonus content. I like the music on the CD, though... it's too bad that they have to muck it all up with DRM under the guise of extra features that don't work.

Yay!

Maybe the rest of the damn CD makers will follow suit, and I can go back to using my Sharpies to scribble on the front of my CDs!

Which is it?

TFS says they are considering stopping, and then says they stopped months ago. Could we make up our minds please?

Riiiiiiight, downloads...

Critics have argued that the system has not worked as consumers could be driven to illegal sites to download music to the popular iPod instead

Who needs to illegally download? DRM'd "CDs" have a much more serious flaw, from EMI's perspective - They don't actually stop anyone from ripping them (and as a perk, they don't play in some audio CD players, particularly car CD players), meaning users need to rip and reburn them just to use as intended.

Good to see them giving up, though, regardless of the reason.

I know it has been cold outside recently...

But did hell freeze over?

Finally, they're starting to get a clue. I do not advocate pirating music in any way. However, I think it's equally, if not more insidious, that commercial interests are making it very difficult for consumers to *want* to do the right thing. This is a step in the right direction. *AA....are you listening?

Re:I know it has been cold outside recently...

Well they got a clue but not the one your thinking of.
1. DRM costs money.
2. Current DRM didn't stop the music from showing up on file shareing networks.
3. Current DRM is a waste of money.
4. Stop paying for DRM that doesn't work.
5. More Profit.

Now if they ever get effective DRM it will be back.

Duh

"EMI Netherlands has announced that it is considering no longer using DRM on CDs, because it isn't worth the cost.

We could have told you that, but since when did you guys ever listen to your customers?

From the article: 'Critics have argued that the system has not worked as consumers could be driven to illegal sites to download music to the popular iPod instead. A spokeswoman for EMI said it had not manufactured any new disks with DRM, which restricts consumers from making copies of songs and films they have purchased legally, for the last few months.'"

Did you ever think we, as consumers, when buying a CD, want to make backups, import the CD to our Ipod or other MP3 player?

It's amazing how management runs these companies. How can you deliver a product your customer wants when you don't even listen to what they WANT?

Soo...

Are precedents global? I mean will one country follow suit solely because another has seen the light?

Joda

Do or do not. There is no 'consider.'

Really?

There is no try, only do.

DRM on cd's us futile anyhow.

Well done EMI, have a duh tag

Is any protection 'worth the cost'?
How about ditching all these lame attempts to stop 'casual copying' like CSS, DVD regions and macrovision, and then pass the savings on to the customer?

If not then don't be surprised when the customers casually downloads it from a torrent. With freedom from DRM shit, torrents would still be good value at twice the price.

Let's think of the consequences here...

...and the poor software pirates who are quickly being putting out of business. How are they going to put food on the table if they don't have anything to crack? Let's do the right thing and think of their needs, people!

Everything is DRM now

When did people start equating rudimentary copy protection with Digital Rights Management?

The term has lost all meaning. People are throwing it around whenever they stumble upon any bug, missing feature, or technical limitation that causes them grief. "I can't use my iPod with multiple computers, I hate DRM." "Internet Explorer crashed, DRM strikes again." "This website requires registration, DRM is out of control."

In other news...

...EMI has announced they are discontinuing the release of new albums on standard Audio CDs and will now be selling Audio HD-DVDs complete with fingerprint scanners and GPS transmitters and facial recognition software. Any AHD-DVD found to be played by a user other than it's owner (or within hearing range of a non-owner) will self-destruct, and any AHD-DVD found outside it's allocated region will explode.

In other, other news, numerous airlines worldwide have banned the usage of all media disks during flight.

Perhaps Forced By Globalization?

In the article, it says that the DRM'd CDs were sold primarily outside of the U.S.. I suspect this was because of the headaches and lawsuits they knew would likely plague them in the United States. But now with the globalization fueled by the internet, I can imagine that more and more U.S. consumers were importing these DRM'd CDs perhaps after discovering a foreign artist via their music downloaded from the internet. If that's even partially true, then it would be more proof in support of the notion that "sharing" music over the internet is actually growing the market. Making music easier to get legitimately will be a win for the music industry in the long run, if they can get over their CD and DRM fixations.

EMI Artist list

List by sub label. Taken from http://www.emirecords.co.uk/loader.html [emirecords.co.uk]

*NOTE: The site is flash so I can't copy and paste, these are hand copied, sorry for misspellings* ::EMI::
Auf Der Maur
Badly Drawn Boy
Beth Orton
Captain
Corinne Bailey Ray
David Gilmore
Faith Evans
Faultline
FischerSpooner
Hot Chip
Iron Maiden
John Cale
Kate Bush
Keren Ann
Kraftwerk
Pink Floyd
Radio 4
Robbie Williams
Saosin
Shawn Emanuel
Sigur Ros
Starsailor
Telepopmusik
The Aliens
The Concrete
Vincent Van and the Villans ::Heavenly Records::
Dove
Ed Hardcourt
The Little Ones
The Magic Numbers
The Vines ::DFA Records::
Black Dice
Delia Gonzalz & Gavin Russom
The Juan Maclean ::Positiva:: ::Positiva::
Deep Dish
Ferry Corsten
Paul Van Dyk
Soul Avengerz
Soul Seekers
The Shapeshifters ::Positiva:: ::Additive::
Remy

Logical

So they're making a definity imnprovement of the product availability to their customers, making a definite cost reduction, with only a theoretical risk of noticeably increased piracy? Yeah, that sounds logical here too, and I wonder what took them so long. Pirates aren't those crying out at DRM, they use BitTorrent or other P2P nets. That's the biggest design hole of DRM, IMHO. Maybe the point was to not have a single pirate be able to rip (one is enough) that protection or gain it from other sources where it's not protected (or before it is), but all I can say about that idea is "dream on".

a DOH! revelation in the netherlands

do please find sanity elsewhere as well, industry.

I think they pretty much given up a few years ago

I posted about this earlier on http://www.groklaw.net/ [groklaw.net]

Ithink that the last major UK EMI release with DRM was Coldplay's X&Y back in 2005, any other releases I noticed on EMI was on the budget/reissue EMI Gold label, which was usually sold at about £2.99 in the bargain bin's at Sainsburys (a posher version of Walmart for our American chums ;) )

Why they kept it on the cheap stuff and not the latest releases I don't know, I suspect they were trying to see how many returns as "faulty" they would get on the budget range, maybe it was too high a percentage and they decided the cost of the returns on a big selling CD was too high.

They used to have a pro-drm site at http://www.emimusic.info/uk/ [emimusic.info] printed on the DRM'd CD's but they seem to have pulled it.

Funny to see how cocky the record companies were back in 2002 compared to now - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/11/21/all_cds_wi ll_be_protected/ [theregister.co.uk]

Jonathan

Too little too late

After years of treating me like a whoring stealing bitch with the DRM restrictions, I lost interest in what they have to say anymore. They are not worthy of my business. It is like an abusing dad who beat his children after 10 years, asks them..."ohh please come back now, I will not beat you anymore!" Well I seen the world, and I am not interested in going back.

  Im not your bitch anymore. You are not special, and I have no reason to give you any of my money. I havent bought a single new CD in the last 8 years from a store - but I did buy few used [DRM free] Jazz, Blues and few indie at the concerts.

  Fuck you, if you think I will come back.

Not CDs

If it has DRM, it's not a CD: it's a shiny plastic disc that might happen to play in some players. CDs that conform to the standard cannot have DRM.

I always look for the little "CD" logo on plastic discs in stores, and if that logo isn't there, there's no way I will buy the disc.

Swift, like buffalo; cunning, like microwave.

EMI, in a recent press release, has declared that water is wet and the Earth is very likely in orbit around the sun.

"We're as surprised as anyone," said one EMI representative.

Just as a reminder

Lets remember Tommi Kyyräs comments on playing cd's: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050922-5339 .html [arstechnica.com]

Maybe they realised...

Maybe they realised it was a waste of time because it doesn't work.

This may just be my experience, but I haven't come across a single CD (including some which are explicitly marked as having some sort of "Copy Protection" on them) which didn't rip first time in my PC. There's nothing special about my drive (I've used an old Matsushita DVD drive and a Plextor DVD Re-writer). Maybe it's because I am running Linux, but as far as I can tell, CD-Ex on Windows would work equally well as anything I am using under Linux.

because modern CD players are DATA players

as pointed out before the Red Book specification describes audio CD's.

but data DVD has sectors and format information in the data on top of the red book specification.

and the Orange Book specification give details of multisession formats.

most of the "copy protection" systems used worked by wrapping the session information to impossible combinations that were impossible to read. or degrading the galois based CRC information that was used to recover bad data. neither of these methods were fatal to a Red Book player that only played audio disks as it ignored all other formats happily.

but these days most CD players can play MP3's also, and hence are data players not audio players - this means they are exactly the systems that the copy protection was designed to disrupt.

so the CD manufacturers found themselves in a situation where the new hifi's being built were being disrupted by they copy protection and hence unable to play any of the CDs. its a question of the physiscal data path built into the decoder IC on most MP3/Audio CD players.

in short, I'm not suprised they stopped including it - I'm just suprised they waited so long.

Good

consumers could be driven to illegal sites to download music

My favourite band are signed to EMI, and their last album was DRM-infested. I emailed them to tell them that, although I had bought all their previous albums, I'd be downloading their new one illegally because it works better. They intentionally crippled their own product to the point where unpaid pirates actually delivered a better service than the multi-billion pound international corporation.

history repeats

Some record companies claimed that allowing radio stations to play records would damage their profits.

As it turned out they were talking rubbish.

Record companies trying to spindoctor the truth...

...at least in some of the newsreports I saw, in which they stated that "it was not feasible to use a DRM system as the system was hacked every time", rather than (the truth) "the consumer and CD license holders (!) have fully rejected the protection systems we have devised, because they hamper fair use - especially in the area of simply playing out the CD (not even copying it) on normal consumer-grade playback systems and even outright violate consumer rights (sony rootkit)".

Considering. Hmm.

Well talk is cheap - speaking as someone who stopped my 3 CDs a month habit when CD copy protection became widespread, It's going to take more than "considering" to get me near their coasters again. To be honest, the idea of giving money to them at all doesn't sit well with me with the way record companies have behaved over the last few year - it just feels more like paying a ransom to suited mobsters than buying music. Ah well, there's no good way to pay the artists and not the record companies I suppose, so I'll continue to enjoy music through royalties-based channels and magnatunes.

EMI stops DRM in the Netherlands!

Non-Dutch music shoppers still up a creek!

(or, alternatively...)

Continues to fund RIAA lawsuits!

Yea i noticed that no-drm thing too actually

I bought a classic music set (2 sets, 6 cds per set, best classics vol 1 and 2, spectacular) and when my 6 cd changer part of the music set that dates 1991 have (understandably) broken down from continuous playing and changing, i was able to rip them to mp3s without any problems, and with quality. now i connected a stereo line out cable to the music set's amp, and it is playing via winamp perfectly.

this is the way to make a happy customer.

Maybe they're wising up a little

Most other businesses, large and small, realize the essential fickleness of the customer. That means that any barriers you place in his way will result in his finding another way. Now, that doesn't matter when the customer has no other way to get what he wants: that's how it was in the music industry for a long time. All that changed with Napster and the succession of sharing protocols and applications that have come along since. Yes, they tried (are still trying) to use the courts to suppress that "other way", but haven't met with any real success.

EMI Brazil also stop producing them

but the already produced discs are still selling