Last Updated on: 30th September 2020, 09:18 pm
It’s amazing. Just when you start thinking that maybe the folks at the RIAA might be growing a clue, something like this hits the news.
According to RIAA technology head David Hughes, digital rights management software is not dead, and even though the trend now is to sell regular mp3’s that people can use when, where and how they’d like, the technology is about to make a comeback in a big way.
Excuse me a moment.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHOHOHOHOHARHARHARHAHAHHOHOHAHMMMMPHHHHH!!!
Thanks, now where was I? Oh right, I was trying and failing to say with a straight face that DRM isn’t a dead in the water idea. I was also trying and failing to take seriously a prediction from an organization that has been so far behind the curve when it comes to adapting to what the market is calling for that it can’t help but make itself irrelevant and eventually run itself out of business. If you want to disagree with me feel free, but I won’t listen to you unless you can explain to me how they have failed to learn anything from the success of Napster and all of the alternatives that have come since.
Hughes does have the right idea I’ll give him that much, but the way he figures he’ll get there is completely backwards.
Hughes also said that DRM must change so that the public sees it less as a sort of policeman that locks music a way. He would prefer a mode where consumers don’t notice DRM at all. “People just want music when they want it,” he said. “It’s about access. If they get that then they don’t care about DRM.”
Try to get your head around that. People want their music where and when they want it, and the way to accomplish this is through the use of a technology that by design stops them from doing that very thing, only in the dream world he’s living in it doesn’t. Um yeah ok.
The thing he’s missing is that people already do have access to files that will allow them to use their music when and how they’d like. They’re called mp3’s, and the sooner his industry realizes that there’s a market for them [something the rest of the world has known for the better part of the last 10 years], the safer his job and the jobs of his bosses will be over the long haul.