Naturally Apple gets its fair beating on blogs and criticism for being this arrogant on the DRM issue, but one would not expect them to receive a direct attack on this issue from Microsoft. However, Steve “Throwing Chairs” Ballmer apparent goes out criticising Apple for being a closed company… Guess it takes one to know one

It is, none the less,  strange to hear Steve Jobs talk about Apple as an open company, when their entire moneychain is built around fencing in their customers completely. In my opinion they should rethink their strategy and become an open company! But who cares?…. As long as there are customers for their fenced-in technology they will continue to build more DRM into their products!

The three faces of Sony is their hardware business, Sony Pictures in the movie industry and Sony BMG in the music business. The main problem appears, however, in their software department. While the hardware business is trying to create open, innovative hardware, the two content businesses Sony Pictures and Sony BMG is trying to prevent that hardware from being used in piracy. Here is where the customer gets completely forgotten. We then see failures such as the rootkit fiasco in their CD publishing part and the Walkman relaunched that was supposed to smash the iPod but failed completely because of unusable software as it was too ridden with DRM and copy protection technology making it impossible for customers to use. The Walkman’s price was slashed by more than half, but little did it help. The software was useless and people kept returning their Walkmans as they saw them as broken.

Sony, however, learned nothing from this. They still struggle with technologies that Sony Pictures and Sony BMG wanted to push in order to control their customers. Think of the many failed formats Sony has tried to push: ATRAC, MiniDisc, SACD, MemoryStick and so forth. ATRAC is a perfect example here. When the rest of the market had already accepted MP3 as the standard and Microsoft was pushing WMA Sony kept forcing their poor customers onto ATRAC and nothing else. After several years of being practically the laughing stock of the MP3-player market with a ridiculously small percentage they finally yielded to MP3 and released the Walkman player which could play both formats. However, the software was so riddled with DRM og copy protection technologies that it failed completely. Hardware is only as good as its software. Why didn’t they learn?

Even though music has been distributed over the Internet for nearly fifteen years Sony BMG and the rest of the music industry still hasn’t found a digital strategy. In this field Sony is also showing its many faces. It wants to give its customers as many options as possible, but also to completely control their use. This can be seen clearly in the fact that Sony is one of the companies pushing the hardest for the power to use selectable output – a technology that takes away a lot of the consumers rights without asking. So on one side Sony wants to push HD content in all your equipment – on the other side Sony wants complete control to fully disable all your equipment and remove the ability to display the HD content.

Then came the PlayStation 3 and Sony’s newest push of technologies. Now it wanted its customers onto the Blu-Ray path, so that it could force new copy protection technologies onto its poor customers. Another HD technology riddled with DRM. However, when one focuses too much on technology and marketing and forgets about software, which has always been Sony’s soft spot, one is set up for a major disappointment – especially when one is as arrogant as Sony Entertainment. The PlayStation 3 didn’t quite know what kind of machine it wanted to be. It wanted to be a game console, but also a media center and a Blu-Ray player… but as everyone knows: The Jack of All Trades is a Master of None… And that also happened with the PlayStation 3, who is suffering greatly on the market today.The holiday sales has shown that in this time around Sony is way behind its two competitors…

What Sony failed to do Nintendo did to perfection. They focused their console on a major market and didn’t put everything into the console – only what the market was asking for. The result is remarkable – especially compared to the once master of the market, Sony. Even their newest competitor, Microsoft, understood where they needed to beat Sony. Microsoft didn’t have Sony’s innovation in hardware or even remotely their experience in this field. When it comes to software, however, Microsoft is million miles ahead of Sony. They made the right tools for developing software on their platform and they made a brilliant working network service in Live far ahead of Sony’s PSN, which most of all looked like a small afterthought from Sony in hindsight of Microsoft’s success. Microsoft success came from ensuring a lot more titles than Sony did – especially when it came to exclusives, where Sony was once master. Sony simply forgot that consoles are about games. At the same time Microsoft is cutting prices making it harder for Sony to sell consoles, who are already seen as expensive…

Times has changed. Hardware is no longer everything. These days a console is measured by its software and in that field Sony is having serious problems – not only with its countless delays, but also with the quality of the software, which almost always fails to live up to the hype. A clear example of Sony’s problem with software is that every game studio claims that it is much simpler and thereby cheaper to develop on Microsoft’s Xbox platform compared to Sony’s PlayStation platform – even such former Sony exclusives as Square Enix.What is Sony’s response to this criticism? Well, even more strange… They claim that they have made it difficult to develop on the PlayStation 3 on purpose to make it last the ten years they somehow expect this console to last – even though it is far behind all its competitors in every way… sheeesh!

The strangest thing about this is that Sony doesn’t seem to learn anything. They keep on lying through their teeth and spinning numbers in their marketing. They keep on screwing their customers with DRM and copy protection and the removal of consumer rights, using lobbying. One would think that a company that makes a PR nightmare like the CD rootkit would learn something, but it doesn’t seem to happen. What Sony needs a common sense czar…

Well, not very inspiring to say the least. The Greedy Business ™, consisting of the Big Four in the music business, IFPI, MPAA and the likes of those, instead wants to crumble the rights of the Internet users and expect special threatment on the Internet. They want complete monitoring of the Internet – and naturally they do not want to pay for it. For some reason they expect the tax payers to pay for monitoring themselves in order for the Greedy Business ™ to misuse this monitoring for protecting their market. They are dead scared that the powers of the market is shifting and they want to use fear and money to pull their weight around to ensure that no one starts making money on innovation in this business.

In the mean time the Greedy Business ™ are spending their time publishing papirs on Internet piracy to get some support to their “take-control-over-the-internet”-scheme. Naturally these papirs are as filled with errors as the one would expect from these blind managers. They simply doesn’t know the rules of the scientific world and instead are just proving how little truth they have in what they claim instead. Perhaps they should invest all that energy into innovation instead – might be a welcome change!

The problem for the Greedy Business ™ is perhaps that they simply weren’t ready for the realities or for the fact that most business have to actually do something in order to earn money. Instead they just kept on claiming that it was the pirates’ fault – not theirs. They did nothing to better the situation – just kept on complaining! What a normal business would do in such a situation is to change ones strategy (or actually make one in this case), not act like a spoiled child and start suing your customers thereby ruining your market of tomorrow. However, the Greedy Business ™ kept on acting like idiots without an idea in what direction they wanted to go and showed no understanding of what their market demanded what so ever!

Even when it is going perfectly in their sales in the midst of a financial crisis they keep on crying piracy … Won’t you guys just shut the f*ck up and die soon?!

Well, frankly I don’t quite agree! I hate piracy as much as the next guy. No, I don’t find it to be an “okay demonstration against some big business, who is doing you wrong!”. People that pirate are just freeloaders! They do not understand the massive commitment and work it requires to make a game these days – even a poor game (which the market is apparently filled with). I don’t like demos myself. They always leave all kinds of crap on my computer and I hate those regular re-installs. I can, to some degree, understand those people that claim that too many titles these days are utter crap, wasted money, or just not enough bang for the money (like Mirror’s Edge with only 6 hours of gameplay) and therefore try out the pirate version before shelling out good cash. However, guys that use this excuse over and over and never actually buy anything as they keep claiming that there are no good titles: Shut the fuck up! If there were no good titles how come you spend 20 hours plus every week gaming?!… I hate those guys! Stop complaining about game quality when you don’t support good games! Stop complaining about poor performance, too many bugs, poor service when you are using a pirate version, riddled with malware and virusses! Buy good games … it’s that easy!

Games are often good value for money – especially compared to movies, where you get 1,5 – 2,5 hours of entertainment for the approx. same price where the games often deliver 20 – 40 hours of gameplay and a more immersive and often better social experience!

However, the one area where I hate the conclusion of that article is on DRM… I refuse to accept that crappy DRM schemes on my computer! I am not a pirate, i am not a thief… I have 60 plus original titles on my PC alone, not counting my console games… I refuse to receive a copy of a game that denies me much more than the pirate version, which is available for free! Instead offer some free extra stuff and good online parts for us paying customers – NOT CRAPPY DRM-schemes! Hint: they don’t work and they are a nightmare to support! Just give it up and let the market decide! Then it will be easier for the companies to expose the ever growing freeloaders! Yes, I know… companies like EA will still make a lot of poor value titles or easy follow ups on public franchises without any proper content or gameplay, but then don’t buy them … And don’t go for the pirate version of a game you claim is poor!

I hate those double standards… It is easy to shout your moralistic view all over the internet and find a common voice… It is a bit more difficult to live by those beliefs! And believe me when I say that you fucking freeloaders don’t make it anymore easy on those of us that actually pay for good games and don’t pirate! So grow up and smell the free market! Vote with your wallet, not your sorry cry-baby voice!

Now, another reason I personally hate DRM is something that is rarely mentioned in the internet article, but matters a lot for me. I take backup of my games. I hate having to have the physical disc laying around everywhere. In the fully digital distribution age this will not be a problem, but we are not there yet, so it is! Therefore I make backups on my NAS, which is a nice way to access my games when I want to play them. A nice solution, I like to think. The problem is with titles that contain DRM that I have to go to shady sites on the Internet to get noCD patches to get them to work without a DVD in the drive. Why should I be punished for being a faithful customer compared to the pirate? Why shall I be forced onto shady sites to get noCD patches to be able to make backups? How come the industry themselves aren’t offering my this as a faithful, paying customer? There is a reason I complete stopped buying games with DRM… They do not supply me with the options I need. This is a digital age – I should be able to handle my product in a digitally flexible manner!

So, instead of pirating games because you don’t want to pay for the honest work of men and women in the gaming inudstry stop playing games. If you want to change the industry start paying for games, but only those that do it right!

If companies, like EA, doesn’t listen to you then… well… they’ll find out in the one language that company can understand – MONEY!

We all know how you tried to market the PlayStation 3 like a center of HD content and we also know that your PSN doesn’t contain anything of value and absolutely nothing of HD value!

Instead of blocking Microsoft’s excellent attempt at providing what you have failed to do, please start making your own attempt at delivering something of value to your customers.

It is simply a childish act and shows that you can’t be trusted to run both a music, movie and game business at the same time without getting your childish feelings hurt and instead screw your customers. It’s enough just to see how you handled the enormous amount of Sony product-placement in a James Bond film, but this?

Seriously, Sony, grow up – and fast!

UPDATE: … And so they did (for the time being )!

And note to Microsoft: “Please join the digital age soon!” !!!

The music industry earns billions upon billions every year – even though they haven’t adapted or at least their business model in more than 60 years. Imagine that in any other industry? Imagine if the hardware producers had done the same. Rejected the Internet outside their control completely. None of their goods were to be sold outside a physical store in their complete control. They would have surely died. Imagine if the authors had sued Amazon out this world for selling tons of their books online and tried to disable the internet because they found a book online that had been made illegally available? Such thoughts are today unimaginable and still the Greedy Business ™ tries to do this. The ridiculous thing about their attempt is that politicians listen to this.

Lets make one thing perfectly clear: I’m against illegal copying of copyrighted or otherwise protected work… but I am not against copying, information freedom, technology advances. File copying is not automatically illegal downloading. Torrents does not equal illegal download, but an excellent technology that could be used in many different contexts. The Internet is way past the hour where we can just start to disable people’s access to it. It is simply a human right. Why do I say that? Well, as long as the Greedy Business ™ sees nothing on the Internet but illegal copies everyone agrees that it isn’t beneficial to keep. However, in the same moment we call out for the “Three strikes and you are out” adaption we also critize China for not allowing its people free access to information through the Internet. Perhaps soon China will come out saying that they are just regulating against illegal copying and everything will be allright then?

The main problem facing the Greedy Business ™ is that they are no longer functioning as a free market, where the forces of the market regulates. If it had been the case then one or more of the Big Four would have adapted to the Internet more than a decade ago and perhaps even sooner than that – offering people an alternative they were clearly asking for. Take a look at how many portable media devices being sold every year. Then try to go out and find a service that can offer them the media they want, regardless of the platform they have at home (Windows, Linux, Mac)? There are none! Then take a look at what the Greedy Business ™ does offer (after being forced to try something)… Complicated stores, filled with forms that needs to be filled out, again and again, slow download times, extremely low bitrates and quality, DRM, DRM and DRM… and for the same price as you can buy the physical alternative! Don’t try to explain those prices! They simply has nothing to do with the cost of production – as it would in a working market.

If you started to see where all the money goes inside the music industry you would be appalled – and they know this. How come a CD costs the same as a DVD? You cannot try tell me that the price of production is the same for making 12 small tracks of music compared to a large Hollywood blockbuster involving several major stars and thousands of people involved. Then comes the price of a downloadable version of an album cost the same – and should I be so stupid that I wanted to pay for a tune for my mobile phone the price would be one fifth of the entire album. Don’t tell me that it is representing the true cost in any way. It represents that too many people needs to earn too much money inside this great pyramid where the musician sits at the bottom… An entire industry build up of managers and lawyers that imagine a world that cannot live without their product and therefore keep claiming that they must be loosing money to illegal downloads because every person on Earth doesn’t buy a CD every month, like they did in the 80′ies. Could they only offer some real proof of this, instead of the lying, bullshitting statistics they publish now and then, which are always shot down immediately as being at least of factor of 3 over the top or outright lies…

Instead of focusing on making music they are now spending their time on two things: suing their customers for illegal downloading without proper evidence and spreading lies about technology they do not understand themselves.

The conclusion is simply, if you think of it. Technology doesn’t stand still – people sometimes do, however. What we have is a disfunctional industry that needs to die and be reborn immediately. Instead of trying to disable people’s access to the Internet we should instead disable the Internet access for the Greedy Business ™. This would solve all the problems. They don’t need the real world to make their statistics anyway. Then when they have come up with something that acutally moves technology and the Internet forward, instead of back into the Dark Ages, they should be allowed back on. Now, all I need is a politician that wants to listen to the people and reason, instead of listening to the money of the Greedy Business ™.

After a decade of darkness in the minds of the Greedy Business ™ ’s CEOs they finally started to realize that calling your customers pirates, suing your customers while at the same time locking their systems full of DRM might not be the best way to win their hearts. Then Apple along with EMI launched DRM-free MP3 music on iTunes and suddenly Amazon followed with the two more of the Big Greedy Four. All that was left was Sony, who still couldn’t believe why the others would ever want to abandon DRM. After pressure when every blog and newssite on the planet had written about the DRM-free campaign from the other three Sony decided to make their own “DRM-free” option. However, true to Sony’s way of handling their customers it was an extremely poor and difficult way to implement DRM-free, which forced you into a physical store, thereby removing half the incentative. Why would Sony ever want to implement it in such a horrible way? The answer is simple: It is the only way to “prove” that DRM-free doesn’t work. If their silly “DRM-free” attempt was a fiasco they could go out and claim that people didn’t want DRM-free and that the Big Greedy Four should go back to DRM – ensuring Sony a good deal in royalties for their tons of non-functional DRM-schemes.

The main problem the Greedy Business ™ is now left with is their legacy from this decade of DRM and customer-hating. Many analysts predicts that DRM especially will haunt the Greedy Business ™ for a long time. Meanwhile the Greedy Business ™ continues to sue its customers, however meeting a lot more resistance now! The problem with companies like RIAA/MPAA is that their only interest is to make the customers of the company that pay them look criminal – how did anyone ever expect a business model like that to work? EMI has already seen the problem in this constellation and are asking RIAA what it is getting for its annual 250 million dollars, while being prepared to leave the RIAA should their response not fit the bill! RIAA is in dire straits already for showing sides that the music industry shouldn’t like too much. RIAA itself is for some reason not ready to pay artists anything even though they claim to this in their behalf – nor do they ever expect to do this… Why should anyone pay them then? Why not pay directly to the artist that has been exposed to piracy? At the same time they are eager to stay in control in their role as gate keepers and constantly battles individual and independent artists to keep them and the Big Greedy Four in control of the entire music industry, which is also something that would never be allowed in any real free market. Their public announcement often creates hate among music customers and clearly shows that they haven’t got the slightest basic understanding of how a free market should work or what their customers want – or even what they are actually doing!

What is more of a problem is the fact that these “organizations” react so differently which has become painfully obvious in the many lawsuits against college students in America these recent years. The approaches and understandings of RIAA, MPAA and the TV-series are so different you wouldn’t think they even know what they really want – apart from more money. When their lawsuits hits prime news sites like Businessweek with a story of a poor mother who is innocent and who fights back against the Evil Empire ™ of RIAA and the cursed music industry it is a PR nightmare from day one. Of course with their lawsuit approach they are sure to create hate towards the entire industry from the next-generation consumers, which shows their understanding of business. How could the CEOs of the industry miss this? They are once again left with a PR nightmare, which they leave to their owners to clean up, while they still claim their annual wages for ruining the future market for their owners.

If they instead started to look at statistics – instead of “inventing” them – they might see that pirates sometimes actually help companies sell more products… A concept no CEO in the Greedy Business ™ would ever come to understand with their 1980′ies way of thinking. They haven’t even reached Web 1.0, while the rest of the world is ready to leave Web 2.0 and go forth.

What strikes me as particularly inconsistent is how RIAA for example handles its money. They claim to be doing this on behalf of the artists, who pay them quite handsomely to do this horrid job. On the other hand RIAA wants to use a method of pay themselves they refused to the webcasters, while at the same time doesn’t actually go out and support the song writers who is claimed to be their first priority. The RIAA is suppose to be the best lawyers the Big Greedy Four can get, but why are their methods then called into serious question? The same methods are called into question when it comes to the BSA, who are actually forcing companies to turn away from the software-producers who pay the BSA and turn to open source solutions – loosing them for the long run! A company like MediaSentry also quickly removes the earlier proof that they were using illegal methods from their homepage showing that all these companies are breaking the law to “uphold” what they consider to be a righteous cause! All in all these companies are no better than the mafia – and until the Greedy Business ™ understands that they customers will continue to hate them – continuing this PR nightmare!
These days are interesting days. Especially when a hacker found his way into the Media Defenders company and proved that companies like RIAA knows that their actions have zero effect on piracy. This is interesting as it proves that the RIAA isn’t actually working on the side of its employer, but rather is trying to stack up money for themselves while laying to their employer. And what would the BSA do when they see companies like Sony caught pirating software themselves? Sony are refusing to make amends, even though they have forced thousands to do this in a similar situation. How come they only respect copyrights and patents when it helps their own cause?

What are they even doing in the courts? The obvious have absolutely no sense of how to act as a lawyer or how to prove their desperate cases, clearly proven when the RIAA “expert” witness was deemed “borderline incompetent” by real experts in the courtroom, while all their “proving” techniques was called into serious question as well… Why do the Greedy Business ™ hire these guys and pay them so much money for being incompetent? They expect nothing in return, do no real statistics or analysis and still expect customers to buy from them after being sued!

When they cannot win in the markets or in the courtrooms what do they do then? Well the obvious answer if you lived in the 1940′ies Germany or in China today would be to secure a law that indoctrinates the next generation about their view and their view ONLY on file-sharing – ignoring all technological progress made the last two decades all together at the same time. Thank god I live in the real world … and not a country where a new law can make it possible to demand 1,5 million dollars per copied CD – even though no physical pierce has yet to be stolen and all evidence can be falsified digitally! Naturally such a law is made while a large company like Wal-Markt goes out saying that they will no longer accept the far too high prices on CDs as they are experiencing that neither will the customer! Of course a good CEO would know such a thing – if they didn’t read the statistics of companies like MPAA, which are at least a factor of 3 exaggerated and so are those from the college piracy numbers, which they have already admitted!

The grotesque part in this is that even though they are lying wildly and they admits it the CEO’s do nothing. They do not act on this, like a normal CEO would – and therefore they are lost in the digital race completely! The companies are offering no real alternative to piracy. Even the dumbest CEO should know his numbers so well that when he sees that the two biggest piracy nations of the world, China and Russia, bring down their piracy numbers and it doesn’t affect the CD or DVD sales, which continues to fall that this is not a major contributing factor! What a good CEO would do then is to find the REAL contributing factor – instead of relying on statistics that has already been proven false from day one! An industry led by so poor leadership is doomed to fail – and they will… sooner than those poor CEOs will ever realize!

In terms of maturity Blu-Ray needs to adapt its Profile 2.0 as fast as possible so that people doesn’t get burned any more than they already have. Regional coding is also a thing of the past, trying to keep the markets separated so that they can squeeze more money out of the western countries and offer richer content to the slower adapting markets, like USA, the same way it happened with DVD. Regional coding simply needs to go.

Then the content needs to go up in quality. Sony has for so long championed that 30 GB is not enough for the next-gen format – then why don’t you use more than maximum 18 GB on any Blu-Ray? Give the consumer a reason to buy these disc for the already far too high prices Blu-Ray disc are selling f0r – simply add more and better content! One might still remember the early days of DVDs, where almost no real additional content was put on the discs, the prices were high and the movies were poor conversions with almost the same low quality as VHS in terms of picture and especially sound. Sony has championed this format as crystalline in terms of quality so the content needs to be as well – or the money spent on the disc will again be wasted…

Then the loading times of Blu-Ray discs needs to go down. Choosing Java as a language might seem smart in terms of flexibility, but NOT in terms of speed. Customers doesn’t want to go from DVD with almost instantaneous loading times to a Blu-Ray disc with between 50 seconds and 150 seconds worth of loading time. This simply needs to go down! Way down … Computers are fast and we do not live in 1990 anymore… Loading times should be labelled on players to give buyers something to assess them by.

The question of upgradeability then comes to mind. A lot of early adapters have been seriously burned by the lagging maturity in the rushed-to-market Blu-Ray specification. This should not happen to common consumers. Players should be marked with a clear label that they are future-proof.

The prices need to go down. I know that Sony considers the DVD to be last-gen by now, but it is still the bar on which Blu-Ray is measured. Upscaled DVDs look good. Few normal consumers see real difference on medium quality flatscreen TVs combined with a standard HIFI-setup between upscaled DVDs and the Blu-Ray discs. When this is the reality the difference in price in terms of both content (discs) and players becomes an issue and currently Blu-Ray is too expensive on both accounts. This needs to be addressed.

Digital Rights are an important issue and copy protection on Blu-Ray discs are, like HD DVDs, appalling. On top of an already dis functional AACS Blu-Ray has BD-Java to further slow players down. This needs to go! Normal consumers will not accept their legally bought discs doesn’t play correctly. The explanation that copy protection is needed and fair will not be accepted by the common consumer. He wants the content he had paid good money for to play correctly or he wants his money back and heads back to DVDs where this is not an issue anymore!

Well, that should be enough for Sony and the rest of the group to keep them occupied for a while… Let’s not hope for their sake that they are too late in fixing this because digital downloads are coming – with Microsoft pressing harder each day for this alternative – an alternative that is not limited by size or production cost in the same way…

What they completely failed to understand was that DRM in fact had an impact – it was just a negative one. One example is the PC gaming market, which is slowly being killed by DRM technologies. So what the Greedy Business ™ is actually doing with their technology is ruining their future markets and offering an ideal situation for the pirates. Why they couldn’t see this is beyond my understanding. My guess is that they simply wasn’t ready to accept that their old way of distributing, which has not seen change in more than 25-30 years, was threatened and they needed to renew. This is seen clearly in the way the Greedy Business ™ have handled every new attempt at a renewed digital distribution model, which they have been extremely efficient at overtaxing and overlicensing.

While they were busy shooting down every alternative they got and kept throwing bad technologies that took basic rights from the digital consumer it soon became apparent to everyone but the Greedy Business ™ that this might backfire big time. You can’t expect consumers to keep buying your products when you are screwing their rights, their computers, their products and then suing them all the time… Most people would understand that! Of course what you would do if you lived in Nazi germany in the 1940′ies and had such a situation is to create your own news and create fake facts wrapped in propaganda, so that is exactly what the Greedy Business ™ are doing. The funny thing about this propaganda campaign, that is suppose to take the heat out of the consumer backlash, is that it actually admits that the RIAA and the entire music business is not giving the consumer what it wants.

Meanwhile the loathing of DRM continues around the world. Still it is only at the consumer level. Governments doesn’t understand the problem. They can’t see why DRM will never work, as their understanding of IT and technology in general is as fair behind as the Greedy Business ™ are, which means that governments in general buy the crap that the Greedy Business ™ are saying. Even after the complete fiasco of Sony’s rootkit, with another one on the way, they still allow themselves to be taking around the bush by the Greedy Business ™’s lobbyist. Of course you cannot expect every educated human to be as stupid as most politicians and therefore IFPI’s sad attempt at trying to extort the universities into teaching only the view of IFPI is going horribly wrong. They somehow can’t see the problem of making this non factual propaganda in schools as a problem – maybe we should send the entire Greedy Business ™ to China and let them see what the outcome of onesided brainwash is? And it is not the only place where they try to push their incorrect perception of the world and their propaganda into. Report after report, filled with incorrect statistics and erranous analysis on the “losses” caused by piracy comes out of the Greedy Business ™ press month after month.

As of late though an entirely different problem is hitting the Greedy Business ™. The musicians, whom they represent, have had enough of suing their own fans and incapacitated fan’s computers with badly made DRM. Sir Paul McCartney has already spoken up, talked about the many problems that the industry is facing and how they acted completely wrong, when faced with such challenges. You can even hear rock stars claiming that the fight against piracy was already lost in 1997, but they are still fighting it like it was 1997 and with that use of DRM they will just create enemies for themselves. With the artificial high prices customers are forced to pay for inferior products, filled with DRM, they will turn to piracy. Especially since pirates have understood how to make it available and easy to get – even for people who are not technic minded. The band, NiN, also agrees that the prices of CDs are simply too high and that people should pirate their songs! This is a bold statement, but there is a hint of truth in it. Compare the investments in making a full motion film to that of making a CD album. There are far many more people involved in the film and it takes far longer, requires far more equipment, and still the price of the two products are almost the same, when comparing a CD with a DVD – why? While it may be a bold statement by NiN Radiohead took it a step further and went public with their latest album without a record label and even let their fans decide what they wanted to pay for the album! Claims are that Radiohead has already earned around 6-10 million dollars on this distribution model – and they don’t have to share it with a thousand and one lobbyist, lawyer or boss at the Greedy Business ™.

Well, why don’t the big four then start to sell music without DRM? According to some stores DRM-free music outsells the protected tunes in a ratio of four to one… Fear, I guess! It took a company in trouble to see the light… EMI, when faced with dire economical problems and no buyer, needed to get a foothold in this new reality. Suddenly they began to understand that the future is digital and depending on CD sales will ultimately fail. Out of the blue comes the initiative… Suddenly Apple is offering DRM-free tunes on iTunes – rocking the boat again – together with EMI. This suddenly gives EMI an amazing sales boost on iTunes – even on old songs. Amazon cannot lets this go by and soon after signs a deal with EMI, where they want to offer high-quality, DRM-free music. Suddenly Walmart enters this arena as well and now the game is on!

Sony BMG is still sitting behind like a stone, refusing to see reality, like they always have. They are still wingshot at the fact that Apple did with ease what they failed at miserably in retail. Their latest attempt at digital distribution with Crackle is way beyond embarrassing and clearly shows why Sony will never become a software-centric company.

Meanwhile the writings continue on the wall with CD sales continuing to decline and digital music sales continue to rise! This causes the Greedy Business ™ to try and blow an ember of life into their dying goldchild, the CD, but this desperate last attempt already looks like a failure on all counts. What Apple and EMI has begun on iTunes with DRM-free music is already starting to have an affect on the big four… DRM is threatened!

Suddenly Universal shocks by not renewing their iTunes contract, but only to test an alternative way of distributing DRM-free tunes without Apple in charge. The real reason they wanted to leave Apple and iTunes behind is that their greed got the best of them. They wanted a cut of every iPod sold… It is not called the Greedy Business ™ for nothing! They just want higher prices and more money – the only reason they went for DRM-free! The chief of Universal shows just how greedy they have become…

In the meantime the CEO of Warner Brothers suddenl and might I add FINALLY, realizes that their anti-consumer campaign might have helped P2P networks and hurt their own business. Welcome back, sleepy head! This is the first step towards DRM-free tunes from Warner Brothers, and it doesn’t take long before they also went the same way as EMI, leaving Sony as the last of the big four to stay behind on the DRM-only wagon!

After being the last company in the universe to see the light Sony BMG finally yields to pressure and goes DRM-free as well. With Sony into the fields of DRM-free tunes the future for DRM in terms of music is suddenly looking bleak. This could mean that Apple will finally have to relinguish some of their power in the digital music distribution domain, which they have controlled with ease and DRM. I don’t know if the big four made their move out of their deeply burried holes too late, but time will tell..

Of course this is only in the music business – the problem of DRM is still a heavy issue in terms of movie and films, where embarassing moments such as this clearly shows why the amateurishness of DRM needs to go on all fronts! They may not realise it yet, but the writing on the wall is clear. DRM is loosing the battle…

What to expect from the future then? Well, the business could start by looking at what is done right for once. Take a look at what function piracy really fulfills, like using it for giving away free samples, which is a cheap altenative to hyping and expensive marketing! The change is coming, and those that aren’t going with it will die! The business needs to go back and treat customers like customers and do like EMI has done – leave the RIAA/IFPI and start offering people what they want instead! DRM will be gone, perhaps already next summer for music… Now what digitial distribution model will be chosen is too early to say, but it needs to be nurtured, not overtaxed or overlicensed. This will be the salvation for the music business and later the movie and game business… The sooner the companies embrace this change and the future we live in the better they will survive. Times will be difficult – the transition will be hard – but listen to your customers and you will survive! In order to earn money in the future you need to release your control…

For a long time the battle between the consumer and the music/movie industry has grown ever stronger. The industry, in this blog called the Greedy Business ™, have shown by their motives and actions over the years that they simply lack a basic understanding of a free market and of the basic concept of a consumer.

The problem grew enormously in strength when file-sharing over the Internet slowly became a popular technology. Suddenly the Greedy Business ™ found themselves in stalling market position and what easier conclusion was there for them than “It is the Internet’s fault … Everybody is a thief … We have done nothing wrong! Let’s start suing everybody!”. Of course they started propaganda campaign after propaganda campaign trying to justify their lack of realism. Many of these “truths” about file-sharing was riddling with incorrect information, loads of misinformation and outright lies.

The basic assumption of the Greedy Business ™ is that technology should always answer to them, meaning that no good can come from them loosing control of the market to a better technology, like it has happen in almost every other market on the planet. The problem for the Greedy Business ™ is, however, that many, including politicians, are starting to ask a difficult question: Does file-sharing technologies slowly render copyright obsolete? Everything has been done easier with technology over time – apart from the movie and music business, where lousy, cheap DRM-schemes ruin the experience for people. Instead of a competiting market with better products for cheaper money just take a look at CD-prices, which haven’t changed for fifteen years or cinema tickets which have only increased, while the product has not in any way been improved.

The problem of technology hindering, like the Greedy Business ™ is trying constantly with DRM is that it removes consumer rights without compensating them. Then comes the question of Fair Use… Even though politicians state clearly that some fair use is a right the Greedy Business ™ simply goes out, like an emperor, and proclaims that it is not a right, but a service that can be purchased from them. Thank you, oh, God Almighty! “Pay us, we need more money!”. If they only had real analysts they would realize that Fair Use is actually good for the economy, but all they can see is “Pay us, we need more money!”. Naturally their action towards the foolish consumers who think that they should go on enjoying a bit of their products without giving them 107% compensation is to gather more companies into the Greedy Business ™ and try to strengthen the copyright laws into removing even more consumer rights – in a market that is already failing because of such restrictions! “We want more control!”, yes, thank you – we know!

One of their “new” laws amendments should be to ban all DVD backup and require the original disc to be placed in the drive. Well, good for you! In a time where the DVD sales are failing, not because of the content, but simply because it is a thing of the past and consumers want more digital content with better uses and easier use they propose to go back into the stone age and require you to use your disc! Why? Naturally so that you wear the disc up faster and go and buy a new one! Backup – not needed… Just buy a new one! “Pay us! We need more money!”. Naturally you can’t get your amendments through the army of politicians if you happen to have a couple of politicians who doesn’t see your point of view – but that’s easily “fixed” in the world of the Greedy Business ™… Just call them pirate politicians and claim that they are illegitimate thieves – that should help! “We want more control!”. I can certainly understand that – who, in their right mind, would want a politician they can’t buy?

Not only are the Greedy Business ™ trying to limit our rights as consumers, but they are also creeping into our home everywhere, like through your newly bought operating system, Windows Vista, or your newly bought Blu-Ray player, which is literally filled with DRM from A to Z. Now their latest failed attempt at “containing” illegal file-copying is a crappy pierce of software called AACS, which without any explanation from the Greedy Business ™ takes your CPU-time and creates overhead in your computer and offers you no advantages as a consumer, but you have to implement it. It is no longer you who control that device which you have paid considerable amount of money on, store your confidential documents on … just to be able to play movies on it in this time and age?! “We want more control!”.

The most tragic part of it is that this DRM, like any other DRM-attempt before it, doesn’t work! It bugs your computer and prevents you from playing legally purchased or user-generated content, but it only bugs those who haven’t done what is considered illegal in many countries, which is to crack it. Had the Greedy Business ™ only been equipped with a brain capacity of a degenerated four-year old they would see that the pirates, who they “supposedly” fear with their lives, have already cracked this DRM, and what remains is hassle, privacy concerns, bugs, a slowed down computer and no advantages to the person who is playing it legit. The most comical part of this whole DRM-failure is that the consumer will get, without question, the best product, if selects the product from pirate, who offers him the quality and content with no bugging DRM attached.

This was the first part of the market and industry analysis of the stoneage people at Greedy Business ™, in Part Two we will look closer at DRM and at how it has failed completely, alienated customers and started the revolution for a digital age – an age in which there is no room for the Greedy Business ™ and their complete business model will ultimately fail…