Section 17. About Digital Rights Management Technology


17. About Digital Rights Management Technology

Before You Begin

About Music and Video Formats


By 1997 or so, the world had accepted MPEG-1 level 3 (MP3) as the de facto standard format for digital audio; it was versatile, ubiquitous, and mostly free. MP3 files, which are as little as 1/12 the size of their CD audio counterparts with almost no noticeable degradation in quality, can be played just about anywhere and by anything, from PDAs to cell phones to car stereos. Best of all, they have no Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology. Or, perhaps (depending on who you ask), that's the worst aspect of MP3 files. MP3s have been the scourge of the commercial music industry in recent years, enabling music enthusiasts to trade songs freely and amass huge collections of commercial music without paying for it. The large record labels demanded a form of MP3-like digital audio that gave users the flexibility they craved and yet allowed copyright holders to protect their property by allowing users to make only a limited number of copies of the files; they got it in the Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) digital music format and MPEG-4, the open and cross-platform video standard of which AAC is a component part.

In the iTunes Music Store, the restrictions placed on the purchaser by the protected AAC and MPEG-4 files it sells are as follows:

  • You can play purchased songs on as many as five different computers, following a one-time Internet-based authorization process that unlocks your digital ID for each of those five computers.

  • You can burn purchased AAC files to regular audio CDs by first putting them in a playlist and then burning a disc from that playlist as described in Create an Audio CD from a Playlist. However, you can burn only seven copies of the same unaltered playlist before iTunes makes you stop. You can burn individual songs to CD an unlimited number of times.

  • iTunes users on the same network can connect to each other to listen to shared music libraries, but they must be authorized on their own computers to listen to shared protected music, and only five different listeners can connect to a single copy of iTunes in a given day.

The proposition of Apple's AAC copy-protection is an acknowledgment that some piracy, or willful breaking of the DRM, is inevitable. No copy-protection scheme is totally effective because any music that can be played through speakers can be re-recorded into an unprotected format (such as MP3) using a simple audio loop-back cable and recording software. However, because each song must be purchased before it can be downloaded, the would-be pirate must spend the money to buy each song and then painstakingly re-record it to the new unprotected format, a process that takes as long as it does every track to play at normal speed. This means that the risk of piracy is a linear one, requiring a commensurate amount of effort and payment by the would-be pirate for each stolen trackand the gamble is that pirates won't consider it worthwhile. Furthermore, people who are otherwise willing to search for free music on file-sharing services (which might be of poor quality) are likely to think $1 per track is a fair price for peace of mind and an assurance of quality. The same philosophy underlies the iTunes Music Store's restriction on being able to burn a single playlist of purchased songs to a CD seven times. Sure, a pirate can then simply re-create the playlist and continue burning bootlegged audio CDs of purchased music. But he can't do it in an automated fashion, without hands-on supervision, re-creating the playlist after every seven copies. This is a small speed bump standing in the way of pirates, but it is a speed bump nonetheless. And it's doing the job, judging by the fact that in three years, iTunes' reputation as a trustworthy provider of well-protected music and video has grown, and industry participation has grown with it.

Sales through the iTunes Music Store have skyrocketed since it was first opened.

In contrast to the way that some competing DRM systems (such as the one used by Napster's subscription service) work, in iTunes' AAC system, you pay individually for each song at the time you download it, but the song files are yours to keep after you've bought them. Each file is keyed with your ID in the iTunes Music Store; this means that after you unlock a computer you use with your ID, you can freely play all the music files on that computer that you purchased using that ID. If you ever need to unlock your files in the future, all you have to do is authorize your computer using your ID with a simple communication over the network to the iTunes servers. There is no time limit to your ownership of the files or to your ability to authorize.

Note

You can authorize up to five computers to play music you bought, and you can deauthorize any authorized computer later at your discretion. See Authorize a Computer to Play Purchased Music for more information.


In contrast, competing subscription services such as Napster allow you to freely download as many songs as you want, as long as your subscription is current. Each month you must reauthorize your computer through a transaction with the central server to retain access to your files. If your subscription lapses, your files become useless. For some users who prefer to browse with unlimited freedom and who don't mind paying a subscription fee forever, this kind of system might be acceptable. But Apple's bet is that most people prefer to own their music, not rent it.

Authorizing your computer in iTunes to gain access to downloaded AAC and MPEG-4 files.

The relationship between Apple and the labels and between both of them and the customers is a fluid one that continues to change. Apple periodically renegotiates the terms of the deal it has with the labels, sometimes because it wants to adjust the user experience to be more useful to the customer, and sometimes because the labels want to bump up the restrictions. For example, in mid-2004, Apple raised the limit on the number of authorized computers that a customer could have from 3 to 5; at the same time, it reduced the number of playlists you could burn to a CD from 10 to 7. This was part of a negotiation with the labels in which Apple gained more usability for its customers, while giving the labels more assurance against piracy. (Who really needs more than 7 copies of the same CD, anyway?)

DRM restrictions will always rankle some people, and with good reason: Copyright in the digital age is far from an established science. But in the meantime, you would be hard put to find a fairer or more generous purveyor of DRMprotected digital music than Apple and the iTunes Music Store.




iPod + iTunes for Windows and Mac in a Snap
iPod + iTunes for Windows and Mac in a Snap (2nd Edition)
ISBN: 0672328992
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 150
Authors: Brian Tiemann

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