I hate to say it but all this means is that DRM now registers as a bad thing to the general public. So they're cutting ties.

But if the music industry feels they need to bring DRM back they'll surely do it. They'll just bring it back dubbed with a new, media friendly name.

But if it quacks like a duck...

They may bring it back but DRM has a fundamental HCI problem, it annoyed legitimate users, and got in the way of whatever goals they want (i.e. Hey lets take this song by toddler likes to dance to and make a music video etc.)

That's certainly why DRM has become a bad word. All I'm saying is the article seems to imply this is somehow an admission that they were wrong. When in fact it's just the opposite. It's setting the stage for it's eventual return under a new name if they should ever feel the need to bring it back.

Because if they do bring it back part of the push will be "we realize DRM was bad but this new thing fixes the problems." In order to make that statement they need to disown DRM now.

I agree. Journalists (and through them, the general public) are smart enough to recognize DRM when they see it now. The music industry could (and, lets be honest, probably will) try to raise it from the dead at some point. Whatever they do try to pin it on will never succeed though.

Actually, I think that we should give it a user-parsable name, quite like Microsoft did when they switched renamed Palladium (easy to remember, easy to target in the media) to NGSCB (technical gibbersish, scary for non techies), but in reverse.

It was very effective for Microsoft. Palladium was all over the place in tech media, NGSCB got much less coverage.

I remember seeing the phrase "infected by DRM" on Slashdot by it didn't get much traction.

I think that labelling a DRMed work as "locked" would be quite effective.

The only hope for DRM would have been if people never expected better. "This is just how it is."

Of course, through both unauthorized channels (for copy-restricted content) and normal usage (of personal and free content), people now know better. That means under any name, DRM will appear broken and backward.

There will still be novel and annoying attempts at DRM, but essentially, this battle has been won.

> There will still be novel and annoying attempts at DRM, but essentially, this battle has been won.

The battle may have been won for music, but movies already come DRM-enabled, and ebook publishers are pushing DRM like crazy.

This is far from over, since the replication and distribution of digital media costs zero, and this effectively invalidates old business models.

Hard-copy books are still selling (I for one think it's easier on the eyes than glaring in a laptop's screen), but throw in a comfortable ebook reader and ebooks that can be shared with friends, and you've got yourself a business-model killer.

I think this is inevitable, but more time has to pass before newer business models will emerge, and until then they'll keep circumventing the natural evolution of technology.

I don't know how to feel about this ... for one my rights are violated (you end up not owning your copy) and sharing with friends / making a backup are prohibited actions that turn you into a thief. On the other hand I feel bad about content creators (having negative feelings about publishers though because of their policies).

What the RIAA is really saying is, "DRM (for digital downloads) is dead."

DRM for subscription, streaming, etc… is and will be alive and well. I think the consumers of these kinds of service understand and accept that the content isn't really theirs; they never bought it for keeps.

I think that DRM for music is only maligned because the major players weren't able to come up with a single unified scheme (either for encryption or for encoding). As a result, it becomes a distraction, because not every song plays on any player. There are many incompatible formats that play on a subset of available players.

In the case of DVDs, everyone standardized on one scheme, and any DVD plays in any (region appropriate) DVD player. The encryption itself isn't really a problem, and no one complains about it (except for people who want to pirate DVDs).

"and no one complains about it"

Except the folks who want to legally play DVDs on their linux box without paying for a commercial (and thus, licensed) piece of DVD software ;)

Disclaimer: I haven't looked into this portion of the issue for quite some time. It might be a moot point, now.

I wish someone would tell the movie and publishing industries.

I think the music industry finally realized that the only thing that DRM was cutting down on was their profits.

The set of all people that are going to purchase is (and will be for the foreseeable future until/unless it becomes much harder than it is now) much larger than the set of people who do purchase their music. All that DRM was causing was piracy on the part of a few unhappy consumers who otherwise would have bought their music.

After all, every single DRM-protected music file is floating around and available elsewhere in an unencrypted format.

perfectly summed up in the last part: all DRM does is annoy people who legally buy the music in the first place. pirates will be pirates (or whatever you want to call them.. "felons").

As one commenter noted, this really cuts down on the already-small number of reasons I have to justify pirating music.

This may sound absolutely absurd, but why does copying music have to be justified?

DRM per se is far from being dead.

The specific DRM on music was killed by necessity of backward compatibility. CD-Audio, mp3 etc. did not contain any DRM provisions and market demand for compatible products precluded DRM.

On the other hand, standards that include DRM from the beginning (DVD, BlueRay, HDMI etc) will continue using it. New standards will also come with DRM until customers successfully pressure the vendors to dropping it.

DRM is not dead, it just couldn't find the parking spot in front of the music store. Otherwise, business as usual.

"Most importantly Apple announced in early 2009 that all music sold via the iTunes store would be free of DRM."

I don't think that is true, strictly speaking. Isn't the name of the buyer still encoded in the audio files? I think that still counts as DRM, it's only less intrusive.

> I don't think that is true, strictly speaking. Isn't the name of the buyer still encoded in the audio files? I think that still counts as DRM, it's only less intrusive.

No, this is patently false. The name of the buyer encoded in audio files is nothing like DRM.

DRM is a technological solution designed to limit your possible actions. And under the DMCA, you are not allowed to circumvent encryption techniques designed to protect copyright even if for the right reasons (like when you own the copyright of the file you're trying to decrypt).

The name of the buyer is just a "watermark" used to trace the original source. Watermark or not, legally you are still not allowed to distribute copyrighted works without having the permissions to do so. But you still have a choice to bend the rules, at your own risk ... i.e. there's no technology guarding your immediate actions.

From a social p.o.v., it's the difference between "innocent until proven guilty" and "guilty by default, tracking device attached".

Still with the "just a watermark", your "rights" to the audio file are burned into the audio file. If your file leaks into the internet, the RIAA will be at your door in no time.

RIAA started to feel that they are being marginalized. They kept insisting on DRM and the industry has moved on leaving them in the past.