Saving Celine

Poor Celine Dion.  As the youngest of 14 children, buying Christmas gifts for all her siblings must be a daunting prospect.  If I were her, I might make a mixed CD of recent favorite works to keep the family updated on how the kid-sister is doing.  Trouble is, this year, Celine would only be able to grace three of her brothers or sisters with tracks from her most recent album "On ne Change Pas.”  There could be a lot of unhappy faces around Dion Christmas tree.

Why?  Because in efforts to minimize piracy, Celine’s record company Sony BMG released the album with technical restrictions on it that limits the owner of the disc to sharing its tracks more than three times.  The restrictions also prevent Celine and anyone else who bought the album from putting the tracks on their iPod (there go those that iPod Nano gift idea).  And, if that weren’t enough, the CDs contain what some have called spyware that could track computer usage and open up users to security threats.

Very recently, the public outcry about these antipiracy disc finally built to a point where Sony recalled the discs.  (“On ne Change Pas” means “We Don’t’ Change.”  Never say never, Celine.)  Yet, the damage has been done.  Just today it was reported that NY AG Eliot Spitzer is investigating Sony, and the AG from Texas has already filed a lawsuit based on the Lone Star state's spyware law.  There have been much more legal and PR fallout to this.

The Sony skirmish is just another day in the Internet-Age digital rights management (DRM) wars that have been fought ever since Napster burst on the scene in 1999.  The difference is....

... in the time of iPod ubiquity and 40-year-olds’ familiarity with CD burning, the Celine Problem is now playing out on front pages of the nation’s newspapers.

All of this has exaserbated an environment where all DRM is viewed as evil and anti-consumer. (Googling the exact term “DRM is evil” gets you 800-plus results).

This is not only a bad thing for the entertainment industry, but it would eventually be a bad thing for all forms of digital content, and indeed, consumers themselves.

Why?  First of all, DRM is not inherently evil and to suggest so is like saying that all video games are evil because you don’t like the violent ones.  To say the least, some uses of DRM have not been well thought through or even productive. However, using technology to ensure that content developers get properly compensated is not evil.  Consumers should also avoid and resist overly restrictive DRM and buy CDs or MP3s from those who don’t employ it.

But, more importantly, the Celine Saga continues to obscure the fact that music and entertainment are a relatively small and near-term example of content that can employ DRM.

Consider:

--Photograhpy hobbyists using DRM to create these conditions around usage of their photos that they post on their Web site or Flickr. 

--A grandmother using DRM to share access to her home surveillance cameras with law enforcement officials on a restricted basis.

--Using DRM for record keeping, managing the complexities of Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, and the management of confidential data. 

--To save lives and minimize the cost and inefficiencies of tracking paper, our government is making a big push towards the digitization of health care records and the development of a network national health care network.  DRM can help ensure that the inherent privacy and security issues of these records and network are properly addressed.

To get past any bungling of DRM that is counter productive, we need to move to non-proprietary DRM structure and open up the technology to the world of developers, creators of content big and small and technology companies who can all work together to create an open DRM  that can satisfy and are fair to both the coming sea of both amateur and professional content on the Internet and all those who will use and enjoy it.   This effort should  focus on authenticating individuals and their ownership of content and not devices.  People should be able to use what they own on whatever device they own.

Sun Microsystems announced just such an effort recently.  Here's to hoping that this helps Celine out in time for next Christmas.

Comments

[Supra Skytop I]

What do you want for Christmas this year?

[malia]

i love her song

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[Meidy]

This brings back so many mmeerios.:')I really love this message in the song. How many songs now even HAVE messages that are actually full of value? Our values now only include sex, getting drunk etc.:/This also helps me not give up on my faith. Not many people have faith to start with. Love makes anything possible even if it's to have respect for each other.

[Jasmine]

Yes the price is higher at least for Apple. Amazon has not aecnunnod a price for their DRM-free MP3s. More than likely it will be same as Apple, but if they really wanted to stir the pot, they would sell their MP3s for 99 cents. Late last year Amazon.com sold Norah Jones' single "Thinking of You" for 99 cents in an uprotected MP3 format.While P2P remains free we have to acknowledge that they are illegal. I don't do P2P mainly because I don't want to open my computer up to anonymous people trying to get music... or the RIAA.

[Tomi]

PTSD, ABC, BBD, The East Coats Family - Whatever you have I'm here for you baby. Its funny, all growing up you are being taguht lessons to prepare you for the real world - well this is the real world,- but its funny I don't remember the lesson "Watch you daughters die and bounce back in weeks!" I think it might have been an elective freshman year of college. I'm kicking myself in the ass now for not taking it. Like a dumbass I ended up taking "How to score a sexy wife"-(it was a survey course). Anyway hindsight's 20/20. Loveu miss u -TEE

[Sarah]

UPDATE 2011-01-10: I've reduced my raitng from three to two stars, given the additional experiences that I've had with this reader. My review has been updated to reflect those new experiences (particularly in the realm of power management and button controls). I'm a very casual book reader and a very serious gadget enthusiast. I got this book reader as a promotional item at a popular mattress store (yes, really) when I bought a new bed for my daughter. I thought it would be an interesting gadget to play with and since it didn't cost me anything, I figured what the heck. It arrives in an attractive box which contains the reader itself, an AC power adapter (charger) with cable, a USB charging/data cable, a pair of earbud headphones that look almost exactly like the original iPod earbuds, a black fake leather case, a couple of STOP! warning pages (one English, one French) telling you to read the manual before using the reader, and a 40 page manual (20 pages each English and French). Have you ever gone to a flea market or dollar store and found shelves upon shelves of cheap Chinese knock-off versions of popular products? Like, you'd never find a Voltron toy set or Brillo soap pads or Breyer's ice cream or Clorox bleach, but you'd often find things like Lion Force or Robo-Lions toys, Brilly soap pads or Brayer's ice cream or Chloro-Max bleach. They were all similar enough to the real thing' similar packaging, similar color schemes, similar logos, etc but were usually quite a bit cheaper, and never quite as good as the real thing. The iView book reader is just like this. It sorta looks like a Kindle or Nook, and has a color LCD screen like an iPad, but isn't anywhere near as good as any of them. This is a product designed for people who think they might want an ebook reader but don't want to pay for the quality afforded by brand names and are okay with sacrificing quality for price. I'm not going to reiterate the specs as they're already listed in this Amazon page. There is one discrepancy I noticed. The Amazon page says that it supports up to 32GB SDHC cards, but the manual with the unit says 16GB. As I don't own anything above an 8GB card I was unable to verify either claim. The screen is reasonablty bright with a matte finish, making it easier to read in bright light or outdoors. (Are you listening, Apple?) The plastic case is nicely textured, not unlike a laptop's trackpad, making it easy to grip. The buttons are clearly marked. It supports a reasonably wide assortment of file formats including PDF so it's not terribly difficult to find content for it. (One of the first things I did was download a few books from the Baen free library and it worked perfectly.) Connecting it to the computer with the provided USB cable makes the device show up as a standard USB storage device. To load content onto it, you simply drag and drop from your desktop. There is no sync tool; in fact, there is no software to load onto your computer at all. Screen quality is good. Not great, but good. As a book reader it supports several text sizes so those of you with failing eyesight can adjust the text size quite a bit. Battery life is decent; I ran it for several hours at full brightness and only lost one (of four) battery bars. This is where the cheapness starts to come in. It weighs about a half pound, the same as the current model Kindle, but its shape makes it feel heavier. There are, IMO, too many buttons; 23 in total and they're not all placed logically or conveniently, nor do they perform unique functions. For example, on the right side are up/down and left/right buttons. When navigating the menus the logical action would mimic an iPod's controls; up and down to move the selection cursor, left and right to drill down and up through a menu selection. In practice, left/right and up/down work identically (left and up both move the selection up, while right and down both move the selection down). You select a menu option by pressing the button at the bottom center of the unit, inexplicably labeled M for some reason. Also, there is a directional button (up/down/left/right) surrounding the M button which exactly duplicates the functionality of the side-mounted up/down and left/right buttons. So, yeah, there's FOUR ways to move the menu selection at any given time left, up, left directional button, or up directional button to move the selection up, and right, down, right directional button, or down directional button to move the selection down. Why, I don't know. Power management on this device, as a whole, is just weird. It took me a couple of weeks to figure out all of the power management rules and I don't want to bore you with the details. Suffice to say, here are the highlights: 1. There is a physical power switch on the bottom edge of the device, AND a power button on the bottom of

[Andrii]

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[Muzammal]

I'm sorry you are in such a hard place right now. There are no words that I can offer to comfort you, I relaize that. When we are hurting words are just noises anyway. I do think it is positive that you are seeking someone to talk to. It seems to help so many people. You have been through so much, naturally you are hurting beyond measure. I hope you and T get to do something nice for each other this weekend. I know it will be hard but there is so much love between you, focus on that. Sending peace to you.

[Aimee]

can't you still right-click on songs and select covernt selection to mp3 ? i've been sending covernted things to friends via gmail and AFAIK, they've had no problems playing the songs.

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