indessed roscivs

There are still seven songs left, five of them without even a single guess! I’m going to give hints every day until we can get rid of’em all.

1. NYPD
2. Ne bojsia
3. She’s shown you a box of stained-glass tears
4. This ape’s for you
8. Dynamite Stripes
10. Not Barenaked Ladies, Celine Dion, Bryan Adams, or William Shatner
12. Yeah, whoa, I can feel the sugarcane flow

Inspired by sealionii, I give you, “The Fifteen Game”! Here are the rules:

Step 1: Put your MP3 player or whatever on random.
Step 2: Post the first line from the first 15 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing the song.
Step 3: Post and let everyone you know guess what song and artist the lines come from.
Step 4: Strike out the songs when someone guesses correctly.
Step 5: Looking them up on Google or any other search engine is CHEATING!

1. I don’t drink coffee, I take tea my dear, I like my toast done on the side
sealionii: Sting, “An Englishman In New York”
2. Разные ночи, разные люди, Хочет не хочет, любит не любит
sealionii: t.A.T.u
3. And you know the light is fading all too soon, you’re just two umbrellas one late afternoon
4. This ape’s for you, he’s coming atcha, this ape’s for you, he wants to love you
Jacob Lewis: TMBG
5. I’m broke but I’m happy, I’m poor but I’m kind, I’m short but I’m healthy, yeah
sealionii: Alanis Morissette, “One Hand in My Pocket”
6. When I was only a zygote, I still remember the time when there was nothing to know or to think about except the sound of my mind
Jacob Lewis: TMBG, “Sensurround”
7. Ye ye, yeke ye, yeke yeke ye ye, yeke ye ye yeke yeke ye ye
جنّة : “Yeke Ye”, K3
8. Fall is here, hear the yell, back to school, ring the bell, brand new shoes, walking blues, climb the fence, books and pens
9. The sun is a mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace
sealionii: They Might Be Giants, “The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas”
10. I looked away then I look back at you, you tried to say things that you can’t undo
11. Here’s hoping you don’t become a (clang clang clang clang, whoops too late!)
Jacob Lewis: TMBG, “Become a Robot”
12. This is the tale I’m afraid’s unfolding, mini earthquakes and a gun unloading
13. Everything you do says that you are leaving me, everything you say shows you don’t believe in me
جنّة : “Strangers”, Atomic Kitten
14. I love myself, I want you to love me, when I feel down I want you above me
جنّة : “I Touch Myself”, Divinyls
15. I don’t think a nun would say that about a hill. What if he sings, “The hills are vital,
intoning the descant”? … no no no no, “the hills are incarnate with symphonic melodies!”
جنّة : “The Sound of Music”, Moulin Rouge Soundtrack

This should be tricky. Two of them are foreign language, one of them contains the song’s entire lyrics, and one of them technically isn’t really part of the song, but it was the first lines in the mp3, so I figure that’s close enough.

Of course, some of them are ridiculously easy; I expect them to fall very quickly. So get guessing!

“We’re running out of time. We need to get money flowing from consumers and get them used to paying for music again.”
—Ted Cohen, managing director of a music consulting firm[1]

DRM, or “Digital Rights Management,” is a scheme for controlling what can be done with digital content. (I like the phrase, “DRM manages rights the same way that prison manages freedom.”) The basic idea is this: if I’m a musician (or an artist in a similar medium), I would like to be able to sell my music in a digital format. Digital formats are easy and cheap to distribute and to duplicate. The problem is that digital formats are easy and cheap to duplicate—so why would people buy music from me, when it’s just as easy and cheap to get a copy from someone else?

DRM is an attempt to stop this from happening—to make the content easy and cheap for me to duplicate, but difficult and costly for others to duplicate. Unfortunately, this is not a simple task. The tactic taken most often is to use strong encryption to scramble the data. The problem is that you also want the end-user to be able to unscramble the data as well—which means they need the secret encryption key. This renders the encryption nearly worthless. Bruce Schneier, an eminent cryptologist, had this to say about the problem:

It’s not so much about what people can do, it’s more about how they think. There’s nothing anyone can do; trying to make bits uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet. The sooner people accept this, and build business models that take this into account, the sooner people will start making money again.

So far, people haven’t been very quick to accept this. At the Digital Music Forum where Ted Cohen spoke, all panel members save one believe that some form of DRM is necessary. Also at this forum was a considerable amount of Steve Jobs bashing.

Those of you who read my post about Amoroso, Jobs, and DRM know that Steve Jobs (Apple’s CEO) recently spoke out against DRM as something that “hasn’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy.” Furthermore, Steve Jobs stated inequivocally that, “if the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store.”

This caused quite a stir, namely because iTunes has been hailed as one of the few successful uses of DRM. Millions of music files with Apple DRM have been sold. Even more interesting, the Apple DRM is engineered in such a way that songs sold on iTunes can only be played on Apple software—iTunes or iPods. The songs do not work with any third-party software or music players. After a person has amassed a collection of iTunes-purchased songs, they are stuck with Apple and iPod. If they want to switch to a different music player, they have to abandon all the music they purchased. Why would Steve Jobs, after creating such a successful music store, voluntarily give up this lock-in power?

One reason is that he may not really have a choice. The EU and other governments are taking a look at the power wielded by Apple’s DRM and have begun to demand that Apple open up their DRM to other companies, allowing other music companies to sell Apple DRM-protected music that will play on the iPod, as well as allowing competing music players to play Apple DRM-protected tunes. Many, including those at the aforementioned conference, have accused Steve Jobs of being “insincere,” calling his open letter a “red herring.” They believe that Jobs knows that the music companies will never allow him to sell music without DRM protection, and is simply bluffing to get the EU off his back. Steve would never sell music without DRM, they maintain. This is just a PR move—Apple needs DRM to keep people on iTunes and the iPod.

What do I think? Well, first of all I don’t believe that Steve Jobs does anything that isn’t about PR. Steve is first of all a showman, and very good at what he does. But simply because this is good PR doesn’t mean that it’s just lip service. I think Jobs really believes that a world without DRM on music would be better for everyone, and his open letter does a persuasive job of arguing his point.

With DRM, Apple gets a big share of the digital music pie. Without DRM, Apple gets a slightly smaller share of a much bigger pie. All the people who don’t want to buy DRM-encumbered music (either because of ideology, or because they have an mp3 player in their car or a non-iPod model that doesn’t work with Apple’s DRM) are suddenly now in the market. A good portion of them will likely be shopping at the iTunes Music Store.

The real losers here are the music industry, who have backed themselves into a corner and have no easy way out. I like this way of putting it:

Music Industry: We want DRM.
Steve Jobs: You got it. Hey, it only works with iPods as well. Isn’t product tying great!
Music Industry: Can we have more control over our product?
Steve Jobs: Nope.
Music Industry: Oh. Uhm … we’ll leave.
Steve Jobs: No, you won’t.
Music Industry: Oh. Uhm … can you open up Apple’s DRM? This will mean there’s some competition and we can afford to ditch you.
Steve Jobs: Nope. Why would I ever do that?
Music Industry: We’ll make you look like the bad guy.
Steve Jobs: You can try. I made downloadable music viable, produce the gadgets all the cool kids want and I don’t sue children and old ladies. Not only that, but I can plausibly blame all your troubles on you.

The most disingenous statements are coming from the music industry. The best example is from the above article:

Apple has maintained a stranglehold on the digital music industry by locking up iTunes music with DRM.

The music industry is the one with a strangehold on the digital music industry. They can choose who they sell digital music to and under what conditions. There’s nothing stopping them from allowing other music stores to sell music with their own DRM (which they do) that works only on their own music players (which nobody buys because iPods are so popular). In fact, there’s nothing stopping them from allowing other music stores to sell music with no DRM at all, which will work perfectly on every iPod and every other type of music player. They could end Apple’s so-called “strangehold” tomorrow if they really wanted to.

The fact of the matter is that the music industry wants to have its cake and eat it too. They want DRM, but they want DRM that benefits only them, not their resellers. Hopefully, they’ll end up having neither.

Lately at work I’ve been tuning in to an online “radio station” called last.fm. The gist of it is this: you type in a name of a popular artist that you like (say, Barenaked Ladies or They Might Be Giants) and they play music from similar-sounding artists. Just like radio, it’s a great way to discover new music once you’re tired of your same old playlist over and over again.

The great thing is that because last.fm is licensed as a radio station (since they just stream music and don’t actually allow you to say, “Play me this song”), they can legally use music from just about every artist under the sun, from the Beatles to Madonna to Matchbox 20 to Dalida. It’s awesome.

Everything’s not perfect, though. Their Flash plugin (that plays the music) hiccups under Linux, and I can’t get their Linux client to run on my relatively up-to-date Fedora box, so I’m limited to listening at work only (where I’m saddled with a Windows laptop that does nothing but check email all day). Also, it seems like they could do so much more than just play me songs that are similar to a single artist. Why can’t I put in the names of dozens of artists that I like, and last.fm uses all of them to make recommendations? And when I come across a new artist that I particularly like, it could use that to make even further recommendations.

Well, actually, I think last.fm can do at least some of what I’ve described, but not via the Flash plugin player where, as far as I can tell, I’m limited to a single artist “station” (I spent most of my time today listening to the “Sounds like Fairouz” station). I think you have to download their special client in order to get the cooler features. But, unfortunately, it won’t run without admin permissions on my Windows laptop (stupid Windows), and as I already mentioned, I can’t get the Linux client to install properly on FC5.

Oh well. It may not be the “Social Music Revolution” just yet, but at least it gives me something pleasant to listen to while cranking out code (and lets me discover new artists I like too). Why not give it a shot yourself?

Recently, Steve Jobs wrote an Open Letter on Music and DRM. The gist of his letter was that DRM doesn’t work, and that the music companies should abandon it and let Apple and other companies sell music that will work on any mp3 player, not just iPods. The CEO of Macrovision, a company dedicated to providing DRM, recently wrote this response. Here’s my take on Amoroso’s letter.

We have been involved with and have supported both prevention technologies and DRM that are on literally billions of copies of music, movies, games, software and other content forms, as well as hundreds of millions of devices across the world.

Never once has any of Macrovision’s products managed to keep digital content from appearing without DRM on the Internet. The fact of the matter is that DRM simply doesn’t work. It depends on a fundamentally broken pattern of giving the user the cryptographic keys required to unlock the content you’re trying to prevent them from unlocking. As Steve Jobs puts it, “one must still “hide” the keys which unlock the music on the user’s computer or portable music player.”

the fact is that DRM also has a broad impact across many different forms of content and across many media devices. Therefore, the discussion should not be limited to just music. It is critical that as all forms of content move from physical to electronic there is an opportunity for DRM to be an important enabler across all content, including movies, games and software, as well as music.

Translation: if the music industry abandons DRM and discovers that life without it is great, then other industries may abandon DRM too, making our entire business model obsolete.

DRM increases not decreases consumer value –
I believe that most piracy occurs because the technology available today has not yet been widely deployed to make DRM-protected legitimate content as easily accessible and convenient as unprotected illegitimate content is to consumers. The solution is to accelerate the deployment of convenient DRM-protected distribution channels—not to abandon them. Without a reasonable, consistent and transparent DRM we will only delay consumers in receiving premium content in the home, in the way they want it. For example, DRM is uniquely suitable for metering usage rights, so that consumers who don’t want to own content, such as a movie, can “rent” it.

This is pure nonsense, mixed in with a little bit of fact. I’ll accept the idea that DRM is a useful way of “renting” content. But it does not follow that movies or music that you buy should be DRM-encumbered. It does absolutely nothing to prevent Internet piracy, but does a lot to prevent legitimate uses of the content that are protected by Fair Use provisions in copyright law.

Similarly, consumers who want to consume content on only a single device can pay less than those who want to use it across all of their entertainment areas – vacation homes, cars, different devices and remotely. Abandoning DRM now will unnecessarily doom all consumers to a “one size fits all” situation that will increase costs for many of them.

Translation: abandoning DRM will remove our ability to charge people multiple times for music and movies that they’ve already payed for.

Copyright law (and common sense) already dictates that once a person has purchased a copy of a song, or a movie, or a book, they are free to “format-shift” and use that same copy “across all entertainment areas”. They legally don’t have to purchase it multiple times. So the “one size fits all” situation is mandated by law, and will decrease costs for most people.

DRM will increase electronic distribution –
Well maintained and reasonably implemented DRM will increase the electronic distribution of content, not decrease it. In this sense, DRM is an important ingredient in the overall success of the emerging digital world and especially cannot be overlooked for content creators and owners in the video industry. Quite simply, if the owners of high-value video entertainment are asked to enter, or stay in a digital world that is free of DRM, without protection for their content, then there will be no reason for them to enter, or to stay if they’ve already entered. The risk will be too great.

Bollocks. Given the choice between making some money without DRM, and making no money by not publishing at all, “owners of high-value video entertainment” will inevitably choose the former. But given the opportunity to use DRM to remove Fair Use provisions and charge people multiple times for the same content, content owners will frequently choose the latter, no matter what it costs the legitimate user. This is no surprise. But to paint DRM as a win for the “consumer” is simply dishonest.

DRM needs to be interoperable and open –
I agree with you that there are difficult challenges associated with maintaining the controls of an interoperable DRM system, but it should not stop the industry from pursuing it as a goal. Truly interoperable DRM will hasten the shift to the electronic distribution of content and make it easier for consumers to manage and share content in the home – and it will enable it in an open environment where their content is portable across a number of devices, not held hostage to just one company’s products.

Translation: we don’t want DRM to be controlled by other companies. However, we would be more than happy if this “truly interoperable DRM” were completely owned and patented by Macrovision.

The fact of the matter is that DRM cannot be “open”. The secrets must be kept secret, which is a nigh-impossible task even if a single company controls all the secrets (simply because the secrets must also be on the users’ devices). “Interoperable DRM” is a contradiction in terms.

At Macrovision we are willing to lead this industry effort. We offer to assist Apple in the issues and problems with DRM that you state in your letter. Should you desire, we would also assume responsibility for FairPlay as a part of our evolving DRM offering and enable it to interoperate across other DRMs, thus increasing consumer choice and driving commonality across devices.

This is ridiculous. “Assuming responsibility for FairPlay” means nothing to Apple when FairPlay is inevitably cracked as a result of Macrovision taking control. Apple loses its bargaining chip with the record companies, the record companies lose their one DRM stack (Apple, iTunes Music Store, iPod) that actually works relatively well, and the only winners in this game are Macrovision.

With such an enjoyable and revolutionary experience within our grasp, we should not minimize the role that DRM can and should play in enabling the transition to electronic content distribution. Without reasonable, consistent and transparent DRM we will only delay the availability of premium content in the home. As an industry, we should not let that happen.

Reasonable, consistent, and transparent DRM is an impossible pipe dream. Telling content producers and content owners to wait to license their content until this pipe dream is available will only delay the availability of premium content in the home. We, as an industry, and as the people who support that industry, should not let that happen.