[A2k] Dreadful Recorded Music?

[Michelle Childs]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/12/07/drm_drm_and_drm/
Dreadful Recorded Music?
What will DRM stand for in the future?
Page: 1 2 Next > By Guy Kewney, Newswireless.net → More by this
authorPublished Thursday 7th December 2006 10:16 GMTGet The Register's new
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here. Opinion Imagine this: a new world standard in music recording. It
works like this. You turn the radio on and it downloads four hours of
songs in MP3 format. Free.

Yeah, you can probably imagine that. Now: imagine this - nobody in the
music recording industry complains, or protests, or sues.

It already happened. It happened when DAB first appeared, and nobody
noticed, because it was too expensive a solution. And it's happened again
now that DAB has been followed by DRM. No, not Digital Rights Management -
almost the exact opposite: Digital Radio Mondiale.

Here's how it happened. Ask yourself: when DAB first started, how big was
an SD Flash memory chip? And what did it cost?

The question is about to become really important. DAB, or Digital Audio
Broadcast, is amazingly popular - in the UK. Now, the rest of the world is
about to get digital radio too: but a new standard. And, almost without
anybody noticing or complaining, the new standard - Digital Radio Mondiale
or DRM - is about to get people arguing about music downloads again.

It has always been (technically) possible for a DAB radio owner to record
the digital stream direct to memory. The broadcast is already digital so
there isn't any difficulty about digitising it; the only hassle is whether
it's an MP3 format recording. I have played with one of the first DRM
radios, and it is.

The radio is set up so if you plug a =A310 SD flash memory card into the
side of it, you can record four hours of DRM, or half an hour of DAB.
There's an electronic programme guide, so you can set your timer to record
shows that are coming up. And when it's done you'll be able to plug it
into your PC and save the MP3 files with all your other MP3 files.

So, why did the world's music copyright owners not kick up a stink at the
time?

I think it's because they didn't think it mattered. Without a deja vu
machine, it's hard to prove this wrong, but you're going back close to the
days when they ignored the iPod, because "it only works on a Mac, so who
cares?" and at the time when DAB first appeared the UK was the only place
anyone took it seriously.

Morphy Richards has now released the first DRM radio in Germany, and its
view is that the difference between the UK and the rest of the world was
simple: "The BBC made DAB work, because the BBC started DAB broadcasts. So
there was a market for DAB radios, which meant other broadcasters started
DAB stations too."

No such impetus elsewhere, and so you can take your DAB radio overseas,
but you'll find almost nobody transmitting. And so, the music business
ignored it. DRM is now here and is much more likely to become a global
standard because it allows digital broadcasts on existing medium wave and
short wave and FM channels, as well as DAB frequencies.

But it's digital and, therefore, it can breach copy protection, or digital
rights management.


--
Michelle Childs -Head of European Affairs
Consumer Project on Technology in London
24, Highbury Crescent, London, N5 1RX,UK.
Tel:+44(0)207 226 6663 ex 252.
Mob:+44(0)790 386 4642. Fax: +44(0)207 354 0607
http://www.cptech.org

Consumer Project on Technology in Washington, DC
1621 Connecticut Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20009 USA .Tel.:
+1.202.332.2670,Fax: +1.202.332.2673

Consumer Project on Technology in Geneva
1 Route des  Morillons, CP 2100, 1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland
Tel: +41 22 791 6727