Five important things you should know about copy-protected music, movies and books
30 November 2005
We purchased and downloaded our first copy-protected book from an online shop in 1999 and a few years and a few eBooks later; none of these books can be read anymore. We purchased our first copy-protected songs in 2003 and have regretted that ever since, because they won't play on the computers and portable MP3 players we are using today. If you want to avoid the mistakes we made, this is what you should know about copy-protected media.
It is vital for people who create and finance music, books, movies, TV shows or radio programs that they are compensated for their work, otherwise we wouldn't be able to enjoy the works of artists and experts who provide us with entertainment and valuable information. What we don't understand is why some companies are giving less value to customers who want to purchase products in digital format instead of in the more expensive physical product package.
The fundamental problem with copy-protection (or DRM for digital rights management) technology is that they are tied to today's computers, and no one can guarantee that the copy-protected media can be accessed on our new computer or portable media player tomorrow.
1. Avoid copy-protected music CDs. These CDs may not play on your home stereo set, car stereo, old computers, or you may not be able to move the music from the CD to your portable MP3 player at all. There should be a small label somewhere on the cover sleeve to indicate there's a software program on the CD. If that's the case and you insert the CD into your computer, a player software program usually pops up and plays the CD instead of your normal music player. If it is too troublesome for you to return a copy-protected CD to the shop and tell them it is malfunctioning, try playing the CD in a DVD drive and extract the music to your computer from there.
2. Think twice before buying copy-protected songs from an online music shop. For example, the iTunes Store sells songs in AAC format, but the songs have been copy-protected with Apple's own technology that only iPod and iTunes software can recognize. Most other music download shops employ Microsoft's PlayForSure technology, which restricts the use of music to a number of computers and to a portable player. There's no way of knowing if the music will ever play on a home stereo, car stereo, or on a new MP3 player.
For securing a future-proof digital music collection, extract songs from your own CDs. If you don't want to bother with CDs, just check out download stores like eMusic and eClassical for high-quality MP3 music that you can play on a portable device, home stereo and computer of your choice.
3. If you want to read books you have bought today during the next two or three years, don't buy copy-protected eBooks. In the future, it is likely that you will have changed computers, or you have another portable media player by then and you won't be able to open the copy-protected eBook. We have encountered one notable exception: eBooks available in PDF are the only eBooks we still can read after a few years and after one or two hard disk upgrades.
The same level of caution applies to copy-protected audio books. It would be nice to re-listen to a classic novel after a year or two, but who knows which computer, portable device, or car stereo we have then, and if the copy-protected audio book will play in it.
4. DVDs that contain movies are copy-protected. If you want to copy a movie from a DVD to your computer and to your portable media player, you have to learn to use software that extracts the movie from the DVD on your computer and then run another software program that converts the film into a format that your portable media player can recognize.
We haven't seen feature films available as commercial downloads yet, but at least the iTunes store is selling copy-protected TV shows and music videos. Often, TV shows and music are only watched once or twice, so you may want to take a calculated risk and spend money on copy-protected shows that you can't view after a few years.
5. We haven't spotted any copy-protected podcasts yet, but the time will come when some company wants to restrict access to its product. However, podcasts are somewhat like TV shows that are often viewed only once and then can be deleted from the hard disk to free up space for new shows. If the price is right, and you expect to listen to the show only once or twice, a fair and non-intrusive copy-protection would be manageable if the publisher can guarantee it can be played on any device that plays MP3.
In the eighties, when personal software on personal computers was a new thing, some software publishers became concerned about the possibility of people using copied versions of their commercial software. The publishers copy-protected their software to the extent that some products required the use of hardware tokens that had to be attached to a port on the computer for the software even to start. Too bad if you had to use the port for something else. The madness didn't last for long, because no one liked it and it simply didn't work.
Today, some kind of balance has been achieved in software business between protecting intellectual property rights and giving fair value to customers. Before the balance between rights and value has been established in media business, we continue to be extremely cautious towards anyone who is trying to sell us copy-protected music, movies, or books.
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How to copy songs from a CD to a MP3 player
Don't lock yourself in a restrictive digital music
Guide to MP3 players: free download
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