Edward Felten JD Lasica has a must-read posting today, “DRM and ‘casual piracy’,” which does a better job of juxtaposing the rights of the consumer with the music & movie industry’s vision of what those rights should be than anything else I can recall reading on the subject.

Go read it. The only way to do it justice is to copy the whole thing, and that’s not cool in my book.

His conclusion reminds me of the illustrating anecdote in Part 2 of Cory Doctorow’s “Microsoft DRM Speech,” only without the expository background.

Will citizens balk at these kinds of restrictions, or come to accept them? My suspicion is that the Darknet will grow in direct proportion to actions that turn mainstream Americans into “casual pirates.”

The recording industry in particular has two problems here. The first is its self-destructive strategy of eschewing the long-term development of artists, preferring instead the quick buck of one-hit wonders. The second is that if an artist is only going to have one CD worth buying and that one CD only has one or two songs worth listening to, then “schoolyard copying” is going to have a material impact on sales of that CD.

With this strategy, the music industry has essentially made its product a disposable commodity. There’s no point in paying for the CD because the consumer has been trained by the music industry itself to not value that CD. After all, how much are you willing to pay for something you fully expect to be sick of in a couple of weeks or a month, after which time it just becomes a storage problem? If I can get full benefit (listening to the one or two non-sucky songs on the disc) by copying them from a friend, then I don’t need the actual CD. The fact that I avoid the long-term problem of storing it, combined with the ability to put it somewhere useful to me (on my iPod, laptop, or mix disc) is just an added bonus.

So the music industry’s response to their own niche version of stagflation (reduced artist quality & longevity reducing the fan’s desire to own the CD combined with increased ease of obtaining full value from those artists through fair-use “schoolyard copying”) is to try and prevent the completly legal (but fully-satisfying) fair-use of music.

This makes less-than-no sense. DRM has never prevented a song or movie from escaping into an unencumbered format, nor will it. If the music industry wants to improve sales, they should produce music that causes people to believe it has enough long-term value that they’re willing to pay for it.

Another option is to reduce prices on CD’s. I know that there’s no way in hell I’m paying $20 for one or two songs that I’ll be sick of in a month, and $20 is a lot less to me than it is to the kids who comprise the core of the music market. The problem here is that thanks to iTunes and $0.99 songs, the value of a CD is now effectively $2. This is further borne out by the fact that iTunes increasingly forces people to buy the “filler” on the album to go with the two good songs, raising the effective price of those two decent songs to $8 each. I don’t know about you, but I’m not paying $8 for a song I’m expected to be sick of in a month.

Now think of the children. Every kid with a computer and a broadband connection knows that music can be had “for free” on the Internet. Trying to cut off the supply through DRM is a pointless effort which serves only to increase the average user’s skill at finding “illegal/free” music. The only ways to convince more people to pay for music is to either shift the price point of music down the demand curve or produce music that has value beyond the time it spends on the pop music playlist.

I’m not holding my breath for either.

Post is actually by JD Lasica, author of recent book “Darknet: Hollywood’s War Against the Digital Generation” and guest blogger on Freedom to Tinker this week. His book is an excellent read and ties together many practical and theoretical threads in the current copyright war.

For the opposing view, see this post by Patrick Ross over at IP Central.

Paul-
Thanks for the correction on authorship. Duly noted and corrected.

I’m guessing you’re referring to This IP Central posting which refers to one of the articles in Lasica’s entry? If not, let me know (cubicle at halfcatdotorg) the correct link and I’ll be glad to add the one you were thinking of..

As is probably already evident, I feel that piracy is a natural response to the crap music that is produced today. Basically, why take the risk that I’m going to pay $20 for some piece of crap that I’ll listen to once when I can pay nothing to discover that I’ve already heard the only work worth listening to from an artist? IF an artist makes music that is worth listening to, I’ll celebrate his entire catalog. If I think they’re making crap, I’ll mitigate the risk of getting burned by downloading first.