You never cease to amaze me! As many have pointed out you actually have a vested interest in DRM. However, unlike all other movie execs/music producers, you have someone who you put above your pocket book. ME! Your loyal, loyal, loyal, customer. Why am I loyal? Because I know when something has Mark Cuban’s name on it, it’s going to pleasantly surprise me and I will feel like I got MORE than my money’s worth!

Thanks for fighting for the customer Mark!

If I like the content, I will buy it once. I don’t make copies to give away or sell, the content stays within my household and is used and reused. That goes for CDs, DVDs, DirecTV programming, etc. If I Tivo prgramming I’m paying for, then I can keep it on the hard drive or even burn it to a DVD if I so choose. I own that content because DirecTV paid for the rights to carry it and I paid for the rights to let it enter my home.

If I have purchased an 8-track, Cassetter CD or DVD, I own that content and shouldn’t have to rebuy it everytime a new format is introduced. DRM is affecting all of us in a negative way and it has to stop. With all of the entertainment options and electronic gadgets available today, there’s so much “convergience” taking place but every where you turn, you’ve got someone telling you that you can’t copy this media to use on that player…It’s all crap.

We need a new copyright act, one that protects both the entertainment industry and the consumers who SUPPORT the industry. Don’t forget it people, we SUPPORT them, not the other way around.

If we don’t force a change now, what will happen when everything in our world is IP based?

MIM vs DRM

MIM or Media Identification Management protects mass trading and copying of music, while allowing us to be the first ones to sell mp3s.

This will bring balance to the music download and player markets. The labels are afraid of the growing leverage by Apple. And they see that various DRM models have created unbalance in the market. The current plan to use WMAs and Microsoft DRM to bite into the Apple dominance has them worried again. If it’s successful, Microsoft gains leverage on labels.

The concept is simple. Songs via MIM will be blocked from mass trading on networks unless they are purchased. However, once purchased, a user can do anything with his property (portable devices, burn to CD, etc).

Outside of a mass network, the user can only do the same thing as when cassette and CD copying started years ago…give a copy to a friend or two. Owning digital files doesn’t increase the possibilities of mass trading once outside a network. MIM stops mass trading and replication just fine.

Instead of restricting the file from fair use, MIM will place an ID on a purchased song and will be able to track the file and its owner if the file is found to be traded on an authorized mass network or has been burned to a massive amount of bootlegged/packaged CDS.

We can combine MIM with a new mp3 watermarking technology to create the perfect legal music distribution system.

Here’s an example of how it may work.

- user searches for song and initiates download.
- MIM compares hash value to licensed database to determine if song is free or needs purchasing.
- Using watermarking technology, MIM registers user song ID and computer IP from source… and checks to see if source is streaming from multiple computers with same user ID. If so, possible mass copying has been committed and user can be identified for questioning.
- Upon purchase of a song, the file is watermarked with the new buyer’s info.

kaleb@warez.com

It’s good to see someone who has some influence with content holders with this view.

Check out this article for more good info on why DRM is in need of reform.

http://delicategeniusblog.com/?p=170