Well, in a new twist, grad student Joel Tenenbaum – in hopes for getting a new trial – is putting the blame on the record labels for selling “DRM-free CD’s [that make] the proliferation of their recordings on the peer-to-peer networks trivially easy.”

Doesn’t this guy wish he settled for $5k like he was offered to begin with?

There was a generational expectation that all things Web related would be free. Too much Napster for those kids warped their brains a little. But there was little repercussion – at least until recently – for violating copyrights and stealing content, and mainstream media companies eventually explored the free, ad-support only model.

However, free is really only good if the company providing the content can stay in business. And ad support didn’t quite cut it for everyone. After dozens (hundreds?) of newspapers have gone out of business, and the tolerance for Web properties hemorrhaging money is dwindling, media companies that have premium, desirable content are once again exploring a paid model.

What do I have to say about that? Its about fuckin’ time.

Sure I like my free music, but I can still get plenty of it. And my Rhapsody subscription is still one of my favorite $15 a month to spend. I don’t know what people are bitching about when it comes to their DRM. I’ve got unlimited access to their entire library at home on my desktop and my HTPC, at work, when I take my Zune (yes, a Zune) in the car, and that still leaves me 2 more computers that can access my subscription (perfect for my mom.) My other favorite $15 per month? My Netflix subscription. Movies delivered to my door, plenty more I can stream on demand. Whats not to like?

The majority of my frustration is with three constituencies. First, greedy consumers who, for the most part, do not understand the value chain. It costs money to make this music/movie/tv show, and we can’t just give it away. I’ve said for years that someone (a company) needed to stand up and say, “Tough shit, kid. That ain’t how it works.” Or, “The cast of Friends each taking home a million bucks an episode is the biggest expense to this production.”

Second, the companies who did give away their content, thus devaluing it, and making consumers think that its next to worthless, dollar-wise. These companies were too stupid or too pig headed to protect their own businesses. Why did so many magazines put all their content on line – for free – and then expect people to pay for it at the news stand? Why didn’t the record labels tell all those Napster downloaders that those 96kbps MP3 SUCKED? They could have, at least, still moved albums that way (before broadband really kicked in). There’s way too many mistakes the music industry made that it gives me a headache just thinking about them.

Third, and most importantly I think, are the market researchers who constantly told media companies that people don’t like advertising. Hey, no shit. These companies artificially warped the perception of market conditions. I saw very few reports that emphasized the fact that people were willing to pay for quality content. They only emphasized that people didn’t like ads, or that they wanted ads in exchange for free content. But they never explained the dynamic to the consumers.

More free content = More ads. Apparently the companies that pay for these studies didn’t want to hear any bad news. Nobody said, “Do you know that you’d need a $100 CPM to break even? But you are currently only getting $15, and still only filling half your inventory.” The writing was on the wall the whole time. But they just didn’t want to see it. Hey, just increase the ad load on people who are reading and watching. Oh, and lets find some ways to get the advertisers to pay for ads that aren’t even seen!

So here we are, a few years down the road, with ad networks and ad exchanges commoditizing the value of online advertising down to the mid-single digits for all but the most premium of publishers.

Where does that leave us? Simply, if your content is good enough to pay for, you are in pretty good shape. If you were making money in your previous business model – even if it was ad supported – then you’ve got a very good chance of retaining your audience and moving them towards a blend of pay and ad support.

For all of those web publishers who produce anything else, good luck. Original web series that get less than 100k views? Trouble. What about 500k views? Aggregators that produce nothing on their own? Trouble. Have you ever done the math on a $10 – $15 CPM for less than a million views? It ain’t good.

The Web people have had enough of shitty content and shitty ads. The media and content people have had enough of getting shit on by consumers and watching the value of their content decrease. Premium content producers want to do what they do best. Create great content. News outlets want to do in-depth reporting, not just scream at people with different points of view. Imagine that!

If you want free shit, check out all the software listed on this site. Its all free and does everything you need it to do. Listen to Pandora. Watch Hulu. Get your news from Yahoo or Google while you can.

But ready yourself now. Be prepared to pay for the best content. Why? Because its worth it.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/04/13/pirate-bay-heroes-or-criminals/?mod=rss_WSJBlog

Shelly Palmer reports:

Enough with the goose reference, and apparently, enough with DRM for Apple. Seems the iEverything people struck a deal with the labels to set the music free…for a small price. 10 million songs from the iTunes store will be available with no DRM.

Apple marketing guy Philip Schiller announced that iTunes song prices will come in three tiers: 69 cents, 99 cents and $1.29. The labels get to choose the prices.

Additionally, Apple announced a “Set My Music Free” tax / fee. For $.30, Apple will replace the DRM tracks you’ve previously purchased with the restrictions for tracks without any. The upside to the charge is that a) you don’t have to pay it, and b) you’ll get a higher bit-rate track in return. Hopefully everyone has done the math and will make this model work.

Personally, as I’ve said before, I’ve never had any problems with music with DRM preventing me from doing anything that falls within “fair use.” Only when you start to do the things you aren’t supposed to do you run into trouble.

Bottom line – the solution to the DRM crisis isn’t to abandon DRM. It is to put a sensible DRM solution in place that works well enough for everyone to stay in business.

“We think this is going to be a different form of stick, but we absolutely think this will be a meaningful alternative approach that will have a significant impact,” said Cara Duckworth, a spokeswoman for the RIAA.

Different stick? More like a wet noodle. Stop, or we’ll say stop again. Translation: its mp3 season.

AppleInsider has tipped that Apple could be going DRM free by the end of the year. With Amazon already offering DRM free tracks, iTunes is forced to compete. But if DRM goes down, it will be down for good.

In case it isn’t clear enough, DRM developers need to get off their asses and create some system that works well enough for the labels and well enough for the vendors and end users to keep everyone happy. I personally haven’t had any situation where DRM prevented me from doing anything with my music that would fall under “fair use” and I think the definition is fairly broad.

Hasn’t this become more of a philosophical argument at this point rather than a practical one?

In an interesting twist of events, the judge determined that he gave the jury bad instructions that could have “substantially prejudiced” the outcome.

The judge has now put the burden of proof back on the RIAA and record companies to show that Ms. Thomas actually “distributed” the copyrighted material, not just made them available. How they will trace back any P2P connections at this point is beyond me, but I suspect somewhere, somehow, someone knows how to do it.

What continues to amaze me more, however, is that people are still using Kazaa and leaving the “share” function on. While I agree with the judge and hope for the best for Ms. Thomas, I still maintain that if you are too stupid to protect yourself, you deserve to get fucked. Just not this royally.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2008/07/yahoo-shutterin.html

So easy for them to have handled this right. Not sure why they couldn’t just transfer a user’s licenses over to the Rhapsody account they are getting. I love Rhapsody. Seriously.