The Struggle for the Digital Media Future
Oct. 22 -- For Peter Gabriel, Oct. 3 was D Day. Or, more accurately, it was D-D-D day.
On that day in early October, Gabriel, the one-time lead singer for Genesis, helped launch Digital Download Day. What Gabriel and a collection of other artists wanted was to distribute their music online directly to fans in hopes of turning them back onto "legitimate" music sources, rather than free — and illegal — music networks.
The artists were offering a tangible example of so-called digital rights management (DRM) systems.
Tech companies such as Intel and Microsoft are aggressively pushing DRM. These DRM setups would allow content creators and media companies to distribute copyrighted digital works that would be protected from hackers and pirates, yet remain accessible to consumers' fair use copying.
Digital Download Day, for example, encouraged listeners to come to the musicians' sites and choose up to 500 of the 6,000 available song titles for free. Once downloaded, the DRM protection would allow owners to "create" a single copy of each track onto a blank CD for use with their traditional audio players.
Countering the Content Clamp-Down
The effort by artists such as Gabriel and tech companies to embrace the digital download realm seems almost like an antithesis of the recent efforts by Hollywood movie studios and major music record labels.
Lawsuits have closed down file swapping sites such as Napster. Technology advances have produced anti-copying schemes — much to consumers' surprise — on some audio CDs to prevent users from duplicating music onto computers.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
While the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) makes it illegal to deactivate or otherwise circumvent anti-piracy schemes, media companies are already seeking even greater control.
One bill introduced in Congress this year proposes that all new PCs and consumer electronics gear must be outfitted with federally approved copy protection hardware. Meanwhile, another bill would allow copyright holders to "hack" and virtually attack computer systems suspected of containing and trading in illegal digitally copied works.
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