Catshanghai

Bill Gates is becoming a bit of a loose cannon for Microsoft these days. First, he praises the Ipod (source: Engadget) and now he is dissing the current model of digital rights management (DRM). When you buy and download DRM music or movies from online stores like Itunes, Rhapsody and Amazon you are locked into using specific software and hardware devices. For example, Itunes’ purchases can only be played on Ipods or on Itunes software. At the moment, there are several incompatible DRM models that do not allow you to move your online purchases between different media players.

This week Bill Gates had a meetup with some prominent bloggers and admitted the current DRM model was confusing and inflexible. He advised consumers to buy CDs and rip them. This gets around the problem of DRM by not having it in the first place. This is an extraordinary statement, because Microsoft has become heavily steeped in DRM. After developing the PlaysForSure copy protection software for Rhapsody, Urge, Napster and others using Windows Media Player, Microsoft dumped its partners to go it alone . Microsoft’s new Zune player is not compatible with Windows Media Player and will not play any music purchased through these stores even though they developed their DRM. Instead, Zune owners are forced to use a Zune media player and Microsoft’s online store called Zune Marketplace. Read James Kim’s CNET Zune review.

Bill Gates will step down from operational duties at Microsoft in 2008 to become a full time philanthropist and billionaire, but he is currently still CEO and this shows that everyone is thoroughly confused about DRM, even the writers of the copy protection platforms. Closed copyright systems are bad for everyone, particularly consumers. The only people who are inconvenienced are those who download music legally. Copyright pirates are not affected by DRM. They will continue to use illegal file sharing and bittorent services to download movies and albums. Meanwhile, legitimate customers are forced to become pirates and use hacking software like QTFairUse6 when they buy a new incompatible media device.

It is high time that Apple, Microsoft, Sony and the Media industry came up with an open DRM model that protected the intellectual property rights of film makers and musicians while making it possible to change between devices and software platforms. This would help everyone including greedy Microsofts and Apples. Ipods dominate the MP3 hardware market and the 80GB device can hold thousands of songs, but a recent Gartner study showed that Ipod owners only buy 20 songs a year from Itunes. (source: Guardian) That leaves more than 79 GB to fill with ripped and ripped off songs. I think an open DRM standard would get more songs from Itunes onto Ipods and other players. Consumers would win, but Apple is a hardware company that wants to maintain Ipod’s dominance. The Zune is a new device that was launched to be an “Ipod killer” (source: ExtremeTech) , albeit one with even more copy protection. Bill Gates’ recent remarks are surpising and show perhaps that Apple is dictating Microsoft’s DRM policy.