It’s not just music-loving technology neophytes that are having a hard time understanding DRM – the bands don’t get it either. According to Copyfight , the Dave Mathews Band has been “giving fans directions for dealing with DRM-hobbled CDs and encouraging them to appeal to Apple to collaborate with others on an easier way to move music to the iPod.” Normally, that would be just fine… if the problems were actually the fault of Apple. As we’ll see in just a second, however, the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of their record company and Microsoft. Here’s the text of the band’s recommendation:

INFORMATION REGARDING DOWNLOADING STAND UP SONGS TO IPODS
Please follow the instructions below in order to move your content into iTunes and onto an iPod:

If you have a Mac computer you can copy the songs using your iTunes Player as you would normally do.

If you have a PC place the CD into your computer and allow the CD to automatically start. If the CD does not automatically start, open your Windows Explorer, locate the drive letter for your CD drive and double-click on the LaunchCD.exe file located on your CD.

Once the application has been launched and the End User License Agreement has been accepted, you can click the Copy Songs button on the top menu.

Follow the instructions to copy the secure Windows Media Files (WMA) to your PC. Make a note of where you are copying the songs to, you will need to get to these secure Windows Media Files in the next steps.

Once the WMA files are on your PC you can open and listen to the songs with Windows Media Player 9.0 or higher. You may also play them in any compatible player that can play secure Windows Media files, such as MusicMatch, RealPlayer, and Winamp, but it will require that you obtain a license to do so. To obtain this license, from the Welcome Screen of the user interface, click on the link below the album art that says. If your music does not play in your preferred player, click here. Follow the instructions to download the alternate license.

Using Windows Media Player only, you can then burn the songs to a CD. Please note that in order to burn the files, you need to upgrade to or already have Windows Media Player 9 or greater.

Once the CD has been burned, place the copied CD back into your computer and open iTunes. iTunes can now rip the songs as you would a normal CD.

Please note an easier and more acceptable solution requires cooperation from Apple, who we have already reached out to in hopes of addressing this issue. To help speed this effort, we ask that you use the following link to contact Apple and ask them to provide a solution that would easily allow you to move content from protected CDs into iTunes or onto your iPod rather than having to go through the additional steps above.

For those of you that may still be scratching your head about how this isn’t Apple’s fault (Dave Mathews Band, this means you!), let me explain. Here’s what we can determine from the recommendation:

• The CD works just like normal on Macs. This means the problem is Windows only. (GNU/Linux isn’t even mentioned, as it has no native support for any DRM)
• The DRMed Windows Media Audio files are already on the CD. This was done by the record company.

This copy-prevention system works by using the “autorun” feature of Windows, which is on by default, and allows software on a CD to run as soon as it is inserted. The software it runs disables the reading of audio tracks from the CD, making ripping software, like iTunes, useless. The other option is for iTunes to use the restricted WMA files. The problem is, Apple can’t do this. They can’t do it legally, anyway. The DRM contained in the WMA files is Microsoft’s proprietary secret, and it is illegal according to the DMCA to reverse engineer that system. So, if anything, fans should be petitioning the recording companies to stop putting restriced, inferior files on their CDs.

This situation really helps to illustrate why DRM is doomed. The users hate it, the bands don’t like it (and in this case, are even advising users on how to bypass it) and it simply doesn’t work. It’s a hassle to consumers and only exists due to bad legislation. However, by not buying DRMed products and supporting sensible copying policies, we can quicken the demise of the failed experiment known as DRM.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 17th, 2005 at 4:53 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.