DRM will not be legislated

Tim May tcmay at got.net
Mon Jul 8 17:08:02 PDT 2002


On Monday, July 8, 2002, at 04:01  PM, Anonymous wrote:
> be available.  A substantial number of consumers will voluntarily adopt
> DRM if it lets them have a Napster-style system of music on demand,
> with wide variety and convenient downloads, as long as the songs are not
> too expensive.

I doubt it. Napster was popular because people like FREE STUFF!

There were services in Tower Records as long ago as 10 years ago, and 
repeated efforts since, which allowed a patron to pick a set of songs 
and have them recorded onto a customized CD. Cost was comparable to a 
CD. They all failed.

People who were heavy users of Napster, collecting thousands of songs 
(or more), will not be too interested in a system which charges them a 
50 cents or a dollar per song.

And casual users just won't bother.

I expect something like this will happen, but it doesn't significantly 
alter the main issue.

Oh, and it little or nothing to do with DRM circuitry. Most of those who 
download songs will be doing so to put on to their MP3 players, their 
iPods, their own CD-Rs. While the latest Pentium 5 and Opteron machines 
may or may not have DRM circuitry, it's likely that the very target 
market for downloaded music will be using older machines for many years 
to come.


--Tim May
"The State is the great fiction by which everyone seeks to live at the 
expense of everyone else." --Frederic Bastiat





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