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Pepsi's Free iTunes, Digital Rights
Management, and the Super Bowl Ad
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There's a bit of outrage regarding Apple and Pepsi using kids that
have been targeted by the RIAA in their
Super Bowl ad. Whether they really are the kids being
targeted or simply actors is beside the point.
This, I think, is a good thing. The outrage, that is. Several
other articles, such as Double
Jeopardy for kids caught in Pepsi Apple promo, have covered
the "child abuse" angle well enough that we won't rehash it here.
What this ad does do quite effectively is put the spotlight on
Digital Rights Management (DRM) and how it affects us all.
Currently, the iTunes
Music Store has met with great success. Millions of people
are purchasing songs, and many businesses see an opportunity to turn
something that has been considered illicit into something that is
considered legal. The iTMS is no fluke but the result of hard work
and compromises by both the recording industry and Apple.
The result of the partnership is digital rights management. There
was no way that the recording industry would allow their songs to be
downloaded without some control over the content after it was
downloaded. There was no way the iTMS could ever be launched without
a large library of songs.
Depending on your perspective, DRM is either the greatest thing
going or the worst thing ever created. Both of these perspectives
were perfectly captured in the Super Bowl ad. From one side, DRM is a
good thing because it means that the recording industry and its
artists get compensated for creating music. It's hard to argue that
companies shouldn't be compensated for the products they create.
Without compensation no one would create anything.
On the other side of the coin, the ad clearly shows a single group
reaching into the private lives of people and threatening or
launching lawsuits. It also shows people being put under control of
this group.
DRM, in effect, extends the control of a product that once ended
when the product was purchased. Until DRM, when someone purchased a
CD and walked out of the store, the industry didn't have any way of
controlling what the buyer did with it. Users could copy and share as
many copies as they wanted without anyone being the wiser.
The final line of the ad exemplifies this: "There's not a thing
anyone can do about it."
Before DRM, this would have meant that there wasn't a thing anyone
could do about you using a copied CD. Now it means there isn't a
thing anyone can do about you downloading a free, company sponsored,
DRM-protected song that allows an industry to control the product
after it leaves the shelf.
This is not to say that DRM is good or bad, merely that with the
success of iTMS may have glossed over the fact that consumers have
lost a certain amount of freedom with the move to digital downloads.
Whether they ever deserved that freedom in the first place is up for
debate.
Stephen Van
Esch is the founder and president of
the
E-learning Foundry, an online training
resource for Mac users. Steve loves the Mac and is doubly bilingual,
since he's also fluent in Windows and French.
Recently on Mac Scope
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