{"id":3687,"date":"2006-08-28T04:45:00","date_gmt":"2006-08-28T08:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/2006\/08\/28\/previewing-lessons-learned-from-fair"},"modified":"2006-08-28T04:45:00","modified_gmt":"2006-08-28T08:45:00","slug":"previewing-lessons-learned-from-fairuse4wm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/2006\/08\/28\/previewing-lessons-learned-from-fairuse4wm\/","title":{"rendered":"Previewing Lessons Learned From FairUse4WM"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

On the one hand, I’ve said that most users won’t care about FairUse4WM<\/a>
\nbecause they already could easily get unencrypted
\ncopies. On the other hand, Janus DRM has discouraged music fans from subscribing<\/a> and hurt online music businesses. 
\nIn what sense can both these statements be true?  In short, music fans
\nwould flock to a true all-you-can-eat mp3 subscription service, but, don’t be surprised if FairUse4WM has little impact on user adoption of subscription services. <\/p>\n

Many users who currently rely on P2P
\nwould put down money for a slick Rhapsody-like service that didn’t
\nrestrict their uses, just like many online music users already flit
\nbetween iTunes and P2P depending on which happens to be more convenient
\nat a given moment.  And, in the long run, an all-you-can-eat mp3
\nservice may be where we’re headed.<\/p>\n

But in the short run, I don’t
\nthink that’s how things will play out.  Most music fans still don’t
\nwant anything that smells like a subscription “rental” service, and,
\nunless FairUse4WM gets integrated into Rhapsody in some form, it
\ndoesn’t make the experience seamless enough. The iTunes Music Store has
\ndominated the market not just because of the price point, but because
\nit and the iPod work with no fuss.  In contrast,
\nRhapsody-to-FairUse4WM-to-iPod still requires some energy, and, more to
\nthe point, Rhapsody+P2P downloading will for many people be as or more
\nconvenient than Rhapsody+FairUse4WM.  FairUse4WM may make some current
\nRhapsody customers happy, but it won’t attract too many new ones.  <\/p>\n

Furthermore,
\nremember that this hack could be cut off, potentially by forced
\nupgrades or by the roll-out of new subscription services and devices
\ndown the road.  That could prompt users to tune out the licensed
\nservices even more, but it will give certain industry folks the sense
\nthat this was a victory for DRM. After all, if the DRM can’t be broken
\nonce and then run everywhere forever, it “works,” right?<\/p>\n

Of course not — as I said, most users who want
\nto get around the DRM already can easily do so through
\nnon-circumvention means, and, as Engadget argued, the people who would
\ndownload the whole catalog and then cancel the subscription aren’t
\ngoing to be Rhapsody customers anyway. The DRM might get a few extra
\npennies out of a few people, but that’s far less than the money
\nRhapsody would attract with mp3s, and it certainly ain’t enough to
\nbuild an online music service business around.  The service providers like Yahoo<\/a> already understand this, but the record labels don’t or have other interests in mind, and middlemen like Microsoft are indifferent.<\/p>\n

So
\nmy worry — one that in part motivated my initial analysis — is that the
\nmusic industry and others will take all the wrong lessons away from this, and none
\nof the right ones.  Stay tuned, and hope for the best. As both an Activist<\/a> and a Rhapsody user, I’m keeping my fingers crossed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the one hand, I’ve said that most users won’t care about FairUse4WM because they already could easily get unencrypted copies. On the other hand, Janus DRM has discouraged music fans from subscribing and hurt online music businesses.  In what sense can both these statements be true?  In short, music fans would flock to a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/72"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3687\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}