Professor Ross Anderson of the Federation For Information Policy yesterday observed that there has been "a radical shift" in the music industry's standpoint on DRM. "A year ago they would have been 100 per cent behind it," he said, "now they seem less certain". That change, he suspected, was possibly because the record labels were starting to realise that DRM was giving the Apples of this world a new dominance in the music space.
Actually, I think Anderson's observation was wrong, although his conclusion possibly right. But it would be easy to see why the FFIP man thought there had been a change in the music business' opinion on DRM given the industry's representation to the UK All Party Parliamentary Internet Group's forum on the topic. As previously reported, yesterday's 'oral evidence session' was part of the Group's ongoing investigation into the issues surrounding digital rights management - on the back of that session and some 92 written submissions the Group plans to report its findings to Parliament in March or April.
As expected (round here, anyway), the music business' representation to the session wasn't united. The BPI's Steve Redmond began by saying, simply, "we believe that rights holders should have the right to choose whether or not they protect their content with DRM. This debate often talks about DRM as if it's one thing - and suggests that it's either good or it's bad. But there are many different kinds of DRM - some to combat piracy, some to control or restrict usage. Content owners should be able to choose which kinds of DRM, or not, they use when".
However, Redmond conceded that there is "not a single monolithic record industry view on this - different companies and different people have different viewpoints. But that's fine - there's still much to be debated - legitimate downloading isn't even two years old in the UK yet".
Redmond reckons that differing opinions across the industry are not simply polarised into the 'major label viewpoint' and the 'independent label viewpoint' - and he's probably right, although the independents are generally more anti-DRM, as demonstrated by the representatives of the Association Of Independent Music at yesterday's session.
"We are content owners, and we sell music via non-DRM platforms," Beggars Group's Simon Wheeler said, giving the general indie viewpoint. "That decision hasn't affected our physical sales, in fact they're going up. We believe in customer loyalty, in treating customers well. That works. But the other music companies locking down content are hurting the business as a whole - including our business. A lot of people don't realise there is a wide range of opinions in our industry - what you hear is the loudest voice, but it isn't necessarily representative of opinion".
Which is why I think Professor Anderson's observation was wrong. The music business was equally split on the DRM issue twelve months ago, it's just that the high profile litigation being initiated by the RIAA, IFPI and BPIs of this world dominated the headlines, while the anti-DRM views of the independent sector tended to go ignored.
All that said, most in the independent sector would probably agree with the BPI's fundamental viewpoint on this issue - that content owners should be able to decide for themselves whether or not they use DRM. Indies (like we here at CMU) might think major labels are making a bad commercial decision using restrictive DRMs, but they don't think the government should force anyone to stop using it.
And of course that was the key agenda for the All Party Parliamentary Internet Group - what, if anything, should government be doing about DRM? The answer is probably that regulators should be, if anything, concerning themselves with 'communication'[ and 'accountability'. How exactly, we'll outline in our full report on the session next week.
PS: At the Consumer Electronics Show last month Sony Corp boss Howard Stringer admitted that the decision of SonyBMG execs in the US to buy in that dodgy rootkit copy protection software that caused such uproar last year was having a negative impact on Sony Corp's electronics division who, of course, have their own DRM development teams. I think he's right - pretty much everyone at the APIG session yesterday referred to the dodgy DRM as 'Sony rootkit', as if it had been made by the electronics giant, rather than just bought in by the Corp's record company. Such public perception must be irritating for Sony Electronics chiefs - especially given that rumour had it that it was former BMG execs who sanctioned the use of the rootkit DRM!