Audio book provider says no to DRM
Tuesday, October 9, 2007 by level1librarian
Via LibrarianInBlack:
“eMusic has started offering over a thousand downloadable audio books without digital rights management. Available in plain MP3 format, you don’t have to deal with any specific software, or digital rights management restrictions. (…)
Hint to Library-world downloadable media vendors: Follow my logic here. We and our users have problems with the DRM in the systems we buy from you. You know this already, because we have told you. If our users continue to have problems, they’ll stop using the product. If the users stop using the product, we ask for a price reduction -or- we stop buying the product.”
Proprietary formats and software are precisely the reason I don’t use my public library’s e-content. Sarah is right: if using products with DRM continues to be a hassle, why bother.
It seems to me that the stereotypical media vendors jealously guard their electronic material never minding whether their users actually benefit from the ease and mobility they tout. I guess they stick to this approach to downloadable content because they can’t step out of their print world business model boxes. But of course they have to make some money to be able to provide their services. So, what can they do?
How about…
“… embed media content through product placement, for example, you download a movie and see a Mac that the character is using, click on it to link to information about the computer. You like a shirt, car, or song, pause and click, buy.”
The above comes from Vinton Cerf (the founder of Internet), who recently gave a talk at Georgia Tech, as reported by The Ubiquitous Librarian. Have a look at TUL’s notes; there’s everything from surprising (“we’re going to run out of IP addresses in 2011”) to exciting (“If software is no longer supported it should become public domain.”) to problematic (RFID enabled refrigerators won’t work they way we shop). And none if it is dull!
