AfterDawn: News

IFPI annual report praises labels for being forced to ditch DRM

According to the IFPI's annual report on the music industry, released today, it was innovative labels, rather than frustrated consumers or knowledgable online store management who came up with the DRM-free music model that's taking over online music sales. It's an apparent bid to rewrite history, in which they were actually dragged kicking and screaming into the DRM-free marketplace. In fact, last year's report describe DRM as "the enabler of flexible music offerings."

The IFPI is also pulling no punches in their campaign to turn ISPs into their proxies in the fight against internet piracy. opens with a section titled "Making ISP Responsibility A Reality." Interestingly, however, the report also features another section highlighting the mobile music market in Japan, in which that coiuntry is characterized as "setting a fascinating example to the rest of the world."



If nothing else it's certainly fascinating that the report would be giving so much praise to the online market in a country where according to the report "One key reason for Japan’s digital market success has been the formation of a mobile music retail service jointly owned by record companies." This is unlike the U.S., E.U., or other areas of the world where music executives aparently expect other companies, like Apple and Amazon, to build their new distribution model for them.

Written by: Rich Fiscus @ 24 Jan 2008 23:20

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• 7 comments

• Blackjax

  As I read this article I happened to look over and see my dog chasing his tail.....
  My ribs now hurt too much to continue typing!

  25.1.2008 00:04 #1

• maryjayne

  My dog eventually learned if you sit down after spinning a few times, then you can actually catch your tail. Now I get my kicks from watching the carpet butt drag scratch. Sometimes I join him with a good scratch :-)
  
  Back to the article:
  DRM sux.
  Apple sux.
  ISPs forced into babysitting their customers will drop their customer base and cause more private ISPs to emerge.
  The US has a business model of let another company develop the ideas that you want and then when they start to become successful then buy them out. Less work than trying to develop the concepts yourself!

  25.1.2008 08:22 #2

• nobrainer

  And the record industry rhetoric continues as per usual!
  
  RE: forcing internet isp's to monitor for copywrited material.
  this will last for about 30 seconds until all bittorrent clients use encryption, failing the you could always use an encrypted tunnel or a vpn and it even stops all that crappy traffic shaping!
  
  Optimize BitTorrent To Outwit Traffic Shaping ISPs
  
  Originally posted by hyperlink: How To Encrypt to Your BitTorrent Transfers:
  The RC4 encryption offered by many popular BitTorrent clients today will obfuscate not only the header but the entire stream, which makes it considerably more difficult for an ISP to detect that you're using BitTorrent. Even if your ISP does not force you to enable encryption, you may be connecting to peers with ISPs that do.
  
  Encryption began appearing on clients in late 2005. By the end of 2006, most actively-developed clients were updated with encryption. While not all torrent clients in a swarm will support encryption, most of them will. As a result, this small percentage of non-encryption capable peers may be a reason not to force encryption on a full-time basis, but there is no reason not to enable encryption that allows the falling back to a non-encrypted connection when needed.
  
  If your favorite client is not listed below, check your documentation.
  
  
  How To Hide BitTorrent within an Encrypted Tunnel:
  
  With the advent of Application-Layer Inspection, some ISPs may recognize and control BitTorrent traffic despite your best efforts.
  
  You may be able to hide the BitTorrent traffic in an encrypted tunnel -- a transport path within the normal transport paths provided by TCP and IP. You can tunnel your traffic through cooperatives such as The Onion Router (TOR)* or I2P. Commercial Virtual Private Network (VPN) providers such as Relakks or SecureIX will also help keep your ISP from detecting exactly what you're doing. If you are familiar with SSH and SSH Tunneling, this is also a possibility. However, some ISPs even throttle or inhibit these encrypted tunnels.
  
  Azureus provides in-client support for TOR and I2P. Other clients will have to set up the software as recommend on the TOR or I2P site.
  
  *Note: TOR has been updated to allow peer-to-peer download data, despite any information to the contrary (it used to be prohibited).
  
  and how easy is it to set up uTorrent tunnel you ask? well its this easy!
  
  
  
  
  http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnion...OWTO/BitTorrent
  
  
  

  The BPI Are: SONY, UNIVERSAL, WARNER GROUP, EMI.
  
  The RIAA Soundexchange Are: SONY, UNIVERSAL, WARNER GROUP, EMI.
  
  The MPAA Are: SONY, UNIVERSAL, WARNER GROUP, DISNEY, PARAMOUNT, FOX.

  25.1.2008 12:14 #3

• banned4Lf

  HUH?!.?!.?!.?!.?!.?!.
  
  "Praising DRM-free music"?????????? They were all about that before and now they aren't?
  
  Now they're pissy at the ISPs?
  
  Can you say "Hyp-o-cras-y"?

  25.1.2008 12:34 #4

• borhan9

  At one stage they were for drm and now they are not make up your minds people :P

  19.2.2008 02:28 #5

• phobet

  Once again, big record labels want someone to subsidize their business model. Instead of offering compelling content in the forms the consumer is looking for, at a reasonable price, they want the ISPs to police their networks, thereby assisting them in keeping alive their mediocrity. Only when the companies are in sync with their consumer base, can they succeed in their endeavors.

  12.5.2008 17:49 #6