"Social DRM" is Anti-Social

In February 2007, right after Steve Jobs claiming to the world that he was Anti-DRM and that the fault of him having DRM in iTunes was that of the majors (which is nothing but a bunch of crap, but I digress), Adobe's Bill McCoy wrote in his blog about his vision of DRM, acting as agreeing with Steve Jobs. His ridiculous arguments leaded to a new concept: "Social DRM". I ditched the whole absurd idea and almost forgot about it. Until now.

It seems that there are lots of people thinking that "Social DRM" is a bright idea. Actually, I've seeing the term in my readings more, so I decided not to ignore the issue anymore, and write a quick post about why "Social DRM" is a really bad idea.

First, getting this straight: I really think that "Social DRM" is less bad than "traditional DRM", mostly because it isn't DRM at all. Yet, being less bad doesn't mean it is good, to the point of making me state that, like I don't buy DRM'd stuff, I wouldn't buy nothing with "Social DRM".

What is "Social DRM"? Well, nothing more than watermarking. Basicly, McCoy is trying to think of DRM on e-books, and his "idea" is to have a "Social DRM" that is in fact a mark in every page on the ebook, make it header or footer, stating something like "this book is for the exclusive use of [insert purchaser's name here]". Why is it bad?

Well, McCoy certainly choose the name "Social DRM" because he understands the "social" need consumers need to have in their "content". A book (or an album, or a movie) is social, because if you read and like it you want to share it, to recommend it to your friends, you're going to cite it on your blog, you'll make references to it in your day-by-day... you'll use it as a social tool. So, he [tries to] argue, when watermarking the book instead of making it have DRM, you're not taking the social part of having the book out of it. It is social because it isn't anti-social. But he's wrong.

Let me make a small and quick list of social things I can do with my books:

• I can borrow it;


• I can leave it on my desk and next time I know Paula is reading it;


• I can give it;


• I can sell it;


• I can trade it (bookcrossing-style);


• I can leave it on the bus bench after reading it;


• I can let it be used by everyone in the office;


• ...

Now, how many of this social things I can do with your "social DRM"? I can't borrow it, 'cause you're not "Marcos Marado", I can't let Paula wander around with it on her laptop, she's not "Marcos Marado" either; I can't give, sell or trade it, which means that if I abandon it (or loose it!) in my flash disk on the bus, I might get in trouble, 'cause you aren't me. Does this sound social to you? To me, like "tradicional DRM", this sounds exactly like "I'm having my freedoms removed".

Thanks but no, thanks, I'm too social to buy anti-social "Social DRM" stuff.

The Social Web of Music

For those who read this blog for a while now, you've probably noticed that I write a lot about music and technology, sometimes both. A pair of posts I did on the issue may be already somewhat outdated: one about finding music on the web, and other about the web for music artists and lovers.

While there's some discussion around the web on wether Web 2.0 is better or worse than P2P for this kind of stuff, an issue I would love to talk about in a future post, today I'm going to talk about "The Social Web of Music", impelled by the fact that Techcrunch made a Social Music Review that, IMHO, doesn't really reflect the great web apps out there in the field.

They chose eight products: FineTune, Pandora, Last.fm, Mog, Radio.Blog.Club, MyStrands, iLike and iJigg.

My first comment about the chosen applications is that FineTune, Pandora, Last.fm, Mog, and Radio.Blog.Club aim exactly for the same, so they're concurrents themselves.

FineTune lets you create playlists of music you want to hear, which is great if you want to be listening to some music instead of knowing new music.

On the other hand Pandora (here are some posts where I talked about it) has the easiest user interface of all, and has the best algorithm of finding out music that you'll probably like. On the other hand, it has two major problems: it almost only has mainstream music (almost everything comes out from the major labels) and it's only legal to use it in USA (so, no Pandora for us European guys).

My favourite of the bunch is Last.fm (my cover here): while it wasn't until some time ago, the social features it has are preety good. I'm intending to do a full cover of Last.fm and the way I use it, but for now I'll only say that it has an impressive social component that lets you (only if you want, and that's good) tag, rate, talk, know new stuff, get free tracks, and a lot lot more. It has something that beats those others: it lets bands or labels to create their pages there and promote their music. That makes it preety cool for bands and for those wanting to listen music, mainstream or not. The social component there is strong enough to make a band, by publicising themselves there (upload a music free for stream or even download, and it will surely be heard) to get fans or even sell your music in a much success rate than any other webapp I know of.

Mog also lets artists upload their music, but... well, it quite sucks. It's confusing, it has bad design, and the real use for which I can imaging Mog being the app you're looking for is only if you want to blog about music. And, for that, Last.fm would also be fine...

Radio.Blog.Club was a big surprise: I can't imagine it being relevant in a discussion about the "social web of music". I guess that the only reason why it was referred is that the author thinks that "the interface is good". Sorry, but I do not agree. Call me stupid, but while the website says that artists can upload their music, and while, by the file names, users are obviously submitting (copyrighted stuff, BTW), I walked around for 10 minutes or so and didn't find out how to do it. I don't intend to come back there.

MyStrands might be "social music", but isn't web: it's a desktop application you have to download, and there are only versions for Windows or Mac OS. Since I'm a Linux user, this isn't for me.

iLike is even worse: it's an iTunes plugin. No, I don't use iTunes.

Finaly, iJigg: the music digg. I don't really like digg, so I might be biased on this, but iJigg is just... well, if you want to discover music and you want "anything" (forget finding stuff similar of what you already know and like), or if you want copyrighted stuff that others post there (lot's of it, there), then you might find it interesting. But I doubt that it will be "the music web app you'll get used to use".

So, if these are my oppinions about the choices, what would be mine?

For me, only five stand out:

Pandora - I've talked about it up there, so go back and read it :-) If you're resident in USA and what you want is to get at your job in the morning, open a browser tab and make it play music you like until it's time to go home, this is for you. Easy, fast learning, great interface, preety cool. If you like something enough, you can buy the track or album in iTunes (please, don't - those tracks have DRM) or Amazon.

Last.fm - The music experience and interaction. Put your music player to feed Last,fm, use it to listen what other people recommend you, bands similar to the one you're listening now, other bands from the same music label, leave a comment, take a peek on what other Last.fm users that listen to it like to hear, know new bands, get some free, legal, DRM-free music.

SellABand - I promised a full review of it that I never did (shame on me). To give you an example... I have a musical project and I've used the internet to promote it - and even to get the label that released my last album. Of all those music services my music can be heard, SellABand is the one where I probably have less people listening to it - but in the other hand is the one that possibly granted me more fans. Also, Last.fm and SellABand were direct creators of revenue: I sold at least one CD thanks to each of them. What's SellABand? What makes it so different? No better than this page to explain it, but basicly bands, for free, create their profiles there, with (at their choice) free-to-listen music. "Believers" (the name for listeners) may "believe" in an artist by buying one "part" of the band ($10 per part). Then, "Together Believers have to raise $50,000 to get their Artist of choice in the studio. At any point before your Artist has reached the Goal of $50,000, you can withdraw your Parts and pick a different Artist. You can even get your money back. It's your music. It's your choice." If one band reaches $50,000 (in four months two already did), a CD is released, you get a copy, 50% of the profits go to the band, and the other 50% are distributed to their believers.

Amie.st - I talked about this before, and Mike from Techcrunch is a big fan of this, so my surprise was huge when I noticed that this wasn't on their list. Basicly they consider that every track has a value, but music lovers are the ones who should decide whats its value. So, When a band uploads one music there, it starts costing "0 credits", and if people say that the song should cost more than that, it starts costing something, and more, and more. It's the free market aplied to music - a way better way of knowing and buying digital music - you're basicly paying it's "real value".

MySpace Music - This had to be here. I don't like MySpace (nobody does, right?) but it's the biggest website on the Internet, and that means something. If you ignore all the kiddy social crap and take a look to in only taking into consideration the music aspects, you'll see that this is the most used "music webapp". You have from really big and well-known bands like Björk there, and you have that until the "I don't have or want a band, but I once did this track" stuff. You have music for every kind of tastes, some you can only stream and some you can download. You can see, specialy from the "top friends", what other somewhat simmilar bands you'll possible like, and discover lots of music.

And you? What music web applications do you use?

Caveats in the Social Web

After my last blog post where I told you that Social Web has some issues, like freedom, let me talk you a little more on the issue.

I use lots "social webapps", I even revamped my planet today (I use Planet Noori as my RSS reader, but several people also read it, and a Planet has several advantages like the fact that it is easily reachable and readable by serveral devices like my cellphone with Opera Mini). But using third-party social apps have caveats.

My planet used to be on Ning, but it didn't give me the flexibility I needed, so I changed back to my own instalation and setup of PlanetPlanet.

Yesterday Google News was messed up, as well as Blogger was (that's why I didn't write anything here yesterday).

Merankorii's webshop (Merankorii is my musical project) was made using MyShopify: an AWSOME webapp to create an e-shop really easy. The problem is that it has a considerable downtime of several minutes per day. "Jaded Pixel does not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, or error-free."

So, what am I talking about? Well, simply that it is easy to agree on start using some services and rely on them without having any "insurance" on the availability of the service. It's basicly the same problem that you have on relying on 3rd-party API's. Have you ever read Google's Privacy Policy? Doesn't bother you that all the operations you do on blogger, including authentication, is being have in plain text (http instead of https)?

This isn't to be a big post talking about the Social Web, but simply aims to make YOU think.