News

According to an article posted by The Financial Times November 20, Kim Bailey, the director general of the UK trade group Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) is urging the music industry to drop digital rights management (DRM), saying that incompatible proprietary technologies, rather than preventing unlicensed copying, discourage sales of electronic files, "stifling growth and working against the consumer interest."

Ms. Bailey noted that recording labels have been "quick to complain" that declining CD sales have not been balanced by a commensurate growth in sales of digital files, but she contended that the labels' insistence upon DRM "might have added to the slow take-up of legal download services" by confusing consumers.

Pointing to amazon.com, EMI, and other non-DRM services, Bailey said, "There are certainly experiments, but there's still a certain element of resistance within the music industry," adding "DRM just puts consumers off." Bailey also pointed to ERA research that indicated that consumers were four times more likely to choose an MP3 file over a DRM-encoded file. The director general said she was making the plea now so that labels could drop DRM before Christmas, when iPods and other personal portable players would be given as gifts—and, presumably, need to be filled with downloaded files.

We've said it before, but we certainly don't mind repeating it: DRM affects legitimate customers who purchase content without substantially slowing down freeloaders. Why do we care? We're not so concerned about lossy formats, such as MP3—although we do believe that people who purchase content should be allowed to use it on the devices they choose—but rather that, as audiophiles, we have seen DRM-encumbered high-resolution media fail precisely because consumers did not want to have to choose one format over another or choose a format that could not be used on all of their players.

Now we're presented with a wonderful future format—one we can experience now: high-resolution downloads, such as those pioneered by iTrax, Linn, and MusicGiants. What they have in common, in addition to better sound, is a commitment to giving their customers choices about how to enjoy the music they buy.

We happen to think that's how it ought to be.