the internet has arrived

Andy, here's a picture just for you, as requested. I'm sure ALL those other people who read this blog (I'm pretty sure that would be me, looking for typos) will enjoy it as well. (As an aside, feel free to leave comments by clicking on the link at the end of each post.)



What does this have to do with "the internet has arrived," you ask? Nothing! But pictures were requested. Ask and ye shall receive. Anyway.

I graduated from high school in 1996. At that time, the internet was around and was established enough that it was available, but not universally. Some computers had internet access, some didn't. It was considered important though not vital to understand how to use a computer, and mostly they were used as fancy typewriters, to type up essays.

When I started university that fall, for the first time everyone was permitted to have a umanitoba email account; up till then students had to apply to the IT department, and not everyone was eligible. (My first email address was umpotte0@cc.umanitoba.ca.) Internet access was readily available, but only in the computer labs and on certain terminals in various student offices. The internet was recognized as a valuable tool (as my friend Joey put it, "the best way to get porn ever") but it was still sort of a novelty, and at that time people using it extensively for anything constructive were considered early adopters. Nobody really had a handle on how to use it very effectively -- it was a totally new tool. ("Hey! Maybe I could post my lecture notes on the internet!" was a revolutionary concept, and I don't think it crossed the minds of any of my first-year profs.)

Now, of course, the internet has become indispensable, both for academics (posting lecture notes, literature searches, journal access, you name it) and for administration (registering and changing classes, checking grades and schedules, that sort of thing). And that's just in the university setting. We were talking to a travel agent the other day, and he was searching for flights, trains, and accommodations for us. It took an hour or so, but he had searched in several ways, on several airlines and rail companies, and we were pretty confident he had found us a reasonable price -- because we had also used the internet to get a sense of prices. I asked him how travel agents had functioned prior to the internet, and he just shook his head. "I don't know," he said. (He was probably younger than me.) "I guess people spent a ton of time on the phone." And probably paid a lot more because they couldn't compare prices easily. And of course, porn distribution continues to thrive. I guess you have to take the good with the slimy.

Anyway, we're now moving away from being tied to a desk to access the internet. Wireless connections, or WiFi, is becoming more and more available, both in peoples' homes and in public places. Some cities are even adopting city-wide WiFi, so that everyone has access to the internet wherever they are, whether sitting at their desk or on a public bench. I'm not saying this is easy or problem-free (security issues, for example, become more and more of a concern), but it is a marker of how important the internet has become that we are considering it in the same league as electricity and water services.

It will be interesting to see where it goes next. More and more online applications are becoming available, and often cheaper than their non-online counterparts. For example, Google Docs & Spreadsheets is a word-processing and spreadsheet program similar to Microsoft Word and Excel (which pretty much everyone has some experience with) that one can use for free on the internet. It doesn't have quite as many bells and whistles as Word and Excel, but then most users don't use a lot of the bells and whistles anyway. Basically, you can create a document (such as a letter or essay) or a spreadsheet and save it on the internet. So if you create it at home and save it, you can access it at work, without having to carry a disk, CD or USB key that you might misplace or forget.

It'll be interesting to look back in a few years at this post and kind of shake my head at how much hadn't even occurred to us to try.

things are coming together

We're starting to settle into life back in Winnipeg. I was gone for 3 1/2 years, and Andy was gone for 2, so the Winnipeg we're coming back to isn't the same as the Winnipeg we left, but then we didn't expect that it would be. Some friends have moved away, some have started families, and some are simply doing different things now. Plus we went from essentially (or at least officially) each living with our parents to living as a couple, owning our home, and considering ourselves settled enough to get a dog. In addition to all that, we're also in the process of establishing ourselves in more permanent jobs that are actually "career" jobs rather than jobs that we're only planning to stay at for a few months at best.

So there are lots of changes.

At least from my point of view, things are going pretty well. Any time one turns one's life upside down like this, there are going to be bumps in the road - but generally our bumps haven't been too bad. (Knocking on wood in a big way here.)

I'm starting to settle into my job here, and getting used to working in Manitoba rather than Ontario. That was not an easy transition, and I'm still getting used to a lot of differences, but the differences are becoming more and more minor as time goes on.

We're also starting to get back into activities here, especially ultimate. We played a bit in Thunder Bay and managed to get a pretty respectable pick-up game going regularly in the summer. Not quite the same as having a league to play in, though. My skills have definitely deteriorated in the 3 1/2 years I was away, but what do you expect when you go from playing four nights a week plus touring to a single weekly pick-up game? Ah well. Thunder Bay had it's share of attractive alternatives.

Anyway, I find more and more I'm thinking of our house as home, of Tall Grass Prairie as my neighbourhood bakery, of my office as MY office, and of myself as living in (rather than visiting) Winnipeg. These things are becoming less and less novelties and more and more everyday life.

Interesting that after all of these major changes, it took only three months to start feeling this way.

digital rights minimization

Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs, just posted what he called "Thoughts On Music" yesterday. In a nutshell, he discusses "digital rights management" (DRM), or the code applied to digital music files to prevent users from copying them and distributing them over the internet.

The background: in the late 1990s, a music-sharing program called Napster became available on the internet. This program allowed people to take songs stored on their computer and make them available for others to download. Ostensibly, the idea was that people would be able to put their own music out there for others to listen to, thus creating an audience that would not ordinarily be available to people without the resources of a music label. In reality, people "ripped," or took songs off their CDs and put them on their computer, their music collections and made them available for the entire world to download.

Napster started off small, but mostly by word of mouth it grew until millions of people were using it. Millions of songs, from Mozart to Metallica, were available for free. It was big enough that organizations with economic interests in all of these copyright violations got concerned -- the Recording Industry Association of America, representing major record labels, in particular. After months of threats and lawsuits, eventually Napster was shut down. (It later re-emerged in a different form. More to come on that later.)

Napster's argument was that they simply provided software, not copyrighted material, and that they couldn't control how it was used, nor be held responsible if people didn't use the software as Napster "intended." (It's hard to say exactly how Napster truly intended the software to be used, but certainly it had some legitimate uses.) The RIAA et al's argument was that while Napster did not provide the copyrighted material, the primary function of Napster's software was to enable users to violate copyright law. (One of the factors in the RIAA's decision to go after Napster rather than the individual users who were unarguably violating the law was simply that Napster, as a single entity, was an easier target than the millions of Napster users, plus it was not felt to be a good business strategy to arrest or sue all of one's customers.)

By the time Napster shut down, several other file-sharing programs doing the same thing had sprung up, such as Kazaa and Gnutella. All of these programs were free to download and depended primarily on advertising for revenue. (Users were often forced to install adware and spyware along with the file-sharing program, which created a whole different set of problems.)

It was recognized that people loved the convenience of downloading music. First, one could get music quickly and without leaving the comfort of home. Second, one could pick and choose only the songs they wanted, rather than having to buy an entire album when only one or two songs were wanted. Third, the selection of music available was essentially unlimited -- if it had been recorded on CD, somebody somewhere probably had made it available.

There were two schools of thought within the recording industry. Many felt that nothing good could come from making music available over the internet in any form because it could not be controlled, that the music industry would collapse as people continued to download music without paying for it. Some, though, felt that the future of music was online, because people were not going to give up the convenience of downloading music, and because it would be an exercise in futility to try and stop it. Some even saw an opportunity, a new method of distribution that was far more efficient than shipping CDs around the world, and felt that people would still be willing to pay for music if there was a way to do it easily and for a fair price.

Apple's iTunes Store was the first big online music store. Their model was to charge 99 cents for any song in their catalogue, or $9.99 for a complete album, regardless of who the artist was or which label produced the music. The major record labels balked at this (and they continue to complain about it), but in the end they allowed Apple to give it a try, but only if Apple protected the music to prevent it from being shared all over the internet without the labels getting their cut.

So Apple created a certain type of file format called AAC for files downloaded from the iTunes Store. (Previously, most music was in a format called MP3; the difference between AAC and MP3 is sort of like the difference between VHS and Betamax -- both formats do basically the same thing, but aren't interchangeable.) AAC files play on any Windows or Mac computer but only using Apple's software, and only on iPod-brand portable music players, because Apple owns this format (sort of like Sony owned the old Betamax format) and for various reasons has not allowed anyone else to make software or music players that will play AACs (unlike Sony, who allowed many VCR manufacturers to make machines that would play Betamax tapes).

AACs (the digital music files) contain code that puts certain restrictions on how people who own the file can use it. For instance, they can only play it on a certain number of computers at the same time, and they can only burn it to CD a certain number of times. These restrictions were agreed on by both Apple and the record labels before a single song was sold on the iTunes Store.

This code that AACs use to restrict usage is a type of digital rights management, or DRM. Other distributors of online music use other types of DRM, but they are all designed to reduce the possibility of copyright violations.

Whatever the form, DRM has a couple of big problems, though: it doesn't work very well, and it inconveniences the user.

One doesn't need to know any more than how to burn a CD and then re-rip it to get around Apple's DRM, and this is a completely legitimate thing to do -- and it fact, it should be done. Computers crash all the time, sometimes deleting or ruining files, and everyone has had the experience of losing some sort of file at one time or another. Imagine spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on music and then losing it all to a computer crash. Good thing you backed it all up on CD so you can put it back on your computer, eh? As an aside, you could now use that CD to put all that music onto someone else's computer too, or email it to them, or post it on the internet for anyone to download, because in the process of burning the file the DRM is removed.

So if someone is motivated to get rid of the DRM on a file they purchased (say, to make it freely available online, thus violating its copyright), it's very simple, though not a quick process. It takes a fair amount of time to burn files to CD, and that gets to be a real pain when one has thousands of songs. Most other DRM systems are similarly simple (and tedious) to remove; Apple's DRM isn't unique.

The second problem with DRM is the inconvenience to the user. With a CD, one can play the music on the computer, in the car, on the stereo in the living room, in a portable CD player at the gym, wherever. One can lend it to a friend and they can play it on a CD player made by a totally different manufacturer. One can copy it to a tape and play it on a tape deck instead. These are all perfectly acceptable uses.

With DRM, the user can only play it on a certain number of computers. You can only use it on players manufactured by the music store's parent company. You certainly can't lend it to a friend. These restrictions are significant. What if one has an iPod, doesn't like it, and wants to get a different type of music player? With DRM, either one has to burn and re-rip their entire music collection as described above (which isn't kosher according to most online music stores), or else pay to re-download their collection. That's either a lot of time or a lot of money.

So in summary, in order to protect their copyrights, music stores attach DRM to songs, which is very effective in annoying users but not very effective in preventing copyright violations. This is why DRM is sometimes referred to as digital rights minimization rather than management.

In fact, some types of DRM have been disastrous. In 2005, for example, Sony started including DRM software on some of its CDs so that when people played the CD on their computers (which is completely legitimate), a type of software called a "rootkit" was installed, which wreaked havoc with Windows computers. It opened up huge vulnerabilities in Windows and allowed viruses to infect these computers. It was an enormous scandal because Sony essentially sneaked this rootkit on to people's computers without telling them, and then it caused huge problems for thousands of people.

Since 2003, the iTunes Store has become a huge success. They have recently sold their two billionth download, and have expanded into audiobooks, movies, television shows and iPod games. Other online music stores have also had varying degrees of success using a several different models -- Microsoft's ZuneCity is much like iTunes (though it's brand new), for example, while eMusic allows songs to be downloaded without any type of DRM (because of this, the four major labels will not allow eMusic to carry their songs, so their selection is limited to independent artists and labels). Napster allows songs to be purchased, or you can subscribe for $9.95 per month and listen to any song in their collection as much as you want (but if you stop paying for the subscription, you can't listen to the music anymore). Rhapsody is another subscription service. None of these, though, are anywhere near as popular as iTunes, and you can only use certain types of music players with each store. So someone with an iPod can really only use the iTunes Store, someone with a Zune can only use ZuneCity, and so on. (Music from eMusic will work on any player because it has no DRM, and if one is willing to spend the time removing the DRM from other music, then it will also work on any player. But as discussed, that's very inconvenient.)

So this is the background to Steve Jobs' comments.

Basically, Jobs is responding to calls from critics for Apple to allow other brands of music players to play music purchased from the iTunes Store. In his article, he spends some time discussing why Apple has refused to do this, which is interesting enough. But the real meat of the article comes later, when Jobs essentially calls for music labels to give up on the concept of DRM altogether.

That's pretty revolutionary. Jobs has shown a willingness to take on the labels in the past (such as when he refused their demand to allow higher prices for certain songs and albums) but this is really asking them to radically change their thinking. Ultimately, I think that the record companies have no choice. DRM is a lot like airport security -- it's inconvenient and not very effective. However, the labels have always resisted -- hard -- being brought into the internet age, and they seem to be convinced that they can still dictate the rules to people.

It's just not the way it works anymore. Information -- and that's really what digital music files are -- flows way too fast on the internet to be controlled. That's what makes the internet a unique medium in history. And it's not a bad thing that will destroy the music industry. It's a good thing. It's easier for people to try out music that they've never heard before, and people have shown that they're still willing to pay for music if it's readily available. So you have a bigger audience that's exposed to more music that's easier to buy?

If I'm looking to grow a market, what more can I ask for?

deja vu all over again

Non Sequitur, 3 Feb 2006.