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Microsoft convened a small group of bloggers today at their Redmond headquarters to discuss the upcoming Mix Conference in Las Vegas. Highlights of the day included:
The receipt of a Zune as a gift (the third I’ve received from Microsoft - I now have all three colors).

Seeing the look on Gates’ face when he walked into the room and every single one of us had a Mac open on the desk in front of us - Niall Kennedy had also set up a makeshift wifi network using an Airport.
An hour-long anything goes Q&A session with Gates.



One of the questions that I asked was his opinion on the long term viability of DRM. I don’t hide the fact that I think DRM isn’t workable, and actively support DRM-free music alternatives such as eMusic and Amie Street. The rise of illegal or quasi-legal options like AllofMP3 and BitTorrent ensure that users have plenty of options when it comes to DRM-free digital music.

Gates didn’t get into what could replace DRM, but he did give some reasonably candid insights suggesting that he thinks DRM is as lame as the rest of us.



Gates said that no one is satisfied with the current state of DRM, which “causes too much pain for legitmate buyers” while trying to distinguish between legal and illegal uses. He says no one has done it right, yet. There are “huge problems” with DRM, he says, and “we need more flexible models, such as the ability to “buy an artist out for life” (not sure what he means). He also criticized DRM schemes that try to install intelligence in each copy so that it is device specific.

His short term advice: “People should just buy a cd and rip it. You are legal then.”



He ended by saying “DRM is not where it should be, but you won’t get me to say that there should be usage models and different payment models for usage. At the end of the day, incentive systems do make a difference, but we don’t have it right with incentives or interoperability.”

These quotes are rough - I was typing fast but it was not an exact transcript. Still, it is interesting insight from a man who is in a position to shape the future of digital music models.

He also criticized DRM schemes that try to install intelligence in each copy so that it is device specific.

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:Buying CD's is the 1982 method of listening to music.

Lost Soal wrote:

He also criticized DRM schemes that try to install intelligence in each copy so that it is device specific.

Yet he does pretty much the same thing with Microsoft products, and even goes so far as to say their merely loaned to the buyer, and as far as DRM goes wouldn't WGA be essentially DRM for Windows?

While his comments are all well and good, they seem a little two faced to me.

Arthur Tuxedo wrote:Buying CD's is the 1982 method of listening to music. The music industry needs to get with the times. If they offered even a halfway decent product, there wouldn't be so much piracy. Instead they try to charge the same amount for digital as physical even though it costs them much less, load it with DRM, and then are surprised when people just pirate it instead.

I know, U235. I am old enough to remember the changeover from cassettes to CD's, after all, but the fact remains that you could have bought a CD and listened to it in 1982 if you looked hard enough and were willing to shell out some bucks. Perhaps I should have said the circa 1992-1997 method.

What the fuck is this "nobody had CDs until 1991-1992" bullshit? I lived through the fucking 1980s, and by the late 1980s, anybody who knew anything about stereo had a CD player. And they didn't cost that much, either. My first CD player was a Pioneer "6-pack" machine. It came with two magazines, which you would load up with 6 CDs each and then swap out for variety. I got it in 1988. Most people I knew adopted earlier, but I didn't have a lot of money. That's why multi-disc changers were already common by the time I finally got into the market.