aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Et Tu Bono update
Gregory Heller of Defective By Design wrote to thank me for signing the petition asking Bono to take a stand on DRM. Almost 5,000 people so far; the goal is 10,000 by the end of the month.
He also pointed to a Reuters report questioning the viability of a record industry business model built on DRM which included this great quote from Yahoo Music general manager David Goldberg:
“It’s all nonsense. Music is never going to be protected, and anybody who tells you that is not being honest. Yes, you can put up speed bumps, but the people who really want to steal music are going to steal it. So you’re just making it hard for people who want to do the right thing to get the music they legitimately purchased on the devices and services that they want.”
This difficulty, Goldberg continues, only serves to dissuade consumers from buying music legally and instead keeps unauthorized peer-to-peer services in business. He calls the protected a la carte download model a “failure,” noting that legal digital download figures have remained flat all year.
“There’s been no growth this year at all,” he says. “The market has stalled.”
