Declan McManus, you’ve got some explaining to do! How is it that your music is being used as an instrument to foist half-baked technology on ignorant users while there are other more important fish to fry?
Not for a minute do I confuse the seminal popular artist (aka Elvis Costello), his talents, attitudes and beliefs with the money making machine that publishes and promotes his musical widdlings. However, the recent appearance of sample cuts from his new CD, ‘When I was Cruel – Collector’s Edition’, in a ‘free’ CD with my Sunday Times (of London) rang alarm bells.
‘Free’ is a flashing red light for me. With the music mafia tooling up for battle against users that ‘pirate’ digital recordings, circulating a disc of cuts from an unreleased CD caused my eyebrows to head for my hairline.
Lest you think that the furore over Digital Rights Management (DRM) is more of interest to your teenagers, I would argue that getting DRM right is critical to many online businesses (and their bricks and mortar foundations). Knowledge is worth money and putting a taxi meter on digital content is a good thing. How you do it can make it into a bad thing! depending on whom you look to pay the bill.
However, Mr. Costello’s record company, and friends, are up to nothing but another technology freeze out power play. In order to enjoy the delights of Elvis’ latest warbles for ‘free’, you may find yourself in possession of a Trojan horse called Microsoft Windows Media Player 9 complete with Secure Audio Path linkage so that DRM cossets the movement of encrypted content on its way to an authenticated and compliant output device.
Microsoft’s Trojan
Playing the unprotected tracks is benign but if you try to access the DRM ‘enhanced’ content, you are whisked via the magic of the Internet to a site that allows you to download a beta copy of Microsoft’s Trojan, sorry, Windows Media Player 9 as well as other alternatives.
Poorly implemented DRM as well as poorly documented DRM has the potential to waste user money. The legions of nerds are already working on a ‘fix’. You won’t find me wailing about the false sense of security the aptly named SAP will give the record labels. Shhh. Let them enjoy it while they can!
A consistent and reliable DRM system is what is needed to protect intellectual property. The current solution, being rammed down the throats of the world (or being sneaked in the other end) is neither consistent nor reliable and the only interests that it protects are the ones that can afford to lean on American and European legislators. What you have is Hollywood, the recording giants and Microsoft sitting around a table deciding what we can listen to (or read). There’s a not very well concealed bill at the end of this!
Lest you side with the business argument in this case, music downloads are driving a lot of DSL installations over in the ‘Land of the Free’ and where there is a DSL user there are lots of nice things that business can reach out and provide. And if you think that is some kind of Yank perversion, check out the deal that Napster’s successor KaZaA has just done with Tiscali to promote DSL.
Lots of free music isn’t the only DSL spin-off. Could it not be a means to stop Dublin’s traffic growing! If the gentle soul in front of you this morning in the daily snarl was a telecommuter, you’d be at work a little less frazzled – and if you were the telecommuter, the world would be a much better place!
But, we are told, DSL is too expensive and there is too much risk involved in rolling it out before there is a demonstrated demand. The spectre of 3G silliness could be recited here. I’m glad that the Wright Brothers never had this business advice – ‘Go back to bicycles, Wilbur! That’s where the demand is!’
Another soon to be collected bill is the failure of Irish telecoms and the government to realise the importance of broadband in keeping Ireland in the focus of new technology and not languishing in a not-quite-first-world backwater. The European Competitive Telecommunications Association’s DSL scorecard (reported in last month’s Computerscope) should be ringing alarm bells as much as ‘free’ music.
I realise that the various countries of Europe run the gamut, but with Ireland trailing far behind. DSL Forum, in another report, said that DSL installations in the world are up 13 per cent over in the last quarter. Whither Ireland?
I know that Ireland isn’t an economic powerhouse like the larger European states and the pool of potential Irish DSL subscribers would hardly wet the feet of Deutsche Telekom, but that is no excuse. Initiative – and the right technology – is the key to finding those willing to pay the bills.
DSL for GBP12.99/month
Paying monumental bills for a service that you don’t think you need may be a problem for potential Irish subscribers. But DSL doesn’t have to cost the earth. A new ISP has reared its head in England offering DSL at GBP12.99 (circa EUR20) a month. While there is much comment from the community of established ISPs that this offer is doomed, Freedial.biz seems to have done its sums and thinks that the volume it expects to attract in both the low ticket and premium service business categories will pay their bills. This is one to watch.
Look at the Nordic countries that have similar populations to Ireland. Not only do they suffer summertime plagues of mosquitoes, artic winters, and rutting moose (unlike here) but they have huge tracts of unsettled territory in between isolated settlements – and darn few big cities at all. None of this is exactly conducive to rampant DSL, yet they usually rank near the top in the broadband league tables. Those Swedish au pairs don’t leave their homes because they are tired of slow dial-up internet connections!
Maybe we should forget wires? The US is cozying up to the idea that 802.11b could be a way to roll out broadband over small areas like villages and business campuses. The idea that Ricochet had before its demise was great: Make wireless access points a plug in for street lighting. Then there is the chimera of satellite DSL in Europe. Tied as it is to the wavering hand of Eutelsat, it hasn’t had the success that it has in the US where the wide-open spaces of the US west demand a wireless solution. When you live in the middle of 10,000 acres of cattle and grass, I guess you don’t mind paying a bit for contact with the outside world!
I think there are some interesting ideas perking across the Irish Sea that could help things along. One of them is an initiative between British Telecom, local business and a corporate sponsor to underwrite the cost of putting in DSL-capable exchanges in areas of low population density. The bill, in the end result, gets paid but the telecoms carrier isn’t out on a speculative limb.
Another very wired approach to putting DSL in every business and household seems to be emerging. We all have wires connecting our offices and homes already, namely power wire. The idea was originally mooted in the 1990s and promoted by the likes of Siemens and Nortel/Norweb, but the regulatory climate was too chilly and the demand for it was not hot enough either. That was almost a decade ago and now there are colourable reasons for piping broadband into every cottage, shop and office. And they already have the wires in place. And the regulatory issues are solvable.
On significant retro-rocket for DSL installations everywhere is the need to put trained installation technicians at every site. With power line DSL, it’s could easily be plug and play into the sockets that are already there and in use.
An industry group has formed and recently met in Scotland. PLCforum is about Power Line Communications, geddit? Rural Scotland has a lot in common with rural Ireland besides a penchant for pubs! There is a trial under way in Perthshire (DSL not pubs!) and the testers are seeing throughputs of up to 1Mbit/s. Current technology permits speeds of up to 45 Mbit/s.
It’s a learning curve that goes up and down: Keep the speed up, the noise down, the security up and the price down. Power utilities in Germany and Spain are getting behind the technology. There are over 60 active PLC sites in the world and thousands of paying customers are using the service. With the cost of wiring the country off the invoice, DSL could be affordable for all.
Technology is wonderful. Technology saves money. Technology helps business give better service. Sadly, technology has a price attached and sometimes that bill is collected indirectly. The trick is to know what the costs are, both economic and otherwise, and make your decisions based on the whole picture with a nod to the future requirements for prosperity. Rest assured, however, There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
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