DRM-Free Video: Why Not?

The music industry is slowly (oh-so slowly) warming up to DRM-free music (witness Amazon's new DRM-free music store, which opened today). Video, however, seems to be another story. But if the movie studios actually calmed down and throught about it for a moment, they'd realize that DRM-free movies and TV shows would be good for everyone.

Music downloads free from copy protection have been gaining traction: you've got Amazon's DRM-free storefront launching today, while EMI and Universal Music are both dipping their toes in the DRM-free water. The big movie and TV studios, however, are terrified of the idea; piracy looms large in their minds, and even Steve Jobs, who openly backed DRM-free music and launched DRM-free tunes on iTunes back in April, sounds less than enthusiastic about the propect.

Why the difference in attitude? Here's the argument: since the beginning of time, music records, tapes, and CDs have been, if you will, DRM-free—people have been making copies of vinyl and CD albums for decades. VHS and DVD videos, however, have had copy protection in one form or another since their respective inceptions.

Said Jobs at the EMI/iTunes launch (as quoted by PC World): "Video is pretty different from music right now because the video industry does not distribute 90 percent of their content DRM free. Never has. So I think they are in a pretty different situation and I wouldn't hold it to a parallel at all."

Soooo, videos are different from music because...they've always been copy-protected, while music hasn't? Maybe that's how it works in the minds of movie and TV execs, but from a consumer standpoint—and a common-sense standpoint, actually—that's not much of an argument. We're still talking about content, right? One has sound, the other has sights and sounds. They're both sold and downloaded online. They both work on PCs, TVs, and handheld media players. Am I missing something?

If, say, NBC or ABC or Fox or CBS decided to go nuts and release their shows DRM-free, here's what would happen: they'd make more money. Why? Because their shows would work on more computers, more portable video players, and more TV set-top boxes—and that means more customers. Oh, and incidentally, us users would get to use our videos—the ones we paid for—on any and all of our devices, not just an iPod or a Windows-friendly device. That's "fair use," not piracy.

If the studios are really so worried about piracy, they should consider this: video files are huge—on the order of 500MB for a 60-minute, standard-def TV show, about 1.5GB for an HD show, and 3GB and up for an HD movie—making them impractical for most of us to bother copying and/or swapping. (And those who would copy 1.5GB files are already doing so on BitTorrent, DRM or no.) A five-minute song, on the other hand, weighs in at about three to five MB—pretty small, and taking mere seconds to copy. Something tells me that DRM-free video wouldn't lead to a frenzy of piracy; it's just way too time-consuming for most folks. Swapping DRM-free music? Way easier.

And if that argument doesn't work, how about this idea: go ahead and watermark those DRM-free videos (it's already being done for DRM-free music). Put unique identifiers (just not our social security numbers, please) in the files, so that anyone who does put them on BitTorrent can be tracked. And before you get your hackles up about privacy, consider this: you know The Man is already watching our every move, "Enemy of the State"-style, right? (I'm only half-kidding.) So why not put it to use in a way that gives us something useful—like DRM-free video—in return?

So that's my thought—not an original one, by any means, but one that movie and TV execs need to sit down and take seriously. DRM-free video would be good for everyone—I promise.