[This Classic Not A Blog™ article was originally published on January 16, 2006.]

Since the development of massive data transfer capabilities between personal area networks, it is now commonplace to see entire libraries of music transferred between two people as they pass each other on the sidewalk. There is often no personal communication between such passers-by, but by enabling their phones to “share all” with anyone else also willing to do the same, terabytes of music exchange virtual hands almost instantaneously. Terabytes of music that—music industry analysts claim—cost the music industry billions of dollars each year.

Recently, hEAR Magazine, caught up with Arthur Pendergrass, President of the Recording Industry’s Protection of Finances department, to get an exclusive look at the ever developing digital rights management technologies.

Thank you for joining us today, Mr. Pendergrass.

Thank you.

We’d like to start off with a question regarding the new DRM the recording industry is planning to implement. Rumor has it that it’s a revolutionary breakthrough, not only for DRM, but for music technology as a whole. Can you tell us a little bit more about this?

Certainly. We have maintained a media silence up to this point due to the prototypical nature of the technology. However, we’ve recently reached a high level of success with the implementation and we’re ready to unveil it. I’m glad to have this opportunity to set the record straight and lay to rest all the vicious rumors surrounding the technology.

As you know, it has become a mantra of music stealers that “what you can hear, you can record.” Record illegally, that is. This has always been a bane to the music industry and our rightful control of our intellectual property. What we’ve managed to accomplish will not only prevent these criminals from sharing music, but from hearing it at all.

That seems counter productive. Isn’t music supposed to be heard?

Traditionally, yes. But we’ve developed a system that converts musical tones and other air vibrations into electrical current among neural pathways. Beginning early next year, we will begin beaming music directly into peoples’ brains.

Fascinating. But would it not still be possible to simply rip the data from the media and store it locally for playback at a later time? This method seems to just be moving the data encryption up one level, but the data itself remains.

We have considered that possibility. Our solution addresses yet another problem currently faced by the music industry: that of rapid media proliferation. Ever since the blue ray standards war of the late oh’s, consumers have been increasingly more wary of purchasing albums on physical media. No sooner have you purchased the new Scion Eidolon album on data cube then its released for the higher density holodisc.

Instead, we will beam the music directly into the listener’s brain via a simple upgrade for the most commonly used ear implants. The data itself will be transmitted over the UltraWi network, but will bypass all hardware except the implant itself. The implant beams the data into the brain, where it is converted to music by the listener’s own neural network. This process destroys the data, naturally, so there is no way to record it. Intercepting the data before it reaches the implant would disturb certain tamper-proof quantum states, making any sort of attempt to read the data without a brain a fruitless effort.

Each song purchased would have a certain number of listens—which could be inserted into play lists as regular songs. But instead of playing a file with the music data stored in it, it would instruct the phone to call in and stream the song through our network.

Of course this would make it impossible to listen where your network is not available.

We estimate that more than ninety percent of our customers will never leave the network. It is true that the songs will not be transportable as they have been in the past; that is, there is no way for the customer to take the music with them when they leave the hotspot. But intellectual property rights have never specified that the customer owns the songs themselves when they purchase the song data—in whatever format that happens to be. They simply purchase the right to play the song. In this way we are maintaining a higher level of control over our intellectual property, which was always ours to begin with. Now we have a way of ensuring that songs can only be played when we permit them to be played, allowing us to better serve the customer.

Many audiophiles still consider the best reproduction of music to come from old vinyl discs, often via tube devices. Digital music has always been seen as one step removed from—and therefore inferior to—analogue music. It seems like this “neuronic” music, for lack of a better term, is removed yet another step from the actual sound of the music. How much is the music altered by influencing the brain rather than via sound waves propagated through the air?

We prefer to call this type of music “direct perception” and it is a major step forward in sound reproduction technology. You see, even analogue players and tube amplifiers still produce a sound wave which is sensed by the ear, and the ear then transmits the signal on to the brain. We can emulate any type of player, amplifier, room, speaker set-up—anything that could possibly play a sound. We can mimic it precisely and the end user would never be able to tell the difference. It’s a simple matter of reproducing the exact firing sequence of the neurons that would be activated if someone were actually listening to the music.

Another advantage is that it eliminates the necessity for tympanum reconstruction surgery. It has become common to replace the organic ear mechanisms every twenty years or so due to nearly continuous input of sound via ear implants. In the past all sounds were generated from five feet away or more, but now there are very few sounds that infiltrate one’s personal noise cancellation system, and those that do—by the user’s choice—enter via the ear implants anyway. This is an unnatural strain on the system.

By listening to our direct perception music, the ear is not being used in any way. This greatly reduces wear on the ear. It is possible sometime in the future that we may be able to live our entire lives without needing to regrow ears even once.

This is certainly an amazing development in the fight against music pirating.

Indeed. We are finally returning music to the way it was originally intended to be consumed: with full control over the piece in the hands of the rightful owners—and the artists, of course.

Another benefit of this new rights management is that it will once again strengthen the copyright. It has always been a well known fact that the only people who support the creative commons license are those who do not stand to make money off their work. Over the past few decades, the evolution of the creative commons license—both from a legal standpoint and overall acceptance among the general population—have undermined the reputation and the stability of the copyright.

But now that we once again have complete control over our intellectual property, it gives new meaning to the copyrighted nature of the work. By restricting the use of the media to our terms, it shows that the copyright is not dead, but remains an important legal precedence set by generations of usage rulings in the courts. Those who have shunned the copyright for a creative commons license will find themselves without legal ground when they do need to defend the use of their work in court. Fortunately for the music industry, we have continued to use copyrights even in the face of unpopular opinion, and we are now again in the position to defend these copyrights in a court of law.

That’s definitely an important development in the ongoing struggle over intellectual property ownership.

Yes, we think so.

Once again we thank you, Mr. Pendergrass, for taking the time to talk with us today regarding intellectual property rights and the music industry’s response to rights management.

The pleasure, as always, is mine.