Despite widespread declarations of the death of DRM in music, the Recording Industry Association of America insists that it's far from dead. At the Digital Hollywood conference taking place in Los Angeles this week, the organization argued that DRM is still used in the large majority of music distribution methods. Not only that, but DRM is poised to make a comeback to make up for where it has fallen.
"(Recently) I made a list of the 22 ways to sell music and 20 of them still require DRM," RIAA technology unit head David Hughes said during a panel discussion, according to CNet. "Any form of subscription service or limited play-per-view or advertising offer still requires DRM. So DRM is not dead."
Hughes' statement comes just four months after the last of the Big Four music labels decided to ditch DRM for some sales. Sony BMG joined EMI, Universal, and Warner in selling DRM-free MP3 files through Amazon's MP3 service (in addition to a rather large handful of independent labels), making Amazon the only online destination that sells unprotected music from all of the majors. Other music stores offer some DRM-free selections too, like the iTunes Store, the Zune Marketplace, eMusic, and Amie Street, to name a few.
Still, it's true that DRM still exists in the music world. The majority of songs from the iTunes Store still utilize DRM, many stores continue to sell tracks with Windows-centric DRM, and practically all subscription services still use it. Other services, such as web-based music service Last.fm, offer free ad-supported streaming, but users are limited to listening over the web and cannot take the files with them offline. And, of course, subscription-based services use DRM to ensure that the downloaded music expires once users cancel their subscriptions.
Hughes believes that per-track purchases are going the way of the dodo in favor of these other models, and that's why DRM will have a resurgence. "I think there is going to be a shift," he said. "I think there will be a movement towards subscription services and they will eventually mean the return of DRM." Hughes did acknowledge that users would rather live in a world where DRM stayed out of their way by saying that as long as they get to use files how they want, users don't care about DRM.
The problem with DRM is that users can't use the files how they want, which is why they do care. And we're miles away from the kind of magical solution solution envisioned by the Hughes that would create the perfect, unnoticeable DRM scheme. Others on the panel realize this. Digimarc Corp. director of business development Rajan Samtani pointed out that there are too many ways for the "kids" to get around DRM and that it's time to "throw in the towel."
Aside from incompatibility, there's another major danger with DRM: having your music licenses disappear on you one day. This most recently happened with MSN Music, which announced that users will need to either commit to their authorized computers for life or circumvent the DRM by burning the music to a CD and re-ripping.
The industry's recent willingness to drop DRM and embrace other, nontraditional models led us to believe that the music industry was finally "getting it." Given Hughes' comments, however, perhaps the Big Four labels and RIAA never will.
Here at Topless Robot we've already given the business to a not-quite-dozen nerd-centric songs that could best be described by Spinal Tap's immortal two-word review, "Shit Sandwich." But there's more to life than snark—there's even more to the Internet than snark, believe it or not—and while anyone whose driver's license doesn't read "MATLIN, MARLEE" can tell you that Vanilla Ice's "Ninja Rap" eats it, selecting the true cream of the soundtrack crop is a tougher row to hoe. Armed only with fond memories, refined taste, and that sweet YouTube extension for the Firefox search bar, we've selected the finest tunes ever to grace any movie about extraordinary, gaudily dressed individuals solving problems through violence. (If you're reading this site, that describes pretty much every movie you've ever seen.) Our one rule: If the song is from a score it has to have vocals—otherwise we'd just end up rattling off a few dozen tracks from John Williams, Danny Elfman, and John Carpenter and having to call it a day.
So feast your ears on the eleven songs listed below: They're really freaking good. And for once, we're not even being sarcastic.
11) Stan Bush: "The Touch" - Transformers: The Movie
If this song didn't exist, the '80s would have had to invent it. The ultimate fist-pumping, headband-wearing, sleevless-sweatshirt-sporting anthem, Stan Bush's contribution to the only full-length Transformers movie so far in which Bumblebee does not urinate on Barton Fink is basically the peppiest song EVAR. It's so deliriously encouraging, so psychopathically uplifting that I wonder if an on-staff psychiatrist prescribed it so as to mitigate the damaging effects that the movie itself would have on its grade-school audience. How upset can you get over the death of Optimus Prime and dozens of other Autobots or those creepy floating-head tribunal things who feed people to shark robots when Bush's full-throated "You're a winner! You're nobody's fool!" is ringing in your ears? Bonus video: Dirk Diggler pays homage in Boogie Nights! He's right about the vocals, you know.
10) Tomoyasu Hotei: "Battle Without Honor or Humanity" - Kill Bill Vol. 1
Yes, this track rapidly became the most played-out soundtrack staple since White Zombie's "More Human Than Human." But in the context of your very first viewing of Quentin Tarantino's genre-movie mash-up masterpiece Kill Bill Vol. 1, where it served as the entrance theme for crosseyed cutie Lucy Liu's O-Ren Ishii and her gaggle of Asian pop-culture stereotypes the Crazy 88s, it was pretty much the coolest thing you'd ever heard. That reverbed-out "When the Levee Breaks" drumbeat, those razor-sharp J.B.'s-style horn blasts, and those towering peals of guitar and trumpet practically had me ready to jump into the screen and start attacking people with my Hanzo sword myself. Not coincidentally, this was one of filmdom's best "walking in a group in slow motion to stylish musical accompaniment like total fucking badasses" scenes since another Tarantino movie, Reservoir Dogs. And frankly, if I have to get killed by a gang of vicious criminals with coordinated clothing, I think I'll take Go-Go Yubari and Sophie Fatale over Mr. Pink and Nice Guy Eddie.
9) Michael Sembello: "Rock Until You Drop" - The Monster Squad
One of the many, many, many great things about Fred Dekker's "Our Gang meets the Universal Monsters" mash-up masterpiece The Monster Squad is that when he decided the forces of good needed some kind of rebuttal to Dracula's proclamation of certain victory, this is what he came up with. Over a memorable montage of the Monster Squad's middle-school members prepping for a confrontation with the Prince of Darkness and/or fighting for a look at a naked picture of their colleague's slutty sister, singer Michael Sembello (yes, the "Maniac" guy!) orders his legion of listeners to have so much fun that they literally dismember themselves: "Dance until your feet fall off!" "Party till your brains fall out!" Sir yes sir! And just when the music threatens to get too hot, Sembello breaks it down so that we can enjoy the rest of the montage without spilling over the side like a pot of spaghetti you leave unattended on the burner for too long. Even despite the total lack of any visible contribution to the cause from Squad member Fat Kid, I think you'll still agree with Sembello's musical assessment of this sequence: "It's totally rad. It's coo-coo. It's coo-coo. It's cool."
8) Tim Cappello: "I Still Believe" - The Lost Boys
Years ago, on the message board for comic-snob bible The Comics Journal, I somehow got around to the topic of the sax-heavy song performed by a shirtless, musclebound, heavily greased gentleman on the Santa Carla boardwalk in Joel Schumacher's one and only good movie, The Lost Boys. Who was that barechested, Brutus "the Barber" Beefcake-bodied bard, I asked? The answer, as I found out (from the former EIC of TCJ and current mastermind of ComicsReporter.com, bizarrely enough), is Tina Turner sideman Tim "Timmy" Cappello. Kudos to Mr. Cappello, then, for producing this atmospherically anthemic ode to believing, whatever the cost. Musically it boasts the shit-hottest sax this side of Gerry Rafferty's "Baker Street" or Beck's "The New Pollution," while lyrically it's a defiant declaration of belief in the face of pain, grief, lies, storms, cries, wars, cold, heat, rain, tears, crowds, cheers, shame, greed, heartache, tears again, wait, years, and of course pseudo-punk vampire tribes, though that last bit is more implied than stated outright. Such is its power that, like Corey Haim does to Jason Patric, we can only force our eyes away from the rhythmless yet oddly passionate dancing of '80s goddess Jamie Gertz and gaze in awe as the bonfire light reflects off his glistening torso while he plays it.
7) Rage Against the Machine: "Wake Up" - The Matrix
This right here? This is why the Matrix sequels sucked. No, seriously, listen: You've just finished watching the most groundbreaking Western action movie of the '90s, a combination of Philip K. Dick conspiracy/philosophy, Yuen Wo-Ping wire-fu, cutting-edge CGI, and "electronica"-era shiny pants that blew the minds of every geek in the country. You've listened to the now-godlike Neo, fresh from laying the hacker-Zen smackdown on Agent Smith, tell his computerized overlords that he's gonna rip the lid off humanity's virtual-reality prison. You've seen him step out of a phone booth into the midst of the brainwashed hoi polloi and take to the skies like a trenchcoat-wearing, ecstasy-rolling Superman. And most importantly, you've seen it all go down to the astonishingly intense roar of Tom Morello's how-the-hell-does-he-get-it-to-make-those-sounds-anyway guitar and Brad Whatsisname's pounded-to-within-an-inch-of-its-life drums from Rage Against the Machine's "Wake Up," an absolutely brilliant music choice that literally had me laughing for joy in the theater. You are, in short, FUCKING PUMPED. So whatever those wacky Wachowskis cooked up for parts two and three, how could it possibly top the sequel you instantly saw in your head?
6) John Williams: "Duel of the Fates" - Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Yeah yeah yeah, prequel trilogy sucks blah blah blah, Darth Maul doesn't do anything yadda yadda yadda, John Williams past his prime bitch bitch bitch. "Duel of the Fates" is still as good a piece of music as Williams ever wrote, a "Carmina Burana" for the Jedi set. And it serves as the soundtrack for one of the greatest fight scenes ever filmed, regardless of the quality of the movie that surrounded it. Show me someone who didn't get goosebumps when that big vocal chorus erupted over that vertigo-inducing shot of that massive shaft where Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan and Maul were dueling and I'll show you someone who thought midichlorians were a good idea. One last thing: Just try not to hear the words differently once you've seen this.
5) Barry Harman, Ford Kinder, and Spencer Michlin: "G.I. Joe: The Movie Title Theme" - G.I. Joe: The Movie
For many Joe fans, the only way Stephen Sommers's upcoming live-action G.I. Joe: An International House of Pancakes (or whatever the P.C. bastards are insisting we now call it) could get any worse is by including Cobra-La, the bugfuck-crazy race of snake-insect-fungus people who battle the Joe team in their full-length animated feature. For others, that's about the only thing that could save Sommers's stupid movie. (Put me in the latter camp—I for one have long felt that we should dedicate more military resources to fighting secret Himalayan enclaves of genocidal Lovecraftian manimals.) But there's at least one thing that Joe devotees divided by The Movie's sci-fi storyline can agree on: That opening theme song is fabulous! Essentially an extended remix of the TV series' theme, it kicks off with a memorable minor-key Cobra-centric section. Who can forget its immortal lyrics: "Crashing through the sky / Comes a fateful cry: / Coooooooo-bra / Co-braaaaaaaaa! / Coooooooo-bra / Co-braaaaaaaaaa!" If inventive pronunciations of the name of a completely unrealistic techno-terrorist organization were horses, Harman, Kinder, and Michlin would ride. Then the kick-ass Joe theme proper kicks in, and by God, everytime you hear it, do you doubt for a second that G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero, G.I. Joe truly is there? The whole shebang accompanies the most dazzlingly animated sequence in franchise history, a Fourth of July attack on the Statue of Liberty by Cobra featuring such eye-popping imagery as the Cobra paratroopers' kaleidoscopic descent (and one particular Cobra paratrooper's telescopic crotch). By the time its final notes fade into memory, you'll be hoping the Joe team's entirely non-lethal reign of heroism will never end.
4) Annie Lennox: "Into the West" - The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
I know, I know. It's not an ironically enjoyable artifact of the '80s, it's not a high-energy song of celebration, it doesn't involve conspiracy theories about the United States government murdering civil rights leaders--what the hell is this doing on the list? It's here because it makes me cry every time I hear it, and if you're as big a fan of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and Peter Jackson's adaptations thereof as I am, it probably has the same effect on you. With music by LotR score composer (and former SNL bandleader!) Howard Shore, lyrics by LotR screenwriters Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, and vocals by Eurythmics androgyne and Galadriel soundalike Annie Lennox, its evocative images and majestically swelling chorus served as the perfect emotional capstone to the greatest action-adventure trilogy of all time. Enjoy watching the above clip of Lennox performing the song at the Oscars that The Return of the King went on to sweep, provided you haven't already poked your own eyes out with the massive boner you get when presenter Liv Tyler delivers her breathy introduction to the song while wearing sexy librarian glasses.
3) Ray Parker Jr.: "Ghostbusters" - Ghostbusters
Considering that Ghostbusters is simultaneously one of the greatest comedies, New York City movies, and science-fiction-horror films of all time, you'd have to ask yourself what kind of moron would turn down the chance to record its theme song. The answer, of course, is "the kind of moron named Huey Lewis." After the editor-in-chief of The News passed on the gig, the producers decided they wanted a new "I Want a New Drug" and tapped session man Ray Parker Jr. as the composer, performer, and future lawsuit defendant of a knockoff version they could use as the flick's theme. (Listen to Huey's track--see the resemblance?) The resulting designer-impostor '80s-funk workout surpasses the original, thanks to Parker's laconic vocal delivery, electronic-horn riff, synthesized spooky noises, and that head-nodding synth-bass beat. But here's the real reason bustin' makes me feel good: How many theme songs can you name that contain almost as many classic catchphrases as the movie they're from? "Who ya gonna call," "I ain't afraid of no ghosts," and that unmistakable shout of "GHOST-BUSTERS!" all stem from the song, not the flick. And I'm sorry, but you've got to be some kind of crazy lyrical genius to write a song about a ghost and decide that of all the things you could say about it, you've gotta throw in "I hear it likes the girls." No wonder every single celebrity who made the early '80s awesome wanted to be in the video.
2) Prince: "Batdance" - Batman>
Batman, meet Prince's dirty mind. Prince's dirty mind, meet Batman. I'm sure you'll have a lot to talk about! Man, try to imagine modern-day Warner Bros. and Christopher Nolan turning over the soundtrack for their ponderous Batman Begins to, I dunno, OutKast and you'll have some idea of how freaking crazy it is that this song and video ever even happened. Torn between his brother-in-mononymhood Batman and his fellow purple enthusiast the Joker, Prince created a hybrid character called Gemini, who presides over a berserk interpretive dance involving women in batsuits, a parade of Vicki Vales led by a woman in a shirt reading "ALL THIS AND BRAINS TOO " (an homage to Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns!), cheeky references to the '60s TV-show theme that still have over-serious Bat-fans sputtering with fury, collage-style lyrics culled from all of Prince's other Batman soundtrack songs, and a fucking vicious guitar solo. The end result is a ballsy slab of industrial-dance-funk-rock-madness that proves superhero soundtrack music doesn't have to be kid-tested and mother-approved.
1) John Williams: "Ewok Celebration" - Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
Christmas morning, the last day of school, your first time, the birth of your grandchildren—nuts to that action. For sheer, unadulterated joy, nothing on God's gray earth beats hearing the Yub-Yub Song. Sure, wannabe tough guys slag the Ewoks as lame, original-trilogy-ruining Muppets for kids. This is goddamn absurd. First of all, as if freaking Star Wars fans have any right to complain about something not being macho or sophisticated enough. (And I say that as a guy with a Rebel Alliance tattoo.) Second of all, let's see you take out the Empire's war machine with lumber. Third and most important of all, the moment those adorable little insurgents finished watering the mighty trees of Endor with the blood of their imperial occupiers, they busted out the hap-hap-happiest song of celebration ever recorded in this or any other galaxy. Ever since I first heard this over two decades ago, I've dropped whatever I was doing and danced around the house, dorm, apartment, or theater like I just destroyed an AT-ST. Williams and Lucas might have tried to burn this toe-tapping, paw-clapping, helmet-bongo-bashing masterpiece out of their movie like Luke torching his old man's corpse, but they'll never deactivate the shield generator that keeps it safe inside our hearts. Celebrate the love! Original here
The Telecommunications and Internet subcommittee of the the House Committee on Energy and Commerce held a hearing today on H.R. 5353, the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008. The bill would establish an official national broadband policy, one that prevents service providers from subjecting lawful content to "unreasonable interference" or "discrimination." It also calls on the Federal Communications Commission to assess competition in and consumer access to broadband Internet access in light of this policy. The testimony at the hearing, however, suggested that these provisions, and net neutrality in general, means very different things to different groups. And, as far as the RIAA is concerned, net neutrality legislation could hamstring the fight against piracy.
Representative Edward Markey (D-MA), a sponsor of the bill and chair of the subcommittee, left little doubt that the IFPA is about a specific vision of net neutrality. "Now we are faced with a choice," he said in his opening statement, "Can we preserve this wildly successful medium and the freedom it embodies, or do we permit network operators to fundamentally alter how the Internet has historically functioned?" Markey presented the neutral Internet as an enabler of innovation, and contrasted it with a future in which, "in the name of network management, policymakers permit carriers to act in unreasonable, anti-competitive fashion."
Telcos, not surprisingly, beg to differ. Kyle McSlarrow, president of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, was one of the witnesses testifying, and his past testimony regarding a similar Senate bill reveal that he's apparently operating in an entirely different universe than Markey. From his perspective, mandated net neutrality would somehow suppress all incentive for ISPs to expand broadband access. He accused companies like Yahoo and Google, which flourished in the broadband market, of trying to "foreclose any new business model that would enable new entrants to challenge them." From McSlarrow's perspective, network management, far from ensuring neutrality, is a form of innovation that will somehow bring the next generation of Internet into being.
In this, McSlarrow got support from University of Pennsylvania law professor Christopher Yoo. Yoo has testified on behalf of ISPs before, arguing that congestion caused by file sharing represents a real burden for all Internet users. His academic writing also presents 'Net neutrality as somehow interfering with solving the "last mile access" problem.
Christopher Yoo
Markey's universe wasn't entirely uninhabited, however. A representative of the Christian Coalition and the president of Shoebuy.com both testified that a non-neutral 'Net in which ISPs could charge for access to their customers would stifle both small organizations and newly formed companies. Ben Scott, the policy director of Free Press also echoed Markey's concerns, and suggested that Comcast's blocking of P2P traffic suggested that net neutrality regulation is no longer an abstract concern—it's a real-world problem. "It is time for Congress to act," Scott testified, "this is the right bill at the right time."
Representatives of the RIAA and the Writer's Guild of America were also on hand. For these groups, the traffic filtering favored by telcos is a close cousin of the content-based filtering that they favor for combating piracy. As such, they clearly have an interest in helping ISPs enable some form of network filtering on a non-neutral 'Net. But the actual state of the Internet is less important to the RIAA than blocking piracy so, since it has been far from successful in bringing all ISPs on board the filtering bandwagon, its representative played hardball.
The RIAA barely addressed the legislation at hand, and simply thanked those who crafted it for recognizing a distinction between legal and illegal Internet traffic. Instead, its testimony seemed to consist largely of a veiled threat against ISPs, suggesting the RIAA hoped to negotiate a market-based solution with them, but it would support legislative intervention—which the service providers are hoping to avoid—if necessary.
To a certain extent, the testimony was filled with questionable comparisons and false dichotomies, such as the telcos equating innovation in biasing Internet traffic with the innovative companies that succeeded through services offered on an unbiased network. Any informative debate or informed legislation will ultimately have to carefully separate these issues, and there seems to be a degree of urgency in doing so. As the Free Press' Scott noted, "it is not a question of whether consumers will have laws guarding against Internet gatekeepers, but how those laws will be crafted."
Still, it's true that DRM still exists in the music world. The majority of songs from the iTunes Store still utilize DRM, many stores continue to sell tracks with Windows-centric DRM, and practically all subscription services still use it. Other services, such as web-based music service Last.fm, offer free ad-supported streaming, but users are limited to listening over the web and cannot take the files with them offline. And, of course, subscription-based services use DRM to ensure that the downloaded music expires once users cancel their subscriptions. 
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