Labels Push for a Unified DRM Standard

thejoelpatrol writes "Bad news for Apple fanatics but good news for all the crazy slashdotters who want an iPod but feel dirty using Apple's DRM: the labels are getting together and insisting that online stores standardize their DRM methods. Being the providers of the music, the labels clearly wield a lot of power, but so does Apple: without iTunes, the online music business is next to nothing. Will Apple give in? Not if they can help it -- they're on top of the world. Before anyone messes it up, AAC is an open format, while the Fairplay DRM standard is not."

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Re:The labels

[Anonymous Writer]

The labels can go fuck themselves.

Apparently there are some photos circulating the net demonstrating how that can be done, I hear.

Re:Very good

[Anonymous Coward]

Records labels are doing a very good thing here. Thank god Real Networks saw this, and acted. All any of these 3 out of 4 companies haft to do, is license one and others DRM schemes, then develop software that allows them to decrypt the others DRM scheme into pure PCM and then convert the song with the others DRM.

OpenMG to Helix
Helix to OpenMG
OpenMG to WMA/Janus DRM
Helix to FairPlay
FairPlay to Helix
WMA to OpenMG
WMA to Helix.
OpenMG to FairPlay
FairPlay to OpenMG
WMA to FairPlay
FairPlay to OpenMG
WMA to FairPlay
FairPlay to WMA
OpenMG to Helix

Sony, Microsoft, Apple, and Real actually working together, WOW!!!

What's hard about this concept?

Re:Very good

[Anonymous Coward]

Shhhh!!

Easy Way

[Doc Ruby]

How about they all unify on one certain DRM standard, that will be absolutely interoperable among all players, without any key-distribution headaches, extra bandwidth, or market friction: NONE. It's backwards compatible!

Re:Teenage Jon didn't krak CSS

[timster]

Personally, I think we should get away from actually believing that a college student in Finland sat down and wrote an operating system.

A programmer from IBM passed the confidential trade-secret information for emulating UNIX to "Linux Tovald" who uploaded the program to an FTP site.

If you think a college student could just sit down and emulate an industry standard operating system, then you should go work for The O'Reilly Factor and not spend so much time trolling, troll.