Slashdot Mirror
Making Money Selling Music Without DRM
phaedo00 writes "Ars Technica's Nate Anderson has an excellent writeup on the rise of eMusic and how they're suceeding despite their unwillingness to hop on the DRM bandwagon. From the article: 'The Holy Grail of online music sales is the ability to offer iPod-compatible tracks. Like the quest for the mythical cup itself, the search for iPod compatibility has been largely fruitless for Apple's competitors, whose DRM schemes are incompatible with the iconic music player. For a music store that wants to succeed, reaching the iPod audience is all but a necessity in the the US market, where Apple products account for 78 percent of the total players sold. Perhaps that's why eMusic CEO David Pakman sounds downright gleeful when he points out that there's only two companies in the world that can sell to them--Apple and eMusic.'"
It's a little sickening how you got modded up to 5 just buy throwing a lot of legal verbage (in links no less), none of which actually makes your point.
.99/song off iTunes, when your "in the know" friends have been paying .9-.25/song.
Your own first links that you cite point out that phonographs, legally copied, are allowed to be imported. Then you point out that downloads are not physical items, and declare phonographs a "red herring".
This is the real point, that NONE of your legalese refutes:
These songs were legally produced in Russia; in Russia, downloading an mp3 and listening to a song are considered about the same thing; the reason the allofmp3 songs are so cheap is because you're basically paying to hear it on the radio (when you consider how many of us used to tape our favorite songs off the radio as kids when we couldn't afford to buy the cassette, this practice isn't that revolutionary).
If the RIAA doesn't like having its music sold at the rate of radio tunes in Russia, it's free to stop doing business with companies in Russia, free to stop accepting royalties, etc.
NOTHING in the links you posted implies that legally produced mp3s that are legally purchased and imported for personal use have been found illegal. Certainly, if you did something like share the files around with your friends on bittorrent, that would be a different story.
But thank you for throwing up that MOUNTAIN of irrelevant legal verbage to disguise the fact that you resent having to pay