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Warner Music Group Drops DRM for Amazon
SirLurksAlot sends us to Ars Technica for an article about the Warner Music Group's decision to allow DRM-free music downloads through Amazon. This reversal of Warner's former position has been underway for some time, and it boosts the number of DRM-free songs available from Amazon to 2.9 million. Quoting:
"Warner's announcement says nothing about offering its content through other services such as iTunes, and represents the music industry's attempt to make life a bit more difficult for Apple after all the years in which the company held the keys to music's digital kingdom.
It seems to be that the music industry is pulling a "new coke" method of marketing: come out with a new product that sucks (DRM-laden "music"), and then all reap the rewards when they revert back to the original (real and liberated music). This will make everyone feel like they're "sticking it to the man" by purchasing this new flavor, when in fact the industry is in fact reverting back to the old tried-and-true method.
/do/ with this music that is being sold to me without expressed limitation. Do I now have my fair-use rights back because I don't have to violate the DMCA by breaking copy protection? Or is breaking copy protection now back within my right because the industry is trashing DRM in general?
This begs the question: what exactly can I
Somehow, I fear, the consumer is still going to end up losing in the end.
-d
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
It took a technology company, with Jobs' inroads in the entertainment industry, to create a system that worked for online digital distribution. The record companies let Apple take the gamble with the hardware/software/infrastructure costs with very little risk to them. And it was successful.
Now that the record companies see that internet distribution can work, they are now back into the game of trying to regain control. Apple has been pretty tough on flat rate pricing. The record companies want to dictate price. So now we're back to egos clashing.
Not that letting Apple have a monopoly is good thing, but frankly I never minded the DRM. There is a huge "All DRM is evil" crowd here. Now there were some ways folks proposed DRM was evil, but I'm not against the concept per sue.(Rootkits come to mind), but Apple's system seem to me to be a fair balance.
I can put it on an iPod, if I owned one, a couple PC's at my house or use one as a server and stream to other machines and the .99 per track was fair. $1.29 for no DRM, if it was worth the extra money I'd pay it. To me it' not. As far as losses/lossy goes, I can't tell a difference. I'm no audiophile either, but I have enough hearing damage from loud music as it is...
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Could it be that this is the result of Amazon's decision to simply stop selling music altogether?
(For those that didn't notice: About a week before Christmas, you couldn't buy any music from certain distributors at Amazon for a few days in some EU countries. They wanted Amazon to take the (as the music industry calls it) "legal" distribution ways instead of buying their CDs in areas where the record industry sells them for a penny per dozen to have any sales at all. Amazon complied and pulled the cheap records. And every other record from those studios. One week before spendmas. They also announced that "the talks are not over yet", so... is this what came out of those talks?).
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
They only have a few Warner artists on the site now.
"On another subject, it's also interesting that earlier this year Steve Jobs was whining how he wanted to sell DRM-free music, but "they" wouldn't let him. Well, Steve, Amazon is doing it. Why aren't you? Or were we really getting yet another Apple lie, and the whole point really has been all along to sell people music that could only work on iPods?" Whoa there Mr. Innuendo and inaccuracy....Apple cannot just start selling a catalog of DRM free music because they want to...they HAVE TO HAVE THE LABELS APPROVAL! So, instead of once again blaming Apple for everything from DRM to Global Warming, try fact some fact-checking. In addition, there are at least 26 different online services that are iPod compatible. Yes, the iPod is such a walled garden.
There is no security when liberty is sacrificed.
Yeah, this is great news. It's been terrible how Apple worked to let consumers keep some fair-use rights [like when they first put up the store, they were the only ones letting you burn purchased music to CDs]. And I doubt many songs would be priced at $0.99 [or thereabouts] if it weren't for Apple. It would probably just be better all around [at least for the media companies] if Apple just closed down the iTMS.
Hell, Apple could just move over and use that sexy Ovi portal by Nokia!
Am I the only one the believes if Apple didn't hold the line for individual songs priced at $0.99 [or stopped having an iTMS store], that at best, $0.99 would be the 'low' price for the old, unpopular songs, and everything else [either old & popular or new] would be priced significantly higher. And have more DRM limitations, rather than less.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Hmmm, that's a really good point, but there's certainly a crypto workaround.
Just off the top of my head - the client keeps a keypair, and during purchase:
so, you've at least reduced the problem to proving ownership of the buyer's keypair. I'm no sure how you would do that in court, perhaps through IP logs and credit card authorizations, but at least you don't have to hinge your trust on the seller.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The difference is that almost nobody is buying video online. Instead, people are flocking to buy DVDs. In contrast, CD sales have been dropping and people are quite comfortable buying music online. One of the reasons for this is that DVDs are much more reasonably priced than audio CDs. Other reasons are that not many people own multimedia or "home theater" PCs hooked up to their TV. They just want to stick a disc in and play on the TV. While almost nobody has a computer hooked up to their TV, almost everybody has either an iPod, or their computer hooked up to some speakers. MP3 downloads (via Napster and P2P) were already in full-swing before the iPod was released, video downloads weren't.
Basically, having 90% of the paid video download market doesn't mean much, because there's not much of a market yet.
... and then they built the supercollider.
FairPlay was the least foul DRM Why so?
and Apple used its retail leverage to keep prices down Doesn't add up. Prior to 2004 apple did not have leverage (iTunes sales we growing, but still not a large enough factor to give Apple leverage). And presently, while they actually have leverage, they are not the cheapest source of DRM-free music (compare the prices on iTunes and Amazon for proof).
There's plenty of pro-Microsoft wags trying to say that Amazon is hurting Apple, but MP3s are good for the iPod. Actually, you're the first person to mention Microsoft on this thread. Anyway, the point is not whether Apple is being hurt, or Microsoft is helped. Competition among online music retailers is good for us; as their margins get squeezed, they'll keep steady pressure on the labels to lower their prices. Everybody wins (consumers) as long as neither Apple, MS, Amazon, anyone else, win outright.
The only thing bad for the iPod is Real/Windows Media/ATRAC DRM that can't play on the iPod. 'Can't play' is not accurate. Apple chooses not to support these formats (and they have their reasons). Should the competitive landscape change to a point where this lack of support hurts them, they will include the support (at least WM-DRM is easily licensed -- I don't know about ATRAC and Real). For now, it's in their interests to avoid interoperability with other DRM schemes. Case in point is the way Real would keep reverse engineering FairPlay support into Rhapsody, and Apple would keep updating iTunes and FairPlay to break Rhapsody's support. Make no mistake about it -- all players in this segment loathe interoperability, and Apple is just as guilty/innocent as anyone else of eroding Fair Use rights.
RealNetworks Reverse-Engineers Apple's FairPlay DRM Scheme
RealNetworks announced this morning that it has essentially reverse-engineered Apple Computer's FairPlay Digital Rights Management (DRM) scheme. RealNetworks' Harmony Technology will let customers load songs purchased from the RealNetworks RealPlayer Music Store onto Apple's successful but closed iPod portable audio player.
Apple refused to share the technical information RealNetworks needed to make this translation possible; Apple CEO Steve Jobs refused repeated requests from RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser. Apparently, RealNetworks got tired of waiting.
ps: did you enjoy the link? It's right out of your playbook ;)
I just bought my first piece of music in 6 years. My recording industry boycott is now over. Nicely done, guys.