Sony BMG Dropping DRM

Lally Singh writes "BusinessWeek is reporting that Sony BMG is planning on dropping DRM from their music. Salon's Machinest had an interesting take on this; 'Actually, what's happened is quite ironic. It was the industry's own DRM mandates that tied many music-lovers in to Apple's music storefront (we all had iPods, and the only way to buy digital music for the iPod was from Apple). Now Apple's become too powerful for the labels. They need an alternative distribution channel — they want to get music to our iPods, but they don't want to go through Apple to do it. The only way to do that is to offer retailers like Amazon the chance to sell songs as plain, unrestricted MP3s, which are iPoddable.'"

Comments

I Preferred the Root-Kit

[Anonymous Coward]

Back when Sony was putting root-kits in it's music CDs I felt justified in pirating their music.

Now I just feel OK about it.

Re:That crackling sound you hear..

[TaoPhoenix]

This is THE company known for proprietary ways to do everything. Skies help them if they make an accidental mistake after their "intentional" ones.

And what's with the timing? "We didn't want to ( ?? ) to Christmas sales, so we saved this announcement for the day people got back from vacation / finished inventory."

P.s. Is there a rootkit in your skates?

What's the news?

[prostoalex]

AllofMP.com has been pioneering the model all along.

Re:Travesty, thats all I have to say.

[mce]

In Soviet Russia, where the real hacking studs live, hackers soon will massively distribute DRM-ed versions of Sony's DRM-free music, just to show the world how much they hate the established music industry, irrespective of what it does.

In the US, some wannabe high-school hackers will briefly attempt the same, but will be sued into the ground by RIAA laywers intent on showing who still owns the copyrights to and patents on the DRM concept.