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Chinese Users Get Nokia Music Service Sans DRM
angry tapir writes "Nokia has launched a version of its Comes With Music download service without digital rights management (DRM) for the Chinese market. Currently, the service is available in about 30 countries, but in those countries the music, unlike in China, is copy-protected."
Why would Nokia waste time implementing a non-DRM scheme just for China? It seems like a problem that would have worked itself out on its own.
... we /. users still getting the 503 errors !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
While they might have no DRM, China is willing to go the extra mile (e.g. far beyond the US) in monitoring / enforcing their policies against their own citizens. Think of what they already have to fulfill the RM part of DRM.
They don't need DRM, when the Rights Management has a suitable real-world equivalent in their government. All they have to do is wait for the right moment to use it on their target.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The US pharmaceutical companies overcharge the US market for their drugs because they know they can get away with it, with all their lobbying power with the government (both in the Whitehouse and in Congress). You think the music industry and movie industry is any different? They pay more than we can, so they get a government more to their liking. Then they can gouge us for the money to buy even more of our government.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
wtf are you all on about
nokia are doing this because they realise that China pirates as much as possible and it is difficult to make money Western-ways in China: "an acknowledgment of the difficulty in monetizing music sales in a region overwhelingly (sic) dominated by piracy." http://www.digitaleastasia.com/2010/04/10/nokias-comes-with-music-service-hits-china-drm-free/
this is an attempt by nokia to make some money in china in the face of overwhelming piratanical odds.
Wait! Whats a sig?
If DRM is supposed to combat piracy, then why no DRM in the country with one of the highest piracy rates in the world?
Perhaps because DRM has nothing to do with piracy, and everything to do with screwing every last cent out of law abiding customers. Seems the chinese are smarter than that and simply won't stand for being screwed like that, so they are forced to actually offer a better product at a competitive price.
So what the west needs to do, is follow china's example, pirate more and eventually the record labels will be forced to stop treating us with such utter contempt.
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Land of the free and home of the brave!..
Whoever modded this "flamebait" needs a sarcasm meter check. P.S. Awesome post.
Piracy is readily accepted as a fact of life in China. Just about anything that is sold on CD or DVD media is available in pirate form. Small pirate vendors outnumber legitimate stores by a wide margin. It's actually harder to buy legitimate media than the pirated stuff.
Knowing this, Nokia anticipates total rejection of DRM by Chinese consumers. Using DRM to compete with pirates is business suicide. So they don't do it.
For whatever reason, Nokia thinks they can get away with DRM in other countries. Because consumers are stupid. If they don't need DRM in the world capital of piracy, why do they need it anywhere else?
How dumb are western consumers? Spam exists because a tiny percentage of morons are still opening the messages and buying herbal Viagra. DRM exists because a tiny percentage of morons is willing to by crippled products.
The copyright industry has made it clear: Only by adopting piracy on the scale of China will DRM will go away.
i'm a Nokia Music India user, and just before end of february, they sent out a email, the first part of which i have pasted below
"Nokia Music is becoming part of Ovi
Nokia Music will soon become Ovi Music. This means all the tracks you download will be DRM-free, MP3 files that you can now play on a PC, Mac or any personal music player! Plus, as part of the change to Ovi, we’ve enhanced our search capability so it’s easier than ever to find the music you want."
Chinese citizens may have less human rights but they have more digital rights. And leave piracy for real pirates! GRRRRRRRRRRR
a book, a movie, a recorded tune: impossible to control in the internet age
of course, artists will still make money off of media, via ancillary means (live concerts, cinema houses, paperbacks), its just that the traditional media companies aren't necessary any more as distributors. there job now is to simply die, though they obviously aren't doing it quietly
there is a tendency in the west to extend corporatism as much as possible. when the truth is, owning a monopoly on an intellectual product stifles true capitalism, like any monopoly. a society truly wedded to the ideals of a free market is one which understand monopolies and oligopolies are artificial construct which stifle free trade. as such, the monopolies granted by the idea of intellectual property are anti-capitalistic, and those who champion a world without intellectual property are not "socialists" or "communists", but are actually hewing to free market principles to the fullest. creeping corporate power is a threat to the free market, no matter how many in the west confuse corporate bloat with the ideal of a free and fair market place
intellectual property also impoverishes our cultural space. all for the sake of overextending a philosophical idea that has no place in the modern world
death to the concept of intellectual property
of course, it makes no matter how many legislators media companies buy off to extend this failed philosophical idea: the internet merely renders all those laws unenforceable and moot
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
As I read in the press and the 'net, China does not respect copyrights. So, using DRM would only mean that the Chinese will employ ways to defeat DRM. And since the market is so large (double that of the USA), it makes more enconomical sense to dispense with DRM.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada