Thread: Saint Steve to bless the world with DRM-free downloads

Posts: 4

Post by zeus April 2, 2007 (1 of 4)
http://playlistmag.com/news/2007/04/02/drmfree/index.php

This should kick some life into the iTunes Store ... at least until $9.95 a month all-you-can-eat wireless streaming becomes a reality. Maybe now is the time for the industry to distinguish the physical product on quality.

Post by The Seventh Taylor April 3, 2007 (2 of 4)
It seems odd to me that the higher sound quality lacks the copy protection while the lower sound quality tunes retain it. Who would be interested to copy poor quality? (No, I do know the answer: youth) Of course it makes some sense when you realise both are correlated to price.

Some slides from EMI's presentation here: http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/av/docs/20070403/emi.htm

Post by zeus April 3, 2007 (3 of 4)
The Seventh Taylor said:

It seems odd to me that the higher sound quality ...

"Higher" being a relative term only.

Post by Claude April 3, 2007 (4 of 4)
It's weird when this move is presented as giving more rights to the consumer, even when it is only about making the products usable in the first place.

EMI abandonned CD copyprotection (which they had introduced in 20003 in Europe) last year, because of many complaints by CD buyers who were unable to play the disc on DVD players, and unable to copy the music to their portable players.

So far, iTunes downloads can only be played on iPods and not on other portable players, which reduces the market potential and raises competition issues. Removing DRM will make the files usable on other players.

In both cases protection against copying was also a protection agains many legitimate uses. DRM technology wasn't intelligent enough, but I'm sure it will return as soon as those issues are solved.

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