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Warner Music Group Drops DRM for Amazon
Posted by
Soulskill
on Thu Dec 27, 2007 07:58 PM
from the step-in-the-right-direction dept.
from the step-in-the-right-direction dept.
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.
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Can't argue with Amazon (Score:5, Informative)
Only real complaint is that the album downloader (that allows you to get the album discount) only runs on Windows & MacOS. Write a Java client and get with the program, Amazon!
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Hell, Apple could just move over and use that sexy Ovi portal by Nokia!
Am I the only one the
Re:Can't argue with Amazon (Score:4, Funny)
I disagree, there are plenty of bittorrent clients for Linux as well.
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Re:Can't argue with Amazon (Score:4, Funny)
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Or hire someone that can.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Agreed [kallisti.net.nz]. It seems like the donationware/bounty-ware would be a great way for business to get products and reward people (and generally garner that good-will stuff while expanding their own interests).
Re:Can't argue with Amazon (Score:5, Insightful)
In terms of licensing, encoding AAC audio content in an MPEG4 container is less proprietary than MP3. The only part that isn't an open standard is FairPlay, which is also the least restrictive DRM you'll find.
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?
Apple started selling DRM-free music back in May, before Amazon released their big MP3 store.
Your username couldn't possibly be more ironic.
Parent
Re:Can't argue with Amazon (Score:4, Interesting)
RealNetworks Reverse-Engineers Apple's FairPlay DRM Scheme [windowsitpro.com]
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 ;)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Google "Steve Jobs 2003 RollingStone" or read the links I provided
So I re-read the rolling stone interview. Not one anti-DRM stance in the entire article.
I'm sure you find it more convenient to repeat what you think you know.
I'm sure you find it more convenient to invent an anti-DRM stance on Job's behalf where one didn't exist.
Apple didn't owe Real's shitty DRM any handout.
Real didn't ask for one. They tried to license FairPlay (licensing = pay money for IP. handout = alms for beggar). Apple was not interested in interoperability because they had (and still have) the market by the balls. Does this behavior remind you of a particular company you love to despise?
Had Apple supported Real or WMA...
Real did not want supp
Hmm (Score:2, Insightful)
I have a sudden feeling that I'd like to buy something from Warner's catalog off Amazon.
Excellent (Score:4, Insightful)
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Apple bad, record industry good?
Whooaaa, it's not even the new year yet!
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I think it's more like "Apple good, hands clue-phone to Warner Records."
Re:Excellent (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Excellent (Score:5, Informative)
QTFairUse download & discussion [hymn-project.org]
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Re:Excellent (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, being able to break DRM (today) is no reason to buy DRM encumbered music.
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Call me when it's lossless (Score:3, Insightful)
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Google says: Results 1 - 10 of about 120,000 for losslessly.
Not about DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
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So, where's the downside?
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Re:Not about DRM (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Not about DRM (Score:4, Interesting)
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...
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Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
Following this the process of suing based on watermarks will wane, but the distributors will instead disconnect people from their websites if they find their watermarks on p2p. The result will be that those burnt ( weather guilty or not ) will migrate to filesharing.
In essence, despite the obvious fiasco that is DRM the same garbage will continue due to greed and stupidity. Really, DRM in one clothing or another has been arround for some time, it as never been successful, but that hasn't stopped people from trying. It will continue this way for quite some time still.
Re:Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe I'm being naive here, but if I can get DRM-free, reasonably encoded music at a reasonable price, why would I want to continue sharing music on p2p networks? I mean, wasn't that the entire point?
(Disclaimer: The above was an hypothetical "I". I personally don't get music off p2p networks, mostly because the selection and price of used CDs has been sufficient for my needs.)
Parent
Re:Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
You missed the point, say you never ever touch a p2p network ever again, what stops the RIAA from posting the latest Britney Spears song, marking it ith YOUR watermark, and then sue you for $100.000.
Simply put, if watermakrs were to become accepted as evidence in the court of law it would allow the people who make the watermarks to frame ANYBODY WHO BUYS FROM THEM. I.e, the moment they have your credit card number you're unable to criticise them or they could frame you by uploading a bunch of music to piratebay, marking it with your details.
It only takes ONE false positive to destroy the entire watermarking scheme. One mistake, one virus, trojan or worm uploding an inncoent victim's music to the web. It takes one person to buy a song , upload it to the net, and then deny it, hand the police a clean harddrive... game over. If it happens to even one person customers will be scared of it.
The scheme is doomed to fail. Perhaps mroe so than DRM. With DRM you were risking to not be able to play your music when the vendor makes a mistake, with watermarked media you risk having your life ruined from legal fees. If they even thought about enforcing it they would kill their entire market. Yet somehow they think that "this time it will be different".
I'm a little surprised Google isn't doing much in this area yet. My guess is they are waiting for the predators to kill one another so they can feast on the remains.
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Gross Fraud (Score:4, Insightful)
Right now they are suing people with all kinds of dubious legal theories, but they're still arguably within classical law interpretation.
Outright framing individuals crosses a line into pure fraud, and if correctly proven by a defense team, will smash that label a giant penalty.
"Your honor, I'd like to call Bruce Schneier for the defense expert."
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Friend of a Friend of a Friend... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Manufacturing? No chance. China has that sewn up. Do away with the music, movies and microcode, and America's left with only the high-speed pizza delivery industry.
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Of course, people could simply avoid "leaking" the music to p2p networks. That would solve the problem rather easily, wouldn't it?
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Yes, because the record industry never makes mistakes, it never sues peopel even when they have no evidence, and they have never lied in court? Heck, they don't even have to make a mistake, it is enough if a user makes a mistake and gets his life ruined as a result. Say Joe-Shmoe send his laptop to repair and the staff at the repair shop decides toc opy the files. Joe-shmoe gets
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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:
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It may have something to do with the fact that cars are mass-produced, with millions of them exactly alike, whereas people (identical twins excepted) are all genetically and phenotypically unique.
That's great, but what about the law? (Score:5, Interesting)
This begs the question: what exactly can I
Somehow, I fear, the consumer is still going to end up losing in the end.
-d
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That the customer (I will never agree to being reduced to a consumer) has an option didn't hit their mind: Not buying. That people would actually rather do without their product rather than taking the rectal abuse DRM is didn't really cross their mind.
Do we get "more" now than we do before? No. But we get again what we want: Music to listen to whene
The media companies dug themselves into a hole (Score:5, Insightful)
> they saw their sales hurt more by pushing DRM rather than dealing with the "loss" of "only" selling us
> music once.
No, I don't think that is the reason at all. In the end they would probably have won on the take it or leave it tactics with DRM. Most people were lining up, buying iPods and giving each other iTunes gift certificates like good little consumers. No, what did it was fear and greed. Fear among the music cartels that Apple and Microsoft were about to become a duopoly and control all access to media... i.e. replace the music (and eventually movie distributors) companies as the gatekeepers. Really, once they were distributing most music it would have been a totally natural step to start signing up artists directly.... Apple already IS doing that with indy acts. So fear of being cut ALL the way out was motivating them to find a way to create enough retailers in the digital download space to avoid being marginalized.
Now consider the greed and fear at Amazon, Walmart etc. They could read the same tea leaves. Walmart with it's huge iPod display and shrinking sales in their CD dept and the uneasy reality that the Walmart online music store will NEVER be compatible with the Apple or Zune DRM scheme. I.E. every ipod or Zune sale is helping Apple and Microsoft dismantle Walmart's current huge percentage of nationwide music sales. Ditto for Amazon, selling the crap out of iPods, each one sold eating away at future content sales unless they found a way to 'kick the table over' and change the rules of the game.
Odds of convincing either His Steveness or the Borg to open up their DRM system being zero, even with the full unified might (yea, as if) of all of the media megacorps, the only way out of the hole they had dug themselves after considering the file compatibility matrix of the huge installed base of players was unencumbered mp3.
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Replace... (Score:2)
(real and usable music)
Try explaining why your neighbors music isn't accessible from device B. It's funny, because you can tell it's one of those technical explanations they almost would like to understand but long before the end of the explanation you know they've got the gist of it. There's no good reason.
That I think is the difference between digital music and movies. Everyone now has multiple music play-back devices and through the success of a limited number of formats pe
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Video too? not soon. (Score:5, Insightful)
There's one reason we're seeing DRM-free music: Apple.
Every internet whiner and hazmat-suited protester put together didn't make a noticeable fraction of the impact against DRM that Apple did via their refusal to buy into Microsoft's DRM or license their own to others. They turned the labels tools to control customers into a distributor's tool to control the labels, and now the labels are caught in their own trap, and desperately thrashing and gnawing at their limbs to get away (by selling DRM-free to everyone but Apple).
But, since Apple haven't had the industry-crushing success they had with music in the video market thus far, and no one else looks likely to repeat Apple's feat, we may be stuck with DRM in the video market for a while.
Perhaps, perhaps not... (Score:3, Informative)
I can't find a good link, but have you seen the new NPD figures for online video sales?
Apple is crushing all takers. The share of TV shows was around 80-90% of the entire market - the share of movies lower, but still I think about 60% with the rest split into many smaller pieces. Apple also just inked that deal with Fox to include iPod compatible video files, that I assume are DRM'ed using Fiarplay,
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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 everybo
Erm.. did they say 'globe' ? (Score:5, Informative)
So that is the "settlement"? (Score:5, Interesting)
(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?).
Are they still adding the music? (Score:3, Interesting)
This has nothing to do with DRM (Score:3, Insightful)
My boycott is over (Score:3, Interesting)