Warner Music Group Drops DRM for Amazon 167
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.
That's good news. (Score:1, Insightful)
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)
Call me when it's lossless (Score:3, Insightful)
Not about DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
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.)
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.
Re:Excellent (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, being able to break DRM (today) is no reason to buy DRM encumbered music.
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.
Re:That's great, but what about the law? (Score:3, Insightful)
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 whenever and wherever we want to. I'm fairly glad that the idea of DRM was already met with resistance at its beginning, not its end (we all remember their pipe dreams of "leased" or "rented" music, where you're supposed to pay-per-play).
It's certainly not the outbreak of common sense this will undoubtedly being tagged as. It's simply that they saw their sales hurt more by pushing DRM rather than dealing with the "loss" of "only" selling us music once. The price for total control of their music simply was too high. Because the price would have been to lose the rest of their sales.
Re:Prediction (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Prediction (Score:3, Insightful)
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 his life ruined ith a $100.000 fine, the story hits national news. Heck, he doesn't even need to be innocent, first time somebody gets caught they can simply claim they are innocent and that the whole thing is a mistake, it will kill the market all the same.
Or hire someone that can.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Friend of a Friend of a Friend... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Can't argue with Amazon (Score:2, Insightful)
Flamebait, my ass. That's actually funny.
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.
This has nothing to do with DRM (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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."