Warner Music Group Drops DRM for Amazon

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 great, but what about the law?

[davek]

It seems to be that the music industry is pulling a "new coke" method of marketing: come out with a new product that sucks (DRM-laden "music"), and then all reap the rewards when they revert back to the original (real and liberated music). This will make everyone feel like they're "sticking it to the man" by purchasing this new flavor, when in fact the industry is in fact reverting back to the old tried-and-true method.

This begs the question: what exactly can I /do/ with this music that is being sold to me without expressed limitation. Do I now have my fair-use rights back because I don't have to violate the DMCA by breaking copy protection? Or is breaking copy protection now back within my right because the industry is trashing DRM in general?

Somehow, I fear, the consumer is still going to end up losing in the end.

-d

Re:Not about DRM

[ducomputergeek]

And it's about egos as well as controls. The music industry is used to having control over distrobution, what songs are promoted through radio play, how things get marketed, etc.. Before, the equipment to mass replicate CD's (Replication not duplication, there's a difference) was out of the reach of most. But with the internet, everything changed.

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...

So that is the "settlement"?

[Opportunist]

Could it be that this is the result of Amazon's decision to simply stop selling music altogether?

(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?).

Re:That's great, but what about the law?

[ChronosWS]

Do I now have my fair-use rights back...

Did you give them up? No? Then you still have them. As long as you are willing to fight for them, they remain your rights. As soon as you abdicate this decision to the government, they become privileges.

Are they still adding the music?

[assassinator42]

They only have a few Warner artists on the site now.

Re:Can't argue with Amazon

[chaz373]

"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? Or were we really getting yet another Apple lie, and the whole point really has been all along to sell people music that could only work on iPods?" Whoa there Mr. Innuendo and inaccuracy....Apple cannot just start selling a catalog of DRM free music because they want to...they HAVE TO HAVE THE LABELS APPROVAL! So, instead of once again blaming Apple for everything from DRM to Global Warming, try fact some fact-checking. In addition, there are at least 26 different online services that are iPod compatible. Yes, the iPod is such a walled garden.

Re:Can't argue with Amazon

[davester666]

Yeah, this is great news. It's been terrible how Apple worked to let consumers keep some fair-use rights [like when they first put up the store, they were the only ones letting you burn purchased music to CDs]. And I doubt many songs would be priced at $0.99 [or thereabouts] if it weren't for Apple. It would probably just be better all around [at least for the media companies] if Apple just closed down the iTMS.

Hell, Apple could just move over and use that sexy Ovi portal by Nokia!

Am I the only one the believes if Apple didn't hold the line for individual songs priced at $0.99 [or stopped having an iTMS store], that at best, $0.99 would be the 'low' price for the old, unpopular songs, and everything else [either old & popular or new] would be priced significantly higher. And have more DRM limitations, rather than less.

Re:Prediction

[bill_mcgonigle]

This will ruin numerous lives until some clever lawyer points out that since the distributor knows the watermark THEY can upload it to p2p networks in order to frame people they wish to sue.

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:

• the seller sends a secret to the buyer encoded with the buyer's public key and the seller's private key
     
• the buyer encrypts this secret, with his private key and the seller's public key, and signs it, sending the encrypted block with signature back to the seller
     
• the seller includes this data block in the message it embeds during watermark
  

so, you've at least reduced the problem to proving ownership of the buyer's keypair. I'm no sure how you would do that in court, perhaps through IP logs and credit card authorizations, but at least you don't have to hinge your trust on the seller.

Re:Perhaps, perhaps not...

[dangitman]

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 everybody has either an iPod, or their computer hooked up to some speakers. MP3 downloads (via Napster and P2P) were already in full-swing before the iPod was released, video downloads weren't.

Basically, having 90% of the paid video download market doesn't mean much, because there's not much of a market yet.

Re:Can't argue with Amazon

[dhavleak]

Jobs was publicly arguing against DRM in 2003

Actually, his public appeal was in Feb 2007. At this point EMI had already decided to experiment with DRM-free music, and Universal was planning to follow suit (as we saw later in '07). iTunes was being looked at in Europe for anti-competitive practices. A suspiciously well-timed note, don't you think?

FairPlay was the least foul DRM

Why so?

and Apple used its retail leverage to keep prices down

Doesn't add up. Prior to 2004 apple did not have leverage (iTunes sales we growing, but still not a large enough factor to give Apple leverage). And presently, while they actually have leverage, they are not the cheapest source of DRM-free music (compare the prices on iTunes and Amazon for proof).

There's plenty of pro-Microsoft wags trying to say that Amazon is hurting Apple, but MP3s are good for the iPod.

Actually, you're the first person to mention Microsoft on this thread. Anyway, the point is not whether Apple is being hurt, or Microsoft is helped. Competition among online music retailers is good for us; as their margins get squeezed, they'll keep steady pressure on the labels to lower their prices. Everybody wins (consumers) as long as neither Apple, MS, Amazon, anyone else, win outright.

The only thing bad for the iPod is Real/Windows Media/ATRAC DRM that can't play on the iPod.

'Can't play' is not accurate. Apple chooses not to support these formats (and they have their reasons). Should the competitive landscape change to a point where this lack of support hurts them, they will include the support (at least WM-DRM is easily licensed -- I don't know about ATRAC and Real). For now, it's in their interests to avoid interoperability with other DRM schemes. Case in point is the way Real would keep reverse engineering FairPlay support into Rhapsody, and Apple would keep updating iTunes and FairPlay to break Rhapsody's support. Make no mistake about it -- all players in this segment loathe interoperability, and Apple is just as guilty/innocent as anyone else of eroding Fair Use rights.

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 ;)

My boycott is over

[stinky wizzleteats]

I just bought my first piece of music in 6 years. My recording industry boycott is now over. Nicely done, guys.