Apple might be up for shedding DRM

[Termite Man]

Digital Rights Management

"Windows media player has determined that this file is not authorised for play on this machine"

The Man trying to tell you what you can do with the music you bought, basicly (ie. "Don't copy that music you just bought!")

I understand what everyones going on about now

 

[jæd]

Still a bit of a rip at a £1 a track though. You can buy new CDs for £9 and they come with packaging, booklets and in a hard media format and distribution costs.

Yep... But you have to walk all the way to the nearest record store, or wait until Amazon decides to deliver them. And just think of all the wasteful packaging...

 

[editor]

Yep... But you have to walk all the way to the nearest record store, or wait until Amazon decides to deliver them. And just think of all the wasteful packaging...

Yeah - what could be worse than visiting a friendly record store, eh? Heck, I might even have to speak to people too!

 

[Kid_Eternity]

Still a bit of a rip at a £1 a track though. You can buy new CDs for £9 and they come with packaging, booklets and in a hard media format and distribution costs.

Yep but still a step in the right direction. Hopefully one day we'll have bandwidth enough (and iPods with a few terabytes of storage) to have CD quality downloads. Will be good to finally get rid of all that wasteful packaging...

 

[Lisarocket]

Still a bit of a rip at a £1 a track though. You can buy new CDs for £9 and they come with packaging, booklets and in a hard media format and distribution costs.

Yes, but albums haven't gone up in price with this new announcement, only individual tracks, so you would be able to get a DRM free album in better quality than previous off iTunes for about £7.50

You can also upgrade tracks you've already bought to DRM free and better quality for an extra 20p

 

[fear-n-loathing]

its about time that DRM was scrapped, it doesn't stop piracy and ties the customer down

 

[editor]

Yes, but albums haven't gone up in price with this new announcement, only individual tracks, so you would be able to get a DRM free album in better quality than previous off iTunes for about £7.50

Do you not think that a tad expensive seeing as distribution and packaging costs are all but zero compared to physical CDs?

A quid a track still looks pricey to me for a digital download but each to their own.

 

[editor]

It has to be said that Inquirer is heartily unimpressed with the news:

So, in the end, the content mafiaa stole your rights, and sold them back to you. They didn't even stop hitting you, the 'old way' is still there, and the beatings continue unless you pay and pay and pay. Throughout all of this, somehow people are lauding Apple and EMI. Dumb sheep.

If they did it without the price increase, I would have no problem with the move, and all the press who regurgitated the PR bull without questioning it. If they had dropped the older DRM infected tracks at the same time, I would have no problem with the way the press reported it. If this was anything more than a stealth price hike disguised as user benefit, I would have the same lack of problems.
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38678

This comes the same day that Apple gets an official warning from the the EU, alleging that they are restricting music sales in Europe.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/0,1000000097,39286603,00.htm

 

[jusali]

All I can say is un-fucking-believable!
People have become so used to be shafted by big corporates they have no fight anymore, we should all be ashamed of ourselves for allowing this to happen. I'm embarassed to be English these days

 

[genee_rave]

I work for an independent label and itunes are by far the most difficult download service to deal with for EVERYTHING!

- to get your music on the store you need a mac! (to run the upload programme)
- they insist that mix CDs are sold as individual tracks (when most labels have only licensed the tracks to be sold as part of a mix)
- any song over 10mins long is deemed to be an 'album' and you can only buy with all the other tracks on the release

there's more but i'll stop ranting now!

the latest EU ruling is about the fact that you can't purchase from other country's stores - ie. if you live in the UK you can't buy a cheap mp3 from the greek store! however i will defend them on this because the labels require them to restrict that due to the fact that they often only own a track for a particular territory..