Are DRM’s days finally numbered?
The International Herald Tribune has an article suggesting that the major record labels are finally beginning to see the light about DRM. This seems to be in keeping with a Yahoo! article I mentioned earlier. The big question is whether Apple will ever see the light on this? I suspect that one of the reasons the record companies are now beginning to back-peddle on this issue is they’ve only just realised that they’ve sold their souls to Apple. Of course it was them who insisted that an online music store would have to have DRM in the first place, and Apple were only too pleased to go along with them. But the upshot is that Apple now have an almost total monopoly on the MP3 player market and online music sales, and that clearly isn’t good for the record companies.
Cory Doctorow is the cool voice of reason in all this and I’ve blogged about him before here and here.
Update: France and Germany are joining Norway in challenging Apple over their DRM policy. Yay!
Another update: OMG. Norway have just become the coolest country in the world. They’ve outlawed iTunes! There’s discussion on Slashdot if you have the patience.
February 7th, 2007 at 10:58 am
On the subject of which I see that Steve Jobs has just issued a (rather disingenuous statement) to the effect that Apple would embrace a DRM free music market- presumably to offset the bad PR that i-tunes is getting. To be fair, it’s not as if Fairplay is particularly worse than any of the other DRM systems- (just like MacDonalds isn’t really much worse for you than Burger King or KFC)- just the most prominent. Still, it’s nice to see them on the run.
February 7th, 2007 at 10:59 am
url for above comment:
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/