Otherwise Occupied - drm

Apple and EMI remove DRM from EMI's library.

gregh — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 06:27:47 -0500

I couldn't sleep, so here I sit listening to the EMI/Apple press conference:

Come May, the entire EMI library will be available on the iTunes Music Store, as ~~MP3s~~unencumbered AACs, for $1.29 each.
iTunes customers will be able to upgrade their current EMI iTunes purchases to the premium MP3s for $0.30 per item.
Albums in ~~MP3~~AAC will be sold at the current prices.
Apple estimates that over half of the DRM-protected tracks on the iTMS will be available unencumbered by the end of the year.
To accommodate the multiple pricing levels, users will set a preference as to what quality the user wants.
Existing iTMS library, with DRM-encumbered songs, will remain.

I ~~must've missed~~did miss the bitrate of the new encoding. TechCrunch says 256k.

BCLT liveblogging: Susan Landau from Sun

gregh — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 12:23:03 -0600

Finally brought up the idea that DRM extends beyond music and videos. There may be digital rights that aren't just about copyright, but more generally about access. Sun's system, being centered on identities and access, can deal with that. Oh yeah, it's all open source, so there's no inherent lock-in. As UCB professor Hal Varian noted in the prior panel, he has at least one eBook he can no longer view, because the company that protected it is no longer.

See Open Media Commons for more.

BCLT liveblogging: Reactions

gregh — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 10:56:58 -0600

Andrew Bridges from Winston & Strawn is speaking now, taking a decidedly anti-DRM stance. Among other things, he's pretty clearly mocked the standard plaintiff's argument that lack of integration of DRM necessarily makes application vendors liable for contributing or encouraging infringement (I'm sure he used much more precise wording than mine.)

But what was funny was watching some of the reactions, particularly what looked to be disapproving comments going back and forth between Tom Rubin of Microsoft and Victoria Bassetti of EMI, who clearly didn't agree with Mr. Bridges' comments.

BCLT liveblogging: Todd Albertstone of Real Networks

gregh — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 10:26:50 -0600

Notes that Rob Glaser suggested eliminating DRM from music downloads well before Steve Jobs, plus "he really meant it."

I'm not sure why so many people think Jobs wouldn't be just as happy selling music without DRM.

Steve Jobs suggests opening it up.

gregh — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 13:21:07 -0600

Written by a man who's clearly confident in the position of his company in the marketplace, Steve Jobs writes about why music is sold with DRMs, and how Apple would embrace a marketplace without DRMs. More importantly, he gives a reasonable explanation for why Apple won't license FairPlay to other device makers, and suggests reasons why Microsoft was forced to go its own way with Zune's DRM.

Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy. Though the big four music companies require that all their music sold online be protected with DRMs, these same music companies continue to sell billions of CDs a year which contain completely unprotected music. That’s right! No DRM system was ever developed for the CD, so all the music distributed on CDs can be easily uploaded to the Internet, then (illegally) downloaded and played on any computer or player.

In 2006, under 2 billion DRM-protected songs were sold worldwide by online stores, while over 20 billion songs were sold completely DRM-free and unprotected on CDs by the music companies themselves. The music companies sell the vast majority of their music DRM-free, and show no signs of changing this behavior, since the overwhelming majority of their revenues depend on selling CDs which must play in CD players that support no DRM system.

So if the music companies are selling over 90 percent of their music DRM-free, what benefits do they get from selling the remaining small percentage of their music encumbered with a DRM system? There appear to be none. If anything, the technical expertise and overhead required to create, operate and update a DRM system has limited the number of participants selling DRM protected music. If such requirements were removed, the music industry might experience an influx of new companies willing to invest in innovative new stores and players. This can only be seen as a positive by the music companies.

Read "Thoughts on Music" for the full thing.