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We’ve won the DRM battle 

Sony BMG, the company that cheerleaded DRM music through rootkits is about to drop DRM, according to a report by Businessweek.

"Sony BMG will become the last of the big four record companies to offer music without the handicap of digital rights management, effectively putting the final nail into the music DRM coffin."
Does this mean we finally "own" our music? hopefully. It just infuriates me…. really. I go buy the latest foo fighters CD either in the store or on line and I don’t own it? Windows media player pops out at and tells me that this disk has rights on it SCREW YOU I just bought it and I own it, don’t tell me what I can do with it. Same with videos Ive downloaded from the net.

What’s interesting about this is Justin Timberlake’s latest song is expected to be the first release by Sony BMG via Amazon of DRM free music. Isn’t he a smart marketer

About a year ago Michael from tech crunch wrote that DRM would face an inevitable death, guess what he has been proven right.

Ok so who is going to be the next corpse to litter the floor? How about the movie studios; we’ve conquered music but surely the ability to play legally purchased video where and when we like it is the next logical goal. Viva La Revolucion.

Have these morons seen the future of Mobile computing 

Not likely I think theyre just trying to protect their profits. They obviously realize that they can’t fight billions of sharing and caring people. nor control all the medi devices out their or the manufacturers of them POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!

In a move that would mark the end of a digital music era, Sony BMG Music Entertainment is finalizing plans to sell songs without the copyright protection software that has long restricted the use of music downloaded from the Internet. Seriously?…. Who on earth do they think they are telling the users and buyers of music online what to do, what they can and cannot do with their music. The majority of us just want to buy some music and upload it to our ipods or mp3 players. Finally it looks like that barrier is going to be removed. Finally weve sent them a message we cant be stopped. Personal Technology is growing by leaps and bounds everyday. Cell phones with mp3 players, PSP’s playing music and video, all kinds of MP3 layer are now in the hands of just about everybody. It’s about time the music houses woke up and sniffed the coffee. Its here to stay and is only going to grow. SO get on board or DIE.

It appears for now anyways that Sony, will make part of its collection available without so-called digital rights management, or DRM, software some time in the first quarter, according to people familiar with the matter. They’re the last of the top four music labels to drop DRM, following Warner Music Group, which in late December said it would sell DRM-free songs through Amazon.com’s (AMZN) digital music store. EMI and Vivendi’s Universal Music Group announced their plans for DRM-free downloads earlier in 2007.

These Old men are Getting Hip to the Internet

HAR matey batten down the hatches and hoist the main sail. We’re going to send those rat scallions to Davey Jone’s locker!!

After ten years of trying to control how we share , they have finally found The motivation to lift copyright protection. This is a sea change for the recording industry, which for the better part of a decade has used DRM to guard against what it considers illegal distribution and duplication of songs purchased online. Thats just a fancy way of calling us criminals and music piracy pirates. Can some one explain to me what is illegal about buying music online and putting it on my Mp3 player and then letting my girlfriend use it when shes at the gym? Ok so I’m a criminal and should be fined 7,000 per song I share?

It doesnt matter one bit if it’s on my sharing list or on my media player. Like everyone eslse I have gig bytes of music on my hard drive. I personally dont go to kazaa (virus infected wasteland) or lime wire (just as infected) to share and get music, but you do, are you a pirate? YEP and good for you!!!

So abandoning DRM on à la carte song purchases, the labels would create a whack of new, less restrictive ways of selling music over the Internet, such as through

• social networks like Facebook
• MySpace.
• Partnerships with retailers such as Amazon could also help the music industry take a swipe at Apple, which has come to dominate the legal download market through a one-size-fits-all pricing scheme record labels find restrictive.

The details of Sony’s plans are expected to pop up in the coming weeks.

Justin Timberlake, the popular recording artist signed to the Sony-owned Jive label, is participating in a Super Bowl promotion with Pepsi that will kick off Feb. 3 and offer free distribution of 1 billion songs from major labels, including Sony, done through Amazon’s DRM-free download service,(some inside source).

Sony has been shaking and baking and experimenting with DRM-free songs for about six months. The company began giving away DRM-free promotional downloads for recording artists that sell less than 100,000 units, and at least one artist gained mainstream exposure through the effort. "A lot of these tests have led people to believe that maybe this works," says a Sony BMG executive who asked not to be identified. A Sony BMG spokesman declined to comment. Amazon also declined to comment on its DRM-free deals, beyond what it has disclosed in press releases.

I wonder if one of these big wig execs had a little daughter or son come to them with mp-3 player and say "daddy, you’re a bad daddy because you wont let me have my music"

The move by Sony BMG is especially noteworthy, given the company’s checkered DRM past. In 2005, Sony BMG incited a consumer boycott and was the target of lawsuits after it embedded CDs with a form of DRM that was surreptitiously copied to and buried in users’ PCs (BusinessWeek.com, 11/29/05), leaving the machines vulnerable to viruses.
Abandoning an Outmoded Idea

Many, including music executives, consider the industry’s about-face long overdue. "This agreement is the first of many of these types we’ll be announcing in the coming weeks and months," Warner Music Group Chief Executive Edgar Bronfman Jr. wrote in a Dec. 27 memo to employees explaining Warner’s breakthrough deal with Amazon. "Many have argued that we could and should have done this long ago."

Labels used DRM software in an effort to prevent illegal sharing of songs on peer-to-peer networks, such as Gnutella. Instead, the restrictions served mainly to frustrate paying customers, forcing them to degrade the quality of music by first burning it to a CD before uploading it for play on the device of their choosing. Last year, consumers filed several class actions against the major record labels (BusinessWeek.com, 1/5/07) and, in a couple cases, against Apple, for restricting the devices and thereby controlling prices.

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