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| Why DRM is a bad idea |
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| felipe |
 Posted: Mon 02 Apr, 2007 18:01 Post subject: |
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| flyermoney wrote: | | Wait and P2P. |
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| flyermoney |
| Posted: Mon 02 Apr, 2007 19:26 Post subject: |
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I slept with Michael Jackson
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| Quote: | | Complete albums from EMI Music artists purchased on the iTunes Store will automatically be sold at the higher sound quality and DRM-free, with no change in the price |
Ça, c'est cool. Big up, genre.
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| felipe |
| Posted: Tue 03 Apr, 2007 08:41 Post subject: |
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| Gizmodo wrote: | We just got off the phone with Jeanne Meyer, the Senior VP of Corporate Communications at EMI. Even after adding a grain of salt, considering they did come from the horse's "official" mouth, there's are some interesting facts worth noting about the DRM-Free tracks on iTunes.
- EMI approached Apple about DRM free tracks, not the other way around.
- EMI is cool with any other music store doing DRM-free tracks. This is not an iTunes exclusive.
- Those stores can put songs in any format they want. The iTunes premium price and AAC 256 kbps format are Apple's Marketing decision.
- One underpublicized aspect of this deal is that full albums will cost the same. That means that while LCD Soundsystem's North American Scum will cost more than a DRM'd version, the full album, Sound of Silver, that it came from will cost the same either way. Combine that with the ability to upgrade tracks into full albums, and DRM'd songs into free tracks eases the stinging a bit.
- EMI made this move based on research that showed consumers want DRM-free tracks.
- They're doing this to get a bigger stake in online music, believing that even though CDs are 90% of their sales, those figures will shrink or stay flat. They're projecting that online sales should rise to to 25% of their sales by 2010.
- That includes music sales on cellphones. That's 500-billion capable handsets, worldwide, by end of this year.
- The DRM-free tracks should, they believe improve sales: Even as piracy gets easier, so does the ability to play songs on any MP3 player available. (That is, once some other music store releases EMI tracks on MP3.)
- Although Jobs says, "We expect to offer more than half of the songs on iTunes in DRM-free versions by the end of this year.", EMI says the first of the new tracks will be on sale in May.
- EMI won't disavow RIAA lawsuits, however.
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| Engadget wrote: |
For years Apple has said that given the choice between DRMed and DRM-free media ecosystems, it would always choose the former. Thankfully things seemed to be looking up when Jobs apparently had a change of heart after last year's crippling European pressures wrought havoc on the public perception of the iMonopoly. But we're still nowhere near there yet -- and we don't just mean that the other big labels, Sony BMG, Universal, and Warner, haven't switched over to DRM-free. What we're seeing here is a rabbit being pulled from a hat; it's wonderful, but what does it mean?
we don't believe Jobs is leading by example here -- EMI is. EMI is taking a huge, huge step in its business, and we fully commend them. Honestly, we do, kudos to you, EMI. Apple is taking the role of providing the first venue for EMI's great DRM-free music experiment; but what we find disconcerting is that Stevie J. is asking the labels do what he says -- not what he does.
With his $4 billion+ stake in the media megacorp and his seat on the board of directors, you'd think Jobs would be quick to encourage Disney-owned labels, like Hollywood Records, Lyric Street Records, Mammoth Records, and Walt Disney Records, to "embrace [DRM-free] sales wholeheartedly." Perhaps Jobs and Iger don't see as eye-to-eye as they previously postured, or perhaps Jobs is waiting to see whether this is actually the right move for the business, consumers be damned.
Steve mentioned that 128-bit AAC just isn't good enough for the sharp-eared, so uncrippled tracks are being bumped to 256Kbps. This gives Apple the ability to sell the music as a separate product and price point, while giving consumers the illusion of greater value. But we don't believe having free, usable, uncrippled media is a feature -- it's what we deserve, and we demand it. Asking customers to pay 30% more for no DRM and a higher bitrate is a distraction, a parlor trick to take our attention away from the philosophical issue: EMI is still selling DRMed music. EMI CEO Eric Nicoli said, "Not everybody cares about interoperability or sound quality." Since when did the two become so intrinsically linked? |
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| Best Boy Electric |
| Posted: Sun 22 Apr, 2007 03:21 Post subject: |
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BIG BOSS ELEKTRIK
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At last, music is the winner
Michael Dwyer www.smh.com.au
April 19, 2007
EMI's bold new move to unlock its music to the digital masses is
the wildcard in the poker game of legal downloads.
There's an unlimited supply/And there is no reason why/I tell you it was all a frame/They only did it 'cos of fame/Who?/EMI
EMI by the Sex Pistols
THE entire music establishment has practically detonated for real since Johnny Rotten lobbed that parting grenade over the wall of Britain's most distinguished music company, EMI, in 1977.
The "unlimited supply" of cash from those decadent glory days is now slipping like ash through the fingers of the last four major music conglomerates. Who'd have guessed that 30 years on, the label that dismissed the Sex Pistols for their ratbag behaviour would out-punk them all?
EMI has been conspiring in anarchic circles of late. The venerable parent company kept a low profile while its flagship renegades, the Beatles, hatched their mysterious agreement with Apple Computers in February - with specifics still to be announced.
Then, last week, chief executive Eric Nicoli moved into the media spotlight after settling EMI's ancient, $72 million royalties dispute with the Fab litigants.
Coincidence? Perhaps.
When Mr Nicoli and Apple boss Steve Jobs called their joint press conference in London on April 2, many assumed that it was to announce the Beatles' dramatically overdue debut on Apple's iTunes online music service (5 million songs for sale, and still only the 10 solo stragglers by Ringo).
The news, as it happened, was much bigger.
From May 1, EMI is withdrawing its defences in the online war against piracy. Beginning with iTunes, the company is "making all of its digital repertoire available at a much higher sound quality than existing downloads and free of digital rights management (DRM) restrictions".
It's nothing less than anarchy in the UK - and in every other country with broadband access. The other three major music corporations (Universal, SonyBMG and Warner) are likely to be livid at the audacity of those punks over at EMI.
While some industry pundits are predicting a domino effect among the other three majors, that's far from certain given the stubborn culture of protectionism that has arguably been their undoing since they went to war with the then-illegal music site Napster at the turn of the century.
Since then, the implementation of flawed and frustrating DRM locks has made buying music online far less attractive than it should have been. In effect, DRM penalises all MP3 fans as de facto criminals. The resulting antagonism has probably exacerbated the piracy pandemic the majors are so desperate to contain.
But EMI's unilateral surrender means that, for once, music is the winner.
Removing DRM encryption from the new "premium" song downloads means that the Pink Floyd or Coldplay song you buy on iTunes is yours to keep and copy as many times as you want to any digital device - not just the Apple iPod, as currently dictated by the company's proprietary "FairPlay" DRM system.
And "much higher sound quality" means that audiophiles no longer need to be insulted by the MP3-quality definition that has made online retail such a poor option for discerning music fans. EMI's premium downloads will be encoded at 256 kilobits of information per second, which is twice the definition of standard online/MP3 fodder and comparable to CD fidelity.
On iTunes, and presumably the other services yet to negotiate with EMI, premium downloads will come at a premium price. You can still buy regular 128 kbps/DRM downloads for $1.69 a track, but should you choose to pay $2.20 (or thereabouts - precise Australian pricing is yet to be announced), you are offered better sound and greater interoperability, whether you fancy the Rolling Stones, Norah Jones, Gorillaz, Kylie Minogue, Keith Urban, Robbie Williams or a fat wad of other EMI acts. But not the Beatles. Not yet, anyway, despite the recent settlements with Apple and EMI.
But wait, there's a steak-knives clause. Buy the whole album instead of individual tracks and you will pay a regular price for the premium product. That's a low, low $1.69, multiplied by the number of tracks on the album, and every song is yours to keep at CD quality to copy for your own use ad infinitum.
All we need now is an imaginative artwork delivery model and even obstinately album-oriented holdouts such as Radiohead might be tempted to start licensing their conspicuously absent masterpieces to online retailers such as iTunes, Zune, emusic and the rest.
Of course, all of this is merely fair play (as opposed to FairPlay) to those who liked the old system when records and CDs were engineered to exacting hi-fi standards in the first place and were indisputably owned by the purchaser upon sale and playable on any system forever and ever - until someone trashed it at a party or stole it from your schoolbag.
But it's life-affirming news for the more paranoid among us who had begun to envisage an Orwellian reality in which music would be compacted into muzak, hardwired into our Telescreens, and only rented back for limited use if we bought regulation equipment from the iMinistry - and then bought the same equipment again when the battery died a few years later.
But the beneficiaries of that scenario would have been few. None of the majors, for starters, have exactly been copping it sweet in the brave new world of digital distribution. In Australia, online music sales registered a four-fold increase last year but still account for only 5.5 per cent of total music sales. And that total is in steep decline, perhaps due to piracy or a wider variety of leisure activities such as computer games.
So who is Big Brother? Having sold 90 million iPods and 2 billion songs through iTunes, it's clearly Apple boss Steve Jobs and Apple Computers who have been snickering loudest behind the ubiquitous Telescreen.
It was therefore highly pertinent when, two months ago, Mr Jobs published an eloquent online essay titled Thoughts on Music in which he made a compelling case for the abolition of DRM in music retail.
Apple has taken some flak for its FairPlay DRM system and even weathered charges of anti-competitive practices in Europe, but Mr Jobs took the opportunity to remind his critics that it was the four music majors who together "control the distribution of over 70 per cent of the world's music" and who insisted on DRM locks before they would license their music to online stores.
Naturally, no company will share its DRM secrets with another. Hence the absurd situation in which tracks bought from Microsoft's Zune store play only on Zune players, while the same tracks from Sony's Connect store play only on Sony players, iTunes play only on iPods and so on.
"Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats," Mr Jobs suggested. "In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music that is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat." He also provided a good reason why the four major music companies should acquiesce: "Because DRMs haven't worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy."
As Mr Jobs points out, last year the DRM-protected download market made up only 10 per cent of all songs sold.
"So if the music companies are selling over 90 per cent of their music DRM-free (on CDs), what benefits do they get from selling the remaining small percentage of their music encumbered with a DRM system (legal downloads)? There appear to be none."
Another way to look at this is to think about the average MP3 player. The hard drives are usually full to bursting with music but only a tiny percentage has been bought on legal download sites. The rest has been pirated or ripped from CDs.
This is the prevailing state of lunacy that EMI has apparently now been the first major label to acknowledge.
In truth, its radical new online strategy looks more like an act of desperation than a progressive rethink of DRM. It's perhaps best understood as a gallant attempt to kick-start the shiny new vehicle (online retail) before the wheels fall off the terminally ill one (CD retail) while hopefully closing the gap on its rivals in the same cavalier manoeuvre.
It's no secret that EMI has been hit particularly hard in these troubled times. Since 2000, there have been recurring stories of proposed mergers and takeover bids. Just last month Warner was in the news cited as a potential buyer of the music giant. But as a vociferous believer in DRM, one can safely assume Warner has lost interest in the acquisition.
Nonetheless, Mr Jobs is confident that EMI's provocative policy shift will lead to more than half the total iTunes catalogue being DRM-free by the end of this year. If he's right, the logic of market competition suggests that within a year most music for sale online will sound as good as technically possible, will be owned in perpetuity by those who pay for it and will be easily copied illegally by those who don't.
Which would roughly take us back to where we were 30 years ago when music came on vinyl, we stole it freely on cassette while the Sex Pistols were still burning through a supposedly unlimited supply of record company cash. That's progress, right?
Not really. But in a poker game that's been stacking up all wrong in recent years, EMI's bold new premium downloads concept has thrown all the cards in the air and made bets for the future of digital music anything but predictable.
Whatever these EMI/iTunes punks have up their sleeves next, odds are high that it will involve their four sequestered aces: John, Paul, George and Ringo. Most pundits see a premium iTunes issue as inevitable, but that alone would be small change for the greatest musical asset that ever roamed the pop charts.
More compelling is widespread speculation about a dedicated Beatles iPod, the world's first preloaded digital music device, which could marry musical hardware and software in the most attractive and technically advanced package since the compact disc.
There's certainly something suspiciously timely about these three goliaths of modern music - the Beatles, Apple Computers and EMI - choosing to settle decades of complex litigation just weeks before June 1: the gala 40th anniversary of the most famous, popular and revolutionary album of all time, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Listen closely and you can almost hear Johnny Rotten's canny conspiracy theory ringing through the ages: "I tell you it was all a frame." Maybe EMI only did it, once again, for the media attention that has been so eminently forthcoming.
Another dramatic press release is doubtless in the drafting stages. Right now, the pop group, the computer company and the record company of the moment are playing their collective cards close to their chests.
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| felipe |
| Posted: Mon 21 May, 2007 12:05 Post subject: |
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| Chil Pollins |
| Posted: Fri 01 Jun, 2007 07:59 Post subject: |
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Da Muthafuckin' Chil Pollins
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| Cornelius |
| Posted: Fri 01 Jun, 2007 09:12 Post subject: |
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I'm Big In Japan
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holy crap!
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| felipe |
| Posted: Fri 01 Jun, 2007 16:22 Post subject: |
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| Best Boy Electric |
| Posted: Fri 01 Jun, 2007 16:56 Post subject: |
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BIG BOSS ELEKTRIK
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Quelle bande de connards!
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| atrabem |
| Posted: Fri 01 Jun, 2007 18:07 Post subject: |
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DESIGNER
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| Best Boy Electric wrote: |
Quelle bande de connards! |
Jamais heureux, hein !
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| Best Boy Electric |
| Posted: Sat 02 Jun, 2007 03:25 Post subject: |
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BIG BOSS ELEKTRIK
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| atrabem wrote: | | Jamais heureux, hein ! |
Y'a largement de quoi:
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| flyermoney |
| Posted: Wed 06 Jun, 2007 09:32 Post subject: |
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I slept with Michael Jackson
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| Fake Steve Jobs wrote: | Turn me on, dead man
Oh man. Now people are pissed because they've found "secret info" hidden inside iTunes songs. See here. Apparently things are slow at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and God knows they can't go a week without getting a bug up their asses about something. And what better target than Apple, the company that has done more for the world than any other company in all of history? So they're all fired up because when you buy songs on iTunes the song files have your name and email address embedded in it. Folks, relax. It's just a watermark, okay? It's not the mark of the beast. You're not going to get turned into a zombie if you listen to your iPod. And nobody is going to steal your iPod and hack the song files and then find out your name and your email address. Even if they do, you can just get a new email address. And a new name. Or something. |
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| felipe |
| Posted: Mon 18 Jun, 2007 12:24 Post subject: |
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TEKNIKAL SUPERVISOR
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The new 7digital
| boinboing wrote: | | 7 Digital is selling EMI's catalog as 320kpbs MP3s for UKP0.50 -- about $1. Apple is selling the same music as lower-bitrate AAC files, with s33kr1t information hidden in them that Apple won't discuss, for 30 percent more. 7 Digital works with any browser, so you can buy this music without needing to use iTunes, which doesn't exist for Linux. |
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| Best Boy Electric |
| Posted: Fri 10 Aug, 2007 18:07 Post subject: |
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BIG BOSS ELEKTRIK
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| felipe |
| Posted: Fri 17 Aug, 2007 12:06 Post subject: |
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TEKNIKAL SUPERVISOR
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Dinosaurs with jetpacks
| Quote: | Universal as a whole is a cranky company. In particular they will swim against the stream of popular opinion to spite other companies. Currently two divisions are doing this. Their home video division refuses to sell high definition versions of their movies on the more popular Blu-ray format and instead goes exclusively with the less popular HD DVD format. They are the only large, major movie studio with this stance: the other studios either support Blu-ray exclusively (Sony, Disney, Fox) or support both (Warner Bros., Paramount).
There’s been much speculation as to why Universal continues down this path and the consensus seems to be that Universal is less interested in succeeding than they are in Sony failing. That, and Toshiba pays them to support HD DVD exclusively. You see, Toshiba hates Sony too…
As for Universal’s Music Division, their “Sony” is Apple. They don’t like Apple. To be fair, most major labels stopped liking Apple the minute they realized they accidently gave Apple the keys to the castle, the castle being online distribution.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, a record label amounts to nothing more than shady suits, Advertising money, CD replication plants, and distribution channels. Online distribution is making the latter two, plants and distrubition channels, obselete. You don’t need a CD plant when the music is sold online and you don’t need a bunch of stores when your music can be sold to everybody in the world from the same web page.
By letting Apple have online distribution rights, which Apple quickly built into an empire, the record labels burnt one bridge (CD replication) and gave one to Apple (Apple being the world’s most popular online distribution channel).
...
Recond labels = Dinosaurs
Internet = meteor
The labels want to blame the internet for their downfall. Except they can’t blame Apple (though they have insinuated as much). They blame piracy. The internet was the problem and DRM (magic computer pixie dust that would make songs as impossible to steal as CDs in a store. Cough.) was the answer.
Except it wasn’t.
...
Universal has decided to jump on the bandwagon as well and “experiment” with DRM-free tracks. what is the goal of the experiment?
Well, there’s really only one goal: to prevent the DRM monopoly Apple currently has going. The one, ironically, that Universal and other music companies demanded of Apple in the first place. The one that Apple also wants out of. Crazy, I know. Universal’s goal is to hurt Apple in the most politically correct way possible: everything else is just corporate cover-up. Universal is trying to undo the damage they did to themselves over the last 5 years… they’re trying to get the keys back.
...
By refusing to sell DRM free on iTunes Universal allows 3 things to happen. 1) They get to ensure that DRM-free tracks sell horribly. This is good because it ensures
2) the DRM tracks they sell on iTunes will sell much better. This allows them to say “look, we sold more DRM tracks than DRM-free tracks. Obviously the consumer prefers DRM.”
3) They get to be courted with sweet royalty and licensing deals by Apple’s competitors who are *dying* for some advantage against the juggernaut.
The other distributors will go with this because having something Apple does not is a nice competitve advantage and online distributors will bend over backwards for it. For example, Microsoft pays Universal for every one of Microsoft’s Zune products sold. That’s money paid for literally nothing… these things have nothing to do with Universal itslelf and theoretically could never play a single Universal song during their lifespan, but Universal still gets a cut of the sales. Why? Because Universal told Microsoft that they wouldn’t give Microsoft the ability to distribute their songs unless Microsoft hooked them up. It was extortion, and Microsoft went along because they know they can’t beat Apple unless they have Universal’s songs.
...
For Universal, the experiment is win-win. If it “succeeds” then they can continue on that path, cultivate other retailers, and ditch Apple. If it “fails” then they are justified in maintaining DRM on their products.
For a consumer who want to buy DRM-free tracks from iTunes this experiment is bad news: it’s very existence makes DRM-free Universal iTunes tracks less likely. |
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