Copyleft: the magazine

We’ve been anticipating this one for sometime, but Phil Schiller just announced in his MacWorld keynote that, by the end of the first quarter of 2009, the entire iTunes catalog will be DRM-free. This puts an end to six years of DRM on Apple’s iTunes and iPods, though it will still likely be in the proprietary .M4A music format. Furthermore, it reflects the new realities of the music industry, where the record companies have finally recognized that downloads are far more important than physical media and consumers won’t put up with their music being locked up in absurd digital “rights” regimes. We just want to play songs without interference from the people from whom we legally bought them.

In other iTunes news, Apple will also be introducing differential pricing for the first time, with song prices ranging from $0.69 to $1.29. It has been reported that iTunes is already offering to upgrade people’s libraries to DRM-free versions for $0.30 per song. So go forth and liberate your music library!

(via Engadget [1],[2] and CrunchGear)

Update: The ever vigilant Cory Doctorow notes over at Boing Boing that this new DRM-free announcement only applies to songs, not audiobooks or videos. While we at Copyleft: the magazine concur with Cory’s concerns about the continued encumbering of non-music files on iTunes, I think it’s a huge step just getting the music industry to accept DRM-free music. The film industry and traditional publishing are a bit behind the learning curve here, and are going to continue to be skeptical of DRM-free online sales. But, hopefully, they’ll learn more quickly than the music industry did now that they have a solid case study of how an industry can fail by applying DRM and the success that industry will have now that downloads will be nearly universally unencumbered.

We’ve seen this before, but it still hurts every time. Walmart.com’s digital music service has announced in an e-mail to customers that it is going to shut down its DRM servers in about a week as it switches over to a completely DRM-free shopping experience. So, as of October 9, all you’ll be able to buy from Walmart.com is MP3s without digital rights management, but all the non-MP3 music you bought from them will no longer be transferable (without that obnoxious step of burning to CD and re-ripping them into MP3s).

While it’s nice to see the world’s largest retailer finally giving its customers what they want, those consumers that bought into the old ways of buying music are still getting hurt by the music industry’s previous unwillingness to give-up digital rights management. Sadly, this is a cautionary tale both to those of us who buy media, and other media outlets like the movie industry, that, in the end, DRM will only hurt you.

(via Ars Technica and Engadget)

While there’s been a lot of coverage of this one over the past week, I think it is worth another look. According to numerous news sources, the judge in Atlantic vs. Howell, a long running RIAA file-sharing lawsuit, has declare in a preliminary opinion, that the RIAA’s contention that simply having files available on KaZaA does not constitute a violation of copyright. So, if the RIAA does try to take this case to trial, it would need to prove not only that the Howell’s, who are husband and wife co-defendants in the case, not only had a KaZaA account that had music shared on it, but that someone downloaded said music and that the defendants are responsible for making that download possible. Given the Howells’ brutal honesty so far in the case about their lack of tech-savvy with regards to the workings of KaZaA and the fact that they were using it to distribute non-copyrighted works of an exhibitionist nature (that’s what the internets are for, right?), this preliminary statement is being set up by many as the gold standard for how to handle this sort of case. The case is expected to go to trial in September, so we’ll see what happens between now and then.

(via Ars Technica, EFF, et al)

In a move that has riled even the most levelheaded of bloggers out there, Microsoft has decided to shut off the authentication servers for its dead MSN Music service, essentially flipping the bird to anyone who bought music from them. The nuts and bolts go something like this. PlaysForSure requires an authentication key to play music files and you have to have a new key every time you move a file to a new device or computer. Without the servers, which are expected to be shut down on August 31, consumers will no longer be able to move music to their portable audio players or any other PC, essentially condemning them to leaving the files on whatever computer they bought them on. This includes making it impossible to play that music if you upgrade your OS as well (possibly to Linux, just out of spite). That’s right, the DRM scheme that promised to be better than iTunes (but just barely) by allowing you to move your music to a bunch of different music players now can’t even do that. The only option, as Ars Technica pointed out, is the same bad one that is available to most people stuck in a bad DRM nightmare: burn all your music to CD, then re-rip. Weak.

(via Ars Technica and Wired)

Latest news in the death of DRM comes from the UK, where 7digital.com is offering Pink Floyd’s entire catalog DRM-free and at a massive discount. Floyd is, of course, celebrating the 40th aniversary of the launch of its first album. Apparently, 7digital is also discounting much of Floyd’s catalog by a cool quid and 50p down to £5.49 (that’s about a $3 discount to $11 for Dark Side of the Moon on this side of the Atlantic). Just one more sign that DRM is not necessary to ensure record company (or artist’s) profits.

(via Pocket-lint.co.uk)

The internets have been abuzz this weekend about the potential launch of Amazon’s new DRM-free music store in mid-September. The New York Post apparently broke the news from Friday that Amazon is thinking about maybe launching sometime around the week of September 17th-ish. This is still speculation at this point, as Amazon has been pretty mum about the whole thing, but everyone from Forbes to Engadget to your own Copyleft: the magazine is reporting on it, so it must have some kernel of truth, right? The timing seems right though: it’s the end of back-to-school and all those college kids should be getting their student loan checks in the next couple of weeks. Of course, according to the RIAA, they all steal music, so they’ll probably go spend it on beer (not that we ever did that… really…). Also gives Amazon some time to get the kinks out before the holidays get into full swing. As usual, we’ll keep you posted.

(via The New York Post)

In the world of digital music, it appears that hell has just frozen over. Right on the heels of the recent announcement by Universal Music that it would offer much of its catalog without digital rights management for the next few months, Wal-Mart (of all places) began offering DRM-free tracks by the music giant and fellow major label EMI for and iTunes beating 94 cents a song. Yes, you read that correctly. The worlds largest retailer has, in one price dropping instant, changed the music buying landscape to one where DRM-free music is both affordable and readily available. Not only are DRM-free tracks now widely for purchase without a subscription, but they are also cheaper than the industry standard 99 cents per song. Oh, and just for the record, for the last three days, the top downloaded song of the week at Wal-Mart was DRM-free “Big Girls Don’t Cry” by Fergie for $0.94. If we weren’t appalled by many of Wal-Mart’s other social or business practices, we’d be right there with the rest of America. Instead, we’re holding out to see what Amazon.com’s music store has to offer…

(via Reuters and Wal-Mart)

The British Parliament, going against the suggestions of its own Culture, Media and Sport committee’s recommendations and the desperate pleadings of the music industry, has decided to keep in place its 50-year cap on copyright. British MPs had originally been considering extending the term to 95 years, ostensibly to bring it in line with American copyright law. Assuming nothing changes in the next five years or so, this means that early rock-era music by the likes of the Beatles could start entering the public domain as early as 2012.

(more…)

Universal Music has committed trying out DRM-free music sales through January 2008 at such disparate music stores as Amazon.com, RealNetworks, BestBuy.com, Passalong Networks, Google, and Wal-Mart’s online music service. Additionally, Universal will be selling DRM-free tracks on its individual artist and label sites. Notice a name missing from that list? Yep, Universal gave a metaphorical finger to Apple’s iTunes, claiming that they don’t want to be held back by Apple’s iPod-centric site.

This is spectacular news for those that have long advocated abandoning digital rights management and moving toward a more reasonable music market. However, Copyleft: the magazine is only cautiously optimistic, as the success of Universal’s experiment will depend on how well it does during the crucial holiday season (it’s no coincidence that Universal has only committed to its experiment until January). It’s too early to say for sure, but this could be the beginning of a major shift in how we get music to a freer, fairer system.

(via the New York Times and Universal Music)

Microsoft announced this week that Nokia has plans to integrate its PlayReady mobile DRM platform into some of its mobile phones. PlayReady is a newer DRM system that Microsoft launch back in February which is designed to be more flexible than previous systems (like PlaysForSure), but still give service provider control over how individual files are copied. The idea is that PlayReady will be platform and file-type independent, so will encumber music, video, image and program files regardless of whether they are transfered to a phone, PC or any other device. Users have to register their devices in a “domain”, which sets up a centralized security key that unlocks the file for use on acceptable (to the service provider) devices.

In many ways, this is a one step forward, two steps back type of proposal. Nokia and Microsoft will be giving consumers more flexibility in using their DRMed files than in the past, but are also setting up a system whereby the digital rights management software can worm its way into any convergent device. We’ll keep you posted as more people start picking up PlayReady and Nokia tells us exactly what it wants to do with the system.

(via Microsoft)