RIAA Sues Man for Ripping Legally Owned CDs to His Computer

[Vladimir]

Thank God for radio.

[Lemur]

Seems as though the record labels are clueing in to some of what gets their customers angry. Sony/BMG has finally joined the herd, and will be dropping DRM from their non-Apple online retailers.

The only thing the labels can agree on: We hates us some Apple, yes we does.

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, BusinessWeek.com has learned. Sony BMG, a joint venture of Sony (SNE) and Bertelsmann, will make at least 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.

Sony BMG would become the last of the top four music labels to drop DRM, following Warner Music Group (WMG), 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.

[drone]

If Sony is finally doing it, there really must be a change in the air. Drug kicking and screaming into the 21st century, I'm sure. I wonder what this means for Apple's FairPlay scheme. Jobs has said the only reason they have DRM is because the labels force them to have it. Time to see if this is true, or if Apple really is using FairPlay as a lock-in.

It would be nice to get straight AAC files from iTunes (on all music). Got me a iPod Nano for Christmas, and am loading it with mp3s (apparently "pirated" ) ripped from my CD collection. I'm not going to pay for FairPlay, but will buy if they change their rules.

As an aside, Microsoft must be furious. All the effort spent putting DRM and DRM protection into the Zune and Vista, slowly being made obsolete. Defective by design.

[Don Corleone]

I guess I'm not certain what "FairPlay" is. I've bought tunes off of the I-Store, is that what you mean, Drone?

As for dropping DRM on all content providers except Apple, isn't that a bit of an anti-competition violation? I didn't think you could favor some of your distributors over others.

[Lemur]

FairPlay is the Apple-only DRM included in most iTunes purchases. It's true, if Apple had not included a DRM scheme, they could never have gotten the labels to sign on, so in this Jobs is not lying. However it has also locked customers into using iPods, a side-effect the labels could have foreseen if they weren't a bunch of technophobic idiots with their heads firmly planted in their hindquarters.

AAC is the audio layer of MPEG-4, where MP3 is the audio layer of MPEG-1. Both should play fine on any relatively recent audio player.

Oh, and drone, Apple has been selling high-bitrate DRM-free tracks for months. EMI is the only label that agreed to do it in iTunes. Now that Apple has a dominant market position for handheld audio, I don't think they would mind dropping the golden handcuffs known as FairPlay.

[drone]

I guess I'm not certain what "FairPlay" is. I've bought tunes off of the I-Store, is that what you mean, Drone?

FairPlay is the iTunes DRM mechanism. It's kind of a wrapper around the AAC files and keeps track of the restrictions Apple puts on the music it sells. You can get some tracks (EMI?) without it already.

As for dropping DRM on all content providers except Apple, isn't that a bit of an anti-competition violation? I didn't think you could favor some of your distributors over others.

You would think so. Nothing would surprise me in this business though.

Edit->Beaten by the Lemur.

[Husar]

I downloaded an album from EMI yesterday and it consisted entirely of 320kb/s MP3 files. The only weird thing was that it offered me 13 files from what I thought was a 14-song album, will have to check that.
Was my first online music purchase and only bothered because it was DRM-free.

[drone]

Back to the Sony story: how could I be so gullible. Of course Sony doesn't have a clue, they would never release DRM-free music. They just have a very unique way of DRMing their files:

Sony BMG to sell DRM-free music downloads through stores

Sony BMG Music Entertainment will crack open the door to its music vaults on Jan. 15, taking the DRM copy-prevention wrapper off a limited selection of downloadable tracks.

The tracks will be offered in MP3 format, without DRM (digital rights management), from Jan. 15 in the U.S. and from late January in Canada.

The move is far from the all-digital service offered by its rivals, though. To obtain the Sony-BMG tracks, would-be listeners will first have to go to a retail store to buy a Platinum MusicPass, a card containing a secret code, for a suggested retail price of $12.99. Once they have scratched off the card's covering to expose the code, they will be able to download one of just 37 albums available through the service, including Britney Spears' "Blackout" and Barry Manilow's "The Greatest Songs of the Seventies."

In contrast, online retailer Amazon.com offers 2.9 million DRM-free tracks in MP3 format from the catalogs of EMI Group, Warner Music Group, Universal Music and a host of independent record labels. Apple's iTunes Store has around 2 million DRM-free tracks in the AAC format supported by its iPod and many mobile phones. No store visit is necessary to download those tracks, and an album typically sells for $9.99 or less.

About 4,500 retail outlets in the U.S. will sell the Platinum MusicPass cards by the end of the month, including Best Buy, Target, Trans World, Fred's, and Winn-Dixie, according to Sony-BMG. In Canada, the cards will sell through Best Buy, CD Plus, and Wal-Mart, and later through record store HMV.

Typical Sony.