The Author – Bart Busschots
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Apr
3
Apple Puts It’s Money Where It’s Mouth is – iTunes To Go DRM Free
Filed Under Computers & Tech, Security on April 3, 2007 at 2:46 am
I’m in my parents place this week and out here in the heart of Ireland broad band is not available. I find dialup so frustrating that I generally don’t bother even going online. So, I managed to miss Apple’s big announcement till now. For those of you on another planet (or deprived of broad band like me) Apple and EMI announced on Monday that they would start selling high quality DRM free music on iTunes. The price is the same for albums but more expensive for individual tracks. Since the quality is higher and the files are DRM free that seems fair enough to me. I just hope this experiment goes well. I really want this to be the start of a whole new era for digital music, the end of the failed experiment that is DRM.
[tags]DRM, EMI, Apple[/tags]
From what I’ve read in the past, apple always wanted to go DRM free. Everyone has wanted to go DRM free.
What this really seems to be is that a music company has finally gone DRM free. That’s one of the four music companies (from what I’ve read). Hopefully the other three will follow suit and then hopefully after a few years the price difference will be gone (in favour of the cheaper price).
That’s a lot to hold out hope for though.
is it not, Apple puts your money where its mouth is?
$0.30 extra for drm free content?
I don’t know.
Still a move in the right direction.
In fairness, 30c ain’t much, and they’re also higher quality files.
I’m sure glad to see it – I think it’s an interesting twist that they added cost to get it DRM free but made it more palatable by making it a higher quality recording. I have a ROKU sound bridge to pipe music from my itunes library to my stereo, and if I had STOLEN all of my music it would work perfectly, but since I paid for my music through iTunes it does NOT work for those songs. I wonder if I can pay the $.30 uplift to get the songs I already own as DRM free?
Allison, you will be able to upgrade your songs. Haven’t decided if I’m going to bother yet.
Don’t know if this is old news or not, seems the DRM free tracks are still somewhat tied down:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6711215.stm
Thanks for the Link Dave. I’ve been Broadband-less since 31 May so I’d missed this. I wouldn’t count that as ‘locked down’ though. This does not prevent you from doing anything legal. It is just a deterrent against piracy. I quite like this idea but only if it is implemented properly using something that cannot be trivially faked. Say by adding some form of digital signature to it or something like that.