Report: Sony BMG to do away with DRM
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BusinessWeek.com reports that Sony BMG will offer some of its collection free of copy-protection software in coming weeks.
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Trying to recoup its losses as a result of placing anti-piracy software on its music CDs, Sony BMG sued the company responsible for the technology, it said on Thursday.
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Sony BMG Music Entertainment, the last major music label holding out against selling music online without copy protection, relented Thursday and announced Amazon.com Inc.'s digital music store will carry songs by its artists.
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NEW YORK (Billboard) - In a bold move to pave the way for  more widespread licensing of music publishing rights, EMI Music  Publishing and Sony BMG Music Entertainment have entered an  umbrella agreement that sets working guidelines for clearing  rights to new digital music delivery opportunities on phones,  PCs, digital cable systems and emerging physical  configurations.
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Despite pleas from fair-use advocates, Microsoft plans to patch an application that can strip Windows Media files of potentially restrictive DRM (digital rights management) technology.
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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission  said on Tuesday Sony BMG agreed to settle charges that it  included potentially damaging anti-piracy software in some of  its CDs without telling consumers.
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Executives from Nokia and Philips published an open letter today calling for the European Commission to consider scaling back, if not eliminating, imposing levies on digital recording media and playback devices, including DVRs and MP3 players. But the alternative may be a hard sell: increased DRM.
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Apple CEO Steve Jobs has made a surprise call for the end of digital rights management technology, which is designed to stop copyrighted music from being shared illicitly. Jobs says Apple would sell only DRM-free music on iTunes if it could.
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Sony BMG will pay $750,000 in  penalties and costs and reimburse California consumers whose  computers were harmed by anti-piracy software on some CDs sold  by the record company, California officials said on Tuesday.
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Amazon.com has added songs from Warner Music Group to the range it sells as MP3 files without DRM (digital rights management), the companies said Friday.The online retailer&#160;launched its music download service&#160;in September and now offers 2.9 million songs without copy prevention technology, including tracks from Warner, EMI, Universal, and 33,000 independent record labels -- although it has still not won over Sony BMG, the only one of the music majors still insisting on the use of DRM.Warner said it also planned to offer album bundles including exclusive tracks through the Amazon service.The move is a blow to Apple&#39;s iTunes Store, which has only persuaded EMI and a handful of independent labels to let it offer their tracks in the&#160;DRM-free iTunes Plus format it launched in May. The rest of the songs available through iTunes come with digital limitations on where they can be played, or how many times they can be burned to a CD.Three formats dominate the market for online music sales: MP3 and AAC, which are both open formats, and WMA, a proprietary format owned by Microsoft.MP3 files do not include provision for DRM: music recorded in that format will play on most digital music players, many mobile phones, and in software readily available for all the major operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, opening up a huge potential market to Amazon and to other online music stores such as eMusic dealing in unprotected MP3 files.AAC is the format Apple chose for its iTunes Store. Most of the 6 million tracks in its catalog come wrapped in a proprietary DRM layer called FairPlay, although EMI and independents such as Sub Pop, Nettwerk, IODA and The Orchard also allow it to offer higher quality AAC recordings without DRM. The DRM-encumbered tracks will play on authorized iPods, iPhones, PCs, and Macs -- but won&#39;t play on digital music players from other vendors. Unprotected AAC files will also play on many mobile phones, PCs running Linux with the appropriate software, and even Microsoft&#39;s Zune digital music player.WMA files without DRM will play on PC or Macs using Windows Media Player, and some phones and digital music players -- although typically not on the same ones that play AAC files. Microsoft has also introduced a range of DRM systems enabling online stores to sell locked WMA files -- and later abandoned some of them, leaving a certain amount of confusion and doubt about whether devices and songs branded &quot;PlaysForSure&quot; really will play for sure.Industry executives expect initiatives such as iTunes Plus and Amazon MP3, which remove the DRM locks placed on music downloads by an earlier generation of music services, will encourage consumers to buy more music.Warner believes that giving consumers the assurance that the music they purchase can be played on any device they own will only encourage more sales of music, it said Friday.It may also persuade music-buyers to look at other brands of digital music player such as the Zune range from Microsoft, ending Apple&#39;s dominance of that market segment.With the locks off the music, Apple also faces the prospect of a price war with Amazon, which offers 1 million of its MP3 tracks for just $0.89, compared to the $0.99 Apple charges for all its tracks. Before the launch of Amazon MP3, Apple also charged a $0.30 premium for tracks in the iTunes Plus format, which is recorded at a higher quality than the DRM-encumbered versions. Other Amazon tracks sell for $0.99.
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Our countdown to next week's CES centers now on whether the CE industry will at last reach a solution to the DRM conundrum. The new trend toward DRM-free music doesn't appear to be shaking the Blu-ray and HD DVD folks, who continue to cling to proprietary disk formats. Will consumers seek a video alternative, and might it come from China?
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With the last remaining label of the big four to join the online retailer's new music store, it could be argued that DRM is essentially dead.
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LONDON - Six large technology and music companies announced Monday they have banded together in an attempt to bring some interoperability to the DRM (digital rights management) systems protecting digital content such as music and movies within the next nine months.
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Tacit admission of defeat IFA 07 Sony will next year kill off its Connect digital music download service, Register Hardware has learned. Its Walkman products will instead Windows Media technology, the consumer electronics giant told its customers today.â¦
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Sony BMG announces a deal with Amazon to put tracks online that are free of copy controls.
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Quality DRM-free tunes sell well, says 7digital, which plans to drop copy-protection this year.
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Top executives will be the first to use Microsoft DRM technology when Mathias Thurman rolls it out. So what could go wrong? Best not to find out.