Sony BMG to drop copy protection for downloads
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Sony BMG Music Entertainment, the  world's second largest music company, will this month become  the last of the big four majors to drop copy protection  software on music downloads, also known as digital rights  management (DRM).
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Nearly a year ago, Apple CEO Steve Jobs boldly called for the music industry to abandon its practice of using digital rights management (DRM) software to protect its content.
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Acknowledging its proprietary audio technology was a marketplace flop, Sony Corp. said Thursday it plans to shutter its Connect digital music store and open its portable media players to other formats.
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(InfoWorld) - More than two years after a security researcher first called attention to Sony BMG's use of a stealth program to enforce digital rights management on its music CDs, the company reached a deal with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over the incident, the FTC announced on Tuesday. In a deal that was approved by a 5-0 vote by the FTC, Sony agreed to clearly disclose limitations on consumers' use of its music CDs and promised not to collect information for marketing or install software without consumers consent, the FTC said. The company also agreed to reimburse consumers up to $150 for computers damaged by the program, the FTC said. The settlement marks an end to a long and embarrassing incident for the company, which began when Mark Russinovich, an expert on Windows security of WinTernals Software, now part of Microsoft, published the results of his investigation into a rootkit that had infiltrated his Windows machine. Russinovich's research uncovered a stealth program, dubbed "XCP," distributed on CDs from Sony BMG that silently installed and concealed itself on the machines of customers who played the CD. The revelation and Sony's awkward response to it -- first denying that there was any problem with the XCP program, then making halting efforts to release programs to remove XCP -- set of a chorus of criticism on blogs and in the mainstream press. Subsequent investigation revealed that the XCP program was poorly conceived, hastily written and could be used by hackers to conceal their own malicious programs on systems that had the XCP program installed. Eventually, Sony posted a software removal program for the XCP and conducted a widescale recall of XCP enabled CDs. But the incident was a watershed, prompting discussions of the competing interests of copy protection by corporations and consumers' right to privacy. In the consent agreement announced today, the FTC said that "the installation of software without consumer consent that exposed consumers' computers to security risks was unfair and violated federal law." Hiding the software and failing to provide a way to remove it were also violations of U.S. law, the FTC said. The company will have to offer its removal program for another two years and will have to continue allowing customers to exchange CDs with the concealed software purchased before December 31, 2006. The company will also have to provide retailers with financial inducements to return XCP infected CDs and allow the FTC to continue to monitor its compliance with the consent decree.
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For years, record labels have been reluctant to release music in unrestricted MP3 formats, but now some music companies are reversing course on the copy protections and playback restrictions originally designed to reduce piracy.
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Sony's three-year effort to beat Apple's iTunes Music Store is over.
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Electronics giant Sony has reversed its position on the formats playable by its range of digital music players. The company has announced its new devices will now be able to play music tracks in the MP3 format
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Sony Corp.&#39;s Japanese music unit says it will no longer sell CDs with built-in copy protection, a technology it had been pushing for two years.
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The company will begin selling music downloads in the MP3 format, at least in North America. Sony says it has no plans to drop copy protection elsewhere.
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Sony Corp.'s Japanese music unit says it will no longer sell CDs with built-in copy protection, a technology it had been pushing for two years.
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With Sony's move to sell music unburdened by digital rights management schemes, all of the Big Four labels have now thrown DRM on the dump heap of history. But Sony and Universal are experimenting with digital watermarking -- an anti-piracy tool that has implications of its own.
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Sony stops making copy-protected CDs, saying music fans have heeded its anti-piracy message.
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(InfoWorld) - Web music stores have taken off with such gusto that now everyone wants to get in on the online media action, and the next battle ground is the digital movies and TV shows aimed at your living room. What users need to beware of amid the headlong rush to build digital music, movie and TV libraries is the terms of the digital rights management (DRM) attached to the files they're buying, which control the use of the files in various ways, including by restricting usage to a certain number of devices. DRM technology was developed to protect the music industry from illegal downloads, but it can also lock users into choosing one device, or family of devices. The fight may appear to have just started, but with portable media players such as the iPod so dominant, and their new appeal as view screens for downloaded movies and TV shows, its a decision users will have to make quickly. The time will soon come when it will be too expensive for a user to switch from, say Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod/iTunes/iTV platform to a rival platform because the DRM would ensure they have to buy a whole new music and movie collection. A future where users are stuck in one company's back pocket could be avoided if DRM licenses are broadly shared. But DRM appears to be on the verge of becoming a weapon to lock users in. "We see no consolidation of formats in the foreseeable future. It is Fairplay and Windows Media DRM for now and that may not change although the jury is still out on video as we are early on in the game for video. For audio the game is over," said Van Baker, vice president of media industry research for Gartner Inc. Fairplay is Apple Computer Inc.'s DRM technology. Songs purchased at the iTunes Store, for example, are meant to be used on only two devices, such as a computer and an iPod, and Fairplay helps enforce such rules. Microsoft Corp. has its own Windows Media DRM, which isn't compatible with Fairplay, so users, for example, cannot use Windows Media files on their iPods. And while Microsoft has been far more open to licensing its DRM than Apple, even creating a PlaysForSure logo to let users know which devices and files are compatible with Windows Media files, it may change its tune regarding such licenses. The company's new Zune media player is not compatible with PlaysForSure. That fact alone highlights how important Microsoft must view the Zune and Zune Marketplace, because in one fell swoop, it became a competitor to online music store partners and to PC and mobile phone makers that sell rival digital music devices. RealNetworks Inc. and Sandisk Corp. also joined the fray recently, highlighting the tight-fisted approach companies are taking. Users buying a Sandisk Sansa e200 series portable music player get RealNetwork's Rhapsody media service bundled inside, and a chance to pay a monthly subscription for music downloads. But if users cancel the subscription, the next time they connect to the Internet, Rhapsody will delete the songs from the music player and their PCs. Individual songs purchased on Rhapsody won't be deleted in such an instance, but since the songs will be tagged with RealNetworks' Helix DRM, users will have to make sure any new music playing software or hardware they buy supports Helix. The question of technology companies controlling the content users buy so enraged the French government that in June, it passed a law requiring companies to provide enough information about their DRM technology to enable competitors to create interoperable systems. There is also an industry group that could play knight in shining armor. The Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA), which boasts hundreds of tech companies, including heavyweights such as Intel Corp., Sony Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Lenovo Group Ltd., is working to select and promote an industry standard DRM to ensure digital files can be used on a wide range of devices companies make. Others are also hard at work on the issue, including groups intent on creating open-source DRM technologies, as well as hackers already figuring out ways to beat DRM. In the thick of what will likely end up a promotion and marketing fight, users will have to keep their heads about them and make up their minds. It could be wise to sit out this round of DRM controversy and wait to see which standard wins out, or to stick to traditional media and create digital files by ripping songs from CDs, for example. But it's definitely a time to pay attention. Nobody wants to build a library of favorite movies and songs, only to find that by switching to another computer or software makes it unusable. Â
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The Warner Music Groupâs announcement is the recording industryâs latest move away from its reliance on digital locks to reduce piracy.
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TOKYO -- Sony BMG will start selling music downloads in the copy-protection-free MP3 format later this month in North America, as even the last holdout among the major record labels crumbled to the growing trend.
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Papering over the cracks Microsoft is working on closing a loophole that creates a means to strip usage restriction from music files wrapped in its DRM technology. A program called FairUse4WM, recently posted on the internet, allows users to bypass Microsoft's Digital Rights Management (DRM) system.â¦
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BusinessWeek.com reports that Sony BMG will offer some of its collection free of copy-protection software in coming weeks.