All Articles Tagged drm

UPDATE: Engadget heard from Drew Herdener, Amazon.com’s Director of Communications:

These books were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by a third-party who did not have the rights to the books. When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers. We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances.

Good on them for coming clean and changing the policy going forward. Though it would have been nice to have the candor and insight up-front.

ORIGINAL: According to Engadget, Amazon has remotely wiped copies of George Orwell’s classics, 1984 and Animal Farm from Kindles, refunding the purchase price of affected users.

We’re not yet certain, but users of the iPhone Kindle app are probably similarly effected.

It remains unlikely that Amazon broke into any houses, repossessed any copies of same, and left change on the bureau.

By contrast, when Apple removed NetShare from the App Store, already purchased copies remained — and remain to this day — on the devices of whomever purchased them.

Takes a lot of wrong to make App Store policy seem right these days, so way to go, Amazon. You’ve either redefined ownership in the DRM age, or broken faith with any customers thinking of owning any more Kindle content…

You saw the epic liveblog, now see the photos.

We have the deets in photo on the new 17″ MacBook with the ridiculously large 8 hours of battery life, the fact that iTunes is going 100% DRM-Free, the new iLife with GarageBand Music Lessons, iMovie’s stunning upgrades, and iPhoto’s geo-tagging and face-recognition, and also the new iWork with Keynote — which now has an iPhone-based remote for switching slides and reading your notes.

Um, yeah, this was a huge Macworld for Mac people — and the iTunes DRM news and the Keynote news were incredibly great upgrades for iPhone owners.

Makes you weep that Apple will never go to a Macworld again, don’t it?

Read the rest of this entry »

Apple Insider has published a rumor saying Apple’s iTunes service is about to match Amazon MP3 by going DRM free. This follows on a previous story saying Apple was in negotiations to do just that.

Since the introduction of iTunes Plus (the name given to the higher-quality 256 bit DRM-Free music), only EMI has allowed Apple to carry their music in that format, with Warner, Sony, and Universal refusing to do so, instead only offering them to iTunes competitors like Amazon, Napster, etc.

What’s changed? Maybe nothing. Or maybe iTunes has just kept growing stronger and is now in a position where they can negotiate the same, consumer friendly deal?

The rumor says we may see the change as soon as tomorrow, December 9th.

On the rare occasions when I hit iTunes looking for music, I go immediately to iTunes Plus. When it comes to DRM music, I’m just not gonna do it, so if I can’t find it on iTunes Plus, I can’t find it. Trouble now is, I can’t find iTunes Plus! Used to be in the Quicklinks, but now it’s gone missing from the iTunes Canadian Store. Maybe MacRumors knows:

Forum user Doodledoo has been following it closely and found evidence of tracks from both Warner and Sony studios participating in iTunes Plus. Apple originally launched their DRM-Free iTunes Plus format with the support of only EMI but recent rumors have suggested Apple is working on winning over the other three majors studios (Warner, Sony, Universal).

Whazzat? Really? Could it be that Big Media is finally learning that treating customers to fair use for fair price is the way to go? In a word… “no”. According to Apple Insider, progress and all, the Beatles are still going to need some help:

“EMI want something we’re not prepared to give ‘em. It’s between EMI and The Beatles I think – what else is new?,” McCartney said. “Last word I got back was it’s stalled at the moment. But I really hope it will happen because I think it should.”

So are we finally on the cusp of a revolution? Is (music, at least) DRM dying? And will all of us be long gone before the Beatles show up for download as well?

According to CNet (via Apple Insider), Apple is in talks with the remaining 3 out of the Big 4 record labels who still refuse to allow iTunes to sell DRM-free music.

Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony BMG currently provide DRM-free music to rival services like Amazon MP3 as a way to promote competition to iTunes, though the lack of availability of these services outside the US, along with iTunes continued (and growing) dominance in digital music, may be causing them to rethink that position.

EMI, of course, has been offering DRM-free music via Apple’s iTunes Plus service since it launched, and at double the bit rate (quality) of the regular music.

Hopefully we’ll soon see the day that big music decides to stop treating their customers as de facto thieves and realizes offering quality goods at fair market prizes is the only real way to stop piracy. Or am I the crazy one?

A-Day continues! AndroidCentral will have continuing coverage of T-Mobile’s new GooglePhone throughout the day, but we here at TiPb are keeping our eyes peeled for those nuggets that collide (or will collide) with the iPhone.

Okay, so Google’s CEO is on Apple’s Board of Directors, but he recuses himself from meetings about the iPhone. Okay, so Android is technically positioned to compete not against the iPhone but against the wide-range of lower end, multi-form-factor Windows Mobile devices. Okay, so the Android Market isn’t a proprietary, walled gardened like the App Store, which may please the FSF but may also turn off some developers who prefer single device targets. But at least Android is leaving the iPhone’s bread and butter alone right, it’s iPod heritage powered by the #1 music store in the US, iTunes?

Eh… Not so much. VentureBeat (via Engadget) is now rumoring that Google may just have lined up cloud-competitor Amazon to provide not only music, but TV and Movies as well. aTunes much?

What’s especially attractive about Amazon MP3 is that, while the 3@$+@29! record labels (other than EMI) deliberately withhold high quality, DRM free music from iTunes in order to give other vendors a competitive advantage, Amazon gets the good stuff from pretty much all of them. (Albeit it only in the US, but that’s the whole world anyway, right Amazon?)

Will this be announced alongside the T-Mobile G1 today? We’ll soon see!

Windows pundit and out of the closet iPhone lover Paul Thurrott brings his usual brand of over-the-top Apple baiting and legitimate griping to bear on iTune’s recent announcement of “day and date” movie downloads, where iTunes will offer the latest from Hollywood for sale (not rental!) the same day as DVDs are released.

Thurrott rightly points out that $15 for no-extras, unilingual, often non-captioned, DRM-laden movies is just too pricey, and even (though in a later point) that Hollywood is charging apple a whopping $16 per film, meaning Apple is taking a $1 hit on every movie they sell (as a loss leader to drive iPhone and iPod sales).

And greedy, gluttonous movie studios wonder why people are willing to go through the hassle of pirating (JAR!) content?

He also tells us rental movies don’t get the “day and date” treatment, even though Hollywood grants that privilege to CinemaNow and Movielink (whom he makes sure to mention had “day-and-date” purchases before iTunes as well).

Although Apple link-bait to be sure, Thurrott does place some small blame on the movie industry. Please allow me to add massive quantities more. Like the record companies, terrified of Apple becoming the #1 seller of music (whoops! too late!), the movie industry wants to give competitors some competitive advantage, with apparently no consideration for consumers who, 70% of whom, according to US market share, have iPods, including the iPhone, and would benefit from this content being made available under the same terms (if not more fairly priced with fairer terms of use) via iTunes.

But the movie industry is afraid of Apple “ruining” their business the way Apple “ruined” music. It couldn’t possibly be that the advent of the internet allowed creators to connect with consumers without the usury and distribution oligopoly of old media?

What says Thurrot?

I’d point out two things: That the ongoing migration from physical media (VHS, DVD) in the entertainment world mirrors a similar migration in software delivery, from physical media (floppy, CD, DVD) to subscription services and cloud computing. More pertinent to this story however, is the notion that anyone who is buying digital movies from iTunes (or any other service) is simply wasting their money. The future is anywhere, anytime on-demand delivery of content, delivered as subscription service. The very notion that someone needs to “own” a movie is outdated, especially when that movie is an intangible and demonstrably inflexible DRM-encoded digital file.

Fairly priced, DRM-free content, let’s say new movie rentals for $2 and purchases for $4, and there would be no casual piracy (and greatly reduced piracy in general). Volume pricing, given the economy of moving around nearly-free bits via legitimate p2p within a network may not be a working business model for the movie industry, but then again, it could just make them a fortune…

At that point it becomes, like iTunes music, an impulse buy, and I know I would spend more per month on that than I do now on physical media that costs them much more to produce and distribute.

What do you think?

NBC done gone lost their rainbow peacock’d minds? Maybe, if Gizmodo is properly quoting their Chief Digital Officer, George Kliavkoff:

“We’d love to be on iTunes. It has a great customer experience. We’d love to figure out a way to distribute our content on iTunes.” [They want more money per show to] “reflect the full value of the product.” [And for iTunes to block you from loading pirated content onto your iPod.] “If you look at studies about MP3 players, especially leading MP3 players and what portion of that content is pirated, and think about how that content gets onto that device, it has to go through a gatekeeping piece of software, which would be a convenient place to put some antipiracy [sic] measures. We are financially harmed every day by piracy. It results in us not being able to invest as much money in the next generation of film and TV products.”

Huhbuwhat?!

NBC is currently turning down $1.99 per 22-44 minutes of The Office or Battlestar Galactica. 2 bucks for content previously aired on FREE television, which can be easily, legally (and much to their chagrin and previously failed efforts to block it) taped or PVR’d. They’re turning down that EXTRA money because they want MORE of it, and they want iTunes to prevent you from, say, shifting that FREE content from your PVR or media center to your iPhone without paying MORE of that EXTRA money?!

Dare I suggest the only reason the pirates exist is because of Big Media’s greed and short sightedness. The minute they charge fair prices for fair use, given the low barrier of entry and elegance of use of iTunes’ interface, the piracy disappears for everyone but zealots. (Never mind the marketing value of downloads alone — The Office being a prime example.)

Apple really can’t pull the trigger on their DVR patent fast enough.

What do you think?