http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/06/technology/07apple.php?page=1 DRM goes the way of the technological dinosaur. Goodbye and Good riddance. - msbae
What about all of the songs that I purchased that already have iTunes' DRM-hexes on them? Will there be some kind of system update to purify them them or am I out of luck? I've never been terribly clear on how this copy protection stuff works.
There is, but you have to pay $0.30 per track... and you have to convert your entire library, you can't pick certain songs. Though I'd imagine if you have lots of songs from iTMS then DRM isn't a big priority for you anyway Anyway, I'm very surprised that Apple did this and they get a big thumbs up from me for it! I'm not thrilled about the introduction of the tiered pricing scheme though, largely because I'm afraid it'll ripple down into the other online music stores.
A few things about this (which is great news, I agree)...Apple never wanted drm in the first place. It's just that now they have finally gotten the 4 big music cartels to agree to take it off (as well as hundreds of indies). And there was always a simple way to take it off. Step 1 - Buy album on iTunes. Step 2 - Back it up to CD. Step 3 - Delete album from computer. Step 4 - Import album from your physical CD backup into the computer - it is now DRM free and can be played as many times in as many places as you want. Yes it is an extra step but you should be backing up your cd's anyway. Bottom line - GREAT NEWS!
As I've only purchased 8 albums from the iTunes Store, I opted for the upgrade at about £2 per album. The upgrade increases the bit rate from 128 to 256kbps so I don't feel cheated.
As I understand it, tiered pricing was the trade-off demanded by the music companies for dropping the DRM. The recession combined with reduced music sales in general was apparently enough to convince them to finally make that swap at least.
I've never purchased anything from iTunes, and I don't plan to, either. There isn't much point in doing so when you own hundreds of CD's...
Well, at least one article I read interpreted the music companies' intransigence on that point as an attempt to let other outlets catch up with and provide competition to iTunes. Also note that Amazon already uses the variable-pricing scheme which iTunes will now employ.
The music companies didn't want Apple (or anyone probably) to hold all the cards. They didn't want to be dictated to, they were used to doing the dictating. So they let other outlets have it but not iTunes because Apple would not agree to their tiered price structure. I guess something changed that now. And Apple has had DRM free music from EMI for a while now.
I just browsed at the Wiki article on that treaty. Of all the major countries that are taking part in the negotiations, China isn't among them. I wonder why...
Something that occurred to me while discussing this with my sons ...... this article discusses music downloads only. iTunes also distributes video, doesn't it? Is there an DRM enabled restriction there as well?
Is that because of the greater expense involved in creating the works, the potential for greater loss of income from pirated versions of those video based works?
That ACTA treaty is worrisome as it could involve relaxed standards for monitoring the internet en masse. The bill is largely being created in secret and may include provisions for internet filtering. Australia is already testing it's firewall (a nationwide firewall which nobody can opt out of) which is to filter "illegal content". This bill could be very dangerous to internet freedoms in regards to privacy and could even be used to impose censorship (especially if a government was to decide that content depicting dissent was illegal content). CuttingEdge100
As odd as this may sound ... is there any trustworthy place online where I can read up on ACTA? The reason I ask it that way is if I just simply Google "ACTA" I'm not sure what sites would be giving accurate information. This affects online activity, after all.