DRM

Hello? Is this thing on?

Technological and musical developments go hand in hand.

In the early 18th century, the discovery (or rediscovery) of well-temperament spurred composers such as J.S. Bach to tune their instruments in new ways, making it possible to play music in all keys and essentially paving the way for what we now think of as Western classical music.

After the U.S. Civil War, cast-off martial instruments from the conflict were appropriated, combined with traditional African instruments (such as the banjo) and musical idioms, and used to create a new form of semi-improvised ensemble music with syncopated rhythms: Dixieland. Which in … Read more

iTunes updates for DRM-free music

After Steve Jobs' open letter to record executives back in February, it was clear that DRM-free music (music without digital rights management technology) wasn't far away for Apple users. Today, the concept became a reality with the release of iTunes 7.2 (download it for Windows or Mac OS X).

As of today, all of the songs from music label EMI on Apple's iTunes Store will be free of DRM via a new service called iTunes Plus. (Note: that link will open iTunes and take you to iTunes Plus, but only if you have version 7.2 installed.)… Read more

Apple offers a little love with its DRM-free upgrades

According to CNET's own experiments, the iTunes Plus feature that launched Wednesday and allows you to upgrade previously purchased EMI song files to the DRM-free versions appears to have a neat side effect.

The upgrade, which costs 30 cents per song or $3.00 per album, seems to be based on iTunes account purchase history, not whether the song file resides in your iTunes library.

Figure out the perk, yet?

It means that those of us who have lost a previously purchased iTunes song file due to a corrupted or lost laptop, now have a chance to get it … Read more

iTunes goes DRM-free with EMI

Apple's iTunes store began selling DRM-free songs from EMI on Wednesday.

DRM (digital rights management) software prevents owners from copying or freely using a digital file across multiple devices.

As expected, all the songs from music label EMI that are sold on iTunes are now available in DRM-free versions. Shoppers have the option to purchase either a 256kbps AAC-encoded DRM-free song for $1.29 via iTunes Plus, or the usual 128kbps AAC-encoded DRM-version for 99 cents.

"We expect more than half of the songs on iTunes will be offered in iTunes Plus versions by the end of this … Read more

Toshiba's latest Gigabeat V series PVP

Toshiba announced that they will be releasing an updated version of the Gigabeat V portable video player on June 1st in Japan. The new Gigabeat V series will be available in 40GB and 80GB capacities priced around $409 and $491 respectively. Beyond increased capacity, the new series improves on the features of last year's Gigabeat V30 by offering a 4-inch, 24-bit color display with a resolution of 480 x 272. Like its brother the Gigabeat S, the V series also uses the Microsoft PMC interface and supports Windows Media DRM 10 and WMA 9 lossless. The new Gigabeat V … Read more

Amazon to offer DRM-free music from EMI

Critics of digital rights management have long insisted that record labels could boost sagging sales by offering music unencumbered by copy-protection schemes.

Apple's iTunes and e-tailer Amazon.com are in position to test this hypothesis in the coming months. On Wednesday, Amazon announced that it plans to sell DRM-free digital songs from the record label EMI Group. Amazon's unprotected music, which will be sold from the retailer's upcoming download store, can be played on a wide variety of portable music players, including Apple's iPod and Microsoft's Zune. Amazon's news follows a similar announcement last … Read more

Amazon to offer DRM-free music downloads

From CNET News.com... see full story:

Amazon.com plans to launch a digital music store later this year, featuring music downloads without copyright restrictions.

The e-commerce giant announced Wednesday that it would offer songs from more than 12,000 record labels in the MP3 format, without the controversial digital rights management (DRM) software. Record labels are beginning to warming up to the concept of offering music downloads without DRM, after waging war with peer-to-peer companies over distributing their copyrighted music and over piracy issues.

"Our MP3-only strategy means all the music that customers buy on Amazon is always … Read more

Elite data transfer headaches--already?

New owner of an Xbox 360 Elite? Well, if you were planning on transferring your Xbox Live Arcade games along with the rest of the data from your old 360, think again. There seems to be a major problem with how the transfer kit imports the games, involving DRM--yes, even games now suffer from this poorly thought-out technology. After a successful hard drive transfer, all of your purchased Arcade games will magically downgrade to demos. In order to have full access to these games, you must sign into Xbox Live (thanks to Joe at The Pensive Gamer for pointing this … Read more

Unhappy Digg users bury site in protest

Digg.com users, very upset at the news aggregate site for deleting articles containing an encryption key that could be used to crack the digital rights management on HD DVDs, have inundated the site with thousands of recommendations to pages that contain the code. The protest was apparently heard by Digg administrators, who later reversed the ban.

On Tuesday night, the "All topics" category contained several pages of the most popular articles recommended by Digg readers populated only by links to sites that contained the code, as well as messages deriding the Motion Picture Association of America, a … Read more

News roundup: MySpace, Yahoo, Amazon

MySpace and Photobucket make amends. The block on videos from Photobucket for MySpace users was lifted yesterday. According to a post on the Photobucket blog, "open lines of communication and procedures with MySpace" were made to make sure it doesn't happen again. The blockage affected nearly a quarter of Photobucket's 40 million registered users. Related: MySpace launched a version of its site today for Latino Americans.

Yahoo, Gracenote launch lyrics service. Yahoo Music users will now be able to pick up the lyrics to their songs after a deal was made with digital media company Gracenote. … Read more

DRM