Apple And Emi Make A Deal To Remove Copyright Protection

Well I found this interesting as I was browsing tech news, the article says it best "In a move that could have a big impact on online music". EMI will begin selling songs through Apple Itunes without the anti-piracy protection on the songs. Now why would this be such a big deal to make money of course and the fact businesses like MEI have been fighting to bust people for illegal downloads of the music and since they were with Apple itunes it was impossible to play them on any other devices, but now that got thrown away. Of course those song without the protection will be $1.29 a song, so you can do the math and if you download about 18-20 songs your actually buying a complete cd.

So the question is, who got the better deal music pirates or the Music industry?

I would say the pirates because now people just have to pay for the songs that don't have the portection and then load them up to be downloaded again. Although you can find most of those songs already, but it just made it easier and an a way could prove a bad move for Apple and EMI in the future.


Source

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070402/tc_af...izLknwjKNIjtBAF
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070402/media_...hqwPQHf788jtBAF
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070402/ap_on_...9WdI7A6bKUjtBAF
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20070402/bs_nf/....Yg003RRuIjtBAF

It is good to see that they are finally listening to people and agreeing that the vast majority of people out there are nice legitimate people. However, pirates and anyone who is quite computer savvy would pay less for the DRM protected music, and find some way to remove the DRM. I am still quite old fashioned when it comes to music. Despite how brilliant computers are, when it costs only £1 more to walk into HMV and buy a physical, non-DRM, real CD compared to a download that could have all sorts of problems and be in a format you might not want, I walk into the shop every time. Downloading probably actually costs more, becuase if you follow good backup practice and burn all your music to CD (stupid DRM permitting), then put that in a case and store it somewhere, you are better off buying the real article.

I suppose this is the same as Linux being preloaded on computers from Dell - its great that the public are finally being listened to, but its unlikely anything useful will ever happen, or last that long.

I think the music industry will actually be better off by doing this. The reason is that a lot of people do not buy music online because of the copy protection and the fact they can not use it on their portable players or if they get a new one, they cant use any of their music. Instead, if it $1.29 a song and you basically are buying a full cd, the industry actually saves money since they dont have to waste costs on cd's, cases, paper inserts and labels. This is a larger cost than people realized when you look at how many cd's are still sold.

I buy CDs. Actually: I swap CDs online. It's a lot cheaper than buying downloads or new CDs, yet is still perfectly legal.

Downloading files...well...I love the fact that I have the freedom to do that - and I'm very happy that Apple's finally starting to realize that they need to be more user-friendly if they want to expand their customer base. But I personally still prefer the actual CD anyway. It's just more convenient for me.

To add to this wonderful topic

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070403/ap_on_...IApU1MiGWUjtBAF

its funny how this report just came out a day or so , right after the Apple EMI deal came out in the open. Of course this is all ove europe not just london, of course it's not like modt people care about getting music legally anways.

This sounds really stupid. You cant even buy music from an online store in Mexico anyways.... It says Itunes is not available in your country, and so do the major music sites. So where do you think about 90% of the population here get their music from nowadays? Even the Isps promote their services by telling you that you will be able to download tons of music. RIght now the government is fighting people who sell copied cds on the streets, but thats no use now, everybody can buy a cheap mp3 player and get their songs from the internet.

Its about time that everyone is realizing that DRM doesnt stop piracy, it barely slows it down. The only thing the DRM managed to do is annoy users. And I'm not just talking about DRM in music, but all kinds of copy protection schemes.