Entry tags:

drm, music

The Tomb of DRM
And here we have it, the epitaph that shall be inscribed on the depleted uranium sarcophagus of DRM, once all its myriad insectile limbs have ceased to twitch and are finally tucked inside:

Our download service provides files in the WMA music format or the WMV video format, which is not supported by Apple Macintosh computers. To use your music with an iPod, simply follow the steps below:

1. Save each downloaded song to your PC


2. Burn a music CD (in CDA file format)


3. Import the music from the CD into iTunes


4. Update your iPod

These well known 'burn-n-rip' instructions to "circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work", instructions that breach Title 17/Chapter 12/Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, are brought to us by none other than... Sony!

Delicious, isn't it.

This comes via ArsTechnica.com who also note that Sony is about to follow its competitors/RIAA cronies, EMI, Universal, and Warner, in dropping DRM, starting with "1 billion tracks via the Amazon Music Store".

So we're winning. These idiots have at least begun to realised the Luddian futility of trying to recreate the limitations of the 20th Century in the 21st. But still, these anachronistic corporate structures persist, punishing people for making obvious use of ubiquitous technology, stifling any innovation that might actually make accessing our culture easier, then restricting and filtering that culture as though it belongs to them, trailing behind them a vast mantle of industries based on physical products, products that are as doomed as the jobs they now barely support, with not even a hint of an exit strategy that could save livelihoods.

They are done with providing access, they do not control the primary means of production, they are no longer an artist's only way of reaching an audience, their only purpose now is to support themselves and defend their increasingly illogical position. So long as we are asked, or even forced, to pay for a service that we no longer need and certainly do not want, the battle will continue...