Anyone here like DRM? Digital Rights Management is a big pain for anyone who has legitimately bought music and other digital content and, quite rightly in my opinion, wants to use it as they see fit.
Apple's been slammed for it - Sony too. Now Yahoo has offered a popular song for sale without any copy-protection.
Jessica Simpson's "A Public Affair" is the honoured track, which also comes with an option to purchase a version of the song with a choice of names in the lyrics.
Though the download is double the price it would be on iTunes, at $2, the price was attributed to the personalisation option, not the lack of DRM.
"...we've been publicly trying to convince record labels that they should be selling MP3s for a while now," Ian Rogers of Yahoo Music wrote on his blog. "Our position is simple: DRM doesn't add any value for the artist, label (who are selling DRM-free music every day -- the compact disc) or consumer, the only people it adds value to are the technology companies who are interested in locking consumers to a particular technology platform."
However, some analysts believe that this is just a promotional offering and won't set the trend for future protection-free downloads.
"It's very, very unlikely that we're going to see any mainstream music sold without digital rights management, without the approval of the record labels," said Michael Gartenberg of Jupiter Research. "The labels are certainly not going to go for it. It's been a staple of their existence."
What do you think of DRM? Is it ever likely to be dropped, or just get more restrictive?
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