Apple today announced that users have purchased some 250 million songs from their iTunes Music Store (‘iTMS’). Daily downloads are hovering around the 250 000 mark, totalling some $500m annually. (Incidentally, although the press release proudly points to the store being available in ‘more than 70 percent of the global music market’, it’s still not here in Australia.)  Read more »

Los Angeles-based Napster, now a legal music site, has a mere 270 000 subscribers and struggles to attract new users. In an attempt to differentiate itself from Apple’s offering, Napster will relaunch its online subscription service under a flat rate pricing model. Users will soon be able to download as much as they like from a library of 1 million songs for $US15 a month.  Read more »

‘When Napster launched its new subscription Napster-To-Go service two weeks ago, they touted it as a low-cost way to access thousands of songs without having to buy them. For $14.95, customers can copy all the tracks they want from Napster’s catalog to digital music players. There’s even a 14-day free trial. Of course, when the subscription expires so does the music [renting music? What a horrid idea!].  Read more »

Increasingly, manufacturers of non-electronic products are using Rights Management technology to enforce an artificial monopoly over the supply of aftermarket service and maintenance. The Senseo espresso machine is one such example; it utilises what its manufacturer calls ‘protected’ coffee pods that are only compatible with Philips’ own pod system - similar to the way DRM is used on portable music players to prevent alternative codecs being used.  Read more »

overshoot writes "We all knew it was coming, didn't we? Now Princeton University and nine others are introducing DRM'd textbooks. For a 33% discount, students get a 5-month node-locked e-book instead of all that glossy paper. Maybe Congress should just get it over with and change the law to allow EULAs on printed works?"

Originally by timothy at Slashdot: Your Rights Online, 12:25 PM

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Sun Microsystems stepped into the fractious arena of digital copyright protection this week with plans for an open-source, royalty-free digital rights management ('DRM') standard. The Open Media Commons initiative aims to address concerns that a growing number of incompatible download schemes might frustrate consumers and hold back growth in the download market.…

Originally by The Register - Internet and Law: eCommerce, 12:13 PM  Read more »

Programmer develops tool for removing encoding surrounding multicasts in effort to give open-source media players access.

Originally by CNET News.com - Security, 8:34 PM

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The Electronic Frontier Foundation has posted a guide to the licence terms of major online music retailers. From their comparison, it appears that very few, if any, of the online stores confer proprietary rights in the music they purport to ‘sell’: in most cases, the vendor reserves the right to modify the terms of the licence at any point; alienability (resale) is either restricted or completely prohibited; in short, dealing with the music as owner seems impossible. The result is, I suppose, a bare licence:  Read more »

'Switchfoot's new album, Nothing Is Sound, shipped from Sony with copy protection software on the CD, much to the dismay of thousands of iPod-wielding fans. The band posted a response on their official forum apologising for the protection and detailing ways to circumvent the protection and rip their songs to PC. Switchfoot linked to open-source program CDex's download page with instructions on disabling the autorunning protection and ripping the files to MP3.  Read more »

Most business enterprises are finding it increasingly difficult to keep track of software licence compliance, with 72 per cent of firms manually tracking compliance, or carrying out no tracking at all, according to a report from the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA).

Originally by The Register - Software, 6:36 PM

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The European Commission today set out measures for updating the management of online rights in musical works, recommending that an EU-wide copyright licensing system be established.…

Originally by The Register - Internet and Law: eCommerce, 6:37 PM

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'schnikies79 writes "Sony BMG is rethinking its anti-piracy policy following weeks of criticism over the copy protection used on CDs. The head of Sony BMG's global digital business, Thomas Hesse, told the BBC that the company was 're-evaluating' its current methods. This follows widespread condemnation of the way anti-piracy software on some Sony CDs installs itself on computers.  Read more »

According to an editorial being run by the New York Times, the ability to fast-forward through television commercials may soon be curtailed as part a plan being ushered in by the next generation of home entertainment devices:

THEY will take my remote control away only when they pry it from my cold, dead hands.  Read more »

A higher French select legal committee has dropped the contentious provision from its copyright law that would have placed the onus on companies using DRM on music services, to license it to other equipment makers.…

Originally by The Register - Internet and Law: Digital Rights/Digital Wrongs, 10:49 AM

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