From NPR:

The giant record company EMI has promised to start selling its songs on Apple’s iTunes site — without Digital Rights Management, or DRM. DRM is the electronic lock that the music and film industries put on their digital files to keep people from stealing.

The digital locks have been a major source of complaints from consumers. DRM protection means that songs purchased from the iTunes store could only play on iPods, and not any other device. Now it will be possible to play the songs on any player, whether it’s a Zen, a Zune or an iPod.

The absence of DRM will also allow music fans to make as many copies of a downloaded song as they would like.

But there is a catch: The DRM-free songs will cost fans an extra 30 cents above the 99 cents to which they’ve become accustomed.

Good for consumers.  I don’t even own an iPod, but I like to see that some of the draconian measures the record companies took to protect their product are being lifted.  But the reason I highlighted this story isn’t because of the change in direction.  A quote from EMI CEO Eric Nicoli caught my attention:

The best way to combat illegal traffic is to make legal content available at decent value, and conveniently.

It’s an excellent statement that is applicable to much more than just music.

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This entry was posted by Brian on Monday, April 2nd, 2007 at 7:32 pm and is filed under Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Please note the copyright policy.