January 4th, 2008
Better late than never: DRM (in music) dies
Sony BMG Music Entertainment is reportedly planning to sell its songs without copyright protection. When a Sony–the company that brought you that infamous rootkit fiasco–calls it a day on DRM you can officially turn out the lights.
Actually, the death of music DRM is a bit late. I thought DRM would have been swept out before the year ended. Guess the hearse got caught in traffic.
According to BusinessWeek.com:
Sony BMG, a joint venture of Sony and Bertelsmann, will make at least part of its collection available without so-called digital rights management, or DRM, software some time in the first quarter, according to people familiar with the matter.
Sony BMG would be the last of the big four music labels to drop DRM. Warner Music Group was a holdout until December when it announced a deal with Amazon. EMI and Vivendi blazed a DRM free path in 2007.
The game plan for the music industry appears to go DRM free, sell tunes outside of iTunes and grab control of the recording industry away from Steve Jobs. Will it work? Probably not, but if we ditch DRM I’m all for the experiment.
Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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