December 15th, 2005
Artists revolt against DRM
My Morning Jacket, the artists who recorded the copy protected CD "Z" I mentioned here, are doing more than protesting Sony BMG’s use of DRM spyware. They are revolting. Yesterday I read that My Morning Jacket was doing their own recall of the affected CDs. Now I see they are burning unrestricted copies of their CD and mailing them to users. Hmm… I wonder if they are breaking the law under the DMCA.
US band My Morning Jacket has responded to fans’ complaints about copy protected Sony BMG CDs by sending them DRM-free copies of its album.
The group began burning unrestricted CDs after fans found that they could not transfer their album ‘Z’ (pictured) to their iPods. Their manager, Mike Martinovich, told Rolling Stone that Sony BMG should drop DRM on CDs entirely.
The Rolling Stone article says Sony BMG is reconsidering their plan to use copy protection on all their CDs. If a lot of artists refuse to sign with Sony BMG and other companies using copy protection and go indie, perhaps the big labels would get the message. Wikipedia has an extensive list of indie record labels.
More here about My Morning Jacket’s revolt.
MMJ are by no means the first act under the Song BMG umbrella to express their displeasure over the corporation’s attempts to curb piracy via copy-protection software — the Foo Fighters, the Dave Matthews Band and Switchfoot have also done so — but they’re likely the first act to publicly offer to burn individual copies of their album for fans.
Sony BMG had no comment on MediaMax issue or My Morning Jacket’s response to it.
Initial link and inspiration via VitalSecurity.
