Off you go… into the purple yonder!

DRM died on April 29th, 2008 when Microsoft announced it would be shutting down its ‘Plays for sure’ DRM validation servers on August 31st, 2008. All DRM’d music bought under the ‘Plays for sure’ system will become permanently tethered to the device it is currently ‘authorized’ on. When those devices fail or are replaced the [...]

The New York Times is reporting that several major book publishers are starting to do away with DRM on their audio books.
Wonderful news, indeed.

Sony/BMG has finally announced it is going to drop DRM for at least part of its catalogue. Original source: Businessweek. They were the last holdout among the four big labels.
That’s it for music, now on to video

When Apple launched DRM-free music on the iTunes music store, Jobs predicted that by the end of the year, all labels would be selling music in an unencumbered format (on the iTunes music store).
Well, Warner has joined the MP3-selling party, which makes Sony-BMG the lone holdout. But Warner and Universal are not selling their music [...]

Mark Pilgrim has a really nice writeup on the problems with DRM and the Amazon Kindle in particular, written out as a play in 6 acts. He references RMS’s Right to read, as well as George Orwell’s 1984.

Last Monday, Nine Inch Nails announced that they are no longer under contract with a record label, and intend to sell their music directly to the public.
Yesterday, Radiohead released its latest album online allowing the buyer to decide how much she wants to pay for it, and without DRM. There’s also a ‘discbox’ version which [...]

Amazon has launched Amazon MP3, a DRM-free music store. From the press release:
Amazon MP3 Offers Over 2 Million Songs From More Than 180,000 Artists and Over 20,000 Labels, Including EMI Music and Universal Music Group
So that’s the second label (Universal Music Group) that is starting to get a clue. Welcome to the party guys. Two [...]

We headed over to the local ‘media markt’ to buy a couple of cheap DVD players yesterday. All players were labeled as ‘multi-zone’ and when I asked about that, the sales guy happily explained that all the players they sell can play DVDs from any region. One simply takes the player to the service counter [...]

In an editorial on Economist.com, the case against DRM is made. Here’s a nice quote:

Belatedly, music executives have come to realise that DRM simply doesn’t work. It is supposed to stop unauthorised copying, but no copy-protection system has yet been devised that cannot be easily defeated. All it does is make life difficult for paying [...]

Good news this Monday morning: Apple is going to sell songs from the entire EMI digital music catalog without DRM, starting next month. Non-DRM”d tracks will come at a premium price ($1.29), but also with better quality - 256Kbps AAC. There will be an option to upgrade existing purchases to the higher-quality non-DRM’d versions, for [...]