Music industry to abandon DRM?
 

Wow:eek: Is this credible?

SURPRISE, SURPRISE, SURPRISE. After all the lawsuits we've been reporting about, all the fiasco's we've been through (Microsoft incompatible trio MSN-Plays For Sure-Zune), and now, it seems that music industry executives are finally thinking with their senses and not with their ill-fated techno-paranoid logic. During Music 2.0 conference in Los Angeles, a lot of speakers are confirming that the time has come to either drop the DRM completely, or enable complete interoperability between various devices and services such as iTunes, Zune, Sansa, Rhapsody, eMusic, Yahoo, Napster, Limewire, Walkman etc.more

I dont know about that conference or what i said there, but following recent spate of lawsuits and etc, i highly doubt if they are going to actually drop DRM. In fact to me it seems it would only keep getting worse and worse.

But then these are just my thoughts...

I think that they will come to their senses.

The music industry needs electronic distribution, and they don't need ... "Betamax."

DreamWorks had to restate a quarterly profit as a quarterly loss after retailers (as it is their right to do) returned thousands of unsold Shrek 2 DVD's. (Apparently, lightning did not strike twice.) The problem, simply, was "little plastic disks." Printing them, shipping them, warehousing them, stocking them, and eventually, shredding them.

"Betamax" was only competitor to VHS tapes, and it was technically better. But only one format can "win."

Like it or not, Apple Inc. has already won. If you hold to a proprietary format, then you have a new million-pound elephant and even though he's standing in an orchard, he can still stomp you... if you hold to a proprietary format.

If, on the other hand, you simply embrace an existing, open format, and acknowledge that while customers could print bezillions of copies for free ... tens of millions of customers out there frankly don't want to ... then you have an industry waiting to happen, where anyone can play the game equally.

Maybe .. Napster was right.

When I see a movie, I want to see it about twice. With popcorn. I don't want it sitting on my shelf thereafter. I don't want to have to go to a store, buy it, and then go to a used-CD store and try to resell it. Eventually, somebody is going to "just do it," and the rest of them will be Betamax.