Quote:
Originally Posted by aru
The article does not mention books at all. I wonder whether this only benefits people buying music off the internet, or if sony-connect will sell books you could handle like any other files you own.
I hope the no-more-DRM will spill over onto books too. It would be nice if prices would drop too i.e. 99c for every book  |
This will, sadly, only benefit music.
What's going on here, again sadly, is not that Sony has had a change of heart and recognizes the right of the consumer to copy their music and play it where ever they like, but rather that Apple has an uncomfortably tight grip on the music labels' ... erm, wallets.
See, Apple's iPod is owned by approximately 98% of the Earth's population. The only DRMed format that will work on the iPod is the iTunes format, which gives Apple huge power as the sole distributor of that sort of file. So much so, that they can tell the labels how much to sell their music for, and dictate all sorts of other terms.
The labels hate that, but they have tried and failed to back other music players and other DRM schemes. Their last hope is DRM-free MP3, since that's the other format the iPod can play.
My thought is that they want to force Apple out of the music business by selling tracks cheaper and with fewer restrictions at Amazon - Apple doesn't make that much from music anyway. Then, when the labels are in the driver's seat again, they might re-introduce DRMed downloads. Perhaps not, as they're currently trying to find other innovative ways to make money giving music away (
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...908#post137908).
But they're certainly not doing this because they think consumers should have options. They're doing it to try to wrest control of the digital music market away from Apple.