Business Week reports that Sony/BMG throws in the towel on drm

[Liviu_5]

Title says it all:

"The last major label will throw in the towel on digital rights management and prepare to fight Apple for valuable download revenues"

Link:

http://businessweek.com/technology/c...eek+exclusives

[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

[kilohertz53]

Sony learns very slowly. They invariably back a losing proprietary format or DRM scheme (Betamax, ATRAC, MemoryStick, BeBB, and BluRay). Then they gradually come around to doing things the way the rest of the world does.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by kilohertz53

Sony learns very slowly. They invariably back a losing proprietary format or DRM scheme (Betamax, ATRAC, MemoryStick, BeBB, and BluRay). Then they gradually come around to doing things the way the rest of the world does.

To be fair, it was really just "bad luck" that VHS won out over Betamax. Beta was arguably a better standard. Sony did absolutely nothing wrong there.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

To be fair, it was really just "bad luck" that VHS won out over Betamax. Beta was arguably a better standard. Sony did absolutely nothing wrong there.

It was not better when they extended the recording time. The wikipedia article

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videotape_format_war

was interesting.

It says for example:

What Sony didn't take into account was what the consumers wanted. Sony believed that having better quality recordings was the key to success, whereas it soon became clear that consumer desire was focused more intently on recording time and compatibility for easy transfer of information (Besen, 1994).

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

To be fair, it was really just "bad luck" that VHS won out over Betamax. Beta was arguably a better standard. Sony did absolutely nothing wrong there.

Well, not exactly. VHS was started because Sony would not license their format to other manufacturers. Has VHS got a foothold Sony did license their format but it was too late to swell the tide.

the Betamax format is still the dominant and only format for 3/4" semi-pro equipment and it basically a mod to the original format they obtained from Ampex. What they did in 3/4' they tried to do in 1/2" and it failed. I do agree that the Beta format is a higher quality.

Dale

[JSWolf]

According to what I heard on TV, Blu-Ray is slowing winning over HD-DVD. So go Sony!

Warner Brothers are backing only blu-ray.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7174591.stm
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22507330/
http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News...x?NewsId=22210

Goodbye HD-DVD! Finally the technically superior format will win the war.

[kovidgoyal]

I must add that LRF is currently the technically superior format on the market for ebooks (barring epub of course). Since its closest competition .mobi is also DRMed up the wazoo and SONY seems to be moving faster to support epub, perhaps for once SONY is actually ahead of the curve.

[bingle]

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.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

I must add that LRF is currently the technically superior format on the market for ebooks (barring epub of course). Since its closest competition .mobi is also DRMed up the wazoo and SONY seems to be moving faster to support epub, perhaps for once SONY is actually ahead of the curve.

Who says they won't apply DRM to epub?

Dale

[kovidgoyal]

Yeah but they'll also be able to read non DRMed epub which means they will have support for the best format and the most open format.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Yeah but they'll also be able to read non DRMed epub which means they will have support for the best format and the most open format.

Where can I buy ePub-format eBooks from? It doesn't currently appear to be a wildly popular format, to put it mildly!

[kovidgoyal]

epub is important from a hobbyist perspective. I for one would always choose a reader that natively supports epub over one that doesn't. As for commercial formats, SONY already supports LRF, which is the technically superior format. And thanks to the efforts of the community, it's as easy if not easier to generate content in LRF format as any other format. As a result, in the ebook arena, SONY posses the technically superior, open format, unlike the historical Betamax, etc cases.

[bojan]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

I must add that LRF is currently the technically superior format on the market for ebooks (barring epub of course). Since its closest competition .mobi is also DRMed up the wazoo and SONY seems to be moving faster to support epub, perhaps for once SONY is actually ahead of the curve.

I must admit that I don't know much about LRF format, but lots of people are complaining that the font sizes in the LRF e-books are limited (imposed by the book creator) -- that doesn't sound like very superior format to me.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

epub is important from a hobbyist perspective. I for one would always choose a reader that natively supports epub over one that doesn't. As for commercial formats, SONY already supports LRF, which is the technically superior format. And thanks to the efforts of the community, it's as easy if not easier to generate content in LRF format as any other format. As a result, in the ebook arena, SONY posses the technically superior, open format, unlike the historical Betamax, etc cases.

Betamax was also a technically superior format to VHS by the way (although not SVHS). What is it that makes LRF a technically superior format? It is xml based like the others. How is it better than ePUB?

Dale