p2pnet - rss feed: iTunes DRM-free downloads
p2pnet.net news:- Ring the bells, light the candles, etc, etc. It’s here. Apple has started selling DRM-free downloads.
Does this come by way of big Thank You to the people who’ve been paying a rip-off dollar a go for Apple’s DRM-polluted digital music files? Nope. It’s so the company can adopt the label of Good Guy and pry another 30 cents out of users.
As p2pnet posted yesterday, quoting MacRumors, “From the iTunes Help, it appears you will be able to upgrade your existing songs to the iTunes Plus (DRM Free) version:
“The iTunes Store also offers songs without DRM protection, from participating record labels. These DRM-free songs, called “iTunes Plus,” have no usage restrictions and feature higher-quality encoding.”
Called iTunes plus, the “higher-quality encoding” in the downloads, all from EMI, is Apple’s excuse for hiking the price. DRM-loaded iTunes downloads are 128 kbps. The new offerings are at 256 kbps. The company claims this is sufficient justification for the almost 30% boost in fees.
Interestingly, the iTunes site is featuring an audio book by Al Gore called The Assault on Reason.
Meanwhile as we also said yesterday, “In the real world of online music, things will remain as they’ve always been: music lovers will continue to download from affordable independent services such as AllofMP3.com, from sites set up by musicians themselves, and always, of course from the free p2p networks.”
Still, it’s a start, and the significance isn’t so much that iTunes is now selling the DRM free tunes; it’s more that Big 4 organised music cartel member EMI, based in Britain, is making the downloads and where it goes, its colleagues in crime, Vivendi Universal (France), Sony BMG (Japan and Germany) and Warner Music (US), are bound to follow, sooner or later.
The Big 4 are being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st digital century. Their next step will be to drastically reduce their wholesale prices and open their catalogues, fully.
When will that be? Will it even happen? We believe it will, but it’ll take time.
The lamescream mainstream media continue to present the idea that there’s a viable corporate music market when in fact, it barely exists. They completely ignore the fact billions upon billions of files are shared online every year on the backs of technologies conceived and created by people whose motivation is to let the music be free —– free in the sense off a bird on the wing, rather than free beer.
The Big 4, and their opposites in the music and software industries, will have to adapt and accept that, thanks to the Net, people are no longer ignorant, compliant ‘consumers’ who depend wholly on corporate sources for information.
They’re customers again, people with the ability to talk with each other one-on-one, or group-by-group. They have free choice, and the means to use it.
Also See:
p2pnet - iTunes DRM-free Day today? , May 30, 2007
MacRumors - Apple Releases iTunes 7.2, Launches iTunes Plus (DRM Free), May 30, 2007
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
June 5th, 2007 at 6:55 pm
I’d just like to mention that every time you buy an “iTune,” it’s embedded with your name, address and e-mail information. So why not choose freedom (internet sharing) — instead of more privacy invasion?