Wal*Mart to Sell Downloadable Movies (Now with DRM!)

Retail goliath Wal*Mart today announced their intentions to enter the Digital Distribution market by selling movies from not one or two, but all six major Hollywood studios. The movies will be priced between 7.50 and 19.98, pricing that is designed not to interfere with brick-and-mortar DVD sales.

The service uses Microsoft's DRM scheme, and as such requires both Windows and Internet explorer. This means that Firefox won't work; take a look at this screen (click for big):



As you can see, Firefox will load the page, but there's no way to actually read the site. Check it out for yourself.

This deal has much more interesting, broader implications on top of one more reason to be annoyed with Wal*Mart. As it stands, they are selling movies for the same price as DVDs, but without giving the consumer the ability to copy the file, burn it to a DVD, or use it at all with other devices. Sad times.

(via theinquirer)

Steve Jobs: Apple Would Embrace a DRM-Free Marketplace "Wholeheartedly"

Unless Apple.com was hacked, Steve Jobs has posted an open letter to the music industry and music consumers entitled "Thoughts On Music." He provides three possible scenarios for the future of DRM.

The first alternative is to continue on the current course, with each manufacturer competing freely with their own “top to bottom” proprietary systems for selling, playing and protecting music.

The second alternative is for Apple to license its FairPlay DRM technology to current and future competitors with the goal of achieving interoperability between different company’s players and music stores. On the surface, this seems like a good idea since it might offer customers increased choice now and in the future. . . The most serious problem is that licensing a DRM involves disclosing some of its secrets to many people in many companies, and history tells us that inevitably these secrets will leak. . . . Apple has concluded that if it licenses FairPlay to others, it can no longer guarantee to protect the music it licenses from the big four music companies.

But here it is - straight from the big man's mouth:

The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.

Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy.

Jobs also addresses the criticism that their customers are being locked into the iTunes ecosystem:

Today’s most popular iPod holds 1000 songs, and research tells us that the average iPod is nearly full. This means that only 22 out of 1000 songs, or under 3% of the music on the average iPod, is purchased from the iTunes store and protected with a DRM. The remaining 97% of the music is unprotected and playable on any player that can play the open formats. Its hard to believe that just 3% of the music on the average iPod is enough to lock users into buying only iPods in the future. And since 97% of the music on the average iPod was not purchased from the iTunes store, iPod users are clearly not locked into the iTunes store to acquire their music.

(Via Apple)

First Romania, Now Gorbachev

Poor Bill Gates. Vista is getting such a bad rep. The Romanian president claimed that his country has been built up on pirate copies of Windows. Now Mikhail Gorbachev (you know, the glasnost perestroika guy) is stepping in and asking Mr. Gates to not press charges against Alexander Ponosov, a Russian school-teacher who was found running illicit copies of Windows on his school computers. Apparently, Ponosov didn't even know the copies were illegal as they came pre-installed on the computers, and if found guilty, can be shipped off to a Siberian Prison camp. Yikes.

Microsoft has responded saying that they aren't dropping anything - a decision that leaves me wondering how conflicted one of the world's biggest philanthropists must feel.

(via Techdirt)

New Get A Mac Ad

Wonderful new Get A Mac ad makes fun of Vista's security or lack thereof.

One Down, One to Go

Apple Inc. (the one that makes iPods and Macs) and Apple Corps Ltd. (the one that the Beatles founded) have finally worked out their differences and come to an agreement with regards to the use of their apple names and apple logos.

Apple Inc. (the computer one!) now owns the rights to pretty much everything Apple-related and will license certain trademarks to Apple Corps (the Beatles one!). Apparently this has the Mac rumors crowd in a frenzy because they think it (along with Steve Jobs showing the iPhone playing "Lovely Rita" at Macworld) means Apple Inc. will start selling Beatles music through the iTunes Music Store.

The New York Times article from which most of the information I used to write this post came is pretty informative, with the exception of this part:

The Beatles are considered the last major holdout from online downloading services like iTunes. Today, Beatles fans can play Beatles music on an iPod only by transferring the songs from a CD.

Please. Did they start selling Zeppelin tunes and not tell me about it?

By 2010 could file-sharers be swapping news instead of music?

From the BBC:

According to Cambridge University's Prof. Ross Anderson, the man who helped create the idea P2P file-sharing, internet users will be sharing news instead of music by 2010.

In his vision, people around the world would post stories via anonymous P2P services like those used to swap songs.
They would cover issues currently ignored by the major news services, said Prof Anderson.

"Currently, only news that's reckoned to be of interest to Americans and Western Europeans will be syndicated because that's where the money is," he told the BBC World Service programme, Go Digital. Such P2P systems, he said, would give everybody a voice and allow personal testimonies to come out.

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Romania Proclaims Country Built on Pirated Windows

In a recent meeting, Romanian President Traian Basescu told Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates that the IT boom in Romania can be heavily attributed to the on going piracy of Windows software. Basescu met with Gates in celebration of a recently opened technology center in Romania's capital.

"Piracy helped the young generation discover computers. It set off the
development of the IT industry in Romania," Basescu said during a
joint news conference with Gates.

Basescu went on to say that the piracy of Microsoft's software also encouraged the creative capacity of Romania's IT workers. It's estimated that 70% of software in use in Romania is pirated. Though anti-piracy laws have been in place for over ten years, few are enforced.

Gates had no response.

LINK