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.

Lets see if the people of the internets will prevail and get rid of DRM, or at the very least start the removal process. Sign the Defective Design Letter Here

Yet again the RIAA is on the train to nowhere, seen as Steve Jobs said in his "Thoughts on Music" Apple would not be licensing fairplay, its either no DRM or Apple owns there system, the RIAA says "Apple your thinking like us, lets start licensing FairPlay DRM" (they didn't say it like that, but you get the idea)

Gotta love em, they just can't help making a fool of themselves whilst spending millions suing people.

We all know that piracy has ended up as a monumental PR mess for the record industry, and it is a undisputed fact that the industry in general were far too late and couldn't adopt the same model they do in the shops so invented DRM (lets not go any further into this)

I love music as much as the next man, but when a consumer thinks their being ripped of they will always find a new way, the internet provides such a way. So when Napster and Kazaa came along the consumers went there instead of going to the local music store, by the time the industry realised just how big this was they had only one option left to sue everything and everybody related to this P2P software. As a resulting pissing off there next generation customers and the ones they already had, and along the way giving themselves and P2P developers bad press.

As a knock on affect we see the labels only investing time and money and bands that they know will make money (yes the popular rubbish, usually based of Pachelbel's canon somewhere along the line)

I acknowledge the fact piracy is theft and I just think its too late for some people who are so used to just downloading music that its unlikely that even the Dell Marketing budget could change there minds. I also think DRM just locks you in the path of why buy it and have it locked down when I can download it for nothing.

As much as the labels may not be ripping us consumers off as much as we think, why do they need to get royalties from every iPod sold, this is greed and almost a stealth tax. There has to be better ways for the industry to still make money and let the cosumers get the media from wherever they like or at least get it for a good price, for example it is often cheaper for me to buy a CD then it is to buy from iTunes, how can this possibly work, it cost more to make a CD downloaded has no CD yet costs more (a sense a little greed here)

We then move on to how music is no distributed and listened to. Radio is taking a back seat, the associations wont license Podcasts, and only the popular blogs publish what people want to read and lets not even get into myspace. How do we discover really good new music?? Well there's a new section of my site (thats it check out the music pages when you've finished reading this) and then there is the IODA Alliance: http://www.iodalliance.com/ and the Podsafe music network http://music.podshow.com I also urge you to check out ReIgnition Records www.reignition.com

I will leave this post with a thought:

You and some of your mates are a band just starting out, you produce a CD and put your music online in the iTMS, napster etc. You find that your Album is more illegally downloaded than it is bought and you get no money for these illegal downloads. Would you be pissed off? I know i certainly would be.

Today is the day against DRM, yes that little thing iTunes that limits the music you bought, not because iTunes wants to control the market, but because the labels want to control the market.

Yes, thats right. The Labels. Why? may you ask well its simple, they were too late to the game napster and kazaa had been and gone by the time the labels saw the internet as a revenue stream and now the labels control and sue the next generation of consumers, tell me how this helps them make more money?