DRM free music news stories on Newser

Audio Books Lose Copy Protection

Laila Weir — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 12:02:59 CST

Some major book publishers are planning to remove anticopying protections from digital audio books, allowing customers who download them to transfer the files between their computers and portable players. The world’s biggest publisher, Random House, will offer all its audio books as unrestricted MP3s this month, reports the New York...

Watermarking Sets Music Biz Up to Fail Again

Jonas Oransky — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 13:30:00 CST

Digital rights management is dying, but Ken Fisher writes in Ars Technica that the music industry is “barking up the wrong tree” if it turns to watermarks instead. The technology—which encodes owners' info into tunes—isn’t a practical copyright infringement fix or good from a privacy standpoint. Watermarking isn’t...

Napster Moves to MP3-Only Format

Laila Weir — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:30:00 CST

Bad news for digital music copyright advocates: Napster plans to sell music downloads as MP3s and stop selling DRM-protected songs, the digital music retailer said today. Digital rights management blocks consumers from illegally sharing music but is unpopular with users because DRM-protected songs will often only play on certain players...

Sony BMG Will Bail on DRM

Sam Biddle — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 13:20:00 CST

Sony BMG will begin offering at least part of its music catalogue online without restrictive digital rights management mechanisms, Business Week reports. The decision comes after the other three major labels—Warner, EMI, and Universal—decided to ditch DRM in 2007, challenging Apple's 80% share of the legal music downloads...

Amazon Gets Funky With Warner Music

Kevin Spak — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 14:21:55 CST

Amazon’s burgeoning mp3 service landed another big fish today, adding Warner Music’s catalog to its online store. The Amazon shop aims to compete with Apple’s iTunes, selling songs for 89 cents as opposed to Apple’s 99 cents and without digital rights management software that makes sharing songs difficult and limits...

New iTunes Offerings Raise Privacy Worries

Sam Gale Rosen — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 11:23:28 CDT

Apple's announcement that iTunes would make DRM-free music available omitted a significant detail: The personal information embedded in regular tracks is also in the non-privacy-protected tunes. That raises privacy concerns, the AP reports, including the possibility that the unencrypted information might make it easier for music companies to crack down...