Tag: DRM

RealNetworks, the company you love to hate, is back with a new product sure to capture the attention of Hollywood and its MPAA thugs. For $30, RealDVD plans to do what DVD Jon enabled years ago -- namely, making digital copies of your DVDs. Unlike Jon's illegal DRM stripping software, RealNetworks' approach lays on additional DRM allowing you to make a single copy, only, playable on the machine ...

If you woke up this morning worried about what Yahoo! is planning to do for its Music Store customers who are about to be left in the lurch with its DRM server shut-down, have no fear. Yahoo! has announced that it will offer customers coupons or refunds for those songs you bought. Basically, you'll get a coupon that you can use at RealNetworks Inc.'s Rhapsody download service. Their songs, of ...

In the past, Rhapsody has put all of its efforts behind an all-you-can-eat, subscription-based music service, which is great for the insatiable music enthusiast who never leaves his or her desktop, but bad for the always on-the-go iPod addict. Now, Rhapsody is preparing to launch a downloadable MP3 store so it can directly compete with iTunes and hopefully attract more customers with its new ...

You may think you're a fine upstanding citizen, but chances are if you own a computer, you're a law breaker. If you've ever burned a CD for a friend, downloaded music from a Peer-2-Peer service such as LimeWire, or used a Wi-Fi network other than your own, then it's possible you've engaged in criminal activity -- even placing a friendly wager online with a friend violates various state, local, ...

For many, the name Napster still evokes memories of the carefree early days of music downloading, when songs were free and illegal, but nobody seemed to mind. Those days, of course, didn't last long, with the service being effectively shut down by pressure from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It was later re-launched as a legal download service, but never quite regained the ...

Amazon recently moved into the number two online music retailer spot without much fanfare. Amazon's online MP3 store opened merely six months ago, and it appears to be gaining on the number one retailer -- Apple's iTunes Store, which commands 80% of online digital music sales. The trends towards moving away from music burdened with digital rights management (DRM) software created new ...

SanDisk yesterday launched Sansa Sessions, a music distribution effort that uses microSD cards, which are those tiny little pieces of plastic that fit into (and expand the storage capacity of) cell phones. As of this week's launch, the microSD cards contain DRM-free tracks from over 50 indie rock bands, including Nada Surf, Of Montreal, Ladytron and more. This music sampler comes for free with ...

The Recording Industry Association of America really, really wants to stop people from downloading illegal music. Over the years it has supported crippling copy protection that would leave your music files unplayable should you get a new computer, has stated that ripping your own CDs to your own MP3 player is illegal, and showed its commitment by hitting a single mother for a $220,000 fine for ...

We continue to be impressed at how quickly Amazon's amazonmp3 store has come in just a few months. What was a plucky little start-up recently became the first digital music vendor to offer copy protection-free tunes from all the major music labels, all in a format playable on nearly any digital music player in the world. The only thing holding it back it was geography, but that's set to change ...

Amazon.com has done it. In less than six months since its launch, the amazonmp3 service has gone from nothing to establishing a position as the only place on the web to legally download DRM-free music from every major American music studio. It was just a few weeks ago that Warner signed up, leaving Sony as the odd company out, something we predicted would change quickly. We didn't figure it'd ...

It sure looks like DRM, the record industry's digital music copy protection technology, is really dying. Wal-Mart is pushing record labels to ditch copy-protection from their tracks, Paul McCartney publicly hates the stuff, and even iTunes, which has sold more DRM-laden music than anyone else, is shifting away from protected tracks. Now Warner Music is joining in as well, finally selling tracks ...

DRM is hated by those who legitimately purchase music, and now Wal-Mart is jumping on the bandwagon. They have asked record labels that sell music through its online store to ditch the stuff. An abbreviation for Digital Rights Management, DRM is software created to restrict what you can do with music and movie downloads. It's the stuff that keeps you from copying music and movies from one computer ...

Today, Amazon.com quietly re-targeted its missiles to point them squarely at Apple. The Internet superstore has launched a public test version of amazonmp3, its new music download service that offers MP3s compatible with every digital media player on the planet. That means you can download tracks and listen to them with iTunes and iPod just as easily as you could with Windows Media Player and, ...

Wal-Mart is the latest store to jump into the DRM-free music sales game, offering the same digital-rights-management-free tracks from EMI and Universal that are sold through the iTunes Plus, Yahoo! Music Unlimited, and other online music stores. (DRM is a system of adding a small amount of data to an audio file, which puts draconian limitations on copying, burning, and playback of the material ...

Record labels looking to keep their property off of illegal file-sharing networks have begun experimenting with a technology called 'watermarking' as the successor to DRM, or digital right management. DRM is a system of adding a small amount of data to an audio file, which puts draconian limitations on copying, burning, and playback of the material. Customers dislike these restrictions and ...