Puretracks President, Alistair Mitchell, admitted that the big four record companies, Universal, SonyBMG, EMI and Warner, are all still committed to including digital locks on music downloads. EMI had been in negotiations with several retailers about selling DRM-free downloads, but broke off the tracks presumably over failing to agree on an upfront fee that retailers would have to pay.
Some industry insiders do acknowledge that DRM stances are changing rapidly however. "The industry is starting to wake up to the realization that you can't treat your fans like criminals from the get-go," said Andrew Cash, head of the Canadian Music Creators Coalition. "When you do that you're just not going to keep them. This is sort of a wide-open field - we need to get into some serious discussions about how to monetize the free peer-to-peer networks that are out there so that people do get paid."
As an example he suggested small additional fees on Internet and phone services. The major record companies insist that DRM is necessary to control unauthorized copying and proper compensation or articles. However, as Apple CEO Steve Jobs pointed out, it's pointless adding DRM to digital downloads when you sell unprotected CDs, which are the main source of MP3 files on P2P networks by far.
Source:
Sympatico / MSN
Written by: James Delahunty @ 26 Feb 2007 6:57
