A DRM-Free World For Online Music
Saturday, February 10, 2007
via the Apple website addressing some “rubs” against Apple for having a
digital rights management (DRM) that restricts iTunes music downloads
to be played on only iPods.
In the letter Jobs describes how the DRM came to be through
restrictions from the larger music companies who were concerned about
users pirating music through the iTunes website. The DRM was made to
protect downloaded music from being copied freely across the internet
and in turn gain the approval of the music companies which would then
allow Apple to sell their music online.
Jobs also points out that Apple is not the only company with a DRM
that restricts downloaded music to a device. “Music purchased from
Microsoft’s Zune store will only play on Zune players; music purchased
from Sony’s Connect store will only play on Sony’s players; and music
purchased from Apple’s iTunes store will only play on iPods. This is
the current state of affairs in the industry…”. He states that the
agreement Apple was able to make is still unmatched by most digital
music services which allows the music to play on an unlimited number of
iPods and up to 5 computers....
Zune Phone Confirmed!
Friday, February 9, 2007
We don’t wanna say we told you so, but, ya know, we did. On Monday, Microsoft filed a mystery application with the FCC for an enigmatic wireless device that could be used to talk over the Internet. Sounds like a VoiP device, right?
Not really. The device is described as being used for “consumer broadband access and networking,” which doesn’t sound like vanilla VoIP to me. Microsoft goes on to say that the device would use OFDM as its communications protocol, not WiFi or Bluetooth. Well, why not? The standard OFDM (orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing) is a modulation scheme that is used widely in upcoming 4G standards of the future. But with wireless access gaining momentum, and the all-around arms race for bandwidth, 4G starts to make sense, in a crazy, crazy kind of way...
