Category: Digital Rights Management

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has posted a guide to the licence terms of major online music retailers. From their comparison, it appears that very few, if any, of the online stores confer proprietary rights in the music they purport to ‘sell’: in most cases, the vendor reserves the right to modify the terms of the… Read more →

Manufacturers of non-computer products are using rights management technology to restrict the supply of aftermarket services such as maintenance and consumables. The Senseo espresso machine is one such example; it utilises what its manufacturer calls ‘protected’ coffee pods that are only compatible with Philips’ own pod system – similar to the way DRM is used… Read more →

‘When Napster launched its new subscription Napster-To-Go service two weeks ago, they touted it as a low-cost way to access thousands of songs without having to buy them. For $14.95, customers can copy all the tracks they want from Napster’s catalog to digital music players. There’s even a 14-day free trial. Of course, when the… Read more →

Los Angeles-based Napster, now a legal music site, has a mere 270 000 subscribers and struggles to attract new users. In an attempt to differentiate itself from Apple’s offering, Napster will relaunch its online subscription service under a flat rate pricing model. Users will soon be able to download as much as they like from a… Read more →

Apple today announced that users have purchased some 250 million songs from their iTunes Music Store (‘iTMS’). Daily downloads are hovering around the 250 000 mark, totalling some $500m annually. (Incidentally, although the press release proudly points to the store being available in ‘more than 70 percent of the global music market’, it’s still not here… Read more →