[via Boing Boing] Canadian music publishers have attempted to infiltrate a proposal to the Canadian Copyright Board with a clause that would necessitate DRM for online music services. The specific language is "an online music service shall use all technical and other means available to it to ensure that reproductions made by a user are exclusively for that user'''s private use." It's not clear what such language would amount to in prosecutable terms, but the door certainly seems open for compulsory DRM. Where that leaves companies like eMusic who eschew such schemes would remain to be seen. It's a sad day when we have to look to France to see a country questioning DRM, and look North only to see it may be become a government mandate. We can only hope those contrarian Qubecois can take up the mantle against such schemes.
I have an iPod, I have iTunes... and of 2645 songs in my library, fewer than 15 of them have DRM. And I bought those knowing full well that they contained the DRM. I had a choice. If I don't like the DRM, I won't buy the media that contains it. In the meantime, I will enjoy listening to tracks on my (almost) DRM free Video iPod.
October 11, 2006 at 10:22 a.m.
Eric Solomon
Well, the problem isn't so much informed folks such as yourself, the problem is people who don't even known what the letters DRM stand for ... people who have an iTunes habit and then think about how Creative has a nice flash player, only to learn they can't transfer their iTunes tracks to it. There's no open DRM standard, so it's inherently doomed to restrict consumer choice (PlaysForSure was a stab at a standard, but even that's getting ditched for the Zune service).
October 11, 2006 at 11:15 a.m.
Justin Sheppard
If there's anything us Quebecers can do, it's bitch. I don't see this going anywhere in a country where the courts looked the other way on file sharing in the first place.
October 11, 2006 at 11:34 a.m.
Batfish
the new site http://www.anthologyrecordings.com has no DRM either. that is the way it should be, having mandatory DRM would be a huge step backward. there was no DRM scheme in any past formats (CDS, tapes, 8track, records etc) it may have been a pain to copy but not impossible or illegal. Good luck to eMusic and Anthology Recordings, they have it right.
I remember when I thought Canada was cool.