Computerworld claims that Microsoft is going to start selling DRM-free music. This comes after, of course, Apple's recent announcment of a deal with EMI to do the same. Five years after we predicted it'd happen back at EMusic, it looks like our vision for DRM-free music is finally starting to come true.
What's most interesting about this, though, is the source. Microsoft has been a staunch champion of "Digital Rights Management" (a code-phrase for "copy protection" that the music industry popularized around the turn of the millennium), because they themselves are holders of lots of copyrights in the form of their software. You'd think that, being technologists, they'd understand that cryptography doesn't solve this problem. Unfortunately, they make the common mistake of confusing what they wish to be true with what is true.
Some have even gone so far as to suggest Microsoft's recent DRM "enhancements" to Vista have crippled that OS' potential success. I think such optimism about the fate of Vista (and, sadly, DRM) is unwarranted - I still recall Eric S. Raymond's confident prediction that XP was going to flop because the registry was too hard to manage or somesuch. It is interesting, though, that while Microsoft is no doubt incurring significant costs to build DRM so extensively into the operating system, they at the same time have music spokespeople saying things like "Consumers have made it clear that unprotected music is something they want." It's an interesting lesson in how the interests of different divisions of large companies can diverge (see also, Sony: music division vs. electronic division).
Obviously, it's nice to see the big music companies finally starting to come to their senses. I don't think the damage they've done to themselves is completely irreversible - though teaching a generation of college students that piracy is easy, painless and fun wasn't very wise. Like David Byrne (and, yes, it was very gratifying to hear him say his legal downloads are from "eMusic" because of this) I've stopped buying from iTunes because of the DRM hassle. I look forward to returning - iTunes is the client/server solution I wanted to build at EMusic, and the simple act of searching for and buying music is quite convenient, there, if there was no DRM pain to go with it.
It is probably too much to hope at the moment that Microsoft will learn the lesson on DRM end-to-end. But, for the first time in about seven years, I'm actually optimistic that big content-providers may be starting to learn their lesson. I'd love to see video game makers, DVD makers and general software vendors learn the lesson, next. However, I try not make the mistake of confusing my wishes with the truth.
Via Boing Boing