Ugh!!

Wow, if you were putting anything off until Hell froze over, well you might need to clear up some time on you daytimer. Hell hath frozen over because a major record label, EMI, has agreed to start putting tracks into the iTunes music library, sans Digital Rights Management.

This is great new. It shows that there may be a thawing in the thinking of major labels and how they market their product online. But, I’m afraid that may be a bit premature. I am adopting a wait and see attitude when it comes to labels going “unprotected”.

The tech community has been crying foul over DRM from the very get go. DRM does not protect content from pirates. DRM breaks content for upstanding customers. DRM in effect harms customers, who incidentally paid for the content, while doing nothing to stop the pirates who are the real problem.

I know there is going to be some illegal sharing, but if I know that I can get a great version of the content quickly and easily from a known source, I will take that over the malware infested waters of the sharing sites.

One of the main reasons I haven’t purchased more from the iTunes Store is that I didn’t want crippled AAC files that would transfer to my other devices. I have no incentive to be a pirate of content. I don’t want to give up my cherished bandwidth so that others who didn’t pay for the content could profit from my purchase. I do want to be able to listen to my content on my XBOX. (Which, my home computer can’t see my XBOX because the new version of Windows Media Player is broken, but that is another blog entry.)

Hurray for EMI for at least testing the waters. This is a major step towards what I see as an uptick in revenues for you company. I know I will buy more tracks if they are more useful to me.