Amazon 'Thrilled' With Sales Of DRM-Free Music Downloads

[admin]

Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) said Tuesday it was " thrilled" with the early sales of DRM-free digital music tracks.

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"Everybody loves the DRM free format, so selling MP3s is being very successful for us," said CEO Jeff Bezos said in an analyst call following the company's third-quarter earnings report.

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200710231846DOWJONESDJONLINE000816_FORTUNE5.htm

[src2206]

So as every one is saying..DRM is on its way to grave.

[admin]

It's a balancing act between the risk of unprotected music being shared, and DRM causing consumers to switch off buying music altogether. The thing is, copying and sharing music is easy with or without DRM (even if the DRM hasn't been cracked, you can rip it from unprotected CDs, or do a "what-you-listen" recording of it), so the only function DRM serves is to annoy consumers.

The same with DVDs to an extent, although sharing DVD quality movies online is too much trouble for a lot of people who don't have fast connections or big bandwidth allowances. If studios want to eradicate illegal online sharing, they have to offer alternatives, not to use draconian measures to stop the sharing.

Sharing Blu-ray/HD DVD movies is all but impossible right now (25 GB downloads per movie? And then another $10 for the blank media to put it on? No thanks), so there's some natural protection there and there's no need for it to even have DRM protection until sometime in the future where downloading 25 GB becomes something you do several times a week.

[Chewy]

the studios should start marketing H264 video online

just got back from a trip into the future and saw the "writting on the wall"

of course history always repeats itself and I am sure the video business will repeat the mistakes of the audio business

anyone remember that tech conference "long ago and far away" when the geeks warned the media industry that the internet would roll right over them if they didn't plan ahead

I think Gates and Job were the only ones with a clue, of course they made their millions listening to geeks and taking them seriously, I guess being a geek helped

[drfsupercenter]

All they have to do is make movies like $5 to permanently download. Then people might use that instead of the free rips.

And if they made DVDs like $5 as well, I'm sure it would stop people from renting and copying, as it's almost $5 to rent a new movie at Blockbuster!

[src2206]

Yup, I agree with drfsupercenter

To make very high profits, these corporations are basically loosing money. They should opt for "volume" mode to get profit. Lower the price, lowers the piracy.

[drfsupercenter]

And they basically have a monopoly. If you want a movie, you have to buy it from them.

And that's where the middlemen come in. Some brave soul pays too much for a movie, rips it and shares it with his friends. Everyone there's happy except the company and the person who had to pay too much for the movie.

Say that DVD cost $15 and he makes two copies. The company gets $15 and three people get the movie.
Say they make the DVD $5. His friends decide that it's cheap enough to buy their own, and the company makes $15, while three people get the movie.

So it might not make much difference after all...

Except that one scenario is legal, and one isn't...

[src2206]

And in my opinion this question of legality is also not that clear, its pretty murky; and obviously relative. A classical analogy can be drawn with "sharing books". I believe we all book lovers do it, swapping or borrowing books from friends or relatives. The problem lies in when we make copies. Still, I do not think that book/ publishing business suffered for that. Another thing I remember is a reference to a verdict of US Court, where court clearly pointed out that it is not sharing but the motive behind the sharing will decide whether it is piracy or not.

The greediness of these monopolistic corporations are basically starting their downfall. Today they will stop one, another will sprang out next day. A few can not decide what is right or wrong, it is the will of the majority that decides. Though I do not support exchanging/ sharing on the basis of monetary transaction, that is obviously illegal. And this can easily be stopped by lowering the sky high prices.

[admin]

Studios should make deals with ISPs to offer unlimited downloads (no bandwidth limits), downloads done through a P2P system. Then, offer DivX quality (1 or 2 CDs) movie downloads for around $3 - 5 or some kind of "all you can eat" plan for a set amount each month.

This new distribution method can become an alternative to purchasing DVDs, for when you really don't care too much about the picture/sound quality or extra features and you just basically want to watch the movie. No DRM of course.

With this system, I doubt most people would bother with downloading illegal DVD-rips, and the people who buy DVD/BD/HD DVDs will probably still buy them for the superior quality and content. ISPs can also make back some of the money lost to excessive bandwidth usage while downloading pirated stuff. Everybody wins!

The biggest physical hurdle to this might actually be on the ISP side, since bandwidth and network congestion become issues when millions of people are downloading (although I guess since they are moving away from illegal P2P downloads, not much *additional* bandwidth is actually used). Also, making these files playable easily on standalones might be a problem - using a standard format like MPEG-4 ASP (DivX/XviD) might help, or if they provide one click tools to convert and burn the downloaded file to DVD.

The biggest psychological hurdle is the studios unsure about these new distribution methods, and feeling that it will cut into their existing distributions methods (ie. optical discs) and the profit it generates.