Thursday, October 29, 2009
Wal-Mart is selling music online without copy right protections!
According to the article " Wal-Mart to sell Music Online Without Copy Protections" by Mike Barris, Wal-Mart stores Inc. has begun selling some of its online music catalog without anticopying software, stepping up its competition with Apple Inc.'s iTunes store.
"Wal-Mart will sell songs without the software--known as digitial rights management, or DRM--through its walmart.com site for 94 cents a track, or $9.22 and album. "Wal-Mart will launch the service with songs from two major record labels, Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group and EMI Group PLC.
"The retailer said the new format lets customers play music on almost any device, including Apple's iPods and iPhones and Microsoft Corp.'s Zune portable media player. Wal-Mart will continue to offer its existing WMA-format music downloads, which cost 88 cents a track but cannot be played on iPods."DRM has been a big issue in the world of online music sales. Major record companies would normally have copyright protections attached, but recently they decided to offer parts of their catalogues without protection.
"Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs has contended that DRM software has been ineffective at solving digital piracy of music. That is in large part, he argued, because the vast majority of music is sold today on CDs, which generally don't contain copy protection, making them eaily sharable over the Internet through file-sharing technologies. "
