A former digital music giant bites the dust
We received an email from Nokia yesterday informing us that it was shutting down the OD2 music download service. The name may not ring any bells, but at the dawn of legal music downloading, it was the biggest player in the market.
OD2, or On Demand Distribution, as it was first known, was one of the pioneers of digital music sales. It was set up ten years ago and by 2004 had partnered with big names such as MSN and HMV to run their download shops. It was never designed to be a big name - the idea was that each partner would provide the front end of the shop and OD2 would handle the sales and actual downloading.
Having been set up by former Genesis singer Peter Gabriel OD2 had something of a tortuous journey, running at a loss before being acquired by American firm Loudeye in 2004. Loudeye was then bought by Nokia two years later, and incorporated into Nokia's own online music shop.
Partly, what killed OD2's success in the UK was the fact that its shops were web-based and depended for their reliability on users' web browsers, but more of a problem was the advent of iTunes, which opened its music store in Europe in spring 2004, at the same time as OD2 was starting to make sales headway.
True, those who had portable music players that couldn't play protected AAC files were still using the service, but the appearance a couple of years ago of significant numbers of unprotected music files for sale (either through iTunes, pioneering projects such as Bleep or competitors such as 7digital or the late Wippit) finally did for the service.
So following the demise of Wippit last year it's time to say goodbye to another British pioneer in the field of music downloading.
Nokia is going to be concentrating on its own Nokia Music Store, which is linked to many of its new handsets. MSN, meanwhile, has shrugged off the change with an announcement that it's moving to an in-house distribution service for its MSN Music Store.
Sony forgets about fair use
Sony took the stand yesterday in a court case about copying music and claimed that making a backup of a bought music CD is piracy.
What confuses me is that spokesperson, the head of litigation for Sony BMG, also said that uploading bought music to an MP3 also constitued piracy. I'm confused because Sony sells quite a few MP3 players.
Reading the manual for the Sony NW-E013F MP3 player (direct link to PDF) reveals references to copying from CD on pages 71,93. The quick start guide for Sonic Stage also talks about importing music from CDs.
As the Inquirer points out, that's technically true in the UK but not really enforced. Not that it would be very hard to enforce. Sorry, it would due to the sheer volume of PCs that would be implicated.
DRM on its way?
Universal has become the second major record label to start selling its music online without any copy protection. Until now, most music bought online for download has come wrapped in something called Digital Rights Mechanism (DRM), which essentially stops it being copied.
Problem is, it also generally stops it being used on more than one portable player, and sometimes on more than one PC in a home. It also limits iPod users to tracks bought at the iTunes store, and users of other music players to tracks bought at stores using the Windows DRM.
Now, after EMI said it would sell unprotected downloads through iTunes, Universal is following suit, with a trial that will last until January at Amazon and other American download sites.
The music industry has long been the driving force behind DRM, since the days of illegal downloads on the old Napster music-sharing service (the same name and brand is now used by a legal service). The labels panicked and insisted that music sold online should have these clamps.
What's changed? It's not that the industry has finally started listening to the customers it's been abusing for so long. What's really changed is that the music industry is in a dire position - bloated and money-grabbing, the major labels are haemorrhaging money, and they have realised that one way to start pushing up the amount of downloads being sold is to give people the freedom to do what they like. It's a desparate move by an industry in a corner.
What's next? Apple to buy one of the record labels? You never know.
Microsoft loses ground in the DRM war (for now)
The backwards and forwards battle to keep protection on music took a turn against Microsoft with the news that the Digital Rights Management it produces has been cracked again.
Call my defeatist but I've always felt that complete protection against piracy is nigh on impossible (not that I agree with piracy, artists deserve to get paid), so I'm not overly surprised or disappointed. The balance is sure to swing the other way in a few days with Microsoft likely to release another update.
Sony attacks root kit company
Sony has sued the company it got to write the root kit that was used in an attempt to protect its CDs (and got the company into all sorts of trouble) for a whopping $12 million.
The summons accuses The Amergence Group Inc. of 'negligence, unfair business practices and breaching the terms of its license agreement by delivering software that "did not perform as warranted'.
The settlement that Sony came to with owners of the CDs cost a total of $5.75 million. Should the judge find against them in this case the total cost to their business is only going to go up.
Unsurprisingly, The Amergence Group said they would fight the allegations.
This could get interesting.
