[Web4lib] Light at the end of the DRM tunnel?

[Andrew Hankinson]

Hi John,

AAC is an open standard, and in fact is less encumbered by patents  
and of higher quality than MP3.  Anyone can add AAC playback to their  
devices, and many companies have already. (Even the Zune plays AAC  
files!)

It is built and supported by the MPEG group, and is recognized by the  
ISO, so you may think of AAC (or M4A, as it is also known) as a  
successor to MP3.

The proprietary part of AAC from Apple was the Fairplay DRM, which,  
as of today, is no longer an issue for music from EMI. (and hopefully  
other labels will follow soon.) For more information, you can  
consult: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding, and in  
particular the part on "Promoting Aspects."

See, it's not a bad deal after all!

Andrew

On 2-Apr-07, at 6:00 PM, John Fink wrote:

> DRM or no, it's still AAC, so it's still of limited use.  It's just  
> about as bad as full DRM if the distribution format is proprietary.
>
> jf
>
> On 4/2/07, Andrew Hankinson <andrew.hankinson at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> Just saw this and thought I would pass it along:
>
> Apple Unveils Higher Quality DRM-Free Music on the iTunes Store
> http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/04/02itunes.html
>
> (Don't mind the marketing speak...)
> EMI's the first major label to offer DRM-Free music. Hopefully this
> is the first step towards a DRM-free world.
>
> Andrew
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