Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a technology supposedly aimed at protecting music from piracy, however most people who follow the news are already aware that it seems mainly to target the paying customers and leaves the pirates and free-downloader's unaffected. Well, it looks like it has seen another failure as it certainly did not stop the music retailer Virgin in France from allegedly breaking the DRM of a song made exclusively available to France Telecom and Orange to sell on its own website; of course re-infecting it with its own DRM instead!
Unfortunately, their technique did not turn out too successful as this ended resulting in the retailer being fined €600,000 for piracy, not to mention the publicity of this. They were found guilty by an industrial court for ignoring the song's exclusive deal with the two telecom providers and have been ordered to pay €250,000 to each telecom provider and a further €100,000 to Warner music. Apparently, the telecom providers both signed an exclusive €500,000 deal with Warner to make this Madonna single available to customers to purchase from its website or by mobile phone for one week in October. Thanks to heystoopid for letting us know about this news:
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The firm, owned by Lagardere, was fined for illegally downloading Madonna's Hung Up to resell on its own website. An industrial court found Virgin France unit Virginmega had ignored an exclusive deal reached by Warner Music France with France Telecom and Orange. Under the ruling, Virginmega was told to pay 250,000 euros to each telecom firm and 100,000 euros to Warner. Warner welcomed the decision, saying it had succeeded in protecting its rights and those of its artists. |
If Warner music did actually obtain the song from the Telecom provider's service to re-encode into its own format, it makes me wonder how many songs they and other music download service providers have obtained from other music download services providers as a way of saving that time that would be spent ripping music form CDs to build their large libraries.
heystoopid added: Oh well, even the fellow members of RIAA in crowd, are it seems guilty of piracy, where will it all end! , and it seems the majors, whilst signing up exclusive distribution deals of popular downloadable music, does not amuse the individual major labels retail arms, as it eliminates another potential slice of the profits, in this age of the ever diminishing and falling sales of regular audio cd's! Such is life, as Ned kelly would say!
Source: BBC News - Business
