Music DRM - Where are we now... UPDATED

Coldplay's new CD is loaded with DRM rules.

The CD has been manufactured for usage in regular CD players, but might not play in the following players:

• Some CD players that have the capability of burning into an MP3 (such as portable players or car stereos)
• Some CD players that posses CD-R/RW functions.
• Blah, Blah, Blah.

Just look at the insert and you will quickly figure out that your freshly paid for CD will not play anything else a Generation 1 CD Player that has no other functions. Thank god for all these CD standards and new functions...right? Now we can't even listen to our music - which we just paid for.

Just so everyone knows, this huge list of stuff has done ZERO to stop internet trading. In this case, I saw the whole albums on BitTorrent sites almost 3 or 4 weeks before the CD was even released to stores.

So people can get it now or wait, pay and not be able to play it on their iPod, in their car or in their computer...umm...choices. =)

However in other more positive news, the EFF has sent an open letter to EMI records. In the letter published Wed, EFF urges EMI Music to publicly declare that it will not take legal action against computer security researchers who study copy-protected CDs released by record labels owned by EMI.

Basically the EFF believes that fans deserve to know whether EMI's copy-protected CDs are exposing their computers to security risks. After Sony attempted to sweep the whole XCP DRM rootkit story under the bed sheets, this sounds like a damn good idea - IMHO.

In late December, Sony BMG agreed settle to the class action over its XCP DRM rootkit. Mark Russinovich has a great blog about it as well.

One of the funny points in the agreement is that Sony BMG must provide the music on the CDs as unprotected MP3 files. Which is exactly the XCP DRM was created to stop. Ironic.

UPDATE - Paul Ferguson pointed me to a very interesting development in Sweden. A groups of students at the Viktoria Institude in Gothenburg has worked out a system of P2P music listening and sharing that runs on WiFi-enabled PDAs and allows users to actively recommend songs by pushing music to other users in the proximity. Wow.