Aram Sinnreich has posted his analysis of the iTunes/EMI deal on Truthdig:

Early this month, Apple and EMI made headlines when the two companies announced that consumers will finally be allowed to buy major-label music in a digital format that permits them to exercise their ‘fair use’ rights over the songs in their libraries.

This may very well be hailed from the vantage point of history as a crucial moment in the evolution of the digital music industry, and of the media industry in general. However, the details of the deal suggest that its implementation will fall short of the companies’ consumer-friendly rhetoric, and that we still have a long way to go before digital music can live up to its promise, both as a business and as an entertainment medium.

Let’s be clear about this: Digital rights management (DRM), the software padlock that record labels and online retailers typically use to ‘protect’ music files from ‘piracy,’ sucks. If you’ve ever tried to transfer legally purchased songs from your computer to your MP3 player, create backup copies of the albums you bought online or burn a compilation CD to celebrate a loved one’s birthday, you probably know this firsthand. These basic tasks–just a handful of the myriad cool and useful new applications that have convinced tens of millions of Americans to start listening to digital music–are either phenomenally difficult or downright impossible to accomplish when each song is crippled with DRM.

Aram Sinnreich has posted his analysis of the iTunes/EMI deal on Truthdig:
Early this month, Apple and EMI made headlines when the two companies announced that consumers will finally be allowed to buy major-label music in a digital format that permits them to exercise their ‘fair use’ rights over the songs in their libraries.
This may very [...]