The New York Times technology piece, Record Labels Contemplate Unrestricted Digital Music - New York Times, sounds a very promising note -- suggesting that we may finally see an end to the recording industry's intransigence in its hopeless war on downloading and file-sharing. I would predict that within a few years the large companies will be wondering (like the rest of us already are) what took them so long. I hesitate to be too optimistic about this, but again, it's just such a positive development that I have to take some small pleasure in the idea that common sense does, on occasion, prevail.
From the New York Times article:
Executives of several technology companies meeting here at Midem, the annual global trade fair for the music industry, said over the weekend that at least one of the four major record companies could move toward the sale of unrestricted digital files in the MP3 format within months.
This announcement follows on the heels of a similar announcement about a week ago that independent labels have banded together to form a licensing collective, Merlin, that will make unprotected mp3s available for download on MySpace.
Might be the year...
