Hacker News Reader

Comment by dijit | Hacker News Reader

Sorry, I don't buy this at all.

iTunes library (at least for Books and Music) is DRM-free and has been from an early stage (though _did_ launch with DRM).

I've had great success in migrating my purchased items back and forth from linux with absolutely no issue. However now they're using streaming and I'm unable to easily "own" any music anymore... or at the very least it takes you off of the easy path.

View on HN

Apple wanted to launch iTunes as DRM-free but wasn't able to negotiate the licensing for it. The content providers were the ones that made the DRM a requirement.

Yes, and then Apple convinced them to go DRM free.

iTunes has been DRM free for more than a decade now.

Yes, I know that. I was just pointing out to the person claiming that Apple was the one that initiated DRM in iTunes that Apple never wanted it to begin with.

Ok, your comment left it ambiguous as to what state it ended up in.

Agreed. Can't edit it anymore, though. :(

Thanks for clarifying.

Yeah, apple was one of the first to go DRM free for music. That was a big deal and a bold move by apple.

Are iBooks DRM-Free now? That's exciting, do you know when that happened?

Right. At launch, leveraging ipod marketshare was key. After those same users got locked in to the app-store, the music library lock in became less important. So they started out by letting you pay extra money to break out of their walled garden. I'm pretty sure purchases made in the ipod era are still drm encumbered today.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com