Meglena Kuneva, EU Commissioner for Consumer Protection, has (rightly) spoken out against the iTunes-iPod tie-in. However, she also said that she would like a “cooling-off period” so that online music can be returned. Although un-DRM’d CDs can be returned, record labels aren’t keen to emulate this in the digital arena, and so a “cooling-off period” would no doubt rely on DRM to ensure that returned music could no longer be played. This leaves two opposing possibilities - either Apple licenses its DRM to others, meaning that all music is DRM’d but can be returned, or it sells digital music unprotected without the option of returning it. Surely the expansion of DRM would be worse for consumers than MP3s without a cooling-off period?

From Ars Technica, here.

Posted Tuesday, March 13th, 2007 @ 7:00 pm
Filed in business and productivity, copyright and drm, science and tech

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Further reading

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