Interesting DRM Developments

Two stories piqued my interest in the category of fodder for my hypothetical book about online music.

First, Michael Robertson tried a slightly different variation on the same scheme that got his ass sued by Univeral Music when he was running MP3.com and, guess what? Warner smacked him down again.

The root of the issue is that Robertson's companies are making the digital reproductions of the songs. The law has consistently sided with the notion -- and the recent "virtual DVR" case bears this out as well -- that the end user is the only one who is authorized to do this in the absence of some other sort of agreement with the content owners.

Over on the more legal side of things, Coolfer flags some interesting goings-on at Amazon, tying their current interest in selling DRM-free MP3 files with their history of not jumping at the chance to sell more restrictive downloads. So while eMusic took the strategy of only selling content they could get as unsecured MP3s -- namely indie labels, Amazon just decided to wait the big labels out.

Could Amazon + EMI start to bring the market around? Too early to tell, obviously, but it's certainly one of the more encouraging things I've seen lately.