Someone gets it (at last)

[andrewducker]

Warp records, home of Aphex Twin, are selling their music online.

In MP3 format.

Without protection built in.

So if you want to pay them for their music and then listen to it on any MP3 player you like, you now can.

More here

Comments

[whiterabbitt.livejournal.com]

I have always been angered by people touting iTunes' "most liberal music license on the net." The reality is that regular CD's have absolutely no copy protection. That's a liberal license. You buy the CD and then do whatever the hell you want with it, except make money. And nobody had a problem with the principle until they saw that they could be making more money.

Though there exist albums I'd rather own, I'll buy these instead.

[diffrentcolours]

So where's the Ogg Vorbis option?

[andrewducker]

It's in the "things not going to happen anywhere in the mainstream because only 0.1% of people care about them" section, along with FLAC and support for BeOS.

[alienspacebat.livejournal.com]

Note that they say on their website that iTunes has obvious security holes in the DRM and only a weak form of DRM was used intentionally to get the labels on board and probably allow the consumers to crack the protection.

Warp also point out the following hole in their own system, relating to taxing and billing

"If you are ordering from an IP address located in mainland Europe, prices will be displayed in the Euro equivalents. From the USA (and anywhere elese in the World) they will be displayed in US$, and the prices do not include any sales taxes so are considerably lower than their Sterling or Euro equivalent"

So its just a case of finding a free US proxy server and you price is significantly reduced. Warp will still get the same amount of your cash, just that 17.5% wont end up with the government. In a way, hinting this to uses is their own way of making music cheaper and not losing out.

I dont know what the legality of this is, but there is nothing illegal in using a proxy server, and nothing wrong with buying in dollars off the net. Paypal also happen to offer an excellent exchange rate at the moment of around 1.8