Nokia's music deal is duff
DESPITE THE FURORE over Nokia's 'Comes with Music' announcement yesterday, a close look at the terms of the free music deal reveal a rather less rosy picture than was originally thought.
If you missed the original news then here's the hype: in a tie up with Universal Music, Nokia will be offering a free music subscription package with some of its 2008 phones. That means that Nokia buyers will be able to grab as much music as they want for nothing - the cost of the subscription will be built into the phone package. The big news - that even after the year ends and the subscription expires, customers will be able to hang onto the music they've downloaded to continue playing.
But here's the bad news - the music will be encoded with Microsoft's now-defunct PlaysForSure DRM, encryption so aggravating that even the Vole itself has abandoned it. That means that there will be no ability to transfer the music to another portable device beyond a) an outdated MP3 player or b) another new Nokia phone paid-for on upgrade. No Ipod, no Zune, and no CD-burning either, natch.
We can certainly applaud Nokia for trying to move its devices and its business model forward, competing with Apple both in the music service arena and the music-playing phone arena. But Microsoft DRM just ain't the way to do it. ยต
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It does not matter what DRM scheme is imposed. People will either respect it or break it. Nokia and Universal have no control over what happens to that music, once it is released to users' phones.

As for Plays for Sure, there is already (gee, in late 2007, go figure!) a crack for it: FairUse4WM.

If you want to play your music only on your Nokia phone, you're certainly welcome to do so. Unless they disable bluetooth, or something equally drastic, those music files can be transferred and their DRM removed.

This is grade school stuff. I'd like to be able to upload mp3's to my phone, then send them in MMS form to other mobes. Also, I'd like to take a 30 second clip of and mp3, and convert it to ringtone.

I'm not sure how this goes in the UK, but in the US, such "experimenting" by mobile customers is highly discouraged.
The same music is sold on non-copy protected CDs. Does it make *any* sense to copy protect downloads?
I would never BUY DRM'd music, but if you are getting it for free what is the harm in it? So what if you can't transfer the music to another device? You have not lost anything, you've not spent money on that format instead of another? Seems to me like finally there is going to be a legal try-before-you-buy scheme for music!