Entering the DRM-Free Zone: An Intellectual Property and Antitrust Analysis of the Online Music Industry.
Monika Roth · FLASH - Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship & History (Fordham University) · 2007
Recently, EMI, the world's third largest recording company, and part of the "Big Four" record labels that own and control almost all of the music available to American consumers, broke with industry practice and announced that it would no longer sell songs with built-in copy restrictions.This move followed a public request by Steve Jobs, Chief Executive Officer of Apple, for recording companies to allow the sale of music online without antipiracy software, proclaiming that it would be the "best alternative for consumers." 1 Up until this point, all the major music companies have been selling all digital songs with copy restrictions.Starting in May 2007, EMI's music began to be sold through Apple's iTunes and other online music stores at the cost of thirty cents extra per song ($1.29 per song rather than 99 cents).Eric Nicoli, EMI's chief executive was quoted saying: "It was clear what we had to do because we hold the customer at the center A PDF version of this article is available online at http