The initial iTunes news came from French website ElectronLibre, claiming that Apple would offer DRM-free catalogs of Universal Music, SonyBMG Music and Warners on December 9th. The Frenchies posted that story back on December 3rd, AppleInsider chose to run with the rumor like Forrest Gump at 6:35 PM EST on December 8th. You know... just in case.
That one report by the big brains of Apple news set off a chain reaction of blogorrhea that created a shit storm of misinformation on several highly visible blogs. Delivering another ten pound bag of false hope to iTunes audio files just in time for Christmas. The big Apple scoop turned out to be a steaming pile of "fail" according to a detailed post by Greg Sandoval at CNET.
"Rumors coming out of Europe that claim Apple will begin offering unprotected music files from the three largest recording companies on Tuesday are bogus, according to my music-industry sources." Sandoval reported for CNET.
After the recycled DRM-free news was built up to a masterful crescendo, AppleInsider's Aidan Malley, closed his post with cautionary advice that readers should treat ElectronLibre's claims as "rumor". Advice that he himself chose to ignore while casting out a trolling line with a convincing 400 word hook attached. That's wicked lame broheim. Especially since the French iTunes fairytale had a ripe five day old aroma.
Being a failed hack writer willing to exploit any slightly newsworthy Apple story that has even the mildest smell of authenticity, makes me an expert witness in sniffing out a real polished turd. This rumor was exactly that. I chose to step around it myself and yet I still managed to get some smeared on the bottom of my house slippers. That's the rumor game fellas. Nobody gets away stink-free.
Old catalog Neil Young songs hardly makes an Apple press release that iTunes is going DRM-free. Brand new Kanye West on Universal is still not unprotected. So what good is a stealthy, unidentified, title-by-title switch over? Amazon has DRM-free today.
Here's the text to above link:
"As we reported it earlier this week, Apple started (yesterday) to change DRM-containing music tracks by their DRM-free versions. For example Neil Young albums are now available DRM-free, but the price did not change. Apple will keep moving the entire iTunes Store catalog to the DRM-free version; this will take some times, considering it holds millions of songs." Lionel - Hard Mac forum
Posted by: stew112 | December 10, 2008 at 08:15 AM
Perhaps you spoke too soon:
http://www.macsurfer.com/redir.php?u=374512
Posted by: L M | December 10, 2008 at 07:13 AM