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Letter - DRM on DRM Radio: it's not what it seems...

from Paul Grierson: I am the Project Director for UBC's DMD service. I'd like to set a couple of things straight in the article you wrote if I may:

• Digital Radio Mondial isn't established on a commercial basis in the UK and may never obtain the groundswell DAB has achieved
• DMD cannot work on DRMondial for the time as it is does not carry sufficient data capacity or error correction capabilities. We are not launching on that platform as your article suggests (unless I've misread it!)
• Recording a digital audio stream straight onto SD Card has been around since the second generation of DAB receivers and will continue to be. In much the same way as you and I used to record the top 40 onto TDK's, this won't stop consumers making the effort to own a clean copy of their favourite tracks. Some of that effort may be illegal and substandard (stream-ripping/p2p) but a far greater proportion will be purchases. Ref: 2004/2005 saw UK downloaded music split 8% legal, 92% illegal;2005/2006 the split is 23% legal, 46% illegal, 31% mixed
• Our technology works by broadcasting locked (with windows DRM) music files and an information service in a separate data channel that is synchronised to the audio stream of the radio station, on the same multiplex. The music files consumers buy are not the ones heard on the radio
• The £1.25 price tag will also deliver a dual download version of the track to the users broadband account
• Songs bought on DMD can be ripped into iTunes for a sideload into iPods
• Virgin does already have a 3G music service available. It won't be available as you suggest on Lobster phones as they are only 2.5G devices.

Pascal Grierson