>It's interesting to see the music industry keep moving forward and allowing this type of stuff to happen (and the itunes match/etc services). The other two big industries are so far behind.
The reason seems to be exactly what you pointed out - the music industry's got a 10 year head start on this because technology arrived sooner that grew the market and pretty much forced the labels' hands. Broadband, Napster, iPods, and the industry's ridiculous DRM responses to piracy (and the pain & suffering that came with it) led the labels to realize a common sense approach was the only thing that would save them.
The movie studios certainly still haven't learned this yet - I feel like we're at the point with movies that we were with music in the mid-2000s. Those were the dark days when there were a dozen different competing DRM standards for downloads, and the record labels were releasing CDs that were deliberately damaged so as to not be rippable (or worse, that covertly introduced rootkits that interfered with access to the CDROM drive).
The reason seems to be exactly what you pointed out - the music industry's got a 10 year head start on this because technology arrived sooner that grew the market and pretty much forced the labels' hands. Broadband, Napster, iPods, and the industry's ridiculous DRM responses to piracy (and the pain & suffering that came with it) led the labels to realize a common sense approach was the only thing that would save them.
The movie studios certainly still haven't learned this yet - I feel like we're at the point with movies that we were with music in the mid-2000s. Those were the dark days when there were a dozen different competing DRM standards for downloads, and the record labels were releasing CDs that were deliberately damaged so as to not be rippable (or worse, that covertly introduced rootkits that interfered with access to the CDROM drive).