Wow! I didn’t realize Apple was going to be able to prevent people from holding a sound recorder up to a speaker!

What can’t they do? You know, other than keep people out of your iCloud…

the best thing for U2 and Bono to do with their music is shove it right up their chutneys!! who the hell has said their music is even worth pirating anyway??

well this will suck the freebie lovers -_-

So you invent a new music format that absolutely no current car stereo or most audio players can’t play… and what? You expect it to be a success?
And the whole multimedia experience will maybe attract a small niche of people who aren’t doing anything else while listening to music. It is progress on some small level so I welcome it, but it is by no means groundbreaking.
Sure there is Mac’s and PC’s that will be able to play this, but how the heck are you going to prevent people from recording the output channel? There are plenty of programs to do just that or just plain physical devices. Nobody needs to break the DRM.

Any tech that seeks to replace other tech has one simple hurdle to overcome – why would anyone want it? Generally X replaces Y because it’s either cheaper, more convenient, or better quality.

DVD? *Way* better than VHS in sharpness, convenience, size and handling, etc. CD? Far better than vinyl or cassette. MP3 – play anywhere on anything, no hassles. Digital photos? Far cheaper, faster, more convenient, fit more in a camera than film. Keurig or Tassimo – so much more convenient than paper filters and grounds, even if the coffee is more expensive… and so on.

So what’s going to replace our current music format? Can a new format be significantly cheaper than MP3? No, not unless music sellers are going to cut album prices to $5 or less. More convenient? It’s a file played on an electronic device -computer, iPod, phone – how do you change that? better quality? Heck, I can’t tell my 128bit MP3 from the 320bit. Think anything is going to improve on that? Most music is listened to in the car, or walking down the street – noise cancelling might be great, but the music file itself – won’t be noticeably different when competing with ambient noise.

the same can be said of video – unless someone has a better idea than the competing MP4, DIVX and similar standards, they aren’t going anywhere. DIVX beat MPG/MP2/VOB because it could crunch the file down by a half to a quarter; I doubt there’s much more you can squeeze it. Quality? You can already get 1080p. Price? Kind of irrelevant in video, it’s formatted to whatever the market wants, and if too badly overpriced, is competing against free.

the only advantage I can see of a new format is for the publishers, but they aren’t the ones making the buying decisions. The ones that fail to sell what the pubic wants will be the last to get profits.

I suspect this U2 pet project is just something Jobs then Cook nodded along with to get their trained monkeys onstage to go perform for the big events. It won’t go anywhere.

My best guess is that they plan to roll out special proprietary speakers that handle the DRM decryption instead of the usual software decryption. Moving the decryption from software to hardware is the only way I can think of to prevent trivial reproduction.
Of course, that still wouldn’t stop an ordinary microphone from recording the output. And some hacker somewhere would naturally want to take those special speakers apart to figure out how the DRM works, at which point you might as well have just flushed all those millions of development dollars down the toilet.
Finally, who would want to pay extra for “piracy-proof music” speakers, when you could just download the music off the internet and use the speakers you already have?

U-Who, preaching copyright maximalism makes me lose respect, and no longer want to give my support which includes paid ownership of works. U2 you may still be on my playlist but you are banned from my purchase list.