Tony sez, "This week, Deutsche Grammophon, the classical music recording giant that's owned by Universal Music Group, launched its own DRM-free online music store. Peter, of the most excellent createdigitalmusic.com, interviewed Jonathan Gruber, VP New Media, Classics & Jazz, Universal Music Group International about the launch."

# The store is truly international: No, really international. Not the US and Canada international. The store will sell to 42 countries, and will extend to Southeast Asia including China, India, Latin America, South Africa, and Central and Eastern Europe including Russia. Two words: 'bout time. # There's real variety: In a genre badly abandoned by an entire industry recently — long before Napster, in fact — DG has put up a serious catalog. And in a big change, instead of publishing a subset of their current catalog, they've actually re-released "out-of-print" albums. Lest you think I'm shilling for UMG, they've released a couple of my personal faves I only had access to on vinyl, and made contemporary music far more accessible.

The terms and conditions are kind of a mess here. On the one hand, the terms say (i) that this is a purchase, not a mere license, so the file becomes your property and (iii) that you're basically only expected to obey copyright law, not a bunch of made-up rules that Universal has imposed on you as a condition of selling you the music.

But on the other hand, you "agree" (iii, iv) that this is only for personal use without any right to redistribute (sell, loan, give away) the files, which are all rights that you get under copyright.

Link

(Thanks, Tony!)