Slashdot Mirror

It was one thing when it came to buying digital music. You could spend $1 to get the song that you wanted, rather than paying $25 to get a CD with the song that you wanted. That's a big enough price difference to make it worthwhile. But with e-books, it's just stupid to spend $15 on a e-book, while the actual book is only $17.

But you're merely haggling over price, as the old joke goes. I don't think digital handcuffs become acceptable at any price because I don't want to be taken advantage of. The physical book confers rights of ownership DRM is designed to take away regardless of how little one pays for the DRM-riddled alternative. As George Hoteling saw first hand years ago, one might not have right of first sale anymore. Even ostensible advantages one might imagine come nearly free in digital format aren't necessarily there like they should be as Wil Wheaton saw when he updated his iPod software with Apple software and lost all of his tracks only to learn Apple would restore them in what Wheaton called a "one-time only do-over to replace all of your purchased music, free of charge". Magnatune.com, on the other hand, lets you restore purchased tracks as many time as you want, share tracks with others, and Magnatune always sold its wares DRM-free. Inexpensive digital media doesn't become more attractive with restrictions management.

Can I sell it?

maybe, it was quite a pain for this guy and it unlikely to be better for others

If Steam goes down, can I still play?

only if you trust those who end up with the steam domain name, and the people who end up with the company, and the contracts on which agreements were made, and so on... to release a hack

I concur. And it's even worse than you describe. As I understand it, not all iTunes is DRM-free. Some tracks that Apple distributes still have DRM and there are plenty of other reasons to reject doing business with Apple including:

• the presence of DRM in their other products,
• funding the large corporate labels means helping the RIAA further attack the public, not getting as many restores of lost songs as you need
• not get in the way of your first-sale rights
• and not getting your music under a license that allows sharing even when you pay for the tracks

I'd rather reward distributors that treat me well, like Magnatune.com which never had DRM (and therefore had no two-faced explanation about how they'd like to get away from DRM). Magnatune lets me play and share all tracks from their catalog (they're all under the CC By-NC-SA 1.0 license and I don't have to buy anything to get copies of tracks under this license). Magnatune doesn't treat their artists differently by letting them buy better promotion on Magnatune's website. Magnatune earns my lifetime subscription fee. Apple earns the outrage of my non-technical friends who bought various Apple products and later discovered the lock-in, proprietary, and expensive loss of their rights.

TFA butchered the old line "good, fast and cheap: pick any two". In this context, 'fast' relates to speed of product delivery not the product itself.

E.g.,
You can have it tomorrow, cheaply, and it will suck.
You can have it tomorrow, costly, and it will be good.
You can wait a year, and it will be good and cheap.

Lossless would be more useful in the future—I might want to archive the recordings in a format I know I'll be able to play/transcode to something else later on (FLAC is ideal for this).

As for Apple's new offering, I wouldn't pay 3x for a difference that I personally would only maybe be able to detect in a back-to-back comparison that will never happen.

You're not just paying more for something you might not hear, you're also paying more for embedding personal data in the track. According to ArsTechnica Apple embeds customer information in the DRM-free tracks too. Customers didn't get that when they bought wax cylinders, records, or tapes, nor do customers get that when they buy CDs. Customers can easily resell all of the older media without divulging personal information (theirs or anyone else's). I doubt most people leveraging their first-sale right by selling their iTunes tracks want to distribute anyone's personal information along with it. But maybe Apple has this covered: as George Hotelling learned, it's harder to sell one's iTunes tracks than it needs to be.

And now it appears that the new iTunes version will not let you "convert the music you've bought -- even "DRM-free" songs sold at a 30 percent premium -- into MP3s that will play on your iPod" when you rip the CD with iTunes. I believe most MacOS X users manage their audio tracks exclusively with iTunes from ripping and uploading to a portable digital audio device, to searching and playback. I could do the same thing with Rhythmbox on a free software OS (minus the digital restrictions management and personal data embedding, of course) if I weren't so finicky about processing the ripped WAV file with other programs before I encode with FLAC.

• Songs can only be streamed to a subnet. Prior to 4.0.1, they could be streamed anywhere. The streaming functionality was further restricted in 4.7.1 to five computers in a 24-hour period, instead of five at a time.
• Playlists can only be burned seven times, and switching the order of the playlist doesn't reset the counter. Prior to 4.5, playlists could be burned ten times.
• A variety of third-party programs have been intentionally broken. Some stripped the DRM; others were more benign, such as a program that allowed DRM-protected files to be copied back to a computer, and a system that attached FairPlay DRM in a way designed to make a competing music service compatible with the iPod.

Apple didn't have a choice.
No, Apple did have a choice. They could have provided the music without restrictions. That's blindingly obvious. The fact that it's commercially viable doesn't make it ethical, or the right thing to do. If Apple had really wanted a long term situation where they could've profited, they would have worked with artists.

Apple didn't change the "rules" about how you use your music.
You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. They did; see here; Features lost in iTunes upgrades

Now if you buy DRM'd music from Apple's online store then there are some rules in place, but they are among the must user friendly out there.
They can be user friendly; but they're still wrong. I could give a guillotine a grapical point-and-click interface, but it'd still be a terrible thing.

There is a limit to the number of times you can burn a play list that contains DRM's music. I believe that limit is 10, but if you need to burn more than that the solution is pretty easy. Use another program to burn additional copies of the CD.
The limit is 7. You're probably confused because this is one of the rules about how you use your music that changed.

"A company acting in it's own self interest so it can turn a profit? Blasphemy!"
Again, just because an action is legally possible, does not make it ethical.

I know, let's do away with all private and public companies and let the central government plan everything to do away with this evil notion known as "profits".
You know, calling Free and Open Source Software communist is normally something only indulged in by Steve Ballmer. Having Freedom to use your possesions in any way you wish is an idea that has little in common with the many applications of Communism. It isn't even a particularly prominent feature of theoretical Marxism. It's a pretty childish insult, and it's one I haven't seen in a long time.

Result: somewhere between difficult and impossible. The current systems literally have no provision for ownership of a file to pass from one account to another.

See e.g. impractical.

I don't want to give people access to my accounts after I pass away, I want to pass on the legally purchased files that I accumulated. Isn't it a major problem that this currently isn't supported by DRM systems?

I thought about how to jump start IPv6 a while ago and wrote How the Internet is broken, how to fix it, and why that's not going to happen. I figured I'd link to it again because it got a lot of good feedback last time I posted it.

The basic idea is to create islands of IPv6 by having consumer routers tunnel IPv6 over IPv4. This would prime the pump for IPv6 applications, which would create demand for IPv6 ISPs.

It turns out Microsoft came up with something similar, so now I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with my approach :)

After reading this one and all the comments, I have to agree on my original recommendation... if you are buying stuff from iTMS I guess you'd have to accept that it's not an investment (unless the system changes) and go back to buying CDs. :-D Thanks for taking the time for intelligent discussion.

Thanks for the tip, I actually heard one or two things about that :)

Thanks for the tip, I actually heard one or two things about that :)

I posted How the Internet is broken, how to fix it, and why that's not going to happen, a rant about IPv6 adoption, to my personal site.

Basic idea - include IPv6 over IPv4 tunneling software in Linksys routers. This would allow people to run IPv6 networks in their houses and talk to IPv6 networks elsewhere. This would fix a lot of problems that NAT introduces, and would sidestep the wait for IPv6 ISPs. It would also provide enough of a user base to encourage application developers to include IPv6 support.

Of course, this would kill Linksys' NAT router sales, so they have no incentive to do so, but I like to think it's a good idea.

I think once you purchase your song you should be able to listen to it at any time anywhere.

The way I look at it is that hymn does not modify the song -- only the container. As I said, using hymn to facilitate copyright infringement by giving away the music is wrong. (In fact the whole point of leaving the AppleID in the file -- the very thing, ironically, that Apple leveraged to break hymn with iTunes 4.6 -- was to discourage that sort of thing.) As for sampling or (re-)selling, that's a whole other discussion altogether -- one involving the interrelated issues of fair use/derivative works/commentary/criticism for sampling, and stuff like this for selling.

-HJ

There's a good page on stopping comment spam here.

this fellow attempted the experiment.

Originally posted at http://george.hotelling.net/90percent/linkage/pr0n _leads_the_way.php:

I found a pretty insightful rant (safe for work) copied from the business guy at the altporn site Suicide Girls. I wish the RIAA would start tracking how people hear about the albums that they buy, so that they could stop freaking out.

Porn has a long history of figuring out how to use new media to their advantage. Perhaps because porn is driven by our basest instinct we understand it on far deeper levels than widget building, and can apply that understanding to things that we don't fully comprehend intellectually. Maybe it's just because there's such intense competition in the industry that forces companies to innovate. I'm sure there's a "free hand of the market" joke in there, but I'll be damned if I can find it.

The VCR was largely decried by the MPAA because they saw it as cutting into their profits. When the VCR was still new, MPAA president Jack Valenti said the VCR is [to the movie industry]...as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone. (which of course means that he wasn't opposed to the VCR). A driver of early VCR purchases was being able to watch porn movies without having to go to theaters filled with creepier people than you. Fast forward 20 years and that Boston strangler makes up a huge portion of movie studio profits.

While I'm skeptical that porn can drive any technology - who really needs porn on their cellphone at blazing speeds - the porn industry typically ahead of the curve. Let's hope the RIAA realizes this and stops suing 12 year old girls.

Ah the good old question of the right of first sale. I found a copy of that story here.

So what else can be done about it? I'm surprised no one has mentioned Bayesian filtering of comments. Like most people who've heard of it, I first found out about Bayesian filtering from A Plan for Spam, and how it can identify spam. Since then virtually every spam blocking system has started using Bayesian techniques for at least some part of identification.

I found this: (maybe redundant, I did not check)

[Update 09-04-2003 2:52 PM]:
Dear George Hotelling (me@mydomain.tld)

**PLEASE READ THIS IMPORTANT EMAIL REGARDING YOUR LISTING(S)**
We would like to let you know that we removed your listing(s):

2555673237 Double Dutch Bus by Devin Vasquez

for violating our Downloadable Media Policy. Please read our Downloadable Media Policy here:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/downloadable.h tml

We have credited any associated fees to your account. We have also notified the bidders that the listing(s) was removed, and that they are not obligated to complete the transaction.

If you relist this item, or any other item that violates eBay policy, your account could be suspended.

If you believe your listing was removed in error, please let us know by replying
to this email with supporting information.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Respectfully,

Customer Support (Trust and Safety Department)
Ebay Inc.

===========
It's still going on with more information there

in his auction he states he will not transfer the thing by means which don't comply whith the Ebay guidelines (in this case over the internet). It's added as an update but that doesn't make it less valid.

From the auctioneer's site:

[Update 09-04-2003 3:02 PM]:
My GPG signed response:
I do not believe that my auction violates the downloadable media policy, I posted in my auction that I would not be violating it. I specifically ammended [forgot to run ispell] the auction to state that the buyer would not receive the item in question over the Internet.

Please reinstate my auction ASAP.

George Hotelling

[Update 09-04-2003 2:52 PM]:
Dear George Hotelling (me@mydomain.tld)

**PLEASE READ THIS IMPORTANT EMAIL REGARDING YOUR LISTING(S)**
We would like to let you know that we removed your listing(s):

2555673237 Double Dutch Bus by Devin Vasquez

for violating our Downloadable Media Policy. Please read our Downloadable Media Policy here:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/downloadable .h tml

We have credited any associated fees to your account. We have also notified the bidders that the listing(s) was removed, and that they are not obligated to complete the transaction.

If you relist this item, or any other item that violates eBay policy, your account could be suspended.

If you believe your listing was removed in error, please let us know by replying
to this email with supporting information.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Respectfully,

Customer Support (Trust and Safety Department)
Ebay Inc.

You can see the email from eBay to George Hotelling here, at his site as well as his reply.

I wonder whether eBay was pressured, or ???