Gateway to Ship PCs with Pre-Installed DRM Music Files

Captain Chad writes "News.com has an article about Gateway's decision to bundle Pressplay's music service with its PCs. Of interest is the fact that 2000 popular songs will come pre-installed, helping reduce download time for those of us with modems." I wonder how much Pressplay is paying for this privilege. All sorts of interesting legal wrinkles here: you're buying a computer which contains data that you cannot legally access.

Comments

Gateway...

[airrage]

Don't worry the gateway will soon break and the crisis will soon be over...

you can use the songs in spite of editor comment

[deft]

" including a 90-day free subscription to the service that contains 2,000 songs preloaded and available for streaming and downloading."

editor should have read the article.

also, my cable box comes with the ability to recieve all of the channels too, whats the legal implication there?

my car comes with the ability to do 150mph, but the chips lets me go to 120... whats the legal wrinkle there?

don't like it? don't buy it

[Pave Low]

simple as that. maybe if you slashdotters would put your money where your mouths are then you might be able to get the industries to change its ways. This one looks pretty easy to avoid, as you can buy PCs from any other vendor which doesn't contain these things.

But when it comes to movies, DVDs, CDs you people will bend over and take it up the ass and still scream blood murder? Gotta love the hypocrisy.

.

Re:don't like it? don't buy it

[Bob-o-Matic!]

In my first 4 years of buying CDs I accumulated about 500 total. In the last 4 years I have bought maybe 5 total, as gifts for others. So considering that 500 CDs @ $18.00 each = $9000.00. If there are more like me, I would say we are definitely not adding to the bottom line of the record industry.

Now, as for DVDs, I know the MPAA is evil... but I feel like there is $8.99 - $17.99+taxes worth of entertainment on a DVD. I look at a DVD and see the 2 hour product of at least 100 actors and production crew, whereas for about the same price I *might* get an hour of product from really 4-10 people, tops, on a CD.

Plus all new music is crap, anyways. Everyone should have taken a long break after Social Distortion's "Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell".
(only half-joking)

between two fats guys in a buffet line...

[Em Emalb]

"Entertainment companies, burned by piracy and file-sharing services like Napster, have been seeking more control over digital copies of movies, music and TV shows, while tech companies are putting out even more products that encourage customers to "rip" and "burn" entertainment software."

On the one hand, we got tech companies saying burn your music. Enjoy it, play it, sleep with it, whatever. On the other hand, we got the RIAA saying: HEY! Wait! You can't do that. You need to pay me for that.

In the middle is the customer going you know what? Screw you both. Make music. If I like it, I'll buy it. (--In most cases) Hey, PC makers, you make pcs. Don't worry about what I do with it, it ain't your concern.

All good .. until DRM is broken ...

[SuperDuG]

then you get 2000 songs with your gateway. Lets see ... average 15 songs a cd .... 2000 / 15 = 133 ... times $17.00 for the average CD ... $2267.00 free !!! ... and it's not your fault you did BUY the computer and that just came with your computer. Same thing goes for when you buy a box from an auction, to find it's full of gold, to the victor go the spoils.

Re:you can use the songs in spite of editor commen

[shepd]

>also, my cable box comes with the ability to recieve all of the channels too, whats the legal implication there?

The premium channels aren't pre-recorded on the box.

>my car comes with the ability to do 150mph, but the chips lets me go to 120... whats the legal wrinkle there?

The car company doesn't want to see you dead, perhaps?

So this is how it works:

[DeadSea]

1. You buy a computer.
2. It has an OS and software installed.
3. It also has a folder called "music".
4. You browse into that folder and you see see songs like "Britney's Latest.drm".
5. You say, "Boy I'd like to hear that!", so you open it.
6. They player comes up and says "You don't own this yet, I can't play it, would you like to buy it?"
7. Being cheap you open another player and try to play the file but you can't because the file is encrypted.
8. Frustrated, you go back and buy it.
9. The music player sends your payment info and downloads a decryption key.
10. The music now plays, but only on that machine with that player.
11. You caputer the digital out of your sound card, rip the song to mp3, send it to your portable, and put it on the internet.

Re:So this is how it works:

[cyt0plas]

> 4. You browse into that folder and you see see songs like "Britney's Latest.drm".
> 5. You say, "Boy I'd like to hear that!", so you open it.
> 6. They player comes up and says "You don't own this yet, I can't play it, would you like to buy it?"

7. You say "screw it", delete the file, fire up your favorite P2P application, download it in 30 seconds, and become yet another person sharing Britney's Latest.

No thanks, I'll just skip to #7.

Re:So this is how it works:

[fulldecent]

That's what they want! If you start accepting the DRM and use your hardware to pirate the music. Then DRM will have the argument that "the only thing allowing piracy is compromisable hardware". Then everyone will switch to "trusted" hardware, pending the support of the media industry, the software monopoly industry and the government-for-sale industry.

Re:So this is how it works:

[AftanGustur]

For the majority of people entries from 10 and onwards will be something like :

10.0 The music now plays, but only on that machine with that player.
10.1 The music now plays, but only on that machine with that player.
10.2 The music now plays, but only on that machine with that player.
11. The music doesn't play any more, you need to pay more ..

wait a minute

[nizcolas]

"The Pressplay deal is significantly different because we're pioneering a way to deliver digital music on the hard drive," said Brad Shaw, a senior vice president for Gateway.

I sort of remember something. A way I used to get digital content onto my machine...nap something or other...man that seems familiar.

Honestly, who do these people think they're fooling. Look at the selection of music, they're obviously targeting the audience most utilizing current p2p apps. Do you think most high school and college kids are going to give up their napster/kazaa/audio galaxy/etc for something they have to pay for?

So what?

[rebrane]

So what? My computer already has tons of data I can't access without illegally reverse-engineering files. My server at work is chock full of e-mail that I can't access without (probably) violating my cow orkers' rights. One might argue that the layout of my CPU is data stored inside my computer, but I sure can't have access to that.

Re:access

[Anonymous Coward]

we had a cromemco that did that with serial ports.. it had 32 serial (terminal) ports and you had to buy an "enable" disk for them... man many of us found what memory register to change to turn them all on. and contrary to what any of you say... it's not illegal to do what we did.. we bought the hardware, what it says in the EULA means jack and until people start realizing this and flipping the entire software industry the bird they will do the mob-boss business model.

me? I happily violate companies and peoples IP rights hourly... only no-talent wannabees whine about it.

The top songs

[I_am_Rambi]

Personally, I don't like alot of the mainstream music that is out today. So if I buy a *cough* gateway *cough* why would I want these music files? The top 2000 hits....Ummmmm I would rather not have that on my computer.

Can I rather have the top 2000 punches?

Re:well I am sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't companies realize that no matter what they do, somebody will crack it?

Why do you think the DMCA exists?
"sure, we know some smart bastard will crack it, but when he does we'll nail his ass to the wall."

Which songs?

[xchino]

Is there a list of the songs that come with it? Is it grouped by genre? There's alot of different tastes out there and I can easily see several people buying this FOR the music (non-tech ppl of course), just to find out that it doesn't have single song they like. 2,000 songs @ ~4 megs a piece = 8,000MB, or 8Gigs sacraficed to an unusuable data format. 8gigs over a modem certianly isn't a laughable amount over a short time span, but how many 56K 80+GB warez sites have you seen? I can't justify the loss of space/Saved bandwidth ratio especially when I won't want most of the music...
I think it would have been a better decision to slap 8Gigs of DRM'd Porn on the drive..

Re:And that IBM mainframe has 8 CPUs, but only 2 w

[91degrees]

Any problem with that concept?

Ummm.... actually... No.

IBM do not have a monopoly on their machines. If they do this, I'll ask Sun if they can supply am 8 processor Sparc for the same price as IBM's "2 processor" machine.

Obviously, if I think EMI are charing too much for a Robbie Williams CD, I can't ask Warner for a cheaper price.

Re:technicality

[k3v0]

i wonder if you have to sign a EULA just to purchase the computer

Re:well I am sure...

[N3WBI3]

Agreed the music industry need to realize you get more with honey than you do with vinigar. Instead of lobying for anti consumer laws they need to give me a reason to buy a cd (not give me a reason not to dl music).

I dont buy CD's and when they shut donw napster I stoped DLing them, guess what I dont buy any more CD's now than I did then because I am not getting anything I cant listen to on the radio. What they need to do is include things with the CD's that are not easily digitally sent (like a poster, or cupons for concert tickets, a key chain, ...) just something people might actually kinda want if they are a fan. Something like that (or if any of you have better examples) might make a CD worth dropping 20 on.

three years ago geeks noticed how much we are only tolerated by the music industtry, even when they went after napster the average person who does buy alot of CD's thought it was no big deal but they were at least made aware something was going on. When the copy protection that would not work on some computers and CD players came out more people noticed and I suspect you will see more and more of this as cheap cd music mixers come out (the sony thing I think) and people want to create custom CD's but can not copy due to CD format.

Note to the music industry, hogs get fat pigs get slaughtered..

Cow commerical?

[Schnapple]

Remember how Gateway ran that commercial that "respected your rights to download music" (or somesuch). I took that commercial to be a slap to the face of the RIAA - now they're the RIAA's lapdog? Or have I completely misread this?

Re:why?

[Sloppy]

This isn't a Gateway gimmick for increasing their products' sales by making them more attractive. Of course, they are going to spin it ant put it in the best light and make it sound like a feature, but that's not what it is.

Gateway's insight is this: "Hard disks are getting big, and we are shipping computers with a bunch of unused disk space. Why not fill that space with advertisements (or anything else that a third party will pay us to put there)?"

What's the difference?

[dmomo]

All sorts of interesting legal wrinkles here: you're buying a computer which contains data that you cannot legally access.

I don't see much of a difference between this and software demos that are made up of the full version and only need a registration key to be unlocked.

You are wrong

[MCMLXXVI]

You can access any of that you want. You can't however sell, distribute, or give away what you access. I can take my computer, rip out the CPU and spend a year mapping the layout. I have done nothing illegal. If I sell it or publish it the internet then I have broken the law. You own what you own and unless you SIGNED a waiver to say you were not going to do this you are free to do what you want with YOUR stuff.

Protected data?

[phorm]

I didn't quite grasp it in the article, but I would assume that this data is somehow encoded/protected so that it is only accessible with the key or subscription (post-trial)?

I remember when ID software shipped extra games on their Quake, etc CD's. You could call in and get a decoding key to install the games.

After a while, somebody cracked the CD and you could get the games with a keygen... somehow I think encoding data on a machine is just asking for trouble.

Re:Stainless Steel Balls.

[KelsoLundeen]

Funniest -- weirdest -- damn thing I've read all morning.

Whoever mod'd this as 'Offtopic' is a moron.

I'll agree it doesn't address the actual situation as specified in the topic, but the idea here -- the anger, at least -- has a ring of truth not heard on Slashdot on a long time.

Funny shit!

(BTW -- on topic -- what happens to the DRM files when you need to reinstall the OS? Do you lose everything?)

Re:And then there's the Apple approach...

[clontzman]

That's why Apple doesn't offer a machine -- even an old CRT iMac -- for less than $900. You don't think that music is really *free*, do you? Trust me, you're paying for it, whether you want to or not.

So much for Gateway supporting your "rights..."

[dpbsmith]

Gateway says here:

"As a leading proponent of inexpensive and easy-to-use downloadable music, Gateway believes consumers should have lawful rights to encode, copy, collect, purchase and listen to their personal music collections in the MP3 format. We fully support an MP3 user's right to:

'Rip' and encode their own CD music collections into digital music files for their own personal use and enjoyment.

Make as many copies of their digital music files as they would like for their own personal use. This freely allows consumers to copy their MP3s on any number of their own computers in various locations, as well as on to their portable MP3 hardware players.

'Burn' their music files onto compact discs for their own personal use."

Yeah yeah yeah, now that I see Gateway's ACTIONS I can go back and re-read those words with the right slant. "Of course, we never expected you to think that the files you purchased as part of your Gateway Computer are YOUR files." Or perhaps, "Well, we only meant that for .mp3's. We don't feel that you have any rights for files whose names end in any other set of three letters."

My mother taught me that the essence of a lie was not whether or not the statement was technically true, but whether the speaker intended for the listener to misunderstand them. I'm afraid Gateway's fine talk about consumers' rights is just such a statement.

Re:Eminem? Dixie Chicks?

[Bitmanhome]

Today you're more likely to get these messages:

C:\mypreloadedmusic-DRM is a system directory, and cannot be deleted.

or

Unknown command "deltree"

Re:Related: Gateway customers to format, reinstall

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM's still does a good job. Most of the stuff they preinstall is IBM software, and none of the stuff they put on is software you need to buy a key to use. Unfortunately they don't sell as well as other companies, since most stores don't carry IBMs. You can order them online, though.