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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.
Gateway spins Pressplay service on PCs
By Reuters
December 5, 2002, 10:11 PM PT
Computer maker Gateway on Friday announced a deal with online music provider Pressplay to load its PCs with 2,000 songs from music stars such as Eminem, Bruce Springsteen, the Dixie Chicks and Frank Sinatra.
The deal with Pressplay, a joint venture between Vivendi Universal and Sony, capped a turbulent week for Gateway, which saw its stock fall 17 percent Thursday after the troubled PC maker warned that fourth-quarter revenue might not measure up to expectations.
The news came after three consecutive quarters of losses at the Poway, Calif.-based computer maker, which has suffered from weak demand and stiff competition from rivals such as Dell Computer.
Under the Pressplay deal, Gateway consumers can access the Pressplay service and features in several ways, including a 90-day free subscription to the service that contains 2,000 songs preloaded and available for streaming and downloading.
By loading it on a computer, consumers, especially those using dial-up connections, will save weeks of downloading time, said Michael Bebel, chief executive officer of Pressplay.
Other Pressplay plan options will also be available, some to be sold separately in hard-drive packages.
Gateway signed another deal with Pressplay rival Listen.com's Rhapsody a few weeks ago, marking the first distribution pact between a computer maker and one of a current crop of subscription services, trying to lure customers away from unauthorized song-swap services that have emerged in the wake of now-idled Napster.
Under that deal, buyers of Gateway desktop PCs will get a coupon for one free month of Rhapsody and a demonstration of the service on the PCs.
"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.
Shaw said the deal would have no impact on the company's fourth-quarter forecast announced earlier this week.
After the free trials, consumers can get the Pressplay service, which provides more than 200,000 songs and additional features, with pricing options starting from $9.95 a month.
"We're now making it possible for people without a broadband Internet connection to get in on the fun of digital music by delivering it to them in a whole new way," said Ted Waitt, Gateway chairman and chief executive in a statement, adding those with broadband will enjoy it even more.
Gateway earlier this year sparked the ire of the music industry by running TV ads that showed Waitt and a cow--the company's mascot--singing along to a homemade CD, directing viewers to a Web site that encouraged them to "protect their digital music rights."
The ad was construed by the recording industry as an invitation to music fans to join in the fight against Hollywood as technology and media companies locked horns over digital copies of entertainment.
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.
Gateway executives this week said they have always supported legal copying.
Waitt said the Pressplay deal was a great example of the technology and recording industries working together to drive innovation and serve demand for legitimate digital music.
Gateway plans to promote with television, Web, catalog and e-mail marketing.
Don't worry the gateway will soon break and the crisis will soon be over...
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
The poster says that the computer contains data which you cannot legally access. I would actually interpret that you can access it, you just cannot legally try to go around the protection mechanism that pressplay has put on it.
I am quite sure that there will, eventually be a very easy workaround for this. Don't companies realize that no matter what they do, somebody will crack it?
I wonder if and when music will actually get to this point where everyone buys music online? Personally I like to own the CD to have the original CD art...
So long as I can still delete the damn things.
Since they gave you the content, when you break the DRM for the purpose of listening to it, you're not breaking it for the purpose of copying it (necessarily). They gave you the copy on purpose...so it'd seem that tools designed to give you access to content that was given to you by the copyright owners might not be covered by the same DMCA.
" 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?
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
"After the free trials, consumers can get the Pressplay service, which provides more than 200,000 songs and additional features, with pricing options starting from $9.95 a month. "
So basically, it's a big ad? Nothing new here.. And we all know that the files will be cracked extremely quickly (of course, some geek will have to fess up and admit to buying one of these!). No matter, they'll all be songs I wouldn't want anyway - the "pop"ular stuff that the radio plays day in and day out, no doubt.
In general, it's a good idea, but if you think about it: 5 megs on average per file (guess) x 2000 = 10,000 megs... That's a LOT of wasted space for something you're not supposed to be using until you pay for! So, yeah, I'm paying extra to waste space. Nice.
If Gateway didn't do this, we'd all be eating talking cow steaks in a week. Those cruel, vicious monsters.
....As if the free AOL icons on the screen weren't enough... now is the paperclip going to pop up and say "You haven't been force fed pop music lately. Would you like me to play something by Brittney Spears?"
Music = marketing and product all in one. The more you listen to music the more you either like it or hate it. If you like it you'll buy more, if you hate it you'll suffer through it or turn it off.
Now the music companies are going to put their marketing materials (free?? music) on the computers to further entrench themselves.
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
"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.
Sent from your iPad.
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.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
>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?
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
All sorts of interesting legal wrinkles here: you're buying a computer which contains data that you cannot legally access.
That's not new. I've been other examples of software that comes pre-installed but "locked" where you need a key that you can get by calling the company and paying more money. I seem to remember Adobe having some fonts like that pre-installed at some point, and I definitely recall special-purpose PC's coming with application software pre-installed but disabled until you bought an access key...
I'm not sure what kinds of "legal wrinkles" might apply, but I do know this is not the first time it's been done.
101010, 222, 52,
I just bought this damn computer and I have no more disk space!! Oh yeah, i have 2000 songs on here that I can't listen to...
IS this legal, even though noone can legally acces them? I didnt want them, i didnt pay for them.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
this will spur some people to try their best to hack this DRM system. After all, if you already have 2000 songs on your HDD you might want to access them, if just for the sport aspect ;-)
you're buying a computer which contains data that you cannot legally access
So ? If I recall correctly, mainframes in the old days used to ship with HARDWARE that you couldn't access legally. The machine came preshipped with X amount of RAM, which was enabled by simply flipping a switch after you payed for it. Noone ever complained, even though RAM prices those days were somewhere in the region of what we pay now for an average house.
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
Don't forget. Vivendi is also doing bad. They're going to break next. I think the service will have to change name do PressStop instead of PressPlay. :)
"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?
If you get an error, type "OVERRIDE" or "SECURITY OVERRIDE" and then try the optimize command again.
No, not necessarily. You would have to comply with the full terms of the license agreement, whatever they may be. For example, the agreement may require you to remove the files after xx days or after x uses or pay a additonal fees. I believe the article mentions a 90-day trial to access the 2,000 songs.
...The way I interpret it, you cannot legally access the same data. Pressplay has put data on the drive that you probably would get from the 'net, so it's saving you time (and maybe bandwidth charges, depending on your ISP). If you were to get it from the 'net, it would be illegal (using p2p).
The way I interpret it (IANAL), they've broken the law.
Gateway computer, preloaded with songs: $999
Connection to the Internet: $19.95/mo.
Knowing it's only going to take a couple minutes to crack 20,000 songs wide open: Priceless
slashdot!=valid HTML
So what? My computer already has tons of data I can't access without illegally reverse-engineering files. My server at work is chock full of e-mail that I can't access without (probably) violating my cow orkers' rights. One might argue that the layout of my CPU is data stored inside my computer, but I sure can't have access to that.
License more than 200 songs from mainstream and niche artists, encode them to 160Kbps MP3s, and bundle them on new i-Systems.
No DRM. No free trial. Just free music.
Mix. Burn. Repeat.
2000 "popular" DRMed songs you can listen to for 90 days, or about 300 encompassing all genres of music that you can listen to forever? Hmm.
I knew you could boys and girls. Competition from Dell, and yes even HP and Compaq is just too much for Gateway. Despite lowering prices to the point where they operate in the red, they just can't seem to keep up.
It's too bad really, I think they were a good company who just had to make too many compromises.
I would have to venture that the idea here is to get new computer buyers (who we can therefore assume do not have an encompasing understanding of DRM, the legalities of file-sharing, etc...) latched into this turn-key system. I'm sure that whatever tool they're using to front-end this initiative has DRM dripping off the edges and will allow you to rip your own music to their proprietary (read:can't take it no-where else and don't even think about trying to share it P2P) format and get the user's locked in. Someone has taken a hint from M$ and is looking to get the 'Embrace and Extend' initiative rolling in the music world.
Now you may call me cynical, but I highly doubt that this tool will play nicely with standard P2P tools. Would you put it past someone like PressPlay to have any mp3's touched by the system either re-encoded in a DRM-friendly format with minimal warning to the user (click here to import all you files into the PressPlay AudioVault of Doom...)
or some obnoxious and legaly-questionable click-wrap aggreement that consists of 15 pages of legal bum-fodder that allows them to show up at your house in the middle of the night, rape your dog, kick your grandmother down the stairs and flag all the audio files on your machine with a unique fingerprint that gets matched with your machine ID and therefore your RW identity... hmm, Little Timmy has been uploading his Smurfs Christmas Album to Sweet Suzie. RIAA, sic'em!)
{/sarcasm}
Anyhow, I cannot fault Gateway for trying to provide their customers a value-added item like this (like smallpox to the Native-Americans...) I see this as becoming a troubling trend as more companies with DRM products start co-branding with big names in the PC field and set this plague loose on the face of the planet.
In the meantime, I'll stick with my ogg-vorbis/mp3 server running linux.
"If I wanted your input on my pet project, I'd stick my hand up your ass and use you like a sock-puppet." - Muse
You caputer the digital out of your sound card
Make that "analog out". Windows ME and Windows XP operating systems have a Secure Audio Path that disables digital outputs and unsigned drivers when playing restrictions-managed audio files.
Will I retire or break 10K?
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?
I do find it interesting that computer makers are making it easier to rip and burn, while supplying pressplay et al inside it. This bothers me a bit. There has to be something backroom-ish going on. I agree all things equal, it may make the college freshman grab one, but other than that I see no special reason for it. So what are they getting out of it? Advertising, sure, but whatabout pressplay logging? You think they are sharing their logs with Gateway so they can determine what songs to put on the next generation of PC's? Maybe Gateway just wants to see how much their computers are actually used for the digital music they push so much in their adverts. Either way, I don't like multi company bundling. It just smacks of small print consumer stick-it-to-em EULA's.
'I don't want more choices. I just want better things.' - Edina Monsoon
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..
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
Further, didnt I pay for the HD? Isint it my hard drive? They should pay me rent for wasting my space with unaccessable junk.
It comes preloaded with the Eminem and Dixie Chicks?
c:\
c:\deltree \mypreloadedmusic-DRM
Are you sure you want to delete the directory \mypreloadedmusic-DRM and all subdirectories? [Y/N]
Youbetcherass
172 File(s) deleted.
c:\
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
umm whats wrong with ogg, I would prefer to use mp3 if it was under the same license as ogg. we need to support open standards.
I believe it is you who are mistaken about a great many things. DRM means that you have to comply with whatever terms the copyright owner wants to put on you in order to access the material. Simply buying the computer may not be the only term, and it most likely will mean that you can only access the material a certain number of times, or for a certain period of time without coughing up more cash.
my cable box comes with the ability to recieve all of the channels too, whats the legal implication there?
Its illegal to decrypt them without permission. Doesn't mean that the law is right. I personally agree that the law makes sense, but people are free to disagree with me and try to convinve their elected representatives to change this law.
But this is just because of percieved cost to them. It costs them money to send me signals. In the case of data that's already on my hard disk, it doesn't cost any more to supply decrypted data than it does to supply encrypted data, yet they want to charge me the full cost of the media just to decrypt it for me.
... to the Microsoft Tax when we buy a machine loaded with cruft we have no intention of using?
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
So...we're now buying computers that have *OUR* hard drive space taken up by useless software that doesn't below to us? A:\format C:\ www.kazaalite.com... Pfft, if I want to have software on my computer that doesn't belong to me, I may as well have it be software of my choice, that I can actually use!
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
I would hook the boot HD up to a different computer, extract all the songs onto it and format the drive on the gateway afterwords. Never once did you boot thier install of the OS that has the license agreement. And since they "gave" you the songs on your computer you're free to do what you want with them. I.E. remove DRM and enjoy in OGG format.
Is there an option available to pre-load my machine with porn instead?
--It's Pimptastic!--
The concept of 'having data that you cannot legally access' has been around for ages already: Adobe Type-On-Call (Not sold anymore, as far as I can tell.)
:)
This was a CD full of fonts - Adobe's entire font library, in fact - where you could not access particular fonts or font collections without sending Adobe a bunch of money first. They'd give you a key to unlock those particular fonts.
I'd been wanting to try and crack it open ever since I was 15 or so, but... looks like I'm not allowed to anymore
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.
Maybe they could start a real value added program with GUNWin.
http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/apps/en/index.html
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
"All sorts of interesting legal wrinkles here: you're buying a computer which contains data that you cannot legally access. "
So what? I bought a name brand PC a few weeks ago that came with Quicken Deluxe on it, to be used only if I have bought the reg key.
The real issue here is that this won't work: within two weeks of these bad boys hitting the street, there will be dozens of postings on how to circumvent Pressplay's reg/purchase code strategy and gain access to all of the music, just as I can go to any one of dozens of sites for hacks into getting my unregistered copy of Quicken to work. I wouldn't do this, of course: no no, not me....
There's a metaphor here from Apocalypse Now: the Bridge at Do Long. Every day the Americans would rebuild the bridge, and every night the Vietnamese would blow it up. Each new tack by the RIAA and its DMCA cronies to secure rights in this fashion will be defeated, sometimes within minutes of hitting the street.
This points to the need for them to dynamite their business model and think up something new: how many people actually pay for content? (And porn doesn't count. Besides, porn is largely stolen anyway!) The answer is none, zero, nada. AOL-TimeWarner's about to find this out the hard way. Gateway and Pressplay are making it easier than some to circumvent by the fact that the files are on your machine, and you can ostensibly do what you want to with them without them knowing. But even if you had to download them, you'll still be able to hack them.
"Don't matter how New Age you get, old age is gonna kick your ass." - Utah Phillips
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?
Schnapple
With my new dual USB iBook, on the default install, there's something like 600 megs of MP3's by various big name artists (can't remember them all, since I reloaded with my new 10.2 cd I forgot to back them up), spoken word stuff from Henry Rollins I remember, perhaps someone else can fill /. in on what's all on there. Pretty neat I think.
Yep, they're 100% unencrypted, copy them anywhere MP3 files. They're installed when you do a full system restore. No DRM here. Not needed or wanted.
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)?"
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
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)
Apple used to include free MP3s with some of its models so people could use them with iMovie and iTunes. Sure the music was mostly instrumental or public domain, but at least it was free and didn't require an Internet connection to unlock.
"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved." -- John Ashcroft
Gateway computers come with a recovery CD, don't they? (at least my friend's did). So what happens if something goes wrong and you lose your hard drive - since you paid to listen to those songs (through advertising, upped computer price, or through the 'free' trial), do you get them back? Do you have to redownload the 2000 songs you have 90 days free access to? I doubt they have a couple of DVDs of music in the box, ready to be reinstalled for you...
I can see some poor suck^M^M^M^Muser calling the tech support people crying for her Britney! *ack, the horror*
The end of DRM will the following: Microsoft, working in concert with the Big 5 record labels, will begin to deliver content in the form of stainless steel balls. Sort of like BBs, but bigger. They will insist that these steel balls are, in fact, music. "Believe us," they'll say, "we thought long and hard about this one." The steel balls will, however, confuse consumers. "I don't know," they'll say, "I can't hear anything." But the labels will insist that the steel balls work fine. "They're music," Hilary Rosen will say, "but they're copy protected." "It's foolproof," Jack Valenti will say, and then -- a few months later -- introduce his own version of the steel music balls: plastic video pyramids. Each pyramid will be about three inches high, black plastic, and weigh about three ounces. "Microsoft helped us with the protection algorithm," he'll announce. "In fact, they're so secure not even Microsoft's new operating system can play the video. But trust us, these videos look great." Confused consumers will be seen walking around with steel balls and plastic pyramids. "I don't know," they'll say, "I haven't seen anything yet, but I look forward to it." Another music lover will admit to liking the way the steel balls feel. "They're so smooth and lovely. Perfect." "The Register" will point out that the balls are not, in fact, perfectly spherical. "There are tiny, minute imprecise abrasions. But to the naked eye they'll look pretty nice." Posters on Slashdot.com will claim that they've not yet cracked their steel balls and enabled the music. "It's in there," a Slashdot poster named Borg2Soon will say, "I've set up a Linux box to play the steel balls." The plastic pyramids are a bit more diffucult since they take up more space and aren't as portable as the steel balls. "You can't carry as many pyramids around at one time," John C. Dvorak will say. The Screensavers Patrick Norton will be dubious. "Well, I'm not sure why they made the music into steel balls. I liked the normal files." The screensavers Yoshi will design a case-mod in which users can place up to one thousand balls and fifteen pyramids. "It's a wicked mod," Yoshi will say. Thousands will build the mod. Millions will praise the balls. "But not the pyramids. I don't like the pyramids." John C. Dvorak will wonder why they just couldn't have made the pyramids plastic balls instead of plastic pyramids. "Come on, Microsoft," Dvorak will chide, "not everyone has room for all these pyramids." Microsoft's stock will skyrocket. Amazon will merge with Starbucks. They'll rename the new store 'Pequod.' The White Whale will be spotted. "Balls!" Ahab will shout.
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 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.
Disney Interactive about 4-7 years ago used to include entire programs with its computers but would disable them until you paid an online payment to them.
This is way back though. I just remember trying to figure out how to get through the disabling so I could play... Never figured it out. (I was really young then.) All I knew is that if you signed up with them (it would dial a long distance number and give your info to them), the programs would become active.
Perhaps now with the internet, more people will go out of their way to break the DRM, but I am willing to say most will either pay to listen to them, or just continue downloading like they always have using morpheus or something similar.
~ kjrose
Did YOU read the article?
Under the Pressplay deal, Gateway consumers can access the Pressplay service and features in several ways, including a 90-day free subscription to the service that contains 2,000 songs preloaded and available for streaming and downloading.
and
After the free trials, consumers can get the Pressplay service, which provides more than 200,000 songs and additional features, with pricing options starting from $9.95 a month.
So basically, Gateway is allowing Vivendi to put music on the drives, and Vivendi allows users to play it for 90 days. After that time, I'm sure the assumption is that some of the users will like this way of downloading music (knowing that it's correct, that it's virus free, and that somehow the artists are probably benefiting from it) and will continue to use the service.
Yes, the users can access the data. No, they don't have to pay for the first three months.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
Sorry, could you say again? I kept getting this static that sounded like "BLAH BLAH I'M AN ANONYMOUS COWARD IGNORE ME"..
slashdot!=valid HTML
I'd love to see the first lawsuit after these watermarked mp3s get cracked and make it onto a p2p network.
"Dude, you're going to Jail!"
*ducks*
Money I owe, money-iy-ay
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.
Pressplay sells two plans:
$9.95 / month for unlimited streaming + downloading into press play format
$17.95 / month for unlimited streaming + 10 conversions to portable formats
they also offer the $17.95 / month plan as $14.95 / month if you pay for the entire year in advance.
The non portable format is tranferable to one other system. Further tracks can be organized in play lists and sets....
My guess is that they are trying to sell people on the $9.95 / month to have a large music library on their computer. I'd further guess that pressplay also is coming out with some sort of portable player for their format.
So a gateway customer paying $9.95 / month has:
1) a very large music library on their system
2) The ability to add to it freely as new music comes out
3) The ability to take this music and move it to their portable player
I can see this doing quite well. 200k songs ~ 18k albums ~ 500 shelves ~ 100 sq foot CD collection ~ 1/2 a small record store excluding duplicates ~ a small record store including duplicates.
That's a lot of music for a home user at a price which is not unreasonable. I can see music fans which aren't that computer savvy going for this. The main thing that needs to happen is for gateway/pressplay to offer a way to get the music into a car for people not to realize this is not as good a deal as it looks like.
...where id software decided to package all of their old games encrypted on the CD with the ability to 'unlock' them with a credit card.
Then some unscrupulous scoundrels broke the encryption, and turned a $9 game preview into Best of ID Software Platinum "Game of the Year" Edition.
blah blah client side security blah blah tooth fairy...
Also, i wonder if, when they tell you the size of the HD, do they chop off the space they've filled up with 2000 unwanted songs? Do they make it obvious that you could save a few gigs by deleting them? Probably not.
vk.
I cannot fault Gateway for trying to provide their customers a value-added item like this (like smallpox to the Native-Americans...)
At least the Natives got blankets out of the deal.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
Flame away!
The cable companies did so much legal junk in the past (blatent paying off of senators... judges, congressmen..) that you really shouldn't use it for anything legal. Basically Cable companies got a bunch of junk put on Sattilte tv access, so regular sattilite sucks, and nobody uses it.
About your car? Your car doesn't falsely advertise that it's capable of going 150... it's just a fact that can be judged by logic. What? you don't think Gateway will make this into a huge scam? 2000 FREEEEEEE Songs!!!!
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
If they're going to take up storage real estate on a hard drive where you own the platters, but you can't use the data legally, they owe you compensation for the space they're stealing from you.
In short, charge them a monthly fee for having their data on your hard disk drive. Many companies do that as their primary business--selling external storage.
The sooner such practices as this bankrupt the businesses at fault, the sooner the practices go away.
Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.
Gateway says here:
.mp3's. We don't feel that you have any rights for files whose names end in any other set of three letters."
"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
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.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Just call me a visionary!! .
Two wrongs may not make a right, but three
I dont care anymore, most music comeing out is crap, the older stuff isnt affected (yet), I have over 400 (legally purchased) cds, 300 LPs, and 500 casstettes. some independent bands really show us what they have and Ill buy their music directly from them. the older stuff Ill just buy at used music stores/pawn shops
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
You know, the music may have its merits but when they start loading up the harddrives with a few gigs of pr0n before I buy it, then maybe I'll be interested (Now thats a time saver!)
3Y3
---- Anyone can act smart, but it takes a smart person to act stupid. ----
John is a teenager. His parents bought him a Gateway laptop for his first year at college.
John opens his laptop to find some really cool songs sitting in 'My Documents'. Wow! That's cool!
John tries to play a song, and gets a notice that he needs to pay first. John is a college student. John doesn't like paying.
John opens up the latest flavor of P2P filesharing software and downloads the damn song for free.
Of course, I'm sure the fact that consumers are rallying around the concept of free MP3s, while by and large still buying CDs, doesn't really mean anything. Research shows if we put padlocks on all our content, and then throw it in consumers' faces every chance we get, we might still be able to inflate our profits to pre-Napster levels!
Idiots.
So are you saying that if I have a set of speakers that are digital only (no analog in), and I play a drm-enabled song in windows, no sound will come out of the speakers? As technology pushes into the future, I imagine digital speakers will become far more commonplace than analog.
Project Steve
my car comes with the ability to do 150mph, but the chips lets me go to 120 and if you drive 120 MPH you endager me and others. No one will die if you listen to music shipped to you on your hard disk without paying some big stupid media company. Nor will anyone die if I make a program that can play that music for you, but unlike the speeder, I might go to jail for that.
As has been pointed out a million times before, the implications for free speech and publishing are grave. A big fat music publisher has made a format that only they may use to play music that limits your ability to use and share that music which is really someone else's work to begin with. You are not alowed to understand that format and will go to jail if you study it and publish the mechanism used to "protect" the content. You are told that it is immoral for you to read that content without the publisher's permission and that it's wrong to share it with your friends. RMS saw correctly what happens when all publishing goes this way, we all end up being slaves to the publishers. They can charge us more than we can afford to learn then use that debt to extort all our future work, which we will then have to pay to access. Imagine a format like this being used to publish your next paper. Now imagine that your children have to pay the publisher to read that paper. Sick.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Little OT but ...
This reminds me of the Sun Enterprise 10000 (StarFires) that came with 64 processors pre-installed but you could use only the ones that you paid for (others need to be "enabled" before the system can use it).
S
This may seem like a silly question, but what good does this do people who buy the computer, but won't have an internet connection? For instance, a person who buys one for their kids to use for schoolwork or a person using it just to store recipes, use Quicken, etc? They won't even be able to access Press Play's online presence. So is the encryption done locally via something like a registration key, or does it require a connection? Just wondering.
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
The CRT iMac currently sells for $799.
iBooks and eMacs start close at $999.
Is it really that hard to check facts?
They wouldn't like to take the risk of supplying premium channels if they knew there were no legal sanctions against people pirating it.
then don't give them to me unless i pay for them, simple as that. don't give me something that's kinda hidden and expect that if i find it i won't use it. maybe the pizza company charge for delivery per pizzl. they can't charge you extra for the delivery if they find out you eat the second pizza somehow.
untangables are generally services. say i hire an electrician to install some circuits. he installs some extra circuits on the chance that he can upsell them to me. i'm not interested, but find the extra circuits after the fact and find that i am able to use them just fine. can he now start charging me for the service he performed of installing those? hell, no. he can only charge me for what i contracted him to do which was install x amount of circuits.
I bought the Motorola T720 cellphone, the new color one with games and all. Well it has tetris and tony hawk skater game, Both of these games are DEMOS! and thats one of the main selling points of the phone, look at the ads for it. I bought it for the big screen, and returned it yesterday for a Nokia becouse the Motorola keept crashing on me. But we will see more of this in the furtre becouse people buy things and say, "wow it come with this and that..." umm no.
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
Your example still does not fly. You're not looking for a specific machine, just a good number cruncher. An activity, as opposed to a specific solution. So why does your example want a specific CD? Don't you just want something good to listen to? Warner has just as many similar artists as EMI, so why not go to the place that provides the cheapest music?
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
If not, you could take this to a country where DMCA doesn't apply, apply any crack that shows up and legally own 2000 songs. You can even sell these unencrypted disks to others and make a business out of it.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Uh, we all complain that our PCs come bundled with shit we dont want. Internet explorer, AOL etc... Last year when i got my new compaq i booted it up, i hear a dilatone. On startup it had connected to AOL! Also on the desktop there were icons for disney stuff, nickelodian stuff, compuserve, execpc, internet explorer, outlook express and all sortsa other crap i didn't want. How many gigs of stuff i didn't want and didn't ask for were on my disk.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Ponder this if you will:
1. User id10t buys a new Gateway with music installed
2. id10t downloads Kaaza and procedes to share their entire hard drive
3. Johnny Hacker downloads the watermarked music and cracks it
4. Johnny puts it back on Kaaza unencrypted(but still watermarked) for the world(and the RIAA) to see
5. User id10t is charged
Finally stupitity will be a criminal offense. Of course it could be Grandma going to jail. I would like to see that prosecuted.
SD
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
Glaxo, Inc, announced today it will soon begin shipping sealed bags of M&Ms with its blood sugar testing kits...
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
I think Mastercard has the copyright on that arrangement of words ending with "Priceless" - You just busted their copyright, widely recognized trademark and harmed their good name. Oh oh!
Interestingly enough, they don't really mind that kind of usage, and actually encourage it. I was watching an interview on TV with a MasterCard spokesman.. and he stated that parodies of MasterCard commercials on shows and by people they had no problem with.. but where they draw the line is when people start to use it for their own gains (in this case, they were upset that a political candidate was using a parody of the MasterCard bit in their commercials).
slashdot!=valid HTML
My family bought two Gateways about 5 years ago. Back then it seemed they did a decent job about not adding too much useless crap that nobody needed, something that other OEM vendors such as Compaq were notorious for.
I've not seen a new Gateway since then, but it seems they've gone the way of others and are now innundating users with gigs of junk.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
First, it's 2000 songs, not 200,000 as you state. That's at best 200 CD's assuming 10 songs. Considering that there are on average maybe 25 or so music categories (ie, Alternative, Rock, Blues, Broadway_&_Vocalists Children's, Music, Christian_&_Gospel, Classic, Rock Classical, Country, Dance_&_DJ Folk, General, Hard, Rock_&_Metal International, Jazz, Latin, Music Miscellaneous, New, Age, Opera_&_Vocal Pop, R_&_B, Rap_&_Hip-Hop Rock, Soundtracks) that's 8 albums per category. Not a "small record store including duplicates" by any means.
Secondly, this music will grow old. Sure, they can download new stuff from Pressplay, but how many poeple are going to do that over their 56k lines?
Ultimately, I think this is an interesting idea, but will not be an overnight success. Then again, Pressplay probably needs all the users it can get, so I doubt they're worried about piracy (as if KaZaa/etc weren't already the dominant players).
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Nope, yours is.
The reason they put the data on the PC does not dictate what you can do with it, the law does.
You are forgetting about the doctine of first sale. This states that if I buy something copyrighted I am automatically given certain legal rights, unless I sign a contract otherwise. So if when buying a gateway, I don't have to sign a contract, I am given certain rights to all the data on that computer. One of those rights being personal use.
So, I have permission under copyright law to use those files, but the DMCA makes it illegal for me to translate them into a usable format.
Here are some more links about first sale:
Life is too short to proofread.
My first "PC" was a Gateway. I admired their high quality and worksmanship at the time.
Then they started making shit computers with proprietary hardware and other junk.
And now supporting DRM?
Too bad Gateway. You've just insured I'll never buy another one of your products. I do not deserve to be treated like a criminal before it has been proven I am one.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
While I agree that CD's are over priced, there are far more that 4-10 hands that go into any CD. If you have a 4 piece band, you must have an engineer, at the very least. The engineer brings as much musical knowledge to the table as any of the musicians and has just as much influence on the final sound of the album.
The engineer then has his assistants who do the grunt work, and then the sound guys, etc... There are probably an average of 40 sets of hands on any modern commercial CD just from the artistic side. The biggest difference is there is no union like there is with film, so you don't see all of those names.
If you really can't figure out where those 40 names come from, ponder the best boy and gaffer positions. Or Assistant to 3 venezuelan llamas...
Your math is off a bit. First off there is the 200k issue (what's included in the membership). Gateway is only using 2000 as a teaser I guess but that's more of a short term issue. DVDs cost pennies to duplicate in mass. A 10 DVD set...
Now also notice I said small record store.
200k songs / 10 songs album / 25 catagories x 2 remove duplicates = 1600 albums per catagory.
That ain't bad for a small store.
I'm sure this is a far-fetched idea, but I was just thinking about the fact that marketing droids came up with this "Digital Rights Management" which has been conveniently called "DRM" by everybody from manufacturers, resellers and slashdotters. The idea I had was that, instead of calling this massive problem by the name that the marketing types would prefer, we should go thru the trouble of at the very least saying the full name, and preferably the RMS version of "Digital Restrictions Management", so that Joe User is at least prompted to ask what it is. That way it doesn't get lost in the millions of other acronyms and abbreviations he has a hard time keeping up with, like RAM, P2P, P3P, etc, etc.
This is just a thought, but I think it'd be at least minimally beneficial.
out of curiousity, which law prohibits that? the DMCA probably doesn't apply because the viewer isn't attempting to copy copyright material, and in some cases it's an analog signal that's being decoded
The DMCA has several sections and makes several things illegal. It is not restrticted to digital data. It is not restricted to copying. It is not restricted to "illegal" activity - meaning a librarian, teacher, and student can all go to jail over a completely fair use bookreport which immune from copyright restrictions.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I'm sure the assumption is that some of the users will like this way of downloading music (knowing that it's correct, that it's virus free
I hear ya there! I downloaded some music from P2P and I came down with chikenpox. Thank god I didn't download any Britteny Spears, who knows what I would have caught!
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
It could theoritically try and do that I suppose. However, at this point, it doesn't. Windows is not aware that it is running on a virtual machine, it sees all the virtual devices as real hardware and treats them accordingly.
From the story: blah blah blah blah blah.
Here's where I say blah, blah blah blah blah.
Seriously... almost every tech company in existence jumps onto whatever the latest fad is. DRM will fail, and I will personally see to it as will millions of other people.
When will they get it? If 100% of entertainment was DRM'd, I'd still not buy it.
Like I said, it would be easy. I'm not saying they CAN'T I'm saying they DON'T. If they were to start looking for VPC and the like, well then that would break this particular method. However, since the programs are just virtualizations of real computers, the BIOS can be modified. It's a normal PC BIOS, and that's not reason it can't be swapped out for another one that is compatible.