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Playfair Relocates to India
Lord Grey writes "Imagine my surprise to see playfair 0.5.0 appear on Freshmeat's project list. Remember, the project was pulled after Apple filed a Cease-and-Desist order just a few days ago. playfair's new web site talks a bit about the move, as well as sporting the latest release of the controversial utility."
I have yet to find a time where I would need to strip out the DRM unless to share with the masses.
Suppose your main computer (that you play music on) runs Linux but you have a spare Windows machine or Mac that you can use with iTunes. Gee, that scenario was terribly hard to think up.
If Apple is one of the good guys (i.e. supporting true fair use and consumer rights) then at some point they will have satisfied whatever their minimum level of due diligence is and go to the RIAA and say 'we tried to stamp it out, I guess we'll just have to live with it'.
If on the other hand Apple does not support fair use and consumer rights, then they will keep suing.
I suspect however that if Apple doesn't fix this then the RIAA will kill their deal with Apple, leaving WiMP and Real as our only major outlets for legitimate digital music. Ugh. This is one situation where one really hopes that the reality distortion field us up to full power (when Apple goes into the conference room to negotiate with the syndica^W RIAA)
In point of fact I just want digital distribution of music, and I'm willing to pay a fair price for a fast, reliable service, with consistent quality of product. You don't get fast, reliable, or consistent quality on the P2P networks. This is the key differentiator IMHO. I don't want DRM, the RIAA wants DRM. FairPlay DRM was workable for me (I understand that reasonable people can differ over what level of DRM they can live with, however.) If Apple wants to treat me as the customer, they will give me what I want. If Apple wants to treat me as an eyeball and the RIAA as their customer, then screw 'em.