The Sony/MP3 Saga Continues

Renegade Lisp writes "Sony's rolling out their new line of flash-based music players to the market these days. More stylish than ever, they surely look like a serious attempt to regain territory lost to the iPod, and perhaps even to create the Walkman of the 21st century. And it looks like Sony has finally given in to consumer pressure: these new "MP3 players" can finally play MP3 natively, not just Sony's proprietary ATRAC format. But wait -- you cannot just put your MP3s onto the device, you have to run them through Sony's obfuscation software first. The obfuscated files, when installed properly on the device, can be played. But you can't just move them around, share them with your friends, whatever. Well, of course the obfuscation scheme has already been broken by a brave hacker. But is this really the way to create the "Network Walkman" of the 21st century? Sony, please wake up!"

Comments

Re:Just IMO but...

[HaggiZ]

You warez and copyright infringing fanboys seem to think that leeching whatever you want when and where you want is fine.

I'm not a fan of DRM the way it is being rolled out in the majority of cases, but Apple's implementation is pretty tight. It doesn't impact on my ability to use the content I've purchased how I want to use it, all it's done is prevent me from freely giving away someone elses work. Spend 12 months slaving away over your masterpiece which you're planning on having make you rich... give it to a friend, and have him photocopy it and pass around to all he knows. See how much you appreciate the action then.

I'm dead against DRM which prevents me from using things I've purchased for my own personal use, whatever they may be. I'm also against content which ultimately requires a subscription or on-going licence to be able to use.

Apple infringes on neither of these desires, and is completely transparent to my experience. Get used to it, DRM is going to be the way forward and with good reason. People who invest their time (and money?) to provide you with a product or service deserve to be re-imbursed in some fashion. If you want to receive your content electronically, then DRM is currently the only solution to prevent you from depriving someone else of renumeration they rightfully deserve. And I don't care how secure or insecure it is, it just needs to be secure enough to make the majority of people not want to invest the time to circumvent it. Books are fairly insecure from a copyright perspective, it's just that photocopying a 300 page novel usually requires more of a time commitment than earning the $20 to buy it.

Your consumer rights haven't been screwed, come back to reality. It's just that things are now being put in placed to stop the providers of goods being screwed over by the likes of you.

I'm disgusted at how much money the record companies make on the back of artists. I'm disgusted how little said artists get paid for the amount of work they usually have to do. That being said, stealing the content off of a friend only deprives them even more. If they have the means to distribute the content themselves without being screwed over by morally challenged "consumers", then maybe they can free themselves of the dependence on the big industry. DRM gives them the ability to do things like this themselves, not hinder it.

And hopefully along the way, the significant reduction in costs of production and distribution is passed directly back to me, the consumer.