EFF Releases Music DRM Guide

Chris Chiasson writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently created a plain English guide to several fair use restrictions that major online music services, such as Apple's iTunes, force on their customers via Digital Rights Management (DRM) laden music files and End User License Agreements (EULAs). An excerpt from the guide follows: 'Forget about breaking the DRM to make traditional uses like CD burning and so forth. Breaking the DRM or distributing the tools to break DRM may expose you to liability under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) even if you're not making any illegal uses.' The EFF also lists four alternative music services which sell unrestricted files."

Comments

Re:Independent music recommendation services?

[SuperBanana]

With the advert of the Internet, they don't need anyone else to publish and distribute their music to the world.

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The problem is: I know what kind of music I like, and I know which mainstream bands make this kind of music, but I don't have time to go listening to every indie artist to find out what they make.

Record companies aren't in the business of making records. They're in the business of promoting marketable artists.

A friend said it best- "Indie is just another word for crappy, unmarketable, and unpresentable". It's the god-honest truth. Good music sells itself (and hence isn't "indie"). Most of the people who I've met who like "indie" music are impressed with their trucker hats and "vintage" t-shirts, doing what they do simply to be "different", failing to realize they're just like every other "indie" kid in the room.