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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."
Any form of DRM sucks, and I'll do whatever I can to avoid entering into any DRM agreement.
Why UNIX?
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.
Yeah forget about trying to break the DRM in iTunes cos like... uhh. you don't need to, to burn CDs.
The EFF dings Apple for cutting the number of identical playlist burns from 10 to 7, while conveniently neglecting to point out that Apple simultaneously raised the number of authorizable computers from 3 to 5. If they're going to give "the real deal rather than spin" they should refrain from inserting spin themselves.
the EFF need to get their guides printed onto paper and distributed to the public, buses, trains, in the street , through doors, offices, trams, subways, parking lots, schools , youth clubs, community centers
otherwise nothing will change, we (technologists/gurus/nerds etc) all know the ramifications of DRM and the threat it poses to society, but society doesnt know or even care about what they dont understand sick profiteers are trying to do
educate people, lots of them, quickly, using traditional methods, because this inteweb is not the answer to this problem
Sure, you can go out and buy a CD today, but what about in 10 years? 5? CDs will eventually be replaced by SACD or DVD-A, both of which have DRM schemes. If we don't stop DRM now, there will be no alternative.
Sure, DRM can and will be cracked, but that's not what it's about. The iTunes DRM can be cracked, too. It provides a major inconvenience, many hurdles for us to jump over just to use something we already bought & payed for.
About DVD-A's encryption being cracked, it wasn't What happened was a patch was released for WinDVD to redirect the output to a file instead of a sound card. You can bet the RIAA is working on a way to neutralize this.
Wow. Sounds like a balanced, fair, and unbiased review of the issues to me.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
However, I'm pretty cynical, so I instead expect laws to change to make restricted media the norm.
Force onto their customer? They held me up at gunpoint so I had no choice but to buy from the iTMS? If you buy music from iTunes, you're going to have DRM'ed files. Don't like it? Don't buy it.
It's not like music isn't available from other sources (both brick and mortar and online). But remember, those "easily" converted music CDs are starting to include DRM mechanisms as well.
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
"It's a choice"
No, it's not a choice. It stopped being a choice when they passed the DMCA.
"If I don't want DRM, I will buy from someplace that doesn't use it, buy the CD (assuming it isn't broken), or not buy it at all."
What, then, will you do when everything is distributed via DRM?
I'll tell you: you'll either 1) Buy things with DRM and basically live a rental-based existence where you cannot create without purchasing a "distribution license," 2) Become a felon for buying things with DRM then breaking it to actually make use of them, or 3) retreat to your cabin in the wilderness and live out a life without the DMCA.
"If you don't agree, don't enter into the agreement and go elsewhere for your music."
But, you see, software-based DRM is always cracked. That's why all of the big companies are working to embed it in the hardware of every PC manufactured.
They claim you can "turn it off," but the problem is that DRM will only actually work when it's a closed system. So it's basically a lie that you can turn it off. Sure, you can disable it, but you'll be disconnecting yourself from the Internet and everyone else by doing so.
In conclusion, "so many people are against DRM in any format for anyone" because DRM is not being presented as a choice. The DRM-supporters (large companies) have paid their congresspeople to enact the DMCA, thus establishing a universal contract without our consent.
The DMCA applies to everyone in this country (and many people in other countries, as can be seen from enforcement actions) and it exposes you to potential prison time not for doing anything wrong, not for infringing copyrights, not for plagiarism, not for any of these things... the DMCA exposes you to prison time for altering a product which you legally purchased.
That is why so many people fundamentally oppose DRM.
Many public foundations employ "copyright" and "licenses" -- also known as "legal restrictions" -- that prevent you from doing things like reproducing or distributing their works. Forget about breaking the license with a copy machine. Breaking the license is a violation of the law and could expose you to prosecution.
- nc/1.0/"i on"t ion"t ion"v eWorks"a lUse"
The EFF says:
"EFF is a nonprofit group of passionate people -- lawyers, technologists, volunteers, and visionaries -- working to protect your digital rights."
But buried in the source to this very article is the following secret code:
License rdf:about="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by
requires rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Attribut
permits rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Reproduc
permits rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Distribu
permits rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Derivati
prohibits rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Commerci
requires rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Notice"
This "code" restricts your rights to use the article. Even worse, each article might have a different license! Future articles might change their license at any time!
The facts: you read it, they still own it. Sounds like 1984? Read on.
Additional EFF article restrictions:
- Prohibits commercial re-use or re-mixing into a new article.
- Requires that the license and copyright be reproduced with the article.
- Requires that you credit the copyright holder and/or author.
Other articles using this same "licensing" could be even more restrictive!
Looking for alternatives? Here are some sites that don't use restrictive "copyright" and "licensing".
- Project Gutenberg http://promo.net/pg/
- Public Domain Music http://www.pdinfo.com/
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
Like all brain-damaged products, the way to kill DRM is not to buy it. If the manufacturers can't make any money with it, they will drop it. That's how business works.
Sadly, few people have any idea of what's going on. I rmember trying to explain the Dmitry Sklyarov case to somebody and failing miserably.
I have several CDs that claim to be copy protected, but this seems to range from nasty warnings only, to CDs that refuse to play on windows boxes unless you play them with their player. My Linux boxes play them without comment.
Only one copy-protected CD (Face A Face B by Axelle Red) in my collection is in any way difficult to play - on my portable CD player, where it plays the first few seconds of each track, over and over. My car CD player plays it without comment, and my Linux boxes play it and will rip tracks from it until the cows come home.
I've never bought a DRMed tune from an online vendor, and never will. If enough people did this, all this nonsense would come to an end. When the marketplace speaks, business has no choice but to listen.
...laura
You said WTF!?. The 'F' is that I didn't contact Jon to ask him if I can posting the link to his program in a slashdot post.
You might say "WTF!? You don't have to ask permission to link". I would respond that the 'F' is that it is not illegal to link to his site, but it is not very nice if he has to pay for the bandwidth. So by not providing a click-able link I thought I was making sure that only those who really want to get his program will get there as opposed to having tens of thousands of slashdotters click on it just because it is something to do.
When you "buy" a DVD, you do not actual own the copy, you have merely purchased a long term rental. The rental agreement lets you play it at home for an indefinite period (basically as long as the current type of player is still produced and/or yours still works) - subject to certain restrictions on some titles (e.g. being forced to watch the previews).
Instead of breaking the law wherever feasible, I think our crowd would be much more successful helping to enforce it. If the EFF could bring suit simply to force media companies to stop calling what they do "selling copies", and call them "long term rentals" instead, then the market would take care of the rest. There would still be a market for long term rentals - but you would also be able to actually buy a copy for more money than a long term rental (probably something around what video rental stores pay for their copy).
The best way to get rid of a bad law is to enforce it vigorously.
Do you read every single EULA and other agreements? They could have written there that I should give them my firstborn child, if I click the button.
It's not a EULA gotcha, it's common sense.
If I buy a piece of software commonly known to be available for platforms X or Y and then decide later to switch to platform Z, I don't whine that the developer ripped me off because my X/Y software doesn't run on the Z it was never created to run on to begin with.
You started using the iTMS knowing full well you need iTunes to play these files and iTunes is only available for Windows and Mac. You had Windows, it was YOUR choice to switch to Linux. I'm sure there was other Windows software you couldn't use when you switched to Linux. Unfortunatly, without iTunes your purchases don't play. How exactly is Apple responsible for your choices?
This is, of course, assuming slashdotters even click on links... how many even RTFA? ;)
As many a slashdotted site will tell you, slashdot readers RTFA. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of slashdot commenters in general.