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EFF Releases Music DRM Guide

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the pay-to-play dept.

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."

3 of 300 comments (clear)

  1. DRM by eneville · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Any form of DRM sucks, and I'll do whatever I can to avoid entering into any DRM agreement.

    --
    Why UNIX?
  2. preaching to the choir, blah blah by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful


    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 ,even TV (get those cheques written) basically anywhere the public might see it and read it and understand it

    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

  3. It's a choice... but for how long? by sound+vision · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.