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RIAA Says "Don't Expect DRMed Music To Work Forever"
Oracle Goddess writes "Buying DRMed content, then having that content stop working later, is fair, writes Steven Metalitz, the lawyer who represents the MPAA, RIAA in a letter to the top legal advisor at the Copyright Office. 'We reject the view that copyright owners and their licensees are required to provide consumers with perpetual access to creative works.' In other words, if it stops working, too bad. Not surprisingly, Metalitz also strongly opposes any exemption that would allow users to legally strip DRM from content if a store goes dark and takes down its authentication servers."
As a proud user of GStreamer-based media players, I didn't expect it to work at all.
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
...doesn't mean we shouldn't try.
NOT!
you keep shooting yourself in the foot and pretty soon you wont have a leg to stand on, i already quit buying your products, this is a good way to get even more people to quit buying your products...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I guess I won't be buying DRM'd music, much like how we all stopped buying DRM'd music, for that reason.
So... I guess... you lose Mr Metalitz? Is this your final answer?
This is the "music as a service" model. Soon, they will try to take control even on my volume knob.
... The money I gave you for it still works. I don't get to take that back, do I?
People who buy DRM'ed media content are idiots. It's not as if the record companies have tried to hide their sense of entitlement, or their unethical beliefs and attitudes. It would be different if they had, but as things stand, there's nothing else to do but blame the "victims" who keep giving them their money.
Stop feeding the machine, people.
If you don't want drm, buy the cd and rip.
... Fuck you.
So they're knowingly defrauding the buyer by intentionally selling something not fit for purpose?
I assume our wise and courageous Justice Department will hand down indictments any minute!
Yes of course. But that's because the creative works should be public domain after a while. And I don't mean after 70+ years either.
I mean... really? I don't even have a lame/wildly inaccurate car analogy to throw at this one, I'm just in awe of how dumb this is.
--Not to be worried, Pitr fix.
Car Analogy, I choose you!
I'd like to sell you a car, it's brand new and gets great gas mileage. Oh, but only you can drive it, no fair letting someone else borrow it without them paying us. And you can only drive it on roads that we say are ok. You also have to bring it in to the shop once a week, or it will stop working. If you're out of town and can't get it into the shop, it'll stop working until you do, and if the shop goes out of business or just doesn't want to work on your car anymore, well, that's just too bad; we reject the idea that you should be able to drive your car forever.
So, according to him, noone ever 'buys' movies or music; they just rent them until they break.
I almost hope he wins; stupid restrictions like this only increase the incentive to avoid DRM.
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
I guess people who bend over and buy DRMed music deserve this.
Record sales are slowing down, and you are trying to cash in on the digital economy. How do you go about it? Well, if you're the RIAA, you publicly come out and announce to everyone that you are going to sell them a product that can arbitrarily stop working. Ugh, I really hope that the RIAA is not long for this world. Oh, and if they start getting bailout money I am leaving the country, mark my words. They have undermined their own business and they deserve to fail.
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
As a sidenote, this mp3 has DRM technology embedded in it, and will self destruct in 10...9...
Metalitz will drive you mad!
THL phish sticks
The only way right now to reasonably sell people the same, say, movie is to release it in a different format (dvd, now bluray) or to include some extras or a shiny box or whatever. Something different, no matter how small.
Mr. Metalitz's view allows online store operators to simply go out of business, start a new store under a different name and maybe even with different names on the corporate charter, and go on about selling the same exact things over again.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
"You don't understand, Harry, nobody could understand unless they have lived with the goblins. To a goblin, the rightful and true master of any object is its maker, not the purchaser. All goblin-made objects are, in goblin eyes, rightfully theirs."
"But if it was bought ---"
"---then they would consider it rented by one who had paid the money. They have, however, great difficulty with the idea of goblin-made objects passing from wizard to wizard. [snip] I believe he thinks, as do the fiercest of his kind, that it [the Sword of Gryffindor] ought to have been returned to the goblins once the original purchaser died. They consider our habit of keeping goblin-made objects, passing them from wizard to wizard without further payment, little more than theft."
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
He sounds like a goblin from the Harry Potter books, the last book in fact. Goblins in that universe think that only the creator owns something and everyone else is renting the item. They strongly dislike the practice of humans passing heritage items down the family tree and think that when the 'renter' dies such items should be returned to their creator. (ok...I geeked out a bit there...and yeah, I've read the books too many times....)
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
Dear RIAA,
In regards to your notice that you feel it is fair to arbitrarily remove something I have purchased from my possession (via disabling DRM'd music), I wish to inform you that you will never, ever, ever get another cent from me. I wish you good luck in maintaining your failing empire as it crumbles down around you for I am certain I am far from the only person who is disgusted at your activities and your outright contempt for me as a "customer." Thus I am certain others will also forgo purchasing your latest CD from Pop Star X and chose to instead invest that entertainment dollar in something - anything - that is of value. Your product no longer has value.
Thank you and goodbye.
Yes, what Metalitz says is true, that rightsholders cannot be expected to provide copies that work in perpetuity, but never have rightsholders had the ability to REMOVE the legally purchased right to consume said product. Either rightsholders must accept the burden of maintaining availability, or they must not require DRM. Not a legal opinion, a moral one.
MacroHard - Boning you in a big way! (TM)
Let's stop making such a big deal about this. The solution is simple. DO NOT BUY DRMed MEDIA! There's plenty of quality media available outside the recording industry. Articles like these need to go away IMO.
What part of "tongue my asshole after a nice greasy shit" did you not understand?
iTunes music no longer has DRM, and several other music services also no longer have DRM, so I think this isn't as big an issue as the Slashdot readership will no doubt make it in the comments that follow. This is another story intended let everyone blame the RIAA for their piracy, I guess, as if that's a valid reason.
Dear Mr Metalitz,
You are a complete cunt.
Regards,
The World
"Forever" is exactly how long it will be before I buy it in the first place.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
This is why I, back when iTunes still had DRM on its offerings, considered it perfectly reasonable and ethical to run any purchases through JHymn (and later Requiem) as soon as I'd bought them. It's also why I've done exactly the same thing with the few digital movies I've purchased. Also I taught my daughter, wife, and several friends how to do it, and explained (often in tedious detail) why this was necessary to protect their purchases, what with music companies failing and shutting down their license servers....
The bottom line is: These guys have no interest in customer satisfaction at all. The business mantra used to be "The Customer is King"; but with groups like the RIAA/MPAA, the customer is perceived as only having value for as long as his/her wallet is open.
#DeleteChrome
I support this fully... as I am purchasing everything with my new DRM'd money. He can't expect it to stay in his account forever now, can he?
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
The only reason this works for the *AA is because most people don't know any better. They want music. They go buy music. End of story. Try to explain it to a technologically illiterate person and their eyes will glaze over before you've finished saying MP3.
mmmm...forbidden donut
They only license the copies, not sell them. Hmmm.
Last I read, a license is a form of a contract that defines who may legally do what, what each party is agreeing to, has liability for, etc. and has to be agreeable to both parties in advance. For example, when I apply for a driver's license, I agree to certain things, but the governments obligation is that they will [at least here in the US and most of the time] enforce them fairly.
How does, you bought a copy without signing and agreement but we unilaterally reserve the right to make it "not work" fit under copyright again? which governs copying and performance for profit, NOT ownership?
Hmmm.....
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
And if they just stopped working for no reason you can be sure there'd be hell to pay... at least in a court somewhere... That's some pretty flawed logic...
I'm like a superhero, but with no powers or motivation.
'We reject the view that copyright owners and their licensees are required to provide consumers with perpetual access to creative works," writes Steven Metalitz, the lawyer
This is why we have a second amendment.
If I buy a CD and I destroy it myself, fine, but if a corporation somehow uses DRM to deactivate it* then I consider that theft.
We don't tolerate thieves around these parts. Not that I would kill someone over one bricked CD, but if my whole 1000-disc collection stopped working, effectively stealing $1500 from me (which is 150 hours of my personal labor), somebody's gonna refund my money..... hopefully voluntarily.
*
* (Yes I know CDs don't have DRM. It's just an example.)
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Don't expect me to buy DRM'ed music ever.
[Insert pithy quote here]
When we (Slashdot readers who are against this kind of Copyright abuse) talk in this debate from now on we should refuse to use to use the term "Intellectual Property."
It's obvious by this view that the RIAA doesn't want you to be able to buy a damn thing. When you sell "Property" you don't get the right for it to revert back to you.
So STFU and don't use that term. Come up with something else, RIAA greedhead.
...to realize you've reached the end game.
Everybody even remotely involved with movies or music from the beginning probably assumed that new formats would come along with new opportunities for both creativity, as well as profit; companies could be angry that the phonograph was stealing money away from their piano roll business, until they jumped into the phonograph business themselves.
Now with music and movies, and everything, being nothing more than a pile of bits, there's simply nowhere to go. Digital is the perfect medium insofar as there's nothing that anyone can conceive of coming after; people could imagine smaller records, color movies, etc., no one has even hinted at the possibility of something to replace a digital file.
So more than anything, they realize that an mp3 will be available forever and ever; it's even *more* perfect because it can be changed to fit the need (burning to a cd, etc.). The problem is that they see the problem from a purely infrastructure point of view: "we have to keep these drm servers running forever? No freaking way!" On top of that, it's only going to go further downhill; the tunes that are DRM'ed today will likely be un-DRM'ed later today, and will eventually get out onto the wider market, so not only are they spending a lot of money keeping up a bunch of servers, the servers become more expensive over time for all the work they're *not* doing as people eventually find the non-DRM version.
Lose now, lose more later.
202-355-7899 tell steve I said hi. Distribute to 4chan, adios.
What if there was a warning/disclaimer before every purchase of DRM'd media (music, books, etc) that said something to the effect of:
"This content contains digital protections to prevent copyright infringement. Part of these protections mean that if we decide to stop supporting this content or go out of business then you will never be able to legally access this content."
Just so people know what they're getting into. After all, it would only be a fair full disclosure of what they're buying and it might make people think twice about buying DRM'd media, but then again, I doubt the warnings on cigarettes really make people think twice about smoking.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
That's gotta hurt. How long before a retraction/denial/sacking?
It doesn't matter. Most consumers learned long ago that this is the basic way of thinking with large music-related corporations. That's *why* piracy is so high. And the music industry still makes money (I have NO idea how, but it does... vast amounts).
All this will do is increase piracy by another tiny percentage. That's it. The people who were borderline will think "That's enough" and everyone else will carry on as normal. And then there'll be another stupid announcemnt/technology/law/restriction and the borderline will shift again and again and again until, actually, *nobody* cares at all.
Please, please, RIAA... consider what would have happened if you went back in the time to all the previous stupid announcements you've made and proclaimed the OPPOSITE. Consider what people would be using now instead of torrent'd MP3's - cheap non-DRM music from YOUR store (and now from Amazon nearly 10 YEARS too late). The next generation are being taught to ignore you, whether accidentally or not, and you won't exist to them - they have iPod's loaded up with MP3's and copy and share them indiscriminately, in the same way that schoolkids are basically taught to copy/paste images from Google Images into their coursework. The laws that *do* protect your business will become more like guidelines, until eventually they are never enforced at all.
You're digging your own grave, and everyone is watching you, but you're the only one not to see it.
If you don't want drm, buy the cd and rip.
This is the obvious solution. People still buying into the DRM Music Download deal really have no one to blame but themselves at this point. As long as those services keep raking in the cash-ola for these IP Trolls - I mean entertainment companies - they will keep pushing forward with this business. People keep saying they are "shooting themselves in the foot" but all I see is business as usual, people keep forking over money for DRM crippled downloaded music services.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
This statement is completely wrong.
"We reject the view," he writes in a letter to the top legal advisor at the Copyright Office, "that copyright owners and their licensees are required to provide consumers with perpetual access to creative works. No other product or service providers are held to such lofty standards. No one expects computers or other electronics devices to work properly in perpetuity, and there is no reason that any particular mode of distributing copyrighted works should be required to do so."
Computers and other products might wear out, but they do not have a "kill switch" that will stop them from working after a specific date, or at the request of the vendor. If you take care of computer hardware, automobiles, other physical objects, they can last a lifetime. The same is true for music, books, and other physical media. DRMed content contains such a "kill switch"... once the server goes down, it's gone.
People used to joke about "having to buy the White Album again", but they didn't actually have to do it, they could keep playing the vinyl copy when CDs came along, and even iTunes didn't make the forty year old LP turn into dust. DRM gives the music industry a new capability, the ability to force EVERYONE to "buy the White Album again" by taking down a single server.
I see nothing wrong with the RIAA's stance here ... assuming of course one was aware of this at the time of sale. If not, if there was some expectation of perpetual access to the work, then there's a problem.
Well if I can't expect the music to work forever, then don't expect my money to find it sway into your hands forever. it's that simple...
That's OK, many of us personally reject the view that the copy rights you hold should last as long as they do. So you keep selling stuff with the intention of breaking it a few years down the road so you can sell it again, and we'll keep not buying it.
They want their idea back.
(I admit, that's not really fair to them. It wasn't their fault.)
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
OK, for us oldies who used to buy "vinyl" records. The more you played the record, the faster it degraded in quality. If you really liked the record, you ended up buying it multiple times. This was before it was easy to record it onto tape. The RIAA wants to return to the days of yesteryear when they could sell a song, the same song by the same artist, multiple times. That appears to be their mindset. After all, in the days of records, you couldn't return a damaged record for a new one. So they had a limited life. And so, in their mind, should all "creative works". I imagine a number of book publishers hate me. I have books that I have reread many times over the years. All for a single "license fee". But, as with records, books "wear out" (paper ages and degrades). I now have a number of books in PDF form. They will never wear out.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
One could make a good argument that DRM is proof of a conspiracy to steal music as well as encouraging or even insisting that customers break the DMCA.
They absolutely know that DRM encourages such behavior so that legal owners of the music must do so in order to retain the ability to play the music they have purchased.
Last I heard we had the right to make a backup copy but the DMCA trumps that. So a legal right is made impossible which encourages customers to commit crimes. Now I'm not saying that they aren't breaking the law. But rioting does not excuse inciting a riot.
Ward
. Silence! Be thankful thy species is unpalatable! .
I thought the headline was implying the RIAA was admitting DRM on music won't work forever as an anti-piracy measure and they're advocating for content producers to stop using it.
On a side note, I completely agree with him that content producers should not be required to perpetually provide access to the content. Once they decide to stop supporting the content, it can be claimed by the public domain and no longer be the responsiblity of the corporations. Now we just need some sort of law that guides the process of content being moved to the public domain in a reasonable time.
My webcomic
Ever been to a car dealership where all the car engines come equipped with a remote-controlled bomb designed to render them useless after an undefined amount of time, regardless that you're still paying full price for a full purchase, not a rental? That's what the RIAA is advertizing right now.
Cheaper paperbacks are printed on a high acid wood pulp paper. After a while (depending mostly on temperature) they fall apart. I have some novels that are only 15 years old and they are pretty much unreadable, with pages cracking apart and the cheap binding losing pages.
If you shell out the money for a hard cover those are supposed to be printed on acid-free paper, and are suitable for a library's collection. And if treated kindly should last 50-75 years or more.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I recognize and accept that technologies change and become obsolete. There are millions of 8-track cassettes floating around doing nothing. Eventually the same thing with happen to tapes, CDs, and DVDs. That's natural. What I don't find acceptable, is that this sort of argument (if passed into rule or law) would give the RIAA precendent to essentially flip the switch when they found a situation to be not in their favor. If the music won't work forever, how long will it work? Do we get any kind of assurance that if we buy a song we'll be able to listen to it once it's finished transferring?
Wow, just wow. This reply of yours was made one minute after another referencing goblins from Harry Potter.
I swear, you Harry Potter fans are starting to creep me out. :(
I don't buy DRM'ed music, I only buy music that does not have DRM to it. Most of my music tastes are 1980's and 1990's music which are available in CD form via used CD stores and Pawn Shops for like really cheap.
I listen to AM and FM radio for free, while I cannot choose the music they play I can change the channel until I find a song I like to hear.
I still own a Sony Walkman and a lot of cassette tape music I bought. My wife still has a stereo system that uses LPs.
I don't own an iPod or iPhone, but I do have a cheap MP3 player by jWin that uses SD cards and my songs in MP3 format barely fill the 512M SD card.
I am on disability since 2002 and been out of work because I have been too sick to work. I cannot afford to buy too many songs or media players like the iPod or iPhone. I have to work with what I can afford to buy, and keep my "legacy music" technology working until it breaks and needs replacements.
Owning DRM music that "expires" is stupid, if you bought something you should be able to own it until you get tired of it and sell it. With the audio CDs people would just sell their old CDs at garage sales or sell them to used CD shops or Pawn shops. But with a DRM music file, not only does it expire, but if you don't want it anymore you cannot sell it to someone else. Capitalism works with a "used market" as well for people to buy stuff cheaper because it is used. Shut off that "used market" and you shut off part of the economy. Thus the economy will suffer for it.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
The judge should ask the RIAA lawyer, 'If 'perpetual' isn't fair, then what is fair?' One year, 5 years, 20 years, whatever we say, or until we go out of business?
To: met@msk.com
Subject: Re: your letter to the copyright office
I have just read of your letter to the Copyright Office claiming that your clients reject the view that consumers should expect perpetual access to a copyrighted work.
I have only one response.
Please identify, with specificity, the section in the Copyright Act where it grants copyright owners the authority to deny access to a protected work that has been legitimately obtained. I can save you lots of time, you won't find it. The right of the consumer to access a work protected under the act is implicit in the sale. The consumer did not rent or lease authorization to "access" the protected work, it was an outright "purchase" of that authorization and the revocation of that authorization is not permitted.
Have a nice day,
It's perfectly reasonable for something to stop working if:
Anything else is a either a con job or a rejection of basic principles of commerce.
If you don't want drm, buy the cd and rip.
That'd likely be illegal because it would violate the DMCA many (most?) CDs contain some form of copy protection.
And no, there is no exception in the DMCA for "personal use". And "fair use" is for something completely different, despite the common misconception here on /.
Not to mention the fact that you'd have to buy the whole CD even if you only want one track.
iTunes music no longer has DRM, and several other music services also no longer have DRM
Music is not the only kind of work at issue. The video services still have DRM. Video is relevant for at least the following reasons:
Copyright needs to be put back to the original 14 years and signing your copyright over to a third party should also not be allowed.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
'We reject the view that copyright owners and their licensees are required to provide consumers with perpetual access to creative works.'
In that case I reject the idea that the RIAA has a right to restrict my access to content once their DRM stops working...as far as I'm concerned that now represents out of print and unable to be obtained legally so I shall steal it. Treat me like a criminal and I shall become one. Great model RIAA...thanks for allowing me to self-justify my actions.
Because my money is now printed with disappearing ink.
They think it is fair to have perpetual, virtually "forever" copyrights while it is fair that the buyer does not get to own it "forever"?
I think we are far beyond any sense of reasonable and it is just about time we have them committed to a psychiatric institution.
Ok, I buy the 'not indefinitely' line, sure. But, this being the digital age and all, where data can be duplicated, then duplicated, then duplicated, without bit loss or transformation, I would expect the FEE I paid you for YOUR content, to last the life of the copyright with which you so aggressively support. Anything short of that is FRAUD! Or, breach of contract... You choose...
So in essence, since they don't wish to honor the terms of the agreements that THEY themselves have made on behalf of the public, why should I honor those terms for them?
Fact is I shouldn't, and I won't!
I reject the view that your works have been published in a medium where copyright is applicable if the medium is specifically designed to have its own safeguards against copying. Such safeguards are their own form of copy prevention and, if used, should be considered a replacement, not augmentation, of the copyright protections afforded by law.
And this is why I burn every album I buy and download from iTunes onto a backup CD... just in case something goes awry...
You might think so but Metalitz in TFA says otherwise:
This not only muddies the (logical) waters, but is dead wrong: The first computer I bought new (in 1990), an Acer laptop, 386-20Hz, still works. It will not run Windows Vista, but it runs DOS just fine -- still. It does what it was intended to do when it was bought. I do not expect it to run a modern OS. But I DO expect it to be repairable (it hasn't needed any) and to work as long as I live.
Same for my music and movies, Mr. Metalitz.
DRM is still an issue, even on iTunes. All of the audio books sold by iTunes/Audible are wrapped in DRM--no exceptions, not even for authors who don't want DRM.
And when the RIAA says they shouldn't have to keep key servers running "forever" he means the RIAA shouldn't have to run its key servers even a day after you have bought the DRMd media. This is a big, big issue. Imagine if your car stopped working when GM went bankrupt...
"The more you tighten your grip, Metalitz, more songs will slip through your fingers"
(What kind of name is "Metalitz", anyway?? Sounds like an evil android)
No sig for the moment.
He is pooring gasoline all over the fire to get more action so he can get paid, we will hack our way to freedom, DRM isn't anything that can't be broken continuously. I am proud to say that I saw this coming years ago, never bought a single DRM based CD or Mp3 and never will, the music companies are getting karmic justice for all the greed they have had for decades.
Such interesting theories these corporate flaks come up with. Here's another one: Piracy means never having to feel sorry about the DRM.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
How does, you bought a copy without signing and agreement but we unilaterally reserve the right to make it "not work" fit under copyright again?
You agreed to an agreement: the Terms of Service of the store from which you "bought" the copy. The terms stated that the use of the copy is time-limited to as long as the store remains in business.
I guess he's rejecting our reality and substituting his own.
I really don't understand why it's so hard to burn a music CD of whatever you buy and then rip it to MP3. Bang. You now have non-DRM'd music, and a hard backup. It costs, what? 12 cents for the CD and takes less than 10 minutes on any modern computer?
And if you don't want to do that, I know 2 or 3 apps on Mac OS X that will let me record whatever the computer is playing... Don't tell me there aren't windows apps that do that. I know people are going to come down on me like a bag of hammers saying how much they've got already, but I'm talking about on an as-you-go basis...
I had a sucky sig.
Don't expect us to take this kind if crap forever. We can 'vote with our wallets'.
RIAA Says "Don't Expect DRMed Music To Work Forever" but not the way they meant. It all depends on your point of view, do you want to be able to play music or do you want to prevent it being played. Moores law and enough time ensures that I can decrypt or even recover the encryption key used for a large number of tracks. In the long run DRM is just an annoyance and I will be able do as I see fit with my files.
Reading the original article, I can't help but think about how greedy the RIAA truly is and how this organization simply doesn't understand the basic nature of internet-based music content delivery. If you purchase a DRM encrypted song, to me, it's like purchasing an encrypted DVD. it's a purchase. As long as you can play it, no problem. Shouldn't be any device that stops you from playing it or any expiry date. Now, I know I'm not taking into aspect the technical nature of DRM'ed music, but again, the issue at first shouldn't be technical, but conceptual and.. ethical. In my honest opinion, instead of "selling" DRM music, the model should be to lease DRM access to music. As long as you pay your "periodic" fee, you access this "selection" of music. Company goes out of business, the music stops working. The RIAA goes for the most aggressive tactics, like someone who would throw tons of shit to the wall, eventually, some of it will stick. The RIAA does the same thing with their tactics. Instead of trying to control everything at a granular level, they should think in terms of bulk access. In the end, selling music online isn't the way to go, but giving subscription based access to music based on various criteria, such as types of music (blues, disco, etc..), by bands, and any other form of grouping would be more profitable and it's "access" based on duration, therefore, nothing permanent and constant streams of revenues.
If Sony sells me a computer that must connect to Sony's servers for some reason or it stops working, you bet I would expect them to keep the servers up in perpetuity. And as soon as the servers went down, I would be hacking the shit out of that hardware. And you know what? No reasonable judge/jury would condemn me for doing it.
This reminds me of the companies that were giving away or selling cheaply PCs that came loaded with adware that you were supposed to allow to run freely on your system in order to maintain "ownership". Basically, the sale was a lease-to-own that was dependent on ongoing ad revenue.
I think most people who bought those machines pretty much immediately wiped the drives and started from scratch right away. Those companies didn't stick around for long. I think eMachines may have even tried to do some sort of subsidized schtick, but that obviously didn't work out.
The CB App. What's your 20?
http://meitantei.propuh41.com.ar/music.gif (The domain belongs to me, it's my personal website, I'm not the creator of the image)
If music companies simply stopped selling music and started renting it for 5 year periods, and guaranteed availability of their DRM servers, they would be legally in the clear, no?
They may not have any customers, but their lawyers would be happy.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Is that you, Jon Stewart?
As far as I'm informed, more and more good artists are jumping ship from the big four labels, and create their own thing. After all, it gives you up to a 2750% profit increase (from 3.5% to 100%), to throw out the industry in-between.
And according to the RIAA's own studies, they will be dead and gone in 5-7 years anyway. (Expect it to be a quadratic curve. Not a linear one.)
So all the talk, all the taraa and kaboom, can just flow by, go right trough me.
I just wait, smile, and see them fall apart. It's a quite beautiful image, if you watch it quietly from the distance.
(Beware: From close up, it looks like that guy's melting face in Indiana Jones.)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
This is a perfectly reasonable view, so long as they made it clear up front that you're buying a limited time, limited rights license, not a perpetual license. I don't think that's what most consumers thought they were buying. I think most consumers expected they were buying something which would work forever.
I was chatting about this this morning. Assume you trust a DRMed music retailer, e.g. Apple. Do you really think their DRM servers will be up and running 20 years from now? And that you won't have bought more than 7 (or however many) computers or iPodsby then? I have CDs I bought in the late 80s that still play fine, so expect my mp3s will too. Us techies all realized this was a problem from the beginning, but it's totally unreasonable to think non-geeks have internalized this.
Story at 11. Really guys, how is it news that the RIAA is looking for more ways to extend their failed business models?
So on the one hand they are whining about "infringers", and on the other hand they are pushing people as hard as they can to infringe.
I steal a car.
You see, car analogies don't work, because cars are physical objects.
Note: I don't own any DRM music.
Funny how when the reality of DRM sets in, it's hard to find supporters of DRM (like Linus Torvalds who doesn't mind Tivoization and objects to the GPLv3 which defeats Tivoization) advocating for less user freedom. The right to read isn't looking so weird anymore (for some, that story was always underrated wisdom).
Please keep this in mind when you next read some open source advocate tell you about how improved developmental methodology, quality of code, or time to market are better metrics for measuring the value of technology. Community, social solidarity, and a steady defense of our freedoms are clearly a better path.
Digital Citizen
i think they do care and that it is their business model. my records (LPs/vinyl) didnt last forever (scratched/ broken/warped in the back seat of my car), so i bought them on tape(8track/cassette). tape player(s) ate those. i bought cd's versions of all my albums when that format came out. again they got scratched, ex girlfriend stole them or whatever. then, through the magic of PCs i could back them up. i could burn that disc over and over and over again. i could even burn a copy for that evil bitch GF who stale my wilco albums. i just cut those fuckers (read as- music industry) out of the loop and out of a huge source of income.
"You can kill the revolutionary, but you can't kill the revolution."-- Fred Hampton
from now on we should refuse to use to use the term "Intellectual Property."
Mr. Stallman is way ahead of you. As I understand it, his points are as follows:
First, disable all of his, his children's, and the rest of his families comparable downloadable digital content: iTunes music purchases, iPhone apps, things like that.
Then, see if he says the same thing.
Ok, fine, lets say he's correct. Then shouldn't it be fine for Bestbuy to kick in my door and take my 42" lcd a year after I bought it?
I mean, just because I paid for it doesn't mean it's mine, and I shouldn't expect to actually own it forever.
Right?
How the hell are idiots like this jackass the people they listen to when creating laws? It's ASStounding.
I'd type more, but HP is at my door telling me they are taking my laptop back as it's been over a year
that quote is hilarious
considering the formidable army of ip lawyers team jk rowling has assembled, and their frequent aggressive efforts at maintaining hegemony, jk rowling certainly is no stranger to intellectual property law. if this wasn't conscious parody on her part, then it had to be unconscious. because by the time a goblin appears in the harry potter books, she was firmly entrenched in cultural superstar status and all the ip lawyering that involves
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
DRM laden products are slowly being rejected by the marketplace. Capitalism is a bitch isn't it?
I reject the view that their business model should continue into perpetuity, just because they feel it should be so. Don't buy from these morons. Without cash, their businesses die.
-ted
He is absolutely, unconditionally correct. They are only obligated to provide consumers access until the copyright expires, not in perpetuity. Of course if the term of copyright was shortened, it would reduce their expense.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
You mean worse. The RIAA is legally sanctioned to pretty well do as they please.
He who has no
What if there was a warning/disclaimer before every purchase of DRM'd media
There is. It's called the terms of service when you sign up for an account at the store.
presidence for this has already been set, It's called a "Rental Agreement" These guys just don't get it.
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
If there were no copyrights, there would be no need for GPL. Of course, I think there should be copyrights and strong copyright enforcement, so long as the copyright terms are limited to 28 years with the option to renew for another 28 years (as it was before the life + n years garbage).
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Computers and other products might wear out, but they do not have a "kill switch" that will stop them from working after a specific date, or at the request of the vendor.
If a publisher of a non-free computer operating system has announced that it declines to issue more security patches for that version, and you have discovered a remote vulnerability in that operating system version, it's almost as good as a kill switch.
I'm surprised nobody has posted this yet
who stale my wilco albums.
should read as
who stole my wilco albums.
i hope those guys dont read the slashdots...
"You can kill the revolutionary, but you can't kill the revolution."-- Fred Hampton
If this starts happening on a widespread basis I would expect that a large number of class action lawsuits would start hitting the RIAA members like a hurricane.
Exactly where on the bill of sale of does it say that 'This product will not work after 1-Jan-2010'.
Here in the UK, the unfair contracts laws would hit them hard and they would be forced to give full refunds.
The RIAA seem to have a real knack of shooting themselves in the foot.
Thanks a lot. Now we're all going to have to pay a *AA tax on new hard disk purchases just like we already do with blank media (CDRs/DVDs).
So much for cheap!
He who has no
I am not against DRM, just let me know what the restrictions of the DRM are in plain English. Not some 20 page EULA that I can't understand.
I have rented a DRM movie from the iTunes store to watch on my iPod. $3.99. I knew I had just under a month to start watching it, and then 24 hours to finish watching it. I knew it could only be on my Mac or iPod but not both at the same time. I was fine with that.
I bought a digital CD from Amazon.com knowing it did not have DRM, but that my user code is in the MP3 so if I do share it, it is trackable to me.
Various web sites have DRM in their video files. You can play these for ever, but only as long as that PC has the license. If the PC dies and the site goes belly up, the media is not usable as I can't get the license again. Some require Windows Media player and will not work on OS X. If I know all that, then that's fine too. I can select to avoid these if I desire.
What I don't like is the rules being unclear, and changing. If recording TV to my VCR is fair use, then why can't I record from my HDTV to my Blueray burner as fair use?
We reject the view that copyright consumers and their currency are required to provide owners with perpetual access to hard earned money.
The money in their investment accounts should vanish at precisely the same time as the DRMed content.
The way out of this mess is for consumers to vote with their dollars, and to refuse to buy DRM-infested garbage. Unfortunately, it seems that most consumers either don't know or don't care. There will probably always be enough people voting for DRM to keep it going.
Don't expect us to buy this crap.
"We reject the view that copyright owners and their licensees are required to provide consumers with perpetual access to creative works"
And I reject the view that you have any real say in the matter. If I give you my money for it, I'll crack the DRM and do anything I want with it for my own personal use. And I don't give a damn what either you, your company, or the copyright office says about that.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
does the quote above appear? i've never read a harry potter book, so i didn't know they were in book 1
so the issue is not when a goblin appears, but when their characteristics are fleshed out. in other words, when she wrote the words above, what book are we in? (was jk rowling a relative unknown or a cultural superstar when she described goblins as copyright holders?)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
'We reject the view that copyright owners and their licensees are required to provide consumers with perpetual access to creative works.'
Fair enough. And likewise, I reject DRM'd works. I'll buy DRM-free MP3s from Amazon over iTunes. I won't buy DRM'd BluRay disks. If you want to provide a "defective by design" product, then keep it. I'm not interested.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
I pay you for your films or music.
I don't give it to others, certainly not commercially.
What I then do with it, is none of your damn business, and in actual fact, I'll do whatever the hell I please with it after I've bought it.
I'll play and store it across all my own devices, I'll play it where ever the hell I want, in my car, in different rooms, whatever.
And if you don't get a clue, and real soon, I'll actually cut you out altogether. No revenue, no money, no stream.
I'd rather give up film and music totally than see your idiocy gain any further traction.
The music and film industry deserve an award for multiple cases of
Poorest use of the internet
Stupidest abuse of their own customers
Mass abuse of the market, ripping off artists and customers alike.
If you guys were wise, You'd have beaten Itunes to the ball and had a monthly fee from members with an all you can eat menu.
You're so dumb that Apple had to show you how to do something. And you're supposed to be the creatives.
The music industry is jammed in the 1960's monopoly model and can't see the wood for the trees.
We`re all equal
When you buy music, make sure to check http://riaaradar.com/ to see if the album is from a company that funds the RIAA. If they do, don't buy it and stick it to them a couple dollars of lost earnings at a time.
"We reject the view," he writes in a letter to the top legal advisor at the Copyright Office, "that copyright owners and their licensees are required to provide consumers with perpetual access to creative works. No other product or service providers are held to such lofty standards. No one expects computers or other electronics devices to work properly in perpetuity, and there is no reason that any particular mode of distributing copyrighted works should be required to do so."
I'm going to infringe on his speech some...
"We reject the view that the public and their trustees are required to provide corporations with perpetual access to their flawed model of business. No other nation or group of citizens are held to such lofty standards. No one expects businesses or other service providers to work profitably in perpetuity, and there is no reason why citizens and consumers should be required to support such.
"
In other words, Steven Metalitz--you and your special interests can eat shit and die.
RIAA wants to sell music like shows in a movie theatre rather than perpetual listening rights. I have no problem with that! When I go to the movies I don't expect to get to come back tomorrow for free.
What is a big deal is that the terms need to be very clear. Is it a year of listening, or ten? Perhaps perpetual listening rights? If the terms are clear I can make an informed decision to buy or not. The price is also probably depending on what is actually sold. Implying that the work will "expire" at some unknown point in the future does not make me want to buy anything. If the seller is depending on closed technical solutions (like DRM servers) I'd probably stay away.
But in general don't mind if my recording stops working. The same goes for a lot of software and other licensed works. If you pay to use a program or watch a movie, why not pay to listen to a recording N times or for X years? I don't need a copy that lasts forever, what I need is to know what I'm paying for. And I only pay for what I get. Didn't apple already prove that it is possible to charge a premium for lossless non DRM:ed music?
.. to take my origianl copy of Dave Brubeck's "Time Out". It just turned 50 a couple of months ago, I suspect these guys will show up to revoke my license to own my copy... right???
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
I really hope that the RIAA is not long for this world. Oh, and if they start getting bailout money I am leaving the country, mark my words. They have undermined their own business and they deserve to fail.
The RIAA is too big to fail.
Reply to That ||
From his page at the link in the summary:
met@msk.com
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
I don't see the problem here. Music is a consumable resources. If it's on a CD, the CD will eventually degrade, it has been "consumed" and the consumer can purchase a new one, or a new format.
When my pen runs out of ink, I don't expect the pen manufacturer to give me free ink, I simply purchase a refill, or a new pen.
When the DRM server shuts down, count it as being "consumed", and purchase a replacement, in a new format.
Our economy is based on consumption, nothing lasts forever, and digital content should be no exception.
Sounds like a job for NOTECABLE!
I have some other copyrighted material thats been working fine for decades and still hasn't been replaced. they are books but many of the ones that i own still work decades after they were purchased. I even have a few that still work after well over one hundred years! I also still have many vinyl albums that still work some 50 years on as well.
This addresses a larger moral issue completely missing from modern discussion about the subject.
In the past, charging interest rates above 5%, if at all, was considered immoral and known as usury. It was so frowned upon because people recognized that making money without working is immoral and unethical in and of itself. Likewise, Adam Smith recognized that a high interest rate would cause capital to flood out of every industry into finance, since you can't hope to build a factory and have the same return as you would simply lending the same money for 10%.
The problem is that distribution of goods is now virtually free and worldwide compared to even a hundred years ago. Digital content even more so. It's understandable that patents and copyrights emerged as mechanisms to reward people for work, but the expiration of these rights is central to progress and promoting competition. Otherwise huge corporations will simply grow larger as they acquire the rights to human knowledge and creativity, and stifle any competition with their largesse and legal abuse.
Label them as
"This file/product may stop working AT ANY TIME, including before you get to use it. No refunds will be issued."
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
...
Copyright was intended to as an incentive to create works which would eventually end up as public domain - it was intended to increase public domain. If you break that, don't you invalidate your copyright?
Some people complain about "piracy" as being theft, but given the original intent of copyright, isn't the entire history of the extensions of copyright AND DRM and the DMCA actually theft from the public?...
Right you are. The growing abuse of copyright that has been underway for four decades is in opposition of the express purpose and practice that is spelled out in no less a document than the U.S. Constitution (Article 1, Section 8, Powers of Congress):
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
The whole notion of extending copyrights held by parties other than the originators indefinitely after the fact (and often after the originator is dead), clearly defies the constitutional basis of copyright in the first place.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Do you record and sell your own music? No? Then... SHUT THE HELL UP!
Problem is that the CD is disapppearing as a sales medium. First the indie stores but soon most physical stuff will be doomed by cheap internet distribution. The RIAA allowing more internet access as soon they have secured a more perfect monopoly with pay per use.
I can't wait till I can get all my music printed in binary on acid free vellum in leather hardbound book form! Take that, RIAA!
moox. for a new generation.
should read:
'We reject the view that music purchasers are required to provide copyright owners and their licensees with perpetual protection of their creative works.'
Music Guaranteed to last a life time ^__^
This is fraud and there's no other name for it. Had they told the consumer prior to the purchase, with a disclaimer, then it would not be anything more than stupid consumers buying the marketing of the RIAA. But since it wasn't disclosed prior to the sale it is fraud, period, sure as the nose on your face.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Depends on whether you see this as inherently defective mechandise as well as a violation of the long time US principle of legal preference for "in fee simple sales".
The song copy that I buy is *my* property. I am constrained by copyright to not infringe it by creating and redistributing more copies. Berne copyright, EULAs and DCMA are all corrupt, monopolistic doctrines that should ignored, fought if necessary.
So we went from "buying some music" to "buying a license to listen to some music" to "buying the opportunity to listen to some music until the RIAA decides you can't anymore." Where do we go next? "Paying for the possibility that one day the RIAA might let you listen to some music one time?"
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Never buy anything with any sort of DRM. Never have, never will. Get CD's across the counter, and make sure they don't have DRM, either. Back 'em up to disk or another CD. They keep this nonsense up, LP's really will come back. All my old stuff from 40 years ago plays great. LPs actually sound _better_ than CD's anyway. Nothing digital is required to play 'em, either, so inserting DRM is a real chore... The whole CD / digital thing is the worst thing to ever happen to commercial music, all things considered.
>an Acer laptop, 386-20Hz, still works.
>386-20Hz,
>20Hz
This is a perfect example of why the music industry is going in the crapper. I don't know if there is even a word for such a high degree of misguided arrogance. This is in the same order of proclaiming "We are victorious! The enemy is defeated and scattered! Their women wail and gnash their teeth!" ...while your position is being overrun.
It's almost like they want to fail. While cooler heads are trying (with varying degrees of success) to find an implementation of DRM that isn't too onerous, this guy comes by and makes a statement like this, which serves no purpose but to strengthen their opponents' resolve.
It's just incredible.
Well, to hell with the lot of them. Go indie. http://thinkindie.com/
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
So if I buy a book from a favorite author, said author has the authoritay to come onto my private property and confiscate his copyrighted book from me at any time? Copyright law places certain restrictions on transfer and/or copying of creative works once they are in the "public domain." I don't think it states anything about the copyright owner being allowed to "render his works incomprehensible, unreadable, unusable, etc. once an authorized copy has become the personal property of the consumer. But the digital format makes that prospect very easy doesn't it? Most (good) artists/authors seem to desire their works to have a long prosperous life. It seems the type that seems more concerned with getting a freaking nickel everytime someone plays their song, are not very creative and cannot create anything worth keeping around anyway.
One can find a list of record labels/riaa members here. riaa.com Let your favorite band's label know how you feel. If the labels discontinue their relationship with the RIAA, their revenue will slowly dry.
I think it is rapidly approaching the time when a radical protest needs to occur. Seriously. Our public domain has been effectively stolen. Things that should be rightfully available to me (all of us) now via the public domain are not. Now this industry is attempting to go even further and renege on contracts that other party only agree to grudgingly. I really think that these industries need to be treated like the British East India Company was in Boston. The industry may not learn. The government will learn one way or the other.
Some one is going to make the argument that I'm proposing revolution over not being able to listen to music. If you really think about it though Intellectual/Imaginary Property is just in it's infancy. We're talking about information. While the RIAA and MPAA may only be concerned about keeping their pockets full with our money, think of the impact this could have on future technologies. I don't know what they are, but I sure as hell don't want them to, by default, be subject to the controls that these to industries are trying to secure for themselves.
Realize that these two organizations do not create ANYTHING that they seek to control. They simply want control for their own profit. The purpose for which these organizations were created is no longer necessary and their further existence is ONLY detrimental to our society as evidenced by their mass extortion tactics. They will no more go away on their own than Al Capone would have. They need to be removed.
"It's because they're stupid, that's why. That's why everybody does everything." -Homer Simpson
Because if you think for a second I'm going to shell out $15 for your record, then another 100+ for your concert when you come to town your frickin dreaming.
they just made stealing music from them morally correct, as far as I'm concerned
Remember, the RIAA says stealing is wrong, but it's ok to steal your paid-for works from you, and it's ok to steal from the public domain by lobbying for perpetual copyright.
It's a shame these hypocrites haven't gone out of business yet.
It's been a long time.
Public stops buying DRM'ed music. RIAA cries piracy. Retirement homes across the coutry raided!
I dare anyone to try playing the digital copy of Terminator 2 Extreme DVD. The DRM server is dead and gone, and there's no way you can watch it.
But a class action lawsuit isn't going to do you much good if the company itself is going out of business, which would be one of the prime reasons for an authentication server to go out of business.
Personally, businesses pushing so much for this stuff tends to piss me off and start making rules like 'If you put DRM in it, and the DRM fails for whatever reason for a legitimate user, the user is entitled to a full refund'. And 'If the DRM requires a central server, and you shut it down, you have to provide a version that works without the server or refund everyone's money'.
I don't read AC A human right
They'll just get bailed out.
I've never been an advocate of DRM, but have been an advocate of respecting copyright and not violating the copyright holder's civil claim to the work. I'm sorry, but no more. Seriously, that is some messed up Grade A excrement. I'm done. Until we have genuine copyright reform, I'm violating copyright. I won't buy books. I'll download PDFs. I won't buy music. I'll download MP3s. I won't buy movies. I'll download MPGs.
Forget supporting the "good guys" and the independents. Until copyright is fixed, I flatly refuse to support the broken system.
What good is public domain to music?
It's our fucking culture.
the end of the copyright term only brings about the end of interest in the music
Yes, that's why nobody wants to listen to this guy or this guy, right?
Pull your head out of your ass and shake the shit out of your ears - it's starting to seep into your brain.
Metaltitz
When I saw the news about development of DRMs back in the day I thought... Okay, the people selling the media have a point, but what if...
and now the conclusion.
Two options here, Option 1. DRMs get abused and there is consumer outcry for laws to protect consumers ( laughable I know). Option 2. Nothing happens.
No one expects computers or other electronics devices to work properly in perpetuity, and there is no reason that any particular mode of distributing copyrighted works should be required to do so
Of course the difference here is you own the "computer or electronic device" and are solely responsible for it, this means you have the legal right and means to keep it working whereas when you're licensing a piece of media subject to DRM protection you depend on the distributor and/or copyright holder for the ability to reproduce it.
They know DRM cripples music and they know people will have to pay multiple times for it and they couldn't be happier about it.
I will dance over their graves.
The RIAA simply waves its magic wand and *poof* it happens. *poof* anything they say becomes law. *poof* fair use? No use! *poof* These are not the droids your looking for.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
I wonder if he would have been able to finish law school if not allowed to barrow law books or tapes from library that people have given.
perhaps they should think deeper on the outcome first ..
Don't expect your copyrighted works to remain copyrighted forever.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
so we could kill the server that they were on and make them go away.
The song copy that I buy is *my* property. I am constrained by copyright to not infringe it by creating and redistributing more copies.
Though the pretty colorful text on the screen says "Buy this song for 99 cents!"... you ain't. You are buying a license to access the file (regardless of whether or not it is DRM'ed).
Unless you created the file (AND THE CONTENT), you don't own it. And.. unless you copyright it, you still don't own it, legally.
Sorry.
0100010001101001011001 0100100000011010010110 1110001000000110000100 1000000110011001101001 0111001001100101
Windows data execution prevention! lol
http://whatisdataexecutionprevention.blogspot.com/
read this and weep they can shut you down now!.
http://www.riaaradar.com/
That they consider not being able to print their own money as unfair. At least it shows it for the sham it is.
This is another reason to avoid works "protected" by DRM. It is an affront to the very nature of fair and equitable commerce, and is contrary to the letter and spirit of copyright.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhBpI13dxkI
www.magnatune.com
Most people don't have the knowledge to do that - especially people who buy that crap. It's more likely that it came with too little RAM to support all the crapware they stuffed on it, the machines ran horribly, and the computers were replaced as soon as their owners could afford it.
One more reason not to buy DMRed stuff. Besides. All the good music's already been. Just say no to so-so.
I think the RIAA should not expect DRMed music to last forever - as a business model, that is.
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
Do you think that Steven Metalitz would agree to deposit the master keys to the DRM used to secure the work with the Library of Congress? Like that, when the legally-determined finite length of time that the work is protected ends, the work can proceed properly into the public domain as the law requires. I suggest the LoC because I find it hard to believe that anyone would be able to suggest that they'd be an untrustworthy custodian.
Not that this would make me more inclined to like DRM, but it would allow the fundamental legal, business and technical requirements of both it and copyright law to be met. Other alternatives would be to require people who apply DRM to place the keys in escrow elsewhere (together with appropriate monies in a suitable funding instrument) so as to ensure that the constitutional requirement for protections to be time-limited be enacted. Of course, if they did it this way then if there was another Mickey Mouse extension, all the media companies would suddenly have to deposit a substantial amount of extra cash into those funds to ensure that they continue to be solvent. I think I rather like the idea of corporate shenanigans hitting them on the bottom line immediately, especially as it would actually encourage shortening the period of protection (so as to release money back to the media companies). Hmmm...
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Could they just go die already? I'm not buying anything either and I'm sick by the cries of suffering from the basement. I guess I'll take a shovel down there and end it ...
Don't expect us to lend you our money forever.
...in a country that considers removing of DRM a consumer right, as long it is for personal use only.
Today at the Washington Post chat on Season 2 of Lost, they noted that you can't get either Season 1 or Season 2 of Lost to work any more on the full episode player.
Sounds like they did this intentionally.
Hack them - hack them all and show no mercy.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
They already have enforcement in place ! built right into your O/S and your Micropressor! read my journal I belive I explaind it quite nicely.
The RIAA is *NOT* a business! It's an industry association funded by the members - Sony, BMG, Warner et al.
The only way the RIAA gets shut down is if the member companies decide that it's not in their best interests to continue funding it. The labels might receive bailout money - but I seriously doubt that would happen. If a label collapses who really cares?
The RIAA could lose every single court case and still be in existence.
I think you'll find that in the end, the customer will actually have the last say on this. We hand over money, the music industry hands over a chunk of data, that data is our property. Like it or not, jump up and down, sigh, click your tongue, and so on and so forth, but this is the human condition in the present capitalistic world that a good many of us find ourselves living within.
A 'license' to listen to music we paid for is just some bullshit word that lawyers throw around. Try to change this concept of ownership too much and a few people will find themselves suddenly out of work.
This is not at all like buying a scratched DVD in a second-hand shop. It's like buying a DVD and then letting them come into your house whenever they want to scratch it, break it, take it away, or replace it with a grainy home movie version of the same. If someone did that with your furniture, you'd tie up the guy and call the cops for breaking and entering, vandalism, theft, and more. Explain why you would want to agree to all of that when you buy a song?
For ever is a TAD long... but for Music sake... what the life expectancy of a Compact Disc that is properly looked after?? 100 years? They should support the DRM for that long..
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
That would probably be possible if they printed it on thermal paper. I've had numerous receipts start fading out despite being sealed up in my file cabinet,which led me to scan+copy last year's tax receipts just in case I'm ever audited and end up with reams of blank expense receipts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhBpI13dxkI
Don't expect me to "buy" it
I don't believe in the tooth fairy or EULAs. I own the copy, not the song (copyright), if you will. Anything that interferes with that is in my eyes a defect or illegal destraint.
I don't recognize a purported, non-negoitated contract, invisible at the time of cash sale (no signature). Ultimately US courts should constrain EULAs in the future. However, I am starting to short weight spurious, banana peel republic legislation here, too. I've already had almost 30 years in and out experience with 3rd world governments, where ultimately effective law is mostly a personal moral issue coupled with defensive capacity, their FUD for my money/skills, and "tribal" connections. I am coming to see more freedoms as much better preserved de facto in the advancing 3rd world than here.
To set your mind at rest, I don't knowingly buy products that give crap product or service, so the RIAA products are safe from me and vice versa. An aside, I use OO and Firefox, mostly, and Linux will soon, finally, set me free.
As the US becomes more consumer unfriendly, the more often I am not going to consume bad US "goods". I'll spend my money elsewhere for a better deal. As for US companies that like to play tough and step on people, they had better practice on a rusty nail or a rattle snake first before they try their luck with me. Step 1, I make them bored or cry til they bounce off the ceiling until they fix it. Else, Step 2 is to find their other customers to entertain and horrify them with *facts*. And I have a lot more nasty attitude with predators (I am normally a quiet wallflower). I've made some people rich, for free, and more recently, others fail, for cause with extra chances. Corp America really should go back to the concept of good product, good service at a good price rather than gotcha marketing and pseudolegal attacks.
If this kind of unfriendly words increases the piracy.... then to bad.
...I'll never buy DRM media. Bet my MONEY keeps working for ya, doesn't it gang?
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
If the RIAA allegedly don't want me to pirate music, why are they hellbent on consistently give me reason after reason after reason to pirate?
Though the pretty colorful text on the screen says "Buy this song for 99 cents!"... you ain't. You are buying a license to access the file (regardless of whether or not it is DRM'ed).
That depends.
When you buy a CD, it doesn't come in a shrinkwrap license. You are buying a copy of the digital content of that CD. The fact that it comes bound in plastic and the organization is by something called a "track" instead of a "file" is irrelevant.
The only thing that governs what you can do with that copy is copyright law. Copyright law, in particular the AHRA, allows you to format-shift that content for your personal use as much as you'd like. The DMCA takes that right away if there is an effective mechanism for access control, but for Red Book audio CDs there isn't one.
Unless you created the file (AND THE CONTENT), you don't own it.
You have greatly misunderstood the difference between owning a copy and owning the copyright.
I own a copy of every CD and DVD I've ever purchased that I still possess. A license can be negotiated in any transaction that involves click-through or shrink-wrap licensing, but that has never happened with regards to any CD or DVD purchase I've ever made.
Never owned that album.
Actually, it is the media that is yours. The content on the media isn't. You have the license for the content while the media lasts, and a warranty for the media for some period of time, but that is all the recourse you have. In the case of downloaded DRM-infected music, where there is no actual exchange of media, you don't "own" shit. You're holding a license, and that license expires when the license of the person/organization you bought the music from (typically a sub-licensee) expires. That license most definitely expires if they go out of business (or lose it otherwise); and so does yours. Nothing in this setup implies a perpetual right to the content in any shape or form. It is a sorry state of the affairs, but that's what it is.
Most registers I've used can't import anything
Then how do they associate product codes from the barcode scanner with prices?
Hey dude, don't be a prat /. better
It's an analogy, it's just a metaphor
Remember, to let your brain engage
Then you can start, to make
Hey dude, don't be afraid /. better
You were made for something better
To comment on thing you understand
Then you begin, to make
And any time you feel inane, hey dude, refrain /. won't mod you higher
Don't carry a chip upon your shoulder
For well you know your trolls aren't very cool
And
mod mod mod- mod mod- mod mod mod mod...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Of course another alternative we all have is buy the CD. Rip the tunes to disk. Copy the tunes to personal player, and enjoy the music until the end of time.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
END PAYEE'S LICENSE AGREEMENT
By accepting this money, the payee agrees to the following terms and conditions. If you do not agree with these terms and conditions, do not accept this money.
1. If this money is accepted as payment for physical products, I release the purchaser from any license agreements which are not visible on the outside packaging of the purchased product(s), which the purchaser has neither seen nor consented to and grant the rights outlined in section 3.
2. If this money is accepted as payment for access to downloadable content, I grant the rights outlined in section 3 to the purchaser and release the purchaser from the terms of any prior or subsequent agreement which conflict with these rights.
3. I agree that that the purchaser may use the product in any and all ways which are not explicitly prohibited by copyright law. In addition to the fair use rights already afforded by copyright law, I grant the purchaser the right to make copies of the whole work for personal backup purposes, and for the purposes of using the media on devices which cannot directly play the physical media. In the event that the original media has deteriorated to the point of being no longer playable, I agree that the purchaser can use a backup copy that they have made as a replacement for the original. I agree that the purchaser may take the technical steps necessary to make backup copies of the original content, where technical measures have been taken to prevent the copying of the original media.
He's right. If the RIAA or MPAA wants to sell you a license to make use of their product in certain specific well described ways, and you pay for the use of said product according to those terms, there's no problem.
However, this is irrelevant. Plenty of DRM free music is available (in a CD if in no other form), and only an idiot would buy DRMed music if an alternative existed. Furthermore, there is no theoretical way to make make effective DRM that isn't tied exclusively to proprietary hardware. Piracy is widely socially accepted, primarily harmful to large distributors rather than to artists, and excessively costly if not outright impossible to prevent.
The question of whether DRM is moral is totally moot, media is easily and freely available, DRM doesn't work, and does a good job of alienating the few suporters the RIAA has. The RIAA is going to have to get their heads out of their asses, abandon DRM, and find a business model that works, or they're going to find themselves customerless and bankrupt.
This whole thing proves that DRM exists to screw the customer and nothing more. Companies like M$ make deals with the entertainment industry to artificially shackle users to their platform.
Scenario: Average Joe buys some songs from M$. 2 years later, Joe wants to switch OS's. Well, Joe gets to re-buy all of his music to liberate it from the conspirators if he wants to take it with him.
Deceptive? As long as it is 'DRM'ed, it is 'owned' by the company, plain and simple.
The whole idea of DRM is to move toward a pay-to-play (per item, per song, per instance), market.
Just because DivX take-home movies that could be watched for a few days before self-destructing, failed, what makes anyone think the "Intellectual Property" Industry won't continue trying in other ways. They turn up the temperature too fast, and people balk, but if they do it slowly enough -- how many people download the same tunes on their ipod or smart phone that they already own -- and then download the same song again in a ringtone, then again in a ring-back tone...etc. Then they pay a monthly fee to play music on their computer... or access sat-radio. Just recently, 'they' have forced users to have to pay again for their songs on internet Radio (moving away from the
charge/listener/song model on 'old radio'....bit-by-bit, they turn up the heat and take away more rights -- all to make you pay more an more for less and less.
When they came for the DVD hackers I did not speak out for them, because I was not a DVD hacker.
When they came for the P2P pirates I did not speak out for them, because I was not a P2P pirate.
When they came for the iPhone Jailbreakers I did not speak out for them, because I did not own an iPhone.
When they came for the text-to-speech developers and the blind I did not speak out for them, because I could see and read the written word.
When I read aloud to my 3 year old daughter, they came for me.
There was no one left to speak out for me.
---
Connect the Gho-Rham dots.
I said you can't load prices of products onto the machine without some sort of network connection or sneakernet
Small business, single register, whoever's entering codes and prices, if there's even a scanner (and there usually isn't) they'd be doing data entry at that register itself, after hours, because it's the only computer in the store.
And once you have a network connection or sneakernet, the system could be exploited through that.
I gave you the IP address for my PowerMac running Mac OS 9 and unpatched IE 3 or whatever version ran on a Mac in 1997. Exploit that.
Wait, if you buy a copy of a song, then doesn't that contradict your ignoring/fighting copyright? Or, to put it more bluntly, do you actually have this objection in a practical sense in that you buy songs and want to distribute them/sell them/claim them as your own, do you just ignore copyright on a purely hypothetical basis, or do you just buy/ignore whenever you damn well feel like it?
Piracy is a considerably more corrupt doctrine (with precious little oversight) that should definitely not be ignored, but should always be fought.
The correct way to fight copyright is to ignore it and everything it produces, in that you shouldn't buy, distribute, or acquire illegally anything that is, or was ever, copyrighted. In that way, you demonstrate that you can and want to live in a world without copyright, that is, you can live on the offerings of artists who don't expect any money or control of their creations in return for creating them.
No-one said it would be easy...
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
The moment they take down their DRM servers they break the original business transaction (buying/accessing the content and they must compensate for the money.
But what RIAA are saying is that they have effectively broken your contract. Maybe under the sale of goods act you can demand damages? Class Action anyone?
This is why DRM is bad. I remember one of the solutions from a provider was to burn your music on to a CD (Before the DRM servers went down) and re-rip it. Ie effectivelt telling you to by pass their own DRM!
In the end, so long as your copy lasts until their copyright expires, you are OK!
Actually, the RIAA et al want you to think that it's just the media that is yours - nobody could successfully argue that you willingly bought little disc of plastic for that much. I mean, if the 'content' (which by the way, isn't divorced from the media) isn't yours then why not just buy blank disks? I mean it's makes much better economic sense, they're a fraction of the cost - of course there's no reason to buy blank disks, because what you're really buying is the exact shape of the disk, which carries information.
It's like arguing that a car crushed into a cube is still a car, the form, right down to the pits on optical surface of the disk is what you are buying. A crushed car isn't a car anymore, a melted CD isn't a CD. Copyright law says you can't reproduce that 'form' for others but when you buy a CD, you are buying the CD.
It's the same with books, you aren't just buying a block of paper, you're buying the ink in that format on the paper. Copyright Law prevents you from taking a book you bought and reproducing it for others, but nobody would accept buying a book that was blank (some artsy stuff aside).
The media companies, publishers etc want you to think that you haven't bought anything other than a shiny bit of plastic, that somehow it would be as valuable if the disk was melted into a puddle. Because you bought a license, but that's their words and wishes, not the facts of it - and were they so confident they'd simply say, upfront, they they are renting this to you.
Don't get me wrong, the size of the corporations and the relative differences in financial situations means that enforcing any of this is akin to the snowball in hell, but that doesn't mean you should necessarily parrot what they want you to think back. It's like second hand books being piracy, or 'grey imports' being piracy, what the corporation wants and says is so, isn't always the truth.
It's interesting that you say that when you buy a CD you get a license, and that the license lasts for the life of the media. But then you say later that a license only lasts as long as company who licensed it to you is around etc. So you appear to be saying that downloads and CDs are the same, and that licenses are for the life of the CD media unless they are revoked... I mean you actually expect that a court would sign an order permitting all your CDs to be taken and destroyed because the company no longer has the right to that license and so it's revoked? Seriously?
Digital media is easier to revoke, especially if it constantly phones home to let you play the media they can kill that service. But how many times have you heard that a court ordered legally downloaded MP3s deleted because a license was revoked? Do you believe that non DRM'd music without the authentication server will be removed from people's machines if amazon got out of the business (and by your standards the license was revoked)? I'm pretty sure the answer's no...
The thing that implies a 'perpetual right to content' is the purchasing of it, as any customer expects.
Z.
If the music won't last forever, how about paying with money that won't last forever either. Bad music paid with bad cheques . . .
Really makes you wonder why the *AA wonders why everybody hates them doesn't listen them, doesn't it!
They let some numpty blab his mouth off without his brain being engaged and they stir up the masses some more. Listen numpty we simply want to pay a fair price for a fair product. Not pay over the odds for some shite that, as it now turns out I never really purchased, but somehow you still took some money. Hmmm, something not quite right here!
Well, here we go. Just another reason to copy the music since you did pay for it and you should expect to listen to it as long as you live, then you should have the right to ensure you can do just that. On a sidebar, if you can listen to the music, you can record it. Screw DRM or whatever kind of "copy protection" they think they can put on music it still comes down to the fact that if you can hear it you can record it. Given the high level of recording software available on home computers today it is possible to make a near CD quality recording. Video isn't quite there, but in a few months/years it will be.
I'm just amazed at how stupid the RIAA is acting. I can't wait till they crash and burn, because people won't even piss on the flames to put them out. I'd be inclined to dance in the street to be honest. Everyone should make their own music in Fruity Loops and only listen to that, that will teach them, boy howdy. We don't HAVE to buy your artists music, you damn dirty apes.
Well here is a question. I'm not conversant on the laws, but it would seem to me that what we need in a class action suit is not to sue the riaa and it's members but the makers of the DRM software. It is the DRM's failure to have an alternate method of validation other than one dependent on a companies survival that has stolen these purchased works from the consumers and not the riaa per se. Though I am all for including them in the suit as I would love to see them dissolved as their tactics are deplorable even if the intent is right or "Don't steal from me" On a purely logical if vindictive level though I would say if you paid say $100 for music from the now defunct Yahoo store I feel that we should be able to use the riaa's model and sue the companies for $1000000 or ten thousand times the actual damages. This would effectively destroy the companies and prevent them from ever infringing our rights again. For those who feel this is a bit out there consider the riaa's latest "victory" where 24 songs worth less than $30 earned them a verdict rewarding them $942000 dollars.
Here's an example of fair. I buy an album. The technology fizzles. I download or rip a non DRM version of the song and it plays forever.
Now take your tired old outdated music industry and lay down in your graves because you already died and are starting to smell.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
To answer your question, while I haven't purchased any RIAA-labelled music since they started suing peoples' grandmothers, I do own plenty of standard-def DVDs and a few HD and BluRay titles. My defenses are that the protection on DVDs was widely disclosed by the industry, was not engineered expressly to violate the first-sale doctrine, is easily circumvented as a practical matter, has never to my knowledge included rootkits or other black-hat tools intended to subvert my control of my own hardware, has not been enforced by a RICO-like campaign of financial terrorism and extortion against individual consumers, and does not allow the publisher to revoke playback permission at a later time.
The last point doesn't apply to HD and BluRay discs, but as long as I can easily rip the discs I don't really care, and will continue to buy them.
I exempt myself from accusations of idiocy or victimhood because I understand the limitations that come with the media I purchase, I choose to direct my media purchases toward parties that won't use my money to attack my interests as a consumer, and am technically capable of securing my own rights under the original intent of US copyright law in spite of the publishers' wishes to the contrary. In addition I probably give $5 to activist organizations such as the EFF and ALA for every $1 I give to entertainment media publishers. I treat these donations as "carbon offsets."
The "idiot" in my post is someone who pays money for content without knowing, or caring, how easily its value can disappear, who blindly swallows propaganda from copyright holders, and who votes against their own interests as consumers. (If you voted for the recent Democratic presidential ticket that included Joe Biden, for instance, you arguably did far more harm to the cause of consumer rights than I do by purchasing the occasional DVD or BluRay disc.)
Does anyone know what the graphs look like for the rise of DRM and the fall of music industry sales? I honestly don't think we can blame EVERYTHING on the piRIAAtes.
So, how about every time an RIAA rep makes a profoundly stupid remark like this one, we all, every one of us who still occasionally buys corporately produced music, declare a moratorium on new purchases for, say, one week. The effect is cumulative. Three stupid statements is an automatic three weeks. See if we can cause a dip in sales. I mean, more than it's currently dipping.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Nobody is arguing about this except you. I'll type it once again, slowly, because I see you cannot read quickly:
when you buy a CD/DVD/etc. you get
You pay for a) + b). Naturally a) + b) costs more than you'd pay for a), you get the right to replay the content while your license lasts. But paying more doesn't imply anything about a perpetual license, rather
If you dispose of a) by destroying it, having it stolen from you or selling it, the license is gone too. If the disk is defective, you get a replacement and a new license that goes along with the replacement.
Simple enough?
To change this legal fiction, which is in force now, you'll have to change the copyright laws, in your country, and elsewhere in the world
Don't expect customers then! Have fun making no revenue :)
This goes along with the StarCraft2 no LAN BS
Why punish loyal customers
You know what still plays just fine? The Beatles records my mom bought in the 60s, and the DJ Jazzy Jeff + The Fresh Prince tapes I bought in the 80's. As long as DRM exists, I will continue to buy vinyl records, and pirate digital music when I can't find the vinyls.
I find it almost funny that the RIAA is desperately trying to cram the internet and digital music into the 1950's business model of the recording industry.