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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."
They don't care. Providing product isn't in their business model anyway.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
... 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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
Yes it is. The point is DRM in general, not just DRM for your particular music in your particular format, from your particular vendor. The decisions made now about DRM will set precident for Movies, Books, Software, and technologies we don't even consider now, possibly including virtual worlds, 3d models for 3d-printers, and who knows what else.
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.
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?
So, what he's basically saying is that there should be no expectation on the consumer's part that the product he's paying for should work at all (regardless of whether we're talking about "owning" said product, or acquiring a "license" to enjoy said product).
Um, maybe I'm being naive here, but isn't that, you know, against the law? They *could* have said, "we're selling you the _right_ to play this for X years, or until date Y", and that'd be fair if they just say this up front, I suppose, but this sounds like they want a free pass to sell you the illusion that you're buying the "right" to access certain content, when in reality they're just selling you a rental license -- one that expires at the sole discretion of the seller.
In essence, because a license is supposed to be a sort of contract, it's like saying they want to be able to not only dictate all the terms in said contract/license scheme (as they already do, one way or another), but they also want a couple of "open clauses" that they can fill in later on, essentially nullifying the other part's contractual rights, if, when and where they see fit.
This is exactly the kind of "fine print" bullshit that corps have been getting away with for far too long. Yeah, I know you're supposed to read every contract you sign, but when even a simple song purchase entails a multiple-page "Terms of Use" or whatever, which usually includes something along the lines of "this text is subject to change, new clauses can be added, rights terminated, changes are applied retroactively and there's no obligation to notify the user of any change, it's the user's obligation to consult the updated terms at link" -- it's time to tell these assholes to go fuck themselves, for crying out loud!
Except they're not the maker, they just licensed it first.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
In other words, "We reject the view that copyright owners and their licensees are required to receive a consumers' money".
I'll bite.
I in favor of backing up a CD to my harddrive. I am also in favor of being able to watch and listen to media files in the software of my choice.
Yes, I am also in favor of copying a loaned CD and to share the occasional music file on the internet, even if that means not supporting Copyright Owners.
I am all in favor of supporting Artists however, and will gladly pay to see them live, I'll buy their merchandise (if its attractive and reasonably priced) and generally try to support them in a way that does not imply having to buy "a license" to listen to their work a finite number of times...
No sig for the moment.
You mean worse. The RIAA is legally sanctioned to pretty well do as they please.
He who has no
It's not illegal to do this as far as I know. If you don't like it, your recourse is not to do business with them, and convince as many as you can to not do business with them. I've been doing this (buying DRM-free) for as long as Amazon was offering MP3s.
If you expect the law to apply to corporate entities that posses huge lobbying power -then I'd say there's no 'maybe' about it.
If there were no copyrights, there would be no need for GPL
Maybe I'm missing something, but how does the absence of copyright translate to the availability of source code? If Windows suddenly goes out of copyright, do I then magically gain the source code to it?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
You are right on. As far as I'm concerned, this is a declaration of war against the people that pay them. This is the much touted 'free market' in action. They dictate the terms and if you don't like it, go without.
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
Or "We reject your reality, and substitute our own"
...
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
It's like buying a scratched DVD in a second-hand shop.
Except that it's *not* scratched, and it's bought *new* from the original "manufacturer" (or agent thereof.) And you can't physically examine it to check for "scratches" before you buy it, and the "scratching" is being deliberately done by the manufacturer after you get it home.
So, basically it's like buying a scratched DVD from a second-hand shop only if you define "like" as "completely unrelated and in no way similar in any way, shape, or form".
AS a proud owner of a Linux Box and DRM free MP3 player, I have no reason to ever support DRM media.
Market forces can kill it.
The truth shall set you free!
In the history of recorded music there has always been an expectation that once you purchase it, it's yours to enjoy for as long as the media itself is capable of playing it. Your wax cylinder might not have lasted long but the shopkeep wasn't going to come rip it out of your hands whenever he felt like it. People listened to their records, 8 tracks, cassettes, and CDs until they fell apart, melted, cracked, or whatever -- if they ever did. And never has it been a consumer concern that someone's just going to take these things away.
Now the average yob, who knows nothing about "DRM" or "RIAA" or any of the rest, is somehow supposed to just know that the deal that's been in effect for the past hundred or so years has some new set of rules -- without being told? While, in fact, the companies peddling the wares are doing their best to perpetuate the myth that the music WILL be accessible for a lifetime like every other music purchase he's made?
No, I believe it is illegal, and likely falls into the category of consumer fraud.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.