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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.
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...
... 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.
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
"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
And if you choose to look under the hood to see why it stopped working, we will sue you. If you remove the MakeItNotWork-O-Meter so that the car runs, we will prosecute. If you publish your findings, we will have you branded a terrorist.
The CB App. What's your 20?
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.
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.
The money I gave you for it still works. I don't get to take that back, do I?
Just start buying your CD's in bulk directly from the RIAA, with checks written in disappearing ink...
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
Ah, but a chair only has a finite lifespan. So if it falls apart after 3 years of normal use I would probably not be responsible for fixing it. Although you may tell all your friends that I make crappy chairs.
On the other hand YOU can buy a screwdriver at any hardware (or most dollar stores even) to fix the chair.
The real issue is that I have persuaded congress to make it illegal for you to buy the screwdrivers that fix the chairs I sell. And now I am saying that I should not be expected to keep any of the screwdrivers around either. And even if no one has the right tools to fix the chair YOU still can't build one.
"Sorry, the rights on that payment have expired. Would you like to supply more goods in exchange for another one?" :oD
...
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