I'd thought I'd clarify a few points people replied on...
If you have DRM-encrypted music files on your hard drive, it's probably because you consented to have them put there.
The discussion doesn't really involve whether or not I've consented to the use of DRM restrictions, any more than whether or not I've consented to fill up my car with Chevron-only gas in the fine print of the car contract. Such stipulations are very anti-competitive and bad for any free market, hence the need for gov'ts to ban such practices.
Just because car manufacturers have been selling cars that run on gasoline purchased at any gas station doesn't mean the consumer has a fundamental and inviolable right to mix-n-match car & fuel however they please.
You're scaring me.
You won't ever see a Chevrolet automobile that only runs on a fuel blend sold at Chevron stations, though, because the market would reject it. It's the market, not the law, that keeps things the way they have been.
If that were the case with DRMing of music and movies etc, we wouldn't even be having this conversation. Which brings me to my next point...
Don't like DRM'd music? Don't buy it.
I don't, really. But **AA execs have near monopolies on their industries due to the overreaching effect of copyright, among other things. People don't really have that much of a choice. In fact, to find non-DRM movies, you have to ignore DVDs and go all the way back to videotapes. Pretty soon there may not be much non-DRMed content left.
The manufacturer sells you the car, not a license to use the car. The correct analogy [to purchasing music] would be leasing a car...
No, the correct analogy to leasing a car would be streaming music, not buying it.
When people buy a CD, they expect that they own the physical CD. That's not unreasonable... As far as non-physical media is concerned, this is something new.
Not really. Even with a physical CD, it's not the plastic disc you're paying for, it's the non-physical portion of the disc - the information on the disk - that's valuable. If you're of the opinion that the information should always be tied directly to that physical medium, then you probably think that ripping the CD to mp3 format for your computer or iPod is illegal, and making a back-up copy is illegal, and copying certain portions for fair use is illegal. Even streaming the music to a different portion of your house would probably be illegal, because the information is traveling without the physical CD traveling. You have very good company with the **AA execs.
Essentially I'm arguing that when get a product is something digital like music or movies or software, that we shouldn't automatically lose all our rights associated with that product. DRM causes us to lose significant rights, even more than we've already lost.
What is also dangerous is people thinking that the government should act against DRM. Seriously, that is just as bad as DRM. It is going to come back to bite people in the ass when those anti-DRM laws start restricting how you are allowed to encrypt your own data. If I create data, I want to be able to encrypt it in any way I choose... just because you find it annoying that it takes 10 seconds to run your itunes music through a utility to convert it to mp3, doesn't mean you have the right to restrict me from encrypting my data however I want.
That kind of thinking is wrong on so many levels...
Encrypting files for personal use has almost nothing to do with DRM. If an RIAA exec wants to encrypt his music, good for him, but he has no business encrypting music I PAID FOR. If I've bought the music, no one has any right to restrict how/where/when I use it, especially if it's well within my fair use rights.
And yes, government has every right to restrict DRM. It's not about regulating files encrypted for personal use, it's regulating business transactions, something that governments have legitimately long been involved in. One party in the business transaction is being very deceptive and insidious about what it is selling.
Essentially, consumers expect certain rights when they purchase things. When I buy a car, the car manufacturer has no right to restrict things like where I take the car, whether I can sell the car, and whether I put Chevron or Exxon gasoline in it. When they buy music, they expect that they own the music, and can play it on any device they own, and put it on any playlist or mixtape they want, and maybe even sell the music to someone else when they're done with it, or at least archive the music in an easily accessible format so they won't ever have to repurchase it. All in the full quality they purchased it in too, not downsampled or recompressed to a different lossy format.
No DRM I've seen yet gives consumers all these rights, or even close, hence the need for governments to get involved.
I think the main problem with freenet, I2P, and other similar services is not their privacy concerns (although important), but SPEED.
The speed at which any of these services run reminds me of when I had dial-up. Except these darknets don't even guarantee you can connect to even the most popular darknet sites. Even when I tweaked all the settings I couldn't ever get decent connections on freenet.
These sites are not going to be very viable until a lot of people use them, and a lot of people aren't going to use them until they reach something at least comparable to speeds of the regular web.
I appreciate all the effort of the people who make these pieces of software, but I can't help but feel much of their energy is misdirected.
I think Google should be scrutinized for allowing censoring. I don't doubt that Google was not the source of this evil, but it is willingly propogating evil.
The reason the Chinese gov't can get away with this is because so many companies give in to this. Google needs to use its vast amount of wealth and clout to prevent the spread of evil, not be a participant in it.
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I'd thought I'd clarify a few points people replied on...
The discussion doesn't really involve whether or not I've consented to the use of DRM restrictions, any more than whether or not I've consented to fill up my car with Chevron-only gas in the fine print of the car contract. Such stipulations are very anti-competitive and bad for any free market, hence the need for gov'ts to ban such practices.
You're scaring me.
If that were the case with DRMing of music and movies etc, we wouldn't even be having this conversation. Which brings me to my next point...
I don't, really. But **AA execs have near monopolies on their industries due to the overreaching effect of copyright, among other things. People don't really have that much of a choice. In fact, to find non-DRM movies, you have to ignore DVDs and go all the way back to videotapes. Pretty soon there may not be much non-DRMed content left.
No, the correct analogy to leasing a car would be streaming music, not buying it.
Not really. Even with a physical CD, it's not the plastic disc you're paying for, it's the non-physical portion of the disc - the information on the disk - that's valuable. If you're of the opinion that the information should always be tied directly to that physical medium, then you probably think that ripping the CD to mp3 format for your computer or iPod is illegal, and making a back-up copy is illegal, and copying certain portions for fair use is illegal. Even streaming the music to a different portion of your house would probably be illegal, because the information is traveling without the physical CD traveling. You have very good company with the **AA execs.
Essentially I'm arguing that when get a product is something digital like music or movies or software, that we shouldn't automatically lose all our rights associated with that product. DRM causes us to lose significant rights, even more than we've already lost.
That kind of thinking is wrong on so many levels...
Encrypting files for personal use has almost nothing to do with DRM. If an RIAA exec wants to encrypt his music, good for him, but he has no business encrypting music I PAID FOR. If I've bought the music, no one has any right to restrict how/where/when I use it, especially if it's well within my fair use rights.
And yes, government has every right to restrict DRM. It's not about regulating files encrypted for personal use, it's regulating business transactions, something that governments have legitimately long been involved in. One party in the business transaction is being very deceptive and insidious about what it is selling.
Essentially, consumers expect certain rights when they purchase things. When I buy a car, the car manufacturer has no right to restrict things like where I take the car, whether I can sell the car, and whether I put Chevron or Exxon gasoline in it. When they buy music, they expect that they own the music, and can play it on any device they own, and put it on any playlist or mixtape they want, and maybe even sell the music to someone else when they're done with it, or at least archive the music in an easily accessible format so they won't ever have to repurchase it. All in the full quality they purchased it in too, not downsampled or recompressed to a different lossy format.
No DRM I've seen yet gives consumers all these rights, or even close, hence the need for governments to get involved.
I think the main problem with freenet, I2P, and other similar services is not their privacy concerns (although important), but SPEED.
The speed at which any of these services run reminds me of when I had dial-up. Except these darknets don't even guarantee you can connect to even the most popular darknet sites. Even when I tweaked all the settings I couldn't ever get decent connections on freenet.
These sites are not going to be very viable until a lot of people use them, and a lot of people aren't going to use them until they reach something at least comparable to speeds of the regular web.
I appreciate all the effort of the people who make these pieces of software, but I can't help but feel much of their energy is misdirected.
Just my thoughts.
I think Google should be scrutinized for allowing censoring. I don't doubt that Google was not the source of this evil, but it is willingly propogating evil. The reason the Chinese gov't can get away with this is because so many companies give in to this. Google needs to use its vast amount of wealth and clout to prevent the spread of evil, not be a participant in it.