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atomicbartbeans
reticulating your mom
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
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2006-03-15, 06:36

Yeah; even though Apple's DRM is the least restrictive around, I try to steer away from DRM'ed content as principle. For the last couple years, I've totally been in love with Apple computers and iPods... what if that changes a few years from now?

I'm sick of the terminology content providers use here... I don't license content I buy, I own it. Do you get a EULA with the purchase of a DVD? A CD*? No, because you paid for it... you own it. iTMS and others should be no different.

The truth is, I can legally do whatever I want with a CD I buy in the store. I can rip it to iTunes (and at a higher bitrate as well) and play it on all my computers (including Linux), burn mix CDs, put them on my iPod, whatever. Fair Use has allowed me to do this since I was born. I paid good money for that CD, so I can listen to it however the hell I want.

So why should these internet music stores (iTMS was the first, but more followed) restrict how I can listen to my music? I'm pretty much paying the same price I would in a retail store for lower-quality compressed music, and on top of that, I'm limited in how I can listen to it? No thanks, I'll take my business elsewhere.

Now you cannot tell me that removing DRM from iTMS purchases would decrease sales. I would definitely become a more regular customer if the songs were distributed without DRM.

(*Haha, well Sony changed this...)

Edit: Here's an interesting analogy... what if Petco sold DRM'ed guinea pigs?



When you bought the guinea pigs, you had to sign a lengthy license agreement in the store. You had to keep them in Petco-brand cages and feed them Petco-brand food. If your guinea pigs make babies, you cannot give them away or sell them to friends... that would be guinea pig piracy, since you'd be taking business away from Petco. Your guinea pig DRM says that guinea pig breeding is for personal use only; distributing the puppies would be a violation of your EULA.

What kind of a crap deal would that be? You're pretty much getting the same thing with iTMS.

You ask me for a hamburger.

Last edited by atomicbartbeans : 2006-03-15 at 07:01.
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