RIAA Says "Don't Expect DRMed Music To Work Forever" 749
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."
that will keep your customers happy (Score:3, Insightful)
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...
Re:that will keep your customers happy (Score:5, Insightful)
That's funny (Score:5, Insightful)
... 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 [riaaradar.com], people.
How many times do we have to hear about DRM?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Dear Mr. Metalitz (Score:5, Insightful)
... Fuck you.
I half agree with him (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Obligatory (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Terminology (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
double dipping (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Important things to note: (Score:5, Insightful)
This is simple. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How many times do we have to hear about DRM?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That's funny (Score:5, Insightful)
... The money I gave you for it still works. I don't get to take that back, do I?
Very good point, the RIAA's purpose isnt to distribute music, they do not care about the music nor the customer, they only care about their money and controlling the market to get more money.
They say DRMed music isnt to work forever, I say the RIAA wont work forever either, they're getting desperate for attention and control, and they're losing bits of it everyday. Music existed long before the RIAA, and will live on long after.
Re:That's funny (Score:1, Insightful)
no, they are perfectly able to buy a can of brasso and a rag, or burn another copy from the perfect digital copy they made of the content which they purchased.
Re:That's funny (Score:3, Insightful)
Ouch. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:iTunes makes this a non-issue (Score:5, Insightful)
He's categorically wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:That's funny (Score:3, Insightful)
That's OK! (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Conspiracy to encourage customers to break the law (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:That's funny (Score:3, Insightful)
Being somewhat devils advocatish - what about all those people who find that their CDs stop working after a few years due to small scratches? Should they be allowed to demand free replacement in perpetuity?
That argument doesn't work. If I buy a chair from you, and I do not properly take care of it, and eventually it becomes unusable, that is MY fault. If I buy a chair from you, use it properly and care for it, and one day the chair just suddenly falls apart, that is YOUR fault. See the difference?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That's funny (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
Boycott DRM'ed products (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:That's funny (Score:2, Insightful)
Music existed long before the RIAA, and will live on long after.
That should be a bumper sticker
Re:that will keep your customers happy (Score:3, Insightful)
They don't care about keeping customers happy. They care about maintaining the "introduce a new format and require everyone to re-purchase their entire collection" model that they've had for the last century. With digital music, that's difficult to do unless they literally introduce a new and far superior digital format. Since they're not likely to do that -- or at least to the extent that the same number of people would switch from current mp3 or ogg that would switch from cassette to compact disc, they have to manufacture the turnover themselves. So, use DRM to simply cut off the music at a certain interval, requiring the user to go back and pay to download their entire library all over again.
The Original Design of Copyright (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:That's funny (Score:1, Insightful)
Being somewhat devils advocatish - what about all those people who find that their CDs stop working after a few years due to small scratches? Should they be allowed to demand free replacement in perpetuity?
Within reason, yes. They want to play this game. Here's a graph.
Property +========= Your CD "license" =========- An _actual_ license
With property, once you buy it... it's yours. Barring any unusual or draconian laws (copyright circumvention, etc), you can pretty much do with it what you want. Unless you have some sort of warranty agreement with the manufacturer, if it breaks it's on your dime.
With a license, you are not actually buying said thoughts/media/music/designs/etc. You are buying a right to use them. Usually, if you are licensing something, the item is
a. priced accordingly
b. pretty generous about handling failures in the physical aspect.
Terms of a license can vary. You can agree to only have access to the information for a month, or for your lifetime.
With a CD, you "own" the risks of having the physical material, while you "license" the content. You "agree" to a contract by simply purchasing the material. It's very sketchy, and It's a good example of what you can get with good money and good lobbyists.
If they were upfront about you simply licensing the music (that you don't "own" the music) and that the consumer clearly knew the terms of their license, I would be fine with them not replacing bad media. Or, if you actually owned the music and had the rights to do with it what you want (as opposed to being forced to break silly circumvention laws, which may or may not be under fair use ), then I would also be o.k. with them not replacing the media.
Have one's cake and eat it too [wikipedia.org]
Thanks RIAA (Score:3, Insightful)
'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.
Re:iTunes makes this a non-issue (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly.
Damn, my $100 collector edition of Fallout 3 won't work anymore! I still have a vintage XBOX 360. And the game disc. But damn, for some reason every time I try to play the game, I just get a "you are not authorized to play this title" on the screen followed by an advertisement for a bunch of current generation videogames that they suggest I buy and play instead!
Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Illegal (Score:2, Insightful)
I assume our wise and courageous Justice Department will hand down indictments any minute!
Aww - We'll get right on that once we finish giving blowjobs to the RIAA
Re:Forever? (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
Re:They are Goblins. (Score:5, Insightful)
Except they're not the maker, they just licensed it first.
Rental music? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:That's funny (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Forever? (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
It's OK, if you knew that up front (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Brings "out of touch" to a whole new level... (Score:1, Insightful)
This implies that the music itself is not an eternal, and abstract commodity, but is instead a fundamentally consumable commodity.
Gasoline is destroyed by the act of its use. Music is not destroyed by being heard. In fact, one could make the argument that it instead expands and proliferates from being heard. (Song gets stuck in head, etc.)
This makes the comparison between gasoline and music absurd in this context. Further adding to the absurdity is that music is a non-tangible commodity, which can be duplicated perfectly at little to no cost, while gasoline is a physical commodity in a limited supply, with ever increasing scarcity due to it's use.
The only commonality that these two commodities share is that they are commodities, and have a value.
Mr. Stallman is way ahead of you (Score:4, Insightful)
from now on we should refuse to use to use the term "Intellectual Property."
Mr. Stallman is way ahead of you [gnu.org]. As I understand it, his points are as follows:
Worse (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean worse. The RIAA is legally sanctioned to pretty well do as they please.
Re:Forever? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Forever? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:that will keep your customers happy (Score:2, Insightful)
I cannot believe that the RIAA, in good faith, actually believed that they were cheated out of hundreds of thousands of dollars for some downloaded MP3s, punitive damages and all.
No, here is the deal (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:that will keep your customers happy (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the issue. It's been proven many times already that the RIAA has acted well outside of "good faith" and continue to do so.
Re:Since your sig is not that off-topic... (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:keep your customers coming back (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Forever? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:How many times do we have to hear about DRM?? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is how you do it.
Send your money exclusively to the people who provide what you actually want.
Those that would rather draconian control for their own selfish gain at your expense will soon become extinct in the face of actual competition.
If they won't give you want you want don't settle for the best that you can get from them boycott them completely. If every person out there actually did this scum like this would go out of business overnight.
Re:Just because we can't kill lawyers... (Score:4, Insightful)
Please spare NYCL, Lawrence Lessig, and any others fighting the good fight, please.
Re:Forever? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or "We reject your reality, and substitute our own"
Re:That's funny (Score:5, Insightful)
This logic just does not follow -- in the case of the user's CD being damaged, it is the user's fault that the CD is no longer working, it is a completely unreasonable expectation that CDs ought to be indestructible, and steps can be taken to ensure that this is not an issue (ie, rip the CD as FLAC and keep the backup, or just burn the disc and keep the original in a safe place.). With DRM, however, the vendor is the one doing the breaking. They can break your music arbitrarily and without warning. For a serious (and stupid) music collector, this could put them out thousands of dollars worth of music instantly. This is like the store owner coming into your house, scratching all your CDs, taking a dump on your living room floor, then just giving you the finger and walking out the front door. Okay, the taking a dump on your floor part was for dramatic effect, but you get the point. These are totally different situations, you aren't even really comparing apples and oranges, its more like Apples and third-world dictators (which, come to think of it, are fairly similar).
Violation of the U.S. Constitution (Score:5, Insightful)
...
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.
Re:That's funny (Score:4, Insightful)
If I buy a chair from you, and I do not properly take care of it, and eventually it becomes unusable, that is MY fault. If I buy a chair from you, use it properly and care for it, and one day the chair just suddenly falls apart, that is YOUR fault. See the difference?
I would have gone with:
If I buy a chair from you, use it properly and care for it, then one day the chair disappears because you pressed the 'vanish chair' button on your remote, that is YOUR fault.
Re:iTunes makes this a non-issue (Score:3, Insightful)
Why waste a CD-R? Burn to an ISO image and rip that. Or use a CD-RW until it wears out.
Mal-2
Rights/Licenses (Score:3, Insightful)
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?"
Re:How many times do we have to hear about DRM?? (Score:3, Insightful)
My daughter has some punk CDs that have a "warning" that says "Please be kind, burn a copy for your friends". If I burn a copy of one of their CDs and give it to you, and you like it, you're likely to buy a copy of a different CD from that band. If I've never heard your music, I'm not very damned likely to buy your CD, now am I?
They screamed bloody murder when the radio was invented saying it was going to destroy the record industry. They screamed bloody murder when the cassette and eight track was developed saying it was going to destroy the record industry. They screamed bloody murder when the CD burners made it to computers, saying they would destroy the record industry.
Talk about crying "wolf". All the things they said would destroy their industry made their profits go up. All the studies not financed by the record industry say pirates spend more money than non-pirates; they're declaring war on their best customers.
The record industry should encourage "piracy". But then, theives always watch their back and think everyone is trying to steal from them. Being dishonest really makes one insanely paranoid, to the point of hurting one's self.
Hubris (Score:3, Insightful)
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/ [thinkindie.com]
copyrights are over rated (Score:2, Insightful)
Boston Tea Party (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:iTunes makes this a non-issue (Score:2, Insightful)
The RIAA are the pirates, and you are a troll. Nothing new there. And GPL is a necessary defense against the restrictions of copyright, so screw you on that too. "Insightful"...Bunk!
Re:Forever? (Score:5, Insightful)
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".
Re:Forever? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
You're a moron. (Score:1, Insightful)
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 [wikipedia.org] or this guy [wikipedia.org], right?
Pull your head out of your ass and shake the shit out of your ears - it's starting to seep into your brain.
Re:That's funny (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
I think a very important part of the issue is that a chair degrades naturally. If someone was storing media files without a backup, and the hard drive died of "natural causes", then you could argue that it's comparable to the chair failing. The store isn't necessarily responsible for replacing it.
But imagine I started selling chairs with a built in remote-controlled self-destruct mechanism, and I didn't explain that self-destruct mechanism to my customers at the point of sale. Years later, I engage that self-destruct mechanism, and everyone's perfectly good chairs fall apart.
Wouldn't it be reasonable, then, to assign me some responsibility for the customer losing his chair? Wouldn't you think it was fair for me to either (a) replace the chair with a non-self-destructing version; or (b) refund the money for the original purchase?
This scenario seems more comparable to DRM.
Re:Forever? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Failed company (Score:4, Insightful)
That might indeed be true if the company is bankrupt and going out of business, but so far as I know the only large scale failure of a DRM music supplier thus far has been Walmart's music service. They essentially got out of the business of online music and took their DRM servers with them. Given the way digital music is going it seems likely that any future failures will be along the same line... a large company will try and and fail with an online distribution model. In that case there is clearly someone to sue.
On the other hand, as is pointed out above, none of the major players in online music sales has DRM on their tunes anymore, so the issue may well be moot from an audio standpoint. Video remains DRMed in virtually every form that it get's released though, so take the Walmart music lesson and apply it to video maybe.
Re:Forever? (Score:4, Insightful)
As I pirate with over 50GB of pirated songs on CD (I had allot of free-time at one stage) I am not at all affected by these fraudsters. Piracy has also been morally justified to the highest possible level. In fact it seems unethical to pay for music because in doing so you are aiding and abetting fraud.