Playing CDs On Computer Now A Privilege
from the they-can-take-our-lives-but-they'll-never-take-our-morcheeba dept
I recently bought a car. In the copious documentation that came with it, nowhere did it say I couldn’t drive the car only in reverse, on dirt roads, without pants, or on Wednesdays. As far as I can tell, I can do pretty much whatever I want with that car, and the people that sold it to me don’t have any say in the matter. Apparently any music I buy might not play by the same rules, with the head of the Finnish branch of the IFPI (the international equivalent of the RIAA) having labeled the ability to listen to music on a computer a privilege. So I need some sort of permission or approval to use something I’ve purchased however I like, in this case, listen to music on the device of my choice? That’s the point of DRM and copy protection, to give the content producer an inordinate amount of control. But the effect of these pointless restrictions on music isn’t that they stop file-sharing, far from it. It’s really the opposite — they encourage it. The IFPI and its friends look at the problem from the wrong side. People have minimal incentive to buy expensive, DRM-laden music when they can get unrestricted versions through file-sharing. Instead of improving their product to make it competitive, the labels hope to club people into buying it by eliminating any alternatives.
Comments on “Playing CDs On Computer Now A Privilege”
music plays on my computer
because I bought the damn machine to serve me; not pay someone else for something they’ve been paid for by me already.
I bought the CD, I bought the computer. I can use, break, eat, burn, etc. each item to my heart’s contentment.
They can never take that privilege away from me, and I can assure you there are real hackers making sure of that, (hackers: not to be confused with skiddies).
Re: music plays on my computer
OH HEEEEEEEEEEEEELL YEAH DUDE!!!!!!!!
maybe that’s what we all ought to do find out where the riaa pres is gonna be next and go to where he is and start breaking and smashing popular cd’s and tapes right in front of him and take a big metal trash can and burn the broken pieces of cd’s and tapes and show him that we do so own the cd’s that we buy!!!!!!
No Subject Given
I really don’t agree with this at all. I can’t imagin my government ever telling me that this is a privledge.
They can call it one all they want. They’ll just not get my money and I will openly download it.
Car ownership vs CD ownership
The problem with this comparison is that more cars have to be manufactured, and each one has to be made from new material.
When you sell a song or other such product, you do not make a new one each time. You manufacture the vehicle which carries it. This is where the comparison breaks down.
You certainly can do whatever you like with a CD and the Finns are silly to say otherwise. But the middle parties who are the music industry have no relevence if they cannot retain the right to sell each performance of a work regardless of how it is delivered.
The real problem here is that there is really no need for the music industry at all other than the artists and any model that says otherwise is including baggage that simply is no longer needed.
I doubt the Finn’s would claim that the right to make pictures on the wall by nailing up the CD’s is a privilege, and that is really how silly and transparent to the corrupt music industry such a statment is.
Re: Car ownership vs CD ownership
“The real problem here is that there is really no need for the music industry at all other than the artists and any model that says otherwise is including baggage that simply is no longer needed.”
I disagree. Despite file-sharing networks and despite the ability to override DRM, the music industry continues to sell CDs and continues to make money. Lots of people are still buying CDs. Sure, not as many CDs are being sold today as in the past, but that is largely attributable to an increase in sales of DVDs and a change in demographics. The success of iTunes shows that people will pay for music. The whole impact of file-sharing is overplayed by the industry and the media.
Good!
Actually, I think this may be a good thing. The music industry as we know it is on a path to self destruction. They are antagonizing their customers, scr**ing their artists, they even want to start a fight with Apple, who has helped them a lot. CD stores will close at an accelerated rate and everybody will have to look for alternatives.
Ultimately, that will open the way for new distribution channels and new business models.
I, for one, can’t wait.
Misuse
However, you cannot buy a car and drive it recklessly. Would you want to sell your car to a mass murderer who intends to run over a bunch of people in Las Vegas with it?
Re: Misuse
You are 100% correct. I am for any legislation prohibiting people from endangering the lives of others with a compact disc.
Re: Re: Misuse
This isnt a bit right! The government wants way to much power and control now days.
They dont even want you to backup your own DVD’s or cd’s either.
Re: Misuse
The enforcer of that rule is not the manufacturer however. The enforcer is the Highway Patrolman. DRM is making the enforcer your computer and the CD itself. It’s like car makers building a car that automatically stops working if it ever drives over a certain speed, over a certain surface, or makes too many small turns during a certain period of time. The problem is that would limit legitimate uses of the car more than reckless driving. The same thing applies to DRM in it’s current incarnation.
Re: Re: Misuse
I’d also like to comment on the ‘vehicle licensing issue’
Vehicle and driver licencing is permission granted by the goverment to use something you as an individual do NOT own. It’s not permission to use your car, you own that. It’s permission to operate your car on a public road which the government is responsible for. You don’t need permission from Toyota to drive your car, or have any number of passengers, or to lower the suspension and fit aftermarket parts, but you’ll need permission from the government if you want to operate your overloaded or modified (and thus potentially unsafe) vehicle on ‘their’ roads.
When I was growing up I learned to drive in a rusty and dented Toyota on my parents’ farm. I did not need permission from the New Zealand government (for me as a driver or for the car) because I wasn’t using their roads. And I certainly did not need permission of Toyota Motor Corp.
Re: Re: Re: Misuse
Hmmm…Why can I be arrested for drinking and driving when it on MY lawnmower, in MY yard?
Re: Re: Re:2 Misuse
I wouldn’t have thought that you could be arrested for drink-driving on your own private property, and in this case it’s not something I’d agree with either. The government’s justification (if any) is likely that you’re unduly and unnecessarily increasing the likelyhood of using yet another public resource, your local 911 services..
And I would point out (again!) that drunken operation of your lawnmower has absolutely NOTHING to do with permissions granted by your lawnmower manufacturer.
Re: Misuse
Are you kidding me? Nobody would want that to happen. People have to take responsibility/accountability for their own actions. The bottom line is to get paid for your stuff. If a mass murderer was going to run over a bunch of people in Las Vegas, I would call the police and not live my life in cowering fear that I was responsible for something I had no control over! The fact of the matter is: Possession is a very deciding factor. If I own something i.e. bought and paid for, I can do whatever I like with it and there’s nothing you can do about it. Not very many people mind paying a reasonable amount for something they want. The RIAA are a bunch of crooks and demand way too big of a share of the pie. You can’t tell me a CD of just 12-18 songs is worth 15-20 dollars a pop!!! Or do you still think Four Non Blonds was a good deal?
Stretching the analogy?
Now that record companies are installing what amounts to viruses on your PC to prevent you from ripping CDs, you could compare it to a car that amputates your arms when you get in. Just to be sure you won?t drive recklessly.
Wow...
Think of all of the consequences this could have: if you can not listen to it on your computer, you can not rip MP3’s onto your MP3 player. So now your MP3 player that you paid $400+ for is useless.
Sorry, but stuff like this makes me less inclined to buy an artist’s music and I will be more likely to obtain it in a less-than-legal manner.
Re: Wow...
if you can not listen to it on your computer
If I can hear it played, I can get the source of the sound into my computer through line-in, and then I can listen to it on my computer, or make an MP3 from it.
And of course after someone does that, they can make it available for download on any of the p2p networks…
I Can Play the It's Like Game
It’s like the auto industry installing equipment in the car to keep you from taking more than one passenger.
Because those extra passengers should buy their own cars.
MjM
Think that sucks?
If you think that sucks, read the EULA for any Disney Kids game. You do not even own the game after purchase, you merely own the plastic that the game was printed on….thats right for $20 you get a CD!
Re: Think that sucks?
by Dominic on Friday, September 23rd, 2005 @ 04:07PM
“If you think that sucks, read the EULA for any Disney Kids game. You do not even own the game after purchase, you merely own the plastic that the game was printed on….thats right for $20 you get a CD!”
UMMMMMM….It’s been that way for a long long time with ALL games you buy. This also applies to books, movies, music, etc. When you buy another person’s work, you are buying a license to use it in certain ways. you don’t actually own the information. That’s called copyright.
Re: Re: Think that sucks?
while that’s the popular opinion, there is such a thing (how much longer) as fair use.
What you say could be interpreted as “you cannot read your book, or play your CD for anyone else, or you violate that copyright; and if you do…”
What, if I read the Chronicles of Narnia to my daughter, then I owe for the second copy I need because I shared it with her?
Do you charge others a fee for borrowing your car, scooter, segway, bicycle, skateboard, airplane, bus, time machine? That could feasably be argued by some poor lawyer to the point of your loss in court.
These things, however insane they may seem, may be working against you and you’ve already agreed to them.
Now what, constituent?
Re: Re: Think that sucks?
“UMMMMMM….It’s been that way for a long long time with ALL games you buy. This also applies to books, movies, music, etc. When you buy another person’s work, you are buying a license to use it in certain ways. you don’t actually own the information. That’s called copyright.”
Then perhaps it should be renamed “use-right”
By my way of thinking COPYright is a government-granted monopoly on the right to make and distribute COPIES. Nothing else.
When you BUY a work you’re buying the work completely. It should be yours to do whatever you like with short of making copies for distribution and if you don’t agree then don’t bother trying to sell your crippled CD’s to me.
The recording and movie industry don’t agree, so I download CC-licenced music and wait for movies on free-to-air TV. Microsoft don’t agree, so I’ve been running Linux almost as long as I’ve had a computer. And it feels good to be free of them.
BTW; I did email the Free Software Foundation; from their perspective I _OWN_ my copy of Linux the same way I own the books on my bookshelf or the van in my driveway. I’m free to do whatever I like with it. Copyright (and thus the GPL) only applies to me if/when I make copies for distribution.
Re: Think that sucks?
How about if everyone sends an -email to the manufacturer after their next software purchase saying you don’t agree with the EULA, and want your money back. (and of course the store you bought it at won’t take it back)
That should put an end to EULA pretty qucik.
No Subject Given
The government (US) is attempting to give corporations the say in how we as People live our lives and what we do with them. The government is basically handing the power to the corporations to do as they please?
Somethings amiss.
Who cares?
Why should one care what the RIAA says? If you stop buying and using their products, they have no hold on you.
Screw ’em.
The only way to stop ’em is to stop handing over money to them.
Re: Who cares?
I totally agree on that one, if we stop buying all the products and music that the riaa represent and put signs and advertisments outside the stores they represent then maybe they might just give a little, of course they won’t give up , their greedy bastards that only want money and go after everyway of getting it.
even if that means going after children on the net!!!!!!!!!!!
Atleast Michael Jackson screwed in private the riaa does it publicly!!!!!!!!!
ok that sucked didn’t it,lol !!!!!
sorry lol
DRM control on CDs
I have never bought another CD after I discovered I could not play it on my PC, and never will again. They can keep their CDs. THere are other ways to get music.
Re: DRM control on CDs
Yea, people like me will buy the CD, put it in our regular stereo, run a wire from the Aux Out plug on the Stereo to the Aux In plug on ourcomputer’s audio card, use a decent audio recording program to record the actual audio input of each track to a .wav file, convert the .wav to a .mp3, and then post it anonymously on the web for anyone to download for free. The only way to defeat that is to make the CD completely unplayable, then no one will buy it.
Re: Re: DRM control on CDs
But the sound quality will suffer – and the artist won’t get paid.
As much as I hate what the media industry is trying to do with DRM (pure nasty greed, that will make them the victims of their own actions soon), I do have a thing about the artist being paid for their work and controling the quality of the recordings.
And also, just because a shop decides to sell beans at five dollars a can, tells you you never actually own the contents and tells you that you can only eat them on a monday, alone in your living room with the curtains closed and the lights out – STILL doesnt give you the right to steal the beans!
They will get the message when people stop buying… but people ripping and distributing for free is giving them a scape-goat. they have legal excuses for thier behaviour and can claim the high moral ground – which is not good!
Unlimited Music for Free
Have any of you heard there’s a new technology out there that lets you consume all the music you want for free.?…. yes, it’s called The Radio.
I know, I know, it comes spiced up with annoying commercials, but hey, at least it’s still free 🙂
Stop the RIAA, don’t buy its music.
Re: Unlimited Music for Free
what you didn’t hear the latest , the riaa is trying or was trying to get the big boys to stop all taping of radio from digital to regular,
although they got put down they are still trying .
pretty soon those bastards will be busting people’s ass’s for taping off the radio …..
the riaa isn’t letting anybody have freedom when it comes to music any more …..
Re: Re: Napster
Obviously the car/CD thing has been mentioned. That just doesn’t work. Toyota isn’t concerned about me copying my Camry and illegally distributing the copies. But CD’s (along with other electronic content) are unique in that you can do just that.
To anyone who doubts that illegal file sharing is a serious problem, just think back to pre-DRM Napster. Or even to VHS. Or just use your imagination… if you could copy your neighbor’s Camry, would you? I sure as hell would! I’d sell it illegally for profit, too! And you’d better bet that Toyota would be on all our asses trying to stop us in any way possible.
Digital content is a unique new concept, and we’re still struggling with how to make up for it’s inherent lack of copy protection, which most real-world, physical items inherently have. Artists deserve to be paid, and without protection, they definitely won’t be. If the RIAA hadn’t started this whole debacle, the original Napster would be installed on every PC in the world today and nobody would be paying for music (which, I’m guessing, wouldn’t be being produced anymore either, except by low-budget garage-bands with crappy equipement). You can argue the whole “people are inherently honest and would pay” thing, but I’ll just refer you back to Napster 1.0, and perhaps a few references on history and human nature.
DRM is not evil, it’s just in evil hands.
Re: Re: Re: Napster
You are 100% correct: DRM is not evil. DRM is a tool, just like P2P, PCs, and cars are tools. Tools are neither good nor evil, but their uses can be.
I do take exception to your statement that no one would make music anymore if not for the money. One only has to look at any other hobby to see the falacy of that statement. Do only pro athletes play football or basketball? Are the pro athletes the only good athletes while all others are the athletic equivalents of “crappy garage bands”? Are intramural sports a program for pro-bowl or world series bound hopefuls? I mean, if they’re not getting paid for it, why else would they do it?
Suppose a college athlete wins the Heisman but decides not to go pro: does he become a “crappy garage athlete”? If Michael Jordan were to play basketball now, would he suck?
An artist no longer getting paid millions of dollars before their album is released does not mean music creation will stop or suck. True, music companies have deep enough pockets to hire great audio engineering talent that can mix a mediocre album into a great album. True, they have the pockets to promote an album to a mass market which will invariably result in more sales. And it is also true that record companies can offer the artist enough money to live without having to worry about rent or food so they can devote more time to working on material. But it is also true that these things are not the only ingredients to good music.
Just because it appears on Clear Channel’s playlist doesn’t mean its good, and independantly produced “garage band” albums are not always crap.
who cares
only idiots buy music. if you buy DRM-laden shit you deserve to have problems with it. lets all grow up and move on
Playing CDs on a Computer now a privilege
I have to wonder what Sony Vaio’s have installed on them. Sony has led the charge in technology to play music on computers, they sell computers with CD roms that are capable of playing music, include speakers with their systems and load music playing software. Go to SonyStyle.com and read about the DVD and CD burners they sell, the media editing software and burning software they sell, as well as their media friendly computers.
Double standards make me ill and I will NEVER buy another BMG Sony product as long as I live.
Its a gross invasion of privacy as well as unfair to the consumer that deserves to know EVERYTHING they are buying in language the lay person can understand, not legalese.