[wplug] OT: locked online music!?

[Douglas Green]

\begin{rant}
Regarding artist compensation, as far as I'm concerned the gloves are  
off. I used to (until today) buy music, even though I generally have  
the option of copying a friend's CD. My mother was a musician, and it  
bothered me that I was taking someone's livelihood. I never got into  
the P2P thing. However, they (recording artists and their  
representative companies) can all take a long walk on a short pier  
when they BLATANTLY infringe on my fair use of their "product". They  
are doing the same thing to me- taking money from me, and NOT  
delivering the product as advertised. When the <real> open market (e- 
commerce) dictates the value of their music, they can kiss my @$$  
while they go broke! I counted 379 files, all purchased by me since  
iTunes 4.6 (!!), that I can only play on my computer.

For anyone who's actually reading this rant, check out this link to  
Apple, regarding burning your music:
http://www.apple.com/itunes/burn/
It not only IMPLIES that you can use your music as you wish, it  
explicitly states "iTunes also lets you make MP3 CDs" which is 100%  
NOT TRUE! ITunes will NOT make an MP3 CD unless you already have an  
MP3 file (not available on iTunes), and you cannot burn these locked  
files AT ALL. False advertising much??
\end{rant}

My apologies to anyone who doesn't give a damn about Apple or iTunes  
or music on their computers, but this issue completely blindsided me!  
I hadn't missed Linux all-that-much for daily use since OSX, but it's  
starting to appeal to me once again! It's more than the OS- it's the  
culture of fair use surrounding it.

Thanks for the website- what's the best protocol for creating a  
virtual account number for a credit card?
-D

On Sep 12, 2005, at 11:09 PM, Patrick Wagstrom wrote:

>
> On Mon, 2005-09-12 at 23:01 -0400, Douglas Green wrote:
>
>> Hey all-
>> I recently purchased a vehicle with an mp3 CD player in it, and tried
>> to burn a few mp3 cds from some of the music I have <legitimately>
>> purchased online. To my surprise, these files are LOCKED! I'm so
>> P.O.'d about the whole thing that I wanted to get the word out about
>> JHymn, an open source piece of software that strips the locks/keys
>> from your files. I have no connection with this project whatsoever...
>> just a really REALLY annoyed (former) customer! I'll spare the rant
>> over fair use of my purchased music for another time. Bottom line: if
>> you've been purchasing music online as I have, you may be in for a
>> rude surprise when you want to play it on something other than your
>> computer!
>> XMMS is starting to look really good right about now...
>> -Doug
>>
>
> A nice solution to this problem is to use allofmp3.com.  It's a  
> russian
> site that due to loopholes in copyright law lets you buy MP3s by the
> megabyte ($0.02 a meg or something), all unencumbered.  They also  
> offer
> ogg, flac, etc.  Very cool site.  Yes, its legal.  They have a license
> to operate in Russia, which hasn't updated their copyright laws to the
> US level of draconian-ness yet.  Under the current copyright  
> regime, if
> you purchase something in another country that is legal there, and  
> they
> are party to the international copyright treaty (forget the name), you
> can bring it back.  Thus, Russian mp3 sites are legal, but Iranian and
> Qatari sites are not.
>
> You may be concerned that the artists aren't getting compensated for
> your downloading here, which is probably true.  But then again, don't
> delude yourself into thinking they're getting much of your $0.99  
> iTunes
> price either.  Most still goes to the record companies, which now can
> get a bigger piece of the pie than before, thanks to not needing to
> manufacture CDs and distribute them.
>
> One recommendation, as you are dealing with a russian entity, you may
> want to get a virtual account number for your credit card  
> beforehand.  I
> haven't heard any horror stories, but you can't be too safe.
>
> --Patrick
>
>
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