[wplug] OT: locked online music!?

[Douglas Green]

While I have no comment about the illegality of the DRM (actually,  
they DO allow you to make a "private copy" by burning lossless audio  
CDs), my beef with the DRM is that it is a <use> limitation, and not  
a <distribution> limitation. I'm perfectly ok with my name and serial  
number being tagged onto purchased music- if it gets distributed  
illegally, then they can trace it back to me and hold me accountable.  
Fine- I'm good with that. I'm NOT ok with someone telling me that I'm  
not allowed to listen to my music on my MP3 CD player!

Regardless of the legality of the DRM per-se, I found this to be a  
very restrictive and unnecessary limitation. In the case of Apple, it  
comes close to forcing people to buy an iPod to fully enjoy their  
music library (as opposed to one disc at a time). Clearly, I'm not so  
rabid that I'm accusing them of that. They haven't crossed that line  
(yet), but they definitely make it easier on the consumer if they buy  
the Apple iPod (starting at just 99.99$, batteries not included).

The original point of the thread was to point out this limitation. It  
was not obvious to me AT ALL that my purchased music could not be  
burned onto an MP3 compilation CD. I'm sure some people were  
completely aware of this problem- but in general I've found that not  
to be the case.

-D

On Sep 22, 2005, at 8:15 AM, Chester R. Hosey wrote:

> Zachary Uram wrote:
>
>> On 9/21/05, *Douglas Green* <diego96 at mac.com  
>> <mailto:diego96 at mac.com>>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Well said Douglas! I agree with you 100%. The Supreme Court has  
>> ruled on
>> fair use and affirmed we have the right to make a private copy. These
>> copy protections are illegal. I hope a case will be  brought  
>> before the
>> Court on this matter soon.
>>
>> Zach
>>
>>
>
> I'd disagree with that slightly. It's legal for you to make copies for
> personal use, but I don't believe that it's illegal for Apple to  
> make it
> more difficult for you to make copies just because it would be  
> legal for
> you to do so.
>
> They cannot bring action if you manage to make copies, although the  
> DMCA
> makes it illegal to circumvent access controls (which is illegal) in
> order to exercise your fair-use rights (which is otherwise legal).  
> While
> Adobe vs. Sklyarov provides some indication that a jury might decide
> that it's not illegal to produce means of circumvention which
> significantly enhance fair use, it's been said that the legal outcome
> was probably affected by the fact that Adobe couldn't provide a single
> example of cracked content being distributed. Audio is significantly
> different in that there's no question as to whether content is being
> illegally traded online, something which circumvention software would
> make significantly easier. As this is exactly the sort of activity  
> which
> the DMCA seeks to prevent, it would be much harder to convince a jury
> that the infringing uses are insignificant against the benefits of
> circumvention.
>
> Ignoring the DMCA, reverse engineering is legal in many places.  
> Despite
> this it's not illegal to obfuscate generated code to make reverse
> engineering more difficult.
>
> I'd be quite interested if you could provide some evidence that it is
> illegal to make it difficult for users to make copies.
>
> Chet
>
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