Grabbing A Fair Use Loophole And Beating The Snot Out Of It!
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I have to admit, this is not something that I had planned on talking about today. Initially, it was just going to be about this. Yeah, Home Depot selling computers, what’s next? Adequate staffing? With all seriousness folks, today I present to you something that I have claimed was coming. Today, you can legally purchase music from a music store and actually purchase songs from popular, mainstream bands…. without any DRM whatsoever.
What’s the catch? Well, in order to remain legal with distributing music according to the original agreement that this company reached with a major distribution group, one must purchase the CD, but they have immediate access to all of the songs purchase in 192kbps quality. I assume the CD is then shipped to you later. Who is behind this ground breaking concept? Why, the man running Linspire - Michael Robertson.
Obviously, I already have my credit card out and am making selections to support what I see being a very important step forward away from this music DRM nonsense. After all, I want to see the artists getting paid! And the fact remains that DRM sucks for everyone, not just those not using OS X or Windows. Special rules, renting your music — it’s all very silly in my eyes.
Unfortunately, the fanfare may have hit a speed bump. Because of some serious miscommunication, AnywhereCD has been forced to protect itself by taking legal action against distributor Warner Music Group. Because this is still an active issue, I am simply going to point to the blog post rather than trying to explain how things got rocky so quickly. Does this mean that the million plus dollars spent to get this off the ground are for naught? Nope, I do not believe that at all. Personally, I am going to make purchases from AnywhereCD and let this work itself out. I would also point out that this is not likely to be the first time we will see the industry freak on a whim, even after it inked a deal giving clear permission to do what AnywhereCD is doing with music downloads. I think this could be, given time and more labels, the beginning of mainstream music lessening its dependency on the DRM silliness. After all, the math is simple. Mainstream bands + no DRM = making sales to people like me. It’s really that simple.
[tags]drm,music,legal,action,lawsuit,freedom[/tags]
2 Comments
Ted Bruner
April 25th, 2007
at 10:36am
Oops! I know, … my kids (now in their 30’s) always called me “Professor”, but some times we learn and expand by looking back to our roots - at least in language, anyway.
Take the quote from today’s article: “Does this mean that the million plus dollars spent to get this off the ground are for not?”
Actually, the sound is correct, but the word used is not. The word intended, but seldom used in today’s world, is “Naught”. It means nothing, valueless, worthless, unworthy. In “archaeic” use, it was sometimes coupled with the negative, as in: “It was not for naught”, or “It was not for nothing; it was not wasted, etc.”
One can certainly hope that Michael and Matt’s efforts will not be for naught. On the other hand, “Naughty”, which is too oft used of children, is a great example of older words fitting newer technology, as in: “Microsoft Vi$ta is Naughty but Nice”, hence some like it (nice) until they try to use it (naughty = Ø).
Keeping honest people honest «
April 26th, 2007
at 2:22pm
[...] And there’s been public articles about it too. Like Matt Hartley who wrote “Special rules, renting your music — it’s all very silly in my eyes.” and “I want to see the artists getting paid! …. Personally, I am going to make purchases from AnywhereCD and let this (our dispute with WMG) work itself out.” [...]