The Realization
Today a coworker asked me a question about iPods.
“I just got an iPod,” she said, “and my husband has a bunch of music that he’s save in some format and I’d like to get some of it onto my iPod. How can I do that?”
I immediately knew we were going to get into trouble. “This is one of those seemingly easy questions that is actually rather complicated,” I replied. “What format are we talking about?”
I could bore you with continued banter, but the point was that this conversation finally dropped a large piece of the DRM puzzle onto me. Why does the public not care that companies are trying to take their rights?
Before I continue, let me interject that this “Why don’t they care?” question can be asked of practically any ‘religious’ issue like this.
It’s because people just don’t realize that Napster’s DRMed content won’t play on an iPod and that iTunes content won’t play on anything but an iPod. If you ever choose to switch to a different platform you are going to have to buy that content all over again. The invesment you made is kaput!
That’s the secret that they won’t tell us.
So my ethical-cum-technical conundrum of how to acquire my music has finally ended. I’m going to buy CDs from now on. An artist will have to earn my dollars, but I will dutifully buy albums on CD. I get a physical copy, I get to choose my encoding scheme and the content is mine to enjoy, rip, sell or trade as I please.
I eventually recommended to my coworker that she burn all the music as ol’ fashioned audio CDs so they can be-reripped as enencumbered MP3s. “I’ve only purchased an album or two from iTunes, but I always burn it to CD for safekeeping,” I said. “You never know what might change.”
It’s all so clear now.
Comments (2 comments)
I should probably know better to add comments on a holy war type of issue, but I’ve never been accused of knowing better. But here’s the deal: to me, there’s just as much an issue of the public taking away the song owner’s rights to make a livelihood off the sales of their music. Most of the DRM implementations in existence (such as the ones you cited) are flawed because they favor song owners too heavily without considering the poor experience encountered by the people who legitimately pay to download their music. But they’re doing so because of all the people who have exploited and would continue to exploit the loopholes in a more open system, at the expense of songwriters and other interested parties.
I know you know this and all, but I’m just sayin’. Plus this is a great opportunity to say Hi! I found your blog through a comment in Jon’s blog. We’re all so, like, connected and shi- stuff.
Kate O' / January 30th, 2007, 12:48 pm / #
Duly Noted.
I would prefer an implementation that cut out the middle man. I want The Roots to get my money, not The Man. ;)
gphat / January 30th, 2007, 7:38 pm / #
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