defectivebydesign.org — DBD Members will target Apple's flagship stores in New York and London on Saturday afternoon (Sept. 30) as a precursor to hundreds of actions on October 3rd, the "Day Against DRM" aimed to raise awareness in the general public of the dangers of Digital Restrictions Management.
Sep 28, 2006 View in Crawl 4
elliamSep 28, 2006
Let's spell this out for the billionth time:If you don't like the trivial DRM they have installed as a method to placate the music labels to allow the very existence of iTunes then DONT USE iTUNES! Was that in any way complicated? I can't see how it is.If iTunes was the ONLY way to acquire music in any form then you might have a point. That is not the case.No one has the right to dictate to Apple how they should run their store. If you are a supplier (label) and you don't like their practices you won't supply them. If you are a consumer and you don't like their practices then you shouldn't buy from them. End of story.Corporations exist to make money. Don't kid yourself into thinking any other way.DRM in no way controls the content of our culture.There is now and always will be music created everywhere and anywhere.If a specific musician happens to release music through a specific distributor that places restrictions on how that music can be listened to then you have to follow the restrictions to listen to it. That does not in any way expand to cover all music and all culture everywhere. Get your head out of your ass and lose the sense of entitlement. Prick.
dannystapleSep 28, 2006
@Backwards:Hold on a mo, what about artists rights being trampled by the record companies too? Of course artists want food in their mouths, and I dont mind paying for content, but I also think that the record company model will soon fade. Since any artist can now upload their content, and sell it from their own systems, with their own choice of DRM or None, how far will record companies go to keep a slice of the action?How about, if content is to be sold on xxx service, it must have yyy DRM. yyy DRM has very large licensing fees both to encode and playback, so therefore to publish music at that kind of price, you need to have the finances of a major music corporation. Back at square one.I think what seriously needs to be considered is a way of ensuring the following things can happen:a) An artist can be rewarded for their work (within reasonable limits, 50 years is taking the mikey).b) An artist can sell/redistribute their music without having to involve a middle man like a record company, or pay massive fees to a DRM organisation. Including for free if they really like. c) A consumer can pay for, and acquire the music.d) A consumer can playback the music on any device they own, be it Linux based, apple or even creative labs designed.e) A consumer can choose to get a single track or a whole album - because lets face it, not every track on an "album" release is worth listening to.f) A consumer can "lend" the music to a freind for a limited time so somebody else can experience it - as an extension of word of mouth. Back in the day of tapes, that was often what I based my decision to buy music on.g) The music is not a free-for-all for any person to copy with absolutely no remuneration to the artist, until the artist has been sitting on their respective backside for long enough that the work should be considered public domain.h) The hardware/software to deal with this does not seriously restrict other choices the use may make in terms of other hardware/software (ie using a computer that is not windows based).In conjunction with this, it would be nice to have something for knowing listening habits, so popularity of artists is known. Something like scrobbler is what I had in mind - independant.This requirements list sounds pretty difficult to acheive right now, but it should define ways in which content (not just music) could be fairly used by consumers, while fairly rewarding the artist. As for the record companies, they are just a bunch of lawyers, bankers and marketing people - so I really dont care at all if they go out of business. I dont particularly like any of those three kinds of people who are also embodied in any other agency businesses.
statusquorulesSep 28, 2006
Stop ***** digging me down. Labels would refuse to let Apple sell DRM free music ffs.
uownedgeSep 28, 2006
I'm against DRM as much as the next guy, but this type of action against it, excuse the expression, is just as retarded. First of all, Apple isn't the only one utilizing DRM. Second of all, do you suppose, that just maybe, Apple chose to use DRM because it allows them to keep the iTunes Store up and running? Hmmm. A large computer and media retailer comes to a record label and says "we'd like to sell you're music, but we're not going to do anything to protect it". Do you really think the producers are going to say yes? Please, give me a break. If you want to do something about DRM, how about coming up with a better DRM solution? Get a large group behind that and give it a push, rather than just being destructive and looking like a bunch of jackasses. Finally, to those P&M'ing about qualtiy....what? You can't honestly tell me that the quality on an AAC you got through the ITS is worse than that 42kbps mp3 with the boosted lower tone levels ripped by some 14 year old kid. It's still better quality than most standard 128k/s mp3s floating around out there. Take your anti-Apple propaganda and shove it. Seriously folks, both DRM and Anti-DRM are getting out of hand. Let's see some reasonable and intelligent solutions, and no more of this idiotic foolishness.
Closed AccountSep 28, 2006
@i440I bet you wouldn't be saying anything like that if they had decided to protest against Microsoft's DRM. You are nothing but a pawn to Steve Jobs reality distortion field. Truly sad.DRM is only their to restrict fair use rights, and in apple's case to keep their monopoly on having to buy an ipod in check in order to listen to songs bought on itunes. And if you say you can just burn it to a CD, why should I be forced to waste a CD just so that I can rerip the CD to put the mp3 version on my mp3 player of choice? Also there is quality lost in doing that conversion. Apple's aac files are encoded in 24-bit sound where as CD quality audio is only 16-bit. And again if you say that converting it to an mp3 file will lose quality anyways then, what if my mp3 player supports playing back aac encoded music? Aren't I allowed to then put it on my mp3 player that supports aac without being forced to buy an ipod instead? And remember that the Microsoft zune can play back aac encoded content. And so can portable audio players from sony.This all stems from the fact that apple refuses to license its drm to third party portable audio manufacturers. Apple could easily release the itunes api to enable them to build drivers for their portable audio players to work with itunes and sync up the same way the ipod does. But just like Microsoft, Apple is monopolistic too.
Closed AccountSep 28, 2006
@Wooism: "Apple is the worst company to pick on about DRM. You can do whatever you want with their music, unlike most other companies music stores."Hey that's cool, I didn't know that! So I can actually take my iTunes music and play it with any AAC player, without loss of quality? Oh, and I can stream it from my computer to my livingroom stereo using any equipment of my choice? That is just frickin' awesome, I had no idea!Could you please please please tell me how I'd go about doing that, cause I'd really like to know!
Closed AccountSep 28, 2006
I love what emusic and magnatune is doing, but the bottom line is that they just don't have the music I want. And I have bought several albums from both services, so I'm fairly familiar with the limitations of their catalog. So for now I stick to iTunes for partial album purchases and CDs for full-album purchases.
danmillerMay 17, 2008
Please tell me you didn't just equate the fight against DRM with political revolutionaries.