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Re: [News] Binding Music to a Commercial Operating System

John A. Bailo wrote:

> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> 
>> Free Music--Next Year?
>> | from SpiralFrog will have to log on to the site at least once a
>> | month to ensure that their downloaded tracks remain playable.
> 
> Rhapsody has been doing that for years.
>  
>> The Top 10 Arguments Against DRM
> 
> Those are all good arguments.   But here's the Top 1 Argument for DRM.
> 
> Given that an unobstrusive DRM scheme can be perfected *technically* is
> there any logical or moral reason why you wouldn't want DRM?   Isn't fair
> that, no matter what you think of the present system of ownership, that
> one who has created content should be allowed to have a system with which
> to track usage?

NO - The whole point of copyright law is that so-called intellectual
property is really owned by the public and the current rights holders only
get a temporary ownership period in which to profit after which the
copyright is returned to the public domain. 

So DRM is not just a way for rights holders to protect their time-limited
ownership but also allows them to prevent it reverting back to the public
domain at the end of their limited lease - it may still become free but
that's not much use if it's in the form of unplayable encrypted files.

Unless there's an independent library set up to hold unprotected versions of
everything they protect with DRM and release those unprotected files on the
day they become public domain then DRM is nothing but theft of public
property - current copyright holders claiming they'll release their own
unencrypted versions when they become free isn't enough as they may have
lost these versions from the archive or gone out of business by then.

As a good example of why DRM is bad look at the situation with old BBC
shows. Back in the 1960's and 70's the BBC wiped a lot of old shows to
re-use the tapes. In the past few years they've been slowly recovering some
of their lost archive back from other sources such as from foreign
broadcasters and home-recorded shows. What would have happened if all the
external copies were DRM protected - it's likely even the BBC would be
locked out of restoring returned copies of their own shows.



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