Posted by Loco Jones on 09/02/05 20:12

From The Electronic Frontier Foundation newsletter:
< quote >

* EFF's New Guide to Digital Music Services Reveals the
Truth About DRM

San Francisco, CA - If you buy music from an online music
store, you may be getting much less than you thought.
This week EFF released "The Customer Is Always Wrong - A
User's Guide to DRM in Online Music," which exposes how
today's digital rights management (DRM) systems
compromise a consumer's right to lawfully manage her
music the way she wants.

The guide takes a close look at popular online music
services with built-in DRM created by Apple,
RealNetworks, and Napster 2.0, as well as Microsoft's
"Plays for Sure" DRM labeling campaign. Although
these companies claim their services allow consumers
"freedom" and the ability to play music "any way you
want it," the reality often does not live up to the
marketing hype. When you download in these formats
from online music services, the services don't trumpet
the fact that your music contains hidden restrictions
that complicate your life and limit the universe of
devices you can use to play your music. CDs purchased
20 years ago not only continue to play in every
CD and DVD player, but can also be used with any
of today's PCs and digital music players. Thanks to
DRM, however, a similar investment in music downloaded
today may be much less valuable to you 20 years
from now.

And yet bypassing the DRM to make perfectly legal
uses puts people at risk of liability under the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). "In this
brave new world of 'authorized digital music services,'
law-abiding music fans often get less for their money
than they did in the old world of CDs," said Derek
Slater, the Harvard student and EFF intern who
authored the guide. "Understanding how DRM and
the DMCA pose a danger to your rights will help
you to make fully informed purchasing decisions."

For this release:
<http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2005_09.php#003947>
"The Customer Is Always Wrong":
<http://www.eff.org/IP/DRM/guide/>

< end quote>

- Loco -
(Now Playing: You Can't Always Get What You Want - Rolling Stones)

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