Stop buying their music, please!
I'm not a big fan of DRM'd music especially after being burned by Microsoft's pathetic PlaysForSure scheme. (Yeah I deserved it, I know.) However, I'm a big fan of iTunes even with the DRM. They seem to have the fairest method of managing the DRM'd music. Now, the way I see it, the newest ploy by Universal to remove DRM but not let iTunes sell it is just plain stupid at best and at worst a sad way to try an exact some sort of revenge on Jobs and Apple.
They can't even commit to not using DRM on music. They're giving us the gift of non-DRM music for a "limited" time until December 31, 2007. Oh thank you so much Universal. What would I have done without you.
It is obvious from the list of companies they are allowing to sell the music without DRM (Amazon.com, Google, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Rhapsody, Transworld, PassAlong and Puretracks) that they have something against iTunes. In fact, according to the article, they didn't even renew their contract with Apple at all. So what now, all the Universal music drops off iTunes when the contract expires? How in the heck does that serve the consumer in any way? Of course, their trial period will show DRM sales as being poor (no iTunes remember) and they'll use that as an excuse to re-enact their DRM.
Interestingly, never does a music label ever consider what the consumer wants. They honestly couldn't care less. You know why, because people keep buying their stuff. What is their incentive to please the consumer. The consumer has power and it isn't being used. For some reason, no one is using this power.
Really, how hard is this?
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2 comments:
DRM is an attempt to rent music to consumers, rather than sell it as property. Some would argue, correctly, that all anyone has ever done is to license music to you on one particular medium, and you only had a right to it on that medium for as long as you could make it work.
Digital DRM is no different. Or is it?
Previous limitations of your music were happenstance of technology. Time marching on, and passing by grammaphones, 8 tracks, vinyl, and so on.
But now it's deliberate. Digital media is here to stay. Though the file formats and storage media will change, the ones and zeros will not.
So piracy is a red herring. The truth is that this is about protecting their right to sell you the same exact product again in ten years, as they've always done.
That sucks.
It's not illegal, or immoral, or even unexpected. But it sucks.
And consumers should absolutely reward any company who decides that a consumer's right to the best available product trumps the companies right to deliberately cripple that product to protect its profit.
Imagine if a car was DRMed so that only you could drive it. And only on certain roads. Or in certain cities.
Imagine if TV shows were DRMed so that you could only watch NBC on a Sony television.
That's the kind of control this is about. Fight it when you can. And absolutely boycott those who would play a shell game with customers in an effort to thwart what is clearly a movement in favor of the little people. Universal it playing a shell game. You can't win. Don't play.
Absolutely!
I would laud Universal's new non-DRM'd music if I didn't think they were deliberately sabotaging their efforts and doing so to gain some leverage both with Apple and their justification (with whom? themselves I guess...) for DRM'd music.
The fact that they are doing this for a limited time shows just how uncommitted they are to bring non-DRM music to the masses.
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