Apple and EMI bring you “unrestricted” downloads…
May 31, 2007Bob Lefsetz sums it up perfectly, so perfectly in fact that I’ll leave it to him (other than a wee bit of censorship on my part!):
And they wonder why we hate them.
In case you’ve been out of the Net loop, when you buy an UNRESTRICTED track at the iTunes Store, it comes with your NAME and E-MAIL address EMBEDDED!
Why is it these BLEEPS think we won’t catch on, that we’re ignorant and won’t spread the word how BLEEPED up they are. Don’t they understand this is how they got in trouble in the FIRST PLACE? The INTERNET!
Just like Lindsay Lohan can’t cover up the fact that she crashed her car high on coke, Apple and EMI can’t cover up the fact that they’re BLEEPING with us. This is WORSE than restricted/DRM/copy-protected music!
They’re trying to SCARE US back into the last century. Trying to trip us up, trying to keep us playing on their terms. EMI hasn’t given up on copy protection, they’ve just instituted a NEW ONE! Wherein they can trace your track if you choose to do anything untoward with it. Yup, if it’s your track that’s being traded P2P, you’re BLEEPED! You’d better not open your music folder to P2P trading, your NAME might get out!
How BLEEPED up is THIS? Why don’t you put a camera in my bedroom while you’re at it. Why don’t you require a list of every girl I ever BLEEPED before I get into the gig. What’s next, SAT SCORES?
I thought the music was supposed to be your friend. But now it’s just part of the endless scamster scene populated by spammers and thieves looking to gain information, to strip us of our identities or beat us into submission. Yup, this is exactly what John Lennon had in mind when he made his music, a private FBI, that could BLEEP with you just like the U.S. government BLEEPED with him, tried to get him deported. Lennon fought for years. There was an emotional cost. As for the FINANCIAL COST? He could afford it. Can YOU? If you’re sued by the RIAA can you even mount a DEFENSE?
In the future, the music will float freely, or be so abundant and cheap that you won’t need to trade/transfer/steal. But YOU’RE gonna have to sacrifice your rights now, along the way.
Where do they come up with this BLEEP? How could they think they could get away with it? Are they really this afraid, this desperate, willing to do ANYTHING to protect their old business model?
As for 256kbps files… I’ve got thousand dollar speakers and I can barely hear the difference between the version of McCartney’s “Letting Go” I downloaded from iTunes and the 160kbps MP3 rip I made from the original CD. On cheaper speakers, on earbuds? NO DISTINGUISHABLE DIFFERENCE!
In other words, EMI just wanted to find a way to charge thirty cents more while RETAINING the copy protection. BLEEPERS!
The Lefsetz Letter is one of my favourite blogs. Check it out.
This rant makes absolutely no sense! When you take cash from the bank (or ATM), every bill has a serial number. If anything illegal is ever done with that money, it can and will be tracked back to you. If you use your many in a normal way, nothing will ever happen. No government or secret agency will track what you do with that $20 (pay for that Hustler DVD in a XXX store), it will just make its trip until it ends up in some bank again.
These files are your property, once you buy them from iTunes Store. You can always prove this, since they will have your name and e-mail (simply click Ctrl-I when a song is selected in iTunes and you can see it – nothing hidden here!). This is nothing new – since iTunes started selling songs years ago, the name and address was added to every file.
If you lose your iPod, and someone finds it, rips the songs back into a PC (or Mac) and puts them on P2P, theoretically, if the music labels (currently, only EMI) trawl regularly P2P systems, they may pick up your files there and track you down through Apple (with their assumed cooperation, of course). If you reported your iPod stolen (and, if you had hundreds of purchased songs, you should), police report will put an end to this. This is no different than when somebody steals your credit card number – once you discover it, you report it to your credit card company and you don’t have to pay a dime of unauthorised charges.
There is absolutely nothing sinister here. This is the best possible way to give consumers total freedom to do with their music whatever they want (the original ‘fair-use’ clause); you can make as many copies for your friends, relatives, colleagues, iPods, cellphones (non-Apple, as well as iPhones), burn on as many CDs as you want and no entity in the world would be able to track this UNTIL, and that is only UNTIL – you (or someone you gave the file to) puts YOUR property (i.e. purchased file) onto a P2P service. Even then, if we’re talking only about 10 – 15 songs, they won’t bother. But, if it’s 500 songs, they’ll come knocking. You’d better have you iPod reported stolen then.
Not sure where you’re based, but I’m pretty certain the ATMs don’t scan the serial numbers of banknotes and keep a record of who each individual note has been issued to here in the UK!
I totally agree with the arguments against P2P file sharing, but IMHO this isn’t the way to deal with it. Embedding personal information about the buyer in any product is only going to exacerbate the “us and them” attitude between consumers and record companies. Anyone who is determined to stay anonymous can easily do so – they can burn tracks to disk, re-rip them without any personal data, and share them via P2P – so this copy protection is basically targeting the casual consumer who shares a few files. And if Apple and EMI are really not bothered about tracking those people down, what’s the point of what they’re doing? They’ve just pissed off their market, and they thought their customers weren’t going to notice.