View Single Post
Old 19-07-02, 06:30 PM   #3
pod
Bumbling idiot
 
Join Date: Feb 2002
Location: Vancouver, CA
Posts: 787
Default

Now, that's a little harsh, JS.

1. It is perfectly legal for you to LEND a friend your CD. A little gray when it comes to giving your friend a COPY. Definitely illegal when you push fair use to the limit and give a copy to hundreds or thousands of 'friends'.

2. You can take a month or two, with help of some good tools, and you can have your entire CD collection in mp3 format, legally. For 'the music industry' to take their entire catalogue and make it commercially available (in a fast, sleek, cheap, functional and supported fashion), legally, will take just a tad longer. I don't like any of the current commercial digital music outfits' offerings, prices, sites, or terms, but they do have to start somewhere. In the meantime the PR people have to sling around some FUD to distract everyone from the real issue: the music industry has absolutely nothing compelling to offer on the Internet as things are today. It's what they get paid to do.

3. As an aside, there was a story today about the computer industry telling the __AAs to take their digital paranoia and shove it where the sun don't shine. Strangely enough, Microsoft was one of the companies, which is most ironic considering their own DRM initiative. Perhaps enough opposition to entertainment industry's proposals will give MS time and opportunity to come in and say: remember how you wanted all kinds of DRM controls a while back? Well, here you go. And suddenly MS has another monopoly.
pod is offline   Reply With Quote