Scott Rosenberg has a nice little rant about "iPod fascism" in his blog on Salon.
"As far as I can tell -- and I freely admit that I'm no OSX expert, so if I'm wrong, correct me! -- there is no simple way to get that music off her iPod and onto her Mac."
How about
PodWorks or
iPodRip?
If you use the iPod as a hard drive, without using iTunes, it's no problem to move music from one computer to another. However, if you try to copy the iPod's music library (created by iTunes), it doesn't work.
The root of Scott's problem is not the iPod. It's DRM. And the root of the that problem is a fundamental disagreement over what rights consumers obtain when we pay for music.
Here's my question: what rights do you get when you buy a commercial recording?
Suppose, for example, that you buy a CD today. Next year -- or five years from now -- the same album becomes available in a higher quality, SuperCD format. Since you already paid for those songs, should you have to pay for them again?
I bought the Dire Straits album Brothers In Arms twice -- once on cassette and once on CD. I know people who have paid for Beatles albums three times... so far. Should they have to pay again to get the next version?
Some consumer advocates are really pushing this question, suggesting that the act of purchasing a CD assumes some rights that are now being taken away by copy-protection schemes. The record labels, bless their hearts, are doing everything in their power to restrict those assumed rights.
Copyright law can't keep up with the pace of technological change. In Canada, where I live, home taping of commercial music for personal use was illegal until 1988. The amendments that fixed that problem introduced the so-called "blank media tax" -- a levy on the sale of every blank cassette or CD sold in Canada, collected on the assumption that we use blank tapes and discs to steal music.
High-speed Internet access and peer-to-peer network software have made it easy to steal music from CD. DVD theft is still non-trivial, but the studios can see the problem looming.
If we can agree that artists should be compensated for their work, the next question is how we should do this.
The current DRM scheme used by the iTunes Music Store (and enforced by the iPod) charges a flat per-song fee and gives the purchaser certain rights in exchange for that money. These rights do not include the ability to share the purchased songs with anyone, or with any computer. However, it is possible to "authorize" more computers to play the same music.
Reasonable people can disagree about whether or not Apple's "FairPlay" DRM scheme offers value for its 99 cent per song fee. I still prefer to buy most music on CD, but I would rather pay 99 cents for a song with FairPlay DRM than $9.99 for a CD with 9 other songs I do not like.
What will happen when the iTunes Store increases the quality of its download format? Will my purchased music be "upgraded" to the new format for free, or will I have to pay? I'm afraid I know the answer to that question.
Would you be willing to pay a few pennies every time you play a song or watch a movie? If so, good news: some sublicensee of Microsoft will likely make that solution available in the very near future.
If you prefer to pay a flat fee to buy the rights to recording, what rights do you think consumers have (or should have) in exchange for their money? And what restrictions, if any, do you think publishers should be able to place on the copying and distribution of the products they sell?
Once again, it looks like this is headed for a competition between Microsoft and Apple. Indeed, Microsoft's announcements at CES suggest that the DRM fight will be between the next Xbox and the next iPod (not iHome, but something like it).
1. David on January 10, 2005 04:45 PM writes...
I've bought some music 4 ways now: album, 8 track, cassette, and CD - and I'm just about bought out. The music industry obviously believes that I am (1) buying a license to listen to music (2) in a specific format. I've come to reject this notion and believe that I shouldn't be paying over and over again for the right to listen. I can accept paying an 'upgrade' fee for new media and I can certainly accept paying a premium for a remastered product. But paying for the Revolver album 4 different times doesn't cut it. If Adobe gives me a price break each time a new version of Photoshop is released then TimeWarner should be extending the same kind of upgrade break.
The idea of micropayments might make sense in some cases but, at least for me, not in the case of music. When I pay for a CD I know what I'm paying, I've already determined it is in my budget. But if I'm asked to pay for each play I suspect the serious dollars will build quickly.
Permalink to Comment2. shaitan on January 10, 2005 06:34 PM writes...
With care, any current digital copy should last for eternity, even if the quality is subpar with future versions. But in the good (sic) old days, one had to contend with wear and tear on tapes and LP's. So, technically one's rights were utimately limited. I bought three LP's of Haydyn's Lord Nelson Mass because I overplayed it and couldn't stand to listen to a wear-degraded playback. And on the third purchase it was a different performance that was much less inspiring. Now I have a fourth replacement and third version on CD. Never wears, as nice as the original, but a different feel. From this pov, DRM is not so bad, unless we get to a point where one can no longer play it, because of obsolescence.
Permalink to Comment3. jdb on January 10, 2005 08:14 PM writes...
To David,
If you have your music on CD, why would you need to ever pay for it again? I'm confused by your statement. You do know that you can rip your CD and play it on whatever player you wish. It is perfectly legal and quite easy to do on any platform.
Permalink to Comment4. Peter on January 10, 2005 08:22 PM writes...
IANAL, so this is just my personal opinion.
If you purchase an physical object containing music, you have every right to do whatever you want with the contents of that purchased physical object for your own personal use. If you wish to convert it to another format, you may do so. If you wish to make multiple copies for your home, car, RV, boat, airplane, whatever, you may do so. It is your property, have fun.
That said, you do not get any rights to the music outside your physical copy. So just because you went and bought a cassette containing Pink Floyd's "The Wall" in the discount bin for $1.79 does not mean that you are now somehow "entitled" to the remastered CD version available through Kazaa. Also, just because I own a bunch of 38 Special albums from the 1980s does not mean I can go download them off Kazaa. I can rip my copies, but not other people's (though, I'll admit, that's sort of a grey area).
So in your above example, no you do not get the song at 256Kbits (from 128Kbits) just because Apple starts selling music at a higher bit-rate (unless, of course, Apple/Music owners want to).
David points out, though, that he's paid for "Revolver" 4 times. I must have bought my first CD Player and CD back in the late 1980s--say 1988. Needless to say, I had one CD, one CD player, one record player, and 30 or 40 record albums. Over the years, I gradually converted the albums to CDs by buying them--again. I had to wait a little over ten years before they started selling CD burners that I could afford. Then I finished off the record albums that I hadn't bothered getting the CDs for.
You had a choice--you didn't have to buy Revolver four times. You could have bought the vinyl album and recorded it on cassette. If you'd waited, you could have burned it to CD. The eight-track, I have no help for. You wanted to buy Revolver four times. And if they come out with a new format, you can either wait ten years for the recording technology to get cheap enough that you can then convert it or you can buy it and enjoy it now. You have a choice, as much as you like to believe you don't. It may not be the choice you want to have (ie, I want everything for free), but you do have a choice.
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