Buying CDs don’t guarantee DRM free music. Let’s not forget the Sony fiasco! But by and large, for historical reasons, CD mean DRM free music. The day they add DRM to CDs is the day I stop buying them. I think that is a fair part of the CD contract. I don’t mind what DRM they want to add to CDs. My only demand is: It MUST be clearly labeled as such.

Yes, music producers could provide downloads DRM free. That is well within their prerogative. But it is also within their prerogative to add DRM. They own the content. They have the right to say how it is packaged. Your money is your own. No one can make you spend it on something that you do not wan or something that does not suit your needs. You get to vote with your dollars! If you like it a little: spend a little. If you like it a lot: spend a lot. If you don’t like it at all: don’t spend at all. Quite simple.

There are many ideas competing in the market today and I think that is good for consumers. It is not perfect, not by a long shot. You have everything from DRM free, to subscription services, to single price ownership. Why not let the market decide? Provide consumers with the necessary information and let them decide. Who says that the is only one solution? All of these models may be able to coexist.

So anyone planning on buying an MP3 player should be asking themselves this question: How am I going to be acquiring my music? Am I going to be ripping from my DC collection? Or am I going to be purchasing from some download service? If your answer is the former, then I think you have the greatest flexibility. Except in cases where the music is available only as a download. Then you are SOL. If you choice is the latter then you need to assess the service that you chose. Is the price right? Is the quality of the music to your liking? Are the songs that you are likely to purchase contained in that library? Is the library growing? Does the DRM work for you? Etc. etc… Once you have chosen you service you can chose you player. This has always been the way you purchase a computer. Decide what software you’d like to run… then choose the computer. And all an MP3 player is a small, highly specialized computer.

Sk, you never had a right to play anything on a Zune. It is brand new (or New Brand, I don’t know, but no matter…). PlaysForSure was/is an unfortunate marketing stunt that seem to promise compatibility. And rather than Apple, Microsoft is it first victim (or is it the other guys left holding the bag? I’m not sure… only time will tell.) At this point, there are no guarantees! If Microsoft/Zune starts to cannibalize the PlaysForSure market you might very well see PlaysForSure players unsupported or under-supported. I see lots of work for lawyers out there. But like I said, it is not a perfect market. So that should also contribute to your decision-making process. Is the service you choose going to stick around?

It wasn’t part of this discussion, but the Europeans seem to want one ring to rule all. It’s a very quaint idea but quite impractical and unworkable. I don’t see the players voting to select one scheme as the standard and licensing it. Or even combining schemes and cross licensing it. We need to let this thing run its course. Maybe down the line we’ll all have a clearer idea of what we want and what is possible

I’m not sure I understand your post at all.

Let me see if I can re-state my position on DRM to clify any confusion that I may have caused.

DRM is a lock. Plain and simple. It is used as a deterent to file sharing. It may not be a perfect lock, but it’s the best that we have at the moment. DRM has certain other properties: It restricts where you can play the content; how many copies you can make; etc. etc..

And that really addresses two different issues.

1. Protecting copyrighted/interlectual property.

2. Users rights.

Quite a few of the post here seem to advocate getting rid of DRM. Let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater. That would simply re-introduce rampant and illegal file swapping. Not that it ever went away. Just because you can buy DRM free music, dose that mean you have solved the issue of illegal music downloading. On the contrary, you may just have taken it to another level. Let’s not forget where the original songs that were illegally traded/swapped came from: Presumably legally purchased CDs. DRM protects the record companies/artists/musicans. Without this protection we would be without music in very short order.

The other side of the coin is: Users rights. And here there is a lot to be dissatisfied about. But the big caveat is: You don’t have to buy DRM protected music. You can always buy a CD and rip it. This give you the greatest freedom of all, because you can rip it to what ever format you want. If you do chose to buy Apple’s DRM protected music from Apple’s iTunes Store, you can burn that music to a CD, at which point it is DRM free. And you should be burning your legally purchased music any way as a backup. So far I do not see the infringement on users’ rights.

One of the major objections to DRM seems to be around the fact that most DRM schemes are not interoperable. I think that everyone is (or should be) aware that legally purchased downloaded music is limited as to which devices it can be played on. So, if you plan on acquiring your music from an online download service, make sure that it is compatible with your player. Companies make a huge investment in creating and maintaining an online download service and deserve to make a return on that investment. Or as the Godfather once said: Gentlemen, after all, we’re not communist. DRM schemes are not all the same, and are used to differentiate one online download service from another. So chose you service and hence your player accordingly.

The most ridiculous reason offered for abandoning DRM is because DRM can be broken. Locks on cars can be (and are) broken. Where is the hue-and-cry to get rid of locks on cars? Locks on homes can be (and are) broken. Where is the hue-and-cry to get rid of locks on homes? Locks on…. Well… I think you get the point.

USA TODAY says: Record labels have won court cases that helped close virtually every major file-trading firm. But the software that powered those services, such as Kazaa, eDonkey and WinMX, still resides on millions of computers. Online measurement firm BigChampagne says more than 1 billion songs are available for illegal trading each month.

What would DRM free music do to stem that tide? DRM did not just spring up in a vacuum. Before DRM there was complete lawlessness and 12 year old kids being threatened with jail and fines. All because they wanted to get their grove on. Well, DRM isn’t perfect but it is the best that we’ve got. After all you just can’t give away (steal) someone else’s intellectual property.

I am an iPod owner though. But that neither here nor there. The real point is: Music producers - artist, musicians - need to be paid. Since there is no hard linkage between an iPod and iTunes Store. Buy and rip as many CDs as you want. Or download as many DRM protected songs as you like. But let’s ensure that the artist gets paid.

I thought you said that you were a decent computer geek, don’t you know that you still need Windows AND other software (Boot Camp, VMware, Parallels Desktop). Now we can enter into a much larger discussion of whether a computer running Windows is a Mac at all.

You sound like an industry shill, entertainment lawyer or someone that has money invested in the music “industry”. I will not pay anyone for lossy DRM’d crap. Like any decent computer geek I rip my own. You won’t see me sporting an iPod or one of those dreadful Zune pieces of junk because I WILL NOT have DRM on anything.

Oh, and yes you can run Windows XP programs on MAC and Linux.

DRM is the solution, it is not the problem. DRM means different things to different people. Microsoft’s DRM is quite different to/from Apples DRM. How do you create a single DRM. And why should Microsoft license it DRM to play on Apple’s iPod or vice versa? The world may be getting flatter, but it is not quite there as yet. There are many examples of incompatibilities in the real world that do not draw this much fire.

I don’t think that you’d want to buy your BMW or Mercedes replacement parts from Hyundai. Are Shick and Gillette blades interchangeable? Can you run Windows XP programs on a Mac?

Here in America, people expect a fair return on the investment that they make in creating value. It’s called intellectual property. The day may come yet when we will see universal DRM but we are not there as yet. This is still a very young technology. Let’s not kill it before it matures.