[IP] Summerized -- Mossberg: Media Companies Go Too Far in Curbing Consumers' Activities
Begin forwarded message:
From: Richard Forno <rforno@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: October 20, 2005 9:30:41 AM EDT
To: Infowarrior List <infowarrior@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Dave Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Mossberg: Media Companies Go Too Far in Curbing Consumers'
Activities
(Agree 100% with him.....rf)
Media Companies Go Too Far in Curbing Consumers' Activities
By WALTER S. MOSSBERG
http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20051020.html
They stand for Digital Rights Management, a set of technologies for
limiting how people can use the music and video files they've
purchased from legal downloading services. DRM is even being used to
limit what you can do with the music you buy on physical CDs, or the
TV shows you record with a TiVo or other digital video recorder.
Once mainly known inside the media industries and among activists who
follow copyright issues, DRM is gradually becoming familiar to
average consumers, who are increasingly bumping up against its
limitations.
...Using a DRM system it invented called FairPlay, Apple has rigged
its songs, at the insistence of the record companies, so that they
can be played only on a maximum of five computers, and so that you
can burn only seven CDs containing the same playlist of purchased
tracks.
...Some CD buyers are discovering to their dismay that new releases
from certain record companies contain DRM code that makes it
difficult to copy the songs to their computers, where millions prefer
to keep their music.
...They believe that once a consumer legally buys a song or a video
clip, the companies that sold them have no right to limit how the
consumer uses them, any more than a car company should be able to
limit what you can do with a car you've bought.
...The companies believe they need DRM technology to block the
possibility that a song or video can be copied in large quantities
and distributed over the Internet, thus robbing them of legitimate
sales.
...Millions of copies of songs, TV shows and movies are being
distributed over the Internet by people who have no legal right to do
so, robbing media companies and artists of rightful compensation for
their work.
...On the other hand, I believe that consumers should have broad
leeway to use legally purchased music and video for personal,
noncommercial purposes in any way they want -- as long as they don't
engage in mass distribution.
...Instead of using DRM to stop some individual from copying a song
to give to her brother, the industry should be focusing on ways to
use DRM to stop the serious pirates -- people who upload massive
quantities of music and videos to so-called file-sharing sites, or
factories in China that churn out millions of pirate CDs and DVDs.
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