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February 07, 2005
The Buy-Rent Scam
Posted by Dana Blankenhorn
Music companies are now pitching online music as a choice between "buy" and "rent."
That's one way of looking at it.
Here's another, a choice between lies and blackmail. (As with the vinyl album at right, built to fail over time if you played it repeatedly.)
Music "bought" for the iPod isn't "bought." It's still going to come with Digital Rights Management technology. It's still going to be under the control of the publisher in ways that music before 1998 simply wasn't.
This was part of the price for Apple being allowed into the business.
The "rental" schemes now rolling out thanks to Microsoft's DRM (like the Napster scheme advertised in the Super Bowl as a choice between "$15 and $10,000) are blackmail. You can download all you want, but it all goes away the instant you end your subscription. It's not $15, but $15/month for eternity, and (worse) it is still controlled by the publisher, so you can't move it around as you might like.
Old CDs for me, thanks.
Comments (1)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Business Strategy | Consumer Electronics | Copyright
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Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for over 25 years and has covered the online world professionally since 1985. He founded the "Interactive Age Daily" for CMP Media, and has written for the Chicago Tribune, Advertising Age, and dozens of other publications over the years.
1. Brad Hutchings on February 7, 2005 09:33 PM writes...
Aside from being 3x as expensive, how is the Napster offering substantively different from the EFF proposal?
The future is toward DRM'd content. Why? Because it will make more money than non-DRM'd content. Your post on President Bush's State of the Union Address last week made one thing clear to me. Like with the trial lawyers, and the perpetual political industry of tort reformers and other malcontents, there will be a perpetual political industry of copyright reformers and other IP malcontents. But the system won't change for the same reason tort reform won't happen. If you create stuff or work in an industry that creates stuff, you realize what shrinkage costs you. Just like if some idiot runs a red light, totals your car, and puts you in the hospital, no-fault is no comfort.
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