I used my two Free Song codes from Coke bottles last night to buy some music. A Gene Pitney song and the song "We’re All In This Together" from HSM.
While I was there I noticed that You Can’t Stop The Beat was released as a music video, so of course I downloaded it. But now I’ve noticed that it’s encrypted with DRM, and I can’t burn it to DVD or put it onto my MP3 player!
I am considering my legal options. Did Apple warn me that I wouldn’t be able to get the video out of my computer? If not, would they be legally obliged to provide an unencrypted version since I didn’t actually ask beforehand if the video was right for my purposes?
Yep, I’m aware that it’s probably on Youtube for free. But I wanted a high quality version. And I want to get the video OFF my computer, dammit! I will write a letter to Apple and demand that they provide me with a way to burn a DVD of the video. If they don’t, maybe I should call Consumer?
iTunes Plus? DefectiveByDesign.org puts it another way. For Sale: Unbroken Car: "Imagine a used car salesman putting up big signs advertising "unbroken
cars." That’s exactly what Wal-Mart, Amazon, and Microsoft are doing.
Their marketing campaigns are based on the fact that their music is
DRM-free." . They don’t mention Apple’s trailblazing attempts to sell unbroken cars, probably because Steve Jobs makes a big show of claiming that he’s against the idea of DRM. Personally, I think Steve Wozniak should be chairman of Apple, then Apple would make a computer that was cheap, flexible, a doddle to use, and didn’t support DRM.
I’m just on the iTunes support site right now, complaining to all and sundry (in a nice way, of course). Did you know that if you make a playlist containing DRM’ed music, you can’t burn that playlist to CD more than 7 times? Why? It’s absolutely zero deterrent to pirates, as they can just burn one copy, then copy the copy. In fact, if I was a pirate making massive numbers of copies, I’d rather use a dedicated bulk CD burning program than iTunes.
Let’s hope iTunes Support gets back to me about "how I would go about burning my purchased video to DVD" soon. If I don’t get a reply, I’ll simply go up the chain of command. I really am thinking of getting Consumer involved.
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