Hey Dan

Does any one else think that it is funny that RealPlayer and Apple are now in a fight over digital rights? The fight is over the RealPlayer Music Store selling files that customers can play on Apple’s iPod. RealPlayer cracked Apple’s FairPlay code and started selling music files that can be played on the iPod. Now, remember if you or I did this we would go to big people jail for violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Now RealPlayer is dropping its prices… those bastards!

The Apple community is outraged. Portable music that can be played anywhere, what are you people thinking! It would be anarchy. Remember the days when you bought a CD and could play it in both you car and at home or even someone else’s house. We cannot let ourselves fall into that kind of chaos again. People cannot be trusted to own anything; we should only let them rent it, for a very short time, then take it away, and hide it. It is for our own good.

“This put Dan in a dilemma. He had to help her--but if he lent her his computer, she might read his books. Aside from the fact that you could go to prison for many years for letting someone else read your books, the very idea shocked him at first. Like everyone, he had been taught since elementary school that sharing books was nasty and wrong--something that only pirates would do.”
--The Right to Read, Richard Stallman, 1996.

I have this idea. Make it easy for me to buy any music that I can play anywhere on any systems sold by anyone. We can call it a Free Market. Then prosecute people who steal or make copies illegally, instead of everyone.

“Fair use” is a crucial element in American copyright law—the principle that the public is entitled, without having to ask permission, to use copyrighted works so long as these uses do not unduly interfere with the copyright owner’s market for a work.

When the DMCA supports are eating their own over 99 cents of my money... it is time to take a long look at this...

What can we do? Learn:
EFF-Austin
Digital Rights Management and Privacy