Re: Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!]

Stephan von Krawczynski
2003-04-28T09:45:29Z

On Sun, 27 Apr 2003 09:59:59 -0700
Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com> wrote:

> What seems to be forgotten is that the people who are locking things up
> are the people who own those things and the people who are complaining
> are the people who got those things, illegally, for free.

Unfortunately this is plain wrong. I am in fact not interested at all in the
P2P stuff. I am interested in simply buying CDs from my favourite bands. And I
_hate_ it to constantly swap CDs during car driving. So I make my own samplers,
where you basically have to _copy_ the songs onto another media. If they are
copy-protected I cannot do that _legally_, because breaking the protection is
against DMCA. Now you just created the case where _buying_ something does not
make sense any longer. This brings up the simple question: what did you really
pay for? In former times you paid for the ability to listen to certain songs.
_Now_ you ought to pay for the ability to listen to a certain CD-media. This
makes a very fundamental difference. I am not interested in the _media_, I am
interested in the _content_ - without technical deficiencies.

There's one other thing you have to keep in mind: a lot of artists do have
agreements where they are paid for every sold CD which is completely full of
their respective songs, but get no money at all from released samplers. This is
why I do not buy any samplers at all. I want the _artist_ to get money for his
work. If there were another possibility to give the money directly to the
artist for his work, I would do that, and buy no records burnt by some RIAA
members at all.

--
Regards,
Stephan