06.23.09
France and DRM
I own musical CDs (and who doesn’t?) and I run Ubuntu Linux 8.10 on my laptop. I rip songs from the CDs as MP3s (sorry, not Ogg-Vorbiss because my MP3 player doesn’t support that encoding format) and plan on putting the large numbers of digital copies on a house system to talk directly to my stereo. I’m OK with all of this – works for me quite nicely. So, what’s the beef?
There’s a certain convenience and plain consumer fun to go online and purchase music, but since ALL Linux users are known pirates (Arrrr) and we can’t be trusted to not share our legal purchases, we’re SOL. Of course, there’s the little matter that Linux users just don’t count in the development factories of Apple (what? ummm, what about OS X and BSD?), Yahoo, Real Audio’s Rhapsody, MP3.com, and eMusic, on and on… No direct support for Linux, only Windows and a bare nod to OS X.
So, here comes France telling Apple, “Look, your copy-protection formats (Digital Rights Management (DRM) are not fair and inhibit users from using their MP3 players. The French obviously recognize that not everyone has an iPod. Thank you so much… Article located on The Register
A quick update: Amazon.com certainly does offer DRM-free MP3 audio tracks, sometimes full albums AND they have a native Linux Downloader that works with their system, software they put together and offer to their Linux-using customers. Thanks, Amazon!
