On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 3:57 PM, Jeffrey Watts [email protected] wrote:
Your quote: "Apple would never have reached where it is today in the online music business without DRM" is also ridiculous - there WASN'T a online music business before they invented it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_music_store disagrees. Apple didn't invent online music retailing. They were just the first group able to negotiate with the big label cartels. Several others had tried and had to go without. Napster famously ignored the labels and money all together until it was too late (ironically, the pressplay Music Store created afterwards was eventually used to relaunch Napster).
There is a reason to fight DRM even as you refuse to buy it -- it's an end run around libraries, fair use and copyright expiration. But I feel too many people focus on attacking companies rather than going out and building the world they want to live in. How many people on either side of this debate have released an album, DRM'd or not?
There's a growing number of good artists using the internet and copyleft to share their work. Off the top of my head: * Denied by Reign * Brad Sucks * Johnathan Coulton
I'm sure if you tried you could name a few others.
Justin Dugger