Are they trying to encourage consumers to break the law?
My budget for anything is rather limited. Most of my music is downloaded through eMusic or AllofMP3. I have no problem with paying £5 per month for a subscription to eMusic, even if I only download one album a month the cost of the subscription is less than what it would cost to purchase that album in a physical form. If the album isn’t available on eMusic, I’ll download it from AllofMP3. I do occasionally purchase CDs, from artists whose music has either been recommended from a friend, or I’ve downloaded from AllofMP3.
As a Linux user, I already have to break the DRM every time I play a DVD. While I am not sure if this is against the law in the UK, it is certainly a violation of the DMCA. Now they want to add the same copy protection to music? I listen to most of my music on my PC or an MP3 player which means I would have to rip the tracks, breaking the law in the process. According to the Wall Street Journal article there will be pre ripped tracks on the DVD, but these will be ‘essentially identical’ to those downloadable from iTunes, which probably includes the DRM. There is no iTunes for Linux, and I’m not willing to switch back to Windows or get a Mac, so again I’ll end up breaking the law should I have to convert these into a usable format. Whatever I do, I’m going to end up breaking the law, so why not just download the music illegally
anyway?
This makes me wonder, is the music industry trying to move to a new business model of suing it’s customers?
Of course, this new format will also have to be more expensive than current CDs.