There’s all sorts of business and rights complexities involved in licensing media for use online and worse for selling it as a downloadable. I don’t blame Apple for this, I don’t even blame Yoko, Ringo, Paul and the Harrison estate but I do pass this on to you so you can get more value for less money.
You can buy an uncompressed copy of the Beatles’ Box Set on media more durable and archival than any hard drive, the ability to play this great music in your older car without an iPod interface plus some attractive printed materials all gathered into a glossy black box including little satin pull-tabs to help you access any of the albums.
Extra bonus? You can convert the uncompressed copy to any format you like and play great music on any device you like. Even cassette if you have the hardware to do the conversion.
Aaaaaaandd…. you can get all this for less money!
Remind me again why CD’s are a bad thing.
When you buy anything at Amazon following the link above, Amazon kicks me back a little money and you don’t spend a dime extra. Everybody wins.
The real cost of free by Cory Doctorow. Â Go read. Seriously.. now.. go.. shoo.. coffee and donuts will be here when you get back.
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/are-f-b-i-warnings-on-dvds-really-necessary/?src=tptw
Pogue responds to a reader asking the perennial question about the annoyance known as the ‘FBI Warning’.
Every stupid little uncivilized incursion we tolerate because we just assume an annoying thing has to be that way, we screw ourselves by inches. If we know the real deal, we can make informed choices.
I am not a lawyer. I have authored (programmed though it’s hardly really ‘programming’) dozens of commercial DVD titles you have seen on offer at Netflix, Amazon or your local (if it’s still in business) Blockbuster.
Things you should know:
- The ‘warning’ is not imposed on DVD publishers by the FBI or any other Government Authority.
- The ‘warning’ does not afford the rights holders for the content on the DVD any additional legal protection. Copyright law applies regardless of whether the warning is there or not.
- Sometimes, the person who has presumed to ‘warn’ you doesn’t even own, or need to own, the rights to some or all of the content on the DVD you bought or rented.
- Whether the ‘warning’ is there and whether you can skip it is entirely at the option of the publisher of the disk and the person who authored (programmed) the disk had to go to extra effort to include it and to make it hard to skip.
This means they decided, the studio or producer of the DVD, to treat you like a child and warn you first. To tell you, with the disabling of controls, that you must watch it, even if you paid for the DVD. To invoke the fear of some faceless authority figure as implicitly in control of whether you had to watch it. To cow you into submission to media-big-brother while hiding behind the illusion of some special government stamp of power.
What can you do about it? Complain. Ask for refunds. Bill for your wasted time. Stop buying more of them and tell them why.
Hell, maybe there’s even some fun to be had finding out whether they had permission to use the FBI logo.
