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In the UK we have no legal concept of fair use, but if any music publisher truly believes that I’m going to lend my original CDs to the kids or to feed them into the slot loading player in the car then they can think again. Of course I’m going to burn CD-Rs from my MP3 library and if the publishers thought about it for one moment they wouldn’t care. I have the original CD somewhere. Possibly I am listening to the music on my PC while it’s playing elsewhere in the house simultaneously, but in fact 99 point something percent of my music isn’t being listened to by anybody at any moment, and some albums are so appalling that they have never been played once in full, let alone twice.

I have shied away from suggesting that copy protection will never work and is incapable of letting the fascists keep me from using my music, because I have little doubt that Windows Vista will lock DRM down as tightly as possible. No doubt Microsoft, Sony, Apple and others have the capability to screw me good and proper but this is where my bewilderment grows. Surely the people they should be worried about are the professional counterfeiters in Azerbaijan and China? What the hell have I, a customer, done to offend any of them? What is the point of DRM that locks me out yet is sure to cause a counterfeiter no more than a few minutes inconvenience.

When Harold McMillan, another British Prime Minister, was asked what can steer a government off-course and replied “Events, dear boy. Events.” Well yes, undoubtedly, but woolly thinking plays its part too so if there’s anyone at Sony who is thinking clearly they might want to have a full and frank discussion with First 4 Internet. They might point out that Aries was a very bad idea indeed and that the last thing any of us need is yet another back door for viruses but we wouldn’t be in this mess if Sony treated its customers right in the first place.

Link
Sony, Rootkits and Digital Rights Management Gone Too Far

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