JimC;212519 Wrote: > It's not the RIAA, it's Congress, and no one cares about the CD. The CD > merely represents the license you have to listen to the music you > purchased on that medium. When you purchase music online, with or > without DRM, the file represents the license granted to you by the > copyright holder. OK, it's Congress at the behest of the RIAA. The RIAA, for the most part, claims to represent the copyright holder's interests before Congress.
To be more explicit about the token that represents one's license to use the copyrighted work, the stamped CD, LP or pre-recorded tape is that token. In the case of DRM downloads, a virtual token is generated to represent the listener's playback device(s) and is stored in the DRM provider's database. The file itself is not the token, just as a burned copy of the CD or a home-recorded cassette is not the token, since they are easily duplicated by the listener. With non-DRM downloads there is no token; there is only the receipt the seller and buyer keep of the purchase. If you resell a non-DRM download, unlike with a used CD or a book, there is no token that can pass to the buyer (at least that I'm aware of) to indicate that he has assumed the license. You're right that we have always been on the honor system to erase all copies when we sold the token. But, with non-DRM downloads we're REALLY on the honor system, because so far as I can see, there's no way for the copyright holders to even know who, other than the original purchaser, owns the token that represents the license. -- Timothy Stockman ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Timothy Stockman's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=8867 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36487 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
