From: Bill Young <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
And (with Napster at least,) once you stop paying
your subscription fees,
your music goes bye-bye.
How can that happen if you have it on your hard drive?
Because ALL legal music sold on-line has Digital Rights Management
(DRM) built into the file.
With Apple, once you buy the file, it's yours -- with a couple of
INCREDIBLY minor restrictions and with one (I consider) major one. I
really can't believe you haven't bothered to read ANY of the terms of
service for ANY of the major music services before coming up with
your opinions on them, but I'll summarize for you:
iTunes Music Store: The AAC files you buy can be downloaded onto as
many iPods, burned onto as many CDs, and backed-up / made copies of
as many times as you like. You cannot store the purchased AAC files
on more than five computers (each computer is "authorised" by you
when you install iTunes), and you cannot burn exact copies of the
same playlist more than 10 times in a row. These are the truly
piddling minor restrictions. You also cannot easily* convert
purchased AAC files into MP3 files -- that's the one annoying
restriction.
*there's a not-very-difficult way to get around this, but it's enough
of a barrier to stop mass piracy of the files, which is its purpose.
You can (and should) always back up your purchases to regular Audio
CD, and as soon as you do those files are yours to do with whatever
you want forever.
All the other services: You pay a monthly subscription for STREAMING
services, or a different fee for keeping the files on your HD. The
files check back with the mothership EVERY TIME YOU PLAY THEM to see
if your account is in good standing. If not, they won't play. These
files also cannot be copied to CD without an ADDITIONAL fee of (you
guessed it) around 79-99 cents a song. On some services (notably wal-
mart's, but they're not the only ones), the rights for each song
VARY. On some songs, you pay a fee and you can keep the file (burn it
unlimited numbers of times), on others, you pay a fee and you can
burn it X number of times, and some you pay the fee to be able to
JUST keep the file on the hard drive (no backups, no extra computers,
no CD burning). There is, btw, NO WAY to tell which songs have which
rights except at the moment you buy them (and it's your job to
remember it afterwards). Oh, and did I mention that NONE of these
other services work with the world's most popular music player, the
iPod?
Hope that helps.
_Chas_
Claiming that the Macintosh is inferior to Windows because most
people use Windows is like saying that all other restaurants are
inferior to McDonald's.
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