Anti-RIAA Manifesto
Just in case you guys missed it Gizmodo published an Anti-RIAA Manifesto earlier today. I am going to pick out a piece of it that is relevant to our goal here.
Digital Rights Management, or DRM, is the software that makes it so music you buy from the iTunes Music Store can’t play on any other player other than the iPod, such as a Zune or Sansa. In an effort to keep people from sharing legally purchased music, DRM actually goes much farther than copyright law dictates, denying paying customers the fair use of the music they buy. You should be able to do what you want with an album once you’ve paid for it; like a CD or a record, you now own it for life.
However, music wrapped in DRM software cannot be played on devices other than those explicitly tied to the store you brought it from. Furthermore, listening to your music across multiple computers, or moving your music to a new computer when you upgrade, is often a huge headache that ends with you needing to repurchase your songs.
That is one part of the symptoms we are trying to treat here. Still, it is a symptom not the disease itself. The RIAA is the disease and I hope that you all will join me in a full out boycott of the RIAA this month.
