mathoda.com

I fully respect the right of anyone to sell media content with any kind of copy protection on it they want.  Yet, I find I am less likely to buy it if it’s copy protected, particularly if it makes the media much more complicated to use as I want to use it in the future.

Apparently a lot of people feel similarly.  For all the millions of multiple gigabyte iPods sold, Apple has only managed to sell about 20 songs per iPod through its iTunes service.

While I admire many things about the iPod, I won’t buy even one copy protected song on Apple’s iTunes.  Copy protection systems make using devices more complex, and they create a lock-in on the device.  Customers who buy copy protected songs must continue to use the devices supported by the manufacturer of the copy protection system, no matter what other competitive devices may later arise, or lose the value of their investment in the copy protected music.

Some people argue that Apple will always have the best devices being offered, so this isn’t a problem, but I think that’s very shortsighted.  The world is a big place with lots of innovation happening, the music playing device of 2015 will likely be rather different from that of today, and changes undreamt of can happen in shockingly little time.

What I would like to buy is music in an unprotected digital format, such as mp3.  Unprotected music can be easily moved from one type of device to another, from my home PC to my DVR to my portable audio player.

For a long time you could only buy mp3 music from a Russian outfit (www.allofmp3.com) which seems to me to be illegal, or from independent music labels, but now things are finally changing. The major studios are starting to experiment with selling mp3s (http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/061207/mp3_music.html?.v=2), a development that is long overdue. It’s rather shocking it’s taken them this long, since if you think about it every CD they sell is sold with unprotected music on it.

This entry has been filed under tech.