Planet Gadgets Gadget Blog

Who owns songs purchased online?

by Administrator

Reuters asks the question: do you own the songs you buy online?. It’s an interesting question, and the answer might not be exactly what you’d expect. As an Ipod customer myself, I know that you aren’t provided with a ton of information upon purchasing your unit. You click on a few “I AGREE” buttons and sell yourself to the California-based devil. Apple allows you to burn your playlist to a CD 7 times, as well as imposes some other restrictions upon music you purchased.

Intellectual property rights is the single biggest challenge going, and very few consumers will really understand the issue. That’s especially true, if companies aren’t clear with their policies and materials.

Digital Rights Management rules are pretty specific, and prevent you from doing some things you may take for granted.

But Apple’s FairPlay digital rights management, or DRM, software prevents you from listening to those purchased songs on a music player from Dell Inc., Creative, Sony, or others. The same thing goes for songs you’ve imported to your computer from CDs you already own.

The bigger problem comes from a few key points

1) You can’t copy music from Itunes to CDs
2) You can’t copy music from CDs into iTunes

This could cause big problems for people who need to re-install iTunes, or even for people who are trying to make backups. You should be able to make backups okay, but a data loss might really cause you some concern. For less technical users, you can imagine the type of frustration that might ensue from finding out they can’t get their songs back. All in all, people are buying tons of iTunes, so Apple has been successful in their marketing. The EU plans on making some decisions concerning Apple’s DRM policies this month.