Ian Deeley said at May 6th, 2007 at 11:42am

James just buy it used off Ebay for £3, at least you can rip it to whatever format you desire, the conscience is clear as its not been downloaded via a Torrent and the rest of the money can go on beer!

Martin Belam said at May 6th, 2007 at 8:18pm

Back before Napster became the big threat to the music industry, the music labels in the U.S. were gunning for second-hand retail shops in a big way. They were trying to enforce that you couldn’t resell a CD without paying some kind of licence back to the label, which, obviously, after everybody else got their cut, meant $0.01 went back to the artist.

As I was working in second-hand music retail at the time I followed the developments with interest.

Then, without either me or the record labels in the U.S. looking, the internet came along from behind us and destroyed both our existing business models.

They have carried on trying to sue their way out of the change.

I just adapted and got a job with the industry that had just eaten up my previous way of earning a living :-)

Adrian Pegg said at May 7th, 2007 at 8:40am

There’s a new song too James…

Quite catchy for a hex based tune!

Ashley Elford said at May 7th, 2007 at 11:53am

I would have thought the difference between your second and third choice, is that by selling the CD to you, they are no longer able to enjoy it, assuming they have no copies.

I wonder in the ‘old days’ what the % of people who taped music from the radio was.

Nick Piggott said at May 7th, 2007 at 8:05pm

I’ve also been publishing a complete sequence of hexadecimal numbers, but they’re entirely of my own making.

http://www.nickpiggott.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/blog/2007/05/0a-fa-12-03-9e-75-e4-5c-d9-42-57-c6-64.html

Adam Bowie said at May 8th, 2007 at 4:30pm

I like the idea linked to from Boing Boing. Choose a random 128-bit number. Encrypt a copyright piece of material with said number.

Then you too can “own” a number and prevent others from publishing it!

Sadly the site’s down just now.

I’d quite like 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-07 - but it’s not really random, and some people might complain.

But all I have to do is encrypt something with it and hey presto, the number’s a circumvention device. Set up a Google Alert to ensure nobody else publishes it, and my plan for world domination is back on track.

Paul Evans said at May 10th, 2007 at 9:20am

You raise a good point James, and one that I had been thinking about myself recently. Buying DRM protected music means that you can’t sell it on. Unlike with physical formats where you can, and in my mind it is only fair that you should be able to if you have bought an album and you didn’t like it or have got to a point where you know you’ll never listen to it again. A realisation which (along with lack of portability), has ground my digital download purchases to a halt.

Obviously DRM prevents you from selling it on, and essentially, I think the same will apply to DRM-Free - as the original purchaser will be able to download the song again. Maybe the likes of iTunes could offer a used marketplace service where you could re-sell a song legitimately and as such, prevent you from downloading it again in the future. Although, as with CD’s, I’m not sure they would be able to prevent people making copies before selling it.

p.s. Good luck with the new job!

Michiel van Diesen said at May 13th, 2007 at 12:29pm

Let me quote The Economist regarding DRM:

“Belatedly, music executives have come to realise that DRM simply doesn’t work. It is supposed to stop unauthorised copying, but no copy-protection system has yet been devised that cannot be easily defeated. All it does is make life difficult for paying customers, while having little or no effect on clandestine copying plants that churn out pirate copies.”

They’re right. DRM also has no effect on availability of songs on P2P networks; in fact, it only encourages consumers to use P2P networks instead of legal download sites to get their content. So it’s very fortunate for both consumers and record companies that DRM might be history within several months.