Loss of Privacy

Rhapsody has announced that they will be shutting down their RAX DRM encumbered music system and that users will have until November 7, 2011 to convert any music downloaded before July, 2008.

On November 7th, 2011 Rhapsody/RealNetworks will no longer support certain music files you purchased before July 2008. These songs will continue to play after November 7th unless you change to a new computer or substantially update your current computer. However, we strongly recommend you back up these RAX tracks to audio CD to ensure you can continue to enjoy your music.

Once you take this small step, you can continue to play these tracks on your audio CD or rip them to any format you desire and play them on your PC.

Please don’t delay – after we shut off support for RAX files, you will not be able to play them if you move to a new computer or upgrade your operating system.

While Rhapsody is allowing its customers to back up and convert their music, it is not as easy as they claim. If you own a few tracks, it might by easy, but if you own hundreds or thousands of music tracks, it becomes a cumbersome and time-consuming task.

There is also a question of legality. While Rhapsody is telling people how to circumvent the RAX DRM, it may not legally be able to. According to US law, unless Rhapsody owns the copyrights to the songs that use RAX DRM, then they are actually aiding others in breaking the law.

Section 103 (17 U.S.C Sec. 1201(a)(1)) of the DMCA states:

Q No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.

….

(A) to 「circumvent a technological measure」 means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner; and

(B) a technological measure 「effectively controls access to a work」 if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.

In the closing of Rhapsody’s RAX DRM, we see, yet again, how the music industry is punishing those who wish to legally purchase digital music. There are so many of these companies that have shut down over the past ten years that it is difficult to fault those who turn to piracy. By doing so, users do not have to worry about the DRM. They also do not worry about making upgrades to their computers and risking the loss of their music. They also do not have to worry about the limits of how many computers they can keep their music on. They simply listen to their music where ever and whenever they want. After experiencing ten years of attempting to do the right thing only to be screwed over again and again, why would anyone want to return to unhelpful DRM schemes?

This is how you treat your fans.

To launch our first single in eight years, AT&T helped us search YouTube for every instance of fans using our music without our permission. And then we rewarded them for it. This film is made out of clips from all those videos. Thanks for being a fan.

This really isn’t fun anymore. It’s just sad. What’s sadder is that so many people still buy into what FOX News is peddling.

FOX News repsonds

It is important to read the actual lyrics surrounding the story.

(common)
In the spirit of god.
In the spirit of the ancestors.
In the spirit of the black panthers.
In the spirit of assata shakur.
We make this movement towards freedom
For all those who have been oppressed, and all those in the struggle.
Yeah. yo, check it-

There were lights and sirens, gunshots firin
Cover your eyes as I describe a scene so violent
Seemed like a bad dream, she laid in a blood puddle
Blood bubbled in her chest, cold air brushed against open flesh
No room to rest, pain consumed each breath
Shot twice wit her hands up
Police questioned but shot before she answered
One panther lost his life, the other ran for his
Scandalous the police were as they kicked and beat her
Comprehension she was beyond, tryna hold on
To life. she thought she’d live with no arm
That’s what it felt like, got to the hospital, eyes held tight
They moved her room to room-she could tell by the light
Handcuffed tight to the bed, through her skin it bit
Put guns to her head, every word she got hit
‘who shot the trooper? ‘ they asked her
Put mace in her eyes, threatened to blast her
Her mind raced till things got still
Opened her eyes, realized she’s next to her best friend who got killed
She got chills, they told her: that’s where she would be next
Hurt mixed wit anger-survival was a reflex
They lied and denied visits from her lawyer
But she was buildin as they tried to destroy her
If it wasn’t for this german nurse they woulda served her worse
I read this sister’s story, knew that it deserved a verse
I wonder what would happen if that woulda been me?
All this shit so we could be free, so dig it, y’all.

(cee-lo vocals)
I’m thinkin’ of assata, yes.
Listen to my love, assata, yes.
Your power and pride is beautiful.
May God bless your soul.

(common)
It seemed like the middle of the night when the law awakened her
Walkie-talkies cracklin, I see ‘em when they takin her
Though she kinda knew,
What made the ride peaceful was the trees and the sky was blue
Arrived to middlesex prison about six inna morning
Uneasy as they pushed her to the second floor in
A cell, one cot, no window, facing hell.
Put in the basement of a prison wit all males
And the smell of misery, seatless toilets and centipedes
She’d exercise, (paint? ,) and begin to read
Two years inna hole. her soul grew weak
Away from people so long she forgot how to speak
She discovered frredom is a unspoken sound
And a wall is a wall and can be broken down
Found peace in the panthers she went on trial with
One of the brothers she had a child with
The foulness they would feed her, hopin she’s lose her seed
Held tight, knowing the fight would live through this seed
In need of a doctor, from her stomach she’s bleed
Out of this situation a girl was conceived
Separated from her, left to mother the revolution
And lactated to attack hate
Cause federal and state was built for a black fate
Her emptiness was filled with beatings and court dates
They fabricated cases, hoping one would stick
And said she robbed places that didn’t exist
In the midst of threats on her life and being caged with aryan whites
Through dark halls of hate she carried the light
I wonder what would happen if that woulda been me?
All of this shit so we could be free.
Yeah, I often wonder what would happen if that woulda been me?
All of this shit so we could be free, so dig it, people-

(cee-lo)
I’m thinkin’ of assata, yeah.
Listen to my love, assata, yeah.
Your power and pride, so beautiful…
May God bless your soul.
Oooh.

(common)
Yo
From north carolina her grandmother would bring
News that she had had a dream
Her dreams always meant what they needed them to mean
What made them real was the action in between
She dreamt that assata was free in they old house in queens
The fact that they always came true was the thing
Assata had been convicted of a murder she couldna done
Medical evidence shown she couldna shot the gun
It’s time for her to see the sun from the other side
Time for her daughter to be by her mother’s side
Time for this beautiful woman to become soft again
Time for her to breathe, and not be told how or when
She untangled the chains and escaped the pain
How she broke out of prison I could never explain
And even to this day they try to get to her
But she’s free with political asylum in cuba.

(cee-lo vocals)
I’m thinkin’ of assata, yeah.
Listen to my love, assata, yeah.
We’re molded from the same mud, assata.
We share the same blood, assata, yeah.
Your power and pride, so beautiful…
May God bless your soul.
Your power and pride, so beautiful…
May God bless your soul.
Oooh.

(assata)
Freedom! you askin me about freedom. askin me about freedom?
I’ll be honest with you. I know a whole more about what freedom isn’t
Than about what it is, cause I’ve never been free.
I can only share my vision with you of the future, about what freedom is.
Uhh, the way I see it, freedom is– is the right to grow, is the right to
Blossom.
Freedom is -is the right to be yourself, to be who you are,
To be who you wanna be, to do what you wanna do. (fade out)

Common apparently believes that the woman he is rapping about was wrongly convicted. He’s free to rap about such things if he wishes. If FOX News is complaining about Common, then it should also be complaining about Bob Dylan supporting murder in his song, Hurricane.

Germany’s music licensing agency, GEMA, has decided that preschools can no longer teach songs and have children perform them without paying a licensing fee for sheet music under a new tightening of copyright laws.

The new rules came into power at the beginning of this year, but have only recently drawn attention as daycare centers have received letters reminding them that they need to sign contracts with GEMA before distributing sheet music to children to sing.

GEMA said that the need for licenses would not have any effect on singing in kindergartens.
“It doesn’t cost anything to sing in kindergartens,” said Peter Hempel. “If a school does not make any copies of music, then of course they don’t need to pay anything.”

This is absolutely ridiculous. The schools aren’t making copies and passing them out to the public. They make a handful of copies so each child has a copy to learn the songs from. Performers are not losing out on any money in this manner.

The copyright rules only concern the rights for modern songs. Songs written by an author who has been dead for over 70 years are automatically in the public domain.

Fees start at 56 euros ($74) for 500 copies of a song, a rate charged annually, not per child.

I predict Germany’s preschools are going to start singing many more traditional songs in the years to come. The German Pirate Party has released a song book in response to the new GEMA rules. It contains only music that is not in copyright. The German Pirate Party also created their own sheet music, which is also not under copyright. It can be freely used and distributed.

While this new law is questionable, it is less intrusive than Belgium, where preschools are charged for playing music to children.

A recent survey suggests that many people, particularly gamers, prefer to have physical media, but the makers of games and videos continue to push consumers towards online only content. In the US, the shift has already occurred as gamers there appear to prefer online gaming. With Microsoft claiming that BlueRay is dead, what, exactly, will the future of videos and gaming look like? A recent court ruling has said that we do not own the media we purchase, opening the door to what media producers have been fighting over for several years; we are no longer owners, we are renters.

A federal appeals court said Friday that software makers can use shrink-wrap and click-wrap licenses to forbid the transfer or resale of their wares, an apparent gutting of the so-called first-sale doctrine.

The case is Vernor v. Autodesk, in which Timothy Vernor made his living from selling items (including software) on eBay. Vernor had picked up some old copies of AutoCAD from an architect’s office sale, complete with their serial numbers, and he put them up on eBay noting that they were not currently installed on any computer. Sounds legal, right?

But there’s a catch. Autodesk, the software’s developer, forced all users to accept an agreement before using AutoCAD. This agreement made clear that AutoCAD was merely licensed, never sold, and that one’s license was non-transferable. Further, a licensee could not rent, lease, or sell the software to anyone else; you couldn’t even physically transfer the discs out of the Western Hemisphere (!). Finally, if you upgraded to a new version, the old version had to be destroyed.

The copies Vernor picked up at the architect’s sale were old copies that had not been destroyed as required. Vernor believed he was in the clear to resell them, as he had not agreed to any license. But after putting them on eBay, Autodesk repeatedly tried to shut down his sales. Vernor, on the verge of getting banned from eBay, sued Autodesk and asked the court to declare his sales legal.

A federal court did so in 2008, but Autodesk appealed, and today the appeals court reversed that earlier decision. In its view, US “first sale” protections don’t apply to Vernor, because he didn’t buy the software from a legitimate “owner.” That, in turn, is because the architecture firm had only “licensed” the software, and that license could indeed allow a software company to prevent resale, lending, and even removal from the Western Hemisphere.

Very soon, we will have games, all video (movies and television), music, books, etc. be only available online. Because this will be the only available place to purchase these items, there will no longer be a used market for books, movies, or video games. While this appears to be the way things are going, it must be noted that it is a dangerous road to be traveling on. If I do not own a piece of media, it can be changed at any time, whether I want it to or not. A book could be edited. I could be forced to have the director’s copy of a movie when I wanted the theatrical release.

If a company goes bankrupt, I will lose my media because it will have been hosted on their servers. Even if I want to continue to watch the movie, read the book, play the game, I can’t because I never owned it. If I don’t want this to happen, then I will be forced to break the law so that I can continue to enjoy my media as I want.

We have already seen Amazon deleting copies of 1984 people had bought. Music lyrics sites have been shuttered due to legal threats. The same thing happened with guitar tab sites. Most games require online registration and/or activation after you purchase them just so that you can play them. Computer software updates often remove a feature that you used to have. The US border patrol will look at you suspiciously if you have encrypted data partitions on your laptop. You obviously must be a criminal if you do this.

The rights you had as a computer user to do whatever you wish with your computer and the media you purchased is changing. The shift isn’t something that’s going to happen. It’s happening right now. The question now becomes, “Will you fight back, stop purchasing any kind of media, or sit back and let it happen?”