Want an iPhone? Beware the iHandcuffs – New York Times

In today’s New York Times, Randall Stross writes, Want an iPhone? Beware the iHandcuffs

Here is how FairPlay works: When you buy songs at the iTunes Music Store, you can play them on one — and only one — line of portable player, the iPod. And when you buy an iPod, you can play copy-protected songs bought from one — and only one — online music store, the iTunes Music Store.

Well, I suppose that might be “fair play” if you make your living selling iPods or you’re a record company whose business plan is to sell listeners the same music over and over, each time they want to listen on a different media. Great business if you can get away with it.

Make no mistake: I’m not advocating we steal content. That’s not right. The Campaign for Audiovisual Free Expression puts it succinctly:

  • Piracy of an artist’s work is illegal. Fair use is not.
  • We have the right to hear, speak, learn, sing, think, watch, and be heard.
  • No one should assume by default that we’re criminals, and the technology we use shouldn’t do so either.
  • We have a right to use technology to shift time & space.
DRM-encumbered devices are Defective By Design — intended to prevent you from using all of the capabilities of the device.
 

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This work by Ted Roche is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.