I was just watching the Foo Fighters on Saturday Night Live. I like them and was just thinking of adding their CD to my wishlist at Amazon. So I'm checking and the 2 copies of the CD say "Content/Copy Protected CD." What does this mean I wonder. Luckily, the reviewers of the CD offer up an explanation. It means that I could listen to it on my computer, but (according to this article I just found) I would only be able to listen to it using Sony Software. So I wouldn't be able to move it over to my MP3 player. What's the point of that then? If I want to copy the damn song onto my computer for my own use on my mp3 player I should be able to do that. Sony claims that it helps them 'protect their intellectual property.' What bullshit. All this has done is discourage me from buying any music Sony puts out. As if I didn't hate Sony enough*. And I do realize that the article I linked to indicates that Sony has stopped putting that on their CDs but they pulled it for the wrong reason. They did it because of a virus thing, so once they have that worked out, you know they'll start doing that shit again. It's just wrong.
Ok here's 2 more articles on the subject. I rarely link articles because I know they eventually go away, but this really really bothers me. I am willing to try and do the right thing and purchase CDs even though retail outletters charge in excess of 15 bucks for them and 9 times out of 10 I don't like the whole thing. Even though a CD costs something like 75 cents to make and I have a hard time believing that the artists are seeing say even 10 dollars on each sale, which if you've ever seen I think it is TLC's Behind the Music you'd know it is more like 1 dollar if that on each CD. They make their money with concerts. And this is how a good customer gets rewarded? Ridiculous. (It is funny I'm on such a high horse over this, the last CD I bought was actually for Matty's birthday but the last CD I bought for me was The Killer's Hot Fuss sometime earlier this summer.)
*Brief history of my Sony hatred. It began in college when I had a smallish portable radio/tape player (ie boombox but you know I don't want to be all 80's). I bought it new and less than 3 months later the tape player was squeaking. I consulted with Sony and per their instructions I sent it back to them. They 'repaired' it and sent it back. It was worse than before. I sent it back. They 'repaired' it and sent it back. It wasn't. I sent it back with a nasty letter to fuck off and I won't buy their shit equipment ever again. Fastforward to 2000ish and I bought a Sony Vaio laptop against my own better judgement. Now it was a refurbished model but that's not supposed to mean shittier. It did. That computer spent far more time at the repair shop than it should have. And it came in with a bad memory chip (which was the place's fault not Sony's but still.) I'm pretty much now completely soured by Sony.
4 comments:
A lot of bands have gotten screwed by Sony in that regard.
Do you mean that you want to copy it to your computer by paying for the individual song or you just want the song for free?
If you want to pay for the individual song, you can probably get it from Itunes for a cheap amount and then you don't have to buy the whole CD.
I mean, for example, that if I have purchased this Foo Fighter's CD that I was just looking at online I should be able to pull whatever songs off the CD I have purchased and put it on my MP3 player. I've paid for it. I should be able to do what I want with it. I don't have high speed connection so I can't download from iTunes.
I see and you are right, once you have purchased it, you should be able to do whatever you want with the songs. I think it sucks that some companies are trying to mess that up just to save from some bootlegging...
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