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Hotlist
Tuesday 15 November, 2005

Tracks

  • The Strokes - Juicebox (Indie)
  • Bloc Party - Two More Years (Indie)
  • Kaiser Chiefs - Saturday Night (Indie)
  • Wolfmother - Mind's Eye (Rock)
  • Burning Brides - Heart Full Of Black (Rock)
  • Blindside - Follow You Down (Heavy Rock)

Albums Recently Played

  • The Dandy Warhols - Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia (Pop Rock)
  • Wolfmother - Wolfmother (Acid Rock)
  • Jimmy Eat World - Futures (College Rock)

Less is More? (More or Less)
Monday 14 November, 2005

I've just heard the latest on Sony BMG and had an honest discussion with some guys from work. Only in America (at the moment), Sony BMG CDs come with a rootkit, their take on digital rights management, so basically when the CD played on a PC, its use is severely limited and a form of spyware is installed which among other things, allows Sony a backdoor to your PC. That is truly unbelievable. Imagine having to pay money and then allowing your PC to be tampered with! Following on from this, there's an article examining the Sony End Users License Agreement and comparing the real world laws to whatever the hell they think.

DRM is a touchy subject and a difficult one to propose a solution to (particularly when I've grown quite annoyed at record labels in general and so I don't condone piracy in many cases), but these kind of over-reactions really piss me off. This is plainly a horrible solution. How can you expect to sell your CD with less features than a pirated copy? Copy controlled CDs and some of the latest DRMed PC game DVDs won't work on all drives/PCs! Decisions like this alienate the people who do buy CDs, when they should be providing reasons to support CD purchasing. I know a few people who are boycotting Sony BMG, or any copy controlled CDs full stop (generally from EMI in Australia) for these reasons. You might see where I'm going with this: iTunes music store. Not for me.

I simply like to be able to control the musical content I'm buying and the best format for that is a CD. Purchased downloads will age quickly. The scenarios I'm thinking of are: if your files are deleted/hard drive crashes (not an unlikely scenario with an iPod!) you will need to purchase those files again, or if you don't like the format it is difficult to improve it. I'm not talking about AAC to MP3 conversion (although that does piss me off), I'm talking bitrates. 128kpbs was acceptable when I started ripping CDs, now it's just not good enough on good stereos or headphones. I could easily have everything as 320kpbs, but that's a waste of HDD space just to consider backwards compatibility (or is it forwards as I'm considering it now?!). I feel that I should have the ability to do what I want now, but control the media for my needs in the future. Who knows what trendy devices in the future may be used? I do know that CDs are a proven certainty in the equation for many years to come.

So why pay more (or simply pay at all) with ITMS or Sony BMG's rootkitted CDs to get less? Why buy singles off iTunes when they can just as easily be downloaded (or easier considering the ITMS Australia limited catalogue)? If it's just to be legally abiding, I can't even guarantee that with the conversions to make it playable on my PC, iRiver and/or xBox that it'll be legal at the end of it! Plus you can't just make an argument to my conscience, you've got to make it to my hip pocket as well. Smart record labels are bundling free 4 or 5 track live CDs or DVDs or other extras to promote value-for-money CD purchasing, so it's not just about the case and label as more either. Provide more for more, not less for more. At least there's live music to give artists what they deserve, instead of the Nazist "You have no rights and we're not trying to improve anything" solely profit-driven approaches of the RIAA and such.

Update: Brad sent me this link from the Age which was posted earlier today. Seems it's very unpopular and prone to being hacked. Also worth noting is that this is only implemented on Windows. Another great reason to switch to Linux, to stop being oppressed by asshole conglomerates!!

Second update (15/11): I've read some great articles about Sony's rootkit and clearly the undeniably evil and shady activities by Sony will not be rectified by removing the rootkit on their CDs. It was worse than I thought. You should not fuck with people's operating software and you should definitely not so it sneakily. They are now officially untrustworthy scum. The Cover-Up Is The Crime has a little more explanation of how the rootkit works, but the sleuthing work of the guy who found it is quite incredible! There's an obligatory call to Boycott Sony that also points out that his favourite CD ripper program ripped the rootkitted CDs successfully too...so what were they thinking?

Third update (18/11): Harry Potter's got nothing on this $sys$ cloaking gear! Another fine nerd gag expressed in T-shirt format.

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