The music giant agreed Tuesday to cease embedding compact discs with digital rights management software that limited the number of copies consumers can make of the music and harmed the computers of some consumers. It also agreed to pay fines in California and Texas.
Sony BMG entered a stipulated judgment with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office and the California Attorney General’s Office to remedy a civil consumer protection complaint filed by the D.A.’s Consumer Protection Division and the attorney general’s Consumer Law Section. They made a similar agreement in Texas.
Each state will receive $750,000 in civil penalties and costs.
Fuckers.
Seriously…unfortunately, a $1.5 million payout is NOTHING to Sony. What jerks.
And you know, the whole “only can burn 7 CDs on itunes” is pissing me off too. Every year I make a 2-vol. mix CD for the people I work with of stuff we listened to in the office, stuff I’ve been listening to, etc. Guess what? There are EIGHT of us…god damn itunes. There’s got to be a better way.
I’ve begun to question the 7 time limit in Itunes too. I’m starting to find that some of my library is locked out when I go to burn a mixed CD for my wife or to listen to in the car.
But isn’t there a way around that limit, anyway?
Use one of your 7 burns to make a CD, and then re-rip it as un-DRMed MP3s (or lossless files). Yes, you lose one generation of fidelity, but at least you then OWN the music you bought.
And label execs wonder why we’d rather use p2p… It’s not (just) because it’s free, assholes. It’s because we want to be able to USE our music how we see fit.
We want to be free. We want to be free to do what we want to do… And we want to get loaded. And we want to have a good time. And that’s what we’re gonna do…
Hey Jake, any thoughts on using the g2p.org link to search?
I’m way too chicken to use P2P but have been able to find a bunch of stuff using g2p, which I figure is less likely to get tracked. It’s much less reliable (about 50 percent of what I want I can’t find) and takes a lot longer to paw through all the various links–but I’ve gotten some good stuff, that I otherwise never would have bought.
Nicole, remember this: no one has ever gotten in trouble for downloading songs. It’s always for uploading/sharing. Of course, apps like Kazaa and Bittorrent automatically start sharing as soon as you download, so you’ve got to be careful to understand the software you use…
But the RIAA and their goons have never hassled anybody for just downloading stuff. They try to obscure this fact, and the press is too technologically unsophisticated to report correctly so you’ll often read about “downloaders” getting busted. But if you look into it, all the cases are about uploading/sharing.
Therefore, using Google or any other site to locate open mp3s will not get you in trouble. Google might catch some shit for it, because judges are morons who don’t understand how search engines work — i.e, that Google isn’t hosting any illegal files, but just amorally pointing you to things on the internet.
g2p.org just sends a specialized query to Google. You can also try http://elbo.ws/ and http://hype.non-standard.net/ both of which are mp3blog aggregators, which point you to sites that are, ahem, discussing certain songs…