MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Amazon's new DRM-free MP3 store

Liviu_5 · 09-26-2007, 08:29 AM

Check out this article:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...sic-store.html

While not technically about e-books, it has a lot of interesting things (not that we do not know them by and large) about e-content. For example:

"There are a few restrictions. One of the biggest is that there's no redownloading of tracks; you'd better make a backup, because if you lose a song, you'll have to purchase it again to get another copy. Such a policy has an obvious analogue to Amazon's CD sales. If you purchase a Tim McGraw CD and your NPR-loving uncle "accidentally" cracks the disk in two, you are out of luck; Amazon won't send you another copy. In this sense, then, music downloads are treated like physical property.

But they are not property. In fact, what you have purchased is only a "non-exclusive, non-transferable license" to each song. Because you have not actually purchased something physical, Amazon's terms of service explicitly forbid both re-selling and lending. With a CD, of course, you can do both quite legally. Digital downloads can be cheaper and more convenient, but there's no legal way to extract value from them when your tastes in music change. Caveat emptor."

09-26-2007, 08:29 AM	#1
Liviu_5 Books and more books Posts: 917 Karma: 69499 Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: White Plains, NY, USA Device: Nook Color, Itouch, Nokia770, Sony 650, Sony 700(dead), Ebk(given)	Amazon's new DRM-free MP3 store Check out this article: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...sic-store.html While not technically about e-books, it has a lot of interesting things (not that we do not know them by and large) about e-content. For example: "There are a few restrictions. One of the biggest is that there's no redownloading of tracks; you'd better make a backup, because if you lose a song, you'll have to purchase it again to get another copy. Such a policy has an obvious analogue to Amazon's CD sales. If you purchase a Tim McGraw CD and your NPR-loving uncle "accidentally" cracks the disk in two, you are out of luck; Amazon won't send you another copy. In this sense, then, music downloads are treated like physical property. But they are not property. In fact, what you have purchased is only a "non-exclusive, non-transferable license" to each song. Because you have not actually purchased something physical, Amazon's terms of service explicitly forbid both re-selling and lending. With a CD, of course, you can do both quite legally. Digital downloads can be cheaper and more convenient, but there's no legal way to extract value from them when your tastes in music change. Caveat emptor."