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Originally Posted by The Rhapsody Team
Important information about your downloaded music
Greetings! We're passionate about making sure our members get all the music you love, as much as you want, everywhere you are. This is a friendly reminder that, in just over 30 days, Rhapsody/RealNetworks will no longer re-license certain music files you purchased before July 2008.
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Got this in my email today. It's not my first "we're deactivating your property, you're welcome!" message I've gotten. And apparently, it won't be my last. Because despite living in a world where music can be profitably sold in an open and non-DRM format, books can not.
Real should offer me mp3s at full quality to replace my .raxs, but they are not. Instead, they expect me to convert the file, burn it to CD, then convert it again back to mp3. That first step can only be done with their software, and I'm convinced they've rigged it to ensure the worst possible quality, because while I'm no audiophile, the fuzz that results after these the conversion make the music completely unlistenable.
Maybe Amazon, B&N and Adobe partners will be more friendly to consumers when, inevitably, ebooks lose their DRM. But we shouldn't have to hope our property won't be damaged in the transition, or have to trust anyone else to ensure we'll continue to hold on to what we paid for, nor should we have to face legal uncertainty in exercising self-help to free content on our own. Nor should there be additional steps after handing over our money to keep what we've paid for.
Apparently however, knowing our history does not save us from repeating it. DRM is dead, long live DRM.
For whatever it's worth, this has been a public service message... from the future!