Know-How Exchange : Other

Well, that's fine, and nobody should be clogging your computer with files you cannot remove.

But spare a thought for the artists. They get paid a percentage based on CD sales. You download and rip, you rip off the artist too. You circumvent the royalty process, you also destroy the recording company's ability to attract and develop new talent.

So where will next year's Metallica, Crowded House, Missy Higgins, Eminem or Robbie Williams come from?

What the industry badly needs is a new model for distribution that provides music at prices that reflect the lower cost of delivery via electronic channels. The era of the CD or record shop is gone. Apple has proven the online music store works. The major music publishers need to adapt or die. Copy protection is a dumb solution, for sure, but IP theft doesn't do anyone any favours either.

Sure, you can "beat the system", but when there is no system any more, where will the music come from?

ChrisB

I am fine with only been able to make 3 copies of the disk, the problem comes when the software that they use DESTORYS my computer, I mean to remove this HORRIBLY written software I had to wipe my hard drive, reinstall windows, reinstall ALL the software I had paid for (a total of 5 hours).

Then when I went to reactivate Microsoft Office I got a message that it had already been activated and I was using an illegal copy!!! After 2 weeks, 10 emails to Microsoft, I finally was able to activate the software by using a hack I found by a Google search.

I PAIDED $149 for that crap software, I have only used it 10 times now I can’t use it. Screw that.

Then there was the fact that I can’t put the music on to my MP3 player what the f**K? There is no point to BUY the music if I can’t put in on my MP3 player, do they really think I am going to carry around my laptop JUST to listen to music when I am at work. NO way, I work with corrosive cleaning chemicals that would break my computer if it ever touched it.

I actually PAY MONEY for music, why are they PUNISHING me? The people that download it off the net don’t have this CRAP on the system.

Also (according to British law) they have committed a crime against me by installing spyware on my system; it is equivalent to breaking and entering.

Now IF they had put in the EULA (End user license agreement) that they were putting a root kit on my system they I would not be so angry, but I would have not bought the CD. And in the EULA they say I there is an uninstaller, BUT there is NONE.

I actually read the EULA, unlike most people. I trusted Sony to keep there word, but they screwed me up the rear end.

I feel sorry for SOME of the artists that is why I BUY the music, I understand that if I don’t pay for it then there won’t be anymore music. That’s NOT THE POINT.

I should be able to put a music cd (which I paid for) and play it on my computer without risking losing all my data I should be able to play it on my mp3 player, or move it on to my media center (if I ever get one).

There is also another issue with this, when I bought the new Foo Fighter CD (One by One) a few years ago I tried to make a back up copy, I was asked to install a special software to do it, I decide not to. A few months later I decided I wanted to make a copy, but when I visited the page to install the soft I was redirected to a domain holding site. It turned out the software company went out of business. After a bit more research, I found that if the software was installed you had to go to the webpage to download the uninstaller. Well it turned out that a lot of people installed it, then the company’s site when down 2 weeks after release of the album and people were not able to uninstall the application because they couldn’t get the uninstaller. It turned out the software was sending EVERYTHING the computer user was doing to a server in Germany, then people started getting spam, passwords, credit card numbers, identities were stolen. BMG knew this was happening but did nothing about it, because they had there money.

If this is the way they want to treat customers that ACTUALLY buy the music, then I don’t want to be a customer. I don’t see why the people that download it illegally get to use it with no problems but the people that BUY it get treated like criminals.