Napster and the Workaround - Any more legal?

Lostreality

So napster is now charging 14.95/month for membership services, and its basicly, download all you can and want to in that month. However, the files are WMA files protected by digital rights management. Meaning, as soon as you stop paying for the napster service, they stop working.

A workaround has been found however. By converting the protected wma files into non protected mp3 files, the DRM is completely abolished. After trying this method out, it works. And it works well. I tend to agree with people that say it isnt any more legal than plain out p2p-ing music files.

What are your feelings? You pay for the rights to download the music, and that money is distrbuted accordingly, shouldnt you be able to keep the music you download? Or is it the same as booting up kazaa and leaving it going for a few hours?

Euphemism

I don't think p2p'ing is necessarily wrong. But I certainly don't see how this is any better. Basically, by signing up for the service, you're agreeing to 'rent' the music, and you're paying accordingly. Just because you can find a way to 'pick the locks' doesn't give you any legal or ethical entitlement to do so.

IMHO, breaking DRM on a CD you own, or a service you're paying for, is a completely different story. E.g. let's say you have an iPod, and you can't play your Napster-downloaded WMAs on it. As long as you're still paying for Napster, I think that converting the WMAs to MP3 is perfectly ethical, even though it's technically illegal.

But again, this is all dependent on the premise that p2p'ing is unethical.

diamondblue1974

Well i can see both sides of the story actually....i do download and quite often converting to MP3...just dont tell Napster or Lars Ulrich for that matter...G

ballistic

What are you using to convert the files?

xenawarrior

This is one of my peeves in the world. IMO, the record industry is one of the only industries that can have internal problems as an entity and force the consumers to deal with it. If I buy a pair of shoes and the shoemaking industry is having a battle within itself as to how that pair of shoes gets to market it's not my problem and it's unlikely it would become my problem.

Not so in the record industry. A year ago I bought a cd from Barnes & Noble. It wouldn't play on my computer. It would play in my car and on a boombox, however. It appears it had some sort of protection on it that wouldn't allow it to be played on my computer (and thus uploaded). I took it back to Barnes & Noble and explained. She told me that wasn't their problem and because I had opened it I couldn't return it. How did I know it didn't play if I didn't open the damned thing?! She said I'd need to talk to the record label. NOT! Well, after much ado she said that she'd take the return this time, but in the future, if this happened I'd have to deal with the label itself. No where on the cd packaging did it state that it wouldn't play on a computer. If it had, I'd have saved myself the time and disturbance. Another one of the "problems" in their industry they passed onto the consumer.

I tried to explain to this store clerk that the problems that come from the products they sell are theirs and not to be turned over to the consumer to then have to deal with the manufacturer or distributor. But that is what is happening in the record industry, IMO. Artists, labels, manufacturers and distributors have problems getting along and finding a fair way to market their product and have everyone in that chain paid fairly and they have been dumping the end result of all of that infighting on the consumer for years. I, for one am sick of it.

We as consumers have gone through many forced technology changes and have taken it in stride. I'm old enough that I bought 8 tracks as well as vinyl in 45's and LP's. Then came cassettes. Then cd's. And now dvd's. All in a relatively short period of time. And we've bought all the technology and the equipment needed to use it along the way. We've had no choice. They don't make vinyl anymore.

Just how many copies of Pink Floyd; "Dark Side of the Moon" should I be required to purchase before it's really MINE and I can listen to it as I'd like?

I make many compilation cd's and one song may end up on many of them because I like it. With the technology that exists with the online purchasing programs I'd be limited as to how many times I could even legally record that one song. I don't even know what happens to it -if it's like some Mission Impossible self destruct encoding on it or what- all I know is that there are limitations on it that are still not right for the consumer.

I used to download a lot. Haven't for a couple of years now. Because I did a lot of it, I got the one Metallica song I wanted and OMG, I'm sure it broke them that I did that. In the meantime I was able to sample some lesser known bands and find that I liked their music and spent my money on them instead. I spend a lot of $$ on music and it's mostly those lesser known bands. I've also shared that with others and many have found they liked that sound too and went out to purchase more of that artist. I just can't find anything wrong with that and many things right as far as the furthering of artists goes.

Okay, end rant.

Waiting for Hillary Step to arrive...

the_classicist

This is the law in Canada: http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/internet/downloading_music.html

The ruling stipulates that:
Downloading a song for personal use is not an infringement.
Placing a song in an on-line music-sharing directory such as Kazaa is not considered distribution.

Elsewhere

I'm sure they are aware of this work around by converting the file to an MP3 and I'm inclined to think that they are not worried. The reason is because when one converts a compressed audio file into another compression format you loose audio quality. Basically it is like copying an audio tape onto another tape... the quality goes down noticeably.

Leolaia

That's true, but can you also convert WMAs into relatively uncompressed WAVs?

Lostreality

You can strip it to a WAV file, but it is still no better quality than the WMA file was (in napster's case, 128kbs) then when you convert it down to mp3, some more quality is lost..so it ends up being about 128kbps or less, even if it says its 192 (which my converted ones do)

Leolaia

Whoa, you mean if you buy music from Napster, it's all in 128 kbps bitrate??? What a rip off! That quality is nothing like buying the real article; it's like taping off the radio. I wouldn't settle for anything less than 160, and generally I download at 192 or 224 kbps. When I rip my own music collection, I always make my mp3s for my iPod at 192 or 224. BTW, what is the quality for iTunes? I haven't used it, does anyone know if their music is at a sucky tinny 128?

Napster and the Workaround - Any more legal?

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