[Free-sklyarov-uk] your Listen.com Rhapsody paranoia

[Chris Lightfoot]

On Thu, Jul 25, 2002 at 12:19:07AM +0100, tobyslater wrote:
> Could everyone please go easy on Listen.com Rhapsody?
> 
> The reason they attempt to prevent users from outside the US from accessing
> the service is simple: music is traditionally licensed
                                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> territory-by-territory, so record companies and music publishers tend to own
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> recordings/songs in some countries but not others.


Hmm. Traditionally, music is bought on CDs, records or
whatever, not `licensed', whatever that is supposed to
mean in this context.


This is an important point. Remember that services of this
type are actually almost-radio-stations pretending to be
music shops. In particular, except for the ten tracks per
month which you may record on CDs, you may not keep any of
the songs to which you listen once your subscription is
over. Obviously this is not a viable business plan in the
presence of services such as GNUTELLA; it may not even be
a viable business plan in the presence of actual record
shops.


So: is the industry going to grow up and offer a
reasonable on-line music service, or is it going to carry
on trying to impose its bonkers subscription services by
legal fiat? I'm guessing that it isn't going to be the
first one....


-- 
Stuff falls from sky all the time
(AP headline)