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May 02, 2003

Morons and Music

Just what has someone been smoking? A reader of "The Register" is apparently complaining about Apple's new music (yeah I know I do that too - see below). The basis for the complaint is that if you fail to back up your music or apply the digital rights on multiple machines or copy it to an iPod and then your hard disk crashes and you loose the music then you will have to buy it again.

Work through that once more. Think it thru. Here I am, average Joe Smith (not really average because I have a Mac and so I am smarter than average), and I buy some track from the Apple Music store. I play it in my iTunes. Cool. I never back up my hard disk. I am not going to let my wife/best friend/neighbour have a DRM license for this music. It's all mine. I am not going to put it on my iPod. I am not going to burn it to a CD. Instead, my house is struck by a bolt of lightening and my computer is fried. Now the evil Apple people won't let me re-download that song for free!

Get real. Get a life. Borrow some brains. Pull your head out of the sand. They are not going to give you a new computer either (maybe the insurance company will) and they won't restore your hard disk. That's what backups are for. I bet you spend half your life whining and complaining about big brother and now you actively want big brother to hold your hand.

Yeah. Right. I'll tell you what. I'll provide some insurance for you. Just like Aladdin does when you download software. You buy insurance if you want them to keep a copy and you are just too lazy to back your system up yourself. Here's my insurance proposal. Everytime you buy a track from Apple, go out and buy the CD as well. Then you have that reassurance that you can reload the music whenever you like. Saves you backing up your disk as well.

Hey, if that lightning strike fries your CD's as well, you could always ring up the music publisher and demand a replacement disk...

You want to complain about iMusic, tackle the inequality to 50% of Apple's customers who cannot even use the service (see previous posts for more rants about this).

Oh, and while you are thinking about replying to this article, back up your system!

Posted by Ozguru at May 2, 2003 02:05 PM

Comments

Doancha (Aussie slang) hate it when you think of the smart response AFTER the event. I often think of the perfect comeback a couple of days later. In this case it is a coupla months but when I was archiving this entry I realised that I should have offered an even better form of insurance - take that song and assign a DRM licence to me. Then I have a copy of the song and if you loose it I can assign a copy back to you.....

Posted by: Ozguru at May 2, 2003 02:05 PM