You’d think (especially these days) that you wouldn’t hear more ridiculous comments coming from the halls of Congress than what our elected leaders have to offer. Well, sometimes the folks called to testify prove that elected officials haven’t completely cornered the market on talking out of orifices that should be left for other purposes.
In hearings in Congress, the RIAA is saying that consumers who have been using content all wrapped up in DRM shouldn’t expect those servers to always be there and thus shouldn’t expect the content they bought to always be accessible.
There’s some common sense to the argument. Nothing lasts forever. But I bet when you bought that song and have been diligently doing what you’re allowed to do with it as you’ve been restricted on how you play it, you thought you owned it. Now didn’t you? Of course Amazon Kindle fans of 1984 and Animal Farm felt that way too, but that’s a different technicality.
The argument might be reaching a moot point as legal non DRM music is making headway thanks to Amazon and even Apple. But I wouldn’t be surprised some day to see an email from Apple saying that they are switching the DRM servers off and you have a period of time to upgrade the music or lose it. Of course there are other ways to do this. And you already know that.
This has nothing to do with DRM or entertainment (although it might be entertaining) and maybe its a way to pay down some of the deficit. It should be relatively easy to set up a system whereby the public could vote on the Internet to charge or tax Congress persons and those making statements before Congress when we recognize bull shit.
Via Ars Technica
