Reading the “Terms of Use Agreement” on buymusic.com, which aspires to become the biggest digital music store on the Web, I find the following:
“All downloaded music, images, video, artwork, text, software and other copyrightable materials (“Content”) are sublicensed to End Users and not sold, notwithstanding use of the terms “sell,” “purchase,” “order,” or “buy” on the Site or this Agreement…End User may only download, transfer, copy and use the Digital Downloads as stated in the particular song, partial album or album’s Metadata Information, which is hereby incorporated by reference. No other downloads, transfers, copies or uses of Digital Downloads are permitted. ”
This is why I will not order anything from BuyMusic.com. Because, in short, you are not really able to buy any recordings there. You can always BUY CDs: I do it all the time, and usually I then rip the music from the CDs in order to play them on my iPod. But you can only “sublicense” the music on BuyMusic.com, not buy it, despite the site’s name. Welcome to the era of “digital rights management”, where corporations will have control of the use of their “intellectual property” in perpetuity.
I wonder: since you are allowed to burn the songs you download at BuyMusic.com to CDs, is it possible then to rip unprotected, unrestricted mp3s from those CDs? It seems like that would be too easy a way to circumvent these regulations.
“Legal” Digital Music Distribution
Reading the “Terms of Use Agreement” on buymusic.com, which aspires to become the biggest digital music store on the Web, I find the following:
“All downloaded music, images, video, artwork, text, software and other copyrightable materials (“Content”) are sublicensed to End Users and not sold, notwithstanding use of the terms “sell,” “purchase,” “order,” or “buy” on the Site or this Agreement…End User may only download, transfer, copy and use the Digital Downloads as stated in the particular song, partial album or album’s Metadata Information, which is hereby incorporated by reference. No other downloads, transfers, copies or uses of Digital Downloads are permitted. ”
This is why I will not order anything from BuyMusic.com. Because, in short, you are not really able to buy any recordings there. You can always BUY CDs: I do it all the time, and usually I then rip the music from the CDs in order to play them on my iPod. But you can only “sublicense” the music on BuyMusic.com, not buy it, despite the site’s name. Welcome to the era of “digital rights management”, where corporations will have control of the use of their “intellectual property” in perpetuity.
I wonder: since you are allowed to burn the songs you download at BuyMusic.com to CDs, is it possible then to rip unprotected, unrestricted mp3s from those CDs? It seems like that would be too easy a way to circumvent these regulations.