dug 
Chris Wheatley makes a few observations about iTunes 6. In particular:
Gifting - like it
Just For You - the jury's still out on that one.
Reviews - whatever.
Videos - very cool, dependent on content obviously
However, no CD or DVD burning for videos - nooooooooooooooooooooo, bad Steve, naughty Steve.
Now, I think Just for you is an irritant and I’ve disabled it (smart of you to give me that option Steve), but the no-video burning is criminal. You know, it’s time we start a mass education movement. Copyright law doesn’t work anymore and if Disney can get the rules re-written everytime Mickey is about to go into the public domain then the world’s music-buying public ought to have some sway.
The EFF and the Creative Commons are great ideas and certainly influential but the guy flicking through jewel cases in V Megastore needs to stop buying buying music and write his MP.
In the short term here’s were I’m at:
- Apple's Fair Play isn't, If you bought a CD but the label said you could only listen to it in Fives 'authorised' rooms and that the burden of managing those rooms' authorisation was on you you'd return it.
- All iTunes Music store users should claim the fair use of their purchased music. Do this by downloading Hymn and removing the rights management bollocks from your MP3 files
- Oh bugger, iTunes 6 has broken JHymn--developer is working on it, check back soon.
- Tell your MP that you want a new deal on copyright. We all agreed on the current deal at a time when the benefits of cheap access to books outweighed the downside of reduced access to copying (seeing as you needed a scribe or a printing press to copy a book). It's time for a new deal.
And while I’m banging Stallman’s copyright drum, I’ve got another consideration. The music industry will tell you that they need you to not make copies of your music because ‘illegal’ copying harms music and reduces creativity. Film studios will say it takes millions of dollars to make a movie and studios need to recoup that cash somehow.
They’re missing the point.
These industries need to make a profit to survive, but they don’t need a giant turnover to do it. Find a way to make a movie for $1000 and sell it for $2000 and you’ve made a 200% profit. My point is that all industries have to change over time. There just isn’t a law that says that everyone in the record industry has a right to a glamourous, cocaïne-fuelled lifestyle–nope, in the future, record company execs will need to find new ways to remain profitable. In the new world, record execs will drive second-hand Lada Nivas and privacy sellers or spam blockers will be bathing in gold tubs.
My point is that a sweet deal doesn’t get to stay sweet forever–move on.