Quote:
Originally Posted by Pony99CA
It's not quite on the same level, I agree, but it's still stealing. You've taken something that doesn't belong to you without compensating the owner for it. That's stealing.
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I agree, it is still stealing. I was just stating that I dislike the analogy that everyone uses when they compare it to a physical product. It is no different whenever we try to compare a Windows Mobile device to the iPhone or space travel to underwater adventures. Sure there are similarities to stealing physical products and digital products but they are not on the same level at all. It is just a silly pet peeve of mine
I guess a better way of explaining it would be like so; Going into Wal-Mart and stealing physical copies of all of the albums you will now lose because you purchased the DRM copy isn't the same as breaking the DRM on music that you already purchased.
It would be one thing if Wal-Mart had a little button next to the album that said "rent this track now," but they no not. All of these DRM stores use the termonology to make it sound like the music you purchase belongs to you and not the other way around so when things like this happens it greatly annoys money spending consumers to not want to buy these products anymore. Some people could even argue that stuff like this turns would be paying customers into pirates because they don't understand how DRM and non-DRM works and all they know is that if they purchsaed music from one company and lost the rights to play it and the same thing might happen if they go to Amazon or somewhere else (even though it wouldn't happen with Amazon's non-DRM selection, but they don't know or understand the technology to know this.)
Then you also have to wonderer, if Wal-Mart's solution to this problem is to have their users burn their music to CD's and then re-rip it, why wouldn't users just strip the DRM from the tracks and cut out the middle-man-CD process? This is essentially the same thing minus spending a ton of money on CDs.
This is one of those situations where no matter what you do as a consumer, you get screwed. You either repurchase your Wal-Mart collection in non-DRM fashion or you break the law and sit and a corner and feel bad about yourself.
The only people that win in this situation are the music companies. Even Wal-Mart loses in this situation because they have to screw over all of their existing customers. I don't really believe there is a right answer to fix this problem besides dropping DRM all together. DRM is bad and the cons will always outweigh the pros and the only people DRM prevents from using products are your customers that actually wanted to give you money. DRM does not stop nor effect pirates and in a lot of cases is cracked before the final products hits the store shelves.