If the company simply gave you the file at a true zero cost, and then sternly admonished you that you must not share it or burn it to CD (and you could), that would be one thing. Instead, they plan to use some form of software to enforce that you don’t do these things - software that will have to live on the machine where you acquire the music, at least, and that may have other, unforeseen effects - and they also would like to require that you watch an advertisement.

That’s not “zero cost.” You’re not paying with currency - you’re paying by accepting items with negative value. I’d go with “libre” in that case.

And you’d like to “wait and see what they’re going to encumber this with”? You don’t find software that keeps you from sharing a file, or burning it to CD, to be invasive?

Interesting.

Now, with regards to invasive DRM, we do have to wait and see exactly what they’re going to encumber this with before making our conclusions.

No.

Restrictions are not to be expected, and they are certainly not to be tolerated. These files are doubtlessly protected with some pretty serious rights-removing DRM, which will require software support, i.e., things to be installed - and which will thus almost certainly doom it to the status of a curiosity.

“…when something is effectively free (of cost) I don’t see why you can complain when restrictions on what you can do with it are put in place.”

H*ll, yes, we can complain! I know what I should be able to do with a song - I should be able to move it to another format, or other media, or even just to a playback device that is more convenient to me. The idea that it was “free” (modulo time spent ignoring an advertisement) is not enough to convince me to say “Oh well, that’s all right then, it was free, anyway” and give those up - much less to convince me that I should install the software on my machine that takes them away.

I agree with your message to some extent. However, the industry has a pretty bad track record overall when you look at it. When it comes to human behaviour, the worst of it will always win out; greed, corruption, lies, you name it. There is only one thing that I can see ever working out for everyone. We now live in an age where intellectual property has dropped to near zero. The industry has to reduce the cost of buying entertainment by a lot, to more reasonable expectations, and they have to ditch the feeble attempts at controlling consumers through things like DRM, region controls, and so on. I’ve always said, as has Jon occasionally in his news postings, that we consumers are perfectly resonable folk, people who would be more than happy to part with our hard earned money if only the industry treated us fairly. I know that if I could buy music in a good format (lossless preferably, after all quality is as important here as with anything else), without DRM, and for a far more reasonable price than things are right now, that I would be broke all the time. I guarentee you that that is no lie, and the same easily goes for my wife too. What the industry looses by dropping prices as much as they clearly need to, they would gain back in volume a hundred fold I’m sure(the ill will they have generated so far not withstanding). However, that all time favorite sin we call greed, which our civilization seems to be solely based upon, runs insanely rampant through out the entertainment industry (never seen anything worse in my life to be honest), and because of that they’ve earned a boycott from the family and I instead. I swear, some corporate bozo must have done a cost benefit analysis betweem doing what I propose vs simply suing people, and suing people came out as the winner which would net them the most cash. Doesn’t matter that what they’re doing, and especially how they go about it, is obviously wrong, bordering on evil. But I digress; so easy to do that when ones ire is raised so high lol. Like you say, this story is a start at least. Problem is that based on history, which has a nasty tendency to repeat itself (primarily because people refuse to change), I highly doubt this is going to work out in the end. Especially when the opportunity to abuse the consumers faith will be right there just ready and waiting to be misued. It will happen, as it always does when greed is the primary motivator behind any kind of project that should otherwise have been a good idea. Never underestimate the power of stupid either.

“Everything has a cost.”

Not true, and you know it.

It would be nice to sit through advertising and then have the product free of all DRM, but this is a good first step. To just rubbish the idea before you have all the details is a little immature. Shouldn’t we wait and have a look at the EULA before jumping in?

And one other point - they won’t play on an iPod? What’s the problem there? This should help to bring down Apples market share with their restricitve fair play DRM.

You can’t have your cake and eat it, there has to be compromise somewhere along the line. If both camps take completely opposing views and refuse to make concessions then you’re doomed to failure.

Reasearch it .