[AUUG-Talk]: Downloading and playing legal music

[Chandana De Silva]

On Mon, 2005-10-24 at 15:36 +0930, Daniel O'Connor wrote:

> Hmm, well there is allofmp3.com. Sure they aren't IN Australia, but this IS 
> the internet.

I am not sure about them. They are using a licence given by the Russian
Multimedia and Internet Society, which may be legal in Russia. However,
unless the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society has agreements with
the owners of the copy right (the musicians and the record publishing
companies) it won't be legal anywhere. Not to mention the fact that the
said artists and publishers are being ripped off.

> 
> > (Recording Industry Association of America) so anybody who wants to do
> > legal music needs them. Which is why it is important to try and change
> > this
> 
> There is a fundamental collision with open source software and DRM's - it 
> isn't possible to have an open source operating system and have a DRM that is 
> meaningful.

Not quite. If you accept the fact that the owner of the copyright has a
right to say how their property is disseminated, then they are withing
their rights in asking that there be some limitations. The problem is
the way that M$ have implemented DRM, which is a clunky method, putting
the control of DRM in software, instead of making it an intrinsic part
of the data. This is possible, and I believe we have all of the
technology needed to do it.

> 
> Any open source OS will not prevent the owner of the machine from controlling 
> what the machine does (which is the point). This is in direct conflict with a 
> DRM which exists to limit what the owner of the machine can do..

True. But that does not mean that you cannot have DRM using FOSS.