RIAA drops eDonkey

[nightflier]

Why is it that you all feel that we have a god given entitlement to free music? Explain me that.

Nod, I know you and I have gone a few rounds on this topic already. But to answer your question, not all music is owned. As a matter of fact all classical music written before the 1930's (if there's a lawyer in the room, please provide exact date), is public domain. But somehow, I still have to pay for it, even if its only software that comes without a medium (i.e. downloaded as opposed to on disk). And I don't care if YoYoMama's boy has re-recorded it again for the umptieth time. I didn't want him to in the first place, because that only means his Sony/MGM/Warner godfathers get to charge me for something that they don't own either - sounds like a racket to me.

Why is this a big deal? I cleaned things up o.k. and my computer is fine. However, some part of QuickTime is still on my hard drive and still has its fingerprints all over my registry. In that regard, they have taken the use of my property. At some point I fully expect to have some conflict with a future version of Media Player and whatever code QuickTime left on my machine. That's how the game works. Why to you think computers become so squirrly after a couple of years? Why do we have to keep replacing software?

Sorry to rain on your parade, jocko, but if you read the license agreement on your Windows software, you'll see that you don't actually own that. If is leased to you and you have the right to use it until Microsoft obsoletes it. As such, you do not have the right to claim that another company, in this case Apple, is installing their software into Windows. You own the hardware, but even the firmware is not yours exclusively. Of course, there are always open source OSs like Debian Linux or FreeBSD, but then iTunes and QuickTime won't run on it. And if anyone was to write an iTunes/QuickTime clone for Linux, they would be violating the DMCA.

Which brings me back to the point that in order to use online music, one has to lease a software/hardware combination from a specific manufacturer. To be truely free of licensing agreements, one would have to give up most online music choices. Hence the anger that many people have against the manufacturers and the copyright holders. As consumers we should all be outraged, and if we're not, then we deserve to pay again for the same thing over and over again.