Random Access 3.0

It always amazes me the way people translate DRM into various ways to 'keep you down' and that you must 'fight the man' in anyway possible, hence my category 'Fight The Man! ...Legally'

PyMusique may have some 'good intentions' of letting people (what people really) play their music in Linux. I do wish Apple would have come out a long time ago with a closed source Linux client but I'm sure that wouldn't be enough for the zealots out there on the web.

I'm not a programmer, I'm a systems guy and now a bit of a systems marketing guy. I know human nature. Open source, while I strongly believe has it's place in the industry it is not the panacea and end-all to be all of computer software.

I strongly believe that the operating system should be an open architecture, with the core kernal and I/O subsystem being completely open, freely distributable. This is probably why I like Mac OS X so much. It's a combination I like and can easily live with. The core (Darwin) is wide open. I could download it, and if I had the knowledge to do it I could port it to jim-bob's processor and make it run.

What I then like about Mac OS X is that everything above the core, Quartz, Core Audio, the window manager (AKA The GUI) are all closed and tightly controlled by the people that have a huge interest in it, Apple. This allows a standard, methodical practice of the corporate guys to do their thing with the OS, but also give core technology back to the community that could use and benefit from it if they so choose.

But I digress.

My point to that little rant was that if you take away the option for people to have to pay for a product to get a piece of it, people will not pay for it and will find a way to get it for 'nothing'. I've got friends that are programmers out there and I know they'd be sitting on a corner with a 'will code for food' sign because if they did all their stuff for free (as in beer) people wouldn't pay for it, they'd download it, and distribute it.

That's why file sharing networks are so huge. It's not because you can't get a copy of The Irish Rovers album from 1968, it's because you can get Green Day's Boulevard of Broken Dreams for free.

Sure, 0.1% of the people out there are looking for a release of a song that you can't buy, like one I loved but can't find from The Chemical Brothers where they re-did Magic Carpet Ride. But the masses (you know, the unclean ones that don't know how to run their computer more than enough to browse some websites and do their email, and download free music) don't care, they don't have money, don't want to spend their money on something, or just are cheap, so they'll find a way to get something for free, and I'm sure PyMusique will help in some way. While yes, you have to purchase a song to get it to your computer, once it's there you can give it away for free again and this time unlike Hymn there is no watermark in the file at all, it's been removed. And I'm sure no one would go out of their way to hack a pepsi bottle to get a free song and then file share it.

Sadly, I'm pretty sure iTunes 5 or whatever the next rev will put the DRM at the store, and a few more restrictions might appear for good measure. Jon and his 'friends' haven't helped anyone at all, they've only driven the guys that own everything to tighten the screws to Apple, and others, when their contracts come due.

And for those of you that would say DRM restricts you, I say bah-humbug. But then I can, because I am allowed an opinion even if it's completely contradictory to yours. That's how this works. 789 iTMS songs and counting on my computer.