The digital deception

Ooooh. Digital music. Aaaaah. I want! I want! I want!

You get your iPod. You install iTunes. You buy a voucher and get hold of that old album you can no longer find in music stores, or the random ones your local music store has never heard of.

You play it on your computer. You transfer it onto your iPod. You love the fact that you’re not wasting plastic, petrol and paper by buying a CD. You lose your iPod. Your computer gets stolen. You forget your iTunes login. You lose the music. You can’t get it back.

It doesn’t matter. It was never yours to begin with.

Instead, you are the owner of a license to play that track or album, and that license comes with an extremely limited set of rights.

Once you’ve acquired a lawfully-made CD, you can lend, sell, or give it away without having to get permission from the copyright owner.

In simpler terms, you bought it, you own it. End of story.

But this only applies to tangible copies.

Digital music downloads come with a more limited set of rights. That’s if you can call it ‘rights’ at all.

If you buy a digital album from an online service such as the iTunes store (which is the model I will use here), you have no legal right to lend that album to a friend. If you decide after a few listens that you hate the album… tough.

You can’t really resell it, although there is an upcoming service to resell your digital music, which has its own issues so let’s not even go there yet. You can’t even give it away.

You know that silly little ‘terms of use’ thing to which you click ‘agree’ without reading?

Here’s what you missed in all the excitement of buying an MP3, being legal and all environmentally friendly.

Even though the Terms and Conditions for the iTunes Store contains more than 14 000 words of latin-esque, dense, non-comprehensible legalese, there are a few things you need to understand.

You’ve just signed your music-listening life over to Lord Cthulu.

Apple is the provider of the service, which permits you to purchase or rent digital content for end user use only under the terms and conditions.

You agree that the service and certain products include security technology that limits use, and whether or not products are limited by security technology, you shall use the products in compliance with the applicable usage rules established by Apple and its licensors.

Any other use of the music may constitute a copyright infringement. Any security technology is an inseparable part of the music.

Apple reserves the right to modify the rules at any time. You agree not to tamper with any of the security technology related to such rules for any reason.

These rules may be controlled and monitored by Apple for compliance purposes, and Apple reserves the right to enforce these rules without notice.

You agree not to access their service by any means other than through software that is provided by Apple.

Users are only authorised to use the music for personal and non-commercial use, meaning, you can’t have a party at a pub with an entrance fee and play the music you bought from iTunes.

Except for the rights explicitly granted to you in that annoying box, all rights are reserved and retained by the company,

“You do not acquire any ownership rights in the software or digital content as a result of downloading software or digital content.”

Basically, by clicking ‘agree’, you screw yourself over.

You pay for it, you don’t own it and you can pretty much only listen to it with sound-cancelling headphones just in case your sister hears the music as she’s walking past your room.

The solution? Buy a CD.

Besides, there’s not much better than flipping through stunning artwork while listening to uninhibited crisp sounds of an actual recording.