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Well, I've just been having a look at the somewhat over-used Digital Download Day site. If you weren't aware, this is an attempt to advertise the legal download services available out there, from people like Freeserve, MOS, MSN and so on, and prove to the people that hey - they're better than Audiogalaxy was and you don't have that icky mark on your soul.
The first thing you notice, when you finally manage to get in, is that they all only work on Windows PCs using IE and Media Player. No Linux or Macs, not even any Winamp. The reason for this being, if you check the FAQ, no other platform is "secure enough" for the companies selling the stuff. In fact, you can't even use your own download manager, you have to use theirs. Given the fact that the login procedure has entirely failed once and failed to give me any free music twice (given that things are so slow it takes a long time to even get to that stage) I'm not that confident that they have the technological skills to stop me nutting the monitor repeatedly while trying to do this.
If you were after more evidence about how out of touch the media corporations are with the current state of play, or with reality generally, you might be interested in checking this out. With FAQ items like...
CD 'burn' allowances for each song are determined by the record labels...
Restrictions to number of plays
For some downloads, the rights holder may have set up some restrictions....
Restrictions to when licence will expire
For some downloads, there will be a restriction to the number of days you are allowed to listen to the track for, this will be explained on the product display screens...
...some older MP3 players are not capable of supporting 'secured content' such as licensed music. Transfer of music to portable players is managed through your Windows Media Player... You can see an up-to-date list of the portable players that support secure content at the Microsoft website.
...I am utterly puzzled as to how they think this is going to be a tempting alternative. If this is supposed to be a "carrot and stick" arrangement it had better be a fucking big stick. With nails in it. Because this is a withered little Tesco Value carrot that's been dipped in bleach. I wouldn't accept this level of service from an entirely free download site. It's actually easier and better to order CDs from Amazon. Even a user who's quite happy with Microsoft domination would be put off.
I'll live with the icky mark on my soul, I think.
This has turned into more of a rant than anything else but, if anyone else has experience with these "legitimate" pay sites I'd love to hear it. Is there a business model that could support it? I think the basic problem, and it's been said before, is that the current model used by media corporations as to what they think they deserve is just plain broken, and it will go down. In five years' time they will not exist in their present state. The technology they would have to ban is just too flexible and central to the economy for it to work; you would have to make it illegal for people to write code for their own computers. That five years is going to be an interesting period, though. |
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