Do you “own” music you download from iTunes?
I was pleased to see this Reuters item, which questions the commonly held assumption that you “own” music you purchase via the iTunes Music Store. The ownership assumption is, of course, one of the main points of differentiation that iTMS supporters often cite when comparing their favored vendor to those offering a subscription model. However, as pointed out in the Reuters article, “owning implies control and if you bought the tracks on iTunes you don’t have complete control.” I linked to this article in an Engadget post over the weekend, and got some good comments. Most of the iTMS supporters pointed out that the service offers the closest thing to ownership that you’ll find on a DRM-based service, since Apple allows songs to be burned to a CD, which can then be ripped back into DRM-free MP3 files. However, other commenters pointed out that doing so could be considered a DMCA violation. It’s also a violation of Apple’s Terms of Service, which state that allowing customers to burn CDs is “an accommodation to you,” and that customers “will not attempt to, or encourage or assist any other person to, circumvent or modify any security technology or software that is part of the Service.” So, yes, Apple supplies a backdoor that allows the DRM to be circumvented, but using it violates both the Terms of Service and Federal law. That certainly doesn’t sound like ownership to me. For my money, I prefer the subscription model. For less than the cost of one CD per month, I can listen to unlimited music and copy it to a portable player. For anything I absolutely have to “own” (meaning copy to a CD so that I can, say, listen to it in the car, or keep if I let my subscription lapse), I can still pay a per-song fee, usually about 89 cents. The real downside of the subscription model is the risk that a service provider may change their pricing (as Yahoo did last year), leaving you in a position where you may have to pay a higher monthly fee to keep listening to your “rented” music. However, as long as there’s significant competition in the marketplace, prices aren’t likely to go up too much, making the subscription model a pretty good deal for anyone who buys more than a handful of songs per month online and doesn’t mind using software that isn’t quite as intuitive and user-friendly as iTunes (which, of course, is another story entirely). If anything, Microsoft’s recent entry into the music store business could keep pricing very competitive—at least until Microsoft drives the other stores out of business, that is.
