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drm (dead-on rant: mandatory)

Boing Boing: New Beasties disc has DRM -- Fight! For your right! To cooo-oopy!: "I always hear record execs whining that they 'can't compete with free' -- but maybe the real competitive disadvantage is that they're selling a product that's less useful than the one being served up on P2P nets"

I've seen several discs at various Japanese record shops that have the "Copy-Protected" label on them, and have passed them up for exactly this reason. What's weird is that the US and UK versions do not have copy protection; yay, way to encourage international piracy. I'm happy to pay money for something I want, but not for something that I can't use as I choose. Record companies that won't let me add music I've bought to my iTunes are missing the whole point. They're only costing themselves sales.

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