Buying Music Online is a Bad Dea1-1new Draft

Buying music online is a bad deal - and that's why I mourn HMV and its kind Being able to listen to music in a shop, buy it and then lend or resell to fr iend s was one of the great advantages of retail chains. Buying music online carries all sorts of subtle restrictions. Some people say good riddance to HMV because it was sickly for some years before it died. I suggest however that the fact it took time to die does not make its loss (and th at of it s hi gh street compet it or s) any less regrettabl e. Wh at replaced them is a disaster for freedom. I miss stores like HMV because I could go there with cash, buy records (usually CDs), and take them home as mine. These large stores had a wide range of music, and I could listen to records in-store (mostly music I had never heard of) to find what I liked. Once I had bought the records, I was free to give or lend them to friends. Under copyright law, I could even copy them, to audio tapes in the old days, and give those to my friends. All this without the state's knowing anything about it. You can't buy music that way on the internet. You are forced to identify yourself to the seller (and to Big Brother, watching over his shoulder) -- and if it's not a CD, you have to sign a restrictive contract which denies you the rights we all enjoyed. I say "you" because I won't go there. For those who love both music and freedom, today's form of internet sales is out of the question, which leaves ever fewer opportunities for us to buy music. Aside from disks sold by musicians, and a few survi vin g lar ge record stores such as Amoeba in San Francisco, the only way a self-respecting person should get copies of music is through digital sharing. The superficial convenience of internet music sales is the bait; in the UK, the Digital Economy Act is the jaws. And HMV was the safe and ethical road to music, which a society foc used on the shor t ter m has not kept open. Richard Stallman, T he Guar dian, January 21 st 2013 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45

Buying Music Online is a Bad Dea1-1new Draft

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