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Friday, January 13, 2006

Well, duh!

It's good to see that more people are finally catching on to the fact that so-called Digital Rights Management (DRM) is not now, nor has it ever been, about protecting copyrights or artists. It is, at its core, solely dedicated to controlling not only creations, but the actual means to create and distribute.

The current legislative initiative is geared toward preventing analog-to-digital conversions (and vice versa) by creating artificial distinctions between "professional" and "amateur" equipment. Furthermore, the proposals would establish the ill-defined professionals as a privileged class, with access to capabilities and options unavailable to mere mortal amateurs.

Our tax dollars at work. Wonderful.

And speaking of things tangentially related to music downloading and sharing, I finally got my first MP3 player today. Heather Marie has had an iPod for a little over a year, and it really is great. She carries pretty much every CD that we own around in a device about the size of a deck of cards.

Although I would love to get an actual iPod of my own, they're a little pricier than I was willing to pay, and the don't currently meet my needs. The gym that I go to has TVs mounted in front of the treadmills, and they transmit the audio on FM radio frequencies, so I considered an FM receiver to be absolutely essential. It also had to be small enough to jog with comfortably. Unfortunately, iPods don't fall into the intersection of those requirements.

After a little research, I decided on a 256 MB Creative Muvo TX. Not as flashy or as hip as an iPod by any means, but so far not a bad little player, and it meets my needs well enough.

Interestingly, I'd been so focused on the radio and music aspect that it didn't even occur to me until after I got it setup that I'd be able to listen to audiobooks and the podcasts that I subscribe to, as well.

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