The Amazon DRM-free music store: You can listen, but you can't mash it up
There has been a lot of positive buzz about Amazon.com MP3 Downloads. It's great to see major labels figure out that digital rights management is just plain dumb.
But here is the catch: To get a song you have to agree to a "user agreement." I don't remember any other Amazon product including such a license. The license makes you click away your first sale rights, i.e. you can't distribute the file to your sister once you are bored with it. This is not too surprising. The Copyright Office already made it clear that we should not consider first sale to be relevant for digital works. Sucks. But true.
But more alarming, the contract you click with Amazon forbids you from mashing up the music into something new or better:
And what is the deal with the "Amazon Music Downloader?" If you buy just a song, you don't need it. You can just, well, download the song. But if you buy an album you MUST install the downloader.
Why must I install this mysterious software just to download MP3s? I suspect it's a way to embed metadata on the MP3 so that it is traceable later.
Anybody know what's up with it?
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