Did you read the Microsoft Chief Counsel's piece? It's about two paragraphs of fluff, motherhood and apple pie, followed by about ten paragraphs of legal disclaimers.... *grin* Tells you where THEIR motives are....

I have respect for Amazon for putting out MP3s. I do NOT have respect for their purchase policy for MP3s. Their http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200154210&#drm page states, in part:

"What does DRM-free mean? Digital Rights Management or "DRM" commonly refers to software that is designed to control or limit how a file can be played, copied, downloaded, shared, or accessed. DRM-free means that the MP3 files you purchase from Amazon.com do not contain any software that will restrict your use of the file."

Note the weasel-wording about DRM software.

Further down the same page, there's the following phrasing:

"Are there any restrictions on how I use the music I purchase? When you make a purchase from the Amazon MP3 Music Downloads store, you are also accepting and bound by the Amazon MP3 Music Downloads Terms of Use. The albums and songs you purchase from AmazonMP3 Music Downloads are free of Digital Rights Management software so that you have the flexibility to play them on any of your media players, PC or burn them to CD."

Clicking through to the "AmazonMP3 Downloads Terms of Use" link in the middle of that, http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200154280
you get (among a LOT of other lawyerese) the following:

"2.1 License. Upon your payment of our fees for Digital Content, we grant you a non-exclusive, non-transferable license to use the Digital Content for your personal, non-commercial, entertainment use, subject to and in accordance with the terms of this Agreement. You may copy, store, transfer and burn the Digital Content only for your personal, non-commercial, entertainment use.

"2.2 Restrictions. You represent, warrant and agree that you will use the Service only for your personal, non-commercial, entertainment use and not for any redistribution of the Digital Content or other use restricted in this Section 2.2. You agree not to infringe the rights of the Digital Content's copyright owners and to comply with all applicable laws in your use of the Digital Content. Except as set forth in Section 2.1 above, you agree that you will not redistribute, transmit, assign, sell, broadcast, rent, share, lend, modify, adapt, edit, sub-license or otherwise transfer or use the Digital Content. You are not granted any synchronization, public performance, promotional use, commercial sale, resale, reproduction or distribution rights for the Digital Content. You acknowledge that the Digital Content embodies the intellectual property of a third party and is protected by law."

Hrm. No remix. No backup. None of the other rights you have with CD's. Just "for personal entertainment".

Now, IANAL. Get proper expensive legal advice before acting on this, I make no claims for it being right - but I do claim that it is wrong.

-John

Mike Friedman - Leased line. If you can get Skype to agree to receiving one.

Zyklon - Enjoy the trip. You'll have more pressing issues to worry about than NN.

Michael - You bring up good points. I agree, all it takes is one law - be it a 'good' law or an 'ignorant' law, doesn't matter - and large sectors of modern internet activity go bye-bye. Or Executive Order. Or judicial ruling. Or administrative finding. Or National Security Incident. Or... *wry grin*

Imagine, just for a minute, a law that requires unique identification of users throughout the internet - as someone else commented, only terrorists need privacy. Think about the ramifications of that - they get really ugly really quickly, and we do have ignorant people in power who're capable of deciding that that would be a good idea - let the geniuses who made the web implement it.

ScienceBzzt - It's not the amount of regulation that matters, it's the details. Sure, more regulation has more details for high-resource people/groups with an axe to grind to play funny games with, but the lack of regulation gives YOU less details for YOU to play funny games with.

Perhaps a better choice would be to get the RIGHT legislation passed the FIRST time, with room for growth in technology, not relying on laws from back in the 1800s to police today's new twists - or tomorrow's, for that matter.

Mike Friedman - You've got that choice already in some ISP contracts & leased lines with bandwidth guarantees. Admittedly, it'll cost you more and be a right royal pain to negotiate with the technopeasants on the sales force, but it's available.

-John B