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wiley

Amazon's MP3 store rips off your fair use rights

October 9, 2007 6:53am

Asking the user not to redistribute or transmit the work is bizarre and over-restrictive. What does 'transmit' mean? If I broadcast my songs over wireless to my airport express, or if someone streams it from my shared playlist in iTunes, is that transmitting it? This is just another one of those catch-all agreements that protects Amazon in the event that someone buys up a bunch of their content and then does something icky with it on a large scale, but from a user standpoint it's an ugly, ugly agreement.

On the other hand, kudos to Amazon for at least technically unlocking the music. Everyone is going to have to eventually follow suit. If someone could break down the movie studio mobsters to allow me to easily and legally rip my dvd's into iTunes now, I would be well pleased.

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