I have made this point myself many times but its nice to read someone else complaining about the daylight robbery we face from the so called "entertainment" companies
http://trends.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/05/03/161237We have to get out of the mindset that we are buying disks or tapes. We are purchasing licenses. The physical media that it is on is just a way of conveying it to you the purchaser. When you purchase dowloadable music online, you never see a CD-ROM because it is conveyed to you the purchaser by electronic media. Even Microsoft doesn't make you buy a new license for Windows because of unusable media. They are only interested in COA's and Product Keys. The recording companies like it just fine that we buy the same licenses over and over again. They are absolute zealots at trying to stop us from making backups of the media we purchase on flimsy, unprotected, easily damaged disks but have never once offered a remedy for the reason we need to make backups.
It is more than reasonable for us to expect to purchase only one license for any artist's particular work, and that sellers of recording licenses should be obligated to assist us purchasers in maintaining those licenses on current, usable media. Even more so if they're going to try to prevent us from making our own backups.
To end this injustice, the recording companies should consider changing its tactics and make available through their distributors:
1) Replacements for broken or unusable media for the cost of the media: If it got cracked, chipped, eaten, scatched, folded, melted, or just plain worn out, or like U.S. currency, anything over half is whole anything under half is zero.
2) Media format upgrades and updates: If it's on an LP, 45, eight-track or cassette, etc., bring in the original for an upgrade to the current media format for the cost of the media.
That would be justice!
Its really simple folks they cannot have it both ways either we are licencing the product in which case we are entiled to an "at cost" exchange if the format changes or we own the product in which case DRM should be removed, anything less is plain stealing, but then we know how theses companies got so big and it wasnt by being fair to artists or consumers.
