Lessig Deconstructs the WalMart Deal

mrG — Tue, 23 Dec 2003 15:08:49 -0500

WalMart has apparently jumped on the downloadable MP3 bandwagon, only buyer beware ... as Lawrence Lessig explains, it's a trap ...

This is the real aim of the “war” against “piracy.” Focus the attention of the world on “pirates” and then “solve” that problem in a way that effectively removes all other creative rights for consumers. This is a total perversion of copyright law, as the late Professor Lyman Ray Patterson showed. The law, intended to regulate competitors, is now a tool for controlling consumers.

Such wonderful Christmas spirit!

As I've outlined here before, all those TOS in the WalMart fine-print contract are not unique to that service; the new rules seem to be the State of the Union among the RIAA-backed track-dealers. Ever since that first 'free' Elvis Costello (ahem) offer and all the way down through such maverick rebels as Neil Young and Keith Richards, the ploy is all the same sinister and deliberate board-room deception, a world-domination trap spun as a flex on the distribution channel issue, but only in exchange for something far more valuable: Exclusive ownership of your machine (via Microsoft DRM in MediaPlayer) and, as Lessig so eloquently illustrates, all those traditional fair use rights you had before this bogus War on Bootleggers began.

Or am I being too kind?

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Lessig Deconstructs the WalMart Deal