Reply #34: You left out a key part of the process. [View All]

As each generation of new media formats are released, the buyer has less right to the product than the version before.

Digital Rights Management decides how long you'll own the stuff you bought, who you can give it to when you're done, etc.

I bought a record in 1983. That record has a song on it that I really like. As the record fails due to age, I find that I didn't buy the song, but the transport method. So I buy a new transport method, the CD. That CD becomes scratched, and I have to buy another one.

Enter digital songs. Now I can save it on my HDD forever! Until the drive dies. Oh, you put it on CD, you can put it on your new computer. But the song was encoded to only let you put it on one computer. So you go to the rights owner and ask for the old license to be removed since you don't own the old computer, and you want to put it on the new computer...

It's a mess.