Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy

I got an email from Pollara Wednesday, the polling firm that gave a favourable slant on a poll conducted [Dec 29, 2005] for the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA). They’ve shown their bias before too, and aren’t ashamed they don’t appear independent of the corrupt music industry’s push to outlaw P2P music downloading. The email I got today was a coupon for a free music track download from the Puretracks website.

Puretracks has been around for over a year, and it’s a competitor to iTunes the most popular music download service that sells music and compensates the artists. Like iTunes though, it employs Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) on the files you download. DRM is, to put it simply, dumb. It creates problems where normally none would exist, in a futile attempt to prevent or hamper music piracy efforts.

I decided to try and redeem my coupon for one free song. I opened the Puretracks site in my Firefox web browser and started to look around. I signed up for an account, after reading the privacy policy, and learned that the first song is free, so I had two songs for free. I found Crazy by Gnarles Barkley, and clicked a button with no hint as to what it was supposed to do. The same page loaded, and I figured out after a few seconds that it had added the song to my Wanted list. I removed it from there, and tried to play the audio clip. I figured out that the speaker next to the song would play that, so I clicked… nothing happened after a popup window opened.

I right clicked the window and because I had IE View installed as an extension, I had the option to open the Addressbar-less window in Internet Explorer, where it finally started to play a clip, and show me an ad my Firefox Adblock had probably prevented me from seeing before.

Satisfied that I’d found the song I was looking for, I clicked the ‘+’ symbol to add the track to my shopping cart. I went to my cart and started to Check out. They confirmed my total due was $0.00 Canadian dollars. I’d seen that some tracks are actually $1.13, instead of $0.99, presumably because an American company is charging Puretracks $0.99US to sell them. My total after Saskatchewan PST, and GST was calculated, and I pressed the confirmation to buy. A new window popped up and had a Download Now button. I pressed that and a Save File dialogue popped up, with an EXE file. I was beginning to become less impressed. Although Puretracks is unlikely to have a virus, it’s not unheard of for a CRIA affilliated organization to install a Rootkit onto an unsuspecting user’s computer. I took the chance though and opened up their download manager in the name of science ;-).

The download took a couple minutes on my slow broadband connection, and saved it in my document’s music folder. I headed over to look at the .wma file and listen to my legally obtained music. I doubled clicked the file [which was from a site with the ironic DRM label "Plays For Sure" with a Windows Media Player 7.1 or higher logo on it]. Media Player 9 opened, and guess what happened? No music played. Instead a dialogue box opened with a few options, and it said “A security upgrade is required to play this file. Do you want to download this upgrade which may take a few minutes?” “Learn more, Yes or No”.

I clicked No, and the music wouldn’t play. Why did I click ‘no’ you might ask, when I’ve already run an .exe file from a source I barely trust? Well for one, to prove a point, and another so that I don’t give Microsoft a chance to install DRM crud onto my system and possibly break other features I like and use. The point is that the music doesn’t “play for sure”. It doesn’t play at all unless you play by their rules. People pay for the use of the music, the Internet connection, the blank CD-R levy, an MP3 player, and a legal copy of Windows XP, and it still isn’t enough for the bozos at Puretracks. They want to record the details of my computer and ensure that I never play that track I downloaded on another computer, even if I own that other computer.

DRM prevents people who legally obtain music from enjoying music. If I’d downloaded the song using a P2P program, I’d be listening to it right now, with no real risk of virus or rootkit infection, and no DRM demanding I install a “security update” so a CRIA executive can breathe a little easier. DRM is dumb, Plays For Sure doesn’t play, and free Puretracks is pure nonsense.

UPDATE: In the Help page at Puretracks is this:

What is Digital Rights Management (DRM)?

DRM helps protect the file from illegal copying. However, as with any ‘lock’, hackers may break it. Those who knowingly tamper with DRM are acting illegally. We discourage any attempt to defeat the copyright protection.

Let me correct that for them, since in Canada I’m not aware of any law that says tampering with DRM is illegal. In the United States they have the DMCA that does make it illegal, but Puretracks is spreading Fear Uncertainly and Doubt (FUD) in Canada.

Update 2: I asked Michael Geist, Canada’s foremost copyright expert, to answer the following question:
Is there any law you know in Canada that makes it illegal to “tamper with DRM” as Puretracks.com claims it is on their Help page?

His response is that there’s nothing directly making tampering illegal, however it could violate the license you agree to when you download music from a service like Puretracks.

So that means even though the tampering might be for your own personal benefit [such as playing the music on another of your computers, or your iPod], they might end up suing you. Depending on the judge, you could wind up paying costs associated with their presumed losses altering their protection scheme to resist your tampering.
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For DRM free music check out Harvey Danger, Bare Naked Ladies, Sarah McLaughlin, or The Arrogant Worms. All not from Puretracks.