Engadget points us to an interesting new site called SpiralFrog; an ad supported site that makes an attempt at free music, but it’s not really free. SpiralFrog makes a laughable attempt at offering free music, with catches. SpiralFrog music is all DRM’d. It requires you to log in at least once a month to maintain access to your account. If your account ever gets disabled, you will no longer able able to listen to your “free” music. It will not work on Mac or Linux nor will you be able to use it on your iPod. As a matter of fact, you cannot even sync your music to any more than 2 media players / cell phones at a time — assuming these said media players / phones support the DRM supplied (separate app — windows / CE based assumed ). And to top it all off, you will not be able to burn any music to CD.

What does their chairman this of this: “We believe it will be a powerful alternative to pirate sites” — Joe Mohen.

Talk about a complete misunderstand on why these “pirate sites” are so popular. It’s not just because the music is free, but it’s also because we can do anything we want with the songs. We can sync them to 1 or 500 media players. We do not have to maintain our account on these pirate sites in order to listen to our music. We can burn our music to CD and play it in our car, CD players, stereo systems, anywhere.

Maybe, just maybe, one of these centuries these music execs will understand this — well, we all can dream can’t we?

( Source: SpiralFrog’s “free” music download service goes live - Engadget )

First, you have the catalyst; Steve Jobs creates an open letter advocating the removal of DRM requirement from the songs sold on iTunes. Then the RIAA responded with a complete misunderstanding of Jobs’s original proposal. Now the flaming as started.
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All thanks to the RIAA, too. The judge as unfortunately ruled in favor of the RIAA. The full details of the article can be located on Yahoo Finance.

The general jist of it is the judge just ruled in favor of the RIAA to prevent XM + MP3 players from “recording” XM braodcasted songs. XM attempted to compare their XM + MP3 player as being nothing more than a radio tuner + cassette player, but unfortunately the judge ruled against it.

I tell you, one of these days RIAA’s reign of terror is going to prevent anybody from owning any music.