day against drm

In honor of Defective by Design's Day against DRM, I'd like to take a moment to provide free advertising for EMusic. It's a subscription-based service with no commitment (and an available free trial). Depending on the subscription purchased songs cost anywhere from $.22 to $.25/song, and they are all DRM-free MP3s which the company trusts you to use legally. The songs are almost entirely independent label -- those songs which you really don't hear about because their labels can't afford to buy huge displays at the front of the record store. Because they are so inexpensive (and already paid for, given the subscription mechanism) I've purchased a lot of songs from tiny bands I never would have heard of otherwise, and have expanded my music choices a fair amount. And it's all DRM-free!

(See more DRM-free stores here.)

Remember, the giftgiving season is coming, and a lot of the latest gadgets this year contain digital rights management capabilities which severely limit your abilities to use the content you have legally purchased in ways which are completely legal under current United States law. If you buy a DRM-enabled song from iTunes, you are technologically prevented from using that track in all the ways which are legal for you to do so. Think about digital rights management when you are making holiday purchases, or when you are purchasing electronic book content for your library. Libraries are very concerned with making sure that the rights of license holders are protected, but the license holders are going out of their way to make it difficult for libraries to enable even legal uses.)