Originally Posted by geneven

Every week, The Economist lets me download a spoken-word version of its current issue in mp3 format. Are you saying that is illegal?

Originally Posted by woody14619

Not true. Maybe for YOU it's illegal for the most part, but frankly far more "illegal" file sharing happens PC to PC than phone to phone. It's not the job of a device manufacturer or OS provider to police what people do on/with the device.

Also, Apple had a way of doing it with iTunes. In fact that was one of their huge selling points in getting permission from the labels initially to start selling songs in iTunes, that it could retain/control/prevent illegal copying of the files because of their DRM format. Once they had the market pretty sealed up, they eventually dropped the strict DRM stuff, but they still can tell what was store bought an what wasn't. There are settable flags in most file formats that indicate if the file is copyright or not, and most people don't know how to change those.

Not allowing files to be shared or copied has nothing to do with legality from a device perspective. If someone copies files illegally from a PC to another PC over the internet, nobody is going to sue Microsoft for allowing the PC to have a copy function (not even in the US where frivolous lawsuits are the norm).



That is the real reasoning here. Sharing anything defeats Apples ability to make a profit. Technically, one can copy a file from their PC (via iTunes), to a device, and play it in two places at once, both on the device and on their home PC. Technically, that's a violation of the agreement you have on purchasing the song, since you only purchased on copy. Apple doesn't care about legal technicalities. They care about selling stuff and making money. Small bands sharing their songs for free, or free open source audio books (like Librivox) don't make Apple money, so they make it all the harder to share such things. It's all about the money.

Originally Posted by benny1967

i didn't know about these two issues. why's that? what does st. jobs want to protect his followers from?

Originally Posted by Grok

Both devices have compelling strong points and some really stinky bad points. As has been stated over and over.....do your research and embrace your chosen device and support the group. Positive energy is so much more useful than a pointless competition that NO ONE will win.

Everything else of similar tone and attitude that has been said before by gerbick and others