April 09, 2008 Filed in:
News
There's an interesting bit on Ars about the legal
issues
surrounding ownership and distribution
of promotional CDs. The gist: The record label
gives you a promo CD. But only you are licensed to
use it, you can't give it away, sell it, or even
toss it.
When you buy a CD or DVD, you are buying a license to
play back the content. Fair enough.
There is a lot of confusion, however, because you are
also buying the physical media. As such, people assume
they "own" the music or movies they buy. It also
doesn't help when you see a TV commercial for a new DVD
release and the voiceover guy says "Own the DVD now!"
Technically, that's not true, is it? Well, it does
sound better than "Buy a restricted license to this DVD
now!", but you can't have your cake and eat it too.
If the advertising regulations for prerecorded music
and movies were as strict as they were for
pharmaceuticals, they'd sound a lot like those
side-effects voice-overs you'd hear at the end of those
drug ads you hear.
Tags: universal, promo, cds