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Napster-to-Go reviewed, math done
This WaPo review of Napster's new "all-you-can-eat" music subscription service sounds pretty craptastic:

For $15 a month, Napster To Go offers unlimited song downloads -- in a copy-restricted format that can be played only on Windows XP computers and some digital music players -- but these songs expire if you don't keep paying that fee each month.

Unfortunately, Napster's not alone: other pay-per-download services include similarly logic-deficient restrictions. What consumers of digital entertainment are expected to put up with is amazing.
Link

An anonymous reader says,

I'm with you on the idea behind this analogy, but the use of a perishable good as an example makes for a poor argument. Unlike a song one can buy, the milk would expire on its own whether or not it was sold based on a subscription model.

Another aspect of the Napster to Go model is that it shows that the RIAAs claims of a lost sale for every download to be demonstrably false. If you can download an unlimited number of songs via napster and play them for as long as you continue to subscribe, then the maximum loss the RIAA suffers from a single downloader cannot exceed $15/month no matter how many songs a person downloads.

I found myself both disgusted and amazed at the incredible marketing spin. I took a closer look at the EULA, and thought I'd like to share some interesting points.

1) "The Tracks and Materials are owned by Napster, its business partners, affiliates and/or licensors, as applicable, and are protected by intellectual property laws."

This is the technical way of saying that you own nothing at all, even though you're paying for it. You might notice that the Napster website is very good about avoiding saying that you are "purchasing" anything. Napster users can "find," "get," "transfer," and "listen to" all the music they like. (Purchasing of music is only explicitly mentioned under the Napster Light service, somewhere at the bottom of a page -- but the same EULA I just quoted applies to that service, also.)

2) "The Client will count the number of times that you play a Download, including while you are offline, for royalty accounting and analysis purposes.... Napster will track the Downloads that you so transfer [to a portable player] and the number of times that you play Downloads on such devices."

Napster users are paying $15 a month for the privilege of being a statistic -- and Music Player makers have to build the hardware to support this feature as well.

Napster's website tells users that they can now "get all the music you want in a whole new way." Indeed. Call me when Grokster wins.

I just got a rather disturbing phone call - Sunday at 5:00 pm, my mother was trying to use her fairly new Dell PC and AOL to do something as incredibly high-tech as go to the weight watchers website where she does some volunteer work (www.wwatchers.com). Althgouth she does not have a Mac (yet), she is running FireFox and of course, this high profile national organization has written some browser detection code telling you, loyal visitor that you must indeed be running a Windows PC with Internet Explorer to access the site. After helping her get into the site's admin area, she was presented with another warning telling her that she could not access the main 'features' because her security settings to were too high (they were set to medium).

Out of curiousity, after getting the url for the interior pages, I was able to connect up to the site with my Powerbook just fine (Safari and Firefox) and access every single bit of functionality just fine (so much for requiring IE & Windows).

Now this site is not unique in it's ignorance but hey, this time it's personal. They are so willing to compromise the safety and securiyt of my mothers PC (ok, it's Windows - you got me there). But I'm not going to just let this one rest - tomorrow I'll be on the phone with their IT depart to start what I'm sure will be a long and terious interlude weight watchers but let's just see if we can trim a little technical fat off this massive organization (no phun intended!). More to come.