If you've been following along you know I've been taking 2 classes this semester. I love both of them. The first one is sitting in front of a Sun machine with Solaris installed and playing for 3 hours. The second one is talking about digital copyright for 3 hours. How can anybody not think that's fun?! I know I'm a bit of a geek :)
Going back to all of this music stuff I wanted to comment on how much I love Rhapsody. I get unlimited music downloaded to my mp3 player for roughly $15.00/month. I love how easy it is to use and I love how I can get most any music I want on there. Coupled with my Sansa player it's quite awesome. I was thinking recently at how I probably never want to buy music again. Of course I don't own the music, it's completely subscription (unless I buy the track), but at least this way I know if something were to ever happen to my computer then that won't matter since I didn't buy anything. I also thought about how much my music tastes change over time. At least I can rifle through my old CDs to see what I was listening to a few years ago, that's a bit nostalgic but I really don't listen to those CDs anymore. Rifling through music files on your computer loses some of that nostalgia...for all practical purposes I suppose I would rather just find it and load it and save the space on my computer.
That's Rhapsody, but this weekend I decided to try out a downloadable audio book from the library. The library I work for uses NetLibrary, which I haven't tried yet. I found a book that I wanted to read through Ann Arbor's audio book service, which uses Overdrive. The download process was a bit confusing but I think I managed to do things in the right order. I was a bit annoyed that Overdrive made me download additional software to my computer though...I think that was strike 1. Everything transferred to my mp3 player fine (I guess I was doubtful). I was going to listen to the book on the way to school yesterday though, and when I hit play on my player it said I needed to sync it to activate the subscription! Huh? Sync it to what? I have a Windows Plays for Sure mp3 player but I do most of my music management through Rhapsody now.
Before my digital copyright class I was sitting with my computer and talking to my classmate, she said to try syncing it through Windows Media Player. I had thought about this in the car too. I did have my cord and player so I tried it before class...it still didn't work. I then put it all away and decided to mess around with it later.
Conversation during class usually jumps around to different topics and somehow libraries offering digital content came up. My teacher mentioned that the most worrisome thing about digital content and libraries is that libraries don't own the actual digital file. Of course the issue is preservation. Libraries work through vendors to allow access but in actuality the vendor is the one doing the collection development of digital files. They can put in or take away any content they want.
Of course that's when it hit me. Libraries offering digital content, like downloadable audio books might not be such a good idea, at least not without some control over the content themselves. The library is doing the same thing I'm doing through Rhapsody. Rhapsody makes sense from a consumer perspective, and I'm choosing the subscription route because it makes sense for the way I am listening to music right now. Does it make sense for libraries though? I know libraries are there to offer us access but I also trust that librarians are making informed decisions on content...not vendors. I also want to trust that libraries are in a position to preserve materials that they feel should be preserved.
Wired tackled this issue in one of its blogs. The non-librarian perspective on this is also quite interesting. My own DRM experiences and some experiences I've heard through our own patrons for NetLibrary have made me think twice about whether libraries should be endorsing DRM and services that only work through specific players. Not to mention the difficulty most people have to go through just to get the service to work for them.
Of course there's no easy answer for any of this. My research topic this semester is on DRM for my digital copyright class so maybe I'll come out of it with a completely different opinion...but I doubt it. Chances are I will be more educated on what we're dealing with. I think the future of accessible digital content through libraries is at stake...that is a big deal.
