In an entirely unsurprising turn of events it looks as though the minds behind DRMed (Digital Rights Management) music don’t actually expect you to be able to own it forever. Moreover, the idea that you’d expect that to be the case is ridiculous.

Word comes from ArsTechnica that Steven Metalitz, who’s been lawyering for the RIAA, on behalf of DRM on content and just how much they can squeeze into your media before you buy it. His word on the subject seems basically to be that the more control on a piece of content the better it can be handled in general terms.

All of this might sound pretty innocuous until you read some of the man’s views on content, which are perhaps best expressed in a letter to a legal advisor for the Copyright Office, in which he basically points out that we don’t expect any other appliance or device to work forever, so why should we expect music to last indefinitely? He says that, “No one expects computers or electronics devices to work properly in perpetuity, and there is no reason that any mode of distributing copyrighted works should be required to do so.”

The problem with this kind of argument, of course, is that he’s drawing a kind of deranged relationship between form and content. People buy media for the content; all music comes on a CD, but you’re not looking for any old CD. Similarly, all books come on paper and you’re allowed to keep that paper, pretty much forever, as it turns out.

The real problem, of course, is that there are very real ways that DRM-addled music that you buy can be rendered useless remotely. It’s strange to work almost entirely on the internet and, after all this time, still be recommending that people purchase physical goods rather than digital.

You can read the ArsTechnica take on it here, their complaints about the DRM situation are a bit different to ours, but equally noteworthy