rights

I picked out a selection of music off of my hard drive to play this afternoon. It was something that I had not listened to in awhile, I cannot tell you how long. Up pops the error message "You do not have the rights to play this music selection. To gain access to the rights, go here."

f*cking Microsoft. Listen to me cause I am only gonna say this once.

First of all, yes, I DO have the rights to play this music, I purchased it over 15 years ago, I still have the original purchase, I have dutifully maintained the medium and I have made legitimate backup copies as required to maintain it and I have honestly and faithfully translated it whenever "the powers that be" have chosen to upgrade methods of media and playback. I'm sorry that I am not thrilled about your program of suppressing new artists and of periodically changing the dominant media-playing devices and media storage formats for the purpose of attempting to sell and resell the same old creations over and over and over again without ever paying the artists because they are all dead now. Exactly how legitimate do you think you are?

Second, YOU do not have the right to tell me that I do not have the right to play it. You are not the artist, not the composer, and you do not own the copyright. Furthermore, you are not employed by any government as a police organization. As it happens, none of your current or past employees have ever shown one smidgeon of the talent required to produce the kinds of music that I tend to listen to. You can talk about intellectual property rights all you want, but that doesn't mean that you have any intellect.

Stop it.