iTMS discussed in ‘The Tyranny of Copyright?’

“In opposition to the cultural commons stands the ‘permission culture,’ an epithet the Copy Left uses to describe the world it fears our current copyright law is creating. Whereas you used to own the CD or book you purchased, in the permission culture it is more likely that you’ll lease (or ‘license’) a song, video or e-book, and even then only under restrictive conditions: read your e-book, but don’t copy and paste any selections; listen to music on your MP3 player, but don’t burn it onto a CD or transfer it to your stereo.

The Copy Left sees innovations like iTunes, Apple’s popular online music store, as the first step toward a society in which much of the cultural activity that we currently take for granted—reading an encyclopedia in the public library, selling a geometry textbook to a friend, copying a song for a sibling—will be rerouted through a system of micropayments in return for which the rights to ever smaller pieces of our culture are doled out. ‘‘Sooner or later,’’ predicts Miriam Nisbet, the legislative counsel for the American Library Association, ‘you’ll get to the point where you say, ‘Well, I guess that 25 cents isn’t too much to pay for this sentence,’ and then there’s no hope and no going back.’”