For all those interested, Federal Copyright Law affords proection both ways. The artist is protected from unlawful distribution and is allowed to have distribution at the same time.

Indeed, there does not appear to be any concern over protecting access to the Copyrighted work itself. The purpose of the software lock appears to be limiting the owners use of the mobile handset to support a business model, rather than to protect access to a Copyrighted work itself.

The ability to unilaterally reprogram the firmware may well extend to the ability to universally revamp the permissions system for accessing and using ringtones, samples, games, software, pictures, and video programming".

Stary reading around pages ...
(continues)