Mike Rivers wrote:

On a good release, maybe they'd sell 300,000 singles,
for 1/5 the gross income. They could increase the profit margin by
only recording 2 or 3 songs instead of 15, but there still isn't
enough money in there to pay for the sushi.

Or to pay for the advertising/marketing effort it takes to sell 'em.

--
ha

In article writes:

See, I find it distracting. I want to _listen_ to music, and having
music around that I can't listen to (because I have to do something
else) is annoying.

I do both. When I listen to music, if it's not live it's in the living
room and I'm playing a CD in a real CD player. If I'm typing at the
computer, I often have some music playing, but it's whatever's on the
radio, usually classical during the day, jazz in the evening. I
haven't a clue as to what's playing and I never stop and say "I need
to buy that recording." It's just something to hide the key clicks and
make me feel like I'm not totally alone.


--
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In article writes:

So-called intellectual property legislation has changed more in the
past twenty or tweny-five years than in the previous hundred fifty.
If anything, is it ahead of the curve and should slow the hell down.

It might be moving faster than it used to, but the rate of change of
technology is still winning that race hands down.

The disgusting thing is that it's all driven by greedy *******s who
want to *take* from the public domain, but never put anything back.

You mean the greedy songwriters who want a nickel from everyone who
has a copy of their song in some tangible form where they can hear it
more than once?

Talk to some intellectual property lawyers. Most will tell you that
our current system is ****ty for everything but their billable hours.

I'll go along with that.

--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
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"Mike Rivers" wrote in message
news:znr1090364363k@trad...

Well, no, but if it's inconvenient, then find some other form of
entertainment.



It's only inconvenient when copy protected discs are involved. As a
result, I won't buy them. If people won't buy them, they don't satisfy
their stated purpose of protecting revenue streams.

--
"It CAN'T be too loud... some of the red lights aren't even on yet!"
- Lorin David Schultz
in the control room
making even bad news sound good

(Remove spamblock to reply)

?? Again, I repeat, this is not feasible. The moment *one* person has
?? cracked the scheme, the knowledge, tools and software will become
?? available all over the world in a very short space of time.

MR Not necessarily. Suppose you told me the eight steps that I had to
MR take on my PC to defeat the copy protection, and I have a Mac. I'm not
MR going to buy a PC to copy CDs.

It only takes one person to defeat the copy protection, and then spread
unprotected files.

MR And if you told me that a ripped copy was available from a certain
MR download location, I might just not be into doing that. While I
MR recognize that there are some people who will jump through many hoops
MR to get something for nothing (or even offer something so that others
MR can get it for nothing) and some will actually enjoy doing it, the
MR more complicated it is, the more people will drop out of that club.

It only takes one person to make it easy for the rest.

?? Welcome to the DRM age, an age whe
?? 1) Those pictures you took on your Nikon camera can't be uploaded to
?? your MSN website, at least without paying a (small, of course)
?? licensing fee to Microsoft. Sony cameras are not subject to the same
?? limitation, since they have several agreements and "mutual
?? understandings" in place with Microsoft.

MR However, the Sony camera costs more than the Nikon because they had to
MR pay Microsoft for the privilige of letting their customers upload to
MR the web site. (OK, so most Sony cameras don't cost more than Nikons,
MR but let's say we're comparing them feature for feature).

There are many, many more alternatives that do not increase the market price
of two hypothetically feature-identical products. Some could be
disadvantageous to the customer in rather insiduous, long-term ways (that
the customer is not even aware of). Sony could provide free or cheaper
licensing of some of its own technologies (totally unrelated to cameras) to
Microsoft. Sony could have made an agreement not to share IP with HP, or
vote against IBM's suggestions on some standards body, or . . .

MR It wasn't until Mackie came up with a $400 software upgrade that I
MR could export my Mackie HDR24/96 recordings to ProTools. And until
MR fairly recently you couldn't control ProTools with third party
MR controllers. And if I want to use a high class A/D converter to get
MR into ProTools, I have to buy at least a Digidesign digital I/O box. I
MR can't run the ProTools software without at least some of their
MR hardware, even if I'm not going to actually use it.

I'm glad you've come up with a few examples of your own, but we really have
only imagined the tip of the iceberg so far. I suggest that the addition of
legislation (e.g. DMCA) will make this far easier for companies, and way
more pervasive, if not invasive, on a scale not yet dreamed of.

The scope for leveraging and unethical (to me, anyway) customer manipulation
will open up dramatically. People will make significant investments in
certain technologies, only to find that their data becomes hugely expensive
to use (or worse, useless) down the line when the vendor changes strategies
or starts working on its share price. We already only "license" most of our
software - no-one owns it, anymore. It's not a long time until we are having
to renew licenses on a yearly basis (since the DMCA will basically prevent
us from switching products). The next logical step is that no-one will
really own the data that they create in any given program, but they will be
"licensed" to use it as the software vendor sees fit. It's no secret that at
one stage Microsoft was practically falling over itself to get customers to
keep their data on Microsoft's servers (the re-emergence of client-server
applications, .NET etc).

MR There's lots of proprietary hardware that doesn't talk to hardware
MR that functions similarly. Rubber Chicken Software had a good business
MR going for a while selling reverse-engineered "bridges" between
MR samplers.

Yeah, and it's not long until ChickenSys stuff is illegal . . . hope you've
never had reason to use it . . .

MR Perhaps a typical CD-ROM, but a pressed CD is quite robust. Probalby
MR fewer errors, so correction isn't as much of a problem. I would
MR presume that the designers of such a copy deterrent system would
MR understand how much 'error headroom' a typical CD has and would stay
MR within that budget. They don't want 50% of the CDs they sell to come
MR back. I think you're making assumptions and accusations without
MR actually looking very deeply into the work that these people have
MR done, or are planning to do. I don't know the company or their
MR reputation, but I know the CD industry and I know that they wouldn't
MR do something totally stupid.

I've already encountered playback errors on several pressed CD's (some in
better shape than others, obviously - although I am pretty careful overall),
and I do not consider that decreasing the quality of error-correction is an
option *at all*. And they probably wouldn't get returns on 50% of the CD's
produced, but you can bet that the minority with good equipment will care.

?? "Mr Rivers, we have put an el-cheapo Korean replacement part into your
?? BMW. But don't worry - just take it for a drive, and I'm sure you
?? won't notice the difference."

MR With certain parts, I'm sure I wouldn't notice the difference.
MR Besides, I have a Lexus.

Okay, so not an enthusiast, then . . .

Ryan

(Mike Rivers) wrote in message news:znr1090410026k@trad...
In article writes:

So-called intellectual property legislation has changed more in the
past twenty or tweny-five years than in the previous hundred fifty.
If anything, is it ahead of the curve and should slow the hell down.

It might be moving faster than it used to, but the rate of change of
technology is still winning that race hands down.

I totally disagree. Recent legislation has stifled a lot of innovation.
Ask a thoughtful software developer how big a risk they think writing
& releasing a new program is and whether they are concerned about
being sued for violating some stealth patent.

The chill being put on innovation is directly attributable to the law
getting ahead of the theory of intellectual "property", and foreclosing
on a lot of innovation before it even happens.

The disgusting thing is that it's all driven by greedy *******s who
want to *take* from the public domain, but never put anything back.

You mean the greedy songwriters who want a nickel from everyone who
has a copy of their song in some tangible form where they can hear it
more than once?

If they, and more importantly their corporate assignees, weren't being
granted 95 year -- permanent, for all intents -- monopolies, I'd be cool
with it.

The sole purpose of copyright (and patents) is to encourage the contribution
of intellectual works to the public domain. You, like most people, seem to
have it backward. Don't take my word for it: read some history.

Talk to some intellectual property lawyers. Most will tell you that
our current system is ****ty for everything but their billable hours.

I'll go along with that.

OK, so what's better? No pie in the sky, no assumptions about people
behaving well, no self-interested thinking, no Brave New World: what's
the "right" thing for society to tell its legislators to do?

-DrBoom

In article writes:

It only takes one person to make it easy for the rest.

But it takes the tree a lot longer to grow when you start with one
seed than with a few hundred.

Yeah, and it's not long until ChickenSys stuff is illegal . . . hope you've
never had reason to use it . . .

I remember that some company that made an SCMS stripper got sued and
took their product off the market. The basis for the lawsuit was that
it had no other purpose other than to assist you in breaking the law.
On the other hand, I have one from Digital Domains that's sold as a
"format converter" and M-audio sells one, too.

In Virgina where I live, it's illegal to have a radar detector in your
car for the same reason as the above - it serves no useful function
other than to assist you in breaking the law. If they catch you with
one, they confiscate it (though they're nice and let you keep your
car). They ought to start confiscating hard drives.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

In article writes:

I totally disagree. Recent legislation has stifled a lot of innovation.
Ask a thoughtful software developer how big a risk they think writing
& releasing a new program is and whether they are concerned about
being sued for violating some stealth patent.

Not that argument again! I'm out.

We live in a litigious society. If there's a chance for a lawsuit,
someone will sue.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

In article writes:

On Thu, 22 Jul 2004 00:11:42 +0200, Mike Rivers wrote:

I remember that some company that made an SCMS stripper got sued and
took their product off the market.

I've been told the SCMS does not work if you copy to harddisk and back.

Most DAW software and hardware doesn't apply or read SCMS codes, but
seems like I've heard of some that does. But SCMS is pretty much
outmoded these days now that just about everyone who would want to
make a "perfect clone" of a digital recording is already screwing
themselves by converting to a compressed MP3 format.

I think as long as you can hear the audio, copy protection is almost
impossible. At least enforcement of it is impossible.

The old (and rejected) Copycode claimed to work through analog copying
because it actually took a slice out of the spectrum. There were some
watermarking systems that never made it to market which also made the
same claim. But you're right - enforcement is nearly impossible. The
best you can do is make it difficult enough to make a good copy that a
significant number of people won't bother doing it.

The problem is that the musicindustry is based on a bussiness model that
assumes copying of audio is difficult. It isn't.

They know that, and that's why they're trying to figure out how to
make money, or at least not lose money, from copying.

The musicindustry should switch to a new model, from selling millions of
copies of a single recording to selling from a huge catalogue with lots
of diversity. With current technology this now is feaseble.

The problem is that there doesn't seem to be enough saleable material
on a unit basis. That's why they have to sell one or two songs, charge
you for 15, and throw in 13 or 14 songs for free. That's the model.

Maybe they should just stop selling CDs entirely and the real
musicians can just go out busking on the streets.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

?? It only takes one person to make it easy for the rest.

MR But it takes the tree a lot longer to grow when you start with one
MR seed than with a few hundred.

This is patently false, both in nature, and in the world of well connected
networks, such as the Internet.

MR I remember that some company that made an SCMS stripper got sued and
MR took their product off the market. The basis for the lawsuit was that
MR it had no other purpose other than to assist you in breaking the law.
MR On the other hand, I have one from Digital Domains that's sold as a
MR "format converter" and M-audio sells one, too.

Well, GUESS WHAT . . .?

NEWSFLASH!!!

BLINKING NEON LIGHTS

Any kind of format converter that involves some kind of alleged "reverse
engineering" could soon be
illegal. Doesn't matter whether you created the data stream or not. Doesn't
matter whether your intentions were legal or not. If the manufacturer tells
you not to convert, you shall be legally obliged to obey. You had better
hope that there are enough "nice" companies around or that market forces
prevail, 'cause the law certainly won't be on your side . . .

/BLINKING NEON LIGHTS

Ryan

Ryan Mitchley wrote:

MR I remember that some company that made an SCMS stripper got sued and
MR took their product off the market. The basis for the lawsuit was that
MR it had no other purpose other than to assist you in breaking the law.
MR On the other hand, I have one from Digital Domains that's sold as a
MR "format converter" and M-audio sells one, too.

Well, GUESS WHAT . . .?

NEWSFLASH!!!

BLINKING NEON LIGHTS

Any kind of format converter that involves some kind of alleged "reverse
engineering" could soon be
illegal. Doesn't matter whether you created the data stream or not. Doesn't
matter whether your intentions were legal or not. If the manufacturer tells
you not to convert, you shall be legally obliged to obey. You had better
hope that there are enough "nice" companies around or that market forces
prevail, 'cause the law certainly won't be on your side . . .

/BLINKING NEON LIGHTS


This has nothing to do with reverse-engineering. The S-PDIF subcode is
available in the published standard. It's a universal standard that
everyone in the industry more or less followed.

The notion is that the SCMS subcode exists to prevent people from making
direct DAT dubs from CDs or original DAT tapes, and that any box that
prohibits this can be used for making illegal copies. In truth this turns
out to be a non-issue since DAT never made it as a consumer format and
CD-Rs have since totally blown everything up. But at the time many of
the major record companies were up in arms about direct digital copies
being possible, which is why we got saddled with SCMS in the first place
(which was a major pain back in the early digital days when tweaking bits
on the fly was less trivial a task). At least we didn't get the goddamn
1KC notch filter that Columbia was pushing.
--scott


--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."