The Lonely Goatherd Blog And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats - Matthew 25:32
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Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
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All original content on MoreThings.com copyright 2008 Albert Barger or the respective authors
January 20, 2003
Fair fighting and stupid tactics So they're pushing this new software called Microsoft Windows Media Data Session Toolkit. [HERE and HERE for the news story.] Naturally I am skeptical, both as a purchaser of factory CDs and as a user of MP3s.
From the Reuters story:
It enables music labels to lay songs onto a copy-controlled CD in multiple layers, one that would permit normal playback on a stereo and a PC.
The PC layer, laid digitally on the same disc, can be modified by the content provider, so that they could prevent, for example, burning songs onto another CD, said David Fester, general manager, digital media entertainment for Microsoft.
First off, let me say that I support the right of the record companies to put out whatever kind of coding they want to, so long as it is not maliciously taking over people's computers. To some partial extent, the record companies have legitimate concerns about massive downloading of their recent material. I would not support legal blockages against companies encrypting their music software anymore than I would support legal blockages against people encrypting their email.
This sounds like a bunch more crappy, complicated programing to screw up the basic product, though. The record companies seem to think that they'll just get the right technological and legal strokes, and they'll get to keep screwing consumers as hard as they want and as long as they want with quadruple pricing of CDs and endless extensions of copyrights.
Hint: it will not work. Whatever kind of blocking and encryption you come up with will take some high school kid about 20 minutes to bust up, and there won't be anything you or your schills in government can do to prevent it. All you're going to do is to come up with something to cause more problems for paying customers wanting to use your product.
Indeed, this could lead to even MORE and accelerated sucking on their sales charts. I know that I for one will not pay good money for CDs that are screwy. Nor will I pay for them even if this code works smoothly as planned; when I pay money for the CD I absolutely expect to be able to make backup copies or MP3 files or mix tapes for personal use. Damned if I'm going to pay money for something I can't use.
Specifically, if a CD comes from the factory with limiting encryption, I'll not buy such an inferior product. Instead, I'll make a point of getting a nice clean MP3 off the net after someone cracks it, which means the record company gets NOTHING. Then I will laugh.
This is not just me making a political point; it is a practical personal matter to everyone who buys CDs. Stupid encryption programming will motivate even a lot of people who are not particularly interested in the political issues, even wealthy people who don't mind blowing wads of money on the cartel products. Who will pay the bucks to buy a commercial product that is actively inferior to what they can download on the net for free?
