"Napster-Proof" CDs....the music industry's secret plan

Well said. You basically said everything I wanted to. Software companies found out long ago that copy protection was difficult to implement. It's going to take the dufuses in the RIAA and similar organizations a while, but epiphany will strike them, too.

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"So you say you want some intelligent responses? I say give me something intelligent to respond to." -- Dimwits beware, B-Ball freak tells it like it is. Sing it bro!

 

Oh, and another thing. Why does the EMI guy think VHS are tapes so difficult to copy? I can understand books and DVD (for now anyway), but VHS tapes?

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"So you say you want some intelligent responses? I say give me something intelligent to respond to." -- Dimwits beware, B-Ball freak tells it like it is. Sing it bro!

 

For a short while, some VHS tapes were encoded with Macrovision which was supposed to make the tapes copy-proof (well, not copy-proof, but it messed with the picture). There were several problems with this, though. 1. Sometimes, the copy protection prevented people from viewing the tapes legitimately (something that will admittedly happen with this anti-copying CD stuff), 2. Products were quickly put on the market to defeat the copy protection., and 3. It was relatively expensive to copy-protect the tapes (leading to smaller profits, something that the RIAA hasn't proven has happened because of the piracy).

You'll sometimes still see VHS tapes with Macrovision, but not all that often.

The thing that is kind of funny about this new CD copy-protection is that it will mostly prevent the legal kind of copying (making copies of an owned CD for personal use only). And if I still want my songs in the computer (and therefore potentially on a Napster-like service), all I have to do is add a step (either some software that defeats the copy-protection or by just making a tape and then using the tape to get the songs into the computer).

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Houston Sports Board

 

I read a similar article about a month ago. Within that article there was news that the end user would be able to eventually rip the tracks to his computer and ultimately to be able to burn a CD but that you would have to go through the encryption company to do that. It did not sound too difficult, but it will be a hassle. I like to rip tracks from my CDs and then create my own CDs of just the songs I like. This type of protection will make it more difficult to do this perfectly legal task.

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"The CD is the root of all of our problems with the Net," says Jay Samit, senior vice
president of new media at EMI, which is testing various copy-protection technologies. "If CDs were as hard to copy as DVDs or VHS tapes or even books, we would not be going through anything like what we're going through now with Napster or Gnutella."

While I like the idea, this guy is clueless. First off, CDs *were* as hard to copy as DVD's -- that's what made them so popular over tapes from the industry's viewpoint.

The problem is that CD-burners are now popular -- 15 years after CD's became mainstream popular. 10 years from now, I guarantee you DVDs will be as easy, if not far easier, to copy than the CD.

The Napster problem is totally different though. He says the copy-protection will make it "more difficult" to copy. Maybe, maybe not (if you can listen to it, then you can copy it). Regardless, the "beauty" of Napster is that it doesn't matter if it's difficult -- all it takes is 1 person to copy it and EVERYONE can get it off of that.

Do they really think that not one person will be able to make a copy of this copy-resistant CD?

This may help fighting small scale copying, but I doubt it will have an impact on the Napster-like problem.



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Agreed. I do that as well. In fact, I bought a CDR for that purpose. I guarantee that the record industry will be WAY behind the computer industry on this one, however.

"He was especially concerned about the songwriters," says Heatherly, because, unlike singers who can tour, songwriters depend almost entirely on CD royalties. "I've seen songwriters myself who have been close to homeless before they finally got the two or three hits that let them survive. And so when I realized how important this was to Charley, I said, 'Let's find a way to make this happen.'"

This is EXACTLY what I've been talking about with Napster. The songwriters are the one's getting killed by this because they aren't touring, selling t-shirts or doing commercials. They are sitting in a room writing the music we all hum along to and they are the one's getting the shaft.


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And then, depression set in...