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CD burning Will Never Be The Same
mooneyguy writes: "Reuters is reporting that EMI has just announced a partnership with Roxio (you know, the "toast" and "Easy CD Creator" folks). They have also bought a minority stake in the company. The potential impact here is scary. Roxio's Duea is quoted: 'Our goal is to enable consumers to legally download and record music to CD in a consumer-friendly manner while fairly compensating copyright owners and creators...' What changes now are forthcoming in their software to force this "fair compensation"? And how far will those changes penetrate throughout the industry? This can't be good for the consumer. Roxio has also come forth with a press release announcing this partnership. In it they announce "EMI will work to develop ways for consumers to easily record authorized music onto recordable CDs" and, even better, 'We want to continue to work with leaders in the music industry, like EMI, to not only provide for the protection of their digital content, but also to enable record companies and artists to get paid for burning.' Yikes!" Anybody else notice how stores like Walmart and Target are pushing the Music CD-Rs more and more? Hmmmm.
Come on. Slashdot has been like this for ages.
"Sony is in the RIAA. They're evil. Boycott them."
"Sony is in the MPAA. They're evil. Boycott them."
"Oh, look, Sony has the PS2! I've got to go buy one right now!"
This has obviously been the next logical step in the evolution of CD-R. For the longest time, people (especially here on /.) have been debating the pros and cons of taxes on the CD-R drvies, or taxes on the actual CD-R's which are meant to help compensate those musicians (read greedy RIAA). Obviously, that's a long way away (and likely to never happen), so the next logical step is software control, and here it comes via Easy CD Creator. Too bad there's a lot more better writing programs out there that are free.
They do accomplish their goal here though. they are slowly making it harder for the average Joe to pirate music. Generally, I don't think that the RIAA, MPAA and whoever else really cares if the whole slashdot crowd pirates their music (we're the geeks, we'll always have the ability to pirate). But when Joe Blow sitting next to you has to so much as scratch his head to pirate music, they've won.
Sorry for posting anonymous coward :)
I have zero confidence in the industry's ability (or more important, their willingness) to produce a solution that repsects this fair use type of copying. Those a**holes would love to make fair use a thing of the past. If they can't do it by changing the law, they'll do it by ruining all the available tools.
Normally, that wouldn't matter. I'd just say, "Screw them, I'll use my own burning software". The specs are public, there's a plethora of CD burner software. But the badly worded DMCA will make those tools become illegal because they "circumvent" a protection scheme, even if that protection scheme wasn't invented until after the fact, and even if that protection scheme is so badly implemented that ignoring it is acutally the default if your software wasn't written to notice it.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Well, I truly believe in freedom. But you're backwards, my friend.
In a state of perfect freedom, *everyone* can disseminate works, provided that they have them. In a state of total oppression, only the creator can disseminate works - others have the ability to, as granted by God, and the natural right to, which we call Freedom of Speech, but the exercise of their rights and abilities are denied them by an interfering authority.
Your freedom is oppression, and your oppression is freedom.
That said, there may be, and in fact _are_ socially desirable consequences of enacting a carefully devised and moderate system wherein rights are circumscribed, but it is impossible to call this freedom. It's just practical - don't flaunt it as anything but.
The real point of copyright is not to enshrine natural moral rights artists posess, since there simply are none. It is to encourage artists to create as many useful works as possible, in order that they may be freely used without regard to the artist. A temporary and limited monopoly on certain instances of dissemination is granted to the artist, but it is a means to an end, and never ever an end in itself.
And even then, the real system is not like you describe. Artists do not have absolute rights to dictate how their works are disseminated. No artist can rightfully deny a fair use of their work. (such as its inclusion within a transformative work) No artist can rightfully prevent their work from entering the public domain, whereupon the limits that people willingly suffer are lifted.
And certainly this isn't a matter of stealing - it's a matter of copyright infringement, which could also be considered illegally exercising natural rights to which only the copyright holder and his designees have permission to exercise. (roughly)
Ideas are not property. Even works are not property, though the medium they are within may - _may_ - be. A book is property; the words are not. A statue is property; the shape is not. Yet reproduce either into another medium which you impeccably own, and you have transgressed. Words are not things, and we actually do not treat them as such. What is illegal is not the thing, but the act of copying them - the exercise of rights that you're not permitted to exercise. Thus, infringement.
As for the Roxio system itself, I can see a significant flaw. It imposes burdens for copyright holders to make use of it to exercise their own legal rights. This treads dangerously close to copyright infringement. (as copyrights must be exclusively assigned to the creator, unless he transfers or expands them) In my capacity in my job, I've made copies of CDs for musicians with ordinary equipment. Prohibiting this is just not a good thing.
Besides which, the courts have found that it is entirely outside the scope of copyright to preclude the copying of works from one medium to another, aka "space shifting." Statutory exceptions exist for many other classes of works. (for instance, any software you legally own or lease may be backed up all you please) There is no need to require that the original source be used, or that you prove to the satisfaction of an inanimate hunk of junk that you may legally do so; posession and performing the copy oneself is all.
Ultimately, no computer program in the world will _ever_ be a substitute for a court. We have perfectly good mechanisms in place for determining if copies are legally or illegally made and disseminated, and that entire framework exists within the domain that we collectively through our government allow it to. Copyrights for music could vanish tomorrow if we really wanted them to - there'd be nothing wrong with it, they aren't manditory.
Software cannot make the kinds of decisions human beings are capable of, it's not a substitute. We should not try to allow it to attempt to be one as it'll inevitably be sorely lacking.
Me, I'm an artist, and that's how I earn my daily bread. Nevertheless, I know the place that I and my bretheren occupy. It is *not* one that deserves dear privleges.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I'm sorry. I have friends who are music majors and are, IMHO, millions of times better than the likes of Brittany Spears.
Even if you think Spears is the greatest musician ever, I still doubt that she puts the same amount of work into truely mastering music that my friends have.
I'm going to argue that it is better for regional stars to arise because people like them, not because some fat cat record company propped them up.
I know some fantastic jazz musicians who play for a subsistance lifestyle that enables them to spend all their time doing what they love.
Perhaps art is dead elsewhere, but where I come from we like our local bands. Many of our local bands are every bit as good as anyone else, and they are funner to listen to because they are people.
-Peter
. Penguins Surely Ca
that new cd R/W units will have a coin slot?
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
For Windows:
.ogg files into the track window and have them burn out to normal CD Audio files. Is this the first burning app to offer this feature?
Beginner: NTI's software (http://www.nticdmaker.com/index.cfm)
Advanced: Nero
http://www.ahead.de/en/index2.htm
For Linux:
Gnometoaster
(http://gnometoaster.rulez.org)
kisocd
(http://kisocd.sourceforge.net)
Or cdrecord directly for Win32, Linux, Mac, BeOS, Solaris and more.
Hey, for those of you not following, Andy (the developer for Gnometoaster) has released a 1.0Beta1 of the excellent Gnometoaster burning app.
One of the nifty new features is the ability to DnD
Ben
I mean, if a song is encoded in such a way that it has a "security bit" turned on (say, uh, bit 1 turned on means "copyrighted") and all the commercial burning software "respects" this convention, then either Nero has to refuse to burn as well or it's "circumventing a technology intended to protect copyright" and becomes illegal.
Or am I missing something?
-------------------
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
First of all, Nero is not a freeware program. From what I gather it is a well known and versatile Windows program for CD authoring etc.
Anyway, I didn't have to look for it, It came bundled with my YAMAHA CD-RW drive. I also got Easy CD Creator bundled with a cheap SCSI controller I bought for an old system. Considering that I don't use Windows, have no use for Windows CD authoring software and would never bother finding and downloading one, it was quite easy getting hold of it, wasn't it?
Oh well, I'll just go on using mkisofs/cdrecord.
No, because it is not reasonable or normal for CDR copying software to look inside the files that it copies. They have worked blindly for many many years. Thus, the bit cannot conceivable be said to "effectively control access".
It's bascially way too late (by more than a decade) to establish a brand new convention for writing CDs.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Are we talking about the Easy CD Creator 4-5 which has been destroying W2K and W95 machines? The above links say that the Microsoft instructions might not save your machine. Be careful out there.
Let's say I want to create a mix CD from live concert MP3s. Since this is /., let's say we're talking about the Minibosses, who distribute their unsigned MP3s freely. Will I be able to do it with Roxio's awesome software, without the cracks that will inevitably be released within a week of release?
Stealing is stealing, but this isn't stealing. It's copyright infringement. Theft is the act of taking something away from someone with the intent of depriving that person of possessing what you've taken. Copying zeroes and ones while leaving the original data intact is not stealing, and U.S. law (on a good day) has different laws regarding each. All those mp3 lawsuits you keep reading about are for copyright infringement, not theft.
No I don't. But treating gnutella like a 24-hour all-request radio station does help me make smarter purchasing decisions about my music.
How does adding a corpo-funded layer of complexity to CD burning software make it easier for me to buy more music? Sounds like all it does is make it easier for EMI and their colleagues to keep CD prices nutrageously high, just to fund more copy-protection schemes like this one.
A question: How will Roxio prevent users from decoding MP3s into WAV/AIFFs, then burning them? Will it all of a sudden become morally wrong to burn arbitrary AIFFs? Somebody better tell the budding garage bands of the world that they are not welcome to use Roxio software.
< tofuhead >
--
It is still the dark of night.
I think you have a seriously naive view of how musicians, and the music industry, works.
Almost all the great musicians have become great before getting 'signed' and 'famous'. They get good by playing in small, cheap shows over and over and over. Then, once they can make good music, they become famous (usually when they are signed by a record company). They don't get signed, start getting paid big $, and then get good.
In recent times, the record companies have noticed that 'sex sells' and started signing good-looking people with no or little talent. These people are paid insane amounts of money but I guarantee that their skill does not improve at all.
If there is no money in music, then a lot of the best musicians will simply cease to exist.
You are so very, very wrong. If you do some background research into past musicians, you will find that NONE of them became rich and famous before they became a great musician. They all became great musicians, then became rich and famous (some, maybe most, never became rich and only famous after they died).
a lot of the best musicians will never happen unless they are able to practice all day, every day, and you can't do that unless you do it professionally.
I see you're not a musician!
And no, 200 years ago Mozart or whoever DID NOT do it on an amateur basis. They were paid by either royalty, upper class citizens or the church.
Hmm...I think it's called 'a gig'? Believe it or not, there are a lot of musicians who are paid exactly that way today! And, Mozart was composing at the age of eight. Exactly how much cash do you think he was getting at that age?
Download all patches for Windows-based CD-burning software today.
Install Linux tomorrow.
Suppose they pulled the plug on useful hardware today. Every manufacturer on the planet goes to copy control, no exceptions, and nobody ever cracks it. (This is of course, impossible. But let's go with the doomsday scenario for a bit.)
Given the number of ATs and XTs at my local surplus store, and the time it's taken to have them gradually replaced with 386s and 486s, I'd say we have at least a 10-15 year supply of useful hardware ahead of us.
And given the age of some of the older pieces of hardware in my collection, I'd say we have at least another 10 years, probably more, before that supply of useful hardware starts to fail.
If Copy Control Doomsday happened tomorrow, we'd have about 25 years before we had to worry. Spare parts purchased now, run for 6 months (to shake out any cases of "infant mortality") and stored in anti-static bags, will be just as good 25 years from now as they are today.
For less than $1000, you can buy enough hard drive storage and multiple sets of spare parts to store 100G of MP3s and have at least one system capable of playing them back for the rest of your natural life.
My old CD burning software didn't care about copy control.
My old CD burning software did things my new CD burning software doesn't do.
My old CD burning software was more functional - I could do more things with it than I can the new version.
What's wrong about it is that there are people trying to pass off downgrades as upgrades.
If your local Porsche dealer said "By the way, the new model Porsche has a rev-limiter hooked up to a GPS system that prevents you from going faster than 55 mph! It's so much better than last year's model!", you'd slap him silly, and you'd be right to slap him silly whether you ever intended to drive over the speed limit or not.
So in essence this company thinks that either by offering a program to burn mp3's to cd will halt what they call illegal thievery? I doubt it in fact why would someone who allegedly steals cd's go out and buy this software when they could continue with their normal bypassing ways.
Is it me or does this reak with this notion;
By creating these so called programs I personally think they sort of force people to go out and rip more since your sort of telling someone USE THIS TO DO THIS. People should have choices, and while I do see the pro's and con's of Napster I also see somebody somewhere along the lines of Roxio, the Artists complaining, RIAA, $INSERT_TARGET_HERE don't have a really good clue yet.
Maybe these people should go and read Bruce Schneier's "The Futility of Digital Copy Prevention" article word for word, and come to a better conclusion instead of thinking some lawsuit, or some program is going to be the answer to people ripping mp3's and doing whatever the heck they want with them.
Want Root?
Exactly! And that is why you will simply not be able to do many legal things in the future, if the industry goes the RIAA/MPAA/SDMI/... way. Look: You are legally permitted to make VCR copies as many as you want. But - without extra effort - you cannot. Why? Because of Macrovision. You can legally buy a DVD, and legally buy a DVD Player, and the player will refuse to play your DVD, because it thinks that you might be in the wrong country. My MD player refuses to copy my own recordings digitally, because by allowing digital copies there is the slight possiblity of maybe me committing a sinister crime (i.e. distributing copyrighted music)!
You would be perfectly legal if you could copy your CDs in the future, only you cannot. That is what "they" want, and if the industry complies, in 5 years CDs will be obsolete. What can be done with stupid laws (DMCA) will be done that way, and where they cannot castrate your basic human rights (freedom of speech for example) the industry will simply take away the technical means for exercising them, and sue every company who doesn't comply.
Look at this article for details about what's wrong with copy protection.
Remember: CDs are just about the only digital Hi-Fi media left that do not have some form of copy protection! They must be destroyed, because every CD owner is a potential criminal!
Home Page
Let's say I own quite a few CDs that are no longer readable. This is happening quite often for some of the older CDs that I own -- KMFDM's "Naive", The Cult's "Electric", Meat Beat Manifesto's "Armed Audio Warfare", etc. Some songs won't play in a regular CD player and none will rip into MP3s.
There's no way I'm going to buy these CDs again (even if they are still in print) because I already own them. Therefore, I downloaded MP3s of the songs off LimeWire and add them to my iTunes music library. As far as I'm concerned, downloading MP3s of songs I own is the same as inserting the disc and ripping them myself. In fact, converting your CDs into MP3s has a hundred advantages over discs, including being generally immune to the paint-leaking-though-the-plastic syndrome that seems to affect lesser discs.
Now, I'm not going to explain to Roxio the above situation, and I don't want to have the hassle of dealing with some goofy digital signature "feature". I like to listen to music, not fsck around with digital signatures or whatever so that "the artist can be compensated" -- we all know that Roxio means it's the RIAA and the music labels that will be compensated.
I expect that Roxio will add some annoying feature because that's the way they run their business. I've had to buy three copies of Toast ($99 ea): once for Mac OS 8 capability, once for Mac OS 8.5 capability, once for Mac OS 9 capability. Toast had no new features I wanted, but I had to buy to use the software with the new OS. This is crazy because Adaptec (now Roxio) never offer an upgrade price. "Oh, you upgraded your OS? Where's our $100?"
I am now more than happy to use the free Disc Burner software that Apple provides. iTunes is better than the SoundJam/Toast hack, and it's much easier to burn indexed CDs with Disc Burner than Toast anyway.
If nothing else, Apple's free disc burning software will make Roxio think twice about charging for a simple compatibility upgrade. It doesn't matter anyway; they lost me as a customer a long time ago.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
I mean, if a song is encoded in such a way that it has a "security bit" turned on (say, uh, bit 1 turned on means "copyrighted") and all the commercial burning software "respects" this convention, then either Nero has to refuse to burn as well or it's "circumventing a technology intended to protect copyright" and becomes illegal.
IANAL, etc, but right now copying all of the bits in a file is not illegal. If someone changes the meaning of bit 1147 at some point, do they suddenly and retroactively take ownership of bit 1147 on all of my own files? What about the 250 CDs of mine that I legally ripped to mp3 for my personal use over the past couple of weeks? Can that retroactively be made a crime?
What I *do* with my copied files might be illegal (if I share them, which I don't), but I don't think you can easily distinguish between the physical act of making a backup copy of something, and making a backup copy you intend to distribute, etc. Squishy territory to be sure, but I think we're still safe as far as the actual backing up of program and data files goes. I would think that as long as copy programs can be used for legal purposes, their use can't be criminalized.
TomatoMan
-- http://frobnosticate.com
Roxio can do whatever they want. They are not obligated to anyone for anything and that includes CD writing software. Why do you think they owe you their software?
Anyway, there will always be a need for data CDs and there is no way to diffrentiate between kinds of data. As longs as those mp3 CD players keep coming out, this partnership is meaningless.
"Intellectual property" is not a concept supported in law until quite recently, really -- think of it. The idea is that somehow this type of property is not a physical thing, something that the theft of which would deprive the owner of its use. IP is the incredible idea that patterns of bits are a piece of inventory that can be somehow taken from some metaphysical warehouse. Digital copying removes the scarcity factor from the market -- we must adjust to this somehow.
Why is that? Is it because the record companies and associated studios have near-monopoly on publication, marketing, and distribution, so they set incredible prices for which the bands must sell their souls? How is home recording doing this to them? Is it not in fact the record companies, not the listeners, that impoverish the bands?
Maybe they didn't sell out because not enough people thought them a good enough draw to buy a ticket. No one promised musicians that they could make a living at it. Hell, the market is oversaturated with them -- there just aren't enough customers to make all of them wealthy, or even give them enough money to give up their day jobs. And let's not forget that the bulk of the money spent on concerts and albums go into the companies' pockets -- it takes a long, long time for a band to pay back its "bill" to the company. Intentionally.
What industry bribed congress to let us make copies?
Sales are not down, an impressive thing considering that the economy has downturned. Napster did nothing perceptible to music sales. Not that this is an argument. Buggy whip manufacturers took a lasting hit from the auto industry.
Congress made Fair Use copying legal because in classic theory, when I bought the record, tape, CD, whatever, I owned the item. I could copy it, sell it to someone (right of First Sale), set it on fire, write on its pristine surface. No one considered the owner of the media to be merely licensing "intellectual property". The owner owned the tape, the book, the CD. This was settled by the Supremes over a decade ago.
What seems to be happening today is that the federal judiciary was seeded over two decades with pro-business judges who seem to think that law should enable businesses to make profits in a time-honored fashion even if that fashion is obsolete. IP is a concept that is being molded by the collective rulings of some really misguided jurists -- we are losing First Sale rights, Fair Use rights, and the concept that we actually own the CD or whatever we paid for at the store. This is not good, people.
I don't really care if companies like Roxio will stop making ripping-friendly software... as a zillion other posters have pointed out, we can always use other software (or other OS's, if need be).
:)
Here's the thing, though, that's scary. When will they start going after the HARDWARE makers? If I was an bastard record company exec, I would go after the CD-ROM drive manufacturers and fight against the digital audio extraction (DAE) feature. Because without that, you can't rip songs directly from a CD. Sure, you could do an analog rip, but that's a pain in the ass (and usually sounds like ass).
Are there any uses for DAE, besides ripping music? It's seems to me that's pretty much it's sole purpose... used to be, in the days of 8x (and lesser) cd-rom drives, a lot of drives didn't even support DAE and they worked fine for everything but ripping.
So, to me, based on the $#$%#$ evil laws that we have in America it would be hard to defend the inclusion of the DAE feature. Not saying that's right, but basically, from a functional standpoint... DSS:DVD = DAE:CD. You know what I mean? Please, someone correct me if I'm wrong in a legal sense. I hope I am.
One good thing: the hardware manufacturers WILL fight efforts by the RIAA, et al, to defend their hardware's ability to rip music... because as another poster pointed out, ripping/burning/downloading music is pretty much the only new "killer app" for PC's these days.
http://www.bootyproject.org
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
When you get into bed with a giant, you gotta expect he'll roll over during the night. Roxio's management seems to be so ignorant of a fact that's left a string of empty buildings from Fisherman's Wharf to Los Gatos that they've gotten into bed with two giants.
This is called the Dance of the Doomed.
The only sensible advice to shareholders of ROXI is contained in the subject line.
If you don't own any shares in Roxio -- and why you'd have held any after their announcement of the alliance with MSFT escapes me -- and if you don't use their Easy CD Creator/Direct CD -- another "in God's name, why?" kind of practice --this is a NOP. Roxio won't be here to worry about this time next year.
And if there's anybody on /. who didn't already know that Windows and Office XP were going to be very nasty propositions -- helLOOOOOOO!
CD players refuse to play audio off a "non-music" (really non-audio) CD-R. You can still copy files off a CD-ROM drive, but the play function on it or on a stereo only would work with an audio CD-R.
Not exactly. The stereos that have been coming out lately that can burn CDs will refuse to use non-audio CDs. But CD players (including these stereos IINM) do still play music off of non-audio CDRs. Heck, I have a regular, non-audio CDR in my CD player right now, and it works just fine.
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I am getting damn sick of constantly losing karma for no reason.
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
No, BETA lost out because of the booming porn industry.
Sony apparently refused to let pornos be released on BETA, so VHS took over.
You're confusing BetaMax with VCC 2000. As far as i know BetaMax 'lost' for the same reason MCA failed; licensing fees.
use another CD burner, or don't upgrade Toast. Roxio loses money. Fuck 'em.
I'm still using the Adaptec Easy CD Creator 3.5c that came with my Plextor burner, and for a very good reason; 4.0 not only managed to totally fuck up my cd's but insisted i install IE 5.5, which i refused to do. Why do i need IE 5.5 to burn CD's??? Also, Feurio is much better for burning music cd's...
Easy way around that; use another CD writing program.
With the problems that Easy CD has been having, that's probably a good idea anyway.
The reference to the 'Music CD-Rs' is another of the music industry's daft ideas. From the CD-R FAQ: http://www.cdrfaq.org/faq07.html#S7-17
So potentially expect to see Easy CD whinge if you try and burn audio onto an ordinary data CD. I doubt they'd be silly enough to block it, but pop up a warning and your average user gets worried enough to think maybe they ought to buy those 'Music CD-Rs' after all.
This strengthens your argument, since they have already succeeded in restricting your exercise of fair use without you even knowing it.
This is the right principle, the only question is the execution. If you think this is bad, then you are part of the problem, not the solution.
I want to be able to pay the artists money for their songs. Up until now, there simply is no way to give money if you want to download an electronic version. If they allow me to pay a reasonable price to download a song, then I will gladly pay it.
The only question is whether they are going to put restrictions on what I can do with my purchased song for my personal use. If there is any copy restriction, then that obviously is not acceptable.
But this knee-jerk reaction to any kind of paying for music is just stupid. If there is no money in music, then a lot of the best musicians will simply cease to exist. Yes, we will always have amateur musicians, but a lot of the best musicians will never happen unless they are able to practice all day, every day, and you can't do that unless you do it professionally. There is a reason why professional athletes, for example, will kick almost any amateur's ass.
And no, 200 years ago Mozart or whoever DID NOT do it on an amateur basis. They were paid by either royalty, upper class citizens or the church. In fact, most artists were compensated in that way. Art and money have always gone hand in hand. Anyone who thinks otherwise is naive (and impractical).
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
use another CD burner, or don't upgrade Toast. Roxio loses money. Fuck 'em.
sulli
RTFJ.
This really is the new killer app. Think of Apple's "Rip, Mix, Burn" ads. Of course the industry is running scared ... serves 'em right.
sulli
RTFJ.
All you know-it-all, pole-in-ass types are so sure that you're morally superior, that every Napster or Gnutella user is out there stealing music. Well, there are LEGAL uses for Napster that DO involve downloading lots of music.
FOR EXAMPLE:
I own about 1,000 CDs. I own a tablet PC which I carry around with me nearly everywhere I go and which doubles as my memopad-sized MP3 walkman. Now I could spend hours encoding songs from CD to MP3 each morning so that I can carry around the music that I want, but that's not really time-effective. What do I do? I download the songs that someone else has already encoded. And what's more, sometimes in the middle of the day I find myself wanting that one particular song that I don't have loaded into the PC at the moment. What do I do? Pop on to one of the OpenNap servers and grab the song. If some of you had your way, I'd have to run home, find the CD, encode the track on my desktop PC, IR it to my tablet and run back to work -- or forego listening to it. Buy why should I have to forego listening to it if I've already BOUGHT the damn thing?
I've bought every CD that ever contained a song I liked. I can show you the matching CD from every song I've ever downloaded. I'm not stealing, and I resent the implication that just because I use the MP3 format or visit Napster/OpenNap sites I'm some sort of criminal.
And just to prove that I'm ON TOPIC, I've even burned a few MP3 CDs that I downloaded. How is this legal? Well, I've been through some albums (Black Crowes SHMC, Fiona Apple Tidal, etc.) 4+ times, buying the damn CD each time, because they've been scratched so much they start to skip. Now for the ones I really like, where quality is really important, I will always buy the CD again (paying royalties EACH time, even though I'm only one listener), but for some of them which aren't worth THAT much to me, I'll just grab the non-working tracks off the net and re-burn the entire CD with the skipping tracks replaced. Voila. FIXED CD. That I already paid for.
And aside from these black-and-white issues, I don't see ANY problem with grabbing an MP3 from a CD I own and sending it to a friend in e-mail with "Hey man, check this track out!" in the message body. I lend my CDs out. Sometimes friends copy them to tape, I'm sure. That doesn't give me any guilt pangs and neither do MP3s.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I can stream
Artist, studio get paid. Roxio keeps selling software subscriptions. Consumer gets a cheap, easy alternative to buying at the store. Everyone wins.
REALLY bad .wav file to a CD, even the ones I already own. Now, I pay for the "privilege" of making my own Best of Iron Maiden, Vol. 1 - 4 because I don't feel like lugging 20 discs around in my car all the time. I pay for the "privilege" of having a burned copy of Seventh Son of a Seventh Son at work, so I can keep the original at home.
I have to pay the studio *anytime* I burn a
Consumer pay more money to legally use media she has already purchased. She seeks out less restrictive alternatives. Roxio loses money she may have spent on software. Artist, studio loses money she might have spent for an album that is worth $8 to her but certainly not $16. She considers boycotting studio and Roxio who tried to fuck her through ill-conceived business plan to bleed legitimate consumers of more money. Everybody loses.
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We want some answers and all that we get
Some kind of shit about a terrorist threat
- Ministry
This will stop only the people who are ignorant to their options or too lazy to find a different route.
If an mp3 search engine gets axed (or a file-trading service has its hands tied) it doesn't slow the people who use IRC or FTP. Sure it's less convenient for most, but it doesn't stop the practice.
If Adaptec handicaps their product, it will only make other burning software more appealing. If you're reading slashdot, you're probably capable of finding an alternative.
that's why we have other programs like Nero out there. So what if Joe-Schmoe uses Easy CD Creator and has to pay a small fee. Your average computer geeks will still be using Nero or some 'other' program out there.
Really, when you get down to it, this could be a big mistake. Nothing could drive more people to a different product than creating some sort of burn-payment scheme. Nero and others like it should be happy.