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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.
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.
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
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?
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.
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!
How quickly we forget? Some days the mob mentality on Slashdot gets ridiculous. Less than a month ago folks were fishing for moderation points by saying "We need to go out and buy Easy CD Creator to support Roxio" (for switching to freedb). Now we have to [insert favorite action expletivehere] them?
So does this mean all the folks who claimed they were going to go out to buy a copy should now burn/sledgehammer their CD?
For me, this is an awesome idea. If I can download and burn individual songs (at a realistic "per song" price) then I don't have to pay for the entire album. I like the idea of singles (since often the rest of an album is not very appealing); however, with singles you have this useless CD with like 3 copies of the SAME song on it plus a slightly bloated price. If I can pay to DL it and create my own CD of "this month's favorites" then I don't have this annoying stack of CD's sitting in my closet.
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.
How quickly we forget? Some days the mob mentality on Slashdot gets ridiculous. Less than a month ago folks were fishing for moderation points by saying "We need to go out and buy Easy CD Creator to support Roxio" (for switching to freedb). Now we have to [insert favorite action expletivehere] them?
;)
So does this mean all the folks who claimed they were going to go out to buy a copy should now burn/sledgehammer their CD?
I had the same thought when I read this article... "Roxio good! No, wait, Roxio evil! No, Roxio good! No, evil! Good! Evil! Ow! My head hurts..."
For me, this is an awesome idea. If I can download and burn individual songs (at a realistic "per song" price) then I don't have to pay for the entire album. I like the idea of singles (since often the rest of an album is not very appealing); however, with singles you have this useless CD with like 3 copies of the SAME song on it plus a slightly bloated price. If I can pay to DL it and create my own CD of "this month's favorites" then I don't have this annoying stack of CD's sitting in my closet.
I agree...that would be nice, if the record companies were really interested in selling their hit single tracks for BYO CDs for a fair price. Unfortunatly, I doubt that that is going to happen under the current system. Why not? Think about this...today, a record company can rake in about $18 per purchase for a hit single, or maybe two. All the Top 40 groups usually have CDs with one or two good songs and a bunch of crap. Most people who buy those CDs are buying them for those one or two songs. If all of those songs were available individually for sale for a "fair" price (which I would define as $1.50 US or less per track, since the "average" CD has about 12 tracks and costs about $18), now what's going to happen? Well, the record company will probably sell just as many, if not more, copies of Boy Band's Big Hit as they would with a premade album...but now they're only taking in a buck or two per sale. Even if there are two or three "hit" tracks in an album, that's still only about $1-$2 for each track, so even the people who buy all three are only spending $3-$6. Very few people are going to waste their time and money on the other nine or ten crap songs that would normally be in an album.
Now, if the band has gone the traditional method of making an entire album with two good songs and ten crappy songs, the record company has paid them to make music that isn't going to sell under this new distribution method. And if the band or record company decides to forego the "crap" since it's no longer neccesary to fill an album with the new single-track purchase system, well, this band might turn out, say, half a dozen good songs in their lifetime, just like they would if they were using the traditional method, but now the record company is only making $1-$2 per sale on each hit instead of the $9-$18 per sale that they would get per hit by selling albums with one or two of those hit songs on them. This sucks for the record companies, because it's much easier (and cheaper) to squeeze a one-week "Top 20" hit song or two out of a random boy-band or girl group than it is to find and cultivate a group with real talent who can produce a lot of good music. And no matter how the hits fall, the record company's profit per hit has still been cut by a huge percentage.
I've always figured that this is another reason the record companies don't like Napster, et. al. Now, any potential buyer can go online and download the full tracks from an album, and then find out that only one or two are good. And since they probably don't feel like paying $18 to get the one song they really want, they'll just download it from Napster and live with the lower quality of MP3.
This is why the record companies are going to make their pay online music services so limited. Since they might be losing those profits on each hit song, they're going to make up for it by forcing users to "rent" the music by only letting them play the songs they download if they keep paying their monthly fees. This continuous income stream makes up for the profit lost because they are selling fewer $18 CDs with one good song.
DennyK
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.