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Music Industry Forcing WMA standard?
CtrlPhreak writes "Cnet news.com has a story up stating that the music industry is considering having cds that contain the un-rippable tracks as well as the windows media formatted files with limited uses ala Microsoft's digital rights management. Just one more brick in Microsoft's continuing monopoly..." And another format that I can't play back. Hope this one dies fast.
Putting monopoly/copyright issues aside for a moment, requiring a WMA version means you lose at least 10% (at 128Kbit), which means that the maximal length would be more like 70min instead of 78min.
This would change the artists presentation of the music itself.
Ok.
Am I not the only one who thinks that, if you can get a signal out of a CD (be it digital or analog), that the music is therefore RIPPABLE. The ONLY way to make it impossible for me to copy a song is to make it impossible for me to listen to the damn thing.
If I can hear it (copying to my brain) then I can copy anywhere else. If they want to make it impossible to play on my computer... oooh ahhh I'll plug it into my non-computer CD player and pipe it into my computer.
Come on, this repeated topic is getting old and pointless.
Can't you still use analog rips?
Sure - it'll sound like crap - but how can they really make them unripable? Like most IP schemes, this won't stop actual piracy - just casual copying. While I'm certain that this casual copying is the vast majority of the violation - isn't a lot of it covered under fair use? I mean if I rip all my old cd's onto my nomad - Then stow them all in the basement - isn't that still legal?
I would be pretty pissed if I then had to use a restricted format to play them back. I generally don't use windows. Rebooting my system to play back a single song is not an acceptable solution. If you had to unplug your CD player and make a handful of software changes in order to play a single track wouldn't you complain?
I think we should all insist that they prominently print notice of the IP scheme on the cover (Warning: Contains IP Scheme that may be offensive to anyone with half a brain) Then simply refuse to buy anything that has that scheme. There may be more Brittany fans out there than there are geeks - but we've got more money.
\Drew National Data Director, John Edwards for President
If this isn't a clear cut case of Microsoft using its monopoly power to cut into and eliminate competition from other markets, I don't know what is. We're not talking software anymore, we're talking the future of music distribution. This should not and could not happen if our antitrust laws have any power. Allowing WMA to be used here is definitely the wrong answer, as it allows Microsoft to say "Oh look, now you need a Windows machine with our Media Player to listen to tracks on your computer". If it was a general standard, this wouldn't be so bad. However, M$ is not known for general standards. They're known for embrace, extend, extinguish.
Electronic Frontier Foundation for online civil rights information
It's amazing to see how those "big" companies (MS included with there "activation tech.") put a lot of energy and resources to go after such a small percentage of the market segment.
Yes, I can copy a CD for a friend of mine as I have the tools and the means to do it with my PC (not that I will), but hey, for every one CD-copier out there are over 100s tape-copiers. And those tape-copiers do it more often than CD-copiers -- its far more easier. So why aren't those music industry clones going after the tape-media rather than the CD?
My answer to my own question is simple: CD is high tech, while tap is not. Thus, doing it in the CD market, creates more "noise" in the media which leads to more reorganization.
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
From that the reader is meant to deduce that applications which do allow free copying of data will out-compete those applications which restrict data by virtue of their better adaptation to the real characteristics of the information.
So you write:
But this only sidesteps the argument, painting in a disagreement where none exists. The real argument is this: 'The creator of information who allows his work to be freely copied has information that is much more valuable than a creator offering similar information but who attempts to restrict the copying of that information.'
LibBT: BitTorrent for C - small - fast - clean (Now Versio
Its called planned obsolesence.
The other reason of course is that as soon as a "encrypted CD -> mp3 ripper" is created (and you know it will) they can prosecute users of this under the DCMA. The RIAA of course, having their own herd of lawyers, can afford to do this, while most users don't have gobs of money and will simply buckle. You'll note that the User is not who the RIAA cares about. They are basically saying 'fuck the user, let him lick our nut-sweat' or something similar. They only care about profit and control.
Linus Torvalds actually has great commentary on this whole state of things in his book just for fun, and he talks about how the RIAA and their predessesors have been doing this since cassette tapes were invented, and before. Hey, why let the user get the music that THEY WANT when we can force them to buy the albums we want them to buy and not give them the choice.
</rant>
Sorry, I'm a little steamed at this whole thing.
A press release discussing most recent additions to the suit can be found here. (This is an extension of a previous suit which covers Windows Media, Microsoft Reader, and many other MS products, which are mentioned in the last paragraph of the press release. Unfortunately, I can't find a description of the original suit at the moment.)
... a great feature in the software. You can play a cd, tape, etc. and 'record what you hear'. So you can hook up your cd player to your line in and record it just like you did with tapes. Then you have an unencoded wave file that you can convert to .mp3 or .ogg ( you DID keep an old copy of your .mp3/.ogg player/recorder right? ). I know that its a pain in the ass, but its a way around the crap that the industry is handing out. I just hope that someone takes the industry to court because you can still make a backup COPY of you music/games/programs. The industry will only step on us as long as we let them, bitchin will not change anything, action can.
Math is like sex. People who get it are popular in class, people who don't are not.
Unless the Mu$ic Indu$try(TM) strong-arms the electronics manufacturers, the WMA standard will face a difficult time gaining market share. There is already a large variety of consumer electronics that play the MP3 format. (think portable boom-boxes with CD players...) Yes, many of the portable memory-card based MP3 players support the WMA format, but many of the other consumer devices do not. (please forgive my lack of extensive research... I'm sure some of them support WMA as well...)
I think the Mu$ic Indu$try(TM) is already sunk... MP3 has taken a stong hold on the consumer market. I myself have several gigs of MP3 content (most of it hard to find where I live), and I'm considering purchasing some sort of MP3 compatable CD player... hours and hours of commercial free music that's easily portable and not broadcast dependant... and with more and more MP3 compatable options available to the consumer, the Mu$ic Indu$try(TM) faces a steeper and steeper climb to the top.
Doesn't this all really come down to distribution channels anyway? The Mu$ic Indu$try(TM) has lost grips on it's distribution monopoly, (thanks Internet!!!) and is only now starting to show it's knee-jerk reaction to digital technology.
Cd's are well entrenched into our society right now, but the fun stuff is at the edge. Namely, DVDA (That's Digital Versatile Disc Audio, you perv) and Audiophile (A refreshing look at old technology. LP style records using a very high tech manufacturing process and extremely tough vinyl. No digital->analog conversions here, baby. Very limited manufacturing runs due to the expense and low market appeal. Remember the /. acrticle about the guys spending $150k+ for a true 'audiophile' listening experience. This is what he had.) You can see many new albums being released with the DVDA style, which makes life a dream for people who want a highest quality possible rip. Dvda uses the same mpeg 2 compression that DVD's use. So, whip out your handy-dandy DeCCS software, and rip the audio straight off the disc. Since you are reading the data off of a the DVD, including checksums, you will get a flawless rip. Current rippers use a sector-by-sector read to try and get a good read, and they often fail since Redbook audio doesn't have checksums for each sector. But DVDA does. DVDA is also recording at a digital quality higher than cd's, and maybe DAT tapes (DVDA is 192kbit/s @ 48khz; cd's are 128kbit/s @ 44.1Khz)
THe moral of the story is, if you're an MP3 collector who is just interested in proclaiming to your IRC friends "WH00T! I got 2 petabytes of Tori Amos!", they want to slow you down. For real audiophiles, we've moved to the next best thing (tm) already.
Toodles
Toodles D. Clown
You know, I'm also against this whole non-rippable CD thing as well as MS's monopolies but I've recently gotten away from mp3's somewhat.
:)
That's because a few months ago I got a Sony MZ-R700 (about $200 then) minidisc player. (I have no affiliation with any electronics company). It is about 1/4 the area/size of a CD player so it is completely portable. The minidiscs cost about $2 each and they can hold up to 300 minutes per disk. The battery life is more than 40 hours (rechargable in the unit) and I can use a USB-to-optical connection for a straight digial rip. All I need to be able to do is play the thing. I know I can't transfer the files off the minidisc, but we're really not supposed to be doing that too much anyhow, right?
I had been waiting for mp3 players with > 64 megs to come down in price but this seems to make much more sense. Once I heard that minidiscs can hold so much, I completely swapped and haven't looked back. Also, I can just pull out one disc and put in another! I don't need to reload the unit with other music and erase what's already on there. You just can't do that with the solid-state players...
Just something I thought you'd all be interested in. Best wishes.
that's like saying "You have the right to walk through this door, but we don't require the doorman to actually unlock it for you." And THEN, if you pick the lock (because the doorman is being obstinate) they throw you in jail for violating the DMCA!!
That's a pretty accurate assessment of how things stand. The Home Recording Act of (I think) 1994 states that you are legally allowed to make personal copies of recordings you've purchased. That is to say, if you copy a CD to listen to at work or in the car, the record companies do not have the right to sue you or have you arrested. It doesn't say the record companies are REQUIRED to give you this right, merely that you haven't broken the law if you do it.
A couple years later, the DMCA comes along, which DOES make it a crime to circumvent copy-control mechanisms. If the door is open, you're free to use it; if the door is locked, you're not allowed to pick the lock.
This is further muddied by the fact that the Home Recording Act specifically mentions "recording devices", and the jury is still out over whether a computer is legally classified as a recording device or not. Therefore, as I understand the HRA, ripping a CD you own onto your computer is still a legal grey area in any circumstance.
I listen to music, and normally I buy about one full price CD a month. I never download MP3s, and I have just a few CD copies.
If I can not be sure that a CD I buy works as it is supposed to (that is, being playable at every CD player I will ever own) I will not buy it!
The reason I use CDs is that I find it the most convenient way to listen to music, and to store music, right now. I know that when I no longer wants to listen to my CDs, I can convert them to any other format I like.
If I no longer will be able to convert the CDs, I probably wont buy them in the first place!
If CDs wont be playable at all in an ordinary CD player, ripping and copying music will suddenly be worth the effort even more than it is today.
The music industry just tells everybody that it is doomed by proposing these rotten changes to CDs.
And by the way, I have bought quite few CDs this year - not because I have copied them, but because little good music has been produced this year.
the music industry blamed napster for it's stale selection and dismal sales. now that napster is gone, they blame gnutella (and others). i blame poor promotion, shitty bands, and the industry changing from music-based to money-based. selling cookie cutter bands that imitate another successful band. this is what i believe caused the music world to suffer the past 5 years.
i legitamately own about 500 CDs. you can imagine what a pain it is to organize, find, and play my music. i bought an mp3 player (neo 20gb), encoded all my cds and take them everywhere. now the music industry wants to limit how & where i can transfer my music. if i can't take it with me along with everything else i own, i dont' want it.
with these restrictions in place, i may never buy a cd again until they remove these weak copy protection schemes which affect the fidelity of the music anyway.
When I buy blank media, I'm not just paying for the media itself -- I'm also paying a "piracy tax" on top of it, because a percentage of the media is used for piracy, and this is how the RIAA (and MPAA) try to make sure they don't miss out on any of that loverly money.
So, given that I've bought my blank media, I've paid my piracy tax -- isn't this an implicit license to copy the material? After all, I've paid for the rights to do so...
I had one, but the wheel fell off.
Just to remind you of this project...
OpenMusic
This is probably just what Billy G told them. Of course the Real Plan is to ensure that the defacto digital media standard is owned by Microsoft so they can:
Ancient Budo Master once told me: "All your bruises are belong to us."
Now that's the real question. If I burn a copy of the CD, will I be able to play it? MP3 is just a transitional phase as other formats are coming (OGG and MP3Pro) that will change the way we are doing things now. To make matters worse, I just bought a new Kenwood CD/MP3 player for my car (kicks serious ass btw). Realistically, what's to keep you from using something like Soundforge, CoolEdit, etc to record a wav and turn it into an MP3 just like I do with my old LP's. We will always find a way to bypass copy protection and if we ALL share it and don't buckle into the pressure what are they going to do, take us all off to jail. I say buy all their damn copy-protected CD's and rip the hell out of them until they have to give in! I will buy CD's from people who put out a good package with good music. It just doesn't happen to often. Go buy Einsturzende Neubauten's "Silence is Sexy" to get a great package and awesome music with a bonus CD. That's what people need to be doing. Here's another thing the artists should do. Put out a few MP3's or whatever from their latest recording, but don't sell it in stores. If the consumers want it, they have to come to the concert and buy a copy there for 20 bucks. Put copy protection on the discs. After 6 months, release all the songs to the net on MP3. Lather, rinse and repeat every 9 months for mucho dinero. Then they sell the live CD's from the previous tour along with their latest offering. It can't be too hard to create a following that would soon have people trading all their stuff online and having them go to the shows regularly to get the latest stuff. God knows, I should have been a rock group manager :)