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Dataplay Ready to Launch
geophile writes "Let's see. This is a CD-like, CD-incompatible storage medium with
lower storage capacity than a CD; copying, which is supported by CDs
and permitted by fair-use laws is not possible; and it's more
expensive than a CD. Read about this great idea here." We've done a couple of stories on the Dataplay discs; this one discusses the heavy content controls built-in. MSNBC had an article on Dataplay a few weeks ago that mentions an "education process" needed to get people to re-buy all their old music in a new format.
The discs look like CDs an inch (2.5 centimeters) across and are housed in plastic cartridges.
I'm looking at my Sony Minidisc right now. The Dataplay people are joking. Right?
Syllable : It's an Operating System
I'm not that fast to react anymore. Everytime I see a scheme like this come along, I point to DIVX. Those "in the know" successfully killed that format with an enduring information campaign that didn't let up until DIVX was out the window. It was to the point that people looking at DIVX players at Circuit City were approached by strangers who would inform them exactly what buying DIVX was going to mean. I think that in any similar situation where a less restrictive, less costly, and less burdensome alternative exists, the same kind of results can be had by simply informing the sheep that the $16 disc in their hand will actually cost $16+$8+$13, etc. if they want to access everything listed on the cover. Oh, play on your computer? No, it won't do that. Put the music on CD to listen to in the car? Oh, sorry, not allowed. Etcetera ad nauseum...
And you can be sure that another plan behind this system is going to be "disc expiration." 20 plays and then another $20 to get the thing going again, or what have you. If I can, I'll be steering people away from the format. I'm sure most slashdotters will too.
I was under the impression that once you owned the rights to the music, you wouldn't have to pay royalties again.
Why can't you just buy music in the new format for $1 a disc, if you already own the music?
eh.. I already know the answer why do I bother
And how long will it be before someone cracks all the "hidden" music on the disks?
..rubbish.
This new product is a lame attempt to try and quash the 'music copying' market - amusingly, I couldnt have imagined anyone else to be the 'flagship' artist to launch this product than Britney Spears.. gawd knows I am sick of seeing her on Pepsi Commercials, and now she goes and sells out on somthing like this too.
It sure as hell doesnt make me want to buy one - if I was to buy another portable media player (seeing as I have a car, I sold my MiniDisc player a while back) it would either be one of Sonys new NetMD MiniDisc players, or somthing groovy like an iPod.
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
However, that just means hackers get to go to a new level, modifying hardware, changing the code in the microcontrollers, etc.
I've no doubt that this will go the way of the "DVD Killer Divx", the minidisc, and the DAT (which is used professionally - dataplay won't even have that market).
All of which have Digital Restrictions Management built in. Of course the recording industry is going to go for it. Their SDMI initiative failed (and is still flopping about like a fish looking for water), and there is no way they can control any software/data based approach - too many fingers have to be in the pudding to make it work, and one of those fingers may leak - much like how the DVD decryption routines were discovered (which would have taken longer without the key, but would likely have still taken place)
So their only hope is
- Copyright/patent new format
- Copyright/patent hardware and algorithms
- Only license copyrights/patents to those willing to play ball their way
But the trick is then getting the consumers to pay for this new deal, which initially is going to be very expensive. Given the choice of buying an IPOD and this new disc device, which do you think the average joe is going to get? No little discs to lose, tons of space, no DRM (well, hacked away) , and personal organizer to boot.They'd have to sell millions of these before the price comes down, and like the minidisc it ain't gonna happen.
I suspect that even when they only release a certian artist in that format the music will still be available (one person with player and a nice sound card, or simply ripped off the radio) in an adequate format. It will backfire, because music consumers are fickle and will simply stop listening to an artist if the entrance fee is $300, and the artists are less likely to play ball with companies that use them like pawns to bring about DRM.
It's a complicated chess game, and they are playing like they've lost their queen. They will fail if they don't fold the game and start with a completely different mindset.
So I'm not worried. Besides, CDs will likely be available cheaply for a long, long time.
-Adam
Dataplay is write-once, requires a mechanical drive to read/write, probably slower than CF, and tries to keep you from moving data around.
Yes, I'd say Dataplay sucks, while CF doesn't.
Lets look at the problems with this product
1. Compression, they use lossy compression so of course lower audio quality.
2. CD's already have a foothold, why the hell would i want to buy more usless junk when i can hardly play anything on it.
3. Its devolution not evolution.
4. Copy protection is futile, as long as the audio is output decrypted its copyable. Unless they do the decryption in the headphones. Then its just really hard.
I'm going to laugh if someone acctully buys one of these. But then there are britiny spears fans who have rich parents. Enough said.
In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.
the big problem with some of these codecs is that thet are CPU intensive... it would be ery hard to creat a portable with enough power to be able to decode audio on the fly... it is similar to when i download huge zip files and i want to decompress them on a 486... also what if i want to set up a streaming mp3 server ove the network and se up a laptop next to me stereo... the server better not be my little pentium 75 here... maybe ill have to sacrifice my 400 mhz gateway for this... i dont think so... so there is no "free lunch" when it comes to compression
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
The costs are too high. Unless you give away the players, there is no way people are gonna drop money for a new device.
The blank price is too high as well.
-- There's only one replacement for displacement.....
When all the music companies try and put 5 CDs worth of music on these disks (to be unlocked by a special registration code), we will all get 5 CDs for the price of 1! Oh, yeah, I'm sure no one will break their reg code.. ha!
I think the big problem with this is that there is no real benefit to switching over to another digital format. I mean, CDs won out by replacing magnetic media (tapes and floppies) and records. I don't think we'll see another shift until we switch over to solid-state media - ROM chips or Flash cards of some sort.
People are stupid, but they're not as irrational as some high power execs like to imagine.
Discs are fragile. CF is sturdy. I can safely slip a CF card into my pocket without using a protective case. This is important with digital cameras. (Also, SmartMedia is fragile. MemoryStick is proprietary. CF rules.)
apparently, retailers can return unsold media to the distributers in exchange for new content. the distributers just told the retailers that they would stop accepting returns of unsold vinyl. This forced the retilers to make the switch. That's why the 'longboxes' were popular - the retailers didn't even have time to remodel their shops for the smaller format.
Oh hell no. The barn door has been open FAR too long for CDR to go away.
CDR prices would have to increase by 25 times to match the prices of the this new tech... and seeing as there is money to be made in selling CDR, they will not go away soon.
Even the biggest players do not have to power to stop a movement as big as making your own CD or downloading music off the internet. I feel that moves like this show the very desperation that indicates they have very little options left in the form of 'prevention'.
Media is so 90s.
Cheers,
Backov
In the law there is no overlap between theft and copyright infringement whatsoever.
We just have to be able to read them. Then we can copy the bits, encrypted or not, to a different disk. As long as we can make a device that makes an identical copy, we'll be fine.
Of course, it's going to be easier to just not buy the things in the first place :) I still don't have a DVD player, because of my initial disgust at the region coding thing.