Sony Adds New Copyright Method to CDs in 2003

Natoi writes "Sony is leaving Mac and **nix users out in the cold with their new copyright method called Label Gate CD copyright system. You'd have to be running Windows and use a Sony developed proprietary software to listen to CD's published by Sony starting next year." This seems a little extreme to me, since sitting at the computer just to listen to music is stupid. What about car stereos and high-fidelity CD players?

Comments

bitch bitch bitch

[RazzleDazzle]

sheesh. Can't you people just accept that you cannot win?? The phrase "it's too big to fail" comes to mind. We are just the little guys. They are some of the biggest most wealthy organizations in the country (the content companies like sony, universal, etc) how could we possibly make them be nice to us? Also it seems like they are in bed with microsoft so we should just quit trying to play around with this Linux thing. The experiment, while fun and interesting, is coming to an end. close up the FSF, the EFF, Open/Net/Free BSD, GNU, 2600, etc. In fact board up the internet. From now on we will have to pay to connect to SonyNet, powered by MS .NET, and brought to you by SprintNET and AT&T-NET. Don't forget to pay for your sign up fee, connection fee, useage fee, communication fee, interconnection fee, unsupported hardware fee, unsupported software fee, weekend use fee, cross country fee, intercountry fee, and buy_the_ceo_another_$12,000,000_mansion fee.

Bend over and say thank you to your wonderful fatherly corporations, bringing us all closer together like one big family. We know whats right for you and at just the right price (your credit card limit).

why

[utexaspunk]

why are all of you so insistent on stealing music? and so proud of it. i mean $15/CD isn't too much to pay. You're getting a recording of an artist's performance that you can listen to as many times as you want. you'd pay $20 to go to one of their concerts. just because you CAN get music and software without paying for it doesn't mean you SHOULD.

Re:whatever.

[firewrought]

This whole undertaking just sparks of an abortive effort. They attack Napster, a hundred other P2P networks spring up in its place. They create encrypted CDs that can only be played in "{company} approved" devices, and by the release date over 100k people already have the entire contents of the CD. They create DRM on their CDs, people buy a $5.00 cable from their local Radio Shack and circumvent it.

Yep... the RIAA buddies must have slept through their courses in basic information theory. INFORMATION IS AN INTRINSICIALLY ABUNDANT RESOURCE; IT DOES NOT FIT TRADITIONAL SCARCITY ECONOMICS.

Here's a hint: the only truly scarce things are (1) artist talent and (2) consumer attention. But not information: duplication is free, and transmission is near-free. Your attempts to enforce an artificial scarcity on raw information will always fail. Maybe, just maybe, if you throw enough money into buying legislatures and cryptographic snake-oil, you'll be able to pull a better bottom-line for awhile. But is a police state good for CD sales? Is technological and cultural stasis good for CD sales? You might f*ck consumers and artist for a little while, you might f*ck freedom and liberty, you may even f*ck open source and technological progress, but your doom is in the wind. You are dinosaurs trying to adapt to fundamental alternations in the climate by using the same tired old strategies. Your extinction is ensured... you will be undercut by smaller, fiercer mammals who move nimbly in and out of micro-niche markets, instantiating and destroying endless product-cycle generations of "globally local" celebrities.

You're so worried about John and Mary trying to relax to pirated music and movies in front of their cramped home-office/kitchen/basement/bedroom PC that you don't see anime fanboys wanting to catch the JPop of Japan, gentriefied college youth straining to hear the rhythms of Indian instrumentalists, or coven gaming clans wanting vocal FX. You've been so busy promoting homogenity and pre-fabbed, broad-market tastes that you cannot conceive of actually encouraging people to build their own tastes and biases so that you can satisfy them with realtime, subscription-based, computer-AI-customized, satellite-delivered content. Instead of replacing the radio stations, you pay them gobs of money to enforce your artificial monopoly. Society can justify your existance less and less as time goes on. Soon, you will not be needed at all. No pretentiously serious "business strategy" will help you; your only salvation will be a frantic search for a completely radical shift in thinking.

But you've always been too staid and afraid to become insanely great. There's risk in that. But stasis is sure death.