Slashdot Mirror
Sony Japan to Abolish Copy Controlled CDs
Gridle writes "In a complete reversal of their policy and on the heels of Avex's partial cessation of copy protected CDs (translation), Sony Music Entertainment in Japan has announced that it will abolish its Label Gate CCCD format (translation) beginning in November 2004 and move back to normal CD-audio format discs for all future releases. Reasons cited are music users' increased consciousness about copyrights and maintenance of legality (conformity to the CD-audio format specification). In related news, Sony also released a slightly updated HD walkman (translation) due to pressure from the iPod, but because of hardware limitations the device still does not support MP3 playback."
"many music users' consciousness increased to protection of copyrights"
"We really thought we could sneak this by most users, but it turns out they're more informaed than we thought. Damn you, independent media!"
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
Any move toward trusting consumers and an industry standard is worthy of a smile. :)
Or at least, a colon and a close parenthesis.
This is a good move by Sony. Discs with the protection are incredibly annoying. Sure, people will pirate stuff and do things with non-protected discs illegally, but this is becoming less frequent, and for people who actually buy their music honestly, it is an incredible annoyance to not be able to do what you want with your own personal music. Thanks Sony.
to face reality. It sounds like the war between its content producing arms and consumer electronics groups has been decided in favor of the electronics group.
It was inevitable- "MP3 players" is the *name* of the categorty and the defining feature of compressed audio devices.
If you cannot rip a CD to mp3 its value to the consumer is lessened considerably and they will be more likely to turn to p2p alternatives. A losing proposition all around for Sony.
It may be too little too late- kind of sad as they could have owned they category if they had only been unhampered by their content divisions (and had some better human interface engineers for their software).
Sounds pretty stupid to me... for many not-particularly-tech-savvy (NPTS) people, mp3 is still the compressed music format of choice, and these people will be most of Sony's market for this device.
NPTS Customer: Hey that looks cool, does it have mp3?
Salesman: No, but it has...
NPTS Customer: Ah we'll leave it - what else you got?/p?
More like... nerdular nerdence!
No more copy-protected CDs?! But why?! I was having so much fun scribbling around the edges with my beloved Sharpees..... I can still do that even if there's no point, right? Right?!?!
I have a feeling half the reason (or the only?) reason Sony is doing this, is because they happen to be involved in the electronics business that requires you to have non-copy-protected CDs as raw material. Basically I think the decision may have that since there's shitloads of profit to be made off the hardware, it may offset greater piracy in their music biz. And somebody doing the math may have realized that this is financially viable. Thus Sony has no issues with this. Maybe the RIAA should stop prosecuting file-sharers, and instead get into some kind of revenue-sharing agreement with the Sonys and Apples of world. (ok, ok, stop scoffing at the words revenue-sharing, it could happen!)
My Favourite Meme
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
When you buy music and movies you are not allowed to return it to the store unless your buying the same title since you could have copied them. Would they now let you return discs with copyright protective measures for a refund since you are unable to copy them?
As a side note to your well put remark - whatever happened to /. crowd's usual dislike of Sony (member RIAA)? To read most comments posted here would make you think Sony is the New Angles Co. (tm).
This is just a simple decision to end a failing practice in the marketplace. Nothing more.