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The Sony/MP3 Saga Continues
Renegade Lisp writes "Sony's rolling out their new line of flash-based music players to the
market these days. More stylish than ever, they surely look like a
serious attempt to regain territory lost to the iPod, and perhaps even
to create the Walkman of the 21st century. And it looks like Sony has
finally given in to consumer pressure: these new "MP3 players" can
finally play MP3 natively, not just Sony's proprietary ATRAC format.
But wait -- you cannot just put your MP3s onto the device, you have to
run them through Sony's obfuscation software first. The obfuscated
files, when installed properly on the device, can be played. But you
can't just move them around, share them with your friends, whatever.
Well, of course the obfuscation scheme has already been broken by a
brave hacker. But is this really the way to create the "Network
Walkman" of the 21st century? Sony, please wake up!"
Their CD based MP3 players require no such obfuscation scheme.
Sony is notorious for coming up with useful, and often superior technology, while at the same time ignoring the actual markets demands that they are targeting.
See betamax and minidiscs
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
You ignore the cases where the manufacturer / service provider ceases to exist (or ceases doing business with you, a la BitMover) and you lose access to the content (either slowly as hardware dies and software succumbs to entropy, or quickly if something like Steam goes away)
Open content formats are the only way to be sure you can access your content, period. Anything else requires trust, and I don't trust corporations because our interests are always in conflict.
Doesn't seem odd to me to want to be sure you can access your content, so it seems reasonable to demand open formats.
"Illegal Activity" is a red herring, and something of the Godwin's Law of copyright arguments.
I bet their internal board meetings are a riot. On one side you've got their hardware guys who don't want to spend their R&D money and waste time/resources on redesigning and rebuilding playback devices that have worked just fine for years to respect the mandated DRM that the RIAA is trying to get into the law books.
Then you've got the label people pushing Sony's attorneys and reps at the RIAA to get this legislation done!
You've got Sony's legal department sending letters to people using Sony's laptops to rip MP3s of songs owned by a Sony label from their Sony DiscMan. And people becoming felons by violating the DMCA when they bypass the copy protection included on Sony CDs. They're violating the copy protection by using hardware produced by ... Sony. It's like a weird hybrid of a Kevin Smith movie and the Twilight Zone.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
This article talks about the demotion of the hardware guy Ken Kutaragi. People thought he might be the next CEO. Instead he was demoted (lost his seat on the board) and one of the reasons is he had the gall to say "Sony also has been hurt by its insistence on making its content proprietary"
More links to same story
Very very sad. Explains what happened to the MD which could have been a great format...
I promptly returned the device to the dealer. And I got so angry about it that I submitted a Slashdot story. It got accepted. And rightly so!