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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!"
I know this has been said, but Sony is run by a bunch of morons! THEY DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT CONSUMERS WANT!
I DON'T WANT to convert my files before playing them. I WANT to be able to share files with my friends. I WANT it easy not artificially difficult!
Sony has to make a decision: Is it a content company or a technology company? It's getting quite obvious that it can't be both!
(And here's the rub, how does Apple manage to succeed as both a content and tech company?!)
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
well. sony sells 'em as mp3 players. if they don't want them to exist they could, you know, stop selling them.
they even have sold real mp3 players(that play from cd's) from time to time. they even sell hardware to burn cd's. all of which gets basically advertised with giving you the possibility to listen to _your_ music whereever _you_ want. minidisc is all about copying, too.
and well, the beef here is that there is a lot of mp3's out there that are perfectly legal to copy to your friends. I'd like there to be a perfect drm scheme - BUT ONE THAT WOULD KEEP THE INTENTED TO BE FREE SONGS AROUND! would give hell of a boost to independent music.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
this is an ipod killer for sure!! ... just like last month... and the month before.
maybe they should just specialize in ipod killers rather than mp3 players. Darn, except i guess they arnt any good at that either.
Mike
I heart the RIAA & MPAA, im sure its mutual...