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Music Industry Backlash Against Sony Rootkit
Foobar of Borg writes "The Associated Press describes how backlash from Sony's Rootkit CDs is causing problems for the music industry. The problem is two-fold: (1) the inherent technological problem of trying to prevent anyone from copying anything and (2) letting lawyers make technical decisions when (from the article) 'Lawyers don't have any better understanding of technology than a cow does algebra.'" More from the article: "'I think they've set back audio CD protection by years,' said Richard M. Smith, an Internet privacy and security consultant. 'Nobody will want to pull a Sony now.' Phil Leigh, analyst for Inside Digital Media, said the debacle shows just how reluctant the labels are to change their business model to reflect the distribution powers -- good and bad -- of the Internet. He believes that rather than adopting technological methods to try to stop unauthorized copying of music, record companies need to do more to remove the incentive for piracy."
Now we just need to use this to draw attention to other things that "people don't understand, so why should they care?", like the broadcast flag, and other overly restrictive DRM technologies.
In general they don't, even though Mr. Lessig is an example of the opposite. How many Lessigs are there out there? It's not FUD even though there is one counter example, you don't have to take everything litteraly.
Life is Reality
Perhaps it is too much to hope for, but it is certainly clear that the current system is completely out of whack. Perhaps it will collapse now and America can start considering why this was supposed to be a good idea in the first place. It's way past time to whack Mickey Mouse.
On the other hand, perhaps it doesn't matter. If you believe that the free exchange of creative ideas is a thing that benefits society, and that this encourages growth and development of a healthy society, then you must conclude it confers competitive advantage. Therefore, the societies that do better at encouraging creativity will eventually overwhelm the others--and nothing the **AA can do will stop that inevitable transition.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
It doesn't seem to stop every self proclaimed expert here from spouting off their particular pet theory that coiincidentally justifies their eMule use, nevertheless.
Give me a nice case, a shiny disk, good sleeve notes and nice music all at a reasonable price and I am perfectly happy - especially if I can then rip it the way I want to for portability afterwards.
To me, free music downloads from Usenet mean I get to preview my music before I buy it, no different to test driving a car before I buy it. When all said and done, if I download some music and don't like it, it's not even worth the waste of disk space keeping it and if it's a good piece of music then I want it in the clearest format possible to play on my nice shiny hi-fi.
Music downloads are for people who don't fully *appreciate* music and treat it as something to have on in the background while they work or workout - I don't have a problem with that, before anyone comments, because I do the same thing myself by ripping my own CDs when I want portability for the car, gym, etc.
However, a true music enthusiast, be it rock, blues, classical, whatever, only fully appreciates a piece of music when he/she sits down and does *nothing else* but listen to that music on a reasonable hi-fi setup with the best quality version of that music he/she can lay their hands on - namely, the original CD.
Call it snobbery, whatever you like, but music downloading is fine for people who treat music as "throwaway", like a set of clothes that gets changed when it goes out of fashion - again, it's up to them how they treat their music. But it's definitely not for someone who *truly* appreciates music...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
You heard it here first
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Translation: Sony BMG needs to research how to make their next crippling system-level crack more undetectable before they try this exact same crap again. They don't give a second thought b0rk1ng their customer's computers, but they absolutely hate getting caught.
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
You know, there's a CD I actually want to check out but it isn't a mainstream release and isn't availiable from the mall. The only way I get a copy around here is to travel into the city center, not exactly my idea of fun. I can order it from the 1-click jokers but I'd prefer not to do any business with them. What I want and what technology offers me is the ability to download an ISO of the entire album at a price point that defeats piracy. This price point is obtainable when we no longer have to pay for packaging, manufacture and transport of physical goods; it also makes DRM obsolete.
It may seem obvious but it's the artists who are going to have to do it, the music "industry" is (brain) dead.
Yeah, but the problem for the record industry is that adopting means they are practically out of business in the long run - at least their traditional business.
The music industry is - at it's base - "selling" to artists the service for distributing music.
That means (or meant) basically the technology to record and produce music to sound storage mediums, the marketing to promote it and the infrastructure to distribute it.
The recording technology became commodity with the advent of digital recording, marketing was never a unique selling point for them, and the infrastructure question is answered by the internet.
For years now they reaped the benefits of vastly cheaper production, but now they are facing a situation where the everything has come together even for the average music customer.
In my opinion, what they are trying to do with that DRM stuff is trying to put the genie back in the bottle, by recapturing control of the distribution channel. Not only because of pirating, but also to save the heart of their business model.
I've been on a active boycott of record-companies since 1997. Two reasons. Sony closed a local CD-factory, claiming that 'piracy' was the reason. The production-equipment was shipped to Romania (or such) so I guess selling the CD's wasn't the problem, but they found a nice way to justify moving to a country with lower wages. (please keep in mind that most of you barely had the equipment to burn CD's or the bandwidth to exchange MP3's)
The other reason was that most companies abandoned recruiting local talent. All we get in our shops is American R&B, all we see on TV is American Gangsta Crap. There is a shitload of bands out their, but none of the big labels will see or hear them. Ilse de Lange might be the last you've heard from the Netherlands.
Haven't bought a single CD since, except directly from the hands of the musician.
Remove incentive for piracy by providing digital version of music?
I wonder if it'll be a DRMed WMV.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Translation: cut prices, allow personal copying w/o restrictions.
So someone put the fear of God into a company and now they're all running away going "NOT ME TOO! I'M NICE!" Well it's about fucking time.
Companies get away with murder, they tried to step on peoples feet again and they stepped on a very pissed off geeks feet and are now paying the price. If we had this uproar against all bullshit policies maybe the world would be a better place. But no, we're in a world of submissive consumers who won't say boo to a goose incase of a lawsuit.
I like muppets.
I want high quality, which the online music stores do not provide (128k WMA and AAC SUCK for a serious music fan with even marginaly good equipment)
I want the ability to easily copy the music! I should be able to rip it to MP3 ort ogg for listening on a HTPC or iPod, or Dell DJ or an mp3 cell phone...
Now as I shop for CDs I will always wonder in the back of my mind, "does t6his have spy/scumware? a virus? a rootkit? what does "enhanced" mean? would I be safer DLing a 320k MP3 from (insert P2P of choice here)?"
There's a message here somewhere isn't there... lets see, the XCP system hasn't kept a single album off the internet, it's infected 2 million PCs with malware and they've p*ssed all the revenue from 50 artists up the wall.
I'm so glad I'm not the Sony employee that proposed the deal with First4Internet.
It looks like it was called sarcasm, sarcasm are normally an attempt at humor by exaggerating the devils advocate, to state the point of the opposite.
Trolls are people who are excessive negative in there posts, often try to personally attack others, or come up with the standard insults, (examples all Apple Users are Gay, or All Linux users are geeky little boys with no lives.) Sometime a troll can be sarcastic, but they should be paid attention differently.
Flamebait are posts that are meant to get people angry and talks about things that a number of people feel strongly about. (examples VI vs Emacs, OS X vs. Linux, Apples 1 button mouse, Politics, Abortion, Religious views) these are arguments that neither side will gain any more insight then they did before. Thus a normal waist of bandwidth and file space.
Redundant these are posts that that say the same thing as other posts and bring no new light onto the table.
Offtopic this is how this post should be moderated it is where the topic of conservation has targeted to much off the original topic. Or the post has nothing to do with the topic.
Over Rated these are posts that seem to moderated to high for their content. Often used to give an other message(s) more priority over the others. So the quick one liner the got first post that had a +5 funny and wasn't really that funny can be modded to a +4 funny and have all the insightful comments underneath it be read first.
Under Rated these are post you want to mod up but really don't know what topic it really fits in, or you want to keep the original moderation but you want it to have a higer score. Ex. if you see a Troll but you really like it and want everyone to see it you give it underrated and if more moderators do the same that is how you can have a Troll +5.
Funny this is where sarcasm goes, normally it is an attempt at humor.
Informative when good and correct information is given. Usually helps fill the missing gap in a story or comment.
Interesting when the user says sorting that causes interest in the posts, normally if you see a posts with a lot of replies to it then it should be considered interesting.
Insightful when more then average thought was put into the post which gives a Point of View not given by others or the Article.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Issues that remain:
Attacking customer computers seems to be the kind of thing that is part of the Sony corporate culture. There has been no apology, and Sony management makes statements giving the impression they will do it again if they think they can without bad publicity.
A music retail store spokesman said that Sony's attack became public just before Christmas. Customers can easily choose some other gift now that they are scared about computer attacks. Sony's attack has hurt the entire music industry, not just Sony. Also, the damage will continue after Christmas.
Few people are technically knowledgeable. The Sony CDs will be causing problems for many years, as they are traded or sold to thrift stores.
The number of computers already corrupted is probably far larger than the 500,000 quoted in articles about the Sony attack. That number is just the number of Domain Name Servers that show evidence that a computer has tried to contact the Sony phone home address. The average server would almost certainly service more than one corrupted computer.
One kind of attack has received attention. However, Sony apparently sells other CDs with other software that may also have negative consequences for Sony customers.
Following Microsoft's lead years ago, some businesses treat all their customers as crooks so that they can stop a few.
What you meant to say is
Music downloads are for people who don't fully *appreciate* music the way I do
I can perfectly well appreciate my iTMS downloads on less "snobbish" equipment. I don't require the knowledge of having spent tons of cash for a "resonable hi-fi setup" in order to enjoy listening to music. In fact, even the el-cheapo earphones that come with iPods will do. That is because my interest is in music and not in expensive equipment.
Actually the "Sony Rootkit" incident has increased the public awareness of computer security. How many non technically inclined people knew about "rootkit" prior to this?
To a certain extent, this incident has increased the public awareness of computer security, which is a good thing.
w00t
That seems to be how companies like Sony view them. Any rights customers may have are seen by SONY and their ilk (a cast too numerous to catalog) as detracting from their own. The only way SONY et al. can maximize rights (and, they hope, profit) is to minimize everyone else's, ultimately including the rights of other companies. Under that notion their rights are maximized when everyone else's rights = 0. That is a reasonable explanation of why they chose to crap on the rights of their paying customers. It's the same logic tyrannies have always used. Sic semper tyrannis
The the success of the GNU and other OSS liscence models suggest that SONY and their brothers in greed are wrong. Just my 2 cents.
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
. . .they are practically out of business in the long run
And it's about fucking time. I believe I've written a few posts on this subject in the past. Most people just don't get what's really going on and why.
In my opinion, what they are trying to do with that DRM stuff is trying to put the genie back in the bottle, by recapturing control of the distribution channel. Not only because of pirating, but also to save the heart of their business model.
Exactly. The real risk isn't even the DRM stuff though, it's their willingness, and success at, buying law to support the business model.
KFG
"Why not just let the artists be in control for a while."
I am so sick and fucking tired of hearing this. The musicians have that control now, and they have always had that power. Nothing forces them to sign a contract with the record labels. Oh, you're probably going to counter that the labels have distribution channels locked up. Well, duh. These distribution channels would much rather deal with a small handful of entities (the labels) than bother negotiating with each and every artist. I keep hearing about this technology, what's it called? The interweb or something. Anyway, it's supposed to empower artists to distribute their music to the widest audience possible or something, eliminating the middle man (the labels) and making music more accessible. One problem though. Everybody expects music on the web to be free and this doesn't make it easy to make a living as a musician now does it. T-shirts and concert tickets don't make up for lost album sales. Personally I blame all sides in this one. The labels need to reduce prices on older CD's, make their back catalogs more accessible, and stop the shenanigans with the foreign releases with bonus tracks. The rest of you should quit freeloading and whining when you get caught.
"come out with an encrypted CD standard"
Where have you been?! Two such standards have been released and have been on sale for several years. Sony's SACD and everyone else's DVD-A. The problem is that no one gives a damn about them.
Or did you want the music industry to force these flops down the consumers' throats by eliminating the traditional CD?! That would have been corporate suicide as the backlash would have been phenomenal.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I think the biggest backlash to come is versus the security companies.
Where the hell where they ?
I personnaly uninstalled Norton Security from my computer as it's now clear that they can not protect me from emerging threats.
The threats of today are not the threats of tomorrow and security firms have to adjust in consequences.
Threats of today : Companies hiding stuff in your computer and correlation between companies. Think Windows Vista.
Threats of tomorrow : Don't ask security firms
Linux/Mac is not an alternative to this shit if you like to play the latest games.
They don't necessarily need to be out of business. A large part of what they do currently is give small musicians the benefit of their hugeness. They give them "loans" so that they can record with good equipment and with professional producers. At home you can record with no producers and with, at best, ok equipment. They promote the band. Advertise its shows and its albums. Also very expensive and very difficult to do without a record company. And of course, they distribute the music, as well as band merchandise. This can be in the form of CD's, as currently, or it could be in the form of getting mp3s on Itunes or even setting up free distribution channels. This would also be very expensive without a record company.
If you take the classic distribution channels out, like getting the CDs to the big department store chains, there's nothing in what you describe above which couldn't be done by Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple etc.
It's done in smaller dimensions today already, but imagine Google or Amazon throwing their knowledge of datamining the behavior of individual users and using it to find "relevant" products (i.e. music titles) to this field in a big way. This combined with them offering mp3 downloads. The classic core competency of record companies (distribution) is not only totally made obsolete, but they also add something where Sony et al. have nothing to bring on the table.
I'd say if Amazon wasn't still dependend on good relationships to the legacy music industry and google wasn't busy targeting microsoft, one of them reviving the mp3.com idea could really hurt the music industry.
The nice thing is that all this DRM crap will lessen their chances even more in the long run, because makes their product less attractive and other big players with alternative offers will eventually surface.
What needs to happen is that a big star will have to surface who is not already bound with contracts to the record industry.
If you want to see the future, go over to allofmp3 dot com, look here for an example..
Copy protection is mathematically impossible. That limitation is not one of technology, which would be overcome by a suitable invention -- it is a limitation of the way the universe works. {Blame the appropriate God if you're so inclined}.
I can't provide a formal proof, unfortunately. But let's just say that there's no way for the dumb, read-only CD even to be certain of, much less do anything about, what lies downstream of the laser head, and that's where the problem begins and ends: the act of reading the CD for the legitimate purpose of listening to it is, on some level, utterly indistinguible from the act of reading the CD for nefarious purposes such as copying it. Of course, you might well have a right to copy it anyway: think Fair Use / Fair Dealing. If you've a cassette player, but no CD player, in your car, then you are allowed to make a copy of the CD onto a cassette as a necessary step in listening to the music on the CD -- your common law property right by virtue of ownership of the CD -- in your car. It only infringes copyright if you part with the CD and retain the cassette for longer than is reasonable for you to get around to recording something else over it, or if someone steals the cassette -- and they are the infringing party. You were merely aiding and abetting copyright infringement, but ignorance of the fact is a defence. These rights aren't set in stone anywhere, because exactly what constitutes Fair Dealing is determined by the courts; but face it, no court in the land is ever going to send you down for taping albums -- hell, even the judge probably has a few in his car.
If you boot up a Linux LiveCD on a computer which has already been infected with the Sony rootkit, you can still rip it with cdparanoia. That proves the protection is ineffective. And while it isn't obvious to everyone how to do it yet, it's a foregone conclusion that someone somewhere will make a Linux distro just for ripping CDs.
Why don't the record companies learn from the printing industry? Many newsagents have a photocopier sitting right next to the magazines and newspapers. Does anybody ever illegally photocopy the Times, the Penguin Shaggers' Gazette, the Woman's Monthly, or the latest Harry Potter novel? No, of course not.
The fact is that CDs are overpriced, and downloading offers an economically viable alternative to purchase. Downloading isn't free: it takes up time, bandwidth and drive space that all have some value to the downloader. If the intention is to burn the tracks to an actual CD, then this requires additional resources: a jewel case and about 1.05 blank CDs {remember the hit rate is not 100%}. Recreating the CD packaging -- even crudely -- will require further resources in the shape of paper, ink and time.
So my challenge to the music industry is to set a new price point for CDs that compares favourably with this figure. Make it cheaper to buy the physical CD than to download the tracks. And people will buy CDs in preference to downloading.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
What they missed was the possibility that, once the geeks figured out what was going on, that they could explain it to the masses in a way that they could understand just how badly Sony is treating everybody.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
As an attorney I can tell you that lawyers tend to have a better grasp of technology than many other professional groups that I come in contact with. You have to be pretty smart to get into law school these days and that generally translates into a better understanding of current technology.
Furthermore, I doubt that Sony's rootkit scheme was unconditionally approved by legal. Lawyers tend to be very conservative when giving advice. I can't imagine any competent lawyer giving the green light to this type of thing given the patchwork of laws regulating and potentially impacting the legality of this scheme and that's just within the US, nevermind internationally. Companies, especially large companies like Sony, are not run by attorneys; they're run by professional managers. It's not uncommon for managers to end run legal or simply ignore legal advice when it's not what they want to hear.
To be perfectly honest, at 43 years of age, I'm glad I'm too old for most of the modern-day music scene. I have more than enough good music with some albums (yes, *albums*, not single tracks) I've appreciated for the past 30 years that I will continue to appreciate to my grave - it's just nice sometimes to find a new album by a new artist to add to my collection.
Sorry, I'm a geek just like most others here and I like my PCs and gadgets. But it seems to me that far too many people, mainly the younger generation, spends far too much time rushing through life trying to do lots of things at the same time - this is why (most) modern music has become "disposable" because it's been manufactured as something that justs goes on in the background while you are doing something else.
My argument, therefore, is that those same people do not know how to devote *all* of their attention to a piece of music and therefore do not appreciate it fully.
Whereas you may be laughing at me, I feel sorry for you at not being able to understand what it really means to *LISTEN* to a piece of music.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I have a new business model for a new recording studio concept but I don't have the capital to pull it off.
Here are the main points:
* Artists would retain all rights to their own music. Copyrights would be in the names of the artists and bands, not the studio.
* All contracts with the studio are open ended, they never expire, and allow the artists and/or bands to back out of them at any time. The artists and bands ARE NOT employees of the studio, the studio is strictly a service to them to get their music published and on the radio.
* The studio would only retain publishing rights, not ownership. The studio's publishing rights ends when the contracts end.
* Music would be published on CD and via a paid P2P service similar to iTunes or Napster. Downloaded music could be used on MP3 players (including the iPod) and burned to CD an unlimited number of times.
* Music CDs published by the studio would contain CD Extra content such as interviews with the artists and bands, music videos, printable lyrics sheets for all the music on the CD, and news about the artists or bands updated via RSS Feed daily.
* A PR Department of the studio would help with merchandising the artist or band. The artist and/or band retains the copyrights and trademarks of all merchandise. The studio receives a percentage of sales as a fee.
* The studio would pioneer the Open Media License, or OML. The OML like the GPL, but for music, video and literature, would apply to media that is offered free of copyrights and trademarks and can be downloaded, used, and even altered without restriction depending on the OML License that is used.
Basically, the artists and bands have full control over everything, and the studio becomes their client offering CD publishing services, P2P music sales and distribution, marketing and advertising, and the artists and bands retain all the copyrights and trademarks. A studio like this I think would set the whole recording industry on its head.
Any comments? If you know a VC who can help me please let me know.
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
thezorch@gmail.com
http://thezorch.googlepages.com/home
Thats pretty good, but I thought of the inverse.
Look at DeBeers. In a relatively short time frame, they were able to convince people to spend "up to 2 months salary" for rocks from the ground that they don't want.
Here a completely artificial need and a tight control of the supply was created from scratch, and now most every man is brainwashed into buying a diamond for his woman.
Now we have an industry that already has an inherent demand, yet they are doing stupid stuff like suing their customers, wrecking their computers, still wearing neon and having winged hair from the early '80s, and what is their problem now?
Never before have I heard of such a collectively stupid and greedy people before.
Whoever modded this Offtopic has a bit of an itchy finger and misses the point.
:shrug:
:shrug:
In normal business relations, it the customers' needs and desires that dictate the business model. Businesses that want to survive would then adapt accordingly. If people stop buying a product, you lose money. Maybe customers leave. You either accept the loss or seek to gain anew.
What we have with RIAA, MPAA, energy, Microsoft, etc., in the bigger picture are industry models working not to accept the loss or seeking to gain anew. It's called customer lock-in.
What is RIAA doing to cater to your mode of listening? Not providing downloads. Apple made headway actually, but is now being asked to provide a tiered pricing structure.
what is MPAA doing to cater to your mode of viewing? Not providing downloads.
What is oil industry doing to reduce your cost of energy?
What is Microscoft doing to make your computer more interoperable?
Point is, RIAA et al., are living in the past, like the oil industry.
For instance, Sony, while on the one hand decrying copying of its CDs to mag tape spent several years selling Walkmen for the express purpose of playing music thus copied, not to mention supplying the blank media to do so.
They also need to stop sending mixed messages to our legislators, who, needless to say, roll over to corporate demands at the drop of a hat. Here in Australia, for instance, it is illegal to copy a CD that you have purchased with your own hard-earned dollars on to your iPod. Apple fails to mention that in the little booklet that comes with the gadget. Legally speaking, you are supposed to pay again for the second copy, despite the fact that you only listen to one at a time. Thousands of us don't, of course, including myself, and are militantly unrepentant. This is clearly a case of a failure of the legal system to keep pace with technology, and sooner or later some form of rationalisation has to take place.
I remember back in the early to mid 80's, as a H.S. student, and making copies of software like the original Wizardry for my Apple II+ and the like. I had friends from two different areas that were a group of hackers, and I was the conduit between the 2 groups, meaning my fater had to purchase boxes of 100 5 1/4 diskettes every month or so.
The difference was, back then (and even now, to a large extent), there was an entry level knowledge often needed to do this kind of thing. You couldn't just make a copy, because of the variable disk speeds often written into the games, etc. You had to know how to use certain programs to make it work, and access to folks that had copies of the original wasn't always easy.
10 years ago, as well as today, for music especially, there isn't a great deal of knowledge you need to do it. Windows will rip a CD for you, in fact. You don't need anything more than what your core OS gives you.
It is similar, in a fashion, to how Sony and Verant handled some cheating in EverQuest. There was an application often run on a Linux box called ShowEQ. It would give you relevant data about where mobs were, how much xp they would grant you (approx) and their levels, etc. For the longest time, there was an entry level knowledge required to use it, so Sony didn't go out of it's way to protect it that much. Then folks started selling machines with a pre-built ShowEQ kit on it that automatically updated itself, and too many folks were using it. Sony had to fight back, and did, with much harder encryption as well as other things to make it harder to work. Could it still be done? Yes, but it made it that much harder. The entry level went up.
Basically, that is what these music companies need to do. Make the cost of entry to rip a CD illegally higher than most folks can handle. The problem they have is that they haven't been able to come up with a way to do that. Until they do, they won't fix anything. And with the internet being what it is, as soon as someone figures an easier way to get around what the music companies have done, they will distribute it easily. Today's ease of naer global communication makes the job well nigh impossible.
Conclusion: The music companies can't win this fight. They never could.
[lots of rant against SACD/DVD-A]
From what I've understood, SACD is in quite widespread use today as hybrid CD/SACD discs. Just about every argument you had about them being inferior to CD pretty much went out the window, since they are at least equal to a CD. But as you say, hardly anyone has a SACD-compatible system due to the wierd bitstream, it's not so much that it is proprietary but wildly different, instead of 16bit/44.1KHz it's something like 1bit/2.83MHz. So if you really want the added resolution, it's there in a lot of mainstream music today. But guess what? Nobody cared.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I agree with the above entirely. What is interesting is that with the old analog LP, no matter what you might say about it's sound quality (vastly better than CD or crackly, noisy annoyance), you actually get a copy of the sound waves as captured in the studio/stage as they happened. Pretty amazing if you ask me. Not to mention the larger canvas for artwork and often some quite creative packaging concepts. Unfortunately you don't get DRM protection, which I know we'll all miss. (Note for the Anonymous Coward above: This is also sarcasm. Just in case you were wondering.) Cheers
Who is this delectable creature with an insatiable love of the dead?
Well, one of the reasons why this blew up so bad was that the rootkit was poorly coded. Furthermore, so was the uninstall tool. Macrovision has a lot more resources than small time startups like First4. They can hire better coders, and they have better resources to do QA. So maybe Macrovisions stuff is still doing all the naughty bits, but they've hidden it better and it doesn't open up your computer like swiss cheese.
isomerica.net | Foonetic IRC
He-he! Brilliantly put. Talking to the youth who download music illegally these days, that is the very reason they don't care to actually pay for their music - they think it's cool to listen to, but not worth the money to pay for. Watching the movie The Last Waltz about The Band's final performance the other day, it really brought home the value for money proposition with music: There you had six or seven brilliant musicians giving it their all and producing some amazing stuff. With modern music you get one or two "producers" in a little room with a computer and some Cubase plugins churning out canned cut-and-paste samples. Or at best a group of "plastic-punk" rockers such as Green Day slapping together a bunch of generic power chords with not the slightest hint of musical challenge. Sorry, I can do that myself for free...
Who is this delectable creature with an insatiable love of the dead?
under the current system when something falls out of copyright (yes it happens every day, even to Elvis!) it enters the public domain and if free for all. Because DRM systems are attempting to be 'impossible' to crack there's a good change that when DRMed music falls out of copyright it will not enter the public domain. So using DRM is basically like saying bye bye to existing copyright laws.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
You might want to reconsider this example. Personaly I'd prefer if all long haul frieght got off the Interstates. And given the choice of coast to coast runs vs. local deliveries and sleeping at home, I think many truckers would too.
Great! Then you would be interested in buying my own version of Beethoven's Ninth, sung by myself in the shower? If, as you say, any "el cheapo" earphones are okay, then maybe an "el cheapo" artist as myself would also do? What really matters is music itself, not the quality of the recording, right?
- Windows users all over the place have turned off autoplay on their machines, so they won't get infected again
- Nerds everywhere will be posting ways to defeat whatever shows up in the future
- The whole industry (and Sony in particular, thank God) is trembling about taking the risk of the ire of the computer industry if they screw these things up again
- The fact that it took 6 months or more to discover this rootkit is a GOOD thing, as the damage done is now more noteworthy and it has caused more damage than if it was discovered quickly
- There's been a ton of bad press, meaning the awareness of 'fake' CDs that are really copy-protected disks has been raised, even in the minds of many non-technical people
How much money would it have cost to arrange for this ourselves? Way to go Sony! Your long-standing behavior toward proprietary and lock-in types of behavior (Betamax, Minidisc, Memory Stick, and now rootkits) has *really* hosed you up good this time!
Us Slashdotters owe Sony a debt of gratitude.
Try sitting in a dark room with your eyes closed and put on some of your favourite music - either in headphones or a good quality stereo. I tend to lie in bed with good headphones
Now REALLY listen to the music. Focus on the different layers. Listen to the textures of the instruments. Focus on the form of the composition.
Pretty soon you'll be hearing all sorts of little details and layers that the musician has put in there that you never noticed before, and with any luck you'll get a shiver running down your spine occasionally. I'm speaking literally here - listening to music this way can actually get shivers running down your spine, the way you can be moved when you loose yourself at a great concert.
Your milage may vary.... and it might not work like this with all styles of music :D
Lawyers don't have any better understanding of technology than a cow does algebra
It's not the lawyers at fault here, it's the courts. Judges (and moreso juries) are people too. Even if this case went before a judge, there is a lot of technicality that would probably need to be very much reworded in order for him/her to understand. One of the problems with law is that one not only need to understand law (a difficult task in itself), but how it applies to the case at hand. In technology we've been getting by using laws pieced together from non-technical applications - sometimes coming out OK but often ending in disaster.
Even if the lawyers understand tech (Lessig, for example), you still need a judge and/or jury that understands it... and possibly more importantly laws that actual deal with tech rather than vaguely related scenarios/applications that have been applied to tech.
Understanding technology and understanding technology law are two different things. Lessig may understand technology law and he may understand technology but most attorneys and their staff do not.
I have worked for law firms as a technical specialist for over ten years the technology gap is only growing larger. Why? In part because of the advances in legal technology law. Part of this can be blamed on the legal system and lawyers in general. But mostly, I think it can be blamed on the billable hour system.
Technology training, and training in general, is not billable. Because it is not billable it is only done with extreme reluctance and then only to the absolute minimum possible.
Do what you like, you're missing my point entirely. But if you're doing something else, all you are doing is *hearing* music, not *listening* to it.
Seriously, what do you have to do to "FULLY" appreciate the music?
You give it your full attention, start hearing things in it you never knew were there.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
this is why (most) modern music has become "disposable" because it's been manufactured as something that justs goes on in the background while you are doing something else.
Every generation complains about the music that the following generation prefers. Every single one in history.
There will be classic popular tunes of the 200x decade that people will still listen to in 2050, just like we still listen to Elvis and the Beatles today. But not everything in current charts will survive this long. But it's the same with 1950s pop music. Look at the old chart hits of the 1950s and you will note that only few of those pop tunes and artits of that era survived music history.
Throwaway, easy-to-consume music existed in the 1950s, as well, and it's forgotten today.
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You may like my a cappella music