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Dell Colludes With RIAA, Disables Stereo Mix
RCTrucker7 writes with a link to a Maximum PC story, which begins: "Details of Dell's surreptitious collusion with RIAA (Record Industry Association of America) have emerged. Apparently, the computer manufacturer disabled the Stereo Mix/Mono Mix/Wave Out sound recording function on certain notebooks to assuage RIAA. The hardware functionality is being disabled without any prior notice and one blogger has even alleged that he was asked by Dell's customer support staff to [shell] out $99 if he desired the stereo mix option. Gateway and Pac Bell are the other two manufacturers to have bowed to RIAA at the expense of their customers' satisfaction and disabled stereo mix without warning." (There are some workarounds posted in the comments of the linked article.)
I know it's fun to use hearsay and draw wild conclusions which make a boogeyman out of various unpopular (some rightly so) parties, but is there anything here besides a bunch of conjecture and reporting of anecdote as fact?
>Is this to prevent home grown artists from recording their own high quality material?
As a musician, I would want to challenge this as abridgement of my rights, and I'd want to make a (worth $Billions$) anti-trust case out of it.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Oddly enough the screenshot feature of Mac OS X is disabled when you are playing a DVD. I'd take a screenshot of the error message, but I obviously can't.
This seems to be the current trend. You can't print bank notes from Photoshop, you can't record audio on your computer, you can't take screenshots. I'm sure this is just scratching the surface of treacherous computing...
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If this is true, what does the RIAA intend to gain from this? It won't stop or even discourage piracy. People recording streams or radio broadcasts do have easy access to simple tape recorders, and mass distribution pirates will simply use a different machine. All this does is annoy people and put a dent in Dell's sales. What is the point???
>It isn't about recording audio input from microphones, it is about making a copy of whats going out to the speakers.
Don't try to dictate to me how I may, or may not, use my tools, thank you.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I wish Slashdot had a mechanism to mod news stories into oblivion... Especially ones like this, with no real facts, and no basis in reality...
I've read Slashdot for the last 5 years, and now I start posting... Go figure
Is this to prevent home grown artists from recording their own high quality material?
Basically we are talking about Dell screwing up one driver to which people are ascribing various conspiracy theories. If you are actually read any of the blogs they are all just speculating and pointing to each other. Some of the more serious blogs outright say it is just random speculation, but that does not stop them from spreading the FUD. Something tells me if Dell made some secret deal, this would affect ALL of their computers, not just ones based on specific chipset. They wouldn't be selling alternative audiocards, and they would not be posting workarounds all over the place.I think that old variation of Occam's razor applies - "don't attribute to malice what can easily be explained by stupidity." Its not the first driver Dell screwed up - its not going to be the last. This one just happened to somewhat fit into a conspiracy theory.
-Em
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This limitation in OS X has been there for a long, long time; it's nothing new. I don't think it's part of any trend. The blocks in place for Grab.app, etc. aren't terribly hard to circumvent, targeting casual users who will give up before querying Google for workarounds. Last time I checked, you don't need anything that doesn't ship with OS X itself to take screencaps of DVD Player.
Though I do agree that Apple bothering to throw up blocks at all seems a bit odd, if but a half-hearted attempt akin to the CD burning limitations of iTunes. Must be some mildly interesting history behind the original decision there...
What has been disabled is the loopback, which lets you record the music that the computer is playing. Youtube for example.
Yeah, or even your own LEGALLY COPYRIGHTED drum/beat/synthesizer loops. Or even the audio off your home videos to use for your own LEGAL reuse in your own LEGAL compilation home videos. Or even your own LEGAL automated answering service that may need to record messages. Or any of a plethora of other LEGAL uses.
As a poster has already stated, do NOT tell me how I should/can or shouldn't/cannot use MY hardware.
The only use I see is for a program like FRAPS, which records your screen and sound.
Exactly, and I for one am a person that uses that functionality to record stuff legally (voiced go lessons on the Kiseido Go Server to be exact). Heck, it is impossible to do it illegally as it falls under the same category as recording videos. Why should I be restricted from using my own computer as I wish.
What I am really afraid of however is how these people are colluding by using a mix of cryptography and laws to prevent "unauthorized" equipment from being able to interface with the system. Right now I can always get another more free piece of equipment, but what about in 10-15 years when you can't run the software on anything but authorized hardware, and trying to bypass that is a federal offense.
The above may be a nightmare to me, but for some rich people it is an utopian vision. I mean it when I say that I am afraid. Afraid because people tolerate minor restrictions being added all the time with just minor protests. It will become worse much worse and by the time people wake up it will be too late...again. Have you heard some of the people behind this. They are not acting as individuals but instead as lunatic powerhungry agents for powerful immoral organisations.
And I used immoral instead of amoral deliberatly. Earning money is an amoral stance, but the idea of earning money above anything else is simply immoral.
I submitted a story that didn't make it beyond blue in the firehose, but which was selected for one of the subsections. I submitted another which made to red, and it wasn't selected.
Firehose popularity may be something editors consider, but it is by no means the deciding factor. This story is on the front page because an editor thought it ought to be there.
Loose lips lose spit.
When that printing press is capable of making near-perfect reproductions of currency, and easily accessible information on how to defeat or mimic many of the security features is found on the Internet, then yes, it is too much to leave around.
That argument doesn't hold water as a defense of the watermarking technology that I was talking to. My complaint is with the practice of forcing printers to leave a serial number behind that law enforcement can track.
That "technique" does not survive a rational examination. That watermarking technology might catch the dumbass teenager that tries to pass a photoshopped $20 bill off on one of the drones at Wally World. But it's not going to catch professional counterfeiters. You really think that they are going to buy printers in such a way that can be traced back to them? The last time I checked it wasn't illegal to buy things with cash in this country and even if it were there are all sorts of ways to obtain things through "unofficial" channels (buying people off at Xerox comes to mind).
Given that, I don't really see how you can defend this practice. It doesn't do much of anything to deter counterfeiting. Yet it makes it that much easier for the Government to trace political communications that it might not agree with. Don't think it's happened before? Think again.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
We did? You could change X video resolution with a simple set of keystrokes... in 1993. While it wasn't a particularly user friendly way of changing resolution it could be done and it didn't require a desktop restart.
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In KPDF, go into the Settings Menu / Configure KPDF and untick "Obey DRM Restrictions".
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Dell Allegedly Colludes with RIAA, Stereo Mix Disabled without Forewarning
Slashdot:
Dell Colludes With RIAA, Disables Stereo Mix
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n. A secret agreement between two or more parties for a fraudulent, illegal, or deceitful purpose.
That doesn't really sound like what's going on here. Maybe Dell relinquished a little more choice in the matter than they should have, but Michael Dell isn't sitting behind a curtain wringing his hands over this one. Try "cooperates", it's much less FUD-filled.