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.)

Comments

Any...facts in this case?

[RightSaidFred99]

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?

Re:Any...facts in this case?

[Artuir]

Right, which is still mostly conjecture and RIAA bashing. I don't see any evidence they were involved - if someone's got REAL links with REAL data, let's have them! Linking to a Dell page with a workaround for an issue isn't proof of all the wild speculation making the rounds.

Re:Why is RIAA asking this?

[fishbowl]

>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.

Re:Next Story:

[edalytical]

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...

This is just another useless annoyance

[ShadowWraith]

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???

Re:Why is RIAA asking this?

[fishbowl]

>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.

Sometimes...

[nexuspal]

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...

Re:Why is RIAA asking this?

[gnuASM]

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.

Re:Next Story:

[NetNifty]

In KPDF, go into the Settings Menu / Configure KPDF and untick "Obey DRM Restrictions".