They already do change links, just not this way yet.
Their stuff takes addresses like foo.com/bar/server-junk//double-slash-format.html and turns the// into a/, making a corrupted live web link out of the text, while continuing to show it as a double slash visibly.
It's a very small step to having IE automatically change all links on the browser side if it doesn't like them. In fact, there's a logical argument for identifying links that are also represented by Smart Links, and interceding, either going instead to the smart link or popping up an annoy box, which would look like this:
The link you have chosen could refer to several different destinations. Please choose one.
http://slashdot.org/yourrightsonline/article7832 78 57?etc?etc
Your Digital Rights
Use Smart Tags ( )
Beginning to get the picture, folks? _All_ they have to do is start popping up 'choices' to go to Smart Tags at every available opportunity, including 'extra choices' for existing addresses. This, I think, would not be deemed illegal. Then it's just a matter of a 'just use the smart tags' option to stop the annoyance, and they're home free, with the user having 'chosen' to not even honor existing HTML tags out there on the net. It is _trivial_ to jockey people into the position of 'choosing' to use Microsoft's idea of what links should point to, and at that point they have a lock on electronic commerce that is truly impressive.
I would be really, really surprised if they were too dumb to realise this. Few people consider them stupid. I think they're completely aware of the whole sequence of events I've outlined. It's the logical next expansion IF.NET works- because if.NET works, they still have to expand more. It's a shrewd move that shows great foresight. The fact that the implications are shocking does not, I think, worry them one bit.
Thank goodness, I am unaffected by this. I don't write about sports on my website at all. It's primarily for my recording studio, Airwindows.
(end sarcasm. And I'd just like to say- holy shit!! Look what you can do when you win the browser war. Who wants to bet that the way they'll appease CNet and the like is by _selling_ 'smart link' access to common english words? Talk about seizing a choke hold on communication and mindspace. This is so far out of line it makes my head spin. It potentially plays merry hell with _my_ trademarks and IP.)
The big win would be ability to internalize advanced IT. If a company chose to do its own software with Open Source, it'd be in a position to control it entirely, pay no fees, and even avoid giving out the source in some cases (if it could be guaranteed not to be distributed in binary- or if it simply used a BSD license rather than a more rigorous license). Plus, it's not that hard to ensure that the dataset being manipulated is never considered 'open': treat it like a big document.
That said, most Fortune 500 companies won't use open source (note how Apple, IBM etc. already do, however!). This makes them easy pickings for the likes of a Microsoft to seize control of all proprietary software and start draining money out of these Fortune 500 companies- which can happen for a _long_ time before the Fortune 500 companies are severely weakened.
In the bottom line it becomes a question of efficiency above all. Yes, huge corporations like to outsource this sort of thing, but if other huge corporations can get an advantage in margin or efficiency by taking on IT responsibility themselves, over the long run they will beat up on the corporations that are overspending on Microsoft licenses and continually wasting human resources keeping up with Microsoft's ever-increasing accounting demands. Complying with a Microsoft audit costs MONEY. For a huge corporation the human costs of labor and wasted time could be nearly as much money as the actual license fees in question- and the audits won't stop coming.
Basically, any Fortune 500 company sticking determinedly to proprietary software is supporting not only itself but is also supporting its vendor in a sort of charity. If that vendor is Microsoft, the cost is very impressive- even staggering. You have to include the accounting costs of audits, the 'runtime' of the relationship as well as the actual products themselves.
This could prove fatal for such companies in the long run if their direct competition includes more self-contained companies.
Oh, come on, that was _funny_. Whatever you do, don't ever go read Penny Arcade. You'd have a coronary:)
Re:Do you have Britney Spears home address?
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Napster Going Legit
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Only because seemingly nobody else has ever been willing to do the work of correlating all that information- and pre-Internet, there _was_ no convenient way to get all that information. The RIAA doesn't even have things like release dates on some of their platinum and MULTI-platinum selling albums. I continually have to go scouring the net for the missing information- I started using CDnow and then (happy thought) went to Google, often getting the info in the results page directly (see a 'released 1979', question answered).
Anyone can do this. I'm using http://www.riaa.com/Gold-Intro-2.cfm as my starting point. While they're not charging for THAT I suggest trying to make some sense of the data.
Specifically, I'm focussing my effort on one particular metric that's convenient. I could have taken down all sorts of information but it would take me far longer and I can't spare the time. What would be great is if someone else went through that data from another angle- for instance, I'm amassing a really _complete_ dataset based on years_out*millions_sold, which is very good at showing historical relevance over time periods greater than ten years. Someone ought to take down all the years of release and the year of the most recent platinum cert! I am convinced there will be strong correlations indicating a brick-wall dropoff for ALL artists post-85 or so, based on the fact that I have seen _all_ the certs while I went through taking down release dates. Even as far back as that, the industry was beginning its pump-and-dump practices: for instance, Shaun Cassidy, and some of the Disco acts illustrated a tendency to go instantly platinum and then never sell another record from back catalog. The thing is, these days EVERYBODY seems to be stuck in that mode, whether it makes sense for them or not.
The truth is out there. Only reason I stumbled upon it was because I set out to do the work. It's amazing that apparently nobody has ever done this- but then, it's an industry where they don't bother to get accurate or complete information on their own _greatest_ sellers for their _own_ website, so what do you expect?
Theoretically, this un-asked-for research might be of great benefit to the RIAA, since theoretically it could lead to their producing artists with staying power. However, I've already mentioned elsewhere that the LAST thing they want is artists with staying power- they want neophytes, veterans demand better pay. So it is my hope that the research can be used to help _indie_ artists develop careers with staying power. And of course, I record music myself- I could use the info too.
And yeah- I'm pretty psyched to have stumbled upon this important something:)
Re:Do you have Britney Spears home address?
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Napster Going Legit
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This conclusion is true. I am currently in the middle of a project, combing through the RIAA's publically available data on gold and platinum records and looking for information on longterm sales. One thing jumped out at me that I wasn't looking for- since around 1990, the pattern of platinum and multiplatium record sales is that the act sells multiplatinum while the label is pushing it, and then when the label stops, the act entirely stops selling. In previous decades, records had the capacity to sell from back catalog. That doesn't particularly happen anymore. People _are_ losing interest in bands once the label stops pumping them into the stores, by the RIAA's own figures. Real-world data not only supports this, but _hugely_ supports it. It's a very big change taking place in the last ten or fifteen years.
No, I think the bit that got 'insightful' was the bit about 'tragedy of the commons' being replaced with 'tragedy of the elite'.
It's a really good point. There _is_ no commons in modern society. Almost nobody but obscure open source developers even acknowledge the _concept_ of a commons. These days, it's 'who owns it?'. There is no conception of a commons, and so no 'tragedy of the commons' can occur because NOTHING is public.
I think this had better stop being taken for granted. This loss of public commons (in every sphere) is NOT inevitable, or divinely appointed, or natural law. It is a collective choice, assisted by really extensive lobbying and public relations on the part of entities which repudiate any concept of a commons.
If we're gonna give it up we should LOOK at what we're giving up, not overlook it. That's why I feel the comment was indeed insightful. It touched upon something that's VERY important. Overwhelmingly so. For crying out loud, public resources have always been a hallmark of society! To abandon that is a BIG CHANGE.
This _is_ a well researched piece. The only thing I can think of that would expand your set of references is "The Death Of Rhythm And Blues" by Nelson George, and to some extent "Trapped! Michael Jackson and the Crossover Dream", by Dave Marsh. Since I'm very familiar with both of those I'll share what they'd bring to your analysis:)
Sentimentality in early American music: Blame this on Stephen Foster. He was very literally the Michael Jackson or Disney of his day. It seems that there's always been a market for desexualized sentimentality- whether it is Stephen Foster's songs about dead lovers, Disney with its 'land of 10,000 uncles' (and NO direct sexual relationships or families with actual children- Huey Dewey and Louie did not arise from a duck f**king a duck, but sprang from Walt's forehead, and their biological parents are NEVER to be referred to), or Michael Jackson's songs of mistrust and betrayal (see 'Billie Jean'), it's as if direct sexual relationships are 'too hot to handle' for the pop market. Dead lovers are 'safe', rejection and lamenting is 'safe', blocking out the whole area of family and relationships is 'safe' and so Pop has always tended to reward artists who had a need to repress themselves. (Michael Jackson is, or was, a Jehovah's Witness- this colors his work in pervasive ways).
So when you say "Nothing like that ever happens in modern pop music, of course" you couldn't be more wrong! The theme of loss or failure to keep a relationship continues right up to Britney Spears- who burst onto the scene with a song in which she apparently sings from the perspective of a girl in love with her abuser! Hit me baby one more time... but... trust me... (and you can tell that no, this is a vain hope- but how sentimental to have such a hope, and to be faithful to one who doesn't deserve that faith...)
As for black music supplanting 'potted palm' music, this is to some extent simply a matter of the narrowing of pop, very similar to what's happening today. When you can _only_ hear 'potted palm' music, anything else becomes more desirable. The restricting of choice lays the seeds for its own rebellion. Black music became fashionable- was co-opted, assimilated into white music again (I don't mean Elvis- I mean Pat Boone singing white bread versions of Little Richard), and hit continual limits all along the way. For instance, before Michael Jackson, there was no black music on MTV. Period. It took Michael to break the color line there. Then, R&B radio began being steadily assimilated into the Top 40 format- playing more and more of a homogenous mix of black and white artists, until there was no real line between black and white anymore because it was ALL 'pop', ALL 'top 40'. The distinctiveness of black rhythm and blues had affected Pop but been assimilated into it and rendered unrecognizable.
What the future holds is best illustrated by Electronic music, but not stylistically. The consolidation of radio into a single limited stream causes pressure, a hunger for other choices and other sounds, but instead of other radio choices turning up, with the Internet the result is suddenly a capacity for virtually infinite choices.
The effect of this on Electronic (which was the first to really make heavy use of the new medium, what with computer geeks liking beepy noises and all) was a wild proliferation of genre beyond all outside comprehension. People will ask, What is drum & bass? What is detroit? What is chill-out? How does ibiza trance differ from acid trance? The distinctions are all-important to insiders but incomprehensible to outsiders. This is because the Internet allows the one monolithic stream of pop culture that was Radio, to be broken into a million tiny streams.
Radio and pop culture tries to deal with this by literally infiltrating teen culture and stealing cultural ideas- such as 'rage rock', which resulted in the manufacturing of Limp Bizkit as a mainstream pop direction. But the twist is, once a cultural niche is seized and turned into mainstream culture, it is already stagnant- Limp Bizkit ensures that rage rock is already dead to the true teen culture. It's an intrinsic failure- mainstream culture _can't_ be all things at once. It inevitably tries to consolidate, and in doing so it loses relevancy and becomes soulless product- in the sense that it doesn't represent anyone's genuine feelings or concerns or desires.
As the internet continues to affect music distribution, the most significant thing to look for is total balkanization. This is a good thing! There will never be one single culture outlet that suits everyone. But there will be a thousand different streams to choose from, all of which are a little more removed from pop culture, all of which take a bit of effort to find, but once you find them you discover a whole new world with its own rules and history and definitions for things. Little bits of the thousand streams continually bubble up into mainstream culture like Trance music being used to sell cars, but communications has finally developed to the point that there will never be a single Pop mainstream again.
It's similar to transportation- after a certain point, people just stopped growing their own food, and now they use transportation to get it (which has its own problems). We are at the point where people will stop looking for a single art and culture source, and will turn to the Internet and easily find forms of art and music that are personal to them, in great profusion. We will witness the decline and fall of Top 40- provided that we continue to bring 'the consumer' not simply repackaged free 'Top 40', but the full range of choices the Internet makes possible.
It doesn't matter if you can get Britney Spears on Napster. What matters is if you can find some sort of easily listenable music on some random web page, freely listen to it, and go and find more, when it's NOT Britney Spears. For the first time, it's more important to look at what the RIAA is _not_ selling, if you want to know where the future is heading.
You're making a lot of weird assumptions that aren't based in reality. Come back when you're over 21 and see if you still remain confident that you understand everyone's motives in the whole wide world:)
Communications is everything. Microsoft just happens to be in an extremely important strategic position. That doesn't mean they will _succeed_, but they're trying to, and in many ways they have a greater will to power than any of those other corporations. Not one of those other corporations has a small-business mindset, not one of them can adapt and react with the speed and effectiveness of Microsoft.
If the other ones are army infantry, Microsoft is Navy SEALs, or some sort of special forces unit. That is why they are dangerous. They're on nobody's side but their own, yet they have a striking force that's equal to far huger organisations, and a positioning that could give them personal authority over the world's electronic communications, and thus the world's economies.
Hell, I did vote for Nader. Will do so again given the chance.
Things simply weren't bad enough yet for everyone ELSE to vote for Nader, too.
Microsoft is like a cyber-Wal-Mart, it's all about sucking money out of communities and squirreling it away. It leads to poverty, the stratification of classes, and the collapse of the infrastructure it feeds on.
Eventually this becomes obvious, just as it does in ghost-towns at which everyone works at Wal-Mart and gets laid off together when they can no longer purchase enough goods from Wal-Mart to justify keeping that many employees part-time. (A hypothetical case, as Wal-Mart usually cannot destroy _all_ independent business in a town.)
The question is, how much damage do you allow before taking action?
It is NOT a foregone conclusion that the government will let Microsoft do this. After all, the government is Microsoft's competitor, and if it wishes to act as Microsoft's 'partner' it's going to get raped like all the rest. There's got to be a shred of self-protection in there. It's _really_ unlikely that the government will blithely let itself be replaced, marginalised. Again it's a question of how much damage is permitted- to what extent does the U.S. Government allow the communications and IT infrastructure that its economy depends on, to be replaced by a privately controlled entity that has no reason for loyalty to the USA? It's got to the point where the USA is holding Microsoft back. MS can't grow to another ten times its size without stepping into the role of government, and so they hold pep rallies and chant "Microsoft, kill 'em! Microsoft, kill 'em!" (who would have _believed_ that in '95?) and how can they not take advantage of, say, the ability to gain control of U.S. military communications and threaten to sell the information to Iraq unless the government moves over politely and lets MS run the show? ("You keep on dealing with stuff like roads and such- that's boring"). It is simply too profitable an opportunity to pass up. Once MS controls the communications and IT of countries, and technically controls the Internet, they can easily gain access to _everyone's_ information (picture the USAMC and Iraq's military secrets residing on the same server somewhere in Redmond. Who can offer more to gain access to the secrets of the other?).
One possible safeguard is that the USA has an army, non-computer weaponry, etc. whereas Microsoft tends to consider challenges to its authority impossible. That means in the event of Microsoft demonstrating high treason, the army could surprise it by literally invading with very unsophisticated weaponry.
At the same time, there is much concern elsewhere in the world about how a 'US' company is gaining such control. It is not unthinkable that some Middle Eastern country might declare war on Microsoft specifically- and you'd see terrorist actions, such as bombings of the Microsoft campus. This would force MS and the US government closer together, but it would also be a very effective form of attack against Microsoft, again because they do not tend to consider challenges possible. Their worldview is psychotic- although they are in fact faced with seizing power on a geopolitical level, to themselves they are still the scrappy little vendor. They can push around entire COUNTRIES and still they are imagining some sort of greater competition 'forcing' them to do it. It's an unhealthy situation, but it's also a suggestive situation: outsiders are not always fooled by Microsoft's own self-deception. They can see that MS is slightly closer than even the WTO to the goal of a global totalitarian governing body, and the fact that Microsoft isn't aware of its size and scope and consequences makes it VULNERABLE to attack AS a global power. For instance, they have bodyguards and security but I really doubt they have aircraft or the ability to defend against air attack, and I don't think they'll be getting it, again because to themselves they are the scrappy little software company writing word processors.
It is sure an interesting time to be alive- in the sense of the old Chinese curse. (another idea- what does China think of the whole world being assimilated into a 'US' company's control?)
I've known about Helmut Dersch for quite a while now, due to my interest in Photoshop filters and QTVR images. (Panorama Tools is/was/will-be available as a Photoshop filter). There are few people for which I have more respect. Helmut is an inspiration and a role model for me, for his efforts to develop image editing software and make it freely available and tirelessly show people how to do things. His software is capable of causing or correcting image distortions with accuracy far greater even than Photoshop's bicubic interpolation- some of the interpolation models Helmut's written are just flat-out incredible! They're over my head as far as understanding how they work, and they run slower, but the results are phenomenal.
He makes these things available _free_ to advance science and art in general.
Among the things that will NOT be affected by IPIX are the ability of his software to correct for normal lens pincushion and chrominance distortion (luminance? the darkening of edges of an image), the ability to do wild and very high-resolution distortions for artistic purposes, the ability to take rectangular images and modify them so you can stitch them into a panorama (I actually have a QTVR panorama of my old studio's early days, done exclusively with Helmut's tools and hand-stitched (with no stretching) before his software helped you do that).
Going after Helmut is a crime. I am glad he is showing the same patient methodical attitude that pervades the rest of his work, and plans to work around the problem in reasonable ways.
My secret fear is that IPIX will try and push its limit, for instance attempting to muzzle Helmut entirely because his algorithms and tools CAN BE used or adapted to the fisheye case. In that event, my outrage would become unbearable- it would be a matter of suppressing the desire to go buy an uzi and HUNT THEM DOWN, and instead settling for scraping together money and paying someone to HUNT THEM DOWN LEGALLY. As in EFF, or some other likely candidate.
IPIX had better know its limits. I consider too-extensive persecution of a 'open' scientist to be an act of war. It's an act of war against the community of scientific information sharing that got all of us where we are, and I can't consider that a situation for simple workarounds. At some point you have to wage war back, whether that's through lawyers or through DOSing or through people planting rumours and destroying their company's stock price even more, or even, if the persecuted scientist is being threatened with imprisonment or violence, threatening back in kind. So far, the most extensive threat being made has been fines and imprisonment through use of the government as a weapon. In other industries (*cough* music industry *cough*) threat of physical violence has often been a quiet and unremarked additional element. Things are escalating, and if people like IPIX decide they want to start acting like the shadier sides of the music biz in their desire to stamp out all possible competition for their product, there needs to be a response ready.
I can't believe anyone would try and suppress Helmut Dersch. The question that is obviously on my mind is, how FAR will they go if unchallenged? Who else is being stepped on? And, can we be certain that all the coercive force being applied is strictly confined to narrow legal claims and patent-related demands? Record labels have often been known to use muscle in dealing with radio stations and programming- hell, Bob Marley's rise was partly reliant on just this sort of strong-arming. How do we know if companies like IPIX cross that line? And there are plenty of companies like IPIX:P
Actually, that's not all that shocking an idea really. For me it's my excuse for artistic integrity. When I take advantage of my musical listening and composing background, I tend to veer wildly in the direction of dissonant, edgy melodies or near-impossible polyrhythms or both at once. Nothing is as much fun as putting together some rhythm that doesn't occur in nature and that you can't dance to;) except that such things _do_ occur in nature... but they are not 'musical'.
To be specific, they sure as hell are not Top 40.
But if 90% of listeners are 'crap', that's a relative judgement, only relevant from one particular perspective. If I use my perspective, it means 90% of listeners do not have the training to identify weird 'wrong' notes and strange polyrhythms- or, more importantly, the experimentalism to enjoy listening to stuff their brain can't immediately recognize.
If you took Britney Spears' perspective, 90% of listeners are crap... because 90% of listeners will tire of her formula eventually! How crappy to be faithless and disloyal like that;) nobody is exempt from the 90% rule...
And if you go back into radio, and wind up being very manipulative and playing 100% payola garbage, 90% of your listeners will see through it and listen to you with a sort of cynical attitude that tends to deflate your attempts to be The Soundtrack To Their Life (in the tradition of old Motown). Crap! *G*
No. Legacy CDs can be completely duplicated by CD burners (sometimes with the caveat that they're not burned Disc-At-Once, but that's minor).
You _cannot_ have a new generation of CD players refuse to play 'data' CDs, because that would make them also refuse to play all legacy CDs. The extra information is for consumer standalone _burners_. Players don't care about that part.
You can cripple burners, but an uncrippled burner will produce discs that will play on all players, excepting those that can't read the dye layer. The difference is the price and the ability to work with crippleware standalone burners- and possibly with a new generation of PC software/burner combinations.
I don't think you can block CD writing in the burner itself- I think you have to control the software, too. Even with a crippleware burner that's ready to check for the 'music' header area, the software will still have to check for that and give thumbs-up/thumbs-down. Hence, EMI/Roxio. And much good may it do them...;)
Well, you said it yourself. If Steve Jobs will never accept any fascist system but his own- hey, this is clearly not his own, so he's clearly not going to accept it. If it matters to have influential vendors and Fortune 500 powerhouses not accepting this stuff, then it's GOOD that Steve won't accept it. More power to him, and may he sell a whole new generation of iMacs on the basis that they are CD rip-mix-burning machines that are as easy to use as toasters.
Or would you prefer the consumer NOT to be told to take advantage of the freedom and flexibility of digital media? 'sitdown-shutup-consume'? That's fine, but I think 'rip-mix-burn' has more sales appeal, frankly >:)
No. There are three dye types- Azo, Cyanine, and Phthalocyanine (sp?) in use. You can also think of them as Blue, Green and Clear Stabilized. They are all interchangeable and differ chiefly in archival lifetime- blue and green have shorter lifetimes. (I may have 'clear stabilized' named wrong- I know that when used over a gold substrate it can be called Gold Stabilised).
The only difference in 'music' CDRs is the price, and the fact that there's a small additional area with data to enable crippleware standalone CD writers to be authorised. If you have a player that doesn't work with audio CDs from CDRs, it won't work with 'music' CDRs either. There's no performance gain.
No, you're right. Any commercial venture that is specifically based on freely copying their stuff has been squished, or is being squished. However, the concept of downloading and trading files and the concept of burning stuff on CDs hasn't been particularly affected, because it's too broad- there's no legal or popular support for taking away everyone's ability to have a CD burner, or to download a file.
When you combine these things, it becomes very easy to download a music file and burn an audio CD of it. It's also easy to take a microphone and record your baby's first words and burn an audio CD of it. The permissible uses are just too wide-ranging- it'd be impossibly hard to stamp out all the methods used to copy RIAA stuff, so they have to focus on the specific businesses that are out there obviously doing things with RIAA stuff without asking.
Okay: 'music' CD-Rs are more expensive. The ONLY difference they have is a capacity to work with crippled standalone burners that won't burn on data CDRs. Most people DO NOT HAVE standalone burners, nor should they- it's a dumb thing when a computer is a more flexible tool for the same purpose, and when you can buy ordinary CDs in stores.
The conclusion is there is NO demand for 'music' CDRs. ANY presence of 'music' CDRs in stores is a scam. The whole concept is a scam from the beginning, and if anyone suggests they 'sound better' they need a quick refresher on digital audio (technically, what would affect the sound would be burst errors, and 'music' CDRs offer NO advantage whatsoever on that score)
The only reason 'music' CDRs are in the stores at all, much less being (at some times) the ONLY brand name CDRs you can buy (I've seen this in Radio Shack at times) is because _somebody_ is pushing them on the channel, and you're seeing them because some people are smart enough or price-sensitive enough to buy the 'data' kind and use that. Surprise surprise, it works perfectly (expect computer CD burners to begin refusing to burn audio onto 'data' CDs... but the trick is, how's the burner gonna know the difference? It's the software that would know).
When most people would rather buy 'data' for cheaper, and don't want to buy 'music', the stores end up with lots of 'music' CDRs sitting around, which is what you see. You may even end up buying them if you're desperate for media and there's no 'data' left. But really, it would be better if you left the 'music' CDRs to rot on the shelf, and walked out of the place.
After asking the management if they have any 'data' CDRs, maybe asking them to carry more of the 'data' kind and noting that they do double duty as audio CDs. But don't expect to have your request listened to... these guys are all pretty armtwisted. Don't make the error of thinking we have a free market here:) it's all too easy to control. Next time you're in the store, _count_ how many 'data' and how many 'music' there are. See if you're offered the choice of 'music' CDR, or going to find another store hoping they too are not 'out of stock'. Which is a nice euphemism for "We're not allowed to carry too many of those because people buy them instead of the music CDRs".
Out of curiosity, does anyone working in retail have any idea of the ordering requirements? For instance, I am wondering if at any time the music CDRs are BUNDLED- as in, the store HAS to buy equal amounts of each to do business with the supplier. That would cause the result we see. What's it look like from the viewpoint of store inventory and purchasing? Anybody have hard data here? Maybe there's price breaks if you buy a certain amount of 'music' CDRs?
...and how to globally control every last hardware manufacturer to make sure that NOT ONE is producing an unrestricted (i.e. the same kind we've been using all along!!) burner. Nothing less will work. They have to not only get the big hardware makers, they have to get ALL hardware makers including the tiny no-names and any black market unrestricted burners. This, in a world where the plans of the unrestricted burners are already out there, ready for an illegal hardware manufacturer to run off a bunch of burners and sell 'em on the black market. No additional R&D need be done.
It's going to be impossibly hard to keep _you_ from having the capability to burn your CDs, as long as you have a fairly minor ability to hunt down the proper tool for it. The concern is more for your Aunt Mary who only uses AOL and doesn't understand these things. It would be nice if she, too, had the capacity to make mix CDs without being penalized for not being as savvy as you. Think of it as consumer protection.
Problem 2 could be worth worrying about- I mean, if you discount the fact that lots of working CD burners already exist. It'd be hard to take away the ability to make CD of your own music. It'd be easier to take away a consumer's ability to dupe your music. "Not EMI? Outta the pool! We cannot verify the checksum, it appears to be corrupt!"
Problem 1 is GOOD. This is a GOOD THING! Please oh please, let them do this! The only real danger is that the big five _will_ hold together as a cartel and cooperate! I would much rather they fight and cause hardware vendors to release misleadingly named special crippled devices (How about the "Complete Music Collection Initiative CD Burner"? Will only burn EMI's releases, for a small payment. Anything else, no go...)
We should _beg_ them to do this. It would totally destroy the commercial potential of those devices, those burners, those initiatives. If we can get the Big Five backbiting each other and using the technological restrictions ON EACH OTHER, we'll have it made. That would backfire viciously and do them considerable damage...
GO FOR IT ROXIO! Make your burner so it will only burn EMI content at a dollar a song! Release a different model with different firmware for each of the Big Five, collect the whole set! Make consumers have to learn which multinational conglomerate really owns Prawn Song or Swan Song or whatever little vanity label that's supposed to look all indie and stuff! RIP OFF THE VEIL!
*G* *G* *G* *G* *G* (oh, how I hope they're fools enough to do this...)
My primary concern is always, "I make my own music. Do I have the technical and legal capability to record and copy it to industry-standard media that I can distribute?"
Well, I already _have_ a CD burner, and even if all future CD writers refused to write a byte without me paying money for authorization to burn a _specific_ _RIAA_ song, I would still have my CD burner, and there are others out there if mine broke.
Plus, Red Book is a very well-established format, and there's so much of it out there that it's impossible to deprecate at this point. It's only just gotten to the point where quality rivals top-end analog systems: modern dithering is a thing of wonder. So not only can I be confident that I will be able to find a (not necessarily new!) CD burner, but I will also have the capacity to burn disks that are consumer-ready. CD audio's going to be supported for a _long_ time. Digital means you can support a lot of different formats- someday we'll have 27 terabyte disks that also play all DVD formats and _also_ play good old Audio CDs. It's just too easy and useful to add the support, to skip it. That means that all future disk-based playback decks are likely to support the format I can write.
This article is alarming, but it's a false alarm. If they do that it'll be about as commercially successful as pay-per-download Napster.
They'd have to mobilize legislation and basically destroy anyone who makes an unrestricted burner or unrestricted burning software. There are way too many other purposes for a burner to make that remotely feasible. They're NOT just for music CDs- and the standard Red Book is not a restricted format. Those music CDs are for _standalone_ burners that are intentionally crippled, the playing back needs no such special media to work.
It's meme time again: assuming that we _have_ already got the word out that 'music' CDRs are simply CDRs to work with crippleware standalone burners (pay more, for no extra functionality or fidelity AT ALL), we now have to also get the word out that the new Toast is merely a 'downgrade' taking away functionality that was previously there. And I can't wait to see exactly how they intend to implement this! Should be good for a laugh.
This is assuming they even get that far.
If _I_ was EMI, here's what I'd do. I'd figure out some way of pushing the _existing_ software out there- bundle it, price-cut it, whatever- with NO restriction, but with a timebomb built into it. Then, at some future time, the software switches to a mode where in order to burn an audio CD or audio track, it does an analysis (fingerprint) of the audio and refers to an online verification site that charges you. If you don't pay and get the verification, no burn! This also has the advantage that if YOU make music, you no longer have the capability to burn your own CDs. Better get signed with EMI if you expect to hear yourself on a CD boy! This would be not a side-effect but an intended effect of the authorisation process. For more fun, you can have the burner refuse to burn the other record companies' songs, and only make CDs from EMI, so you'd have to get five burners!:D
But then I _am_ a complete bastard when I set my mind to it:)
Well... I feel bad for you then, if you buy CDs through traditional channels- because that is precisely where your money goes. Strange or not, that's the truth. It may help to remember that the independent promoters are not really part of the record companies- they're extorting the record companies. However, the result's the same.
If this really bothers you, don't buy CDs through conventional channels. Buy indie, or buy used, or download stuff using p2p methods, because when you buy from music stores or major (or subsidiary) labels, your money's keeping this game going. These promoters and this extortion's taking place over the money _you_ give the business, and the record companies are more or less resigned to the idea that they'll just pay up and jack up the retail cost to you, to cover for it.
Slashdot Mirror
Their stuff takes addresses like foo.com/bar/server-junk//double-slash-format.html and turns the // into a /, making a corrupted live web link out of the text, while continuing to show it as a double slash visibly.
It's a very small step to having IE automatically change all links on the browser side if it doesn't like them. In fact, there's a logical argument for identifying links that are also represented by Smart Links, and interceding, either going instead to the smart link or popping up an annoy box, which would look like this:
Beginning to get the picture, folks? _All_ they have to do is start popping up 'choices' to go to Smart Tags at every available opportunity, including 'extra choices' for existing addresses. This, I think, would not be deemed illegal. Then it's just a matter of a 'just use the smart tags' option to stop the annoyance, and they're home free, with the user having 'chosen' to not even honor existing HTML tags out there on the net. It is _trivial_ to jockey people into the position of 'choosing' to use Microsoft's idea of what links should point to, and at that point they have a lock on electronic commerce that is truly impressive.
I would be really, really surprised if they were too dumb to realise this. Few people consider them stupid. I think they're completely aware of the whole sequence of events I've outlined. It's the logical next expansion IF .NET works- because if .NET works, they still have to expand more. It's a shrewd move that shows great foresight. The fact that the implications are shocking does not, I think, worry them one bit.
(see how it works? Doesn't it look like I meant that as a link? _Surely_ that indicates my intentions, how could it not? Sheesh....)
(end sarcasm. And I'd just like to say- holy shit!! Look what you can do when you win the browser war. Who wants to bet that the way they'll appease CNet and the like is by _selling_ 'smart link' access to common english words? Talk about seizing a choke hold on communication and mindspace. This is so far out of line it makes my head spin. It potentially plays merry hell with _my_ trademarks and IP.)
All you're doing is supporting their stock price. They're not going to listen to you. You can't get enough shares to matter.
That said, most Fortune 500 companies won't use open source (note how Apple, IBM etc. already do, however!). This makes them easy pickings for the likes of a Microsoft to seize control of all proprietary software and start draining money out of these Fortune 500 companies- which can happen for a _long_ time before the Fortune 500 companies are severely weakened.
In the bottom line it becomes a question of efficiency above all. Yes, huge corporations like to outsource this sort of thing, but if other huge corporations can get an advantage in margin or efficiency by taking on IT responsibility themselves, over the long run they will beat up on the corporations that are overspending on Microsoft licenses and continually wasting human resources keeping up with Microsoft's ever-increasing accounting demands. Complying with a Microsoft audit costs MONEY. For a huge corporation the human costs of labor and wasted time could be nearly as much money as the actual license fees in question- and the audits won't stop coming.
Basically, any Fortune 500 company sticking determinedly to proprietary software is supporting not only itself but is also supporting its vendor in a sort of charity. If that vendor is Microsoft, the cost is very impressive- even staggering. You have to include the accounting costs of audits, the 'runtime' of the relationship as well as the actual products themselves.
This could prove fatal for such companies in the long run if their direct competition includes more self-contained companies.
Oh, come on, that was _funny_. Whatever you do, don't ever go read Penny Arcade. You'd have a coronary :)
Anyone can do this. I'm using http://www.riaa.com/Gold-Intro-2.cfm as my starting point. While they're not charging for THAT I suggest trying to make some sense of the data.
Specifically, I'm focussing my effort on one particular metric that's convenient. I could have taken down all sorts of information but it would take me far longer and I can't spare the time. What would be great is if someone else went through that data from another angle- for instance, I'm amassing a really _complete_ dataset based on years_out*millions_sold, which is very good at showing historical relevance over time periods greater than ten years. Someone ought to take down all the years of release and the year of the most recent platinum cert! I am convinced there will be strong correlations indicating a brick-wall dropoff for ALL artists post-85 or so, based on the fact that I have seen _all_ the certs while I went through taking down release dates. Even as far back as that, the industry was beginning its pump-and-dump practices: for instance, Shaun Cassidy, and some of the Disco acts illustrated a tendency to go instantly platinum and then never sell another record from back catalog. The thing is, these days EVERYBODY seems to be stuck in that mode, whether it makes sense for them or not.
The truth is out there. Only reason I stumbled upon it was because I set out to do the work. It's amazing that apparently nobody has ever done this- but then, it's an industry where they don't bother to get accurate or complete information on their own _greatest_ sellers for their _own_ website, so what do you expect?
Theoretically, this un-asked-for research might be of great benefit to the RIAA, since theoretically it could lead to their producing artists with staying power. However, I've already mentioned elsewhere that the LAST thing they want is artists with staying power- they want neophytes, veterans demand better pay. So it is my hope that the research can be used to help _indie_ artists develop careers with staying power. And of course, I record music myself- I could use the info too.
And yeah- I'm pretty psyched to have stumbled upon this important something :)
This conclusion is true. I am currently in the middle of a project, combing through the RIAA's publically available data on gold and platinum records and looking for information on longterm sales. One thing jumped out at me that I wasn't looking for- since around 1990, the pattern of platinum and multiplatium record sales is that the act sells multiplatinum while the label is pushing it, and then when the label stops, the act entirely stops selling. In previous decades, records had the capacity to sell from back catalog. That doesn't particularly happen anymore. People _are_ losing interest in bands once the label stops pumping them into the stores, by the RIAA's own figures. Real-world data not only supports this, but _hugely_ supports it. It's a very big change taking place in the last ten or fifteen years.
It's a really good point. There _is_ no commons in modern society. Almost nobody but obscure open source developers even acknowledge the _concept_ of a commons. These days, it's 'who owns it?'. There is no conception of a commons, and so no 'tragedy of the commons' can occur because NOTHING is public.
I think this had better stop being taken for granted. This loss of public commons (in every sphere) is NOT inevitable, or divinely appointed, or natural law. It is a collective choice, assisted by really extensive lobbying and public relations on the part of entities which repudiate any concept of a commons.
If we're gonna give it up we should LOOK at what we're giving up, not overlook it. That's why I feel the comment was indeed insightful. It touched upon something that's VERY important. Overwhelmingly so. For crying out loud, public resources have always been a hallmark of society! To abandon that is a BIG CHANGE.
Sentimentality in early American music: Blame this on Stephen Foster. He was very literally the Michael Jackson or Disney of his day. It seems that there's always been a market for desexualized sentimentality- whether it is Stephen Foster's songs about dead lovers, Disney with its 'land of 10,000 uncles' (and NO direct sexual relationships or families with actual children- Huey Dewey and Louie did not arise from a duck f**king a duck, but sprang from Walt's forehead, and their biological parents are NEVER to be referred to), or Michael Jackson's songs of mistrust and betrayal (see 'Billie Jean'), it's as if direct sexual relationships are 'too hot to handle' for the pop market. Dead lovers are 'safe', rejection and lamenting is 'safe', blocking out the whole area of family and relationships is 'safe' and so Pop has always tended to reward artists who had a need to repress themselves. (Michael Jackson is, or was, a Jehovah's Witness- this colors his work in pervasive ways).
So when you say "Nothing like that ever happens in modern pop music, of course" you couldn't be more wrong! The theme of loss or failure to keep a relationship continues right up to Britney Spears- who burst onto the scene with a song in which she apparently sings from the perspective of a girl in love with her abuser! Hit me baby one more time... but... trust me... (and you can tell that no, this is a vain hope- but how sentimental to have such a hope, and to be faithful to one who doesn't deserve that faith...)
As for black music supplanting 'potted palm' music, this is to some extent simply a matter of the narrowing of pop, very similar to what's happening today. When you can _only_ hear 'potted palm' music, anything else becomes more desirable. The restricting of choice lays the seeds for its own rebellion. Black music became fashionable- was co-opted, assimilated into white music again (I don't mean Elvis- I mean Pat Boone singing white bread versions of Little Richard), and hit continual limits all along the way. For instance, before Michael Jackson, there was no black music on MTV. Period. It took Michael to break the color line there. Then, R&B radio began being steadily assimilated into the Top 40 format- playing more and more of a homogenous mix of black and white artists, until there was no real line between black and white anymore because it was ALL 'pop', ALL 'top 40'. The distinctiveness of black rhythm and blues had affected Pop but been assimilated into it and rendered unrecognizable.
What the future holds is best illustrated by Electronic music, but not stylistically. The consolidation of radio into a single limited stream causes pressure, a hunger for other choices and other sounds, but instead of other radio choices turning up, with the Internet the result is suddenly a capacity for virtually infinite choices.
The effect of this on Electronic (which was the first to really make heavy use of the new medium, what with computer geeks liking beepy noises and all) was a wild proliferation of genre beyond all outside comprehension. People will ask, What is drum & bass? What is detroit? What is chill-out? How does ibiza trance differ from acid trance? The distinctions are all-important to insiders but incomprehensible to outsiders. This is because the Internet allows the one monolithic stream of pop culture that was Radio, to be broken into a million tiny streams.
Radio and pop culture tries to deal with this by literally infiltrating teen culture and stealing cultural ideas- such as 'rage rock', which resulted in the manufacturing of Limp Bizkit as a mainstream pop direction. But the twist is, once a cultural niche is seized and turned into mainstream culture, it is already stagnant- Limp Bizkit ensures that rage rock is already dead to the true teen culture. It's an intrinsic failure- mainstream culture _can't_ be all things at once. It inevitably tries to consolidate, and in doing so it loses relevancy and becomes soulless product- in the sense that it doesn't represent anyone's genuine feelings or concerns or desires.
As the internet continues to affect music distribution, the most significant thing to look for is total balkanization. This is a good thing! There will never be one single culture outlet that suits everyone. But there will be a thousand different streams to choose from, all of which are a little more removed from pop culture, all of which take a bit of effort to find, but once you find them you discover a whole new world with its own rules and history and definitions for things. Little bits of the thousand streams continually bubble up into mainstream culture like Trance music being used to sell cars, but communications has finally developed to the point that there will never be a single Pop mainstream again.
It's similar to transportation- after a certain point, people just stopped growing their own food, and now they use transportation to get it (which has its own problems). We are at the point where people will stop looking for a single art and culture source, and will turn to the Internet and easily find forms of art and music that are personal to them, in great profusion. We will witness the decline and fall of Top 40- provided that we continue to bring 'the consumer' not simply repackaged free 'Top 40', but the full range of choices the Internet makes possible.
It doesn't matter if you can get Britney Spears on Napster. What matters is if you can find some sort of easily listenable music on some random web page, freely listen to it, and go and find more, when it's NOT Britney Spears. For the first time, it's more important to look at what the RIAA is _not_ selling, if you want to know where the future is heading.
You're making a lot of weird assumptions that aren't based in reality. Come back when you're over 21 and see if you still remain confident that you understand everyone's motives in the whole wide world :)
If the other ones are army infantry, Microsoft is Navy SEALs, or some sort of special forces unit. That is why they are dangerous. They're on nobody's side but their own, yet they have a striking force that's equal to far huger organisations, and a positioning that could give them personal authority over the world's electronic communications, and thus the world's economies.
Things simply weren't bad enough yet for everyone ELSE to vote for Nader, too.
Microsoft is like a cyber-Wal-Mart, it's all about sucking money out of communities and squirreling it away. It leads to poverty, the stratification of classes, and the collapse of the infrastructure it feeds on.
Eventually this becomes obvious, just as it does in ghost-towns at which everyone works at Wal-Mart and gets laid off together when they can no longer purchase enough goods from Wal-Mart to justify keeping that many employees part-time. (A hypothetical case, as Wal-Mart usually cannot destroy _all_ independent business in a town.)
The question is, how much damage do you allow before taking action?
It is NOT a foregone conclusion that the government will let Microsoft do this. After all, the government is Microsoft's competitor, and if it wishes to act as Microsoft's 'partner' it's going to get raped like all the rest. There's got to be a shred of self-protection in there. It's _really_ unlikely that the government will blithely let itself be replaced, marginalised. Again it's a question of how much damage is permitted- to what extent does the U.S. Government allow the communications and IT infrastructure that its economy depends on, to be replaced by a privately controlled entity that has no reason for loyalty to the USA? It's got to the point where the USA is holding Microsoft back. MS can't grow to another ten times its size without stepping into the role of government, and so they hold pep rallies and chant "Microsoft, kill 'em! Microsoft, kill 'em!" (who would have _believed_ that in '95?) and how can they not take advantage of, say, the ability to gain control of U.S. military communications and threaten to sell the information to Iraq unless the government moves over politely and lets MS run the show? ("You keep on dealing with stuff like roads and such- that's boring"). It is simply too profitable an opportunity to pass up. Once MS controls the communications and IT of countries, and technically controls the Internet, they can easily gain access to _everyone's_ information (picture the USAMC and Iraq's military secrets residing on the same server somewhere in Redmond. Who can offer more to gain access to the secrets of the other?).
One possible safeguard is that the USA has an army, non-computer weaponry, etc. whereas Microsoft tends to consider challenges to its authority impossible. That means in the event of Microsoft demonstrating high treason, the army could surprise it by literally invading with very unsophisticated weaponry.
At the same time, there is much concern elsewhere in the world about how a 'US' company is gaining such control. It is not unthinkable that some Middle Eastern country might declare war on Microsoft specifically- and you'd see terrorist actions, such as bombings of the Microsoft campus. This would force MS and the US government closer together, but it would also be a very effective form of attack against Microsoft, again because they do not tend to consider challenges possible. Their worldview is psychotic- although they are in fact faced with seizing power on a geopolitical level, to themselves they are still the scrappy little vendor. They can push around entire COUNTRIES and still they are imagining some sort of greater competition 'forcing' them to do it. It's an unhealthy situation, but it's also a suggestive situation: outsiders are not always fooled by Microsoft's own self-deception. They can see that MS is slightly closer than even the WTO to the goal of a global totalitarian governing body, and the fact that Microsoft isn't aware of its size and scope and consequences makes it VULNERABLE to attack AS a global power. For instance, they have bodyguards and security but I really doubt they have aircraft or the ability to defend against air attack, and I don't think they'll be getting it, again because to themselves they are the scrappy little software company writing word processors.
It is sure an interesting time to be alive- in the sense of the old Chinese curse. (another idea- what does China think of the whole world being assimilated into a 'US' company's control?)
He makes these things available _free_ to advance science and art in general.
Among the things that will NOT be affected by IPIX are the ability of his software to correct for normal lens pincushion and chrominance distortion (luminance? the darkening of edges of an image), the ability to do wild and very high-resolution distortions for artistic purposes, the ability to take rectangular images and modify them so you can stitch them into a panorama (I actually have a QTVR panorama of my old studio's early days, done exclusively with Helmut's tools and hand-stitched (with no stretching) before his software helped you do that).
Going after Helmut is a crime. I am glad he is showing the same patient methodical attitude that pervades the rest of his work, and plans to work around the problem in reasonable ways.
My secret fear is that IPIX will try and push its limit, for instance attempting to muzzle Helmut entirely because his algorithms and tools CAN BE used or adapted to the fisheye case. In that event, my outrage would become unbearable- it would be a matter of suppressing the desire to go buy an uzi and HUNT THEM DOWN, and instead settling for scraping together money and paying someone to HUNT THEM DOWN LEGALLY. As in EFF, or some other likely candidate.
IPIX had better know its limits. I consider too-extensive persecution of a 'open' scientist to be an act of war. It's an act of war against the community of scientific information sharing that got all of us where we are, and I can't consider that a situation for simple workarounds. At some point you have to wage war back, whether that's through lawyers or through DOSing or through people planting rumours and destroying their company's stock price even more, or even, if the persecuted scientist is being threatened with imprisonment or violence, threatening back in kind. So far, the most extensive threat being made has been fines and imprisonment through use of the government as a weapon. In other industries (*cough* music industry *cough*) threat of physical violence has often been a quiet and unremarked additional element. Things are escalating, and if people like IPIX decide they want to start acting like the shadier sides of the music biz in their desire to stamp out all possible competition for their product, there needs to be a response ready.
I can't believe anyone would try and suppress Helmut Dersch. The question that is obviously on my mind is, how FAR will they go if unchallenged? Who else is being stepped on? And, can we be certain that all the coercive force being applied is strictly confined to narrow legal claims and patent-related demands? Record labels have often been known to use muscle in dealing with radio stations and programming- hell, Bob Marley's rise was partly reliant on just this sort of strong-arming. How do we know if companies like IPIX cross that line? And there are plenty of companies like IPIX :P
To be specific, they sure as hell are not Top 40.
But if 90% of listeners are 'crap', that's a relative judgement, only relevant from one particular perspective. If I use my perspective, it means 90% of listeners do not have the training to identify weird 'wrong' notes and strange polyrhythms- or, more importantly, the experimentalism to enjoy listening to stuff their brain can't immediately recognize.
If you took Britney Spears' perspective, 90% of listeners are crap... because 90% of listeners will tire of her formula eventually! How crappy to be faithless and disloyal like that ;) nobody is exempt from the 90% rule...
And if you go back into radio, and wind up being very manipulative and playing 100% payola garbage, 90% of your listeners will see through it and listen to you with a sort of cynical attitude that tends to deflate your attempts to be The Soundtrack To Their Life (in the tradition of old Motown). Crap! *G*
You _cannot_ have a new generation of CD players refuse to play 'data' CDs, because that would make them also refuse to play all legacy CDs. The extra information is for consumer standalone _burners_. Players don't care about that part.
You can cripple burners, but an uncrippled burner will produce discs that will play on all players, excepting those that can't read the dye layer. The difference is the price and the ability to work with crippleware standalone burners- and possibly with a new generation of PC software/burner combinations.
I don't think you can block CD writing in the burner itself- I think you have to control the software, too. Even with a crippleware burner that's ready to check for the 'music' header area, the software will still have to check for that and give thumbs-up/thumbs-down. Hence, EMI/Roxio. And much good may it do them... ;)
Or would you prefer the consumer NOT to be told to take advantage of the freedom and flexibility of digital media? 'sitdown-shutup-consume'? That's fine, but I think 'rip-mix-burn' has more sales appeal, frankly >:)
The only difference in 'music' CDRs is the price, and the fact that there's a small additional area with data to enable crippleware standalone CD writers to be authorised. If you have a player that doesn't work with audio CDs from CDRs, it won't work with 'music' CDRs either. There's no performance gain.
When you combine these things, it becomes very easy to download a music file and burn an audio CD of it. It's also easy to take a microphone and record your baby's first words and burn an audio CD of it. The permissible uses are just too wide-ranging- it'd be impossibly hard to stamp out all the methods used to copy RIAA stuff, so they have to focus on the specific businesses that are out there obviously doing things with RIAA stuff without asking.
The conclusion is there is NO demand for 'music' CDRs. ANY presence of 'music' CDRs in stores is a scam. The whole concept is a scam from the beginning, and if anyone suggests they 'sound better' they need a quick refresher on digital audio (technically, what would affect the sound would be burst errors, and 'music' CDRs offer NO advantage whatsoever on that score)
The only reason 'music' CDRs are in the stores at all, much less being (at some times) the ONLY brand name CDRs you can buy (I've seen this in Radio Shack at times) is because _somebody_ is pushing them on the channel, and you're seeing them because some people are smart enough or price-sensitive enough to buy the 'data' kind and use that. Surprise surprise, it works perfectly (expect computer CD burners to begin refusing to burn audio onto 'data' CDs... but the trick is, how's the burner gonna know the difference? It's the software that would know).
When most people would rather buy 'data' for cheaper, and don't want to buy 'music', the stores end up with lots of 'music' CDRs sitting around, which is what you see. You may even end up buying them if you're desperate for media and there's no 'data' left. But really, it would be better if you left the 'music' CDRs to rot on the shelf, and walked out of the place.
After asking the management if they have any 'data' CDRs, maybe asking them to carry more of the 'data' kind and noting that they do double duty as audio CDs. But don't expect to have your request listened to... these guys are all pretty armtwisted. Don't make the error of thinking we have a free market here :) it's all too easy to control. Next time you're in the store, _count_ how many 'data' and how many 'music' there are. See if you're offered the choice of 'music' CDR, or going to find another store hoping they too are not 'out of stock'. Which is a nice euphemism for "We're not allowed to carry too many of those because people buy them instead of the music CDRs".
Out of curiosity, does anyone working in retail have any idea of the ordering requirements? For instance, I am wondering if at any time the music CDRs are BUNDLED- as in, the store HAS to buy equal amounts of each to do business with the supplier. That would cause the result we see. What's it look like from the viewpoint of store inventory and purchasing? Anybody have hard data here? Maybe there's price breaks if you buy a certain amount of 'music' CDRs?
It's going to be impossibly hard to keep _you_ from having the capability to burn your CDs, as long as you have a fairly minor ability to hunt down the proper tool for it. The concern is more for your Aunt Mary who only uses AOL and doesn't understand these things. It would be nice if she, too, had the capacity to make mix CDs without being penalized for not being as savvy as you. Think of it as consumer protection.
Problem 1 is GOOD. This is a GOOD THING! Please oh please, let them do this! The only real danger is that the big five _will_ hold together as a cartel and cooperate! I would much rather they fight and cause hardware vendors to release misleadingly named special crippled devices (How about the "Complete Music Collection Initiative CD Burner"? Will only burn EMI's releases, for a small payment. Anything else, no go...)
We should _beg_ them to do this. It would totally destroy the commercial potential of those devices, those burners, those initiatives. If we can get the Big Five backbiting each other and using the technological restrictions ON EACH OTHER, we'll have it made. That would backfire viciously and do them considerable damage...
GO FOR IT ROXIO! Make your burner so it will only burn EMI content at a dollar a song! Release a different model with different firmware for each of the Big Five, collect the whole set! Make consumers have to learn which multinational conglomerate really owns Prawn Song or Swan Song or whatever little vanity label that's supposed to look all indie and stuff! RIP OFF THE VEIL!
*G* *G* *G* *G* *G* (oh, how I hope they're fools enough to do this...)
My primary concern is always, "I make my own music. Do I have the technical and legal capability to record and copy it to industry-standard media that I can distribute?"
Well, I already _have_ a CD burner, and even if all future CD writers refused to write a byte without me paying money for authorization to burn a _specific_ _RIAA_ song, I would still have my CD burner, and there are others out there if mine broke.
Plus, Red Book is a very well-established format, and there's so much of it out there that it's impossible to deprecate at this point. It's only just gotten to the point where quality rivals top-end analog systems: modern dithering is a thing of wonder. So not only can I be confident that I will be able to find a (not necessarily new!) CD burner, but I will also have the capacity to burn disks that are consumer-ready. CD audio's going to be supported for a _long_ time. Digital means you can support a lot of different formats- someday we'll have 27 terabyte disks that also play all DVD formats and _also_ play good old Audio CDs. It's just too easy and useful to add the support, to skip it. That means that all future disk-based playback decks are likely to support the format I can write.
This article is alarming, but it's a false alarm. If they do that it'll be about as commercially successful as pay-per-download Napster.
They'd have to mobilize legislation and basically destroy anyone who makes an unrestricted burner or unrestricted burning software. There are way too many other purposes for a burner to make that remotely feasible. They're NOT just for music CDs- and the standard Red Book is not a restricted format. Those music CDs are for _standalone_ burners that are intentionally crippled, the playing back needs no such special media to work.
It's meme time again: assuming that we _have_ already got the word out that 'music' CDRs are simply CDRs to work with crippleware standalone burners (pay more, for no extra functionality or fidelity AT ALL), we now have to also get the word out that the new Toast is merely a 'downgrade' taking away functionality that was previously there. And I can't wait to see exactly how they intend to implement this! Should be good for a laugh.
This is assuming they even get that far.
If _I_ was EMI, here's what I'd do. I'd figure out some way of pushing the _existing_ software out there- bundle it, price-cut it, whatever- with NO restriction, but with a timebomb built into it. Then, at some future time, the software switches to a mode where in order to burn an audio CD or audio track, it does an analysis (fingerprint) of the audio and refers to an online verification site that charges you. If you don't pay and get the verification, no burn! This also has the advantage that if YOU make music, you no longer have the capability to burn your own CDs. Better get signed with EMI if you expect to hear yourself on a CD boy! This would be not a side-effect but an intended effect of the authorisation process. For more fun, you can have the burner refuse to burn the other record companies' songs, and only make CDs from EMI, so you'd have to get five burners! :D
But then I _am_ a complete bastard when I set my mind to it :)
If this really bothers you, don't buy CDs through conventional channels. Buy indie, or buy used, or download stuff using p2p methods, because when you buy from music stores or major (or subsidiary) labels, your money's keeping this game going. These promoters and this extortion's taking place over the money _you_ give the business, and the record companies are more or less resigned to the idea that they'll just pay up and jack up the retail cost to you, to cover for it.