04-03-2007, 09:06 PM
The record companies' bread and butter remains CD sales, and yet remains silent about the easy ability to copy them.
One reason is the CD Red Book standard --- i.e., what makes a CD a CD. It's hard, as Sony and others have found out, to screw around with that and have it remain a CD. Something always happens --- either compatibility with older CD players takes a hit or somebody says "but I can hear what you did to the music."
In other words, when it's easy to copy media, they don't complain about it. When they have hard controls against it, suddenly it's "vital" for their business. How convenient!
Every digital format since (think consumer DAT or Digital Cassette or MiniDisc) has had as part of the spec some sort of DRM or whatever. DVDs of course are the big example here, and so are HD disks.
But a DRM-free download breaks that philosophy apart, the first time that's happened since the CD's introduction.
One reason is the CD Red Book standard --- i.e., what makes a CD a CD. It's hard, as Sony and others have found out, to screw around with that and have it remain a CD. Something always happens --- either compatibility with older CD players takes a hit or somebody says "but I can hear what you did to the music."
In other words, when it's easy to copy media, they don't complain about it. When they have hard controls against it, suddenly it's "vital" for their business. How convenient!
Every digital format since (think consumer DAT or Digital Cassette or MiniDisc) has had as part of the spec some sort of DRM or whatever. DVDs of course are the big example here, and so are HD disks.
But a DRM-free download breaks that philosophy apart, the first time that's happened since the CD's introduction.