What do you think of copy-protection in Audio-CD's ?

[Richard III]

1. Vonork, I'm not quite sure what you're saying, but if you're comparing taping tapes to file-sharing, you're koo-koo. Copying due to the use of tapes was minimal, for several reasons: low quality, hassle, etc. Copying due to file sharing is entirely different; comparing Napster/Kazaa etc. to "tapes for personal use" is like comparing a stock market to a lemonade stand.

2. "Killer," on the same point, China was already a "lost market" for IP and priced accordingly. The way copyrights/patents have always worked is that the market was already priced to deal with the fact that there would be piracy in copyright free jurisdictions, and the (limited) spillover.

That's why Chinese VHS copying damaged but never threatened the VHS market in the same way that file trading threatens the music market. File trading pisses all over the law, even in those countries the producers/creators depended on for their returns.

3. As for all of the "give us our music-on-demand, give us our new tech services," it's all full of kaka. Every poll ever done suggests that so much of the population has now been trained to steal anyway that a market based entirely on paid-digital services would collapse - and everything would now be in piratespace instead of just some of it. I don't beleive the tech-geeks for one minute, and I don't blame the companies for one minute. If the consumer doesn't respect the need to pay the publicist, the producers, the artists, the contract lawyers (yes, they play a role) and all the other people who quite legitimately are working to get music out for the work they do, why should the companies fall over backward to make theft even easier for those consumers?

All of this complaining is based on the premise that having to buy a CD for $20.00 is some sort of human rights violation, or pricing the market to such an unreasonable level that no one can afford the unreasonable return demanded for the labor and capital put into music. They can. So I can't own 500 CDs, I can only own 50. Woe is me!! Oh, quel horreur!! The poor kids!!!

It is also based on the common misconception that every CD turns a profit at those prices. They don't.

Stop whining and start working for a living and respecting those who do the same, and suddenly the CD prices don't seem so onerous after all. Do I think CD prices could drop? Sure. Does anyone who's ever knowingly file-traded copyrighted material deserve the consideration? Nope.

R.III

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

on China again: I was only saying this STARTED the trend, not that it was really so bad...

another thing is the EXPORT of facke CDs from China, not the Chinese market but THEIR market elsewhere....

 

[Richard III]

Originally posted by Lt. 'Killer' M.
on China again: I was only saying this STARTED the trend, not that it was really so bad...

another thing is the EXPORT of facke CDs from China, not the Chinese market but THEIR market elsewhere....

Fair comment, but everything I've seen suggests that every media - tapes, books, automatic-piano-players, movies, you name it, can survive a piracy:sale ratio as high as 1:2. Chinese exports never got so efficient as to make up half the market (although estimates are always murky, I'm a frequent CD shopper and I've never seen more than a few pirated CDs in my life, in several countries. On the other hand, it's obvious that a majority of songs on the market now are digital downloads...

R.III

 

[vonork]

Richard III

Oh, I was only quoting the MEDIA industry, it was them that cried out in misery over how the market would collapse cuz everyone would only record from the radio onto cassettes and stop buying record. Gee, guess they were wrong.

Regarding point 3: Well, they are losing money at least from me, or more to the point they will soon. I download mp3 & movies, if I like the mp3 I go out and by the record, simple as that.

And any movie I watch (that was not a complete waste of time) I go out and rent, but wait, I only pay for it, I don't take the movie with me so they can actually rent it to someone else the same day. Witch actually gets them more money.

Now at some time I will get so anoyed at them by not giving us a system of downlaoding and paying and the same time so I wont take the time to go and rent the movies... (Someone said some system like this is online in the US, but it's not here in Sweden.)

EDIT: btw, I buy more CDs now when I first can download them and listen too them... not as nice to stand in teh store and try to listen to a record.

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

Originally posted by Richard III


Fair comment, but everything I've seen suggests that every media - tapes, books, automatic-piano-players, movies, you name it, can survive a piracy:sale ratio as high as 1:2. Chinese exports never got so efficient as to make up half the market (although estimates are always murky, I'm a frequent CD shopper and I've never seen more than a few pirated CDs in my life, in several countries. On the other hand, it's obvious that a majority of songs on the market now are digital downloads...

R.III

well, i used to say that about pirates CDs, until I got a defective CD replaced rom the company (SONY) via a dealer, then later BOTH turned out to be fakes!

 

[Hitro]

What do I think of copy-protection?

I think it's a violation of my legal rights as a consumer. Period.

 

[Dell19]

Perhaps CD portection isn't the best solution but something does need to be introduced to phase out the trend towards just downloading music for free, or to at least limit it.

 

[Grisu]

Originally posted by Richard III

All of this complaining is based on the premise that having to buy a CD for $20.00 is some sort of human rights violation, or pricing the market to such an unreasonable level that no one can afford the unreasonable return demanded for the labor and capital put into music. They can. So I can't own 500 CDs, I can only own 50. Woe is me!! Oh, quel horreur!! The poor kids!!!

It is also based on the common misconception that every CD turns a profit at those prices. They don't.

Stop whining and start working for a living and respecting those who do the same, and suddenly the CD prices don't seem so onerous after all. Do I think CD prices could drop? Sure. Does anyone who's ever knowingly file-traded copyrighted material deserve the consideration? Nope.

R.III

This thread isn't about piracy it's about copy-protection that cripples a CD.

When I created this thread I NEVER even hinted that I thought that CDs are too expensive, I'm more than ready to pay $20.-- for a CD with music I like (if I don't like the music I wouldn't want it anyway. )

I'm not ready, however, to pay $20.-- for a crippled CD that doesn't even run on my computer or my car-radio. One vendor even refused to give me my money back when I confonted him
I said it before and I'll say it again: this system does NOTHING to keep pirates from obtaining illegal copies, it only annoys legal customers like me

 

[Richard III]

Originally posted by KaeptnOvi
I said it before and I'll say it again: this system does NOTHING to keep pirates from obtaining illegal copies, it only annoys legal customers like me

Perhaps. Frankly, I don't think anything will be effective but jail and education.

But why do you think they're doing it, for sport? Even if their misplaced belief is that it does something about piracy, that's still the motive...

R.III

 

[Vrylakas]

R III wrote:

All of this complaining is based on the premise that having to buy a CD for $20.00 is some sort of human rights violation, or pricing the market to such an unreasonable level that no one can afford the unreasonable return demanded for the labor and capital put into music.

Actually the music industry in the U.S. has recently settled an anti-trust case brought against it by the government whereby they agreed to stop dis-allowing distributors from discounting new CD releases (i.e., price fixing). This article was recently featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal's marketing section about the settlement. A similar situation is pending in Europe.

I am not a "kid" (depending on how old a kid can be - does 34 count?) and while I share your deploring of the widespread piracy, I think the music industry has no one to blame but itself. Taking the U.S. example again, in 1982 the American music industry erupted into a uproar over re-recordable cassettes that would allow consumers to make copies of their legally-purchased records. The resulting legal amendment to copyright laws made it legal for Americans to make copies of their own legally-purchased music and even give copies to friends, so long as no profit was derived and so long as this did not involve a mass-distribution. With the rise of Napster and the ilk, now consumers have a much wider array of choices - but as this undermines the music industry's current operating model, they've fought it tooth and nail. They are bound and determined to force consumers to stick to their pre-fabbed CD format, regardless of the very obvious public interest in downloadable music. The Napster court decision brought up the 1982 settlement but incredibly the presiding judge declared (which is what ultimately killed Napster) that the internet does not represent a new technology from what existed at the time of the 1982 settlement (!) and hence no new copyright amendments are necessary.

Countless surveys in Europe and the U.S. have shown that a very large chunk of those downloading music illegally are not teenagers but middle-aged people who cannot find the music they like in the local CD shops anymore between the Barfney Spears and N'Sync. The ability to have full control over the content and the ability to find the most obscure music imaginable are also major attractions, and these same countless surveys have shown that most who are doing the illegal downloading would be willing to pay a reasonable amount for a comperable service - if only such a service existed. This opinion is very widely held among IT people and indeed it even moved the very conservative U.S. Senator Orin Hatch to threaten action against the music industry in the U.S. if they didn't start adapting to the obvious consumer demand as a part of any Napster settlement - and they've subsequently opened two very weak websites that allow subscribers to rent music on a monthly basis (no downloads and no "burning"), and of course the selection is very limited. In other words, it's set up for a failure. Hatch also mentioned when confronted with the substantial dip in CD sales last year that some of his own observations point to substandard quality of the products the music industry was turning out; he mentioned that they seemed to have concentrated their marketing on a few narrow consumer groups (i.e., young teenagers) and at least part of their loss in sales may simply be due to a faulty marketing strategy and inferior products. Remember that Hatch is extremely pro-business, especially big business.

My father once asked me when I described Napster to him to find an obscure 1950s Polish pseudo-jazz band that he remembered from his childhood. I did searches all over the net on Polish and other sources, but only on Napster did I find recordings from his band. Similarly I found some Yugoslav rock that I listened to as a student in the 1980s (Riblja Corba!), as well as some unusual early 1970s CBC recordings (remember Willie Dunn?) that I have never seen in any CD shop or CD website. If we follow the music industry's current business models, then we as consumers should not be allowed to have access to the music we like (because it's unusual and therefore not profitable for them to produce on a mass scale) but rather we should just be content to buy whatever shlock they turn out on an annual basis for the teeny-boppers. I work in the corporate world and fully want artists and the music promoters who support and distribute them to get their due $$$, but the music industry is fighting hard to force everyone to pretend that it is still 1982 simply because they do not want to have to make the investments to change their business model. And they're willing (through the afore-mentioned encryption and regional coding methods) to abridge my currently-defined legal rights as a consumer to keep their post-1982 gravy-train flowing. They've lost my sympathy entirely as an ardent capitalist, and as I've mentioned they've lost many other erstwhile allies.

Finally - the WSJ (again, hardly a liberal anti-business rag) ran a column on the front page some months ago tracing the story of an 18 year old Irish girl some major American music promoter "discovered" and brought to the U.S. Basically, they spent more than $1 million to figure out that this girl just didn't have what they wanted, shipping her back to Ireland. Sources in the industry were quoted as saying this is very common, and that there is a massive waste of money and resources in the music business on such follies. This (opined the WSJ) is where a lot of that $17.00 for a CD goes; according to an industry source only about $1.00 of that price actually goes to the artist. The current music industry is a badly run business that is passing its financial disaster onto consumers, and is currently taking legal action to force them to continue being spoon-fed the industry's hemorraging business model.

 

[Richard III]

I think we've had the same argument before, Vrylakas, and then you intervened at the end with the same arguments (I even remember the obscure Polish band) and IIRC, at the end of it, I saluted you and smiled and said something about how my ranting on this served a purpose, however much I agreed with most of your comments as well.



So once again, I salute you.



I should add, however, that I have pretty obscure musical tastes, and between online CD ordering and the diversity of CD stores in most major cities, I've never had enough trouble finding anything to justify opening my hard drive and all the music on it (which is actually none, but that's beside the point) to the world for file-trading.

If the trouble is rural folks without decent CD stores, well, tough; I can't get my favorite scotch in the suburbs either.

R.III

 

[test_specimen]

I think that it is only just that instead of buying cds I download the music for free since I have been bothered by marketing for Britney Spears, M&M and N'Sync all day. I consider it as some sort of compensation for my suffering.

I still sometimes buy cds if they are really good (eg. soundtrack to Pi or Requiem for a Dream), but usually only after I downloaded some songs. If the cd is copy protected (and this is mentioned on the cover) I rather download the album than buying it.

 

[anarchywrksbest]

Its illegal to pirate stuff???

*Goes out back*

"GUYS!! We have to stop apparently its illegal ?? "

*Comes back*

Well. No new boat for me

 

[redtom]

I heard they're going to add a program to certain new CD's so they can't be run on PC's, so we can't copy them.

 

[cgannon64]

I don't think file sharing can be stopped. The smartest thing the music industry could do now is figure out a way to exploit it.

I say the "new" artist distributes his songs for free online, makes all the money off concerts.

 

[amadeus]

What do I think of copy-protection in audio CD's?

I think it is ridiculous. Not because I'm some idealist that thinks music should be free, but because someone will get around to cracking the code and we'll be back to rhombus zero (as opposed to square one...)

 

[Portuguese]

Originally posted by redtom
I heard they're going to add a program to certain new CD's so they can't be run on PC's, so we can't copy them.

I bought a CD that said that ("Can't be reproducedin PC/MAC") and it seems that they in the middle of some songs put bytes wrong so that PC doesn't recognise even that there is a CD on the CD driver...

But my HP external CD-RW reads it and now I have more 12 Shakira WMAs on Hard Drive

 

[Cecasander]

Originally posted by Dralix
This of course, is my favourite argument supporting piracy. "Piracy is ok because the artists/companies/whatever have a lot of money, and charge more than I think they should."

I suppose it's ok to rob banks too, because loans are much too expensive, and the banks already have too much money.

Indeed! you got my point. But the bad thing about robbing a bank that they have quite a security system. But the case is, that the money bank got is not their own money, but is belongs to those who have an account.

 

[EzInKy]

Some interesting music industry statistics:

http://news.dmusic.com/print/5804

Year: 1999 2000 2001
Total Dollars (millions) 14651 14404 13700
New Releases 38900 27000 27000
Dollars per release 376,632 533,481 507,407

If these figures are correct, the Recording Industry income indeed did decrease 6.5%, but they also published 30% fewer new titles and actually made more money on them.

 

[vonork]

why I'm I not suprised...