Music Industry Plotting to Control Your Record Collection

The Wall Street Journal | 12-17-2001 | Thomas E. Weber

[rustbucket]

The WSJ has an article about how the record industry may soon try to lease recordings rather than sell them. If you fall behind on your "rent" payments, your music collection evaporates.

Also, new copy-protected CDs apparently redefine the concept of owning a CD. If you buy one of these, you may not be able to transfer the music to your computer or burn your favorite music onto your own CDs or transfer songs to MP3 players.

[rustbucket]

I plan to steer clear of CDs labeled copy-protected and complain to the stores that sell them.

[dandelion]

Screw them. Real musicians and real fans already know that the recording industry is swimming towards the deadpool; this just means they are sinking faster.

Guerilla music, arise!!

[ladyjane]

This is news? har

[VoiceOfBruck]

The WSJ has an article about how the record industry may soon try to lease recordings rather than sell them...

Well, good luck to them.

You wouldn't have a link, by chance, would you?

[Centurion2000]

mp3's all the way ..... I'll occasionally go buy a CD if I really like it, but I've spent well over 6000.00 so far on RIAA products.

[sam_paine]

The more the RIAA etal claim to have 100% invincible methods, the more they ensure there will be hackers breaking it. See www.cdfreaks.com for example.

[Hank Rearden]

If the hardware guys (computers, consumer electronics) can figure out how to cope with price reductions of 10-30%/year, it's time to see the software guys (releasing mostly crappy, lazy "music") get with the program and do the same.

If CDs were $5.99 instead of $15.99 (cost of production: about $1.25 fully packaged in volume) the vastly increased sales due to decreased piracy would result in a much better bottom line. But they really fear the precedent, so are exploring copy protection.

Problem for them, though, is simple: either the protection is cracked, or people just won't buy. Period. They need to learn to compete instead of paying lobbiests in D.C.

[Mr.Clark]

From my cold dead hands.

[eno_]

At MP3.com you can download, perfectly legally, MP3 recordings of thousands of musicians. For genres like jazz, where a lot of talented musiacians never get recording contracts, MP3.com enables them to publish their music and get a little bit of money. The vast majority of musicians earn their living by teaching and playing live or for commercial recordings. The recording industry is a corrupt dinosaur.

[Jim Pelosi]

This is a laughable idea. Any form of "copy protection" will be summarily hacked through with a very simple program that you will be able to download for free on the internet. The music corporations just have to face the fact that the old way of doing business is no longer valid or acceptable to the masses. Maybe these recording "artists" will also have to realize that they're no longer going to be billionairs on record sales alone, and instead look for more ways to generate revenue from touring and movie and commercial use. I myself have not paid for music in the last 5 or 6 years now. I don't see myself starting to anytime soon. Why should I when I can just turn on the radio and hear the same songs played in constant rotation all day long? JIM

[eno_]

Correct! How much of that $15.99 do the musicians see? Unless they have good lawyers, the answer is often zero. There are a handful of star acts that could lose money from people copying CDs, but to let the record companies force travesties like DMCA down our throats is to give up our rights mainly for the benefits of these greedy, corrupt, mafia-infiltrated, tax-dodging, nose candy snorting bufoons.

[wideawake]

I find it amusing that a guitar wizard like Charlie Hunter can craft beautiful yet challenging CDs and sell them for $11.99, but the mindless, two-chord crud that Limp Bizkit churns out is $18.99.

[The Duke]

Hey, I say to them GO FOR IT, and in the meantime I'll be busy starting up my own recording company that releases music without such protections.

[rustbucket]

No link, sorry.

[Johassen]

Breaking copy protection on a music CD is trivally easy: Make a high quality analog copy. Granted this is not an ideally clean copy, but the resulting MP3 could easily be indistiguishable to the human ear and then could be copied digitally from there. At twenty bucks a pop, they ensure that we'll have plenty of time and energy to spend on doing these things too.

[TexRef]

Make a high quality analog copy

Exactly.

If it can be played through speakers then it can be recorded to another source. Sure, you might not be able to "RIP" it to an MP3, etc -- at least not at first -- someone will figure out how to do that.

Remember, DVD encryption was "uncrackable" as well :)

[DeckTheHallsHolly]

The ONLY CD I ever bought that was worth the price was the TOP GUN Soundtrack

[Rockinfreakapotamus]

Screw CDs! LONG LIVE VINYL!

[Petronski]

Anyone remember the copy protection on Lotus 1-2-3 and how it was removed when people voted with their dollars?

The best thing people could do with copy-protected cds is buy them and then return them, so that everyone along the line deals with the hassle and never, ever forgets how much the public hates to pay for the privilege of being called a thief.