Day of action against the new corrupted CDs
phil hunt
The next time you buy a CD, remember to ask:
Will this CD really play on my equipment?
Why? Because the record manufacturers are secretly introducing new
modified CDs into the shops. Some of these corrupt CDs won't play on
computers, PS2 and DVD machines, and others have lower quality sound
and won't last as long as normal CDs. Of the CDs that will play on
computers, they will only play on Microsoft operating systems, and
using Microsoft's Media Player software - users of minority operating
systemsa like Linux will be deliberately excluded, as will
non-Microsoft music playing software.
The new CDs might play fine to start with, but underneath, the sounds
have been subtly corrupted. After a few scratches, you'll have tracks
going wrong much sooner than with normal CDs. In truth, these new
corrupt CDs are not as good as normal CDs.
The full story on the corrupt CDs is at:
<http://uk.eurorights.org/issues/cd/>.
** CAMPAIGN FOR DIGITAL RIGHTS, UK ACTION DAY, SATURDAY 6th October **
The Campaign for Digital Rights is holding a Day of Action against the
new CDs this Saturday. We will be distributing leaflets outside record
shops thoughout the UK, warning potential customers of the danger the
new CDs pose.
You are welcome to join in!
If, like us, you don't want to be ripped off with shoddy, sub-standard
CDs, you can be part of our Day of Action. For details of how to
volunteer, see <http://uazu.net/cd/volunteers.html>.
For general information on the Campaign for Digital Rights, see our
website at <http://uk.eurorights.org/>.
--
*** Philip Hunt *** ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk ***
mmn...@mmnnoo.org
<snip>>
> new CDs this Saturday. We will be distributing leaflets outside record
> shops thoughout the UK, warning potential customers of the danger the
> new CDs pose.
I LIKE it! The common response to this sort of thing
is that you should vote with your wallet. Well, I
feel the consumers have been doing so. The result?
Publishers use their decreased sales as evidence
against the horrors of Piracy. I like your
approach, because leaflets send a more direct
message, both: a) we're not going to buy it
and b) the reason is because you're treating
us poorly.
>
> You are welcome to join in!
>
> If, like us, you don't want to be
> ripped
Ah, good pun.
Richard Thrippleton
Napster. Record industry fucks you, fuck 'em right back.
Richard
phil hunt
>>The next time you buy a CD, remember to ask:
>>
>> Will this CD really play on my equipment?
>>
>>Why? Because the record manufacturers are secretly introducing new
>>modified CDs into the shops. Some of these corrupt CDs won't play on
>>computers, PS2 and DVD machines, and others have lower quality sound
>>and won't last as long as normal CDs.
>
> Napster. Record industry fucks you, fuck 'em right back.
They've shut down Napster. And with their proposed SSSCA, they
want to ban all computers that don't have a backdoor in them that
let them monitor everything you do, in case you make an
unauthorised copy of something of theirs.
This, they say, is necessary to prevent what they call "piracy"[1].
Of course, this is nonsense; people have been making copies of CDs
for their personal use ever since CDs were launched. And because
the new CDs are less robust and will fail sooner, it's more important
for the consumer to make a backup copy, if they want to continue
listening to their music that they've legally bought.
The record industry might eventually consider that their
iniquitous and heavy-handed action causes resentment against them
and is the main reason many people consider making illegal copies
to be socially acceptable.
[1] Note that they consider anyone reducing their profits to be
equivalent to acts of capturing a ship by force, often
raping and murdering the crew. This should give you a good idea
of where they are coming from, morally.
Isaac
wrote:
>
>[1] Note that they consider anyone reducing their profits to be
>equivalent to acts of capturing a ship by force, often
>raping and murdering the crew. This should give you a good idea
>of where they are coming from, morally.
The industry is hurt more when you don't buy or make illicit copies
of their disks. They know how to respond to copying. They simply
lobby for more arcane legislation, and provide DMCA backed copy
protection. They can't possibly respond to people doing without
their product altogether.
I think the industry is going to discover that their new measures
won't increase sales of CDs.
Isaac
phil hunt
Hopefully they will piss off enough people that they will
be forced to withdraw the corrupted CDs sand start selling
honest ones again.
David Masterson
> In article <slrn9rknsm...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>, phil hunt wrote:
>> The next time you buy a CD, remember to ask:
>>
>> Will this CD really play on my equipment?
>>
>> Why? Because the record manufacturers are secretly introducing new
>> modified CDs into the shops. Some of these corrupt CDs won't play
>> on computers, PS2 and DVD machines, and others have lower quality
>> sound and won't last as long as normal CDs. Of the CDs that will
>> play on computers, they will only play on Microsoft operating
>> systems, and using Microsoft's Media Player software - users of
>> minority operating systemsa like Linux will be deliberately
>> excluded, as will non-Microsoft music playing software.
>>
>> The new CDs might play fine to start with, but underneath, the sounds
>> have been subtly corrupted. After a few scratches, you'll have tracks
>> going wrong much sooner than with normal CDs. In truth, these new
>> corrupt CDs are not as good as normal CDs.
> Well, I think now's the time we should all vote with our....
> Napster. Record industry fucks you, fuck 'em right back.
So you're proposing what? If the record industry won't give you the
CDs, you suggest we steal what's on the CDs from them?
--
David Masterson dmaster AT synopsys DOT com
Sr. R&D Engineer Synopsys, Inc.
Software Engineering Sunnyvale, CA
Richard Thrippleton
>On Wed, 3 Oct 2001 09:54:58 +0000, Richard Thrippleton <re...@ObviousSPAMBLOCKcam.ac.uk> wrote:
>>>The next time you buy a CD, remember to ask:
>>>
>>> Will this CD really play on my equipment?
>>>
>>>Why? Because the record manufacturers are secretly introducing new
>>>modified CDs into the shops. Some of these corrupt CDs won't play on
>>>computers, PS2 and DVD machines, and others have lower quality sound
>>>and won't last as long as normal CDs.
>>
>> Well, I think now's the time we should all vote with our....
>> Napster. Record industry fucks you, fuck 'em right back.
>
>They've shut down Napster.
>And with their proposed SSSCA, they
>want to ban all computers that don't have a backdoor in them that
>let them monitor everything you do, in case you make an
>unauthorised copy of something of theirs.
easily happen if they bribe enough of US government to get this through.
>The record industry might eventually consider that their
>iniquitous and heavy-handed action causes resentment against them
>and is the main reason many people consider making illegal copies
>to be socially acceptable.
the drive in my computer. Should I ever find myself with one of these f*cked
CDs I will be sure to make all hell break loose in the store I got it from.
Richard
Mike
news:slrn9rknsm...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk...
> Some of these corrupt CDs ... won't last as long
> as normal CDs.
> ... After a few scratches, you'll have tracks
> going wrong much sooner than with normal CDs.
Huh?
One presumes you can back this up with some kind of intelligent discussion
of how the ECC has been changed to reduce the probability of error free
reading? If the ECC was changed, can you explain how a CD could play in any
existing CD drive (where the ECC decoding is implemented in hardware)?
Your FUD is showing.
-- Mike --
Nigel Feltham
> of how the ECC has been changed to reduce the probability of error free
> reading? If the ECC was changed, can you explain how a CD could play in
> any existing CD drive (where the ECC decoding is implemented in hardware)?
>
The way it works (according to info in hifi magazines) is that they
regularly change the data type bytes on a block of data so it looks like it
isn't audio data - Audio players see it as an error and ignore this data -
using error correction to generate new data based on data each side of the
gap (same as it would if disk was scratched). PC readers see the wrong
header as an error and just correct the header so this wrong data becomes
audio data - when the copy is played it no longer ignores the error so
plays it as noise.
Nigel Feltham
> the drive in my computer. Should I ever find myself with one of these
> f*cked CDs I will be sure to make all hell break loose in the store I got
> it from.
>
The trouble is the drive in your computer may play the fucked disk the same
way an audio player does - it only corrupts it when doing audio data
extraction on the drive. Doesn't stop you playing the CD while recording as
a wav file from your soundcard - it adds extra D-A and A-D stages but
removes the protection.
Nigel Feltham
> be forced to withdraw the corrupted CDs sand start selling
> honest ones again.
>
Not only this but the protection is designed so playing a copy can result
in destroying your speakers - if my player is one of those that causes this
damage with the original disc I assume I am well within my rights to sue
the shop who sold me the disc ( it's the seller's responsibility when a
product causes damage, not the manufacturer's - the customer sues the shop
then the shop has to sue the manufacturer).
This could put many small record shops out of business - imagine a small
shop being sued for damaging a $5000 (or more) hifi, especially if a group
of cutomers with damaged kit files a joint case against them.
Richard Thrippleton
copying; they don't lose anything physically. The real harm that is done to
them is that they _don't_ get my money. In this case they wouldn't get my
money anyway because the CDs are useless to me; hence I'm not harming the
industry. For the record I do not admit to ever using napster, and this
discussion is entirely hypothetical.
From another point of view though, the RIAA are a bunch of bastards;
going after what is effectively a search engine (Napster).
Richard
Ian Pegel
I think the point here is the presumption of innocence. If
CD standard sound is supposed to be of a certain quality due to the
sampling rate and number of bits, and if the manufacturers sacrifice some
of that bandwidth for their anti-piracy measures, I reckon that someone
somewhere should get a good kicking (metaphorically) for disrupting my
litening pleasure with their Cheap Distortion Extortion machines. There!
Ian
David Masterson
[...with respect to copy protected audio CDs...]
>>> Well, I think now's the time we should all vote with our....
>>> Napster. Record industry fucks you, fuck 'em right back.
>> So you're proposing what? If the record industry won't give you
>> the CDs, you suggest we steal what's on the CDs from them?
> I've thought through the issues involved. It's not theft, it's
> copying; they don't lose anything physically. The real harm that is
> done to them is that they _don't_ get my money. In this case they
> wouldn't get my money anyway because the CDs are useless to me;
> hence I'm not harming the industry. For the record I do not admit to
> ever using napster, and this discussion is entirely hypothetical.
When you say "I'm not harming the industry", are you speaking purely
for yourself or are you making a blanket statement that would apply to
everyone using a Napster(-like) system?
> From another point of view though, the RIAA are a bunch of bastards;
> going after what is effectively a search engine (Napster).
From their point of view, its a system whose soul purpose was to
circumvent copyright protections.
David Masterson
>>>>>>> Richard Thrippleton writes:
> disrupting my listening pleasure with their Cheap Distortion
> Extortion machines. There!
What's your ears sampling rate? Can you actually hear the difference?
(I suspect not, but I don't know for sure.)
Someone else said that these CDs have errors in them that audio CD
players error-correct while PCs (etc.) detect as errors. Therefore,
since the error is corrected on an audio player, would there be any
detectable distortion?
Chris Ahlstrom
> What's your ears sampling rate? Can you actually hear the difference?
> (I suspect not, but I don't know for sure.)
Hmmm, we have hi-fi "experts" who swear that vinyl LPs sound better
than CDs, and people who think putting circular weights improves
quality.
> Someone else said that these CDs have errors in them that audio CD
> players error-correct while PCs (etc.) detect as errors. Therefore,
> since the error is corrected on an audio player, would there be any
> detectable distortion?
Hey, numb-nuts, the purpose of the extra information on CDs is to
allow for error correction, in case the CD gets dirty or damaged.
Adding errors is a little like putting scratches in the CD.
Enough scratches, and distortion or worse.
Chris
--
Kick Microsoft off of the Internet!
The Ghost In The Machine
<dma...@synopsys.com>
wrote
on 03 Oct 2001 14:07:42 -0700
<usnd0b...@synopsys.com>:
>>>>>> Ian Pegel writes:
>
>> In article <uwv2c6...@synopsys.com>, "David Masterson"
>> <dma...@synopsys.com> wrote:
>
>>>>>>>> Richard Thrippleton writes:
>
>>>> Well, I think now's the time we should all vote with
>>>> our.... Napster. Record industry fucks you, fuck 'em right back.
>
>>> So you're proposing what? If the record industry won't give you
>>> the CDs, you suggest we steal what's on the CDs from them?
>
>> I think the point here is the presumption of innocence. If CD
>> standard sound is supposed to be of a certain quality due to the
>> sampling rate and number of bits, and if the manufacturers sacrifice
>> some of that bandwidth for their anti-piracy measures, I reckon that
>> someone somewhere should get a good kicking (metaphorically) for
>> disrupting my listening pleasure with their Cheap Distortion
>> Extortion machines. There!
>
>What's your ears sampling rate? Can you actually hear the difference?
>(I suspect not, but I don't know for sure.)
Ears don't sample using a time-pulse; from what little I know of
anatomy, the hairs in the cochlea respond to specific wavelengths.
Presumably this also explains why we can't hear higher pitches
as we grow older -- the hairs, after all, are growing in there, :-)
as opposed to carrots, which as many a mother's child knows is what
grows in there if one doesn't regularly play "wash the ears". Yum.
(This also may explain why my "perfect pitch" is getting screwed up.
Ah well.)
>
>Someone else said that these CDs have errors in them that audio CD
>players error-correct while PCs (etc.) detect as errors. Therefore,
>since the error is corrected on an audio player, would there be any
>detectable distortion?
An interesting idea: deliberately playing with the error correction
codes to "sign" a CD -- those bits can be viewed as redundant info,
after all. Whether recorders actually do that is not clear to me
personally, although I do seem to remember that copying a DAT results
in poor fidelity because of an introduced signal somewhere in the
19 kHz range. (To be sure, 38 kHz is the FM SCA subcarrier. Maybe
my brain is just misremembering something.)
[.sigsnip]
--
ew...@aimnet.com -- insert random misquote here
EAC code #191 83d:17h:55m actually running Linux.
We are all naked underneath our clothes.
David Masterson
> On 03 Oct 2001 07:59:18 -0700, David Masterson
> <dma...@synopsys.com> wrote:
>>>>>>> Richard Thrippleton writes:
>>> Well, I think now's the time we should all vote with our....
>>> Napster. Record industry fucks you, fuck 'em right back.
>> So you're proposing what? If the record industry won't give you
>> the CDs, you suggest we steal what's on the CDs from them?
> Why not? They rip off everyone else. Did you know Willie Nelson has to
> front the studio costs himself, and then only gets 15 cents per album?
> Download a Willie Nelson album off the MP3 group, send him a quarter
> for his efforts, and he'd be making 66% more than the studios pay him
> now.
Didn't Willie Nelson have a problem with the IRS such that they've
been garnishing his take on his records to pay back taxes (and he
agreed to it in a plea bargain)? Much as I like Willie's music and
would be upset if the studios were "ripping him off", I think you're
way off base in this point.
> IMO one of the best ways to fight the music industry would be to set
> up a website where MP3 fans could send in, say, a $10 donation, then
> as they downloaded MP3 albums they could go to the site and allocate
> small portions of that to be contributed directly to the appropriate
> artists.
Why hasn't this happened already? Napster (et.al.) have been around
for a few years now, but there doesn't appear to be any big move afoot
to compensate the artists for the MP3s that are downloaded. In fact,
a recent survey of college students who've downloaded free MP3s from
Napster would rather move to another service than pay for Napster
(regardless of what benefits were thrown in).
David Masterson
> While stuck in the full lotus position, David Masterson chanted this mantra:
>> What's your ears sampling rate? Can you actually hear the
>> difference? (I suspect not, but I don't know for sure.)
> Hmmm, we have hi-fi "experts" who swear that vinyl LPs sound better
> than CDs,
Good point. However, IIRC, don't they claim that vinyl LPs sound
better specifically because they don't sound as "perfect" as CDs
(ie. vinyl sounds more "real")?
> and people who think putting circular weights improves
> quality.
Huh? Don't recognize this one. Is this to change the speed at which
it plays and, thus, make it more "real"?
>> Someone else said that these CDs have errors in them that audio CD
>> players error-correct while PCs (etc.) detect as errors. Therefore,
>> since the error is corrected on an audio player, would there be any
>> detectable distortion?
> Hey, numb-nuts, the purpose of the extra information on CDs is to
> allow for error correction, in case the CD gets dirty or damaged.
> Adding errors is a little like putting scratches in the CD.
> Enough scratches, and distortion or worse.
Hey, I'm only reporting what was said as the way they said. My
question is a valid one (meaning I didn't know the answer).
phil hunt
>In article <slrn9rluju...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>, phil hunt wrote:
>>On Wed, 3 Oct 2001 09:54:58 +0000, Richard Thrippleton <re...@ObviousSPAMBLOCKcam.ac.uk> wrote:
>>>>The next time you buy a CD, remember to ask:
>>>>
>>>> Will this CD really play on my equipment?
>>>>
>>>>Why? Because the record manufacturers are secretly introducing new
>>>>modified CDs into the shops. Some of these corrupt CDs won't play on
>>>>computers, PS2 and DVD machines, and others have lower quality sound
>>>>and won't last as long as normal CDs.
>>>
>>> Well, I think now's the time we should all vote with our....
>>> Napster. Record industry fucks you, fuck 'em right back.
>>
>>They've shut down Napster.
> But the OpenNap networks are still going strong....
>>And with their proposed SSSCA, they
>>want to ban all computers that don't have a backdoor in them that
>>let them monitor everything you do, in case you make an
>>unauthorised copy of something of theirs.
>
> Can you say 'imported computers'?
Yes. Can you say "Free Trade Area of the Americas" or "Amendment to
TRIPS / WIPO treaty"?
>>The record industry might eventually consider that their
>>iniquitous and heavy-handed action causes resentment against them
>>and is the main reason many people consider making illegal copies
>>to be socially acceptable.
>
> I'm one of these many; I don't _own_ a standalone CD player, just
>the drive in my computer. Should I ever find myself with one of these f*cked
>CDs I will be sure to make all hell break loose in the store I got it from.
Quite right too.
phil hunt
>"phil hunt" <ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
>news:slrn9rknsm...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk...
>
>> Some of these corrupt CDs ... won't last as long
>> as normal CDs.
>
>> ... After a few scratches, you'll have tracks
>> going wrong much sooner than with normal CDs.
>
>Huh?
>
>One presumes you can back this up with some kind of intelligent discussion
>of how the ECC has been changed to reduce the probability of error free
>reading?
See for example:
<http://www.mail-archive.com/cdw...@other.debian.org/msg01871.html>
There are other links from <http://uazu.net/cd/links.html>.
Tim Smith
>> ... After a few scratches, you'll have tracks
>> going wrong much sooner than with normal CDs.
>
>Huh?
>
>One presumes you can back this up with some kind of intelligent discussion
>of how the ECC has been changed to reduce the probability of error free
>reading? If the ECC was changed, can you explain how a CD could play in any
>existing CD drive (where the ECC decoding is implemented in hardware)?
>
>Your FUD is showing.
The audio data is interleaved on the CD, so that consecutive samples
are in different sectors. This means if a sector has an uncorrectable
read error, instead of losing a bunch of consecutive samples, you lose
a bunch of samples spread out over time. An audio CD player deals
with that by interpolating to replace the lost samples.
One of the protection schemes records bad samples in some sectors, and
then sets the ECC incorrectly for those sectors, so that the player
will see them as having uncorrectable read errors and interpolate.
In data mode, drives don't interpolate, so your rips sound bad.
That's the key to the diddled-ECC protection schemes.
There is a limit on how many consecutive bad sectors a disc can have
and still have an audio player be able to interpolate. A disc with
these intentional bad sectors will reach that limit with less real
damage than a disc without the intentional bad sectors. Is this
significant? I don't know. If the limit is 2 sectors, for example,
then the protected discs might be pretty fragile. If the limit is 10
sectors, then the protected discs will be about as durable as regular
discs.
--Tim Smith
Jeffrey Siegal
> One of the protection schemes records bad samples in some sectors, and
> then sets the ECC incorrectly for those sectors, so that the player
> will see them as having uncorrectable read errors and interpolate.
>
> In data mode, drives don't interpolate, so your rips sound bad.
So, what's so hard about the rip software doing the interpolation? I
imaging that, assuming what you wrote about drives not interpolating in
data mode, this would be extremely useful for trying to rip (slightly)
scratched CDs.
Ben Pfaff
> Tim Smith wrote:
> > One of the protection schemes records bad samples in some sectors, and
> > then sets the ECC incorrectly for those sectors, so that the player
> > will see them as having uncorrectable read errors and interpolate.
> >
> > In data mode, drives don't interpolate, so your rips sound bad.
>
> So, what's so hard about the rip software doing the
> interpolation?
As I understand it, this is not possible, because conventional CD
drives do not pass the ECC data on to the rest of the computer,
just the uncorrected data; without this ECC data the audio cannot
be corrected.
> I imaging that, assuming what you wrote about drives not
> interpolating in data mode, this would be extremely useful for
> trying to rip (slightly) scratched CDs.
Yes.
--
b...@cs.stanford.edu - b...@gnu.org - pfaf...@debian.org - b...@acm.org
Jeffrey Siegal
> As I understand it, this is not possible, because conventional CD
> drives do not pass the ECC data on to the rest of the computer,
> just the uncorrected data; without this ECC data the audio cannot
> be corrected.
I have a hard time believing there is no error correction going on when
ripping CDs, because I've ripped some pretty severely scratched CDs and
had them come out fine. There is more to this picture than has been
explained here.
Isaac
>Jeffrey Siegal <j...@quiotix.com> writes:
>
>> Tim Smith wrote:
>> > One of the protection schemes records bad samples in some sectors, and
>> > then sets the ECC incorrectly for those sectors, so that the player
>> > will see them as having uncorrectable read errors and interpolate.
>> >
>> > In data mode, drives don't interpolate, so your rips sound bad.
>>
>> So, what's so hard about the rip software doing the
>> interpolation?
>
>As I understand it, this is not possible, because conventional CD
>drives do not pass the ECC data on to the rest of the computer,
>just the uncorrected data; without this ECC data the audio cannot
>be corrected.
>
True. The proposed solution would have to be done in the firmware
of the drive. On the other hand, such firmware is probably illegal
to sell in the US, and manufacturers in countries without the DMCA
like laws would have to be careful about distributing such firmware
over the internet even if it would be legal in their country, lest
they be Sklyaroved.
Isaac
Jeffrey Siegal
I don't believe that would be the case right now, since the copy
protected CDs mostly don't exist yet (as I understand it, they're not
being distributed in the US at all right now). The primary purpose of
such firmware would be to allow legal error-free extraction of audio
from scratched CDs, not copy protection circumvention.
As I understand it, there are some different ways that audio can be
extracted, but not all are supported by all drives. I would not be
surprised if at least some existing drives did allow the ECC data to be
retrieved in software, but I'm just speculating about that.
Isaac
>I don't believe that would be the case right now, since the copy
>protected CDs mostly don't exist yet (as I understand it, they're not
My understanding is that the newest NSync CD has been released in the
US with copy protection. I don't know whether it uses the scheme
we are discussing here. The article I read suggested that three
different schemes were being used in different countries on the
same release.
There has also been a lawsuit filed in California involving a copy
protected CD being sold without proper notification to the buyer.
I don't recall which artist's CD was involved.
So there are at least a few copy protected CDs in the US.
>being distributed in the US at all right now). The primary purpose of
>such firmware would be to allow legal error-free extraction of audio
>from scratched CDs, not copy protection circumvention.
That would be the argument, but perhaps it's one that different
fact finders might decide differently.
The unability to make backup copies makes it all the more important to
be able to play slightly scratched CDs.
>As I understand it, there are some different ways that audio can be
>extracted, but not all are supported by all drives. I would not be
>surprised if at least some existing drives did allow the ECC data to be
>retrieved in software, but I'm just speculating about that.
I would be surprised if any drives did this but I'm just speculating
too.
Isaac
Jeffrey Siegal
> >I would not be
> >surprised if at least some existing drives did allow the ECC data to be
> >retrieved in software, but I'm just speculating about that.
>
> I would be surprised if any drives did this but I'm just speculating
> too.
Look at page 36 of ftp://ftp.t10.org/t10/drafts/mmc/mmc-r10a.pdf
"5.1.8. READ CD Command
The READ CD Command described in Table 34 provides a single standard
command format for accessing CD data.
This command is generic to all types of CD data formats. This command
returns any of the defined CD data streams, including the headers, EDC,
ECC, user data and CD-DA data."
From reading about this command set elsewhere, I gather there is also a
way of having the newer drives perform ECC in the drive before handing
back the digial audio stream (but I didn't feel like looking through all
185 pages to find it). It seems to me this should (for undamaged CDs,
at least) ignore and reconstruct the bad sectors the same way that an
audio player does.
Roger Schlafly
> Obviously artists have to be compensated somehow. If the changeover is
> to happen we *have* to have a payment system that bypasses the
> parasites of the music industry. That won't happen as long as pirated
> MP3's are so readily available. It will wait until either the RIAA
> cuts off the supply of MP3's, or piracy becomes so rampant that
> topnotch artists stop producing music.
We will know that the situation is bad when piracy becomes so rampant that
topnotch artists stop producing music. I don't think that is likely even if
Napster clones were everywhere.
Mark Kent
>>>>>> Richard Thrippleton writes:
>
>[...with respect to copy protected audio CDs...]
>
>>>> Well, I think now's the time we should all vote with our....
>>>> Napster. Record industry fucks you, fuck 'em right back.
>
>>> So you're proposing what? If the record industry won't give you
>>> the CDs, you suggest we steal what's on the CDs from them?
>
>> I've thought through the issues involved. It's not theft, it's
>> copying; they don't lose anything physically. The real harm that is
>> done to them is that they _don't_ get my money. In this case they
>> wouldn't get my money anyway because the CDs are useless to me;
>> hence I'm not harming the industry. For the record I do not admit to
>> ever using napster, and this discussion is entirely hypothetical.
>
>When you say "I'm not harming the industry", are you speaking purely
>for yourself or are you making a blanket statement that would apply to
>everyone using a Napster(-like) system?
Loss of earnings is different from theft, in law, though?
>
>> From another point of view though, the RIAA are a bunch of bastards;
>> going after what is effectively a search engine (Napster).
>
>From their point of view, its a system whose soul purpose was to
>circumvent copyright protections.
>
It's sole purpose was to find MP3s. From the RIAA's viewpoint, however,
they had the funds to kill the Napster company anyway, so they did.
Another example of a large companies abusing the legal system because
they're unable to compete. There was no reason whatsoever why the
RIAA companies couldn't have created suitable electronic music formats,
search engines and anything else. The fact is that they're a bunch of
dinosaurs, totally technically inept, who use the legal system against
potential distributor competition, rather the legitimate business tactics.
Napster *was* a search engine!
--
Mark Kent
Take out the ham to mail me.
Mark Kent
Those bits are a fundamental part of the audio encoding, they're
not some kind of spare information, they're critical. when your CD
get's damaged (scratched or whatever), you'll need that information
for it to continue to play.
>Whether recorders actually do that is not clear to me
>personally, although I do seem to remember that copying a DAT results
>in poor fidelity because of an introduced signal somewhere in the
>19 kHz range.
I know that the RIAA wanted to make sure that DAT would not be successful.
In that, they succeeded. They're now making the same attack on CD-R, but
I suspect that it might be too late. Selling deliberately damaged goods
is not, in my view, anything other than a scam.
>(To be sure, 38 kHz is the FM SCA subcarrier. Maybe
>my brain is just misremembering something.)
It's 19kHz, not 38kHz. This is why you have a filter on your FM tuner,
and why FM cannot produce anything about about 15kHz. If you use a
switching encoder, you'll switch at 38kHz to encode. You still have
a 19khz subcarrier for decoding.
The 19kHz is only there to enable decoding, however, it's not there
to prevent copying.
Jeffrey Siegal
> Rumors are that even a 2-year-old copy of CloneCD can bypass most of
> these schemes. However, all that does is to exactly copy the CD, copy
> protection and all. It doesn't let you extract individual tracks to
> make up your own collection.
If you can copy it in software, you can perform ECC on it in software
and get a (more or less) clean rip.
> More recent CD burners have flashable firmware for which you can be
> sure hacks will appear if that's the only way to defeat these schemes.
> So, it's inevitable that the RIAA will eventually try to ban CD drives
> with flashable firmware.
I don't think special firmware is even required.
But the RIAA may well go after the software.
Peter Hayes
<...>
> Rumors are that even a 2-year-old copy of CloneCD can bypass most of
> these schemes. However, all that does is to exactly copy the CD, copy
> protection and all. It doesn't let you extract individual tracks to
> make up your own collection.
>
> More recent CD burners have flashable firmware for which you can be
> sure hacks will appear if that's the only way to defeat these schemes.
> So, it's inevitable that the RIAA will eventually try to ban CD drives
> with flashable firmware.
At some point the data has to be converted to audio. Hook your sound card
up to the earliest point in the chain, probably the headphone jack, and
copy.
Not ideal, but you can beat the bastards and there's nothing they can do
about it unless CDRs are outlawed.
Peter
phil hunt
>ain't gonna happen, at least not for very long. Look at e-books. When
>I buy an ebook I save the manufacturer the cost of physically printing
>up a large heavy book, shipping it across the country, paying a retail
>middleman, and buying back unsold stock at the end of the year. Yet,
>even though the ebook is copy-protected
As an aside, it's better to say "copy-prevented" here,
as it is a more accurate term since these schemes aim to provent
copies instead of protect them.
"Copy-protected" is a propaganda term used by the content distribution
industries in their struggle to rip us off and take away our rights
for their profit. Please don't help them by using it.
Craig Brozefsky
Yah, we might lose a couple of America's finest R&B schlock producers,
but it's not like Fela Kuti, Talib Kweli, Autechre or any other artist
is going to stop producing music. At some point I wager it will have
an impact on studio musicians compensation for their participation in
big hits "guaranteed to break on radio", but as Kurtis Blow would say,
thems is the breaks.
--
Craig Brozefsky <cr...@red-bean.com>
http://www.red-bean.com/~craig
The outer space which me wears it has sexual intercourse. - opus
phil hunt
>"Dave Martel" <nos...@nospam123.com> wrote in
>> Obviously artists have to be compensated somehow. If the changeover is
>> to happen we *have* to have a payment system that bypasses the
>> parasites of the music industry. That won't happen as long as pirated
>> MP3's are so readily available. It will wait until either the RIAA
>> cuts off the supply of MP3's, or piracy becomes so rampant that
>> topnotch artists stop producing music.
>
>We will know that the situation is bad when piracy becomes so rampant that
>topnotch artists stop producing music.
By topnotch do you mean highest-earning, or are you refering to some
subjective standard of quality? If the latter, it's too ill-defined for
me to comment on. If the former, it will never happen, since these
people can still earn good money by concerts, merchandising, product
endorsements and the like (Britney reputedly gets $100m a year for
endorsing Coke, for example).
Mike
"Mark Kent" <ma...@NOHAM.otford.kent.btinternet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:7rvgp9...@192.168.1.1...
> >An interesting idea: deliberately playing with the error correction
> >codes to "sign" a CD -- those bits can be viewed as redundant info,
> >after all.
>
> Those bits are a fundamental part of the audio encoding, they're
> not some kind of spare information, they're critical. when your CD
> get's damaged (scratched or whatever), you'll need that information
> for it to continue to play.
Even with no damage, a CD is far from error free. The ECC information is
needed for the CD to play in the first place.
-- Mike --
Mike
Okay, these schemes all mess with blocks of data, which will are then
intended to generate unrecoverable errors when read. Audio players will
generate an interpolated sample to replace the bad data, but when copying
the disk, the erroneous data will be written to the copy, along with correct
ECC information, which is regenerated from the data by either the software
used to write the CD or the CD writer itself. In either event, unrecoverable
data has been converted to readable data, which will generate annoying
clicks and pops when played back. Thus, copy protection. Further, since the
readback ECC correction is done by the drive, the information about
correction (or failure to correct) isn't normally passed on to the PC,
there's no way for the software or the CD writer to know for sure that the
data block was invalid.
But that _doesn't_ imply in any way that the CD will fail sooner. I can't
see how any of the schemes mentioned will make any difference to the
lifetime of the disc due to error rate degradation caused by scratches. The
unrecoverable blocks will remain unrecoverable, and the unmodified blocks
will be read and corrected by the ECC. Can you provide a reference that
explains why this isn't the case?
-- Mike --
JD
"Mark Kent" <ma...@NOHAM.otford.kent.btinternet.co.uk> wrote in message news:7rvgp9...@192.168.1.1...
>
> >my brain is just misremembering something.)
>
> It's 19kHz, not 38kHz. This is why you have a filter on your FM tuner,
> and why FM cannot produce anything about about 15kHz. If you use a
> switching encoder, you'll switch at 38kHz to encode. You still have
> a 19khz subcarrier for decoding.
>
a wide, constant bandwidth with a 38kHz carrier frequency, a synchronous
pilot modulates the FM signal at 19kHz. In order to decode the DSB
L-R signal, the 19kHz pilot signal is doubled and used to demodulate
the 38kHz subcarrier.
Because of the way that FM works, it takes 1/2 of the bandwidth to
modulate the FM signal at 10% with 19kHz than 38kHz. There is no
real loss (not much, at least) by using a 19kHz pilot because the
DSB sidebands extend from 38kHz down to almost (38kHz - 19kHz)
or 19kHz anyway. So, the pilot scheme is just a minor SNR improvement
mechanism over the use of a full 38kHz AM scheme.
John
John Hasler
> Yah, we might lose a couple of America's finest R&B schlock producers,...
No, they'd just have to do more concerts and learn how to make do on a few
hundred thou a year. What a terrible, terrible fate.
--
John Hasler
jo...@dhh.gt.org
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, Wisconsin
David Masterson
> On 03 Oct 2001 16:50:16 -0700, David Masterson <dma...@synopsys.com>
> wrote:
>>>>>>> Dave Martel writes:
>>> On 03 Oct 2001 07:59:18 -0700, David Masterson
>>> <dma...@synopsys.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>> Richard Thrippleton writes:
>>>>> Well, I think now's the time we should all vote with our....
>>>>> Napster. Record industry fucks you, fuck 'em right back.
>>>> So you're proposing what? If the record industry won't give you
>>>> the CDs, you suggest we steal what's on the CDs from them?
>>> Why not? They rip off everyone else. Did you know Willie Nelson
>>> has to front the studio costs himself, and then only gets 15 cents
>>> per album? Download a Willie Nelson album off the MP3 group, send
>>> him a quarter for his efforts, and he'd be making 66% more than
>>> the studios pay him now.
>> Didn't Willie Nelson have a problem with the IRS such that they've
>> been garnishing his take on his records to pay back taxes (and he
>> agreed to it in a plea bargain)? Much as I like Willie's music and
>> would be upset if the studios were "ripping him off", I think
>> you're way off base in this point.
> Willie Nelson's just the most vocal about it. I've seen figures in
> the same ballpark for other artists. Unless they're also having
> their income garnished it has nothing to do with the IRS .
Examples? Not that I totally disbelieve it, but you're attempting to
make a big point without corraboration. Many artists have had
troubles with bad management stealing their money. The devil is in
the details.
>>> IMO one of the best ways to fight the music industry would be to
>>> set up a website where MP3 fans could send in, say, a $10
>>> donation, then as they downloaded MP3 albums they could go to the
>>> site and allocate small portions of that to be contributed
>>> directly to the appropriate artists.
>> Why hasn't this happened already? Napster (et.al.) have been
>> around for a few years now, but there doesn't appear to be any big
>> move afoot to compensate the artists for the MP3s that are
>> downloaded.
> I think most people are just going along for the free MP3 ride
> without giving it much thought. As the battle heats up they're
> starting to realize that we're at a crossroads where we can change
> to something better or remain trapped in a system that works against
> both artists and consumers.
Somebody is going to be the salesman/distributor of the music. Most
big artists don't want to be involved with that end of the business.
So I don't think RIAA (or someone in their role) is going away.
Also, what about book writers or actors or painters or ball players?
There are artists of all types that have had issues with how they're
being handled, so why focus on RIAA?
> Obviously artists have to be compensated somehow. If the changeover
> is to happen we *have* to have a payment system that bypasses the
> parasites of the music industry. That won't happen as long as
> pirated MP3's are so readily available. It will wait until either
> the RIAA cuts off the supply of MP3's, or piracy becomes so rampant
> that topnotch artists stop producing music.
Does anything stop artists from marketing their own music (video,
book) now? How hard is it to put up a web-site that advertises your
music (etc.) for sale (or free)? How hard is it to burn a few CDs or
contract with a shop to burn a lot of CDs? The problem, I guess, is
reliable copyright management.
>> In fact, a recent survey of college students who've downloaded free
>> MP3s from Napster would rather move to another service than pay for
>> Napster
> What do you expect? College students don't have a whole lot of money
> to spend, and free alternatives are plentiful. Purchases come from
> those of us with jobs, income, and usually a limited amount of free
> time. I think most of us with money would rather spend our free time
> doing something besides futzing with MP3's and CD burners.
Which kind of shoots down your idea of donating money to the artists,
doesn't it? After all, if 18-25 year olds are not going to pay for
the service (when payment is required), then they are not likely to
donate money (when it's not required). Don't 18-25 year olds
represent like 70%+ of the market for music?
> BTW the RIAA's statistics vastly inflate the amount of money lost to
> the music industry. The college student who pirates a few albums a
> week probably couldn't afford $30 a week for CD's all year. He only
> steals the music because it's free and so easily available. Taking
> away that availablity doesn't mean he'd run to the music store and buy
> $1560 worth of CD's.
But would he buy $1000 worth of CDs? Or $500? Or $250? Your assumed
statistics are vastly deflated to try to make your point. For
instance, in order to meet their customer's needs, the recording
industry might put out the CDs at lower costs on the assumption that
the volumes would go up. Taking away the availability of free
alternatives would definitely increase the sales of CDs -- the only
question is how much and that is something the marketing people can
play with (decreased price, extra benefits, etc.).
>> (regardless of what benefits were thrown in).
> Maybe those just aren't the benefits people want.
The point was that "free" is the benefit that trumps all other
benefits as far as the people are concerned. Given this, there
appears to be nothing that the marketers can do that would turn these
people from *freeloaders* into *customers*. The question is how much
of a segment of the market do these people represent (remember it's
anyone with access to Napster [et.al.], not just "college students").
> IMO the *real* reason the music industry is losing sales is that
> CD's are just plain overpriced. Piracy is only a scapegoat, an
> excuse to justify even tigher locks that are really intended to
> force consumers to either pay more for less or else do without. If
> the scum weren't doing so much collateral damage in the process I'd
> be all for letting them implement tight copy protection and suffer
> the market consequences, because personally I don't think consumers
> will stand for it.
So you're not against copyrights and copy protections -- just as long
as its "not in my backyard"?
> However, I can hardly sit idly by when they intrude into my stereo and
> computer hardware and software, when they try to take away fair-use
> rights to products I pay for even as they enjoy the legal protections
> of copyright laws at taxpayer expense, and when they and their
> bought-and-paid-for buddies in Congress jam oppressive laws like the
> DMCA (and possibly the SSSCA?) down our throats and then use them to
> have people like Sklyarov threatened, harassed, arrested, and/or
> jailed.
I don't think DMCA (SSSCA?) was the right thing either. I much prefer
a technological solution to a political solution (technology knows no
political boundaries).
> (And if you think I'm p*ssed now, just wait until the first time I
> get sold a non-returnable CD that can't be backed up or played on my
> computer and doesn't *clearly* and *prominently* say so on the
> cover!!!)
Given the issues, I think its going to come down to the entertainment
industry putting out CDs (DVDs, videos, e-books, etc.) that are
absolutely unusable on the old hardware (hopefully, it won't hurt the
hardware, but...) so that they can control their rights. This will
force hardware vendors to come out with new hardware (a boon for the
economy?) which obey the copyrights. These "special" CDs were the
first shot in this war -- who will win remains to be seen.
David Masterson
Art is something you're driven to do because it's in you and has to
get out. Artists, therefore, will continue to produce music, but
probably not as much since they won't be making a (good?) living at
it since all their work will be freely available at Napster.
Roger Schlafly
> >We will know that the situation is bad when piracy becomes so rampant
that
> >topnotch artists stop producing music.
> By topnotch do you mean highest-earning, or are you refering to some
> subjective standard of quality? If the latter, it's too ill-defined for
> me to comment on. If the former, it will never happen, since these
> people can still earn good money by concerts, merchandising, product
> endorsements and the like (Britney reputedly gets $100m a year for
> endorsing Coke, for example).
I am willing to listen to any argument that topnotch artists of any sort
have stopped producing music because of piracy. If and when any
such argument seems persuasive, then society can try to figure out
what to do about it. Until then, music piracy is a non-problem.
Roger Schlafly
> > We will know that the situation is bad when piracy becomes so
> > rampant that topnotch artists stop producing music. I don't think
> > that is likely even if Napster clones were everywhere.
> Art is something you're driven to do because it's in you and has to
> get out. Artists, therefore, will continue to produce music, but
> probably not as much since they won't be making a (good?) living at
> it since all their work will be freely available at Napster.
It is just as easy to vary that argument to say that artists will
produce more good music if it is freely available on Napster.
Artists who are driven to get music out might get greater personal
satisfaction if the music is distributed in both commercial and
Napster-like channels.
Henrik Enberg
> "Roger Schlafly" <roger...@my-dejanews.com> writes:
>
>> "Dave Martel" <nos...@nospam123.com> wrote in
>> > Obviously artists have to be compensated somehow. If the changeover is
>> > to happen we *have* to have a payment system that bypasses the
>> > parasites of the music industry. That won't happen as long as pirated
>> > MP3's are so readily available. It will wait until either the RIAA
>> > cuts off the supply of MP3's, or piracy becomes so rampant that
>> > topnotch artists stop producing music.
>>
>> We will know that the situation is bad when piracy becomes so rampant that
>> topnotch artists stop producing music. I don't think that is likely even if
>> Napster clones were everywhere.
>
> Yah, we might lose a couple of America's finest R&B schlock producers,
> but it's not like Fela Kuti, Talib Kweli, Autechre or any other artist
> is going to stop producing music. At some point I wager it will have
> an impact on studio musicians compensation for their participation in
> big hits "guaranteed to break on radio", but as Kurtis Blow would say,
> thems is the breaks.
Fela is dead. He probably wouldn't if he was alive though.
Henrik
--
Ha ha Ha ha Ha ha Ha Ha Ha Ha -- When will I EVER stop HAVING FUN?!!
Craig Brozefsky
> > Yah, we might lose a couple of America's finest R&B schlock producers,
> > but it's not like Fela Kuti, Talib Kweli, Autechre or any other artist
> > is going to stop producing music. At some point I wager it will have
> > an impact on studio musicians compensation for their participation in
> > big hits "guaranteed to break on radio", but as Kurtis Blow would say,
> > thems is the breaks.
>
> Fela is dead. He probably wouldn't if he was alive though.
Yah, but I had just got done listening to Gentleman for the hundredtht
ime and the funky groove was so strong I couldn't resist mentioning
him as an example.
Jeffrey Siegal
> > Willie Nelson's just the most vocal about it. I've seen figures in
> > the same ballpark for other artists. Unless they're also having
> > their income garnished it has nothing to do with the IRS .
>
> Examples? Not that I totally disbelieve it, but you're attempting to
> make a big point without corraboration.
I saw the Dixie Chicks appear on one of the of the national TV
newsmagazines a while back and they reported making essentially zero
from the substantial sales of their records.
The issue is discussed in more general (and colorful) terms here:
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/
Nigel Feltham
>> than CDs,
>
> Good point. However, IIRC, don't they claim that vinyl LPs sound
> better specifically because they don't sound as "perfect" as CDs
> (ie. vinyl sounds more "real")?
>
No.
Vinyl LP sounds better for several proven and measureable reasons.
1. Higher bandwidth - the quoted bandwidth for LP is only the flat area of
the frequency response so if an LP has a quoted 20hz to 20khz response
there may still be useable (but lower level) signal at 30khz but CD
bandwidth is just chopped off at 21khz (anything above this is either added
by the player to attempt to make it sound more real or just an error).
2. No nasty filtering - the 'Brickwall' filter in your cd player (to stop
signals above 20khz) causes a ringing effect on signals above about 5khz.
3. Distortion on LP is at an almost fixed level (raising slightly for low
level signals) but CD distortion is modulated by the signal - the quoted
0.001% is only the value for peak signals, it rised as signal level drops
to reach up to 70% at smallest signal level ( -95db).
4. Many pop CD's are recorded to deliberately clip the signal peaks,
resulting in regular high distortion - this is to attempt to make their CD
sound louder than rival groups.
All of these problems are either removed or highly reduced on the new SACD
and DVD-A formats and most listeners who have compared them with LP and CD
have found they have the same improved sound they can hear on the LP.
>> and people who think putting circular weights improves
>> quality.
>
> Huh? Don't recognize this one. Is this to change the speed at which
> it plays and, thus, make it more "real"?
>
No - Not all CD's have the hole exactly central, adding a weight on top
reduces this effect and reduces the amount of error correction needed.
>>> Someone else said that these CDs have errors in them that audio CD
>>> players error-correct while PCs (etc.) detect as errors. Therefore,
>>> since the error is corrected on an audio player, would there be any
>>> detectable distortion?
>
>> Hey, numb-nuts, the purpose of the extra information on CDs is to
>> allow for error correction, in case the CD gets dirty or damaged.
>> Adding errors is a little like putting scratches in the CD.
>> Enough scratches, and distortion or worse.
>
Reducing the amount of error correction needed can improve the sound
quality and has also been proven to make players run slightly cooler ( by
reducing the amount of processing needed).
Answer this one - if you compare several CD player Transports on the same
external D-A converter why don't they all sound the same if they are all
performing the same error correction (and why does the same music pressed
on a gold CD sound better than standard aluminium or cleaning discs improve
the sound).
David Masterson
Way to go, Courtney Love! I'm impressed. This is exactly the type of
information I was looking for by someone who should know (most of)
what's going on. She's even correctly touching on issues that go
beyond just the music industry (but that's a whole 'nuther rant). I
hope she makes a really big splash with this!
Fred K Ollinger
: > Napster. Record industry fucks you, fuck 'em right back.
: So you're proposing what? If the record industry won't give you the
: CDs, you suggest we steal what's on the CDs from them?
First of all Napster is not 'stealing'. To me, stealing means breaking into
the record company and walking off w/ cds. If someone did that, I hope that
they would get caught. I'm not for 'piracy', though.
You said the recording industry won't 'give you cds', but they only have the
disk itself. The content comes from the underpaid musicians.
I suggest turning off the radio. Don't listen to what's on there. Get out of
the house and see a real band. Pay for this, some of the cash will go to band.
Other cash will go to bar, which IMHO is good, too. :) Finally, buy a cd
directly from the artist. Cut out the middleman. There are many bands who
are not on the radio who have been around for years. Not rich, but doing ok,
making as much as I do at my crappy job, but doing what they love, and not
having to change things b/c some suit thinks that they will sell more widgets..
I mean cds.
Cut off their air supply. Once they sued napster and I read about the artists
coming out and complaining about how little they get from that cd sale anyway,
I see what to do. Pay the producers not the looters.
Fred
Fred K Ollinger
: for yourself or are you making a blanket statement that would apply to
: everyone using a Napster(-like) system?
: > From another point of view though, the RIAA are a bunch of bastards;
: > going after what is effectively a search engine (Napster).
: From their point of view, its a system whose soul purpose was to
: circumvent copyright protections.
First of all, you have to prove how napster is harming record industry.
Probably the same way that the radio ruined record companies. :)
Innocent until proven guilty means that the record company has to show slipping
cd sales that coorelate to copying. They have FAILED to do that. So basically,
they are lying. Which isn't surprising. Artists have been complaining for
years at how little money they have gotten from their own work and how hard it
is to do things independently of these monsters. Now they want to pass laws
to make it harder for the little artist to make money. So basically, they
don't care about the little artist (or the big one) they just want to get
paid for something they didn't make. The RIAA has to show how it differs in
its activities from napster itself which actually promoted smaller artists.
Scared of competition? Have to litigate to success. I envy these jobs riding
around in jets and lying to people. What a great life. Just a bit tough to
look in the mirror or sleep soundly, though I bet sociopaths do just fine.
Fred
Fred K Ollinger
: for a few years now, but there doesn't appear to be any big move afoot
: a recent survey of college students who've downloaded free MP3s from
: Napster would rather move to another service than pay for Napster
We should do this. Start a website. I want the Sonic Youth's, Frank Black's,
XTC, and Joe Strummer's PO boxes so I can send them cash. I will send them
double what their companies would have given them. I WILL pay my last cent to
hear a good band. I refuse to buy another CD eventhough there's a lot of stuff
I want. I just have to wait for a given band to come to town then buy it
direct.
Fred
Fred K Ollinger
: of the drive. On the other hand, such firmware is probably illegal
: to sell in the US, and manufacturers in countries without the DMCA
: like laws would have to be careful about distributing such firmware
: over the internet even if it would be legal in their country, lest
: they be Sklyaroved.
I doubt it. This was one guy making a product that not many people cared about.
Many more people listen to cds than listen to e-books. So they'd have to
build and fill many more jails and arrest even less scarier people than the
people who did dope in the wrong place. This would be the biggest wasteful
government, social engineering program since the war on drugs. Imagine
grandma going under for having an illegal burner? "I just wanted a couple
of bootleg Sinatras" :)
I hope that cops could speak up here. i think that most of them want to make
our world a better place and arresting some people for some laws is tough
all ready. They have to go further and further in demonizing certain people
to make it 'ok' for them to arrest them. They had to really talk up the
'hacker' menace, making up crazy huge figures of 'damages' when nothing real
was even hurt in some cases. I'm not saying that hacking is acceptable, but
imagine having to kick down a teens door for typing on the computer in some
way you don't understand. Painful if you really want to uphold the spirit of
the law, and when you got into the job to make the streets safe for your
friends and family, and this kid, this harmless looking nerd, has to be
busted at gunpoint. Funny, if you think about it. :)
Fred
Fred K Ollinger
: "Dave Martel" <nos...@nospam123.com> wrote in
First of all, the 'market' should decide how much artists make. Any good
God fearing capitalist knows that. they know that markets are subject to change
and past years success are not a gurantee of future success. All RIAA people
know these basics. So if artists make less than tough titty. But will
they make less?
I think it depends on which artists. People will pay for good music. Even if
all songs are available for download, the most popular will sell out concerts
and buy tee-shirts, etc. Some of them will even do this so that the artist
has enough to eat. How many of us never tip. Why tip? It's not enforced. Yet
millions of people get at least enough to eat by this system. Being an artist
means doing what you love. Many of us do it for love only, I write, but I'm
not paid. So getting paid for this is a BONUS not a right. I don't hear
any of these people who bitch about napster, bitching about all the great
artists who are not getting paid much. I know of two good artists who spoke
out about this and tried to change things: Hendrix and McCartney. So these
are not wanna-be's who suck, but actually good artists, other good artists
recommend them.
What the anti-napster people have is a serious lack of perspective. They do
have good points. If you like someone's work then you should try to help them
out. But slowly crushing civil liberties of everyone and treating everyone
like a criminal is not necessary for NSync to make a buck off us all. I think
they suck and don't want them getting any of my money. I don't want it coming
out of my taxes. I won't buy their cd so I don't care if it is protected. I do
like to hear new bands w/o coughing up $12 to find out that they suck. I see
live music as often as I can afford to and I buy their cds. The RIAA
dug their own grave IMHO.
Fred
Jeffrey Siegal
> This would be the biggest wasteful
> government, social engineering program since the war on drugs.
Which, even if true, proves what exactly? That it couldn't happen?
Fred K Ollinger
: >for yourself or are you making a blanket statement that would apply to
: >everyone using a Napster(-like) system?
: Loss of earnings is different from theft, in law, though?
I don't know. I do know that in US we are innocent until proven guilty.
I knew people who downloaded a lot of music that they never would have bought.
They are glad that they didn't buy it. They also made a lot of tapes off the
radio, something that NOBODY talks about. They also bought cds from bands
they did like so they could get liner notes and pics. They also, went to their
concerts after hearing their mp3s. These 'losses' really need to be proven.
: It's sole purpose was to find MP3s. From the RIAA's viewpoint, however,
: they had the funds to kill the Napster company anyway, so they did.
: Another example of a large companies abusing the legal system because
: they're unable to compete. There was no reason whatsoever why the
: RIAA companies couldn't have created suitable electronic music formats,
: search engines and anything else. The fact is that they're a bunch of
: dinosaurs, totally technically inept, who use the legal system against
: potential distributor competition, rather the legitimate business tactics.
: Napster *was* a search engine!
Like the radio, only you choose what song to listen to. I thought that the
most popular songs were the same ones that they played a million times on the
radio anyway. So if they really wanted to 'protect' their work then they
should only keep it on tape at home and only play it to their close friends.
This way there's no copy trouble. When I buy a product, I don't want the
person who sold it to me coming over to my house and asking what I'm going
to do with it. Picture grocery stores acting like RIAA:
"What are you doing with those beans? If you feed all those people then they
won't have to go to a resturant and then the resturants will go out of
business and our economy will sink. So you must be greedy. Don't share with
anyone b/c that hurts us all." :)
The above was in fun and not meant to 'prove' anything.
Fred
David Masterson
> On 04 Oct 2001 09:30:23 -0700, in comp.os.linux.advocacy,
> (David Masterson <dma...@synopsys.com>) wrote:
>>>>>>> Roger Schlafly writes:
>>> "Dave Martel" <nos...@nospam123.com> wrote in
>>>> Obviously artists have to be compensated somehow. If the
>>>> changeover is to happen we *have* to have a payment system that
>>>> bypasses the parasites of the music industry. That won't happen
>>>> as long as pirated MP3's are so readily available. It will wait
>>>> until either the RIAA cuts off the supply of MP3's, or piracy
>>>> becomes so rampant that topnotch artists stop producing music.
>>> We will know that the situation is bad when piracy becomes so
>>> rampant that topnotch artists stop producing music. I don't think
>>> that is likely even if Napster clones were everywhere.
>> Art is something you're driven to do because it's in you and has to
>> get out. Artists, therefore, will continue to produce music, but
>> probably not as much since they won't be making a (good?) living at
>> it since all their work will be freely available at Napster.
> Well why don't they get a job? How long does it take to make a song
> for fucks sake?
Have you tried it? Have you been successful at it? Don't cast stones
if you live in a glass house...
Fred K Ollinger
: endorsements and the like (Britney reputedly gets $100m a year for
: endorsing Coke, for example).
Wait until I perfect 'cokester' and shut that down. :)
Fred
Fred K Ollinger
: Yah, we might lose a couple of America's finest R&B schlock producers,
: but it's not like Fela Kuti, Talib Kweli, Autechre or any other artist
: is going to stop producing music. At some point I wager it will have
: an impact on studio musicians compensation for their participation in
: big hits "guaranteed to break on radio", but as Kurtis Blow would say,
: thems is the breaks.
But if these people are small enough then their stuff might not even be
easy to find on the internet in which case people will have to buy the
cds. I know someone who downloads crap, but the good stuff, he's happy to
buy since its so reasonable, like classical music, and swing. At those
prices, the record companies still make a killing (they can't spend more
than a dime on a cd and they sell them for at least 300% more than that, who
gets a 300% markup these days?) Really everyone wins except the RIAA b/c they
aren't necessary to protect these artists.
Fred
Fred K Ollinger
: Okay, these schemes all mess with blocks of data, which will are then
: intended to generate unrecoverable errors when read. Audio players will
: generate an interpolated sample to replace the bad data, but when copying
: the disk, the erroneous data will be written to the copy, along with correct
: ECC information, which is regenerated from the data by either the software
: used to write the CD or the CD writer itself. In either event, unrecoverable
: data has been converted to readable data, which will generate annoying
: clicks and pops when played back. Thus, copy protection. Further, since the
So it's like a record, but worse, b/c there's none of the 'warmth'?
: readback ECC correction is done by the drive, the information about
: correction (or failure to correct) isn't normally passed on to the PC,
: there's no way for the software or the CD writer to know for sure that the
: data block was invalid.
Right, but how does this affect a cassette recording? What about DAT?
They ARE available, just not cost effective. This could change depending on
market conditions. :)
Fred
David Masterson
> : Napster *was* a search engine!
> Like the radio, only you choose what song to listen to.
IIRC, difference is that radio pays a "use" fee (for lack of a better
word) to have the right to play the songs which they make up for in
advertising (where the fee goes after the radio players pay it is a
whole 'nuther rant).
Fred K Ollinger
: make a big point without corraboration. Many artists have had
: troubles with bad management stealing their money. The devil is in
: the details.
So if we talk about the details is the stealing of money better or worse?
I don't understand why details of which artists and how much, weaken the case.
I'd like to hear many more stories as it strengthens the case. The RIAA does
nothing for artists.
: >>> IMO one of the best ways to fight the music industry would be to
: >>> set up a website where MP3 fans could send in, say, a $10
: >>> donation, then as they downloaded MP3 albums they could go to the
: >>> site and allocate small portions of that to be contributed
: >>> directly to the appropriate artists.
: >> Why hasn't this happened already? Napster (et.al.) have been
: >> around for a few years now, but there doesn't appear to be any big
: >> move afoot to compensate the artists for the MP3s that are
: >> downloaded.
I've changed my behavior. I try harder now to make sure the artists get money.
If it's so much about artists getting money they why can't I freely copy
Hendrix and John Lennon? Don't say the family. They didn't write it. Sean
Lennon is doing the right thing and making his own music.
: > I think most people are just going along for the free MP3 ride
: > without giving it much thought. As the battle heats up they're
: > starting to realize that we're at a crossroads where we can change
: > to something better or remain trapped in a system that works against
: > both artists and consumers.
This has really woken me up. Before I really didn't think about it when I
spent my hard earned money on crap music. I did this for years. After
the RIAA made all this noise, I learned about napster, thanks RIAA. Now I
won't buy a cd unless I make sure the RIAA is not affiliated with the product.
I know, my dollars don't count, I don't matter, but if you really believed
this then you would say it's ok to download music.
I liked it best when someone told me to listen to real alternative, local
bands. I listened and never looked back. It's like the linux of music. Listen
to it b/c it's better not b/c your friends like it.
: Somebody is going to be the salesman/distributor of the music. Most
Why? Napster pretty much made them unneccessary.
: big artists don't want to be involved with that end of the business.
: So I don't think RIAA (or someone in their role) is going away.
They aren't. They are going to hound people until the bitter end.
: Also, what about book writers or actors or painters or ball players?
What about them?
: There are artists of all types that have had issues with how they're
: being handled, so why focus on RIAA?
Well, when I buy a book in the used book store, there's nobody breathing down
my neck. You may have missed the case where a Russian programmer, yes
programmer, cracked the simple code which encrypted text. This returend to
users the same abilities to do things with texts that they had been doing to
books for a few hundred years. This is being discussed.
What about painters? I haven't seen any on mtv or anything. Most painting
locally suck and are too expensive. I paint myself and i'm going to sell stuff
much more reasonably. So, rest easy, these things are being addressed.
: > Obviously artists have to be compensated somehow. If the changeover
: > is to happen we *have* to have a payment system that bypasses the
Why? Who's paying me for writing. Oh, I suck. Probably, but how would you
know? I must fall into a 'market' before someone will look at my book. If I
make it too innovative, nobody will want it. if I make it good, then publishers
will want the same sequel over and over again. I've been thinking about this
for years, talking to writers. It sucks. People talk about it. Some people
don't listen, which I think is the real problem. People don't care. Thanks for
caring. But if i get screwed over as a writer, this doesn't mean that I'll
be happy about the RIAA screws other people over. I'll complain both ways.
I really don't understand what you are saying. That it's ok to screw music
artists over b/c nobody complains about other arts? Weird, but funny.
: Does anything stop artists from marketing their own music (video,
: book) now? How hard is it to put up a web-site that advertises your
YES. Payola. Look it up. You will be educated. many good artists can't get on
the radio for this reason. We have been trying to get a radio station in philly
for years and the companies rejected it. This is a fact. Look it up.
: music (etc.) for sale (or free)? How hard is it to burn a few CDs or
: contract with a shop to burn a lot of CDs? The problem, I guess, is
: reliable copyright management.
But they do burn cds and they do sell them. People are buying them. No offense,
but you must be from a small town. We have lots of artist in philly. I'm
going to a free show tommorrow night.
They are awesome. I bought their cd from them.
: Which kind of shoots down your idea of donating money to the artists,
: doesn't it? After all, if 18-25 year olds are not going to pay for
Is donating bad? If so why? Or are you saying it won't work. I don't think that
NSync could survive this way, but I do know of many better bands who ARE
doing this right as we speak. So IMHO, this is a good thing, I'm happy
w. how things are going.
: the service (when payment is required), then they are not likely to
: donate money (when it's not required). Don't 18-25 year olds
: represent like 70%+ of the market for music?
Dunno. I don't like it when people think of me as 'a market' or even as
part of one. I'd rather be treated as a human. I'd rather give my hard earned
money to someone who treated me with more respect.
: But would he buy $1000 worth of CDs? Or $500? Or $250? Your assumed
: statistics are vastly deflated to try to make your point. For
In many cases they are inflated. When people dl more music than they have money
for. One cd holds 10 cds worth of music. Download 10 cds worth of music a
year and that's 100 cds which is 1200 dollars. Wow. Better spent on live
shows with bands who care.
: instance, in order to meet their customer's needs, the recording
: industry might put out the CDs at lower costs on the assumption that
: the volumes would go up. Taking away the availability of free
They had the chance and they passed up this 'oppurtunity'. When you
have monopolistic control over all aspects of distro: radio, mtv, big
concerts, record stores, advertising, why would you sell for less? They
want to squeeze all your money out of you. They are programmed for this
in business school. Anything less would be 'unethical' b/c they would
be hurting shareholders.
: So you're not against copyrights and copy protections -- just as long
: as its "not in my backyard"?
Copy protection is fine. Don't buy it. It will be cracked. Then many
legal buyers will download it so they get convenience of old cds. And RIAA
will hold up scary stats of so many downloads. And they will randomly arrest
people usually the ones who are most generous w/ their own bandwidth and
hard-drive space, spreadig the message: don't share. It hurts people to
share. Sharing == stealing. Not the types of people I spend too much time
w/. Not the world I want the next generation to grow up in.
: I don't think DMCA (SSSCA?) was the right thing either. I much prefer
: a technological solution to a political solution (technology knows no
: political boundaries).
And is much lamer.
: Given the issues, I think its going to come down to the entertainment
: industry putting out CDs (DVDs, videos, e-books, etc.) that are
: absolutely unusable on the old hardware (hopefully, it won't hurt the
: hardware, but...) so that they can control their rights. This will
: force hardware vendors to come out with new hardware (a boon for the
: economy?) which obey the copyrights. These "special" CDs were the
: first shot in this war -- who will win remains to be seen.
The war will go on forever. It will waste a lot of time and hurt a lot of
people, and enrich those who do not produce. It will never end. Pick a side.
Stick to your own. Enjoy the fight.
Fred
Fred K Ollinger
: produce more good music if it is freely available on Napster.
I like to pay artists for what they do. I don't care to set things up so
I can milk more out of them. I'd like to give them all I have and hope that
they have enough to get by, and wait patiently for something great to happen.
: Artists who are driven to get music out might get greater personal
: satisfaction if the music is distributed in both commercial and
: Napster-like channels.
I think we should all forget about napster, buy and instrument, and make our
own music. If we have time to sit there clicking on songs and typing in
look-ups, then we have time to play our own. And it will be the best music
we ever heard b/c it will be our own. If we don't like what we play, change
the tune. :)
Fred
David Masterson
> : Examples? Not that I totally disbelieve it, but you're attempting to
> : make a big point without corraboration. Many artists have had
> : troubles with bad management stealing their money. The devil is in
> : the details.
> So if we talk about the details is the stealing of money better or
> worse? I don't understand why details of which artists and how
> much, weaken the case. I'd like to hear many more stories as it
> strengthens the case. The RIAA does nothing for artists.
Because if you're lumping the problem of bad artist management into
the problem of the RIAA monopoly (there's that word again), then
you're weakening your own case. I'm not saying that there isn't a
problem with RIAA, just that I don't know how much of a problem there
is until I've seen some valid cases. The Courtney Love article
(mentioned elsewhere) provided me with a lot of that information. I'd
like to see how RIAA would refute what she said and whether or not it
would be as believable.
> : >> Napster (et.al.) have been around for a few years now, but
> : >> there doesn't appear to be any big move afoot to compensate the
> : >> artists for the MP3s that are downloaded.
> I've changed my behavior. I try harder now to make sure the artists
> get money.
So you would pay Napster for MP3 downloads if you felt confident that
artists would get the (lion's share of the) money? You may currently
be in the minority, but hopefully that will change.
> : Somebody is going to be the salesman/distributor of the music.
> Why? Napster pretty much made them unneccessary.
Napster is the distributor.
> : There are artists of all types that have had issues with how
> : they're being handled, so why focus on RIAA?
Based on Courtney Love's article, I now see that the issue with the
music industry is indeed different than it might be with other
copyrightable material.
I'd add to this, but I'm late for the bus...
Isaac
>Dave Martel wrote:
>> Rumors are that even a 2-year-old copy of CloneCD can bypass most of
>> these schemes. However, all that does is to exactly copy the CD, copy
>> protection and all. It doesn't let you extract individual tracks to
>> make up your own collection.
>
>If you can copy it in software, you can perform ECC on it in software
>and get a (more or less) clean rip.
>
>> More recent CD burners have flashable firmware for which you can be
>> sure hacks will appear if that's the only way to defeat these schemes.
>> So, it's inevitable that the RIAA will eventually try to ban CD drives
>> with flashable firmware.
>
>I don't think special firmware is even required.
>
>But the RIAA may well go after the software.
They could, but I would think for software that predates a given
copy protection scheme, the presumption should be that the purpose
of the software is something other than circumventing that particular
protection scheme. That seems like at least the start of a
defense assuming that the purpose wasn't to circumvent some other
protection scheme that the RIAA had standing to sue for.
Isaac
Isaac
wrote:
>: True. The proposed solution would have to be done in the firmware
>: of the drive. On the other hand, such firmware is probably illegal
>: to sell in the US, and manufacturers in countries without the DMCA
>: like laws would have to be careful about distributing such firmware
>: over the internet even if it would be legal in their country, lest
>: they be Sklyaroved.
>
>I doubt it. This was one guy making a product that not many people cared about.
>Many more people listen to cds than listen to e-books. So they'd have to
>build and fill many more jails and arrest even less scarier people than the
>people who did dope in the wrong place. This would be the biggest wasteful
We're not talking about arresting users, we're talking about arresting
suppliers of firmware by manufacturers. The number of involved people
isn't so large.
The whole point to DMCA laws is to keep circumvention tools out of the
hands of the public, because as you suggest, sueing/arresting users
is not so palatable.
Isaac
Jeffrey Siegal
> They could, but I would think for software that predates a given
> copy protection scheme, the presumption should be that the purpose
> of the software is something other than circumventing that particular
> protection scheme.
That would be a good argument. Unfortunately, the software to do what
needs to be done has not yet been identified in this thread and may not
exist. There seems to be software that is able to copy the CDs, bogus
ECC and all, but not one to treat the bogus ECC as errors and correct
them.
Tim Smith
>Jeffrey Siegal <j...@quiotix.com> writes:
>
>> Tim Smith wrote:
>> > One of the protection schemes records bad samples in some sectors, and
>> > then sets the ECC incorrectly for those sectors, so that the player
>> > will see them as having uncorrectable read errors and interpolate.
>> >
>> > In data mode, drives don't interpolate, so your rips sound bad.
>>
>> So, what's so hard about the rip software doing the
>> interpolation?
>
>As I understand it, this is not possible, because conventional CD
>drives do not pass the ECC data on to the rest of the computer,
>just the uncorrected data; without this ECC data the audio cannot
>be corrected.
We are talking about interpolating, not correcting, the errors, so
that would not be a problem. You don't need ECC data to interpolate.
Indeed, the drive, in audio mode, only interpolates when the ECC was
not able to correct the error.
I believe that the problem is that the data you get back from ripping
has already been de-interleaved. You don't know which bits are the
bad ones, so you don't know which bits to replace with interpolated
bits. Presumably, they design the data for the bad bits so that it
forms something that is annoying to listen to, but that is not easy to
identify in software and filter out.
Also, I did some more searching and reading, and it looks like this
stuff happens in smaller units then sectors. Basically, all you are
going to know when ripping is that you have a sectors worth of
samples, and something is wrong with it, but you won't know what is
wrong with it.
--Tim Smith
Ram Samudrala
> On Thu, 04 Oct 2001 06:23:33 GMT, Roger Schlafly <roger...@my-dejanews.com> wrote:
>>"Dave Martel" <nos...@nospam123.com> wrote in
>>> Obviously artists have to be compensated somehow. If the changeover is
>>> to happen we *have* to have a payment system that bypasses the
>>> parasites of the music industry. That won't happen as long as pirated
>>> MP3's are so readily available. It will wait until either the RIAA
>>> cuts off the supply of MP3's, or piracy becomes so rampant that
>>> topnotch artists stop producing music.
>>
>>We will know that the situation is bad when piracy becomes so rampant that
>>topnotch artists stop producing music.
> (Britney reputedly gets $100m a year for endorsing Coke, for
> example).
I'd be interested to know what Pepsi executives think of this
comment. (-:
--Ram
--
email@urls || http://www.ram.org || http://www.twisted-helices.com/th
And the strange flavour of AI work is that people try to put together
long sets of rules in strict formalisms which tell inflexible machines
how to be flexible. ---Douglas Hofstadter
charles lyttle
talented people who will never be promoted by the big labels. Mostly
because they insist on making music rather than hype and pointless
glitz. If a female artist is over 30 and wants to sing rather than let
her tits hang out on MTV, she doesn't get a contract.
--
Russ Lyttle
<http://home.earthlink.net/~lyttlec>
lyt...@earthlink.net
charles lyttle
who play part time at the local bars/malls/craft fairs while keeping day
jobs. Many are much better than you can buy at Wherehouse Music or Tower
Records or B&N. For some good true C&W, hit the bars in Tombstone, Az
sometime or the county fairs in East Tennessee.
Note to teens: If you have a band, burn yourself some CDs and take your
show on the road to the local book stores, coffeshops, parks. Any place
that will let you play, and perhaps get some money thrown in the guitar
case, or sell a CD. But if the applause isn't enough, you aren't an
artist.
David Masterson
> On 04 Oct 2001 16:13:10 -0700, in comp.os.linux.advocacy,
> (David Masterson <dma...@synopsys.com>) wrote:
>>>>>>> drsquare writes:
>>> On 04 Oct 2001 09:30:23 -0700, in comp.os.linux.advocacy,
>>> (David Masterson <dma...@synopsys.com>) wrote:
>>>>> We will know that the situation is bad when piracy becomes so
>>>>> rampant that topnotch artists stop producing music. I don't
>>>>> think that is likely even if Napster clones were everywhere.
>>>> Art is something you're driven to do because it's in you and has
>>>> to get out. Artists, therefore, will continue to produce music,
>>>> but probably not as much since they won't be making a (good?)
>>>> living at it since all their work will be freely available at
>>>> Napster.
>>> Well why don't they get a job? How long does it take to make a
>>> song for fucks sake?
>> Have you tried it? Have you been successful at it? Don't cast
>> stones if you live in a glass house...
> I doubt it takes so much time that you don't have any other time to
> get a job.
If it were that easy to do, then everyone would be creating *GREAT*
art when they came home from their day job. Also, how many good jobs
do you know of that would put up with employees who regularly call in
and say something like "I can't come in today -- I just had a flash of
inspiration and the band and I are going to record it"?
David Masterson
> David Masterson wrote:
>> >>>>> drsquare writes:
>> > Well why don't they get a job? How long does it take to make a
>> > song for fucks sake?
>> Have you tried it? Have you been successful at it? Don't cast
>> stones if you live in a glass house...
> Yes, I've tried it. I just wasn't any good at it. I know lots of
> people who play part time at the local bars/malls/craft fairs while
> keeping day jobs. Many are much better than you can buy at
> Wherehouse Music or Tower Records or B&N. For some good true C&W,
> hit the bars in Tombstone, Az sometime or the county fairs in East
> Tennessee.
And isn't it ashame? How much better would they be if they could
create music and perform full-time?
phil hunt
>
>But that _doesn't_ imply in any way that the CD will fail sooner. I can't
>see how any of the schemes mentioned will make any difference to the
>lifetime of the disc due to error rate degradation caused by scratches. The
>unrecoverable blocks will remain unrecoverable, and the unmodified blocks
>will be read and corrected by the ECC. Can you provide a reference that
>explains why this isn't the case?
I'm afraid not.
My understanding is that there is multiple error-correction information;
in effect the same info is put separately on the CD in several places.
The point of this is that if one place becomes corrupt (through scratches
for example) then the CD player can reconstruct the data from the other
places. But if some of the extra places don't contain valid data to
reconstruct the info, then fewer scratches will be necessary to make it
so that the CD player can't reconstruct the info.
--
*** Philip Hunt *** ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk ***
John Hasler
> If it were that easy to do, then everyone would be creating *GREAT* art
> when they came home from their day job.
He didn't say that it was easy: just that it doesn't have to take so much
time as to preclude a day job. Your full-time musician may produce more
music than his part-timer, but it isn't necessarily better. It may even be
worse, since he has to produce whether he feels inspired today or not.
--
John Hasler
jo...@dhh.gt.org
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, Wisconsin
Dave Kemper
>>
>> Good point. However, IIRC, don't they claim that vinyl LPs sound
>> better specifically because they don't sound as "perfect" as CDs
>> (ie. vinyl sounds more "real")?
>
>Vinyl LP sounds better for several proven and measureable reasons.
This is illogical. "Sounds better" is a subjective term; you can neither
"prove" nor "measure" it.
>1. Higher bandwidth
>2. No nasty filtering
>3. Distortion
Your list focuses on the ways in which vinyl has better technical sound
reproduction characteristics, but ignores the ways in which CDs do, such as
a lower level of surface noise. Which sounds "better" overall depends on
which of these factors are more important to you (and also upon what you're
accustomed to hearing).
>>> and people who think putting circular weights improves quality.
>>
>> Huh? Don't recognize this one. Is this to change the speed at which
>> it plays and, thus, make it more "real"?
>
>No - Not all CD's have the hole exactly central, adding a weight on top
>reduces this effect and reduces the amount of error correction needed.
Voodoo science. Find a scientifically rigorous study where this has been
shown to have any noticeable effect on the sound output.
>and why does the same music pressed
>on a gold CD sound better than standard aluminium
Because the manufacturers of gold CDs (most of them were made by Mobile
Fidelity and DCC) used better sources for their mastering than the existing
digital copies of these albums on the market. By making the discs gold,
MoFi and DCC were more easily able to distinguish their versions of albums
from the standard issues of the same albums put out by the major labels.
(It's also possible that at the time they were introduced, these
manufacturers thought using gold had some effect on the sound quality, but
this has since been debunked.) Notice that gold CDs have all but
disappeared in the last couple of years as major labels have started
tracking down and using proper sources for mastering on their regular
(aluminum) CDs. MoFi, in fact, is out of business now.
--Dave
--
Any unenclosed exit served by an exterior way of exit access shall be
so located that no part of the exit extends past a vertical plane 20
feet and one half the required width of the exit from the end of and at
right angles to the way of exit. - an OSHA rule
dke...@hacks.arizona.edu
>They are glad that they didn't buy it. They also made a lot of tapes off the
>radio, something that NOBODY talks about.
Actually people talked about it a lot in the 30s and 40s when radios were
new. For a long time, it was illegal to broadcast commercially available
music. If you wanted to broadcast music, you had to have musicians in the
studio. (That is why, if you're interested in music from this era, you can
find a lot of it for sale now that was "for broadcast only" and never
commerically available at the time.) This was done because the music
industry feared that by broadcasting music for free on the radio, no one
would buy it anymore. And this was before any kind of home recording
equipment was common enough to be a concern - the fear was that
boradcasting alone, even without the ability to tape the music at home, was
going to kill the music industry.
I'm not sure when these rules changed, but history has shown that
broadcasting commerically availble music did not kill the music industry,
in much the same manner that VCRs did not kill the television broadcasting
industry, as they predicted. It's kind of sad that none of these
industries are willing to learn from history.
Fred K Ollinger
That is would 'succeed' in the same ways that the war on drugs succeeded.
It won't. It will hurt a lot of people and accomplish little.
Fred
Fred K Ollinger
: suppliers of firmware by manufacturers. The number of involved people
: isn't so large.
How is the supply side war on drugs working? How many people have been hurt?
How many people feel that they couldn't easily obtain any type of drug that
they wanted? How many people think that copying files on a computer is more
important to most americans than keeping their kids from doing drugs?
: The whole point to DMCA laws is to keep circumvention tools out of the
: hands of the public, because as you suggest, sueing/arresting users
: is not so palatable.
It's not so much the laws, but how they are going to be enforce. The war on
drugs is full of cases of selective enforcement so that the whole operation
is really a war on our minorities. I don't see how this could be any different.
The US has two really huge borders and our citizens do not enjoy being
randomly searched. We have constitutional protection against it, but that's
currently overlooked by most police procedures. Again, the enforcement is
impossible to achieve in a real way w/ trampling on even more of our rights,
the enforcement will be selective, used against groups that those in power
do not like for some reason, and even if they succeed, they don't gain much.
It's really hard to sell products to the same people that you are persecuting
and treating like criminals. I don't know about you, but I think that this
whole RIAA business has gone way too far. They are the most unamerican
types this side of McCarthy. I'd love to see their asses shipped off to a
truly totalitarian country where they like things.
Fred
--
Fred K Ollinger
: art when they came home from their day job. Also, how many good jobs
I think that there are many more people doing this than we'd like to believe.
Most people I know have not taste in art, and thus need some sort of
filters to 'legitize' it. When I tell them that I saw a great band, they
ask what they have on the radio, etc. So, basically it's a problem that people
are afraid to think for themselves. If you buy a record that sucks, you
should at least be able to say, well, it's on the radio and everyone else
is buying it. I would like to know who these people are living for. For
other people? What a shitty life to feel like everything you do has to look
good to other people. I think that this is really how the RIAA can muscle
people around. They can shrink wrap something w/ factory fresh packaging and
put it in big stores, that people know are the same all over the country.
Funny, but also scary and weird.
: do you know of that would put up with employees who regularly call in
: and say something like "I can't come in today -- I just had a flash of
: inspiration and the band and I are going to record it"?
If you will build it, they will come. Maybe we aren't asking enough out of
our jobs.
Fred
T. Max Devlin
GMT;
Yet, it does. You've made a very well stated and strong argument, Fred.
Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.
--
T. Max Devlin
*** The best way to convince another is
to state your case moderately and
accurately. - Benjamin Franklin ***
T. Max Devlin
>
>> : Napster *was* a search engine!
>
>> Like the radio, only you choose what song to listen to.
>
>IIRC, difference is that radio pays a "use" fee (for lack of a better
>word) to have the right to play the songs which they make up for in
>advertising (where the fee goes after the radio players pay it is a
>whole 'nuther rant).
The fee goes away once the radio pays it; the listener is free to record
songs off the radio, just as we are free to tape movies on our VCR.
The fee was paid by someone, and eventually the song was posted on
Napster (so to speak). When a 'hit' gets into regular rotation on the
radio, as it would if it became popular on Napster, then the radio pays
more of a fee.
It simply all works out, automagically: the end user/consumer is legally
free to make copies of stuff they have bought on equipment they have
purchased for that purpose. Unless it is commercial trade, it only
/increases/ the size of the market for the original author, and so
unless it is a commercial trade, there is no ethical concern and,
because copyright violations do not become criminal (piracy) until you
make more than ten copies or $1000 worth there is not legal concern.
The only concern is the combined problem of greed and fear on the part
of authors and middlemen.
Perhaps in a more well-ordered universe, radio stations would have
already realized the incredible value of Napster-like sites for
marketing purposes, and offered to up the fees they pay to the
unions/authors/corporations. Perhaps in a free market, the simplicity
of downloading music would have already turned into a proper commercial
market, and sites would pay fees as radio stations do, competing to make
the music as inexpensive and convenient as possible, while
simultaneously offering millions of dollars in market opportunity to
authors.
Suppositions and 'perhaps' aside, modern copyright law is rapidly
becoming an attack on liberty.
Peter Köhlmann
> Nigel Feltham <nigel....@libertysurf.co.uk> wrote:
>>>
>>> Good point. However, IIRC, don't they claim that vinyl LPs sound
>>> better specifically because they don't sound as "perfect" as CDs
>>> (ie. vinyl sounds more "real")?
>>
>>Vinyl LP sounds better for several proven and measureable reasons.
>
> This is illogical. "Sounds better" is a subjective term; you can
> neither "prove" nor "measure" it.
>
>>1. Higher bandwidth
>>2. No nasty filtering
>>3. Distortion
>
> Your list focuses on the ways in which vinyl has better technical sound
> reproduction characteristics, but ignores the ways in which CDs do, such
> as
> a lower level of surface noise. Which sounds "better" overall depends
> on which of these factors are more important to you (and also upon what
> you're accustomed to hearing).
>
It depends on a lot of factors, most of which cost real dollars.
I have a turntable which costs more than $600, so I can expect some good
sound quality of it. But does it sound better than my CD's? I would say,
normally not.
>
>>and why does the same music pressed
>>on a gold CD sound better than standard aluminium
>
> Because the manufacturers of gold CDs (most of them were made by Mobile
> Fidelity and DCC) used better sources for their mastering than the
> existing
> digital copies of these albums on the market. By making the discs gold,
That is also one of the reasons a vinyl can sound better.
I have one of those (now quite rare) Half-Speed recordings of
Pink Floyds "Dark side of the moon". It sounds a *lot* better than the
CD version, because it was recorded from a better source.
Peter
--
Failure is not an option. It comes bundled with your Microsoft product.
(Ferenc Mantfeld)
David Masterson
> Said David Masterson in comp.os.linux.advocacy on 04 Oct 2001 16:35:45
>>>>>>> Fred K Ollinger writes:
>>> : Napster *was* a search engine!
>>>
>>> Like the radio, only you choose what song to listen to.
>> IIRC, difference is that radio pays a "use" fee (for lack of a
>> better word) to have the right to play the songs which they make up
>> for in advertising (where the fee goes after the radio players pay
>> it is a whole 'nuther rant).
> The fee goes away once the radio pays it;
The rant concerns who the fee goes to (artists, RIAA, etc.) and in
what percentage.
> the listener is free to record songs off the radio, just as we are
> free to tape movies on our VCR.
> The fee was paid by someone, and eventually the song was posted on
> Napster (so to speak). When a 'hit' gets into regular rotation on
> the radio, as it would if it became popular on Napster, then the
> radio pays more of a fee.
But does Napster pay more of a fee? Or the supplier of the song
(ie. the person whose hard disk had the song copied off of it from)?
> It simply all works out, automagically: the end user/consumer is
> legally free to make copies of stuff they have bought on equipment
> they have purchased for that purpose. Unless it is commercial
> trade, it only /increases/ the size of the market for the original
> author, and so unless it is a commercial trade, there is no ethical
> concern and, because copyright violations do not become criminal
> (piracy) until you make more than ten copies or $1000 worth there is
> not legal concern. The only concern is the combined problem of
> greed and fear on the part of authors and middlemen.
When copying is essentially a "no-cost" operation and can be done by
anyone hundreds and thousands of times, when does the copying become
"commercial trade"? How quickly could you violate the 10 copy rule on
Napster if you made a popular song available?
> Perhaps in a more well-ordered universe, radio stations would have
> already realized the incredible value of Napster-like sites for
> marketing purposes, and offered to up the fees they pay to the
> unions/authors/corporations. Perhaps in a free market, the
> simplicity of downloading music would have already turned into a
> proper commercial market, and sites would pay fees as radio stations
> do, competing to make the music as inexpensive and convenient as
> possible, while simultaneously offering millions of dollars in
> market opportunity to authors.
Who do you want to pay the fees? Napster is (supposedly) only
providing a search service for finding the music and, as GnuTella
shows, the search service does not need to be centralized. This kind
of puts the fee issue back in the user's court.
> Suppositions and 'perhaps' aside, modern copyright law is rapidly
> becoming an attack on liberty.
And it goes beyond the music industry...
Jeffrey Siegal
> >> IIRC, difference is that radio pays a "use" fee (for lack of a
> >> better word) to have the right to play the songs which they make up
> >> for in advertising (where the fee goes after the radio players pay
> >> it is a whole 'nuther rant).
>
> > The fee goes away once the radio pays it;
>
> The rant concerns who the fee goes to (artists, RIAA, etc.) and in
> what percentage.
The fee goes to writers and composers, not performers or record
companies. There is no performance right for musical recordings, only
compositions.
Rex Ballard
phil hunt wrote:
>
> The next time you buy a CD, remember to ask:
> Will this CD really play on my equipment?
More importantly, "Do you GUARANTEE that this CD will play on my
equipment?".
The clerk will tell you anything you want to hear. He will say "yes
it will".
But you should only buy from a store that promises to refund the full
purchase
price for any CD that won't play on your system.
Perhaps Virgin Records will put a big penguin on the cash register to
show that they are "Linux Friendly". Perhaps SAM Goody's will
put the penguin in the window.
And if they don't, you should purchase the music as cassettes, or
via MP3 download services.
> Why? Because the record manufacturers are secretly introducing new
> modified CDs into the shops. Some of these corrupt CDs won't play on
> computers, PS2 and DVD machines, and others have lower quality sound
> and won't last as long as normal CDs. Of the CDs that will play on
> computers, they will only play on Microsoft operating systems, and
> using Microsoft's Media Player software - users of minority operating
> systemsa like Linux will be deliberately excluded, as will
> non-Microsoft music playing software.
The RIAA and MPAA should come up with a standard piece of software
that can log your listening habits, and send the "play list" to
the RIAA. In addition, when you download, the download service
should be required to put a serial number on the media, along with
the purchase price. The downloader would record the IP address, date,
and time of the download on the tracks as well.
The source code would include license terms to the tone of
"removal or modification of this section of software without the
author's permission could be a felony with fines exceeding $150,000
if used to illegally copy, defeat, or disable copyright accounting
systems. You are only licensed to use this software for legal
purposes.
To clinch the deal, each time the software is activated, the software
would send an "integrity packet" to show that it is functional. The
downloads would be SSL and certificate encrypted which means that the
user would have a valid certificate (provided by the RIAA, MPAA,
ASCAP,
BMI, or other royalty agent), and the vendor would have a valid
certificate
(provided by the same). The certificates would be free, but the
downloads
would be limited based on a "bulk charge". You get 2000 "play units"
for
$20. Each time you play a song, the play is logged. When you've
played
2000 "units" (a two minute song?), you can recharge. You can recharge
just like you do with a prepaide calling card. The electronic
certificate
would be valid for the download device. The playlist could be
recorded
on a file and delivered at the next download (allowing for off-line
use
such as RIO).
If you do go to a record store, you can bring the CD home and have it
"activated" with a phone call. They would give you the decode number
(changes every 60 seconds), for that album. This would enable play.
Alternatively, you could use an infrared handshake with a device which
connects to a telephone or ethernet device.
Since you can't download without exchanging certificates, you can't
publish without getting a certificate. If you try to defeate the
certificate and publish uncertifed, you would be very easy to catch.
Since the royalty agents would have a common database of certificates,
along with the IP addresses and DNS information about the servers,
it would be a bit hard to steal a certificate and use it on your
machine.
At the same time, you could freely distribute personal content. This
would allow small bands and new artists to publish original works
without certificates if they wished. On the other hand, why not
register
the work and make a few extra bucks if you get a few hundred plays.
This is not an original idea. It has been suggested, and used since
the early 1980s. It has been used with the "micropayment system" used
by publishers (especially the adult sites) for many years. It has
also been used to distribute advertizing revenue to content providers.
Although it is possible to deactivate this feature on open source
browsers,
the code has been deployed since Mosaic 2.0 and few have even
attempted
to defeat it. Still, adding restrictions to the license terms may be
appropriate, given the higher perceived value of Music and Video
content.
> The new CDs might play fine to start with, but underneath, the sounds
> have been subtly corrupted. After a few scratches, you'll have tracks
> going wrong much sooner than with normal CDs. In truth, these new
> corrupt CDs are not as good as normal CDs.
>
> The full story on the corrupt CDs is at:
> <http://uk.eurorights.org/issues/cd/>.
>
> ** CAMPAIGN FOR DIGITAL RIGHTS, UK ACTION DAY, SATURDAY 6th October **
>
> The Campaign for Digital Rights is holding a Day of Action against the
> new CDs this Saturday. We will be distributing leaflets outside record
> shops thoughout the UK, warning potential customers of the danger the
> new CDs pose.
Keep in mind that you have the right to fair use. This means that you
have
a legal right to copy the content into RAM, to decode the content, and
to
play that content on a device capable of rendering the content.
Theoretically,
you have that right, even if you use DECSS on Linux to play video on
your
MPEG player.
What you don't have the right to do is share that content with
thousands of
other people without paying royalties to the agents authorized to
collect on
behalf of the writers, performers, producers, promoters, and
publishers.
Unfortunately, early MP3 players were distributed that made no
distinction between
downloading from a site that had paid legitimate royalties and a site
that had no
legal right to distribute software. When you purchase a CD, or a DVD,
you really
only have a license for your personal use (fair use). When you start
publishing
content, whether that's playing it at a bar, letting 20,000 people
download it,
you are violating that license. Bars pay anywhere from $200 to $2000
a month
to play that lovely music you hear when you are there. Even Musak
played on
elevator music includes a $20-50/month ASCAP or BMI fee.
If you want to watch a golden-oldie you rented from blockbuster with a
few
of your friends, that might not be a problem. If you decide to share
the
movie with 30-40 of your friends, you are in violation big-time. If
you
make a regular habit of it, it won't be long before one your four
friends
is a law enforcement related professional (lawyer, judge, officer,
investigator, licensed social worker,...) and they have a legal
obligation to report you to the FBI for copyright violations.
They can lose their licenses to practice if they fail to do so.
> You are welcome to join in!
>
> If, like us, you don't want to be ripped off with shoddy, sub-standard
> CDs, you can be part of our Day of Action. For details of how to
> volunteer, see <http://uazu.net/cd/volunteers.html>.
If you don't want to be ripped off, come up with a media player that
requires dual-certificate SSL, records and sends play-lists, and
reports uncertified downloaders - and publish it under BOTH GNU Public
License and BSD public license.
Otherwise, it's you ripping off the very artists whose music you've
come to love. The average artists spends 10-20 years developing his
musical talent, plays in clubs 20-100 nights/year for 2-5 years,
spends nearly $20,000 on musical equipment, and if he's lucky, he
gets a record contract. The record company spends $2-3 million
producing the record, promoting the artist, and setting up promotional
tours. The record company then spends $5-10 million getting records
printed, distributed, and placed on the shelves in stores. They
then spend $5-10 million on advertizing, free air-play on radio
stations,
music videos (MTV), and other promotional efforts. And if they are
lucky, they will get back 10-20% more than they put in.
If the artist doesn't practice, he's not good enough to make music you
want to hear. If he doesn't play in clubs, he won't know how to
excite
an audience he will never see or hear. If the record company skimps
on production, the record won't sound very good. If they don't
promote
ALOT, you won't buy the record when it hits the shelves. If they
don't
advertise and floor the inventory (finance and guarantee sales), there
won't be any records to buy, and if they don't keep promoting it,
people
will listen to it once, and forget about it - no long term sales from
referrals.
Then, when you finally go to the store, and drop your $20 for a CD,
you put the best songs on a web site and download 20,000 copies to
people who pay you nothing, because you "have the right" to share
(depriving the publisher of roughly $100,000 in revenue). And
then you tell 20 of your friends to do the same thing (now up to
$1 million), because you think your are "promoting" the artist.
Tell you what. Go to some bar on amateaur night, get an appointment
with the third runner-up, tell him you'll record his band in your
garage (next to the highway of course), and then you'll put it on
the Web for millions of people to listen to. Then tell them that
you want an exclusive representation agreement giving you 20% of all
the money they make playing clubs, record sales, and spin-off
products,
and you promise them 30% of all the money you make selling downloads
over
the web.
Tell me what they say?
Tell me how many time your boys' songs are downloaded?
Tell me how much money you make selling those songs on Napster
(or other download services).
Tell me how much money you had to put out to get your first
platinum record.
THEN tell me that I have the right to download all of your
songs for free, then put them on MY web site so that I can
give away $1,000,0000 worth of free downloads.
> For general information on the Campaign for Digital Rights, see our
> website at <http://uk.eurorights.org/>.
Mark Kent
After the middle men have all taken their cut, of course, and then, when
you're talking about the salaried employees of the record companies,
who include many of the members of modern created pop-bands, the session
musicians who actually _play_ the music and the writers who write it,
well, I'm not sure they get anything other than their salary, and I
suspect that the royalties go to the record company. Of course, it's
just possible that the record company passes all the royalties on to
writers in their employ, but I find it rather hard to believe.
--
Mark Kent
Take out the ham to mail me.
Jeffrey Siegal
> >The fee goes to writers and composers, not performers or record
> >companies. There is no performance right for musical recordings, only
> >compositions.
>
> After the middle men have all taken their cut, of course, and then, when
> you're talking about the salaried employees of the record companies,
> who include many of the members of modern created pop-bands, the session
> musicians who actually _play_ the music and the writers who write it,
> well, I'm not sure they get anything other than their salary, and I
> suspect that the royalties go to the record company. Of course, it's
> just possible that the record company passes all the royalties on to
> writers in their employ, but I find it rather hard to believe.
Let me explain it again. Record companies have nothing to do with
performance royalties, which go to performance-rights societies like BMI
and ASCAP, and from their to songwriters and composers (or those to whom
they have sold their performance rights). In those cases where the
songs happen to be written by an employee of a record company, then yes,
the record company would be the writer of the piece, and would collect
the performance royalty. But, in general, that's not the case.
If I write a song and I grant to the any member of the public a free
license to publicly perform my work, Courtney Love records it, and then
it gets played on the radio, the radio station owes no royalty
whatsoever. Not to Courtney, not to her record company, and not to any
of the middlemen, session musicians, or anyone else.
As I said, there is no performance right for *recordings*, only musical
compositions and lyrics. This is just one of the many compromises that
Congress has made in deciding what exclusive rights are included in
copyright and what rights are left to the public domain. The right to
perform a recording, assuming you have permission from the songwriter
and/or composer, is simply left to the public domain. You don't need
permission from the record company and you don't need to pay them a
royalty. That's reality. (This reality must must be quite a challenge
to people, such as David Masterson, who want to argue that copyright is
about some sort of absolute right of control on the part of artists. It
is not, and never has been.)
The exception to this concerns webcasting. Unlike broadcasting,
webcasting requires a license from the holder of the copyright on the
recording. There is little logic to this, except the logical of
realpolitik; webcasters don't have the lobbyists that broadcasters do
(although broadcasters were mighty pissed off -- most of all, one might
conclude, at their own lobbyists -- when they learned that they must pay
webcasting royalties to recording companies just to webcast their own
broadcast signal).
phil hunt
>
>Suppositions and 'perhaps' aside, modern copyright law is rapidly
>becoming an attack on liberty.
'Fraid so.
The choice is quite simple: in the modern age you can either have rigourously
enforced copyright laws, or you can have a free country. You can't have both.
Joseph Pietro Riolo
On Sat, 6 Oct 2001, phil hunt <ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> The choice is quite simple: in the modern age you can either have rigourously
> enforced copyright laws, or you can have a free country. You can't have both.
Well said. I find it ironic that the open source movement is
partially responsible for continuing the copyright's ever-expanding
monopoly for they could not live and enforce their terms and
conditions in their licenses without copyright.
Joseph Pietro Riolo
<ri...@voicenet.com>
Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions in this
post in the public domain.
T. Max Devlin
>> Said David Masterson in comp.os.linux.advocacy on 04 Oct 2001 16:35:45
>>>>>>>> Fred K Ollinger writes:
>
>>>> : Napster *was* a search engine!
>>>>
>>>> Like the radio, only you choose what song to listen to.
>
>>> IIRC, difference is that radio pays a "use" fee (for lack of a
>>> better word) to have the right to play the songs which they make up
>>> for in advertising (where the fee goes after the radio players pay
>>> it is a whole 'nuther rant).
>
>> The fee goes away once the radio pays it;
>
>The rant concerns who the fee goes to (artists, RIAA, etc.) and in
>what percentage.
I haven't a clue what your point is.
>> the listener is free to record songs off the radio, just as we are
>> free to tape movies on our VCR.
>
>> The fee was paid by someone, and eventually the song was posted on
>> Napster (so to speak). When a 'hit' gets into regular rotation on
>> the radio, as it would if it became popular on Napster, then the
>> radio pays more of a fee.
>
>But does Napster pay more of a fee? Or the supplier of the song
>(ie. the person whose hard disk had the song copied off of it from)?
Napster pays neither, which is appropriate as it was a very crappy
service.
>> It simply all works out, automagically: the end user/consumer is
>> legally free to make copies of stuff they have bought on equipment
>> they have purchased for that purpose. Unless it is commercial
>> trade, it only /increases/ the size of the market for the original
>> author, and so unless it is a commercial trade, there is no ethical
>> concern and, because copyright violations do not become criminal
>> (piracy) until you make more than ten copies or $1000 worth there is
>> not legal concern. The only concern is the combined problem of
>> greed and fear on the part of authors and middlemen.
>
>When copying is essentially a "no-cost" operation and can be done by
>anyone hundreds and thousands of times, when does the copying become
>"commercial trade"?
Like I said; ten copies or $1000. Which part don't you get?
>How quickly could you violate the 10 copy rule on
>Napster if you made a popular song available?
You aren't violating any such rule. It is those who copy it from you
who are doing it; if they download it more than ten times, they should
pay the poster and the poster should pay the artist, somehow. In a
perfect world.
It is not against the law to use your equipment to copy a friend's
legally purchased CD, regardless of the content. That is one copy. For
you, not him.
>> Perhaps in a more well-ordered universe, radio stations would have
>> already realized the incredible value of Napster-like sites for
>> marketing purposes, and offered to up the fees they pay to the
>> unions/authors/corporations. Perhaps in a free market, the
>> simplicity of downloading music would have already turned into a
>> proper commercial market, and sites would pay fees as radio stations
>> do, competing to make the music as inexpensive and convenient as
>> possible, while simultaneously offering millions of dollars in
>> market opportunity to authors.
>
>Who do you want to pay the fees?
To encourage more convenient distribution.
>Napster is (supposedly) only
>providing a search service for finding the music and, as GnuTella
>shows, the search service does not need to be centralized. This kind
>of puts the fee issue back in the user's court.
You've got it backwards; this puts the fee back in the author's court,
and if they can't figure out a way to collect it efficiently without
restraining trade, then fuck 'em. Authors regenerate; the old ones die
and new ones create themselves.
>> Suppositions and 'perhaps' aside, modern copyright law is rapidly
>> becoming an attack on liberty.
>
>And it goes beyond the music industry...
Way beyond, yes. But all of this is the same for any other media or
product such as software.
John Hasler
> I find it ironic that the open source movement is partially responsible
> for continuing the copyright's ever-expanding monopoly for they could not
> live and enforce their terms and conditions in their licenses without
> copyright.
This may be true of the "open source movement" (though it seems unlikely)
but the FSF has made it quite clear that in the absence of software
copyright the terms and conditions of the GPL would be unnecessary. As for
that "ever-expanding monopoly", I know of no Free Software license that
relies on any feature of copyright law not provided for in the original
Berne convention.
Graham Murray
> They could, but I would think for software that predates a given
> copy protection scheme, the presumption should be that the purpose
> of the software is something other than circumventing that particular
> protection scheme. That seems like at least the start of a
> defense assuming that the purpose wasn't to circumvent some other
> protection scheme that the RIAA had standing to sue for.
It may also be useful for a defence under DMCA for other devices
circumventing that scheme. Could it not be argued that if software/ a
device whose use would bypass the protection was available before the
protection scheme was first used, that no way could that scheme be
described as "effective" and therefore bypassing it does not
contravene DMCA?
charles lyttle
full-time paid hacks. I can't find the good music for all the commercial
crap given display space in the stores. The last few CDs I've bought
came from the artists in Tombstone and on the street at the Fringe Faire
in Edinburgh. The first time I heard Roy Clark was at a county fair in
Kentucky. He was GOOD! But the he got contract and went commercial big
time and his work lost all originality.
T. Max Devlin
>>
>>Suppositions and 'perhaps' aside, modern copyright law is rapidly
>>becoming an attack on liberty.
>
>'Fraid so.
>
>The choice is quite simple: in the modern age you can either have rigourously
>enforced copyright laws, or you can have a free country. You can't have both.
That's complete bullshit. You seem to have some metaphysical delusions
concerning what 'copyright laws' actually say if you think copyright
itself is contrary to a free country (either that, or you are an
objectivist who has metaphysical delusions about what 'free' means,
maybe). It is the failure of laws to be 'rigorously enforced' which is
the attack on liberty, and their extension to new laws that aren't
justified by copyright at all. Your useless polemic idiocy is part of
the problem, not a reasonable opinion but simple reactionary stupidity.
Think harder.
T. Max Devlin
>> The choice is quite simple: in the modern age you can either have rigourously
>> enforced copyright laws, or you can have a free country. You can't have both.
>
>monopoly [...]
The blind leading the blind.
John Hasler
> How much better would they be if they could create music and perform
> full-time?
Then let them figure out how to do so and we'll find out. I'm sure I'd be
a lot better at riding and training horses if I could do it full-time, but
I don't expect or want oppressive and invasive laws to be enacted to enable
me to do so. Why should musicians, authors, etc be any different?
--
John Hasler
jo...@dhh.gt.org (John Hasler)
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, WI
Lee Hollaar
>>When copying is essentially a "no-cost" operation and can be done by
>>anyone hundreds and thousands of times, when does the copying become
>>"commercial trade"?
>
>Like I said; ten copies or $1000. Which part don't you get?
TMax is mixing together a couple of difference provisions of the
copyright laws, neither of which has to do with when something becomes
"commercial trade" (a term not used in the copyright laws).
There is a provision (17 USC 506(a), for those who wish to look it up)
that makes copyright infringement a crime when it is done "willfully"
and either for "commercial advantage or private financial gain" or
if copies with a total retail value of more than $1,000 are made within
a 180-day period. 18 USC 2319 makes it a felony if there 10 or more
copies with a total retail value of $2,500 are made in a 180-day
period. Otherwise, the criminal copyright infringement is a misdemeanor.
(The difference has to do with the possible penalties.)
So, the $1,000 copy threshold doesn't make something commercial. It
makes it a crime if it is NOT commercial. And the ten copy limit makes
a criminal infringement a felony if their total retail value exceeds
$2,500.
As to when there is "financial gain," 17 USC 101 says that that "includes
receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including
receipt of other copyrighted works." So if you trade one MP3 for another,
you have "financial gain" and the $1,000 copy threshold isn't necessary
for it to be a criminal infringement.
The sections of the United States copyright law that I cited above can
be found at http://www.loc.gov/copyright/title17/