The future of music on the net?

[Rex_Omar]

I am well confused about this and maybe one or two of you bright sods can help me out.

Firstly read this article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2675903.stm) before you read any more of this thread.








Have you read it?
















Good.





Now as you can see Microsoft & Co. want to "copy-protect" all CD's in future. But I can see one fundamental error in their thinking.

It may be possible to copy protect a CD, but as far as I can see there is no way anyone can stop music being copied.

Let me explain: Every piece of audio equipment had audio out, whether it is optical, digital, phono or just the plain old speaker wires, it is the audio out that allows you to listen to the music, without audio out there would not be much poit to the equipment because you would not be able to listen to your music.

So basically if we have a way of listening to music we have a way of recording it, whether you plug it into a tape recorder, use a mike, use a minidisc recorder or even plug the audio out into your sound card and use windows sound recorder to record the music you are listening to. There must be 100's of way to record from a piece of audio equipment that has audio out.

No you have a recording of the "protected" and you can do what you want with it, you can convert it digitally and share it with your mates or burn it on a cd.

What I want to know is why these companies are spening millions and millions of dollars on inneffective copy protection that will never work.

Why don't they bring the prices of there products down to a decent level, I would be quite happy to pay £5.00 for an album rather that bother with downloading it, but £15.00 no thanks.

Thought?

Tell me if I am talking cr4p about the recording issues above.

[Jiveman]

The quality won't be as good unless you have high quality kit with optical outputs as you'd be recording an analogue copy of a digital track back in to digital format, admittedly it'd probably still sound normal on mp3 but the reason I have 60+ cd collection is that you really can tell the difference.

Also I heard Robbie Williams went on the record saying that music piracy is great :E

[Razz]

I think it's to prevent someone sticking their newly bought cd into a burner stack thing and churning out half a dozen copies in quarter of an hour. After all, that's quite an easy thing to do. However, hooking up your system to record the audio out is probably more technical than most people are willing to do.

As you said, there's no way to stop music being copied but they can certainly try and make it as difficult as possible for you ;)

[ezt]

Originally posted by Jiveman
Also I heard Robbie Williams went on the record saying that music piracy is great :E

yeah i had a live mp3 of travis who had said this is our new song but i guess you'd all heard it anyway as you got it through napster or something. they said they didnt hate the idea either :P

I think with copy protection there is a fine line between it not working on a pc and it not working in your cd player. If they want to make some software which restricts your playing of the file so it can be played but not copied on your pc then its gonna be very hard to do. at the end of the day the companies can spend what they want and make all the protection they want but people can find a way round the software.

Werent dvd regions meant to stop US dvds getting into the EU before they've even come out in the cinema here? yeah right!

[HULK]

Can add Chad Kroeger of Nickleback sayin he didn't care whether u bought it, stole it, copied it or downloaded it, he just said all he cared about was people listenin to his music ....

[Mr.Blondee]

but remember - to record in real time means you have to actually do the whole album. Now I know if you gonna listen to it anyway it aint that bad but a lot of people just wont bother - it takes, what, 2 minutes to rip an audio cd to mp3 atm? 70 mins is a lot longer and that will disuade a lot of people. Also there is that you have to stop the recording at end of each track so if you just listening to it whilst doing something else you would have to stop what your doing etc. etc.

so it could work.

[Silenced]

all it takes is 1 person to copy it

then it will spread like wildfire on the p2p networks

[Refugee]

Yeah he is a bit of a slag.

[Silenced]

dum dum tshhhh

[Refugee]

Thank you, thank you. Im here all week!

[[WiZ]Prodigy]

Once you've recorded the CD in real time via audio out (using optical to optical or some other virtually losless means) then you've got a perfect copy of the CD that can THEN be copied via convential methods as many times as you like and as quickly as possible.

So it is ultimately a failed idea.

[Rex_Omar]

Originally posted by Silenced
all it takes is 1 person to copy it

then it will spread like wildfire on the p2p networks

Exactly!

Prodigy said the same thing in a different way.

So am I right in thinking that the $500m that Sony is spending on copy protection is a waste of money?

[Amourdia]

Utter waste of money, what ever protection they put on it, it'll be cracked within a week and anybody with the knowledge to load up google.com will know how.

[RinseAid]

Aye, sounds like a waste of money to me, the obvious solution would be to stop you playing CD's in your CD player. Then no1 could copy CD's and the music industry would be very happy.:rolling:

[Katz]

why they bother making cd-writer things in the first place.....
it's like a circle

I mean I copy things on to tape to take with me when I'm in the car for long journeys (unless I use the cd player but even then a copied cd is better than using the oriogional one just incase u wreck it somehow :p) but also I use to lend my music out, and maybe this just happens with my friends I dunno, but I lend them the tape if they like the band or a band (if I make a compilation) then they'll go out and buy that band's cd, if they don't then I've saved them money in a way...

but my quesition is, if record companies don't want cd's being copied and relying on MS's help on protection....
then why did the world of PCs decide to make a cd drive + software for it that enables you to copy data

I'm not a big techincal wizz on pcs heh so somebody enlighten me pls

p.s I know the topic focuses on napster and progs like that but there are ppl out there who are making money off selling copied cds - and I was just wodnering about them

[[WiZ]Prodigy]

There's no way they can stop music copying in it's current form.

EVEN if they did stop music CDs being played on a PC this would have no effect.

Simply: Pop CD into CD Player. Plug optical out from CD player into optical in on soundcard (in my case I'd use the Audigy Platinum sat next to me). Hit play on the CD player and record from the optical in on the soundcard.

Then you've got the music. Simply track mark it and record it to CD. There isn't anything you can do to get round that surely.

[eat]

The record companies cant win. They distribute music to make money like vampires :vampire: . The online community distributes music freely because they want to share their love of a band:pikachu:

[HULK]

Notice how the bands that want to stop copy protection are usually the bands that write about two good songs then fill the rest of there album up with crap :D

[Razz]

Like Metallica :E

[Monie]

Album prices take the p*ss atm though.

£8 is reasonable
£13 is pricey
£15 is just ridiculous...