[advocacy] Re: I just read your article on OGG & have Question

[Daniel James]

> I am aware of the concerns over music theft and the industry is
> frantically trying to find ways to curb unauthorized mass
> reproduction of music files.

Yes - ironic, given that the sole purpose of record labels was to
enable mass reproduction! What I don't think the industry grasped
until too late was that if digital audio makes marginal cost
reproduction possible for the label, that is also true for the end
user.

> I purchased a pocket sized SONY
> player which makes its on mini discs.  The software prohibits
> multiple reproduction of the same files.  So, while SONY may be
> protecting the music industry, they just robbed me of a chunk of
> change.

I agree the SCMS system has a built-in assumption that users don't own
the copyright to the material they are attempting to record. On my
particular soundcard I can set 'professional' or 'consumer' modes for
digital output, but of course not everyone falls into these neat
marketing categories.

As the copyright owner of your own material, it should be perfectly
legal to use a hardware device which can remove the 'do not copy'
bit:

http://www.minidisc.org/part_SCMS_Tweakers.html

> My question is, if hardward is designed to attack pirating and
> multiple copy production of files, what is the myriad of us home
> musicians to do?

Some people will prefer to stick with analogue or pre-DRM hardware for
this reason. There's a potential issue with long-term data retrieval
from proprietary formats, which could affect all kinds of musicians,
not just people recording at home.

For the time being there is plenty of DRM-free technology available
which will not lock up your own material, so I think it's just a
question of being careful when you're buying equipment. You'll
probably get better quality from a hard disc recorder with a 96KHz/24
bit soundcard than you would from a minidisc machine anyway.

DVD-R burners are coming down in price too, so I expect SCMS devices
like minidisc recorders and those 'consumer audio' CD recorders will
be obsolete very soon. We'll just have to watch closely when the next
DRM system appears.

Cheers!

Daniel

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