Posted on 01/04/2002 2:14:02 PM PST by PogySailor
On Friday, Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., sent a letter to executives of the recording industry's trade association, asking whether anti-piracy technology on CDs might override consumers' abilities to copy albums they have purchased for personal use.
A 1992 law allows music listeners to make some personal digital copies of their music. In return, recording companies collect royalties on the blank media used for this purpose. For every digital audio tape (DAT), blank audio CD, or minidisc sold, a few cents go to record labels.
"I am particularly concerned that some of these technologies may prevent or inhibit consumer home-recording using recorders and media covered by the" Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA), Boucher wrote. "Any deliberate change to a CD by a content owner that makes (the allowed personal copies) no longer possible would appear to violate the content owner's obligations."
The Capitol Hill attention is a potentially daunting sign for recording companies, which are becoming bolder in their efforts to keep consumers from making unauthorized copies of CDs. Each of the major record labels has said it is looking at several versions of new anti-copying technology; in particular, Universal Music Group executives have said they want to protect a large proportion of their new releases as soon as midyear.
The labels are worried that the rise of home CD-burners has eaten into album sales, particularly after the worst year in a decade for the music industry.
Universal was the first major label to openly distribute a copy-protected CD in the United States, with the release of a soundtrack to the "Fast and the Furious" film in December. Companies that produce copy-protection technology say other albums have been quietly released into the market, but verified sightings have been rare.
The AHRA issue had been spotlighted by a few copyright attorneys for several months, but until now it has not been a large part of the debate over copy protection.
"If you put technology in place that prevents people from using their recording devices, then it seems that you should not be eligible for the royalty payments" under the AHRA, said Fred von Lohmann, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
A representative for the Recording Industry Association of America had no immediate comment on Boucher's letter, saying the group had not yet seen it.
Boucher, who has been a legislative opponent of the big recording companies for some time, asked the industry group to respond to a long list of questions describing the technologies the record labels are using. He stopped short of saying what he might do if he decided that the technologies do violate the terms of the 1992 law.
As for album sales, maybe it's the product?
Maybe that would be because most of the music produced was made for chimp-listening with the singers' skill not much higher than that ?
And, for that matter, a pox on the recording artists. If they want to make money out of their music, let them do it the old fashioned way, by performing it, rather than creating one song, then collecting money from what are essentially photocopies.
I will NEVER buy a CD that is copy-protected. I'll just download the MP3s if that ever comes to be. BTW, MP3s transferred to CD are lower quality than transferring from CD to CD. I'd much rather buy the legal copy with the liner notes and artwork. But if the music industry forces my hand, I'm going to obtain my music from MP3s over the web.
Quite frankly, the FBI warning on a video is a tastless reminder about how greedy and pervasively powerful the entertainment lobby is in DC.
The terrorists of 9/11 had more to fear in copying a video or CD than in plotting what they did to NY.
We've got some priorities to re-arrange in this society.
And perhaps authors should make their money by reciting their works, rather than by having them printed?
If people are bootlegging CD's and get caught, throw the book at them. But don't prevent me from using my own property for my own pleasure.
No, they should simply have to write out a new copy long-hand, for each reader.
But, seriously, the recording industry are a bunch of crooks.
MP3s are inherently lower quality, because they use lossy compression. However, at high bitrates (160+ Kbs), the difference is too small to be easily heard, especially under less-than-ideal listening conditions.
I've heard allegations that under the Clintigula administration, the FBI was directed to divert manpower from anti-terrorism to copyright enforcement. Does anybody have any documentation to confirm or refute that story?
Given that it's a violation of the bargain which allowed them to collect that revenue, they should have to cough it all back up to the Treasury.
Thank you for the info. I had originally been making and downloading mp3s at 128kps because it takes less time to download and takes up less space on the hard drive. They also sounded fine on my tinny PC speakers. But when I started burning them to CD, they just didn't sound as good as a CD.
Now that I have a broadband connection and a 80Gig hard drive, I'll be doing 160kps or better for now on.
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