carfac said:
As many of you are aware, the MPAA (or is it RAII?) is now pushing the notion that if you buy a CD, you do NOT have the right to burn it to HD or transfer to iPod. As I see it, they are trying to make us buy a new version for each use- a CD for use in a CD player, a DRM version for iPod, etc. The direction I see them headed is to make us pay and pay and pay.
Let's not confuse the law with RIAA press releases with what they'd ultimately desire.
Under the law, ordinary people can make copies of phonorecords (which audio CDs qualify as) under two circumstances:
- Using a device that complies with the Audio Home Recording Act. This is pretty much any device that supports SCMS copy protection. (You can make a copy form an original, but can not make a copy from a copy.)
- For "fair use". Fair use has a fuzzy legal definition. US copyright law mentions a few cases (like excerpts for educational, review, criticism or parody purposes). Making a backup copy, custom mix discs, loading into computers/iPods, is a gray area.
Software (which CDs do not qualify as, but music on other media might) allows duplication for two more reasons:
- For installation purposes
- For backup purposes
Many lawyers understand "fair use" in a way that includes almost anything you do with the music, as long as it's non-commercial and doesn't result in another person possessing a copy. This would allow rip/mix/burn, iPod loading, streaming over a LAN, etc.
The RIAA (and other lawyers) have a much stricter definition of fair use that only permits those reasons explicitly stated in the copyright law. According to them, the uses I mentioned in the previous paragraph are only permitted because the RIAA has made a decision to not attempt prosecution, not because of any legal guarantee.
As for what the RIAA would want, keep in mind that their PR people (including their web site) say that you can rip/mix/burn, load iPods, etc. In other words, there is no disagreement about what you are allowed to do - they are only disagreeing about where that permission comes from. While this is a concern, it's not nearly as dire as some would have you believe.
carfac said:
Why do no online resources allow d/ling purchased music at greater than 128kbsec? Sure, bandwidth is a concern... but I am sure there are enough people like DIATRIBE and myself that want higher bitsrates, and would pay for it. So why is it not available- because the record companies will not liscence it.
You don't know that, unless you're privy to contracts.
You may believe that there's a big conspiracy-based reason. It may also be a simple business decision.
128Kbps is about 10:1 compression. That allows a lot of music to be stored on a server. Higher bit-rates consume more space, and require more download bandwidth.
Companies have to consider the storage costs of alternate formats (which are incurred whether or not there are any purchases) and the bandwidth costs (which are only incurred when purchases are made.) These all have to be passed on to the customer. If the tracks end up 10x larger (for uncompressed audio) or 5x larger (for Apple Lossless format), those costs will be substantial.
You may be willing to pay extra for this, but how much more? $2/song? $5/song? $8/song? As the price goes up, customers are turned away, forcing the price to go even higher (since the storage costs for the songs is unaffected by customer demand.)
Given the fact that CDs cost $8-18 in stores, per-song download prices can't rise too much before people abandon the service. Any company that wants to offer music downloads must take this into consideration.
carfac said:
I think the best we can expect from MPAA on movie d/ls is DVD res... and I think that is probably not likely. 😡
Movies have an even worse problem - huge file sizes.
A DVD typically holds 5-10GB of content. Even if you strip out the bonus features, you're still probably looking at 4-7GB. Assuming an H.264 version can get an additional 50% compression, you're still looking at 2-3.5GB.
Even with a 10Mbps broadband connection (and a server that can keep up), you're talking about 30-45 minutes for the download. For a DSL line (1.5Mbps), you're looking at 3-5 hours download. Even if this is acceptable to you, I don't think most people would agree. And it's unlikely that any download service is going to pump out that much data without charging a lot for it - quite possibly as much as the cost of a DVD.
Which means you're looking at higher compression and lower resolutions, regardless of what the copyright holders may or may not want to allow.
Don't go jumping to conspiracy theories when there are much simpler logical explanation at hand.
