14 Dec
2002
14 Dec
'02
9:43 a.m.
On Fri, 13 Dec 2002, Wayne M. Smith wrote:
What I'm referring to is the recording industry claiming their sales have
dropped. First of all, I want to see hard data to prove this. Second, I
want this dat to be from an independent auditor. Lastly, I want an
independent analyst to confirm whether this is because of rampant CD
copying on college campuses or if it is as a result of the economy.
And many other artists who have had the courage to speak out publicly.
It depends on what you mean by "distributing that research." If you
mean
unrestricted distribution of a hack -- particularly when you know that 99.9% of
those who will use it have no interest in "research" (other than to
"research"
whether they can crack a DVD) -- then I do support it.
Witholding knowledge never keeps anything a secret, especially where
technical issues are concerned. In a sensible world, the MPAA should have
been glad that someone broke their encryption so easily. However, they
would have put the algorithm to scrutiny BEFORE committing it to standard
and shipping millions of copies of vulnerable product. Then they could
have fixed it. Instead, the MPAA has to sit there defending why they
have a turd on their head, and they know it, and everyone else knows it,
but the MPAA is trying to pretend that it's everyone elses fault that they
have to wear a turd on their head.
And in the end, they'll inevitably learn that you can't rely on copy
protection to boost revenues after all, as all the software firms of the
1980s learned from their failed attempts to copy protect software with
ever increasing elaborate schemes. In one regard the RIAA/MPAA (and I use
these acronyms to describe the recording and movie industries
respectively) did learn one lesson, and that was to go straight to
lobbying congress to pass very bad laws (the DMCA) to make it illegal to
crack copy protection schemes. However, this will still not change
consumer behavior, and it will not change the fact that for every
technology, someone WILL figure out how to get around it, laws be damned
(especially when the laws are immoral).
I thought you were going to say that they're spending all their
remaining money on DVDs ;-)
Nope, if anything they are spending their money on high speed internet
access so they can download music and movies faster ;)
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
* Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *
Wayne, I
can't buy your argument for the same reason I can't believe
anything the RIAA or MPAA or any of those silly acronym-based
organizations say. They don't back them up with hard data, because if
they did, we would probably find that sales are only increasing. When the
recording industry is willing to allow an independent auditor to check its
books and report the findings, then I'll believe it. Until then, I don't
take their word for anything.
Every recording contract with a participation clause has an audit provision in
it that allows the artist to come in with their own auditor/accountant and have
full access to the books. Same is true in the movie biz. So I don't really
know what you're referring to. Also, I think
it's pretty petty for the recording industry especially
to be griping about losing sales, especially when it robs most
recording artists blind anyway. But that's another (and even more
off-topic) thread.
I see you've been reading the popular press and the gospel according to
Courtney Love. No, he didn't, but he did distribute DeCSS, and
then others did. The DCMA
doesn't preclude reverse engineering CSS for purely encryption research or
security testing, and I'm certain the MPAA has not said otherwise.
But it does preclude distributing that research, and I can't believe you
could support that provision.
The movie biz is right about where the music biz was 5
years ago.
DVD burners are around $300-400, the media is approaching $1 per
disk and connectivity speeds are increasing. We will see.
The economy is also right about where it was 5 years ago. People just
don't have the money they did in 1999 (I certainly don't). The
correlation is more than a coincidence.