[AUUG-Talk]: Downloading and playing legal music

[David J N Begley]

Quoting David Newall <david.newall at auug.org.au>:

> The concept of copy protection was explored, in depth, by the 
> software industry in the 70's and 80's, and the software industry 
> lost.  The lesson that was learned then, but which appears to have 
> been forgotten now, is that copy protection punishes those who would

Sadly, it is all too common to completely ignore the lessons of the past (not
just in IT but pretty much every aspect of human existence);  a sensible
person would look at the fragile "deliberate errors on recording media" and
other assorted nonsense and realise these merely added to the cost of the
final product, which in turn led to greater piracy - compete head-on with
pirates by lowering cost (not to match, but to reduce the incentive), not by
effectively encouraging your potential customers to look first at pirated
options before "the real deal".

The movie industry still thinks we're in the 1920's and 1930's when the
release of a new title was sufficiently important to have a "gala 
opening". They don't _want_ to change to reflect the changes in wider 
society - they
just want you to send them all your money.  Seriously.

DRM is not about protecting the rights and interests of artists, any more than
extensions to intellectual property legislation are about protecting (thus
encouraging, supposedly for the good of the wider community) investment in
new ideas/products/services - it's about control and profit.

Hrmph...