| Steve House |
November 18th, 2005 10:19 AM |
What's especially galling is that real pirates, people copying CDs for commerical gain, can get around any of these copy protection devices by making at most a miniscule investement. Play the CD and re-record the audio coming from the S/PDIF or an AES/EBU digital output or even loop analog audio out back into an analog input, something easily done with any pro-quality audio interface and a lot of consumer grade soundcards, then remaster from the recorded material. (And remember AES is like S/PDIF but strips out the copy-protection bit from the data stream so any player or audio interface that has it should work as the digital signal source.) So what if you aren't making a bit-for-bit copy of the disk - most people who purchase discs where pirates usually distribute don't have either the hearing or the playback equipment to tell the difference. (Look at how many people are blissfully unaware that their mp3's are Especially in this forum I'll bet 90% of the people reading this have the necessary hardware and software to copy those discs with impunity, copy protection or no, with very little if any noticable generational loss. And if it's a personal copy you're making to have a disc to take with you in the car or to a party while leaving your expensive original safely at home, well, I'll guarantee you any losses you do incur will be obscured by the background noise of your listening environment.
I can understand the recording companies desire to prevent people from copying and posting music online but even there I wonder how much impact it really has on record sales. There's no doubt there's a lot of it posted illegally. But the real question is how many people who have downloaded it or copied a friend's CD would have purchased the CD had it not been available online and there I have my doubts. I'm sure there's some erosion but I wonder how much there really is. I suspect in many cases those people who are downloading and burning or copying would just wait for their tunes to come around on their favorite radio station's playlist or simply do without. Yes, we've all heard how sales are declining but whether that decline is *caused* by copying or other competing market factors are more important remains to be seen. Perhaps the teen market is more motivated to spend their money of other alternative pastimes like video games and will listen to DL'd music if it's available but otherwise would just listen to the radio.
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