On Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 10:05:49PM -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
People were making bootleg copies of records via cassettes for a long time and *that* didn't force a renegotiation of the social contract.
There's a big difference, though. Cassette copies suffer from fairly significant generation loss. Even the first generation copy is noticeably poorer in quality. It tends to limit the scope of copying to only first generation copies, maybe second. With digital media, there is no difference no matter the generation, so there is nothing inherent in the media to prevent geometric growth of the number of copies. I'm not saying this means we need DRM. I buy music from Amazon mp3 rather than the iTunes store. I decided this when I encountered my first device that couldn't deal with DRM. It'll be interesting to see what happens. Large companies don't usually deal well when technology changes make their entire business model obsolete. The recording companies can push with the legal system, but only to a point, and for so long. I also think more artists will follow Trent Reznor's footsteps. David -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
