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Looper's Delight
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OK, here's a worst case scenario: It may well appear overly paranoid to most of you but bear in mind that once a medium goes digital then it is ultimately lockable and signable by any number of encryption solutions and also the playback of that media is ultimately under the control of those who can afford to set up chip fabrication plant.... Not a garage business by any means! So put on your cynical head, slip into Orwellian nightmare mode and: >as performers/composers/producers, what we have is controll over how our >music is used... >..so we publish enough for free/cheaply That is until all the proposed digital rights management systems are in place and you suddenly find that you can't even produce media that will be readable on the state of the art mass market devices out there. No more back room CDR publishing, (or its equivalent) if it doesn't come from one of the big boys and have the right signiture embedded in the data then the playback devices just assume it's pirated and refuse to play (or even auto erase). The same will go for software that receives audio data streams from the net. Open source will provide alternative solutions you say? Not if the 'trustworthy computing' initiative goes ahead and the only code that the motherboard bios (or cpu microcode or whatever other non trivially modifiable component of the system is used ) will let near the audio hardware is code that has been approved by the central authorities (be they Microsoft, Sony, the Ancient Order of Bavarian Illuminati... whoever) So one day you upgrade your PC (or buy a new recording device ) and find that none of the old MP3 players work, you can only playback "MMF" files and guess what there's no conversion software available that doesn't involve signing up for a hugely bewildering license agreement and handing over a few hundred K. Hell the player won't even start up untill it has phoned home and downloaded the latest codec, set of signiatures and new encryption keys to replace those cracked yesterday. Great, guess you'll just have to settle back and listen to the latest single from BoyKlone II or Atomic Mutton that came pre-loaded on the pc and you begin to remember what drove you away from FM radio all those years ago. Meanwhile you've finished downloading drivers and a patch for your favorite DAW software that now actually seems to work on your PC, great! Soon you're laying down a few tracks and soloing over them, shame all your old sample CD's (the royalty free ones you bought a while back, paying over the odds for the rights to use them in your own recordings without the hassle of getting every sample cleared ) don't seem to work in the CD/DVD/NUEZDisc(TM) drive any more and hey! since when did they stop putting analogue outputs on those drives! Oh yeah I remember, the press release said that the NUEZDisc(TM) consortium had decided that the inferior analogue format was now obsolete and agreed amongst themselves to not bother with it in the new spec thus saving on manufacture price and eliminating some bothersome components which this chart here shows were the cause of over 50% of malfunctions on the previous drives, so it's all for your own good in the cause of better reliability and service to you, our esteemed customers. Never mind, at least you can record some music of your own now but hang on... what the F... is that format? Where's my wavs! Hmmm, better read that splash screen properly.... "Thank you for deciding to demo the Maxwell Media Format drivers, you have used up 5 of your 20 free acesses*, why not upgrade to our platinum 'pay to play' program and let the EZupload wizard make putting your tunes on line at www.megamediacorp.com as easy as EGBDF! * Free trial files are reproducable only on the device of origin, other restrictions may apply " <rant mode off> ....get the idea? The sort of wide ranging laws that are being sought could easily be the thin end of the wedge, before you know it the digital broadcast revolution is no more, sure you have free speech but only to those who can be bothered to stand in earshot while the majority sit at home infront of MTV. The technology is there to create monopolies the like of which have not been seen before. Don't say I didn't warn you..... Robin. ==================================================================== The contents and any attachments of this electronic mail message are confidential and intended only for the named addressees. Dissemination, forwarding, publication or other use of the message or attachments by any unauthorised person is strictly prohibited. Unless stated to the contrary, any opinions expressed in this message are personal and may not be attributed to AXA Sun Life or any member of the AXA Group of Companies. Internet e-mails are not necessarily secure. AXA Group does not accept responsibility for changes made to this message after it was sent.