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An interesting letter regarding copy protection of CDs
Here's a letter that caught my eye regarding the issue of copy protecting CDs.It was written in german so I translated it to english myself,so please don't be too harsh on the language used.
Open letter to [email protected] by Soundjunkie
Dear copyprotectors of Universal,
Who to me are the assigned guardians of the rights to the digital sound property: you surely did not expect this mailadress to be a channel of feedback from satisfied customers. Which is no surprise,because why should one consider the fact that one has to get plugins for their players in order to enjoy their band of choice,progress?
All this is of course happening in order to protect the interests of your artists - a music industry tradition, which is appreciated in particular by major artists. That’s why I’m so thankful for the fact that your copy protection does not allow the playback of your precious silver discs on a computer at all.
I know that you are going through hard times. Business is going down, the mother company is going down, labels are being restructured and many labels cannot handle the move to Berlin. The lovely view across The Spree that you have from your waterpalace does not bring any comfort then. Despite this, I hope you will let me share the pride of your capital-based headquarters - because after all, I have contributed to it for several years now.
To be blunt: from now on, I fear that my letter will rapidly glide from joyous praise into venomous criticism. I apologize beforehand for the written scoldings that may occur - music is after all an emotional issue.
My claim is as follows: your complaints about burners and p2p-programs is merely a smokescreen for your real goal,namely to eliminate every right to private copies of music. Pay per listen - that is your dream: each playback will cost a couple of micro cents, and after four weeks a basic license will have to be renewed. This fobbing off of the customer will simultaneously lower the overheads, all while the price per track differs insignificantly towards the price of a full album. The deaf tekknokids can not hear the flawed frequencies the compressed samples yield, since the CDs they have to compare them with are flawed anyway. The crown jewel of your work would be a copyright taskforce like customs, who are allowed to spontaneously search hard drives and mobile playback devices for non-watermarked tracks. That’s your view on the situation.
In reality, the industry has noone but themselves to blame for the current crisis. Fileswappers and home-cd makers have little to do with it. To make a long story short: For many years you have been producing too much crap with ever decreasing durability to ever increasing costs. Massproduction rather than innovation, gloss rather than content, banality rather than value. Following your demands,airplay has made the music streamline-fitted,and interview travels, freebies and backstage passes has kept it alive. A horde of inflation-struck magazines are reviewing the latest crap, because the company’s ads barely have payed their cover.
At the same time,your readymade yet non-know-how-inhibited Mr.Importants are spending horrible amounts of cash on production and promotion. Daily pay cheques are issued to studios that ran out of marketing skills ages ago. Insanely expensive videos are made that no station wants to show. Promo packages are spread all over the country,accompanied by cryptic, to-be-continued band info that looks like it was written by the editors of the local school paper the day after the prom. On over-ambitious bookings disappointed artists are playing for almost empty venues, feasting on overpriced catering deals, rolling Nightliners to sky high prices and tumbling into fellow stars with shining VIP-passes around their necks.
Thankfully, the total cost of these extravaganzas are usually subtracted from the artists’ paycheque. But what happens when you can’t do this,because the whole damn circus has gone down the drain? As we all know, only 3% of all acts earn 100% of the company’s income as a result of their work. Is that a general rule in the market or a way to point out lack of skill?
My answer to this whole mess is now on the table in front of you,and I can tell you this much: I am not amused. My music centre is my computer. Why buy a separate CD-player, when the computer’s CD-drive does the exact same thing? To be able to enjoy my music through my speakers which I have spent my hard earned cash on, I am forced to clear space for unwanted software on my computer. The resulting audio is compressed audio tracks in mp3 format. The original wave files remain inaccessible. The sloppily programmed audio player devours of course 5 times as much CPU as the standard Windows Media Player,even when idling. There is no support for Apple either,even though it is one of the favourite pieces of hardware among musicians.
Am I going to pay 17 euros for this in the future?
No.
I feel like I’m being punished by an industry that hasn’t done its homework. An industry that’s reactionary,unwilling to evolve and in its current state is bound to go under. Dear friends of the music in the stories of the record companies: in case you haven’t noticed - a new age has arrived. The use of sailboats and horse and cart will soon only be used by nostalgic people. Everybody can even afford a ride with the train now. That means: neither sailboats nor horse and cart will any longer be used.
If mp3-files and CD-burners had not existed, I would have continued my 8 year-abstinence from consumation of music. Since the pre-programmed radio shows haven’t worked as a source for new music for a long time now, audio files and copies from my friends have opened my ears to new and timeless pop music. In the last four years I have bought as many CDs as in the entire previous half of my life combined. It was hard work. My no.1 rule is this: A CD I will buy must contain at least 12 tracks, of which half of these I would like to hear twice. Following this rule,I could only buy one out of ten CDs that I listened to.
When I buy a CD, I vouch for the tracks I like to get into the charts, so that more people get aware of them. For the exact same reason I would like to be able to make copies of my own CDs or create home-made compilations for my local pub without any complications what so ever. If this causes one listener to buy an original CD or a concert ticket, my effort has paid off. I am a one-man street team on a mission in the name of good taste. That’s nice,isn’t it?
So what will I do now? Buy a CD-burner and a crack program that bypasses the copy protection? Get my music exclusively from the internet? Hook my MD-recorder up to the phone jack in my local record shop? No matter what I choose, both artists and record companies will lose me as a paying customer.
The army is firing in the wrong direction,because the general has no battle plan - hit by friendly fire. This way,collateral damage turns into total damage. The sellers of pirated CDs in Russia or Asia will not be impressed by this. You will however make sure that the music at schoolyards and children’s rooms will be even less of an issue than without it.
Your loss of income is a sign of the times. A short while ago everything went smoothly for you, but now you are feeling the effects of recession and lack of insurance. Simultaneously, forms of entertainment like computer gaming and extreme sports are competing with music for an audience. Cellphones, tattoos and brand clothes are expensive. Education and culture is decaying, while the kids’ attention span has decreased dramatically. Three years of guitar practice? No way. The music industry has made it for them already: sampling and recycling works perfectly, why bother to come up with new ideas? An adult looking at the charts today will be reminded of his childhood. Elvis-covers are relieved by covers of Bee Gees and Joan Jett, ancient heroes like Grönemeyer save EMI from bankruptcy and Stones and U2 play for record-breaking amounts of cash. The absolute summit of the current recycling trend is the recent cover version of the old campfire-hit “House Of The Rising Sun”.
An industry with a future? Its dignity is shrinking.
Soundjunkie
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"Wenn du dich zum Untergrund zählst, reicht es nicht, es nur zu sagen. Du musst auch viel graben, um es zu werden."
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