This part I found interesting,

When put into a Macintosh or Windows PC, the disc installs software to keep the music secure,

Let’s hope they resisted the urge to add spyware to the copy software, somehow I doubt they would pass up a prime chance to. I even found spyware on my blooming mouse driver recently!!!

Sounds like a fine comprimise to me. I never felt like the music should be free, just available in the user’s preferred format (in my case, digital and portable).

But these �secure digital� tracks cannot be played on another computer should they be uploaded to the Net.

Which also sounds fine, but I wonder if it will allow the files to be moved/copied around your LAN or if you’ll have to insert the CD every time?

It’ll be hacked.  There’s already software out there that will digitize streaming music, or anything else that is processed by your sound card.  It’ll discourage the casual distributor, which is most people, but it won’t stop people who have an ideological bone to pick with the RIAA.

Oh I’m sure it will be hacked.

Although I don’t condone copyright infrigement (my livelihood partially depends on it) and I think anyone who truly believes the music should be free is an idiot...the recording industry did this to themselves.

It’s my opinion that if they’d gotten their heads out of their asses years ago and started offering up their collections online and per-track, for a reasonable fee, they could have avoided most of this. But they didn’t want to invest in the infrastructure. And they wanted to continue shoving their current entire-album-with-expensive-packaging format down people’s throats. Even though “people” made it abundantly clear they no longer wanted to be limited to buying their music that way.

There will always be people determined to get something for nothing. But personally, that was never, ever my motivation. I think the attraction was in large part the ease of grabbing any song you want at 1am, as well as the gigantic selection available. If you wanted it, no matter how obscure, I bet it was out there.

I know there’s alot of places to buy one track on the net now (generally under $1), but from what I’ve seen, the collections are still lacking. If the recording industry wants this to end, they need to head on down to their basements and start pulling out everything they’ve ever recorded/sold and get it encoded and available.

Granted, some have made good strides, but maybe the track I’m looking for doesn’t happen to be the latest Britney Spears, y’know?

Firstly, I�d like to thank all of you for having an informed and intelligent discussion about all of this.

I must say that it is indeed refreshing to see people in discussion about this, rather than out-right flames-n-zingers.

This topic absolutely *needs* discussion, as it’s been brewing for some time now.

There are plenty of people to point fingers at, however to me, this is the situation we *all* find ourselves in.

The rampant sharing without care is costing actual money, from actual people, so I think a lot of people think, as in most cases like this, ‘out of sight, out of mind’. The problem is that this kind of mentality drives up prices from everything from the actual cd that you buy, to the shows/concerts you might attend.

Whether I personally agree or disagree with the way the music industry has or has not dealt with the sharing issue, or speculation on how they may have gotten to this point, there still remains one big glaring fact: They deserve recompense for their product. Simple as that.

A *lot* of folks efforts go into the making of a music cd, from the actual artist to the guy who runs errands, plus take into account the many small businesses that earn a living by doing the print work for the cd cover for example.

The point being, that we here at SunnComm really do take this all very seriously. All of us here are musicians or somehow related to the industry in a creative capacity. But that aside, we also like music just like anyone else and have the same if not more demands for flexibility & playability and we try to make sure the music/playability are foremost.

We absolutely do *not* use spy ware nor implement it into our technology. I personally hate it when it’s done to me, and since I personally have a hand in writing the code, whether you believe or not, it’s just simply not in there..

We are not trying, nor will ever intend to dictate anyone’s experience, however the holy grail is probably going to be the understanding that this issue isn’t going to go away, nor will it be solved (if at all), overnight..

Btw, these are just my personal thoughts and opinions and are not the expressed opinions of SunnComm (whether they may be the same or not

-Scott Plante
Windows Lead System Programmer
SunnComm Technologies, Inc.

you can Check out SunnComm at:
www.sunncomm.com

uh oh...the fuzz.

No, but seriously…

We are not trying, nor will ever intend to dictate anyone�s experience, however the holy grail is probably going to be the understanding that this issue isn�t going to go away, nor will it be solved (if at all), overnight..

Why will this issue NOT go away? Why can this issue not be solved? Maybe those are the case if you’re talking about dealing with the mentality that thinks the music should actually be free (which is ridiculous). But surely technology has advanced to a point where everybody can get what they want, when they want it (in the way they know full well they can) AND everyone get compensated accordingly? Isn’t that the very definition of the problem “going away”.

Greets Brandi

I’ve been a programmer for some years now and it’s been my experience, that anything that can be made can be un-made. That�s #1 on the understanding list. I believe it’s a bit unreasonable to think there is a single global solution that will work in every case, for every user, on anything they run. For example, some people find it perfectly acceptable to listen to a tape or cd made from stuff they recorded off of the radio. Or people that copy an analog version of a cd. We’re trying to firstly make our product playable (shameless plug: which btw, we’ve received outstanding marks on playability during our recent testing by the RIAA in Belgium , safe & effective, by giving the user an *easy* way to do the ‘right’ thing. IE: in the past it’s always been kind of a pain to go through they legal path to license, or register software, music etc, and it was deemed easier just to get onto a p2p network and download something instead. We’re trying a new approach. We’re trying to enforce the rules set forth by the companies that engage us, yes, but we’re trying to do it by giving the user an easy way to do it. Thus possibly taking the incentive to just download it, away…

There are a number of issues/hurdles that we have to comply to or work around, and to be honest, no-one’s made it particularly easy for us to implement this kind of technology. We don’t really think about our technology as ‘copy protection’ as much as sort of ‘copy control’.

There will always be people that seem to think that rules (any rules) don’t apply to them and will try to find way to circumvent anything they might deem offensive to their own particular sensibilities, and in some cases they might even succeed. Even if you might or might not agree with us, or the way we attempt to deal with the issue, we *are* trying to do something. On a personal note, I dig the Eagles, and I firmly believe that if they made what they were due on their album, their shows might’ve been a little cheaper.

Technology has indeed advanced to the point that this whole issue could go ‘away’ as-it-were, but the problem isn’t just technological… It’s political as well. From the users on up to the companies instituting such measures to the companies that develop the technology, *everyone* has to be on the same page for *any* of this to work effectively for any lasting time frame.

For any of this to work, even if technologically possible, the incentive has to be great enough to make happen. And I�m talking about everyone from the users to MS/Sunn/Apple etc to the record companies & artists...I think we’re finally at that point where enough people have lost enough money and have driven prices up high enough that the current system isn’t feasable anymore.

That’s kind of where we and other companies like us come in…

Wow, I apologize for the length of my reply, and my tendency to digress, but I hoped I answered a few of your questions

-Scott Plante
Windows Lead System Programmer
SunnComm Technologies, Inc.

you can Check out SunnComm at:

Wow, I apologize for the length of my reply, and my tendency to digress, but I hoped I answered a few of your question

No problem! Good job.

I suppose my point was that it is technologically possible to implement a system paletable to the honest music consumer. And it doesn’t seem like it needs to be terribly complicated. (More on this if you’d like)

But for the consumer who feels it should be free, or they should be able to freely distribute it...well that’s an entirely different ball of wax. I suppose you combat it with more technology until you can change the mindset. I would say in most cases, these are not people who whould steal something from a store and claim it’s their right to take to for free. But they don’t seem to be applying the same logic to music, and worse, deem musicians and their “supporting staff” greedy for actually wanting to get paid.

Alot of copyright issues are difficult for even educated people to grasp. I deal with it everyday. And I’ve never found quite the perfect answer or analogy to explain my copyrights to clients (who sometimes feel I’m trying to “cheat” them). Although I’m clearly in the right and well in line with industry standards. My explainations get better and more effective as time goes on, but I haven’t found the magic shpiel yet.

So all I can say on the education front is...best of luck to you! I do what I can on my end (really, I do) when I encounter that “it oughta be free, it’s my right” mentality regarding music.