Over the summer, one of the essays I had to write was on the topic of, “Over the next 10 to 15 years, what social, political, or global problem that the USA faces most concerns you?” What are your thoughts? I’ll post up my essay later.
I think that everyone will be riding around in flying cars and living in the sky LIKE THE JETSONS yay Jetsons
Darn, you beat me to it!
Mike
That the RIAA will still be around and still doing everything in their power to stifle development and restrict the rights of those who purchase music media.
By 2016 all music will be protected by DRM. You will not be able to resell music you have purchased due to DRM and watermarking. You will not be able to rip or convert any of your music to new formats or move your music from one device to another. You music will be locked to a specific OS. Music purchased on a Mac won’t be transferable to Windows, Linux, or any other OS. To switch platforms means throwing away thousands of dollars worth of music and purchasing it again for the new platform. Backing up your music will require the skills of an IT department because the DRM will be so confusing and each form of DRM will have different rules.
You may not even be able to purchase music by 2016. You’ll only be able to rent it. You will own nothing. You will no longer be able to collect favorite recordings. It will all be temporary. When the rental period is over your collection is gone. You will not be able to pass on your collection of music to your children. You will not be able to sell your collection. You own nothing.
That is the future. The day the music died.
So I guess the Mayans decided to get out (really, really) early on the 2012 thing? I don’t know about end-of-the-world predictions. So far, not a single one has come true.
Well, I guess it only takes one…
I’m also with JC on the ownership of music. But I think the market (us) will eventually be heard, and something will work out. I’d hate to be reduced to having to rent music. Would my massive MP3 collection be illegal to have? Until then, I’m sticking as much as I can with non-DRMed files.
If I were a little older I might be worried about the USA’s Social Security system. So I’ll worry about it a little more, a little later on.
If I believe Al Gore (which I mostly do), global warming will be a big one. If his numbers are right, pretty soon it will be obvious we’re on a dangerous curve and will have to make lots of expensive choices.
If George Bush were only in his first term as President, I’d be worried about our country going broke by the time he was done.
Going broke, what do you mean? We’re already beyond broke…we’re currently $8,519,582,736,350.47 in debt. It goes up 1.74 billion dollars per day.
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/
You write this into a book, I will definetly go out and buy it, then read non-stop until the end.
I’m not completely against DRM. There are cases where it can be a good thing. DRM will allow you to rent a movie by downloading it. The DRM will cause the movie to expire when the rental period is up. No need to drive to Blockbuster video to rent a movie. No need to return it because it will expire itself.
DRM becomes evil when it is applied to media we think we own (in the way we can own a CD). Once there is DRM on a file that you purchased you don’t have as much freedom with that file as you would with music on a CD. The challenge is to keep as much freedom as you can as consumers and not get complacent as our freedoms gradually disappear.
The solution, I think, will be the use of highend recording devices. Sure, it would go digital->analogue->digital but you would atleast be able to make a new file without all the wierdo encoding. Also, when souncards begin to have digital outs more often (like optical, etc, for higher end speaker systems) you could hook up a digital recorder and go digital->digital and make a lossless copy. Any decoding they’d make the speakers do you could build into your recorder. I don’t think there would be any way to stop you, would there?
But I think JC is saying that we shouldn’t have to go through all this crap with media that we have actually bought legitimately.
It’s sad because if people wouldn’t download music illegally. There wouldn’t be all these restrictions on music that people download legally.
Yes, you can do exactly that with many home studio oriented recording devices. The Edirol UA25 even mentions that fact in its marketing blurb:
Other home studio oriented audio interfaces have the same ability. Prices for those types of devices are dropping. They have excellent sound quality and are a great way to get high quality (audiophile quality) sound out of a computer.
Loop whatever protected music you are listening to through the UA25 and record it to a lossless FLAC file or similar. No quality loss.
The only way to protect from that is to only allow the DRMed music to play on approved (trusted) sound interfaces that are crippled. Can’t really do that yet, and actually doing it would piss off yet more people who are using those types of audio interfaces as their personal stereo system (like me).
You’re thinking like the RIAA. Encumber the legal music with all sorts of restrictions and outright annoyances and then wonder why people refuse to buy it. Why piss off the people willing and honest who actually want to pay for their music?
I drastically cut back on my CD purchases at the beginning of 2002 after buying two CDs that were crippled. One crippled CD actually locked up my computer. The other crippled CD has a very audible pop in it that is almost certainly due to adding additional errors to the CD in an attempt to make it more difficult to rip. I used to buy about two CDs a month, now I buy hardly any and those I do buy are used or indie labels. I’m not going to buy CDs that are crippled crap.
And the RIAA wonders why sales are down.
Quote about the book:
…sounds like a good case to me, guys. Anybody wanna split the cost for a move to Mars?
China owning my country.
I lol’ed.
It’d be funnier if it wasn’t true.
issac newton used the measure ments of the temple of solomon do workout the doomsday year
its 2066
About time he did something good…seriously, why’d he waste his time on all those pointless Laws, when he could have been warning us about doomsday?
Amazon did it. They released Amazon Unbox video downloads. Reviews are not favorable due to the DRM. Ha ha.
Amazon Unbox does give you the option to rent a movie instead of buying it. After you download a rental you have up to 30 days within you must watch it. Once you start watching it you have 24 hours till it disables itself. All well and good. DRM on rented movies is fine as long as the DRM system doesn’t hobble your computer.
The problem is that the movies you purchase are also encumbered with the same DRM. You can only play the videos in the Amazon player. Yadda yadda yadda. Good luck trying to view your purchased Amazon Unbox videos 10 years from now. Good luck trying to sell your video collection later. Good luck trying to play it on an unsupported operating system (are you always going to have Windows as your media center PC?).
Only an idiot would actually buy a video with those restrictions. Especially since the downloaded video costs as much as a regular DVD. With a DVD you can resell it, take it to a friends house to watch, play it in the car, etc. Can’t do that with the downloaded video.