No Rock And Roll Fun

GOODBYE TO YOUR RIGHTS, A BIT AT A TIME: Sony-BMG are planning to tighten up the 'copy-protection' on forthcoming American releases,


Apparently, Sony-BMG are convinced that people are just crying out for CDs which won't let them use their music in ways they always have done:

"What matters the most to us is the consumer experience," Sony BMG Sales Enterprise co-president Jordan Katz says. "Both technologies offer playability across all standard players, including CD players, boomboxes, DVD players, PCs, Macs, car stereos, video games and clock radios."

Katz says the company wants to alert the industry that it is implementing the content-protection technology, because extensive consumer research indicates widespread customer acceptance of it.

The 'consumer experience', then, doesn't involve making mixtapes for your friends or to play on long journeys, or doing a separate copy of an album to have in your car. We're wondering exactly how Katz has come to the conclusion that consumers have accepted this; perhaps he's confusing "People haven't really thought through what they're losing" - or maybe he thinks that people saying "Well, at least it plays on my PC" as 'consumer acceptance. But are we really in a place where record companies are marketing their records as being a leap forward because they'll actually play on your CD player?

More about File-sharing:

Wallace Wang's Book and CD; a pretty nifty 'how to share' guide for starters and the more confident sharer
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