Tim wrote:
The problem is that someone else deliberately denies the opportunity.
Yes, what makes that a complete killer is the vast and long embedded case law for copyright and patent infringement. In the US there are "statutory damages" written into law allowing a music rightsholder to demand and get up to $150K per infringement. The publicised showtrials of P2P downloaders are actually getting whacked for the *lowest* value open to the prosecution according to the punitive law.
to work on some things. Only a few have even heard of unencumbered schemes, and ones that often are better (sound-wise, as well as for
Because of the culture of property rights for virtual, copyable stuff like music, the encrypted formats will not naturally go away any more than a "better lock" for a door on real property would fall out of use. It'd be lovely if the general public rebelled at the restrictions, but I think it will have to get very onerous before they can confront their content addiction.
The only real answer that is compatible with the property rights reality is to repeat the whole RMS vs proprietary software deal with liberally licensed media using Open formats. It shows signs of precursors in the universal use of MP3 for podcasts, I know it may be patent-encumbered but it is unencrypted and is the lingua franca. There is plenty of free music, but much of that is not liberally licensed. Only place I found that could turn into ground zero for a liberally licensed really open format revolution (it supports Ogg) is http://jamendo.com.
-Andy
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