................................. To leave MP3-Commie, hyper to http://commie.oy.com/commie_leaving.html .................................
free software will be the key that unlocks this B.S. and if and when copy protection moves into the hardware, then there will be hardware hackers, and websites with how-to's and photographs. these will probably have to be hosted outside the USA, and maybe outside Europe too. and if and if hardware hacking is too intimidating, consumers will rerecord using analog and accept the one-time hit in quality, as this article describes. http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/03/13/copy_protection/index.html if the technology that Hollywood favors is defeatable, [..] Why are geeks fighting so passionately against the shift toward copy protection? The technology is not what bothers them -- it's the criminalization of the act of copying, and even worse, of the act of discussing copying, that critics find most alarming. Is it really in the public interest to continually increase the level of corporate ownership of ideas and expression? Who should Congress serve? Even the tightest and smoothest forms of protection promise to be not just annoying, but also beatable, say experts. History is on the hackers' and crackers' side. Every attempt to handcuff content -- even cable and satellite TV -- has failed. And the reason is simple: If you can see or hear the content once, you can find a way to copy it. Episodes of "South Park" may originally only be legally available to cable television sub- scribers, but they're also easily available via the Net. One digitized, uploaded copy opens Pandora's box. If users can't decrypt the stream, reset the index of the CD or recode the television to allow for digital output, they'll simply record another way, notes Touretzky. "People don't care all that much about the superior quality of digital content, compared to price and convenience issues," he says, pointing out that MP3s became popular even though they sound worse than CDs. "So, if people can't grab the digital data stream, they'll just set up a microphone next to their speakers and take the one-time analog quality hit in order to rerecord the data in an unprotected format. Granted, this is a lot less convenient than ripping CDs is now, but they'll do whatever it takes." ................................. To find out, what address you were using, when joining MP3-Commie, hyper to http://commie.oy.com/whocommie.html
