Copyright group seeks to boost MP3 player prices with new levy

Article

Canadian music industry representatives are reopening an old debate about MP3 players that could see the average price of the devices climb by as much as $75.


Rip off !

An MP3 player ...is a player, not a recorder. It plays tunes. If I hook it up to a speaker and hit record, it records at the lowest crappiest audio resolution so that it just sucks and no one wants to listen to it.

The fact that I can copy files to it is irrelevant. Why ? Because I cannot keep those copies. They get deleted when i get tired of those songs, and replaced by new ones.

As far as usability goes, it's the equivilant of a cd player. Only with the record companies demanding they get paid every time you change the cd .

The complaint that you could transfer the files to another computer ...well I could carry the original cd over to another computer and play it there too. And they could make a copy of that cd ?
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Besides. Hard Drives crash eventually , and you lose all the data on them, all the songs. The only way to keep them is to burn them to a cd. And guess what ? We in canada pay a premium on our cd's to be permitted to do that , a premium that goes straight to the big record labels.

In the end... the mp3 files are ethereal vapourous things..easily lost and destroyed. The only way to hang onto them for long periods of time is to burn them to cd's , and the record companies are already getting paid for that. To get paid for anything else is double dipping.

"Digital copyright under the past few years has always been dictated by the big labels, which adopt the perspective that fans are thieves and that the lock 'em up and sue em strategy is the only way to go."


It is the only way to go.

You have to understand. The big lables are hard on new artists. They usualy make them sign contracts whereby they wind up getting nothing on a per cd basis and the company keeps every dime, except perhaps some retainer they pay the artist. So , you see it on TV all the time, new artists are encouraged to get their own record label as quick as possible or they'll never see a dime.

Where does this leave the big record labels ?

It leaves them with very old songs, a scribbling of new songs from new artists before the artist break off to their own labels, and not uch else. And let me tell you , I already bought up a nice library of CD's of all the oldies I need , and I listen to them any time I want.

So anything these record labels can get from internet and mp3 products is found money.

Lets face it. How many times to you want to pay for Theme From Mahogany ?

My theory is that Digital Rights Management must fulfill three functions.

1. you pay for the song once , and once only. In your life time.

2. You listen to it any time you like , on any device you happen to own, as long as it's for private viewing / listening only.

3. None of this having to buy your songs again whenever a new medium comes out (record lp's to cassette tapes to cd's to mp3's )

These rules, however, are ant-ethical to a business that has a vast library of old songs everyone has a copy of already and few to no new songs coming in. So it's sue sue sue , for them, it's really their only income.