Stardate 20010605.0902 (On Screen): Why is it that the recording companies keep making the same mistake over and over again? They keep assuming that consumers will automatically buy products which are deliberately crippled, and won't circumvent them, so as to protect the rights of the recording companies. They can offer such products for sale, but why would any consumer want to buy one?
Roxio is in trouble financially (among other reasons, because their most recent version of Easy CD Creator could blue-screen Microsoft operating systems, which gave them a massive black-and-blue eye) and so I can understand why they would make this deal. If they didn't, they'd be dead by the end of this year. But EMI has to be blind to think it's going to work.
Now that the SDMI has collapsed, their newest, latest, greatest plan is going to be to modify the next version of Easy CD Creator so that when it masters a CD with MP3's, it looks at each MP3 for a watermark and if it finds one, it will refuse to burn it onto the CD unless there's a purchased license for it. This is great! All the customers will instantly replace their existing unrestricted burning software with the new version, and of course no-one will ever figure out a way to strip out the watermarks, and music piracy will end. (Sez who?)
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