Stardate 20010607.2155 (On Screen): I personally am not a collector of MP3's. I have exactly one on any of my computers (a copy of "
Flowers on the Wall" — it has personal meaning). But I have been keenly following the RIAA, SDMI and Napster three-ring circus unfold (as loyal readers will know) and so I found this particular announcement surprising. I see two diametrically opposite ways of interpreting it, and whichever is right things in the digital music world are about to get exceedingly interesting.First, Thomson's new version of MP3 may be exactly what they say it is. I don't doubt their quality claims, and their licensing concept seems eminently reasonable (charge the big boys and let everyone else go, since it's unenforceable anyway). With a 2:1 compression advantage over the existing MP3
and backward compatibility with existing MP3 players, it seems a natural evolutionary step for all the people out there using MP3's now. I expect the MP3 fans to take to this like ducks to water. And if nothing else iced things like SDMI, this will. One of the things that the SDMI originally hoped to provide was a vastly better codec which was so good that customers would be willing to take on the considerable disadvantage of paying, to get the better quality and lower bit rate. Now, it would seem, they'll get that lower bit rate without any strings (or price tag).
Unless the other possibility turns out to be true: this may not really be what it seems. Maybe they've hidden some sort of mechanism inside where all the music encoded with it automatically gets watermarked if it came from a copyrighted source. Maybe in 18 months, all of a sudden, all that stuff ceases to be playable unless you buy a license to the music. Maybe this is really a trap. I think this possibility is less likely than the other, but it's hard to say for sure. (Maybe I'm just getting suspicious in my old age.) (engage in paranoid raving)
