US: How RIAA Monopolists Intend To Pick Your Pocket

[GhostShip]

In yet another attempt at using loaded dice to ensure they win any game the RIAA are still aggressively trying to limit freedoms under the law to those they cant steal, read here to see their next consumer fraud ridden adventure.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/03/graduated-response-deal-steamrollers-towards-july-1-launch

Last week, RIAA CEO Cary Sherman confirmed that the country's largest ISPs will voluntarily roll out by July 1 a "graduated response" program aimed at discouraging unauthorized downloading. A Memorandum of Understanding published last summer outlines the program, which was developed without user feedback. Under the new system, a rightsholder accusing an ISP subscriber of infringment will trigger a series of ever-increasing consequences. The responses are graduated in the sense that they escalate after each accusation, beginning with steps aimed at educating users about copyright and culminating in the Orwellian-sounding "mitigation measures" -- bandwidth throttling or account suspension.

As we said last year, this deal is tilted against subscribers. That's not surprising, given that no one solicited subscriber input in advance. In fact, some online commenters have expressed concern that the agreement runs afoul of antitrust law.

What can users do at this point? In some cases, they can vote with their feet. This agreement is voluntary for now, and the while participating ISPs include many major companies -- AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Cablevision, and Time Warner Cable -- there are other options. Users lucky enough to have a choice of providers for their Internet service should consider switching to a service that opted not to "cooperate." For example, companies like Sonic and Cox Communications have a history of fighting for their users where they can, and are notably absent from this arrangement.

Lets remember here people that any ISP going along with this charade is going to be asking you to pay for it, this then makes it yet another media Cartel tax on your earnings, you have two choices either pay like good little sheep or get writing letters to your ISP company asking they why they will be spending your money spreading propaganda and working at your expense for selfish anti-consumer monopolists, the real answer is likely to be they are getting something in return but why should all internet users be forced to pay a stealth tax to these thieves, perhaps some of those fat salaried senators know the answer to that question ?

Snouts in troughs anyone ? 

[White Stripes]

at&t & comcast have such a 'consumer be damned' attitude that voting with feet is the only choice and even then they wont really care... the others on that list may take notice tho...

[silicon_toad2000]

niche sized ISP's will welcome the more discerning customers who choose not to support these schemes.

[White Stripes]

well.. theres a problem there too... in the areas with comcast there are no other cable isps ... in the areas with att there are no other dsl isps.... satellite is insanely expensive and the -only- sat isp in the us available to the average joe cuts file sharing protocols off at the gate...

that leaves dial (slow) or cell carriers (limited data .. no p2p.. ) ... or public wifi...

the copyright industry isnt the only one with insane monopolies...

<sarcasm> the US is a grand place to live </sarcasm>

[MinersLantern]

Thank god I for one thing have already downloaded every music file I could ever be interested in years ago and for the second thing am screwed. I live out in the outback. We have no fancy internet service here. My isp could really care less about what I do as long as the bill gets paid. Yes, slow, no email, no built in webserver, no this, no that. If you want tech help, use google and learn and its as slow as as a babies snot in winter. I used to have screaming fast cable in another city. They would drop the connection at least 2x per day, just for a split second. Just long enough to change the ip and ruin queues. Finally they decided to block winmx altogether. Natuarally, upon a phone call they lied saying my computer and the other 5 of them in my house including the ones that havent been activated for years, somehow, magically all failed at the same time and in the same way.

I got rid of that evil isp and suddenly all the computers were magically repaired again, by GOD or Allah, I guess. -.-

Now im out here in the middle of the desert and have no choice....

I must suffer with my slow, dependable connection that stays up for months, and where the isp has no interest whatsoever in what I may or may not be doing.

Slow != bad. Since in between attacks, at least I can stay in queue for many moons, meaning more files get done. Translation... Slow ends up being much faster than 'fast'. 

[MinersLantern]

Actually, if these silly monkeys wanted to recreate their industry, they would discover dolby 5.1 or 7.1.

No stereo music can ever possibly compare to 21st century technology no matter how 'high quality' it may be.

It is a simple matter in current use to burn a decrypt key on an unreadable part of a DVD. To access the actual superb quality audio or video, you must have that key. Only specifically designed hardware can get the key. It is virtually unhackable. A computer aint going to do it.

One thing about music is that once you have heard 'high' quality, you want 'spectacular' quality. Many are more than willing to purchase (with money) in order to get that quality.

If you try to copy the file you get random noise. You could play it back legally, then rip the analog channels and recode to digital, but that will sound like crap.

If only the RIAA would realize the folly of their ways.

Stereo was wonderful technology, back in 1960...

But no...

The cartel still wants free money while selling cheesy product instead. Let the tards follow their own ship under the ocean.

I guess someday, someone else, somewhere, will figure this out and decide to make a few dollars rather than hiring lawyers.

[White Stripes]

dvd-audio (crunched down with dolby AC3) and bluray-audio (PCM) and even SACD didnt take off in the consumer market... ...you can still get those surround formats if you want but nothing is recorded higher than 48khz sample rate @ 24bit due to studio paranoia...


as for the surround vs '1960s' tech .... um... youve only got 2 ears... and unless you want to spend a lot of $$$ and listen only in the livingroom where you set up that lot of $$$ surround system those discs are useless...

[Bluey_412]

So I cant get 3-D surround out of a DVD-Walkman and headphones?

Damn!

[White Stripes]

So I cant get 3-D surround out of a DVD-Walkman and headphones?

Damn!

depends on your take on the quality of the headphones

...no im not being sarcastic.. 'surround' headphones exist.. the general consensus on them tho is "meh"

...speaking of 1960s tech... wasnt there a thing called a 'quadraphonic 8 track tape' ?  ... those didnt fly too well either....

[Bluey_412]

Nor some of the Quadrophonic versions of Vinyl...

Good for about 3 plays, then the wear made them revert to ho-hum or stereo

[White Stripes]

iirc the rear channels were in a 20khz (or higher?) carrier... which is a frequency thats impossible to keep from wearing down on vinyl even with the most expensive of stylus/pickup ... interesting idea... wrong medium to do it on...

i bought.. but didnt play (no equipment to decode it for one thing) one of those quad records at a second hand store to add a bit of oddball history to my collection... ...wouldnt mind examining it with a microscope...

[White Stripes]

http://www.qsound.com/demos/binaural-audio.htm

2 speakers (headphones in this case... will not work with regular speakers) & 2 ears are all you need for 'surround sound' ... the site even tells you how it works...

interesting to note: disney (theme parks) makes extensive use of this type of surround sound... each seat in a ride that uses it has speakers on either side of the riders' heads...

[MinersLantern]

The idea that 'surround sound' over more than 2 channels doesnt work any better than plain olde stereo, since you only have two ears, sounds reasonable at first.

Read further on the subject. Its not just the ears that pick up and provide audio to the brain as headphones provide by 2 channels. The bones in your skull, sinus passages, angle of the sources reflecting off each surface of your ear. All of that comes into play. Even headphones fall short of plain old stereo via speakers. As far as surround goes, there isnt enough money nor technology on earth to get surround sound from any pair of headphones. Sure, someone will gladly sell you a pair, but as said above the surround effect is going to be meh.

Would I be stuck with listening to 5.1 music over speakers at home if such equipment were built?

Yes and also in the car. Even it has 7 speakers and is capable of making much better music if they were fed more than 2 channels.

But then where do I listen to music? Either at home or in the car anyway. So having to use speakers would not be a hardship to me.

I did have a quad eight track player back in the day in a car. Only found a couple quad tapes to play in it. It still sounded very nice. Much better than 2 channel stereo even with that barbaric technology.

The industry does not wish to do anything that would involve reinventing itself at a profit with todays technology. Easier to hunt down children and little old ladies while writing off expenses for the lawyers instead.

[MinersLantern]

Back again, cause I thought of other things. 

Even Diana Ross and the Supremes were back in the 1960s originally recorded in 24 track 'stereo'.

This means that it is an easy matter to reduce the original tracks to something like 5.1 dolby.
For the ones in power who has access to the original tapes. aka RIAA.

They could also tweak the audio that results in clipping type square waves from the original to something a bit more modern. Such as distortionless audio.

example:  'Come see about me' by Diana Ross and the Supremes.

The bass part of that song is horrible.

Nobody wants to modify that from the original tape.

No wonder some people think that vacuum tube amplifiers STILL sound better.

Vacuum tubes have issues as to replicating square waves.

The edgyness gets trimmed off. It sounds 'better'.

Gah!

I would think that todays technology could do a far better job at making music sound fantastic.

Old or new.

If digital music can be perfectly accurate, it can also be used to simulate a vacuum tube.

It can also be used to adjust the screwy clipping overdrive thing into a nice sine wave.

Its insane that the cartel has no interest whatsoever in improving things.

[White Stripes]

multitrack recording is for changing the downmix result not for a surround image... in your example its just 24 mono tracks... the studio chooses how it gets mixed.... to create a surround image that didnt sound fake or gimmicky (ever heard a stereo mix of an old mono beatles track?... same trick just more speakers for 'surround'..) youd need the sounds from mics positioned in the studio as well as the audio recorded from the individual instruments.... surround mixes arent what you think methinks...

also... tubes 'fold' a clipped signal ... so instead of a signal that has the DC offset that transistors produce you end up with something that on a scope would look like humps on a camel rather than a flat plateau... whether that 'sounds better' or not depends on the listener...

as for the loudness? actually that is a real problem... and it has been going on for years...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

but when you buy 'commercial' music you get what you pay for... ...if you want commercial music that sounds good you'll need to go to a thrift store and buy the oldest published copy of it... preferably on vinyl since it tends to age better than tape...

the tech does exist today for extremely high quality music with extreme dynamic range in everyday consumer equipment... ...you just arent going to get it from the RIAA...