Looks like the start of another "pay twice" campaign folks
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/08/15/riaa_cdr_p2p/The RIAA's chief executive, Mitch Bainwol, last week said music fans acquire almost twice as many songs from illegally duplicated CDs as from unauthorised downloads, Associated Press reports.
According to Bainwol, in turn citing figures from market watcher NPD, 29% of the recorded music obtained by listeners last year came from content copied onto recordable media. Only 16% came from illegal downloads.
Legal downloads accounted for 4% music acquisitions, while official CDs accounted for almost 50% of the total.
The RIAA's favoured solution appears to be copy-protected CDs, which are gradually spreading throughout the music CD market. This approach "is an answer to the problem that clearly the marketplace is going to see more of," Bainwol told the news agency.
Now that copy-protection has gone beyond crude early attempts to foist poor Java music player software on consumers, and to limit their ability to make copies for personal usage - in those territories where such 'fair use' rights are enshrined in copyright law, at least - the music industry seems a lot keener to release anti-rip discs. Much-improved hardware compatibility has helped too.
Things we are seeing here:
1) Research is backing up claims that p2p is not the villain the companies are making out.
The same company (NRD) did some research last month citing increased sales amongst p2p users, they chose not to agree with that particular study, this show how
they
manipulate what you read and hear from them.
2) They are going out of their way to
steal "fair use" rights away from folks by introducing digital rights management into markets where folk are allowed to copy their own music
3) I suspect that this is going to be used to try to get an extra tarrif on blank disks so you end up paying for the music 1, 2 or even 3 times,
extortion is the legal term for this activity.
