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Making Copy Protected CDs Cheaper?
from the interesting-idea... dept
The head of Atlantic Records UK seems to be recognizing the fact that copy protection doesn't provide consumers with anything of value, and he has an interesting idea on how to deal with this fact: make copy protected CDs cheaper than those without copy protection. What if you had an option to buy a copy protected CD at a discount, or an "open" CD at a premium? While it's surprising to see a recording industry exec admit the lower value of a copy protected CD, we all know what would happen. Most people would buy the cheaper CD, and proceed to use some sort of workaround to deal with the copy protection. Unfortunately, this also opens the door to the concept of use-based pricing for music. Want to play that CD on a stereo? That'll be $15. Want to play it on a computer also? $17.50. In your car? $20. On your portable music player? $25.
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Remember Mike, this is the Music Industry so your price scale is a little off.
DRM equipped CD (with Spyware): 20$ (or whatever the regular price is.
CD that you can play on your PC: 50$
CDs that you can play anywhere and are completely open: Priceless.
(Sorry couldn't help it...but it would be a high price nonetheless siting possible renumeration for "piracy"...never mind that we ALREADY fork over a ton of money whenever we buy blank media such as CDs and Hard Drives whether we download MP3s or not...)
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Not your father's "discount"
Exactly -- the "discounted price" would just be the retail price, and everything else would be sold at a premium.
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Solution
I'll just continue to download illegally for free ...
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An Example
I was recently in HMV, London and was about to buy my wife the latest Outkast album, but noticed the copy-protection on it (this thing wouldn't even work on a Mac, so not sure what the protection was).
Now if I can't rip it to MP3/Ogg to play on my 7 computers (half of which don't use Windows), 3 MP3 players or 2 DVD players, then I truly have lost value there.
Solution? Buy it when I get back to the US at Tower, without the copy protection, and save some money on the crappy exchange rate too (hey at 15ukp, that comes to 30usd anyway!)
Personally I would have preferred to just buy the "Hey Ya" and "Rose" tracks online somewhere for 99c, but as Ogg/FLAC/WAV files without copy-protection....
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Re: An Example
The US version of the album is also copy protected but it can be ripped. I did, and I didn't need any protection busting software to do it.
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..
all of you who download music and never buy cd's...stop listening to music. you dont deserve to.
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