I always refer to it as the MP3 fiasco, as far as the music industry is concerned. But unlike when I was a kid, when I burnt myself, and decided I didn't like it and made sure I avoided the experience in the future, the music industry seems to like it ?!
To top it all they rely on and enforce protection systems that can a) backfire in catastrophic proportions and b) are recognized as being flawed.
If it wasn't for the fact that we, the users, have to navigate these weird and wonderful traps laid down for us by the music industry it would be quite funny 🙁
As usual I like referring to an old BBC article that states that a majority of people that download music actually buy a lot of CDs. (Hey the BBC site is good they don't just change all the links when they redo the site, can't remember when they did that last though).
[...] Further reading on this topic lead me to Mike Collins blog and an article about how Amazon seems to have frightened publishers somewhat with new services allowing for people to access digital books from anywhere in the world. Novel concept there : being able to access content from anywhere in the world, sounds a bit like a thing called the World Wide Web ! This stance of fighting for the old way things used to be done and trying to stop anything changing was what lead the music industry to the MP3 fiasco. It sounds like rather than look at ways to adapt the old to the new, it’s once again the will to stop change at all costs that is getting the better ! I wonder how the UK edition of Harry Potter is different to the US edition !? [...]
[...] First of all it’s not astonishing from Sony since you may remember that they already made a complete mess with their previous attempt. Second, well, will they learn it’s easy to hack whether they try to use software or hardware. Third this could easily backfire on them, I’m not sure how but a company that has been so stupid thus far is bound to mess up again ! People have figured out how to spy on which links you visited using CSS so spying on what you played with this type of device installed would probably be feasible. [...]