Posts by jrd010

What's copying your music really worth to you?

The problem is...

...the music industry doesn't see music the same as we do.

They see each possible "copy" of a song as a "lost sale".

Historically, this has worked for them. Going forward, not so much, I think.

In Thee Olden Days, we bought a song on vinyl - a record. Then came cassette tape (and remember, folks, Home Taping Killed the Music Industry - oh wait, it didn't, they're still here). Some people copied records to tape, many others bought tapes of the same records they already owned, just in a different format, for convenience.

Then along came CDs, and many people, once again, paid *yet again* for the same song they already owned, just in a different format. Some people transferred records to recordable CDs, but most didn't.

This is the music industry model -- they like to call these different formats of the same song "copies", and (to be fair) the copyright legislation as it currently stands mostly agrees with them. Personally I have no problem with them charging for a version of the song in whichever format it may be, as long as that cost mostly reflects the cost of generating that version.

Unfortunately, along came computers, and MP3s, and suddenly it was "easy" for anybody to format-shift the music they'd paid for. In fact, Microsoft built CD-ripping into Media Player as long ago as XP.

Sadly, rather than adapt to this new world by trying to change copyright such that it was the *music* you bought, the music industry fought to preserve their existing model -- and given it worked (mostly) with tape and CD, who can realistically blame them?

MOST people would be happy to buy the songs they want to listen to, but to then charge them again and again (and again) just to have the same song in a newer format, with no added value, I don't think so.

Personally, I feel that the 'old' model is unsustainable, particularly when the music industry tries to claim that an album of MP3s (no media, no packaging, no or minimal distribution cost) should cost the same as the physical CD, which has production costs, packaging, warehousing, shipping, physical storefront, etc, etc...

Ten... freeware gems for new PCs

Re: Libre or Open Office ?

Since virtually all of the "non-corporate" developers, who were in fact the core contributors to "Open Office" are now contributing to "Libre Office", that's the one I'd pick at the moment. It's also pretty telling that virtually all Linux Distro's now ship "Libre Office", not "Open Office".

There are supposedly going to be a lot of contributions from IBM (for one) entering "Open Office" in later releases, which may make it interesting, but they aren't there even in the first Apache release.

It's also worth remembering that the Apache license allows code to be moved to a GPL project, while the GPL license does not allow the reverse. So - it's possible that any improvements to "Open Office" will find their way into "Libre Office" - if it's something they want...