DMCA Madness Part 2
Yesterday, Dmitry Sklyarov delivered his testimony in the trial against Elcomsoft. You'll remember me posting about this last July, so this has been a long wait. Since this is the first trial regarding the DMCA, the outcome of this trial will likely set precedence over future similar trials regarding copyright and fair use.
When will the companies get it thru their collective greedy heads that no matter what copy-protection they implement, or laws that they create and abuse, people will always find a way to get around it? Yes, that means there will be a number of people who will make copies and distribute it to people who haven't purchased the product themselves, but in Adobe's case, they have yet to find an e-book that was cracked using Elcomsoft's software.
As far as music distribution goes, I think the record companies have screwed themselves by shutting down Napster and all other P2P services and websites that offer mp3s. How has this affected me? Well, I've downloaded maybe just 2 or 3 mp3s since the shutdown of Napster (record companies might think that's good), but I've bought way less CDs as a result of not being able to sample electronic music, which doesn't get much radio airplay. Not that I listen to the radio, because they're all pretty much controlled by the same company coughClearChannelcough and they play the same shit over and over again. Oh and the music they play between the same shit is the same too.
And rock music? I've only been buying CDs from artists that I already know. So who gets screwed over? The record companies because they missed out on their cut of my non-CD purchase, and the promising new musicians because they didn't get their 13 cents. I think this wouldn't be a problem if CDs were more affordable in the first place. Why is it that I can pay up to $18 for a CD when 10 years ago, they could be had for $12? It's really hard to justify a CD purchase when I can get a feature-length movie DVD for the same price, or less.
Anyways, about this trial. We should all be pretty concerned about the outcome of this. I'd like to think that I actually own the stuff I purchase.