This is some bad stuff, the RIAA (Recording Industry Ass. of America, as Thereg calls them) is looking into more way to protect their products from being copied by consumers.
For those who read this site almost everyday, please read this and tell us what you feel reading this (But stay polite, how hard it may be), I think we can consider this the last straw ! If I lived in America I would contact my local politician and make sure they can't go trough with this.
What does that entail? According to Rosen, there are a number of tactics the RIAA will employ. First, she says, "we are working with sound card manufacturers to implement technology that will block the recording of watermarked content in both digital and analogue form". That will nobble attempts to rip and distribute encoded material, but what about existing files and CDs? Step forward PC manufacturers, whose help the RIAA hopes to recruit to "find ways to block the spread of legacy content". |
Register readers will recall the RIAA's attempts to prevent content distribution directly at the hard drive level through its Copyright Protection for Removable Media (CPRM) initiative, brought to light by The Register late last year. Such was the level of (entirely justifiable) anger at the prospect of the music industry saying what users can and can't store on their own hard drives, that the plan was dropped, seemingly for good.
But not so. "The failure of the CPRM specification to be applied to computer hard drives was a giant step back for the publishing, music and entertainment industry," said Rosen, and promised to "develop a new specification that accomplishes what CPRM would have done."
In the meantime, the RIAA will be lobbying "our friends in Washington" for tougher laws that target "the hackers and file-sharers themselves", so clearly if you thought the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was harsh enough already, think again. Indeed, the RIAA wants legislators to block any loophole in that law which can allow file-sharers to continue to distribute copyright material.
Source: TheRegister
