James Delahunty
15 Aug 2005 20:04
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) believes that bootleg or illegal copies of CDs are a much greater threat to the music industry than illegal downloading is. Fans get twice as much music from illegal copied CDs than from unauthorised downloads according to RIAA Chief Executive Mitch Bainwol. He echoed a report from NPD that says 29% of music acquired by music fans last year came form content copied onto recordable media. 16% has been credited to illegal music downloads.
Only 4% of music acquired was credited to legal music downloads while legit CDs still held strong at almost 50% of all music sold. The solution to illegal filesharing is litigation according to the RIAA, but how can you fight illegal copying? The answer, according to the RIAA, is copy protection. The amount of copy protected CDs being released has increased dramatically.
However, copy protection on CDs is not without it's flaws. Firstly, most copy protected CDs prevent you from ripping the audio tracks, but it's possible to dump DRM protected WMA files onto your windows machine. The problem here is that these files are not compatible with Apple's iPod music player. Apple has been reluctant to license it's FairPlay DRM technology for reasons like this one; they'd much prefer people buy their music from iTunes instead of getting it from a copy protected CD.
Source:
The Register