[Sussex] RE: Copywrite and the Old Woman ...

[Rupert Swarbrick]

John D. wrote:
> But I'd happily use a subscription service if they didn't seem such a
> rip off (which always raises the questions like is what they charge
> value for money? Should they be allowed to stop you accessing the track
> if you stop paying their subscription, or should you be able to keep the
> file once paid for - Oh and not forgetting, do they provide the track in
> a format that _YOU_ want??? - Personally I've ripped all my stuff into
> "FLAC", I don't see why I should convert perfectly good CD music into
> what is effectively an inferior format i.e. mp3, wma, AAC, Ogg etc).
> 

Just my thoughts on the idea of subscription music services. Lancing,
the school I've just finished the sixth form in, is subscribed to the
Naxos Music Library, which lets users have access to all of their
published classical music.

Although they only offer streaming (so the music would be inaccessible
if your license ran out), they're wonderful for the music dept. e.g.
teacher says "Yes - look at Schubert's Erlkonig - he does something
similar there" and pupil wanders down to the library and can listen to
it immediately without faffing around trying to find a CD.

Of course, if you can hear music on your computer, you can always rip it
off, even if it comes down to playing it while recording from audacity!
The reason this doesn't bother companies like Naxos is that you can only
download at "1x" - the speed at which they are streaming. You can hardly
suck down their entire catalogue like that.

So my personal view is that DRM audio technologies are doomed to failure
on a small scale like "I desperately need this one piece of music" and
governments would be well advised to stop trying to legislate against
this scale of copying.

Incidently, about ogg vs. FLAC, my music collection is in ogg format. I
own almost all of it on CD too and have it on my computer to save the
hassle of changing the CDs. Most of the time, I'm listening through my
laptop speakers, which are pretty rubbish compared to a proper HiFi, so
as far as I'm concerned, the very minor loss of quality when recording
to ogg is irrelevant compared to the saved space as it sounds pretty
awful either way!

Rupert
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