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Indeed. SONY tried user-friendly copying and nearly got banned from the US for their trouble. A common refrain during the Napster lawsuit was that "the law nee
by kmeisthax 5y ago
Indeed. SONY tried user-friendly copying and nearly got banned from the US for their trouble.
A common refrain during the Napster lawsuit was that "the law needs to catch up to technology". This is hilariously wrong, looking back on it. The music industry was very adamant back in the 70s and 80s that consumers shouldn't have access to audio recording technology, especially not digital copies. As a result, the law was about 20 steps ahead of technology. Any and all consumer audio recording technology had to prevent second-generation digital copies via SCMS.
The fact that MP3 players were even allowed to exist (see RIAA v. Diamond) is a minor miracle; birthed from a legal battle that I doubt Sony was at all interested in fighting. At that point they had literally bought a record label, which pushed a lot of internal corporate changes within SONY. It's far harder to justify selling devices to copy music when you also happen to sell music.
(Of course, Apple wound up completely monopolizing music sales for a decade by more or less ignoring all of the above, getting involved in both sides of the business, and just using the superior user experience to steamroll over both labels and other device manufacturers.)
- swilliamsio 5y ago> Apple wound up completely monopolizing music sales for a decade iTunes was never big enough to count as a monopoly on music sales, not even close.
- kmeisthax 5y agoNo, but they were a monopoly on digital music sales. Specifically because it was the only music DRM iPods would work with, and competing MP3 players that supported other DRM schemes were pure garbage. By the time iTunes went DRM-free (in 2009), CD sales were about a third of what they were at their peak and digital was the industry's only growth market. 90% of 40% is still a huge chunk of the market.
- fomine3 5y agoAnother factor is that Sony became content holder by buying Columbia
- bcrl 5y agoToday's world isn't much better. I've lost music I paid for because I'm not allowed to transfer it from a device of one generation to the next. It's even worse now that I'm pushed into streaming services on all the platforms that I use. If only NFTs meant I could actually retain ownership of my music collection.... At least I still have my CD collection!