Roger Johnstone wrote:
In <eoad1b$ugt$1@merope.saaf.se> Paul Schlyter wrote:.....but I could play LP's on an LP record player of any other brand. Different brands of LP players didn't use different "encodings". And the LP player allows me to play 45 rpm EP records as well, and (a few decades ago) even 78 rpm shellac records (if I changed the needle on the pick.up). However, in the earliest days of the vinyl record, things were different: there were 45 rpm EP records and 33 rpm LP records. The two formats of vinyl records were competing, and almost always a record player could play either EP recods, or LP records, but not both. Fortunately, this stupidity vanished a few years later, when record players capable of playing both EP and LP records appeared. Today's situation, with portable digital players requiring different encoded formats of the digital files, reminds a bit of the situation in the earliest days of the vinyl record, when record players were unable to play both EP and LP records.The media compatibility problem is a bit different this time as just about all players can play MP3. I believe even Sony has given up on their proprietary ATRAC encoding system and 'allows' their customers to use MP3 files now.The real problem is that the big music publishers refuse to release their music without a copy protection system, but instead of agreeing on a single DRM system they left it up to others to implement them. So now we have Apple, Sony, Real, Microsoft (with two incompatible systems!) etc. each with their own DRM.
Ah, the joys of a market economy. ;-) The plan was that, since the content controllers don't have any real expertise (though they can hire it), they let the potentially offending industries create proposals to put before them. There would be a "cut of the action" for those whose proposal(s) were adopted. The smell of all that potential money both galvanizes all the technology players and hardens them to cooperation with others, lest they steal the benefits of their "brilliant" technology--or at least be one more entity to split the proceeds with. This plot is getting to be as familiar as "Boy meets girl; boy loses girl, boy gets girl (or her Digital Rights ;-)." -michael NadaNet networking for Apple II computers! Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/ "The wastebasket is our most important design tool--and it's seriously underused."