Picture of the Day -
May 9th
All prices are quoted in euros unless
otherwise noted.
1 euro is approximately .91 US dollar.
High End Society is the organizer of this
wonderful show, which is now in its 21st year. Each year on the opening day, the Society
holds a press conference that features industry experts talking about a current topic. On
May 9, the discussion was on CD copy protection. Some of the facts given were that roughly
one-third of CDs sold worldwide are illegal copies (which translates to $4.2 billion US
dollars in lost revenue); 27 CD production lines were recently shut down, and they
produced 100 million illegal discs annually; and finally, because of what's been
happening, between 20 to 50% of new CD releases are now copy protected.
The main points of discussion were that these
copy-protected discs can be incompatible with existing hardware. This has caused problems
in the manufacturing industry because many are blaming the makers of CD players that will
not play these discs. However, the manufacturers respond that the discs are not to Red
Book standard anymore (one speaker described them as more like a multimedia CD-ROM than a
music CD) and that the fault really lies with these copy-protection schemes that have been
developed and do not adhere to standards.
At this point, there is no group working to
resolve this issue, and we can only expect it to get worse. One piece of advice for
consumers is that when they encounter unplayable discs, they should immediately return
them and expect a full refund, with the reason being is that they are not really
"true" CDs. |
