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Peter Cochrane's Hard Drive 1999 The Net threat to profiteers and pirates AFTER a recent CD- and DVD-based demonstration of data encryption for the entertainment industry, two opposing camps emerged: on the left was the "Free Access to Everything Brigade", and on the right the "Charge You for Breathing Group". And not much in between. It seemed to me that both groups had missed the point: why are entertainment bits so ridiculously expensive? The cost to the customer clearly has little to do with the base technology, artists' fees, production, reproduction or distribution. It is largely down to profit and, therefore, at great risk from the undermining technologies freely available on the Net. A day or two later, I conducted an experiment with an encoded CD containing popular music. Slipping this disc into my hi-fi presented no problem - it played as normal. Doing the same on my laptop computer also presented no problem when using a software player. I could even drag individual tracks from the CD on to my hard drive, but then, as expected, it got sticky. The copyright security system had done its job and the copies would not play. I could have wasted a lot of time trying to crack this digital system, but I resorted to a much easier analogue route. By playing the music on my hi-fi and feeding the analogue output into my laptop, I was able to redigitise the tracks. Inconvenient, I know, but it works. Moreover, when I played the redigitised tracks alongside the originals, I could not detect any difference. No doubt, there are some golden ears around who would contest this, but they represent an insignificant market. Right or wrong, this is a neat way of creating a substantial library of music, video and some multimedia. Will people in general go to the trouble? I think so. Consider the cost of a CD or DVD today. An original copy can cost between £10 and £20 per disc, while a DVD/CD player plus a PC capable of processing and reprocessing the bit content is less than £2,000. So even a modest collection of entertainment material is well worth the investment in equipment to transcribe the content. There is no contest, and I can guarantee people will do it. The big question is whether they will do it in sufficient numbers to damage the industry. I think it likely. And what of digital radio and TV? They are of CD/DVD quality, too; you don't even have to seek out a disc - just wait and let it come to you. So, what can be done about this potentially damaging route to free entertainment? Technically and legally, probably nothing effective. A far better solution would be to follow the trend of the networked bit economy and markets. Sell the original bits at a tenth of present-day prices to generate a market 1,000 times greater than today, creating even greater turnover. In many cases, though, it would be better just to give the content away and concentrate on the related merchandising to make money. We know this works because it has already been established by the film and computer games industry. Peter Cochrane holds the Collier Chair for the Public Understanding of Science & Technology at the University of Bristol. His home page is: |
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