So, as customers and consumers, we are probably dealing with a certain amount of misleading comments, files and information from representatives of the music and movie industry along with their defective products, intentional bad sectors, music cd's with intentionally elevated read errors, music cd's with auto-loading software to pollute customer's computers, lawsuits filed against anyone who advocates "fair use", lawsuits against software firms or internet services who produce tools or offer services that "might" be used to duplicate material which is copyrighted, lawsuits against their own customers based on totally unrealistic estimates of losses due to downloading and copying.
The music and movie industry has set itself on a path to abuse their own customers to as great an extent as possible. And they think that is going to lead to increased sales, revenues and profit margins.
It's hard to have any sympathy for as wealthy a group of firms and people as this, while they chase after lawsuit settlements from teenagers, college students and their own long time dedicated customer base.
I still believe that 90%+ of the music and videos that folks download or copy, would not result in a sale, if the copy were not possible or made. I think the entertainment industry wastes a lot of money chasing this copy protection paranoia. Read today's "news" highlights on this site. I'm sure Sylvia Price and her daughter are going to begin purchasing all those cd's that Sylvia's daughter was downloading, now that the BPI has forced them to begin trying to save money to pay them off as a result of their lawsuit. The logic of an industry so intent on abusing and driving away their customers escapes me.
I read recently that the music industry was encouraged to embrace Suncomm's latest version of ineffective copy protection because the Velvet Revolver cd had that software pollution applied to it, and the sales of the cd did not decrease as a result. Think about that. If selling a cd which tries to pollute a customer's computer with suncomm's drivers was such a good thing for the industry, shouldn't sales of that cd increase beyond expectations? Might the sales figures of this particular cd simply represent how useless this suncomm copy protection exercise really is? If the suncomm copy protection doesn't actually prevent copying - why bother with it? If it does prevent copying, and the folks who would have copied it didn't run out and buy the cd as a result - why bother with it?
How many folks out there have adopted my philosophy of not buying these things if they are labeled, or returning them as defective if they are not clearly labeled?
I think companies like Macrovision and Suncomm have sold the industry a totall worthless collection of products and processes that will do more harm than good. But then companies like this only exist as long as the entertainment industry throws money away as a result of their copy protection paranoia.
