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Legal Issues

by Mike Masnick

Wed, Apr 6th 2005 2:55pm





Politicians Consider Mandating Single Music Format Standard

from the how-to-kill-the-music-industry dept

Politicians really like to meddle where no meddling is needed, don't they? The latest, is that some politicians are responding to complaints by users concerning all the different digital music file formats by thinking about legally mandating music file compatibility. While the industry has been particularly shortsighted in not setting up compatibility on their own (the more compatible, the more people can use your system, the more value the songs have, the more value your system has -- seems easy enough), the idea that the government should step in and force compatibility seems like a dreadful idea that would simply stop all innovation when it came to music file formats. Forcing every music file format to meet some politically motivated standard will make it difficult for newer or better file formats to be created. There's simply no reason the government needs to be involved here.

4 Comments | Leave a Comment..


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  1.  

    No Subject Given

    identicon
    A-(Tr)holle, Apr 6th, 2005 @ 4:27pm

    Oh great, so now we have to implement another audio file format into every single piece of audio-playback/sampling/editing/sequencing software and hardware as to satisfy a couple of short sighted politicos. Damn, times like this make me wish I was a libertarian. Then I remember that most libertarians are anti-government retards, and then I go back to being a progressive.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    Prime time to dismantle the DMCA

    identicon
    LBB, Apr 7th, 2005 @ 5:22am

    If they're so worried about lack of interoperability, why not remove existing legal barriers to it -- primarily the anti-circumvention clauses of the DMCA -- instead of putting this band-aid bug-fix legislation in effect? Remove the threat of people getting sued for reverse-engineering formats and the market will sort the rest out.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  

    Good thing they're slow

    identicon
    Chris Wuestefeld, Apr 7th, 2005 @ 6:51am

    It's a good thing they didn't think of this before, or we'd still all be listening to 78rpm records.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  

    Re: No Subject Given

    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Apr 7th, 2005 @ 10:03am

    If you have to resort to calling them retards instead of clearly explaining why their conculsions are wrong, then you must have little insight into their beliefs. To put it in terms you understand, only retards resort to calling others retards...

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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