Rosen Believes RIAA is Wrong about P2P Lawsuits

Newer Guy writes "Former RIAA head Hilary Rosen now believes that the RIAA is wrong by pursuing their lawsuits of individuals for using P2P programs. In a blog post, she writes that she believes the lawsuits have 'outlived their usefulness' and states that the content providers really need to come up with their own download systems. She also is down on DRM, calling Apple's DRM 'a pain.'"

She 'now' believes...

[tetrode]

When she was head of the RIAA, they had one lawsuit after the other to people that were either innocent or had downloaded one or two mp3 files. They didn't go after the big guys.

They didn't dare to go after the big guys.

Now that she is no longer head of the RIAA, she says - I'd might have been not 100 % right what we have done... DRM might not be so usefull (she is having problems with her iPod?).

Anyway - this is so low, I cannot even reach that low...

Sorry, Hillary - once you're on the wrong side of the hallway, you will allways stay there. Whatever you do.

    -- Mark

the DRM statement

[LinuxOnEveryDesktop]

Note that she only said that Apple's *proprietary DRM* is a pain.

I'm guessing she's all for DRM, as long as it is inter-operable.

That still puts her squarely in the evil pro-DRM camp.

After all the things she's done to us, her customers, I don't think I can ever trust that woman.

"A pain"?

[Pink Tinkletini]

Nowhere in the linked article do these words exist. What Rosen actually says is that Apple's "propietary [sic] DRM just bugs me," which is a quite different message in tone and substance--it's not the DRM itself that she finds annoying, but rather Apple's unwillingness to share.

Note to submitters: Don't invent quotes out of thin air, especially when you encase them in quote marks, for Chrissake.

Re:Have You Ever Noticed?

[geoffrobinson]

Often it is your job description and duty to be an advocate for your client/employer.

Could you imagine a defense lawyer saying in his opening argument "my client is guilty"?

Re:Have You Ever Noticed?

[TheGavster]

That WinAmp plugin doesn't actually play the music, it simply passes the file to the proprietary iTunes system in the background. If you'll notice, DSP and output plugins don't work on ITMS tracks.

Re:Have You Ever Noticed?

[Wordsmith]

If you think you -can't- hear the difference on a portable MP3 player with a set of headphones, you are kidding yourself (or need to get your hearing checked). Buy a decent set of headphones.

The original 128 kbps AAC is far from optimal to start. It's adequate for casual use, but still clearly inferior to a CD on anything but $20 computer speakers. Transcode, and you'll lose a lot. How sensitive you are to the loss is a personal thing.

I've done the transcoding with WMAs to MP3s. I find that keeping the MP3 bitrate up rediculously high (say 320kbps) helps quite a lot, but I'm still getting sound fidelity that's marginally worse than the original (and I'm producing files that are much larger than I'd need to if I was taking from CDDA and aiming for the same quality level).

But of course, none of that has anything to do with the DRM, per se. Any lossy-to-lossy conversion involves those problems.

Where the DRM does become an issue in this particular scenerio, though, is that the DRM is one of the key reasons why you NEED to transcode. Admittedly, there are few players other than the iPod that will handle even unencumbered MP4/AAC - but even those that do can't play ITMS tracks, because of the DRM. So you've got to circumvent the copy protection and transcode (you could even go AAC to AAC if your player accepts the format) to use the tracks with anything that's not an iPod.

Also, as another poster pointed out, the fact that the DRM is easily circumvented doesn't excuse it's presence. If no one was trying to stop us from copying the tracks (or from playing them under the circumstances in which we see fit), the DRM wouldn't be there in the first place. It's an insult and it's bad customer service that Apple and others are intentionally crippling their products to take freedom away from the consumer.