Just take a look at DVD's (Score 1)

When you first watch a DVD on a fairly nice tv, you notice that it is just as clear as they say, very very nice picture etc. etc. When you go buy a DVD movie, thats where things get a bit strange. You are only allowed to play that movie in the same region that the DVD was bought in. The content is scrambled as well. I first rented a dvd player back when I didn't have an rca jack on my tv for video in. I usually used my vcr and its jacks for that. I plugged the dvd into my vcr, and every movie I had rented would play fine for about a second, start to go black and white, the screen would roll up, and it would be back to color again, over and over. In any case, I took the dvd player back to the store and said that it didn't work. I had then found out that you cant send out the DVD's signal thru a vcr first, because the content gets scrambled. And for one final blow, anyone that wants to make a software/hardware dvd player has to get a liscense from the DVD CCA (something to that nature), id imagine if you wanted to produce retail quality dvds you would have to get your disc encrypted, and probably have to buy yet another liscense to do that. (by the way all these restrictions have already been cracked, in fact there was a hardware dvd player sold at circut city that bypassed the region info and the content scrambling system, for those who knew how to get into the dev menu). Pretty tough restrictions as far as im concerned. You look at the vcr and think wow. Could this happen to cds as well? I really doubt it. Music has become so small and compact, so many portable/recordable audio devices around that they would be too popular to completely get rid of. The only way I can see it happening is if the record labels/bands decided not to publish thier content on non-secure media. Of course this really means in the real life is that it will be secure until its cracked, thus defeating the whole purpose, and wasting a LOT of money on copy protection issues, and they blame that on the pirates out there. This cycle will continue forever, unless the record companies/bands change how they do buisness. This will not happen by restricting information to the people they are providing it to, but by making a new buisness model that fits into the digital world.