Posted 6/5/2001 by Beorn

"Digital distribution of music through a subscription service does not work without burning. People do not want to listen to music on their PCs but in their cars or on a Walkman. I don't know of many parties where everyone gathers round a computer."

Roxio, (makers of Easy CD Creator and target of a very odd Gracenote lawsuit), on its music downloading deal with EMI. They're going to "develop a secure way of reproducing songs on to blank CDs", which sounds like a good idea until you realize that this is what people have always done with their CD writers, and notice the word "secure" which is legalize for "restricted".

Even more odd, they assume that nobody will ever want to hook their PC up with a HiFi, which is up there with "640k ought to be enough for anyone" in shortsightedness. (Bill Gates didn't say that in 1981, but that's irrelevant). Can't see myself going back to owning a CD player ever again, and some kind of black box commercial product would be so easy to make, and so much much more practical than manually switching audio CD's, it's bound to happen.