What I don't understand is that the music industry has made their money on research/development and promotion of continually better technologies that produce slightly better quality music. The public bought into this in a huge way. We started with primitive records, then LP's, then 8-tracks, cassettes, then CD's, as well as better amps, speakers, digital devices, etc.. Each time the consumer has willingly forked over a lot of money to repurchase their collections and buy the hardware to play the new format.

MP3s are a step in the opposite direction. Most MP3's are 1/8th the quality of CD's! The sound is noticeably worse than even cassette recordings.

The fuss the music industry is making about MP3 "piracy" is CURRENTLY rediculous. However, with ever-increasing internet connection speed and larger harddrive size, MP3 compression will probably not be necessary. When that happens, the music industry may well have something to worry about.


It is interesting to note that in the USA one may only be prosecuted for copyright infringement if one is:

1. downloading/uploading copyrighted material for any kind of profit (including barter agreements).

2. dowloading/uploading more than $1000 of copyrighted material in six months.

This is from the recent "No Electronic Theft" act.

This means that various anti-sharing people are trying to counteract (in some cases with an aggressivenesss boardering on harrassment or electronic vandalism) an activity which is, in many cases, NOT illegal.

really interesting points but a couple of thoughts come to mind

First - $1000 in six months is very easily exceeded (especially if all the files that are downloaded, listened to once and then deleted are counted)

second (and more pertinently) - I'm not at all sure that mp3 files can be criticised on quality grounds - I endevour to download files at 256 or 320 bit rate - use the 'jet audio' player and have external speakers and a sub woofer connected (on the other side of the room) to my computer - I also have a CD player connected to a duplicate set of speakers and sub woofer but it just gathers dust - the convenience of making up playlists as I please makes CD selections cumbersome and tiresome and the sound is just fine

a well ripped mp3 file at a respectable bit rate is only very marginally inferior to a CD and way better than a steadily decomposing cassette - (even at 128 a 'good' mp3 is more than adequate - certainly better than FM radio)

play a poor mp3 through crappy PC speakers via a crappy player and yes you'd be convinced mp3 was a dead end format but likewise if you played a scrathed and dusty vinyl record through a beat up old radiophone you'd think records were were pretty hopeless too (and lord knows those vinyl freaks love the sound distortion you get with records and a needle pick-up)

the real problem is nothing to do with copywrite or format quality - its about the outdated business models of multinational companies determined to make consumers want what they can provide at maximum profit

Cheers, bad_vlad

I am still trying to figure out if the $1000 means $1000 worth of the same file, $1000 worth of files held by a single copyright holder, or single files totalling $1000.

I also have no idea how the worth of a file is determined. As an example, though:

A standard CD is roughly $15, contains 10 songs, and lasts an hour ($1.50 per song, $0.25 per minute of music). If the $1000 is a total of all shared files, and this is the method of determining worth, you can download/upload around 667 songs in a six month period.

You can do all sorts of math on this of course -- is a compressed song with less data worth less than the CD quality song? If so, a 128 bitrate MP3 song costs around $0.13 ($0.02/minute). That's 7,692 shared songs in six months!

This changes significantly if we are talking about other media, but I think it's still a lot of leeway.


As to the quality issue:

As a test I took a 14:15 minute song from a CD.

The song on the CD was 144 megabytes.
The 320 bitrate, 44.100 kHz. MP3 version was 32.7 megs..
The 128 bitrate, 44.100 kHz. MP3 version was 13.1 megs..


For the 320 bitrate MP3 that is 1/4 the data. For the 128 it's 1/11th. Of course the sound quality of the MP3 is not 75% or 91% worse, but I would say that these are significant amounts of data loss.

Obviously we are a ways away from being able to quickly download and affordably store lots of CD quality music (40 megabytes for a "standard" 4 minute songs is hefty).

Interesting thoughts, in any case.

-gratis

The quality of a 256kbit mp3 is for the human ear equal to cd quality. Of course there are slight differences but tests show that even professional sound engineers are unable to tell the difference just from listening to it.

the idea that a CD costs $15 gives away 'location' as probably the US - here in Australia we're talking 30 bucks - which reduces the per six month calculation to around 334 files over the six months - thats only around 56 a month - thats not even 2 a day - if you then factor in all the incomplete downloads there really isn't too much leeway at all - and - do we seriously think Hilary and the RIAA troops are going to give a discount for the lesser quality of files at 128 bit rate - can't see it myself

bad_vlad

THIS PROGRAM SUCKS SO BAD THAT I CAN'T STAND IT FOR ANOTHER MOMENT!! HOW ON EARTH ARE WE EXPECTED TO PAY EVEN AN HOUR'S WAGE TO SUPPORT A PROGRAM THAT OPERATES SIMILARLY TO BOB DOLE'S SEX ORGAN?!?!

Any suggestions to make it better or are you just going to bitch abou it?

I buy Naxos classical CDs all the time. They cost $5.00. I wouldn't waste time downloading the same music in MP3 format.

But if the record companies continue charging $15.00 for a CD, then it's worth our time to download. Why can't Sony charge the same prices as Naxos?

The solution is for the record companies to reduce prices and quit ripping off the public.