"If you didn't pay for it, you've stolen it!"

[Roy M. Silvernail]

On Friday 24 October 2003 02:46, Steve Schear wrote:

> Why couldn't this be applied on-line to music.  Under current fair use
> provisions readers and listeners who have purchased a work are allowed to
> lend it out freely.  Surely the number of people who want to read or listen
> to a work are much smaller at any particular moment than the number of
> people who have ripped/downloaded a work (perhaps only 1 in 100 at
> most).  If some mechanism could be made part of the P2P systems purchasers
> of the work could 'lend' it to others to read, view or hear when they are
> not using it.  As long as the system gave some assurance to Hollywood that
> the works were not being enjoyed at any one moment by more people than had
> paid for the works then the spirit of a lending library would be
> maintained.

> Someone else must have thought up this idea, but I don't recall seeing
> it.  Please inform me nicely if you have seen it proposed before.

This sounds a lot like the SunnComm DRM system that got so much publicity 
recently.  (the one that relies on Windows' CD Autorun "feature") That system 
allows the user of a protected CD to make expiring copies of some tracks to 
share.

The problem with the central premise, of course, is that without some Big 
(Brother) Central Server, there's just no way to track simultaneous usage, so 
there's no way to assure that the number of users <= the number of owners.  
You can be sure that [MP|RI]AA will accept nothing less than perfect 
accounting. And if the system relies on my destroying my physical CDs to 
share the MP3 copies, forget it.  The MP3s are backups for my CDs, but my CDs 
are also backups for the MP3 files.  I've already re-ripped my whole 
collection once to change bitrates and unify tag information. When OGG 
hardware gets more widespread, there's at least one more ripping party in the 
offing.  If that's what it takes to share, then I'll just remain a stingy 
bastard.