Jay, thanks for the link on Napster. The writer takes the view that regardless of the outcome of the court case on copyright infringement, the decision will be difficult, if not impossible to enforce. I think that's a bit simplistic.
Now that there is a court decision recognizing the rights of recording companies and their artists to collect a fee for copying intellectual property, the threat of lawsuits will often be enough to discourage piracy. The producers of software that enables transfer of music files will no doubt be forced to pay a fee if a plaintiff can show harm caused by distribution of that software (even if for free). What about some firm in China selling you a CD full of all your favorite music, but at a bargain price? The practice of piracy in foreign countries can be stopped or at least reduced to insignificant levels in the same way that happened in China with illegal copies of Windows and other items on CDs. When a foreign government is faced with an ultimatim: Enforce the copyright laws or else! That country is likely to cooperate if it still wants to sell other products in the U.S.
Note that the Department of Commerce threatened Samsung with a ban on the importation of all its products unless Samsung agreed to a license and royalty agreement with SanDisk--which occurred about three years ago. The fees paid for copies of songs may be less than what the song publishers and artists would prefer, but I think it is very difficult now for wholesale illegal copying of artistic material. The same will be true for movies and other longer works. What I see is the recording companies beginning to rely on the Internet as the best and lowest cost way to sell their products. If they don't get as much per product, they'll still make it up with reduced costs for packaging, shipment, and manufacture of compact disks themselves.
SanDisk comes into this picture with an acceptable means to protect copyrighted material, albeit not the only means. Still, if the system of selling music changes from the sale of ordinary CD and casettes to downloading the same music on one's own information storage device (SNDK, EMC, MemoryStick, or whatever), and if the volume of the downloads looks anything like what has happened so far, I think we'll see a big, BIG increase in demand for flash cards.
Art |
