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To: Guy Hillyer who wrote (6187)	6/29/1999 8:45:00 AM
From: Art Bechhoefer	Respond to of 60323

Guy, thanks for bringing this article to our attention. Of course, there will be efforts to broaden the wording of the statute to include this type of copying. Meanwhile, however, the fact remains that unauthorized copying is illegal - just harder to stop without a specific statute dealing with the equipment end of the problem. The RIAA and its related agencies can cause a lot of grief for those unwilling to observe copyrights. For example, a favorite tactic that I've seen is to send someone to a bar, in which recorded music, often taken from radio broadcasts, is played as background music. The bar owner receives a stern warning about using off-the-air tape recordings for commercial gain and is told that if this keeps up, he will be required to pay royalties each time he uses these tapes. The end result is that many fewer off-the-air recordings are used illegally. The real problem, as I see it, is that someone pays the advertised price for an MP3 music selection and subsequently makes copies for his friends in a fashion similar to buying casettes and making informal copies for one's friends. The way that this practice ultimately is stopped or controlled is for legal copies to be priced reasonably enough to provide little incentive for illegal copies.

To: Guy Hillyer who wrote (6187)	6/29/1999 9:29:00 AM
From: Ausdauer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 60323

Guy and Art, re: Rio! Guy, you referenced the decision that I was referring to in my post. The Rio! Division of Diamond was recently acquired and I believe that the successful defense of the Rio! was a key stepping stone. re: royalities for content providers Art, the SDMI has been forced to concede a defeat to Diamond Multimedia. The front page of the NY Times Business Section this morning stated that a defacto standard for the secure transmission of copyrighted content was recently adopted and it was apparently proposed by a working group of hardware and software manufacturers who presented a compelling solution to the SDMI. In the meantime devices capable of playing pirated music will be allowed. I tend to believe that SanDisk's press release yesterday concerning the TI/Liquid Audio solution and the previous press release mentioning the Lucent/eDig solution points to CompactFlash/MMC (and not SmartMedia) as being part of the final solution. This could be a huge endorsement of SanDisk that will undoubtedly not go unnoticed. SanDisk appears to be flashing signals to this end. Ausdauer