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Technology Stocks : Liquid Audio Inc - (Nasdaq- LQID) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: $Mogul who wrote (301)	7/22/1999 3:56:00 PM
From: Prognosticator	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 674

I don't think you understand my assertion of "valuable" in my previous message. I understand that Music Distributors would like to protect their copyrighted material: what I don't understand is what does Liquid Audio bring to that area. It is trivial to rip off a CD by doing a BIT-BY-BIT copy, which would include any watermarks, so it is my assertion that the watermark adds no protection against CD piracy, except against incompetent pirates. The other foreseeable use is to allow web-bots to scan the Internet looking for files with the watermark in them, but that too is pointless given how easy it is for somebody to remove a watermark (and you don't even have to go through analog to do that). So the only people who are likely to be caught by this are people dumb enough to put unmodified watermarked music on their own web sites. It seems to me that the only thing that Liquid Audio currently has going for it is a large installed base of players on PC's (free), some mind-share amongst web-sites (valuable) and good relationships with Music Companies (valuable, but can change at any time). What is to prevent other proprietary formats and companies from forming the same relationships? Why will Liquid Audio be preferable to non proprietary SDMI? P. By the way: you're the first person ever to intimate that I'm not a visionary. An interesting experience for me.