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Technology Stocks : e.Digital Corporation(EDIG) - Embedded Digital Technology -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mark cox who wrote (11063)	2/21/2000 6:51:00 PM
From: Jon Tara	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 18366

Current MP3 players will not become obsolete. mark cox wrote: "What I mean by that is there are no doubt many consumers out there who are aware that the current MP3 players will not play the coming secure content and are obsolete. " Current MP3 players all download their files from a PC. There is no reason why transcoding software on the PC cannot be used to convert tracks in any format to MP3. While the recording industry may not like this, there is nothing they can do to stop it. All copy-protection schemes WILL fail, because of the nature of music - it ultimately cannot be protected. In order to be enjoyed, it must be converted into sound waves. Once converted into sound waves it can be recorded. Further, digital music, in order to be converted into sound waves, must first be converted into a simple, non-encoded digital representation before going to a D/A for conversion to analog sound waves. Once in this non-encoded form, it can be easily transcoded into any format. On a PC - the downloading source for all current devices - it is laughably simple to get your hands on the unencoded digital data. Even if the device manufactuers were to cave-in to the recording industry's demands, alternate software would become available which would cirvumvent any restrictions. Ultimately, I doubt the music industry will get it's way, at least in the U.S. U.S. consumers have always resisted limitations on recording music, and I don't see where anything has changed. (Other countries have adopted varying degrees of restriction or compensation - for example, the "blank CD-ROM tax" in Canada.)