Between this and Internet radio if the industry and US government don't pull out of the steep dive they are in there will be ramifications on music for a generation of audio buffs.

I think the EU may be moving away from proprietary encoding schemes, and we may have seen the dam breaking on that when Apple worked out a deal recently with EMI for non DRM music. Time will tell.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/04/02/emi-apple-are-announcing-sale-of-non-drm-music/

French Law could break Apple and Microsoft DRM
http://www.engadget.com/2006/03/13/french-law-could-break-itunes-microsoft-drm/

And then the law was gutted...but they are still fighting DRM
http://www.macrumors.com/2006/05/02/france-drm-law-gutted-in-committee/

OT: Speaking of guns. There was a Parts Express forum participant who was shot and killed last week. The guy was a cabinet builder and the neighbor was mentally handicapped. He thought that the guy was poisoning him with the sprays and sealants. THE DAY the guy was to move he was gunned down on his move to another shop!

The guys name is "Mat G" and if you search on it you can see that they are still talking about it.

http://www.pesupport.com/cgi-bin/config.pl

Quote:
Is it just me going crazy or is it going to be easier to buy a gun than buy a used Cd?

It is hard for me to believe that our legislators don't have much more important things to do than worry about Pawn Shop Sales of used CDs et al! Pretty soon the Garage Sale Police will be showing up.

Can it be any wonder I am beginning to see the glass half empty and not half full anymore?

Jim,

The key mistake in your thinking about this affair and similarly the internet radio nonsense is the term "our legislators". They are not and have not been "our legislators" for quite some time. The vast majority of politicians, both elected and appointed, have been bought by the corporations due to the insanely bad US campaign finance laws. This used CD law and the internet radio royalty law are clear examples of laws that put the corporate interests well ahead of those of the consumer, i.e. voter. But since the people don't vote and the corporations pay for the campaigns it's the corporations who get to have things their way.

These are state legislators, not necessarily the big money Washington types. These kinds of bills I would have thrown in the trash immediately. I had a very simple rule to expose this kind of legislative crap: 1.) Who benefits; 2.) Who pays; 3.) Who gets hurt? It exposes the real corruption if there is any, and there is hardly any legislation that does not come at some cost to someone.

The other issue is that any state law maker can go on line to the National Assoc. of State legislatures and search out recently enacted legislation by state, so this networking does take place. The fact is we do not use this tool enough for the common good anymore. If we went back to a citizen legislatures, federal and state, and had term limits much of this would go away. I'm sorry but this legislation derserves no one behind it with all the real problems we face.

Finally the real fraud in all of this is that any legislator can sign onto any bill that is passed as a co-sponsor AFTER IT HAS PASSED! For those who had no courage of their convictions to help work it, but only look to add successful legislation to pad their resumes for re-election purposes and to make it look like they worked so hard to get a bill through is pathetic, but most citizens do not know of this time tested practice.

Quote:

Can it be any wonder I am beginning to see the glass half empty and not half full anymore?

Look at this way. The glass is twice as big as it should be.