LATEST ADDITIONS

The Music Online Competition Act (MOCA) has won the imprimatur of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), according to an announcement made August 8. The recently-introduced <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/11107/">bipartisan bill</A> crafted by Congressmen Chris Cannon (R-Utah) and Rick Boucher (D-Virginia) intends to insure competition in the delivery of online music&mdash;and to preserve music lovers' rights to copy their own recordings for private use.

While Napster was thriving a few short months ago, the music business was noisily seething and quietly plotting. How could they put the digital audio genie back into the content-control bottle? Although Napster has since been gutted, the labels have identified the unprotected CD as the source of their woes, and now it's payback time.

The occasion was the 1999 Consumer Electronics Show, and I had sought out the Sony suite at Bally's&mdash;the word in the Las Vegas bars where audio journalists hung out was that Sony was demonstrating the production version of their <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//digitalsourcereviews/180/">SCD-1 Super Audio CD player</A>. I was glad I'd made the trek along the Strip: As I reported in the May 1999 <I>Stereophile</I>, the sound of a DMP recording&mdash;of unaccompanied choral music recorded and mixed in DSD by Tom Jung&mdash;was breathtaking, I felt, with an exquisite sense of space. It was definitely the best sound at the CES.

Toljus.

Thanks to all the "Fine Tuners" out there who filled the room early on Sunday morning at the Home Entertainment 2001 Show in May for my "Fine Tunes Clinic." And thanks to Victor Tiscareno of Audio Prism/Red Rose Music for the "technical stiffening." I applaud all your intelligent curiosity, questions, and tales of woe and success. Let's do it again.

Like the proverbial camel who took over the tent after getting just his nose in, it appears that once copy protection is given an inch, it will inevitably try to get in all the way. At least that's how it appears with an increasing variety of CD copy protection systems now currently being tested <I>en masse</I> by the major record labels. Latest to announce a new "evaluation agreement" is BMG Entertainment, which will use and evaluate SunnComm's MediaCloQ "digital content cloaking technology", first put to the test earlier in the year on a Charley Pride CD (<A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/11004/">see previous</A>).

The <A HREF="http://www.nab.org">National Association of Broadcasters</A> has lost a round in its fight to avoid paying royalties for music streamed over the Internet.