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Two other provisions of AHRA are of less interest to audiophiles but nonetheless bear mention. First, digital copying devices must be equipped with the Serial Copy Management System (SCMS), which prevents unlimited serial copying of copyrighted material. When SCMS is incorporated into a digital recording device, the device can make unlimited first-generation copies of original prerecorded material. However, SCMS prevents the recopying of those copies (footnote 7). Second, AHRA provides compensation to copyright holders for lost revenues resulting from home taping, in the form of royalty…
Thus far, the courts have found these programs to be not guilty of copyright infringement. However, all eyes are now on the Supreme Court, which is currently deciding a case involving a suit brought by MGM Studios against Grokster. The ensuing decision will almost certainly be of monumental importance in deciding the future of P2P programs. However—and this cannot be overstated—the Supreme Court is addressing the legality of Grokster itself (and, by extension, related programs), not the actions of those who use such a program. In other words, even if Grokster is found to be not guilty of…
Laurence Borden returned to this subject in November 2005 (Vol.28 No.11):
On June 27, 2005, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in MGM vs Grokster, reversing a decision by the Court of Appeals, which had ruled in favor of Grokster on the ground that the file-sharing technology at issue was capable of commercially significant noninfringing uses within the meaning of the Supreme Court's previous decision in Sony vs Universal Studios. Because the opinions of the Supreme Court and two lower courts, the District Court and the Court of Appeals, were based in large part on that earlier…
Letters in response appeared in December 2005 (Vol.28 No.12):
Copyright law
Editor: Laurence A. Borden's September 2005 article regarding copyright law as applied to copying and sharing music was a valiant effort. Unfortunately, because copyright laws, much like the tax code, were written by and for lawyers and lobbyists, it is all too easy for nonspecialists seeking to explain the law to go astray.
First, the article suggests that making digital copies of music for your personal use was a matter of fair-use principles until the passage of the 1992 Audio Home Recording Act…
Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock and Roll, 1947-1977
by James Miller
New York: Fireside/Simon & Schuster, 1999. Paperback, 8.5" by 5.5", 416 pp. $15.00. ISBN 0-6848-6560-2.
by James Miller
New York: Fireside/Simon & Schuster, 1999. Paperback, 8.5" by 5.5", 416 pp. $15.00. ISBN 0-6848-6560-2.
This book is a tremendously valuable complement and counterpoint to Jim Cogan and William Clark's Temples of Sound, which I reviewed in the July issue. That book did a marvelous job of laying out the what and the how of the golden age of recording popular music in the US. This intriguing and at times provocative book tackles the thornier questions of what difference it all made, and why.
…
Twice a year, Stereophile brings some of its writers out to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to discuss the compilation of the magazine's "Recommended Components" listing, the most recent of which appeared in the October issue. Following a comment from Will Hammond, John Atkinson's collaborator on the recent amplifier blind listening tests, that the magazine's readers would love to eavesdrop on the conversations that take place on these occasions, it seemed a good idea to tape (footnote 1) some of the discussions and publish the transcript as this month's "As We See It" (footnote 2). Accordingly, Lewis…
Richard Lehnert: That's sort of been happening within each review. What Robert Harley's been doing is to add a closing paragraph of measurements after the main body of the review.
Holt: But the thing is, if you leaf through the review section the way it is now, you see...
Lehnert: ...the graphs...
Holt: ...all the way through it. And as Tom said, I have the feeling that's probably turning off some people.
Mitchell: One of the problems of presenting technical information, especially in graphical form, is that graphs have a way of taking up a lot of space for the…
Norton: The technical results are going to have to be separate from the main body of the text for most of us anyway because the measurements are going to be done here in Santa Fe. There's no way we can mesh these two together.
Balgalvis: I'm glad you brought that up—there are three writers here who used to work with High-Performance Review (footnote 5). I have to confess that whenever I had to do the technical section of a review, it was just a tedious thing. The graphs were there, and you tried to put them into in words, which was kind of nice. But I never felt that it was really…
Olsher: Then let's change the measurements that are done. Your opinion shouldn't change.
Galo: I agree with Lew that what the product sounds like is most important. How I see the measurements is helping both the reviewer and the reader understand why the product sounds the way it does.
Holt: But I don't think most of our readers give a damn as to "why." Other manufacturers do.
Lipnick: You have a responsibility to explain your findings. The technical stuff obviously has to back up the subjective description.
Holt: I think the main function of measurements in the…
Lipnick: Of the sound, but there's also an emotional impact to buying components...Let's face it, that's not peanuts. This is a religious rite, going out and buying this stuff, you know. The actual spending of the money is a big deal. And if you start doing this one-voice kind of thing you're talking about, I think you'll lose a lot of that.
Holt: At shows I've had a number of people come up to me and say, "Why don't you people work together on each review, so you can come up with a consensus?" And I said, "Well, for one thing, it would probably take us six months to get a review done,…