What’s the value of a bit? It seems that going after folks who have traded songs or movies online is a huge expenditure of effort and money. Is DRM-protected content the way to go? If you don’t agree, propose another method for the distribution of digital multimedia so that content creators can still be compensated.
A bit, or "binary digit" is a basic unit of information storage and communication. It is the maximum amount of information that can be stored by a device. The binary digit is interpreted as 0 and 1. More importantly, bits can be applied in a variety of different forms. The practice of trading music and movies illegally has become such a huge dilemma for the music and film industries. However, it is a very large task to try and take down because who is at fault? Everyone who has ever downloaded a song or a person who downloads thousands of songs illegally? Who gets to decide what is the right punishment. I think that the DRM-protected content is really the only way to go when distributing digital multimedia. DRM technologies attempt to control use of digital media by preventing access, copying or converting to other formats by end users. As of now, I think it is the only way artists and actors can protect themselves from losing sales by consumers illegally copying and distributing their art. If you lifted the DRM from these type of media, there would be a free for all and chaos, so i believe the DRM technologies does what it can to protect artist until something else comes along.
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I'm not sure what your discussion about the bit was. I raised the question because I wanted you to think of the value of one of those small bits in terms of dollars. If a song you buy is 10 megabytes, and you pay, say, 99 cents, then a meagbyte is worth what? 9.9 cents? And then by the time we get to bits, it's micro-cents.
ReplyDeleteWhich raises the question - are fines of $750 per song reasonable?
Or on the contrary, is a "bit" of a song, less than a second of audio, worth anything?
On DRM - Apple and Amazon now have a thriving business selling music without any DRM. It doesn't appear to be chaotic at the moment, just profit.