Saturday, September 04, 2004
Not sure a blog page can do this.
2. View the distance
2. View the distance
2.1 Digital Music will be the mainstream form of music instead of traditional disk/cassette finally
The following are the main matters that are on the way to developing digital music:
2.1.1 Support from the customers
To the customers, the most important things are convenience in using, good quality and reasonable price.
Nobody can doubt the convenience of using digital music such as MP3. Nobody can refuse the following lures: we can store all music programs into a single unit. There is no need to change disks/tapes when playing, no need to work at finding it when we want to listen a particular program, no worry about losing a favorite disk when we leave the house.
Using the computer compatible control system, we can realize a lot of functions such as locating given songs, freely combining playing, free repeating, auto loop playing, timing playing, random playing… actually any way a human could imagine. For example, player can play ‘Happy Birthday’ automatically at 8:00 AM when your birthday comes.
Players can display the lyrics or relevant information on its LCD screen, no need to research what the next song is going to be by taking a cover of CD anymore, everything is just there.
Of course, the good quality we talk about here is referring to timbre of digital music. Currently the most MP3 music programs we have got are not good enough, that is because most of them are converted from CDs by individuals. The timbre of their first copies are limited by the set and the source CD the converter using, even the consequent copies are as absolutely same as the first copies, the first copies themselves have distortion already. If the professional industries do the first conversion using a good ‘mother tape’ and good sets and computer programs, it gonna be prefect.
2.1.2 Support from the law
Necessarily the support from legal flied is needed, including explanation about the main definition of copyrights. Even though it may cost a long time in argument, counties of the world must achieve some interim or final negotiations by keeping the spirit of dealing with concrete matters relating to work, because the development of science & technology is unstoppable.
Support of building new laws: relating new laws needed to be build to ensure the new concept carry on.
Countries practically act on striking pirates: the developed countries are doing very well on this matter of when the public uses traditional music commodities. Developing countries include China, are adding their power on striking pirates. But the adopting of new information technology makes it more important and an emergency for countries to act in closer harmony.
We have noticed the two cases that occurred in year 2000: the RIAA against a web site named Napster and Universe Recording Co. against MP3.com. In these cases, the owners of copyright have achieved the final victory. Here we need say only that, not only in the United States, but also around our globe including the Internet, there is no market for pirated music. Countries could stop the pirates through the ISPs which are supplying services such as providing Internet gateway and web site space.
2.1.3 Support from the industries of music
The music industry must keep a positive and active attitude, they must realize striking at pirates is not equal to striking digital music. They must provide a way to let people use digital music legally by generating copyrighted digital music programs, and improve the quality of digital music through that. To ensure their own benefits, the music industry must take the initiative to join the process of building and consolidating the publishing and distribution systems under the new environment.
2.1.4 Support from the manufactories of software/hardware
The manufacturers involving to digital music player and tache of publishing & distribution have enough technology and resource already, they can do further things to protect copyright even without any further research or anything else. The problem is, they had no idea about protecting copyright of digital music and had done nothing before. They will be forced by new laws to act, however. They are joining to build a new industry standard of protecting copyrights of digital music. They are producing new players that meet the new copyright-standard. And they are joining the process of building new system of publishing & distribution.
2.1.5 Keep the distribution expedited
We have a perfect system for publishing and distribution of traditional music commodities. It has provided us a solid base of popularization of digital music commodities that Internet has very popular today and the wide bandwidth connectivity increases.
All we need is the people to establish a new idea of distribution. With the modification applied at point of sale in original music shops, identifying users via qualification, and training staff, we can easily change a traditional music shop into a digital one.
Basically, on web sites nowadays we can add new abilities or new professional web sites, and perfect methods of payment. We can also build a series of legal download systems.
2.1.6 Similar conditions of other fields
There are trends that digital products going more and more popular in other fields, especially the following two:
The digital cameras are taking the place of traditional film cameras:
The digital cameras are far convenience than the film cameras, with the increasing of definition and decreasing of price, it is believed that digital cameras could finally replace the film cameras.
The digital newspapers & magazines are taking place of traditional paper based publications:
Although the digital publications are not as popular as the traditional paper based versions, it is recognized that they are faster and more convenient than the latter. If they finally become as fitted to humans and easily carried as paper based publications, we believe they will be very popular.
2.2 Digital music has a very deep influence on the form of music issuing method
2.2.1 Characteristics of traditional issuing & distribution
The traditional publishing and distribution method are based on physical units such as disks (no matter if they are micro-groove or laser) or tapes. The characteristic is that what people purchase are things can be held and touched, buy one thing spend one piece of money, two things for double price, it is very clear.
The difference between copyrighted units and pirates are comparatively clear. Copyrighted units have been made using good ‘mother tapes’ and good material, so they have good quality. The pirates are made from CDs bought from market, and generally using worse materiel, so there is no guarantee for the quality of pirates.
Because the products are physical units, so it is comparatively easy to strike at the pirates.
Altogether, the characteristics of traditional publishing and distribution are:
Are based on physically existing commodities, the objects are physically existing commodities no matter marketing or recognizing.
The main method from the publishing perspective is to confirm whether a unit is pirated or not, it’s a pirate if it is published without authority. However, there are some small quantity of unapproved copies being published and sold, and these are pirates too, but these do not effect the whole framework.
2.2.2 Characteristics of future issue & distribution
Once the music commodities are sold in full digital form such as MP3, there is no relation to what storing unit will be used due to the excellent copy possibility, wild ways and non-distortion characteristics. Purchasing one equals purchasing a lot.
In this sense, consumers no longer to pay for the music storing units, what they need to pay for is the music itself, or in other words, the right to access the music.
Consumers have the right to access the purchased music programs during their whole human life. So the action of purchase should be recorded to protect the right of accessing, and so consumers should also gain a free restoration service when their own storing units experience problems.
Altogether, the characteristics of future publishing and distribution are:
Based on the right to access and no longer within the concept of physically existing units. It is nothing to do with the right of accessing if the storing units are damaged or missing.
Once paid, enjoyed for one's whole life
The passwords are the delegate of the accessing right. Passwords are normally contained on the SIM cards, and even the damage to the SIM card should have no effect to the authority. However, missing a SIM card means to lose the right of accessing for a certain time.
The meaning of pirate may not only be limited on the publishing time, but also extend to any unapproved accessing.
The music industry should adjust its relative policy to adapt these characteristics.
Here are the three main modes to purchase digital music commodities in the future:
1. Step out to shops to get copies with their own storing units
2. Download from the Internet
3. Purchase disks already containing programs
2.1 Digital Music will be the mainstream form of music instead of traditional disk/cassette finally
The following are the main matters that are on the way to developing digital music:
2.1.1 Support from the customers
To the customers, the most important things are convenience in using, good quality and reasonable price.
Nobody can doubt the convenience of using digital music such as MP3. Nobody can refuse the following lures: we can store all music programs into a single unit. There is no need to change disks/tapes when playing, no need to work at finding it when we want to listen a particular program, no worry about losing a favorite disk when we leave the house.
Using the computer compatible control system, we can realize a lot of functions such as locating given songs, freely combining playing, free repeating, auto loop playing, timing playing, random playing… actually any way a human could imagine. For example, player can play ‘Happy Birthday’ automatically at 8:00 AM when your birthday comes.
Players can display the lyrics or relevant information on its LCD screen, no need to research what the next song is going to be by taking a cover of CD anymore, everything is just there.
Of course, the good quality we talk about here is referring to timbre of digital music. Currently the most MP3 music programs we have got are not good enough, that is because most of them are converted from CDs by individuals. The timbre of their first copies are limited by the set and the source CD the converter using, even the consequent copies are as absolutely same as the first copies, the first copies themselves have distortion already. If the professional industries do the first conversion using a good ‘mother tape’ and good sets and computer programs, it gonna be prefect.
2.1.2 Support from the law
Necessarily the support from legal flied is needed, including explanation about the main definition of copyrights. Even though it may cost a long time in argument, counties of the world must achieve some interim or final negotiations by keeping the spirit of dealing with concrete matters relating to work, because the development of science & technology is unstoppable.
Support of building new laws: relating new laws needed to be build to ensure the new concept carry on.
Countries practically act on striking pirates: the developed countries are doing very well on this matter of when the public uses traditional music commodities. Developing countries include China, are adding their power on striking pirates. But the adopting of new information technology makes it more important and an emergency for countries to act in closer harmony.
We have noticed the two cases that occurred in year 2000: the RIAA against a web site named Napster and Universe Recording Co. against MP3.com. In these cases, the owners of copyright have achieved the final victory. Here we need say only that, not only in the United States, but also around our globe including the Internet, there is no market for pirated music. Countries could stop the pirates through the ISPs which are supplying services such as providing Internet gateway and web site space.
2.1.3 Support from the industries of music
The music industry must keep a positive and active attitude, they must realize striking at pirates is not equal to striking digital music. They must provide a way to let people use digital music legally by generating copyrighted digital music programs, and improve the quality of digital music through that. To ensure their own benefits, the music industry must take the initiative to join the process of building and consolidating the publishing and distribution systems under the new environment.
2.1.4 Support from the manufactories of software/hardware
The manufacturers involving to digital music player and tache of publishing & distribution have enough technology and resource already, they can do further things to protect copyright even without any further research or anything else. The problem is, they had no idea about protecting copyright of digital music and had done nothing before. They will be forced by new laws to act, however. They are joining to build a new industry standard of protecting copyrights of digital music. They are producing new players that meet the new copyright-standard. And they are joining the process of building new system of publishing & distribution.
2.1.5 Keep the distribution expedited
We have a perfect system for publishing and distribution of traditional music commodities. It has provided us a solid base of popularization of digital music commodities that Internet has very popular today and the wide bandwidth connectivity increases.
All we need is the people to establish a new idea of distribution. With the modification applied at point of sale in original music shops, identifying users via qualification, and training staff, we can easily change a traditional music shop into a digital one.
Basically, on web sites nowadays we can add new abilities or new professional web sites, and perfect methods of payment. We can also build a series of legal download systems.
2.1.6 Similar conditions of other fields
There are trends that digital products going more and more popular in other fields, especially the following two:
The digital cameras are taking the place of traditional film cameras:
The digital cameras are far convenience than the film cameras, with the increasing of definition and decreasing of price, it is believed that digital cameras could finally replace the film cameras.
The digital newspapers & magazines are taking place of traditional paper based publications:
Although the digital publications are not as popular as the traditional paper based versions, it is recognized that they are faster and more convenient than the latter. If they finally become as fitted to humans and easily carried as paper based publications, we believe they will be very popular.
2.2 Digital music has a very deep influence on the form of music issuing method
2.2.1 Characteristics of traditional issuing & distribution
The traditional publishing and distribution method are based on physical units such as disks (no matter if they are micro-groove or laser) or tapes. The characteristic is that what people purchase are things can be held and touched, buy one thing spend one piece of money, two things for double price, it is very clear.
The difference between copyrighted units and pirates are comparatively clear. Copyrighted units have been made using good ‘mother tapes’ and good material, so they have good quality. The pirates are made from CDs bought from market, and generally using worse materiel, so there is no guarantee for the quality of pirates.
Because the products are physical units, so it is comparatively easy to strike at the pirates.
Altogether, the characteristics of traditional publishing and distribution are:
Are based on physically existing commodities, the objects are physically existing commodities no matter marketing or recognizing.
The main method from the publishing perspective is to confirm whether a unit is pirated or not, it’s a pirate if it is published without authority. However, there are some small quantity of unapproved copies being published and sold, and these are pirates too, but these do not effect the whole framework.
2.2.2 Characteristics of future issue & distribution
Once the music commodities are sold in full digital form such as MP3, there is no relation to what storing unit will be used due to the excellent copy possibility, wild ways and non-distortion characteristics. Purchasing one equals purchasing a lot.
In this sense, consumers no longer to pay for the music storing units, what they need to pay for is the music itself, or in other words, the right to access the music.
Consumers have the right to access the purchased music programs during their whole human life. So the action of purchase should be recorded to protect the right of accessing, and so consumers should also gain a free restoration service when their own storing units experience problems.
Altogether, the characteristics of future publishing and distribution are:
The music industry should adjust its relative policy to adapt these characteristics.
Here are the three main modes to purchase digital music commodities in the future:
1. Step out to shops to get copies with their own storing units
2. Download from the Internet
3. Purchase disks already containing programs
1. Review the background
1.1 History of the record methods of music
Since music has been sold to consumers as some kind of commodity, its form of recording has undergone the following variation:
A. Micro-groove recorder：
Date for this??
Maybe the micro-groove recorder is the first generation of music commodity. This kind of thing with its peculiarities such as accidented circlular sound tracks on a disk and sensitive tone arm bring us a into new age: people can purchase and hold their favorite songs, and can listen to them whenever they want to. Before this, it was only a dream unless there was a local performance.
As the pioneering music commodity, the micro-groove recorder has a huge bulk but its content is rather small. A single side micro-groove recorder contains approximately 20 minutes of music, wanna listen to another side? Turn the disk by yourself!
The player was also a big thing that could not be sneezed at. Either the disk or the player was rather expensive in those days, so they have never become not very popular.
Depending on the technology of the time, micro-groove recorder was hard to be copied. (Imitated? Transferred?)
The timbre and wear of the micro-groove recorder is greatly dependent on the material that was used to make it. When the recording (?) has been used for a long time, the recorder maybe distortion if it was not a very good make, of course the music deviates widely from the original. Abrasion is a big disadvantage of the micro-groove recorder due to the direct contact of disk and the tone arm when it plays.
Nowadays, people who feel nostalgic or who work as scene/radio DJ still love micro-groove recorders very much. Especially for some outstanding ‘disk riders’, it is the most charming moment of micro-groove recorder performance when these guys begin ‘skating on the disk.
B. Magnetic tape：
Cassette tape is the representative product of the second generation. These little tapes are made up of a magnetic medium or metal chrome that has the memory capable of bringing us a real popularization of music as a commodity.
Compared with the micro-groove recorder, tape has clear advantages: a smaller shape, ease of carrying; more content (a standard cassette tape contains approximate one hour of music program). At the price, a cassette tape is cheaper than micro-groove recordings, the production cost keeps doing down due to the worldwide popularization, this keeps cut the unit price of tapes and excites the growing of market more.
The problem of copyright has emerged since this time due to the capability in writing and re-recording of tapes. There are tape players with recording ability everywhere in the market, some that even have special double or multiple seats, and play-record machines that have excellent power in recording, blank tapes are also on sale.
Fortunately, copyright was not a very serious problem during the age of tape. Maybe this lack of piracy could be the result of few notices of copyright, but another reason is that the quality of copying depends on the machine used to copy. Normally the machines owned by individual are not good enough.
Cassette tapes have the potential problem of wear as well. A good tape will fray severely after a long period of playing, sometimes it becomes real rubbish due to being affected with damp. It also can be extremely damaging to the tape if it has the misfortune of twisting in the machine.
C. Laser disk：CD/MD
This kinds of products using laser beams to ‘carve’ music numeral data on the disk had been fully advertised before they were pushed to the public. But the mythology of 'impossible to damage’ was broken very soon with the nicks on the surface of disks: nobody can be sure where the damn nicks come from. People began keeping and using the disks very carefully following the direction from newspaper and magazines, and still they did not succeed in stopping the boring nicks and dirty. Maybe it’s partly because of frequently changing the disks, sometimes people forget the directions, put the disks anywhere they just feeling convenience.
To reduce the time for changing disks and increase the continuous playing time, manufacturers have launched multi-seats CD players onto the market such as 3, 6, 8, 10 even 12-disk seats system.
CDs contain more music programs than cassette tape. Due to the numeric technology it adopted, people have more freedom when playing goes on: such as the ability to find a favorite song immediately, or free playing on any looping method. In addition, people can even edit the list of music programs on some well designed systems.
CD players using non-touch laser beam heads to read the dates, so this process could not damage or fray the CDs when it is working. But just as the points we mentioned earlier, the harm from other ways are deadly to CDs as well, nobody can stand the noise that happens when the player reading the nicks on the CD.
Maybe because of the characteristic that a CD can remain distortion-free when it has been copied in some illegal factory (numeral format), or possibly just because the desirability of protecting copyrights is very strongly argued, the problem of infracting copyright is very serious at this time. We can find piratical CDs everywhere and these pirate copies result in angry complaints from the owners of copyrights worldwide.
*Music COMS chip（non-mainstream product）：
There is a little thing worth noticing, which should be the small music COMS chip. People use these chips when making birthday/new-year cards or some other sets to increase their interest. Of course, these chips that are based on read-only memory technology have very small content and are not aimed at enjoying music, so this technology may have not much effect on the mainstream music products.
D. Full digital memory（computer compatible record memory）：
The most revolutionary development came from computer technology. It is MP3 format that is the most representative digital format. It adopts advantage arithmetic, compresses the space needed to store the music programs greatly. For instance, a piece of CD can contain approx. 16 normal songs and the same disk can contain 150 songs if using MP3 format.
It’s not the main point here to show how many songs a single piece of disk can contain. Storage method is the main innovation of MP3, because the MP3 format adopts the computer competitive formats to store music. Since then, all the music can be stored/copied/transferred/ just like other computer data, all the traditional limits applying to music have disappeared. All the computer technology can be directly used on the music.
Nowadays we can expediently store music that may be up to several hours length into just a square as large as a thumb and a 1~2 mm thickness memory stick. We can download music from the Internet sitting at home instead of stepping out to shop and purchase CDs or cassette tapes. We can even send favorite songs to friends via e-mail…
The current size of music that stored in MP3 format is approximately 1MB per minute. With the high speed increasing of content of computer memory units, a current cassette tape-sized hard disk can contain 20GB or more. That means a hard disk can contain 20,000 minutes of music. Here a normal song runs 4 minutes, so a hard disk can contain 5,000 songs, more than the number that a person could ever have heard! That is to say, we don't need to hang onto a lot of CDs and tapes anymore.
The prices of computer memory units are undergoing steep decreases and this trend continues. For example, the price of RAM was about US$ 40 per MB in year 1995. Today it has fallen down 200 times to approx. US$ 0.2 per MB in the year 2001. And the similar price cuts have happened to the hard disk: in the year 1995 you could spend US$ 100 to buy only a 500MB sized one, but under the same price you can buy a 20GB one, thus the price has fallen 40 times down.
With absolutely covered, the hard disk get rid of worrying about fraying and dirty. Meanwhile the quality of hard disks is under the guarantee from the manufactories for a long time. Even unfortunately it happens to be damaged, it gonna has nothing to do with the authority of access music due to the ‘purchase record’ which will be shown next chapter.
The problem of protecting copyright is gonna much serious than ever before, because of the digital music has excellent characteristics of copying/transferring and it is actually no a bit different between the copy and the original during the process.
About the timbre, we recognize the there is a little deficiency from MP3 to CD, but the current disparity could be distinguished only by experts, for the normal public, nobody could do it, thus the deficiency is acceptable. However, the step of developing digital music has not stopped at MP3. With the developing of technology, the arithmetic must be generated or a new format would burn (we do not care what name it will have, maybe MP4 or MP5, or a name only God knows), till the there is no deficiency or until even the experts or machines could not distinguish one.
Here the case is similar to that of the field of photography. The computer graphs showing pictures with dot array (lattice) were never as good as the film graphs before. But with the development of computer science & technology, the resolving power of the lattice increasing, the colors every dot can shown in are much more varied than in nature. However these kinds of files are generally very big. For instance, a full-color A3 sized photograph cost 20~50MB,if you store it as the format as TIF or TGA. We are very lucky because our engineers have invented a format named JPG, we can use only 1MB memory space to store the file that we just talk about. Of course there is something that has been missed during the process of compressing, but the JPG format just lost the part that is unreadable by the unaided eye, and human beings can not distinguish the difference between the graphs that come from a TGA file and a JPG file. It is stored by using the same JPG format that the most printed/published photograph today use and the digital cameras are using JPG format as well. The MP3 format is taking the same place in the music field as the JPG format does in the graphic field.
1.1 Comparing the different recording methods
The following compares the four generation of music recorders：
Figure 1-1
Figure 1-2
Figure 1-3
The following figures point out the characteristics of current main memory units and which way they gonna be use:
Figure 1-4
1.1 The trend of variation of music storing forms
It can be seen from the figures above that the storing format for musical commodities goes the following ways:
l The bulk of storing units are becoming smaller and smaller, and their content are going larger and larger, easy to be carried. Maybe sometimes in the future, we don't need to carry any memory units anymore due to the development of wild bandwidth wireless technology.
l Because the music programs can be very easily copied and spread and stored, even the most simply individual owned set can do the above things without a little distortion. Therefore, music programs can exist independently forever without any traditional physical storing-unit in some certain meaning.
l Music programs can be played on more platforms and in a more expedient and free way..
l Combining computer science and technology very closely, makes it easy to apply any possible fruits of research the to music field. Accessing music with the computer allows us to control any operation about the music absolutely and freely. As an important part of our lives, music now has no technical barriers to carry into our future digital/intelligent life. Since the present time, this playing ability is not only a dream that we watch in science fiction movies.
But these kinds of trends are striking at the copyrights. Music commodities no longer need traditional physical carriers such as CDs or micro-groove recorders or tapes, consumers no longer need to step out to shops and bring a heap of such things home. In fact, productions comprising much hard work by the music makers could be spread worldwide during a short time, and generate uncountable copies that have no difference from the source.
It is no doubt that the copyrights are being damaged very badly. The question is: are we going to abort the benefit that comes with the development of science and technology so that we can protect the copyrights; or shall we take the weapon of science and technology to plan a new project to protect the copyrights? If we do this latter we stand to ensure the profit of the copyright owners when we enjoy our advantage.
Obviously, it’s not a good choice to close the door to new technology; nobody can stop people’s pursuit of the advantage of using the new and the desires of human nature. Then, the latter one is the necessary choice. That is, finding a way on which we can not only protect the copyrights, but also let customer use advanced technology, a way to double win.
Since music has been sold to consumers as some kind of commodity, its form of recording has undergone the following variation:
A. Micro-groove recorder：
Date for this??
Maybe the micro-groove recorder is the first generation of music commodity. This kind of thing with its peculiarities such as accidented circlular sound tracks on a disk and sensitive tone arm bring us a into new age: people can purchase and hold their favorite songs, and can listen to them whenever they want to. Before this, it was only a dream unless there was a local performance.
As the pioneering music commodity, the micro-groove recorder has a huge bulk but its content is rather small. A single side micro-groove recorder contains approximately 20 minutes of music, wanna listen to another side? Turn the disk by yourself!
The player was also a big thing that could not be sneezed at. Either the disk or the player was rather expensive in those days, so they have never become not very popular.
Depending on the technology of the time, micro-groove recorder was hard to be copied. (Imitated? Transferred?)
The timbre and wear of the micro-groove recorder is greatly dependent on the material that was used to make it. When the recording (?) has been used for a long time, the recorder maybe distortion if it was not a very good make, of course the music deviates widely from the original. Abrasion is a big disadvantage of the micro-groove recorder due to the direct contact of disk and the tone arm when it plays.
Nowadays, people who feel nostalgic or who work as scene/radio DJ still love micro-groove recorders very much. Especially for some outstanding ‘disk riders’, it is the most charming moment of micro-groove recorder performance when these guys begin ‘skating on the disk.
B. Magnetic tape：
Cassette tape is the representative product of the second generation. These little tapes are made up of a magnetic medium or metal chrome that has the memory capable of bringing us a real popularization of music as a commodity.
Compared with the micro-groove recorder, tape has clear advantages: a smaller shape, ease of carrying; more content (a standard cassette tape contains approximate one hour of music program). At the price, a cassette tape is cheaper than micro-groove recordings, the production cost keeps doing down due to the worldwide popularization, this keeps cut the unit price of tapes and excites the growing of market more.
The problem of copyright has emerged since this time due to the capability in writing and re-recording of tapes. There are tape players with recording ability everywhere in the market, some that even have special double or multiple seats, and play-record machines that have excellent power in recording, blank tapes are also on sale.
Fortunately, copyright was not a very serious problem during the age of tape. Maybe this lack of piracy could be the result of few notices of copyright, but another reason is that the quality of copying depends on the machine used to copy. Normally the machines owned by individual are not good enough.
Cassette tapes have the potential problem of wear as well. A good tape will fray severely after a long period of playing, sometimes it becomes real rubbish due to being affected with damp. It also can be extremely damaging to the tape if it has the misfortune of twisting in the machine.
C. Laser disk：CD/MD
This kinds of products using laser beams to ‘carve’ music numeral data on the disk had been fully advertised before they were pushed to the public. But the mythology of 'impossible to damage’ was broken very soon with the nicks on the surface of disks: nobody can be sure where the damn nicks come from. People began keeping and using the disks very carefully following the direction from newspaper and magazines, and still they did not succeed in stopping the boring nicks and dirty. Maybe it’s partly because of frequently changing the disks, sometimes people forget the directions, put the disks anywhere they just feeling convenience.
To reduce the time for changing disks and increase the continuous playing time, manufacturers have launched multi-seats CD players onto the market such as 3, 6, 8, 10 even 12-disk seats system.
CDs contain more music programs than cassette tape. Due to the numeric technology it adopted, people have more freedom when playing goes on: such as the ability to find a favorite song immediately, or free playing on any looping method. In addition, people can even edit the list of music programs on some well designed systems.
CD players using non-touch laser beam heads to read the dates, so this process could not damage or fray the CDs when it is working. But just as the points we mentioned earlier, the harm from other ways are deadly to CDs as well, nobody can stand the noise that happens when the player reading the nicks on the CD.
Maybe because of the characteristic that a CD can remain distortion-free when it has been copied in some illegal factory (numeral format), or possibly just because the desirability of protecting copyrights is very strongly argued, the problem of infracting copyright is very serious at this time. We can find piratical CDs everywhere and these pirate copies result in angry complaints from the owners of copyrights worldwide.
*Music COMS chip（non-mainstream product）：
There is a little thing worth noticing, which should be the small music COMS chip. People use these chips when making birthday/new-year cards or some other sets to increase their interest. Of course, these chips that are based on read-only memory technology have very small content and are not aimed at enjoying music, so this technology may have not much effect on the mainstream music products.
D. Full digital memory（computer compatible record memory）：
The most revolutionary development came from computer technology. It is MP3 format that is the most representative digital format. It adopts advantage arithmetic, compresses the space needed to store the music programs greatly. For instance, a piece of CD can contain approx. 16 normal songs and the same disk can contain 150 songs if using MP3 format.
It’s not the main point here to show how many songs a single piece of disk can contain. Storage method is the main innovation of MP3, because the MP3 format adopts the computer competitive formats to store music. Since then, all the music can be stored/copied/transferred/ just like other computer data, all the traditional limits applying to music have disappeared. All the computer technology can be directly used on the music.
Nowadays we can expediently store music that may be up to several hours length into just a square as large as a thumb and a 1~2 mm thickness memory stick. We can download music from the Internet sitting at home instead of stepping out to shop and purchase CDs or cassette tapes. We can even send favorite songs to friends via e-mail…
The current size of music that stored in MP3 format is approximately 1MB per minute. With the high speed increasing of content of computer memory units, a current cassette tape-sized hard disk can contain 20GB or more. That means a hard disk can contain 20,000 minutes of music. Here a normal song runs 4 minutes, so a hard disk can contain 5,000 songs, more than the number that a person could ever have heard! That is to say, we don't need to hang onto a lot of CDs and tapes anymore.
The prices of computer memory units are undergoing steep decreases and this trend continues. For example, the price of RAM was about US$ 40 per MB in year 1995. Today it has fallen down 200 times to approx. US$ 0.2 per MB in the year 2001. And the similar price cuts have happened to the hard disk: in the year 1995 you could spend US$ 100 to buy only a 500MB sized one, but under the same price you can buy a 20GB one, thus the price has fallen 40 times down.
With absolutely covered, the hard disk get rid of worrying about fraying and dirty. Meanwhile the quality of hard disks is under the guarantee from the manufactories for a long time. Even unfortunately it happens to be damaged, it gonna has nothing to do with the authority of access music due to the ‘purchase record’ which will be shown next chapter.
The problem of protecting copyright is gonna much serious than ever before, because of the digital music has excellent characteristics of copying/transferring and it is actually no a bit different between the copy and the original during the process.
About the timbre, we recognize the there is a little deficiency from MP3 to CD, but the current disparity could be distinguished only by experts, for the normal public, nobody could do it, thus the deficiency is acceptable. However, the step of developing digital music has not stopped at MP3. With the developing of technology, the arithmetic must be generated or a new format would burn (we do not care what name it will have, maybe MP4 or MP5, or a name only God knows), till the there is no deficiency or until even the experts or machines could not distinguish one.
Here the case is similar to that of the field of photography. The computer graphs showing pictures with dot array (lattice) were never as good as the film graphs before. But with the development of computer science & technology, the resolving power of the lattice increasing, the colors every dot can shown in are much more varied than in nature. However these kinds of files are generally very big. For instance, a full-color A3 sized photograph cost 20~50MB,if you store it as the format as TIF or TGA. We are very lucky because our engineers have invented a format named JPG, we can use only 1MB memory space to store the file that we just talk about. Of course there is something that has been missed during the process of compressing, but the JPG format just lost the part that is unreadable by the unaided eye, and human beings can not distinguish the difference between the graphs that come from a TGA file and a JPG file. It is stored by using the same JPG format that the most printed/published photograph today use and the digital cameras are using JPG format as well. The MP3 format is taking the same place in the music field as the JPG format does in the graphic field.
1.1 Comparing the different recording methods
The following compares the four generation of music recorders：
| Memory Units Characteristics | ||||||||
| Sort | Content | Bulk | Needs extra protect | General playing needs number | Nature fray or dirty | Be affected with damp | Fee | Restore music |
| Micro-groove | Approx. 40 mines | Big | Much | A lots | Yes | Yes | Every | Re-buy |
| Tape | Approx. 60 mines | Small | Little | A lots | Yes | Yes | Every | Re-buy |
| CD/MD | Approx. 75 mines | Small | Much | A lots | Yes | Maybe | Every | Re-buy
|
| MP3 | More than even needed
| Small | Little | Single | No | No | One time | Free |
| Up to several hours | Very small | Little | Few | No | No | One time | Free | |
Figure 1-1
| Playing capability | ||||||
| Sort
| Change medium
| Locate aiming song
| Free playing
| Control interface
| Timbre
| Playing abrasion
|
| Micro-groove
| Very usually
| Hard
| No
| Weak
| Good
| Yes
|
| Tape
| Usually
| Could
| No
| Normal
| Good
| Yes
|
| CD/MD
| Depend on the seats of player
| Easy
| Partly
| Good
| Good
| No
|
| MP3
| Never
| Easy
| Absolutely
| Very good
| Good
| No
|
| Yes
| Easy
| Absolutely
| Very good
| Good
| No
| |
Figure 1-2
| Copying capability and copyright problem | ||||||||
| Sort
| Factory Copying
| Individual Copying
| Internet Copying
| Pirate
| ||||
| Possibility
| Distortion
| Possibility
| Distortion
| Possibility
| Distortion
| Possibility
| Fact
| |
| Micro-groove
| Yes
| Yes
| No
| ——
| ——
| ——
| Little
| Little
|
| Tape
| Yes
| Yes
| Large
| Yes
| ——
| ——
| Yes
| Yes
|
| CD/MD
| Large
| No
| Little
| Little
| ——
| ——
| Large
| Serious
|
| MP3
| ——
| ——
| Very large
| No
| Very Large
| No
| Very large
| Very Serious
|
Figure 1-3
The following figures point out the characteristics of current main memory units and which way they gonna be use:
|
| Hard disk
| Mini hard disk
| Laser disk
| Memory stick
| Floppy disk
| |
| Unit price
| High
| Very high
| Low
| High
| Low
| |
| Normal life
| Long
| Long
| Long（careful protected）
| Long
| Short
| |
| Bulk
| Big
| Small
| Small
| Very small
| Small
| |
| Content
| Very large
| Very large
| Large
| Large
| Small
| |
| Number needed
| Single
| Single
| A lots
| Few
| A lots
| |
| Reading speed
| Fast
| Fast
| Fast
| Very fast
| Slow
| |
| Writing speed
| Fast
| Fast
| Slow
| Very fast
| Slow
| |
| Apply
| ||||||
| The sign“*”shows the possibility
| ||||||
| Main memory unit on vehicles
| ****
| **
|
|
|
| |
| Main memory unit on local system
| ****
| *
| ||||
| Main memory unit on walkman
|
| *
| *
| ***
|
| |
| Transferring carrier
|
|
| **
| ****
| *
| |
| Backup unit for long term
| ***
| *
| ****
|
|
| |
Figure 1-4
1.1 The trend of variation of music storing forms
It can be seen from the figures above that the storing format for musical commodities goes the following ways:
l The bulk of storing units are becoming smaller and smaller, and their content are going larger and larger, easy to be carried. Maybe sometimes in the future, we don't need to carry any memory units anymore due to the development of wild bandwidth wireless technology.
l Because the music programs can be very easily copied and spread and stored, even the most simply individual owned set can do the above things without a little distortion. Therefore, music programs can exist independently forever without any traditional physical storing-unit in some certain meaning.
l Music programs can be played on more platforms and in a more expedient and free way..
l Combining computer science and technology very closely, makes it easy to apply any possible fruits of research the to music field. Accessing music with the computer allows us to control any operation about the music absolutely and freely. As an important part of our lives, music now has no technical barriers to carry into our future digital/intelligent life. Since the present time, this playing ability is not only a dream that we watch in science fiction movies.
But these kinds of trends are striking at the copyrights. Music commodities no longer need traditional physical carriers such as CDs or micro-groove recorders or tapes, consumers no longer need to step out to shops and bring a heap of such things home. In fact, productions comprising much hard work by the music makers could be spread worldwide during a short time, and generate uncountable copies that have no difference from the source.
It is no doubt that the copyrights are being damaged very badly. The question is: are we going to abort the benefit that comes with the development of science and technology so that we can protect the copyrights; or shall we take the weapon of science and technology to plan a new project to protect the copyrights? If we do this latter we stand to ensure the profit of the copyright owners when we enjoy our advantage.
Obviously, it’s not a good choice to close the door to new technology; nobody can stop people’s pursuit of the advantage of using the new and the desires of human nature. Then, the latter one is the necessary choice. That is, finding a way on which we can not only protect the copyrights, but also let customer use advanced technology, a way to double win.
Facing The Challenge of Digital Music
Writer: ccton
Uniforce Science & Technology LTD, NZ
Nov 2001, Wellington, New Zealand
Corrector: Gloria McMillan
English Dept. University of Arizona, USA
June 2002, Univ. of Arizona, USA
Summary
Today, digital music led by MP3 has come into our life step-by-step. But, it is a surprising fact that our society seems not to have prepared enough for the popularity of digital music.
This report tries to discuss the characteristics of digital music and the problems that come with it, particularly its effect upon the field of copyright protection, as well as relevant strategies for both producing this media and for protecting copyrights. It is hoped that this analysis will stimulate appropriate attention from society in this affair, in order to guide digital music to grow in a rapid and beneficial way.
Index
Summary
1. Review the background
1.1 History of the record methods of music
A. Micro-groove recorder
B. Magnetic tape
C. Laser disk：CD/MD
*Music COMS chip（non-mainstream product）
D. Full digital memory（computer compatible record memory）
1.1 Comparing the different recording methods
1.1 The trend of variation of music storing forms
2. View the distance
2.1 Digital Music will be the mainstream form of music instead of traditional disk/cassette finally
2.1.1 Support from the customers
2.1.2 Support from the law
2.1.3 Support from the industries of music
2.1.4 Support from the manufactories of software/hardware
2.1.5 Keep the distribution expedited
2.1.6 Similar conditions of other fields
2.2 Digital music has a very deep influence on the form of music issuing method
2.2.1 Characteristics of traditional issuing & distribution
2.2.2 Characteristics of future issue & distribution
3. Project to protect the copyrights of music
3.1 Discuss the legal definition of copyright
3.1.1 Legal usufruct
3.1.2 To transfer & present usufruct
3.2 Current situation of the copyright
3.3 Principal ideas towards a solution
3.3.1. Everyone has a code, every single song has passwords corresponding every code
3.3.2 About coping and spreading
3.3.3 Protect the passwords
3.3.4 A custom plays a single song with multi-player
3.3.5 Why the SIM card
3.3.6 Why there are multi-SIM cards under a single custom code
3.3.7 The meaning of SIM card
3.3.8 To transfer & present the SIM cards
3.3.9 When the SIM card damaged
3.3.10 When a SIM card has been lost
3.3.11 To transfer & present a single or multiple songs
3.3.12 Time limits of SIM card
3.3.13 Available term of SIM cards
3.3.14 The construction & variation of usufruct value of music
The value of each song are the sum of all usufruct
Counting and flowing of the Value of usufruct
l Original price
l Natural depreciation
l The difference between the time limit for SIM card and songs
l Coefficient compensate of unbalanced
l Coefficient compensate of benefits
3.3.15 When using on multi-media computers
3.4 Action
3.4.1 Searching support from the law
3.4.2 Framework of issue & distribution
3.4.3 Main supporting resources
3.4.4 A purchasing example in the future
Uniforce Science & Technology LTD, NZ
Nov 2001, Wellington, New Zealand
Corrector: Gloria McMillan
English Dept. University of Arizona, USA
June 2002, Univ. of Arizona, USA
Summary
Today, digital music led by MP3 has come into our life step-by-step. But, it is a surprising fact that our society seems not to have prepared enough for the popularity of digital music.
This report tries to discuss the characteristics of digital music and the problems that come with it, particularly its effect upon the field of copyright protection, as well as relevant strategies for both producing this media and for protecting copyrights. It is hoped that this analysis will stimulate appropriate attention from society in this affair, in order to guide digital music to grow in a rapid and beneficial way.
Index
Summary
1. Review the background
1.1 History of the record methods of music
A. Micro-groove recorder
B. Magnetic tape
C. Laser disk：CD/MD
*Music COMS chip（non-mainstream product）
D. Full digital memory（computer compatible record memory）
1.1 Comparing the different recording methods
1.1 The trend of variation of music storing forms
2. View the distance
2.1 Digital Music will be the mainstream form of music instead of traditional disk/cassette finally
2.1.1 Support from the customers
2.1.2 Support from the law
2.1.3 Support from the industries of music
2.1.4 Support from the manufactories of software/hardware
2.1.5 Keep the distribution expedited
2.1.6 Similar conditions of other fields
2.2 Digital music has a very deep influence on the form of music issuing method
2.2.1 Characteristics of traditional issuing & distribution
2.2.2 Characteristics of future issue & distribution
3. Project to protect the copyrights of music
3.1 Discuss the legal definition of copyright
3.1.1 Legal usufruct
3.1.2 To transfer & present usufruct
3.2 Current situation of the copyright
3.3 Principal ideas towards a solution
3.3.1. Everyone has a code, every single song has passwords corresponding every code
3.3.2 About coping and spreading
3.3.3 Protect the passwords
3.3.4 A custom plays a single song with multi-player
3.3.5 Why the SIM card
3.3.6 Why there are multi-SIM cards under a single custom code
3.3.7 The meaning of SIM card
3.3.8 To transfer & present the SIM cards
3.3.9 When the SIM card damaged
3.3.10 When a SIM card has been lost
3.3.11 To transfer & present a single or multiple songs
3.3.12 Time limits of SIM card
3.3.13 Available term of SIM cards
3.3.14 The construction & variation of usufruct value of music
The value of each song are the sum of all usufruct
Counting and flowing of the Value of usufruct
l Original price
l Natural depreciation
l The difference between the time limit for SIM card and songs
l Coefficient compensate of unbalanced
l Coefficient compensate of benefits
3.3.15 When using on multi-media computers
3.4 Action
3.4.1 Searching support from the law
3.4.2 Framework of issue & distribution
3.4.3 Main supporting resources
3.4.4 A purchasing example in the future
