RE: Another Nail in the MP3 coffin? - Rant!

["Paul Gordon" <paul_gordon@xxxxxxx>]

(Sorry, this has turned into a bit of a rant!)

>
>you are smoking crack if you think windows media has a chance of coming
>close to the penetration of MP3..
>


You say that now, but...

I very well remember when Wordperfect had 95% of the desktop word processor
market.

I remember when Harvard graphics had a similarly large slice of the desktop
graphics market.

I remember when Lotus 123 had virtually the entire desktop spreadsheet
market to itself.

I remember when Novell Netware owned about an 80%-odd share of the NOS
market.

I remember when Microsoft really didn't think the internet was important
enough for them to bother with.

At the time, if anyone had suggested that Microsoft would wipe all of these
incumbents off the face of the planet, then similarly dismissive remarks
would have been heard!

Experience has shown time, and time, and time again, that where Microsoft
is
concerned, an established brand, or an established standard, or even total
market domination, don't amount to a hill of beans! - If Microsoft
>wants<
to wipe out MP3, then MP3 will be wiped out, and there is no messin'.

Sure it may take time to replace the massive amount of MP3 material that's
out there, and they could probably never totally eradicate it (like
smallpox) - there would be resistance groups of people like us who want to
keep it alive. BUT, when they own about 98% of the desktop software market,
and have the werewithall, (and the demonstrated willingness) to just buy
any
competitor that disents, the power of Microsoft should not be
underestimated!

I'm not suggesting that this is a likely scenario, so please lets not start
another Microsoft flame war here...

Also think about the reasonably high possibilty that in the not-too-distant
future, all the IDE hard disks that we need to keep buying to store all
these MP3's on may well have copy protection built in to the drive firmware
that will effectively prevent the swapping of files between different
machines. Commercially released music CD's can also carry the same
protection mechanism, rendering them useless to any ripping software that
does not conform to the copy protection scheme.

It's not difficult to envisage a future, in just 5-10 years or so, where it
will not be possible to bypass the copy protection, as it will be built in
to every storage device that you can buy. - Of course, under this brave new
world, you would still be able to make copies of your own CD's, but they
would only work on >your< PC.


>
>search on google for MP3=16,400,000 hits, WMA=205,000, Windows
>Media=605,000
>
>

Your search example is a classic case that illustrates the point: - it's
obvious to anyone that the difference in numbers is mainly because the WMA
format has copy management mechanisms built in that limit it's usefullness
as a swappable format, which the MP3 format does not. (Not to mention the
relative ages of the two - MP3 has been around a LOT longer than WMA). -
However, what do you suppose will happen if (when) the MP3 format is
effectively subjugated by the same copy management mechanisms being
enforced
by the hardware used to create/store/play them? Once MP3 is subject to the
same limitations, then it merely becomes the case that there are 16.4
million sites containing totally useless (IE unswapable) music files. When
this is a reality, then don't you think it likely (given that all formats
are subject to the same copy protection), that a format which offers both
higher quality and smaller files will usurp MP3? - Nothing lasts forever,
in
the future, there will be no more VHS decks/tapes, this despite the fact
that it is the single most popular video carrier in the whole world! - bet
you a pound that there are more VHS tapes in existence than there are MP3
files... and I'll bet you another pound that we both live long enough to
see
the day when our progeny do not even know what one is!

Big brother is not only watching you, he's thinking hard about stopping you
doing this!!


>-my 2 bits


And mine!

Paul G.

PS. - I >REALLY< hope I'm wrong!...


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