----------exploding CDs
 
 RJT> > Yeah, the record companies probably look at this
 > as a way to sell more stuff. But once you've
 > bought a copy, you have the right to  enjoy it, right?
 
> They'd like to change that. Remember DIVX? The
> "pay per viewing" DVD-like gizmo? When you bought
> a disk, you got some number of "free" viewings.
> But only on *your* machine. Try playing it on a
> friend's and you had to use a credit card to pay
> for it and "authorize" it.
 
> And when your "free" viewings ran out on your
> machine, you had to buy more.
 
> They've got similar schemes they'd like folks to
> buy into for downloaded music.
 
> Basicly, they want you to have to pay for every use.
 
 That's interesting -- I hadn't heard of that
 specific one before. Here's another example along
 those lines.
 
 When, a few years back, the visual and audio media
 folks first started developing these various
 schemes to extract as much moola from you and me
 as the market could bear, the print media folks
 [book publishers, that is] tried to get in on the
 action too.
 
 This was after the publishers had already jacked
 their prices sky-high and they felt threatened by
 all the second hand book stores that suddenly
 popped up as a result of those prices --
 bookstores from which they, the publishers,
 derived no profits.
 
 So. Some reporter attends a publishers conference
 where the discussions centered around -- get this
 -- how to manufacture a book that would only last
 for one or two readings -- and therefore couldn't
 be resold in a second hand bookstore.
 
 How to do this? This gets bizarre. They had people
 from the printing industry there at the conference
 discussing, amongst other things, stuff like very
 degradeable paper and fading ink, but they came to
 the conclusion that the solution was the glue --
 a glue that would hold the pages together only
 temporarily!
 
 They supposedly abandoned doing all this, but now,
 when I buy some paperback and the pages start
 popping off the spine as I read, I wonder if they
 really went ahead with that scheme.
 
 Sheesh.
 
 Was it it here in this echo that someone was
 extolling the beautifuuly produced technicnal books
 of the past?
 
 
 

--- Maximus/2 3.01