Digital Recordings

I was poking around the internet the other day and I came across a video that promised to be worth watching, so I thought I would download it. Well, it won't download. I need iTunes (!?!?), so I download and install iTunes, and now I can download and watch the video. It all went smoothly enough, though it was I don't know how many megabytes. I do all this and the video turns out to some lawyer giving a lecture. I watched it for a few minutes before I gave up and turned it off. So it was basically a pointless exercise, but I learned that you can set up high quality videos to be downloaded for free using iTunes. Did not know that.

Of course my computer has slowed down. It seems to get a little slower every time I install a new software package. If I click on "All Programs" on the Start Menu, it opens a window that covers the entire screen. I have been installing programs ever since I got this computer and it has only been this year that I noticed it slowing down. I hardly ever remove programs, mostly because the remove procedure usually doesn't work, or even worse, it screws something up, and I still have plenty of disk space.

Then I was watching a YouTube video of Concrete Blond and I noticed that the audio seemed to be lacking, so I thought I would play the copy of the track I had loaded on my computer. No go. Seems VLC won't play wma files.

I used to use Windows Media Player to play music on my computer, but at some point it started giving me trouble. I tried upgrading, but that didn't work too well either. So I switched to VLC. But now I find that all the CD tracks that I copied to my hard disk using Windows Media Player are stored as wma files, and VLC won't touch them. Something about DRM.

So I try Windows Media Player again. This time it installs and runs. Probably because I finally installed SP2 a month or so ago. First thing it does though is puts up a screen of options and the one option that is already checked is the "automatically get license" from somewhere on the internet. Screw you Microsoft, I don't need you jackholes checking up on me. Uncheck that box (as if that will protect me).

So now I can play all my wma files again. I think I'm moving to Linux.

This whole DRM (Digital Rights Management) thing is screwed up beyond belief. Bands are doing more concert tours because they make more money from concerts than they do from records. Bands are releasing recordings over the internet because they make so little from the record companies it's not worth dealing with them. iTunes has a pretty good idea. The media companies would make more money if they would just make it cheap and easy to download their recordings. Most people are not trying to screw them over. A dollar for a tune is cheap and easy. They don't want to be hassled by all this DRM crap.

Now if there is someone who is making large numbers of copies and selling them, well go ahead and prosecute them, but don't make everyone else party to your miserly ways.

Update December 2016 replaced missing picture.