Little Mr Mahatma

In which the middle-aged Peacenik mouths off about War Drones--and all the other things that make him cranky.

Mr Mahatma--who is a Mr in real life--lives in the valleys of Southern California with his wife, a herd of Dears, and an impressive collection of books. Pnorny!
He is reachable at:
littlemrmahatma@yahoo.com

All writings are copyrighted 2003-2008 and trademarked: Little Mr. Mahatma

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Little Mr Mahatma

Thursday, June 26, 2003

Blowin' In The Wind
I have a fairly large record collection. Yep, vinyl - a ton of it. Large platters that break and warp ever so easily. But lots of good music on them and many original albums that you can't find on CD. But this isn't 1960, 1970, or even 1980. Vinyl is dead. CDs are dying. DVDs are it and higher density DVDs are peeping over the horizon.

So...ummm...how many times must I purchase my music?

For example, I have an excellent album of Pink Floyd's "Dark Side Of The Moon" on vinyl. I am allowed by law to "rip" the album so I can copy it to a CD-R and play it on my computer or in my car. It takes a while and takes some effort but the CD-R sounds just like the album - little pops and all. But it is Floyd!

I can not by law download the music if it originated from the CD version of the same album. I have to buy the CD. Theory being the CD sounds better - even if it's the same music with no remixing or no re-recording by the group. It just sounds better. No pops.

When DVDs take over I'll have to buy the Pink Floyd DVD before I can make my personal use versions. Even if it's the same music as the CD and album.

And so on. What's annoying is that the CD versions aren't necessarily adding in value other than clarity. If, for example, you have a VHS and DVD version of the same film, many times the DVD version has extra footage added into the film plus all the other extras. Sure, CDs added in an extra music tracks early on when competing with albums but, again, if I want to backup my albums. I have to do it. I can't shortcut and download the same tracks over the Net.

What Kazaa-ers and other P2Pers should do is clearly label whether a track is from a CD or an album. Certainly if I own an album I should be able to download MP3 if they're based on it.

And now there's a scam with movies. Release a DVD version. Wait. Release it again with added footage as a "Director's Cut". Wait. Release it again with more junk.

You don't see this with books. You don't see Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" being re-released every few years with additional chapters. Tom Clancy doesn't go back and add new plots to his books. J.K. Rowlings doesn't sneak in new paragraphs for Harry Potter. Sure, they have new covers and forwards but the text remains the same.

You do see this with computer games. This is a typical pattern: A new game is released. Then months of patch release hell. An expansion pack comes out. More patches. Then the "Gold" edition combining the original release plus the expansion. Patches! Then - dum, dum, dee, dum! - Version 2! With patches, expansions, and so on, until the "Value Edition" with everything on one CD and PDF manuals.

I just hope electronic books never catch on and replace paper or we'll start seeing "Gold" and "Value" versions of our favorite books

So what's my point here? I don't know. Just some interesting observations. I buy a book once and never buy another copy unless the first falls apart from frequent use, old age, or hungry bugs. I see a movie in the theater. If I like it and buy the DVD, I don't need or want to pay for an extra DVD full of extras. If something like high-density DVD comes out I'm not going to sell my DVDs and buy new versions - well, maybe. Complete James Bond on one HD-DVD could be cool...

9:08 AM

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