ukexpat's post in the ir1000 pictures thread indicated that Outlaw was concerned about getting sucked into a digital piracy debate -- RIAA and the other big companies that make their living off selling music and movies have been very touchy on that subject in recent years, and Outlaw is pretty tiny compared to those monster corporations. I can see their point.

Additional thought -- the argument that there is a threat of a device like the IR1000 being used as part of a digital piracy mechanism to produce perfect digital copies of songs is basically absurd (it's been compressed heavily and streamed across the Internet, so the concerns that RIAA has with digital output on DVD-Audio and SACD don't really apply), but the basic idea of wanting encryption on digital outputs is very fresh on the RIAA's mind, and they're not known for using logic in their decision making processes...

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Gonk

[This message has been edited by gonk (edited February 01, 2002).]