SOrt of off topic here....

As an avid fan of digital music, I was most pleased when the scms system was decided upon to allow home users to make digital copies of cd's. However, you could not make copies of the copies. A fair enough solution to "piracy". I am very curious as to why such a scheme was not adapted for dvd-audio or SACD. Anyone have an idea on that? I had thought they would just use the scms system as a template and modify it for use with dvd audio and other formats.

Thanks,

Bob045

My guess? Record labels would argue that a method allowing any direct duplication of DVD-Audio or SACD would allow a music pirate to purchase one copy of a title and use it as a master copy to make limitless copies. They would also be quite content to prevent any form of copying possible, even that which some would argue falls under "fair use" by the consumer (backup copy in case of damage to the original, for example). I've always suspected that part of the reason the CD-R got off the ground without any sort of all-encompassing copy protection is the decade or so of lag between the formalization of the audio CD format and the development of PC drives capable of writing to a CD. The VHS tape saw the advent of macrovision almost hand-in-hand with the arrival of studios releasing movies on VHS, but the CD was purely a playback medium for so long that I always got the impression that the CD burner sort of snuck up on the record labels. DVD-Audio and SACD arrived after the CD-ROM and CD-RW drives, MP3 files and Napster, and the advent of a whole new audio/video medium (DVD) that included digital encryption as part of the format. That's just my guess, though. There may be some more official explanation of why it turned out that way.

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