Copy-protected CDs - philosophical discussion

If I owned a record company I would want my product copy protected. I would never sell the product, I would only license it. The encoding/license agreement would be so strict that the disc, or digital file, would only work on a single digital playback device. If you wanted a copy for your car or for a second system, you'd have to buy another copy of the product. Such a drastic system is the only way to totally protect the rights of the owners. In return for such the complete protection of my artistic/capitalistic interest, I would charge a nominal fee for the use of the music product, say - $2.00/each. At two bucks a drop any law abiding person won't complain.

Regarding sound quality issues - who cares? Yeah, I'm sure there's some less than 1%er type with a mega-buck system would will truly notice the sonic degradation, but my marketing people have told me that those people don't buy much music.

CFB, take my earlier post at the literal level. If I owned a major record label my best capitalistic interests would be in implementing a foolproof copy protection system. That is how I would best protect the economic well-being of my shareholders and myself. However, if there was money to be made in putting out high quality sound recordings, my fictional major recording company then would do that too. Unfortunately, there is a very limited market for high quality sound recordings. Audiophiles , of which I am one, are a very small minority of the music buying public. In the real world, record companies only have two choices assuming they decide to continue to produce high quality sounding music. They could either subsidize the high end product line through the profits generated by mass music sales, or they could charge the audiophile buyer the true cost of production. Which route do you think the corporate conglomerates that run the modern music industry will take?

My earlier posts were written to express what I believe to be the attitude of the major recording labels. The heart of my hypothetical proposal is to exchange an absolute safeguard against unauthorized copying for a dramatic lowering in consumer prices. Cornfedboy has pointed out several valid problems with my position. It may not be financially viable and it is doubtful that the recording corporations would actually lower their prices.

Another point I was trying to get across is that audiophiles represent a very small percentage of the music buying public. Rightly or not, our fascination with sound quality is not widely shared. I point to the emergence of the MP3 format as evidence of what the general public is willing to accept regarding sound quality. Tireguy points out that there are several audiophile oriented music companies, but I would speculate that the combined sales of the six labels he mentioned in a decade is less than the sales of Sony/Columbia in any given week. The audiophile market is a very minor blip on the screen. It's a niche market that can easily be taken over by the major labels. Mosiac has done a marvelous job with their comphrehensive jazz reissues. How long did it take for Sony/Columbia to recognize the market opportunity and start limiting Mosiac's access to their catalog while they simultaneously released the reissues on their own Legacy label?

I make the assumption that any copy protection encoding will be audible under some set of circumstances. Whether we like it or not, it probably will be an important element of the music distribution future.

Music software sales fell by 5% in 2001 compared to 2000. The best selling software in December for Wintel machines was Easy CD Creator; the Mac best seller for the same month was Toast, another CD burning software. It's easy to see why record companies are trying to prevent the computer copying of their products.