Lately I’ve been noticing an interesting trend in the entertainment industry.

Internet radio stations in the US apparently are being asked to “adopt secure streaming standards” to garner the support of the Recording Industry Association (RIA).

Here in New Zealand, the RIANZ are still waving sticks about the format-shifting debate, saying that under proposed new law it should be allowed to copy your music – for personal use – to only one other format. Even this is something of a loosening of their attitudes of earlier days. Listen to the RIA and RIANZ and you would think everybody with a computer is a pirate and should not be trusted.

Then the (laughably funny) incident of Telecom New Zealand promoting format shifting appeared on the scene. In their regular customer newsletter (sent out with customer bills) they advocated the copying of old vinyl LPs to CD and offered information on how best to do this. There’s an interesting lack of response from the RIANZ on this one, even though it is promoting an activity that is clearly in violation of NZ law.

I then thought about days of old when one would copy a vinyl record to cassette tape to play in the car, or perhaps in a portable stereo. Really that is no different to copying your CD to your iPod, but I do not recall the industry getting overly upset about cassette tapes. Also, recording your favourite TV program on the VCR and lending it to your friends would appear to be in breach of the law. The same goes for recording music or voice off the radio.

It just struck me today what the real differences are. If you transfer from vinyl or radio to cassette or TV to video-cassette, then you are getting a less-than-optimal copy and that copy will degrade over time. Actually, your vinyl will degrade over time too, but less so. Even copying a commercial audio- or video-cassette to another of the same, you will lose quality. In a nutshell, you could get better quality if you forked out for a new one.

Now, enter the digital age and your copy from CD to iPod is…..Perfect! Well, yes, inevitably users will choose to deliberately reduce the quality in order to squeeze more music into their player, but that is a conscious decision and the option is there to take a perfect copy. CD to CD copies are perfect too (if you use the right, free software). Copy your CD to your computer and you have a perfect copy too (same caveats).

So the trouble seems to be the industry do not want you to have a means of making a perfect copy of their wares. That’s the only reasoning I can see behind their current stances on these issues. I wonder if they would be happy for 64kb/s MP3s to make the rounds unhindered – after all, that quality is often referred to as “FM radio quality.”

For my part, I still buy CDs of the music I want to listen to. I’ve yet to be caught out by “copy protected” ones, and have format shifted all of them for playing on my iPod. But then, I have bought very few CDs in recent times because ‘mainstream’ music is generationally incompatible with my ears. The only stuff I buy is new releases from my favourite artists – all of whom have been around since the 70’s or earlier!