I feel very saddened by the way that all beautiful technical developments are being ruined by the copyright mafia. Being an older person I grew up and lived in a timeslot where it was great fun to listen to far away radiostations (out-of-state and Canadian when I lived in California, all over Europe when living here in Europe) and no one even thought of such issues. We recorded music and or radio programmes on a tape recorder, later cassette tracks, and it was the most normal thing in the world.
AM radio is being abandoned in most European countries, DAB and dvb-t/t2 terrestrial signals are too weak to cross borders substantially and on satellite so much in the ways of public broadcasting is encrypted and totally unavailable (not even the option to buy a paid subscribe from abroad) that one feels increasingly choked. Shortwave radio has already been murdered so it's no longer possible for me to travel through Europe using my supersensitive Becker car radio to stay in touch with home or with other countries of which I can understand the languages.
I felt very jealous when I read that in the US there was radio via satellite that could be received in a moving vehicle, but reading this here again it seems that money-greed kills off all that contributes to a care free enjoyment of what technology has to offer us. It feels almost like the bastards who keen ruining our computer pleasure with their virusses and spyware (not to mention governments that abuse our freedom of expression by spying on us). What in heaven's name can we normal people do to get back to the lifestyle of not so long ago while maintaining the beauty of advanced technology?
Excellent writeup! Sorry I pulled a little bit of it out of the quote for length, but well put. Of late, you echo my thoughts on technology and big companies. You can spell the virus they have: G-R-E-E-D. It's augmented every time a company decides rather than compete, do a buyout. We've seen it in SO many industries, and communications leads the pack. When it happens, the greed of the "decision makers" is fed, and the product for the consumer is compromised. I was accused of being a "traitor" to my own industry of terrestrial radio when XM first came out. I had a receiver in my car the day they lit up the satellite for the northern U.S. I had over an hour in the car commute to do my morning show, and it was nice having consistency in programming. I enjoyed the quality. I've heard it go down in quality as well, like others report. It was a good product. It made local radio polish what it does, to remain viable, and LOCAL radio had (and has) the advantage that there are government limits on the amount of "local content" that satellite music stations on XM/Sirius can carry. Not sure how they got around serving up some of the "big" terrestrial stations when XM hit the (satellite) air.
Technology has moved faster than our human brain's ability to apply or learn common sense to the tech! We feed lawyers, we write disclaimers, and we always blame everyone else, rather than putting energy into innovation and positive forward motion in our businesses and our lives. It's tough to fight it anymore. Terrestrial radio is under attack by the music industry now! We already pay the people who WRITE the songs, but now, those who write AND perform want to double dip. They WANT us to play their songs, but they want to be paid for us to do it. Not enough money in legal downloads, CDs, concerts, record DEALS and endorsements anymore. We (radio stations) even BUY our music these days, it's not handed to us to promote by the music industry. Hasn't been for a LONG time. It all points back to GREED. We've allowed it to happen, and the "common" person's voice means little up against large corporate lobbying where technology issues are concerned, or at least, RADIO. (but we are by no means, "alone" in this type of fight.)
When XM and Sirius competed, there was some degree of innovation in programming. Merged: bland. Same happened in all the buyouts in corporate terrestrial radio. Now the big guys answer to stockholders instead of LISTENERS.
You nailed the essence of many issues, not just communications with your reply in this thread. Thank you for writing it . I really liked your "Copyright Mafia" phrase, too.
