[Empeg-general] Re: Sorry about our Canadian Friends...

[genixia@empegbbs-noreply.merlins.org]

Yeah, it'd be bad for a while.

But consider the scenario where we *only* need bigger drives for media storage. That is pretty much now. My photo album from the past couple of years fits onto a single cdrom (over 800 images at 1280x1024 - 450MB). Computer applications aren't that big, even with M$ bloatware. My entire CD collection is under 20GB in mp3 format at the moment, so that only leaves ripped DVDs to take up these huge hard drives. They *may* have a point.

But, the reality is that by the time they got any tariff on HD through government, we'll already have TB hard drives or bigger. So what's going to make us buy larger HD and pay the tariffs?

Working on the assumption that a DVD is 5GB, allows 200 DVDs/TB. How many people own 200 DVDs at $20 or more? Of those people, how many would find benefit in ripping them all to HD. There just isn't as much to be gained from doing this as there is with music. You typically watch a whole movie at a time for 1-2 hours, so the convenience factor is less of an incentive. You can't realistically watch a movie and drive/work/read/jog/do stuff around the house etc., so the need for portability is also far less.

So, the only 2 reasons that I can see for buying a new hard drive at that time are (a) to store home video, or (b) to rip as many CDs or DVDs as I can beg, borrow or steal without regard to copyright.

I still think that the RIAA/MPAA are a bunch of politician-purchasing thieves though. (*** Personal opinion ***)