This is an interesting line of logic regarding CD prices (within the context of a discussion of HDCP compliance) that I never really considered, being a naive idiot.

Home Toys Article - HDCP: For Better or for Worse?:

HDCP attempts to solve a serious problem that’s plagued the studios and other content producers for years and is something that is good for everyone. In fact, piracy is cited as the main reason why audio CD’s never got to that price point was promised when they debuted in the early 1980's.


Now, every machine between your media (say, a Blu-Ray disc) and your TV must have some silly compliance checker before you can watch HD content. The entire move from analog to HD seems to me to be about digital rights management (as opposed to analog rights management which, for whatever reason, corporations didn't seem to be able to get down well). Now, with HD and a government mandated obsolescence of analog, corps get to try and protect their content all over again. If this isn't market collusion, I'm not sure what is.

I think, from DRM-less mp3s sold and over-the-air television and radio, we can see that freely accessible often outweighs the cost to embed rights management functions into various media. I can get HD NFL games from the airwaves, for example, and likely rip them to my computer without a serious quality degradation. Still, I don't, and pirate repackaging doesn't happen (that is, nobody is selling unlicensed NFL seasons on DVD in any large quantities) precisely because the product is, in this case games, so danged easy to get.

Extend to my "I'll pay iTunes to find the music for me," argument.

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