Dolby dilemma

摘要

During the 1970s and 1980s the music industry grew hysterical about 'home taping'. Their trade bodies in the US and UK (the RIM and BPI) shouted for a tax on blank tape, but shot themselves in the foot by rag-bagging reasonable activities - like compiling party tapes from owned LPs and time-shifting radio broadcasts - with practices such as commercial piracy, counterfeiting and bootlegging. Roadies at rock and pop concerts came down hard (sometimes literally) on anyone spotted with a cassette recorder. And as for early portable video recorders, these were seen as the Devil incarnate. I borrowed a big and bulky Devil when a jazz pianist friend asked me to record a gig he was playing in a Covent Garden club. I was two minutes into taping when the bass player stopped playing, stormed over and told me that I would have to pay the whole band Union rates. I tried explaining that it was for private use only but to no avail. I humped all the gear out of the club and went home. Years later the bass player apologised and said how much he wished that he now had a recording of the gig to look back on. Old habits die hard. I have previously written here about the classical music evenings which an elderly music-lover pays to host for friends in his living room. I recently suggested to the regular pianist that it would be nice to use my tiny Olympus digital recorder to make a souvenir CD as a surprise Christmas present for the host. First she made lame excuses about squeaky floorboards, then angrily refused point blank.