The Last Page
Don't Blame It on the Rio
By Dale Dougherty
The Internet is a constant challenge to the
establishment. It is challenging every industry and it is changing the way
people think and act. It disrupts well-defined patterns and well-understood
systems. It is at once subversive and permissive, rather like what we believe
about the sixties.
That's why I recently bought a Rio, a small hand-held device made by Diamond
Multimedia that can download MP3 files from my computer into 32MB of flash
memory. I didn't really buy it to listen to music, though my kids got hold
of it and began using it for that purpose. I wanted it because MP3 is radical,
and it's causing an uproar in the recording industry. I wanted to be a part
of it.
MP3 is short for MPEG Audio Layer 3. MPEG stands for Moving Picture Expert
Group, which has produced notable video standards, including the MPEG-2 format
behind DVDs. MP3 is a compressed encoding standard for audio that reduces
sound data by a factor of 12 while maintaining the CD-quality sound of the
original. What makes MP3 notorious is that it makes perfect copies.
As you probably know, with an MP3 encoder, you can create a copy of any track
from an audio CD. The copy becomes an MP3 file, a piece of music with a life
free of its plastic container. I can download that file into the Rio and listen
to it anywhere. I can also get files from sites like MP3.c
