8 July 2008 41 views No Comment Print This Post  Email This Post

I  just saw this link on digg this morning.  A guy over at ripten had just gotten a new dell laptop and everything seemed peachy until he attempted to set up some audio recoding sessions.  After some searching it was discovered that there were many reports of audio recoding problems on groups of dell laptops an desktops.  

A direct call to Dell confirmed that the problem could be fixed buy it would cost $99 for what was essentially a driver that turned back on the recoding features.It appears that Dell, and several other computer manufacturers such as Gateway and Pac Bell, were pressured by the RIAA (Record Industry Association of America) into disabling the stereo mix functionality. If true, I find it disturbing that at no time did any of the aforementioned manufacturers see it fit to explain the restrictions they were imposing on our hardware.

Most of this hardware is the same across multiple PC hardware vendors.  The crazy thing is that installing a driver from another PC manufacture for the same perfectly functional audio hardware results in a working PC.  

It bothers me that not only  will large PC manufacturers bow to the RIAA and disable parts of their products, but won’t make any mention of it to consumers.  I can only assume that part or all of the mentioned $99 fee will end up in RIAA pockets.  I’m well aware that the RIAA assumes most users of computers and portable audio players pirate music and must be squished.  

I’ve always built my PCs with off the self parts, but for users of laptops it not so simple.  I guess this goes on the list with the DMCA, DRM and other fun little things to protect us fro using our own content.

[via ripten]