There’s a related article on TechDirt: When You Can Hold Every Song Ever Recorded In Your Pocket… Does $1/Song Still Make Sense?.

These thought experiments help people realise that copies are not naturally valuable, that it is only the monopoly of copyright that pretends to make copies valuable. Naturally, only music has value. Copies are just a means of storing and communicating it. That’s why I will one day find a neat way of explaining why musicians should be paid for their music and not copies of it.

I can make a copy of a Mozart symphony for nothing, does that make his music worthless? Is Mozart turning in his grave in fury because so many people are making copies of his music without paying his heirs for it?

When you realise that the Earth orbits the Sun it can be very frustrating trying to persuade people that the Sun doesn’t orbit the Earth – given a lack of clear evidence to demonstrate it. It should be obvious. Unfortunately, the proof takes a lot of time and work to produce. I am trying to demonstrate how a musician’s audience can pay the musician for their music. Unfortunately, when people get hold of the corollary that copies can be made without payment, they decide that the musician can’t be paid if copies cost nothing and then their brains shut down, denying any further consideration of the possibility that music can be sold. A bit like people who upon hearing the heresy that the Earth isn’t the centre of the universe shut down any consideration of the theory that the Earth orbits the Sun.

Sure — just like drug laws have “stopped” people from smoking weed.
Just like “sodomy” laws “stopped” anal sex.
Just like Sarin gas not being legal “stopped” that Japanese Sarin gas attack some years ago.

Feh.

All it takes is for DRM to be broken/circumvented/sidestepped ONCE. After that, the “un-crippled” version will spread exponentially. (Good example of this: the game “Spore”. The company wasted a whole mess of money on that Secure-rom bullshit, and the thing was cracked and downloaded millions of times on p2p networks within weeks.

Another factor that severely militates against the notion of “unbreakable” DRM, is the fact that companies that have TRIED to use DRM have ended up having to teach their users to break it. Good example was when Wal-mart (I think) wanted to shut down their DRM system, and people would no longer have been able to play back files they’d “bought” from them, so they had to explicitly teach their own customers how to defeat the DRM, because if they hadn’t their customers would have been royally pissed.

So, despite all their posturing to the contrary, the corporate megaliths know that DRM is a lost cause by virtue of how digital media works as such — EVERYTHING is “copying” — transfer of data, displaying on your screen, streaming to your sound-card (where it always gets turned back into analog anyway, defeating the DRM at that point, anyhow.)

Honestly, the pro-p2p folks and “copyfighters” do more damage to our OWN cause when we dream up these doomsday scenarios, than the Corporate Megaliths ever could.

You’re actually assuming a point where ONLY closed-formats/drm’ed bullshit survives.
This ignores the basic fact that anything that can be ‘locked” can be “unlocked’ — or do you actually believe there can be such a thing as “unbreakable” DRM? If so, the RIAA/MPAA pigz would love to know about it, because it’s their ultimate wet-dream (or should we say, pipe-dream?)

Crosbie:
I really have my doubts that anybody knows about “everything ever recorded”. Are you including only “big-label” hit releases, or the vast undercurrent of independent stuff/obscure stuff?

Jandek?
The Shaggs?

I have my doubt that “everything ever recorded” could ever be gathered, OR packaged in the way that you’re advocating, even assuming a “copyleft” license.

Deafeatist nonsense (A_F) and Pollyanna Pipedreams (120 GB hard drives containing the sum total of every recording ever released) are equally useless.

We are assuming nothing bad will happen to the world or what’s left of its economy for another six years. Then, breakthroughs in research will bring about 120TB hard drives. Then they will become affordable.

Then we must assume somehow all music can be gathered together in one place and it somehow can be made to fit in 120TB (which, even now, it can’t). Then we must assume that NO NEW MUSIC IS MADE so it can remain “all music ever”.

Even if we limit it to “all recorded music 18xx-2014″, this must by nature include everything ever made by amateurs without recording deals, endless bootlegs of concerts, piano recitals, YouTube videos of idiots playing the harmonica with their butts…

OK, assume we mean just professionally recorded music. Now comes a different assumption that makes the whole thing impossible.

How would it all be gathered together in one place? Someone would have to coordinate and label them to prevent duplications. Then, all the files would have to be checked for integrity (do you know how many MP3s I’ve gotten with the end of the song cut off? Or extraneous material added to it?)

This would take more than six years, even if a hundred people got together to work on it non-stop.

Oh, and just copying 120TB will take a long time. How long would the waiting list be for it?

your suggestion has one problem. The labels (while probably aware of that problem) are not willing to surrender. that’s why they have this highly secret ACTA thingy on their agenda.

So by 2020 there will be NO possibility for harddrive owners to transfer all this nice little cultural heritage with each other. Welcome to the “new world order” of control and surveillance then! Not only “papers please!” by border guards and police, but also “you have any digital storage device on you?”

What was that film called again where a guy transported the digital data in his brain?