From Electronista

The American music industry may be pressuring Dell and other computer manufacturers to disable stereo recording support in an artificial attempt to discourage piracy, say accounts from users. Users of Dell systems with SigmaTel chips in particular claim to be only allowed single-channel recording out of the box and are told that an official solution that restores stereo input will cost $99; Gateway and (in Europe) Packard Bell systems with the audio hardware are also said to be affected.

Dell and others haven't provided an official explanation for the artificially disabled stereo support or the need to charge for the fix, though one Dell representative claims that a fix for the Precision M65 restores stereo recording. Other users have also discovered a registry solution which is said to address the problem for most notebooks that use the SigmaTel processor.

Multiple reports pin the disabled audio on the Recording Industry Association of America, which is accused of asking larger PC builders to neuter full-quality recording to prevent users exploiting the analog signal to record copy protected material. While unverified, the approach would be consistent with previous RIAA approaches to combating piracy, which have often focused on closing off analog-to-digital recording.

The RIAA doesn't publish contact information and so is unavailable to respond to the accusations.

disable stereo recording support

Is this to stop pirates or merely another lame effort to prevent the rest of us from making music? I don't see any pirates, but I see a lot of independent musicians making recordings.

George, you have a good rant on this subject at AzOz:

Eliminating the Competition

by George Ziemann -- July 8, 2008

I'm trying to imagine the reaction of Trent Reznor or Thom Yorke the first time their computer tells them that the ability to make a stereo mix has been disabled. Okay, the first thing they'd do is probably laugh. But after that...

Today's story doesn't quite come from Gizmodo because all I get is a blank page, so I have no idea what it actually says. The link I saw implied that the RIAA is convincing computer manufacturers to disable the "stereo mix" function. A Google search suggests that this may be limited to Dell laptops.

My personal irony is that the reason I can't read the Gizmodo page is because my computer is 10 years old which, in turn, is primarily due to the fact that it has no idea what DRM is and I'm not gonna buy a new one that does because I don't want that crap showing up to "protect" my music. With the next step seemingly an attempt to prevent me from making a final mix, I'm going to stick with my old computer for a few years longer.

I'm going to go off on an old rant next, but I think it has matured well. The passage of time actually lends it a bit more depth than the first time around.

My personal interest in the RIAA did not begin until Sept. of 2002. I didn't really care about Napster. Saw part of the hearings, decided that if artists didn't want me to listen to their stuff, well, okay then.

It started when I tried to sell Hayden's Wall CDs on eBay. Kept getting copyright infringement notices, even though all applicable copyrights for that album were already in my desk drawer. Problem one was that I was using CD-Rs, as we didn't want to invest in 1,000 copies. But this was disclosed in the ads. I started putting this annoying disclaimer in every ad that it was on CD-R and we owned the copyrights, blah, blah, blah. Still received infringement notices.

Then I got pissed off and started attention-whoring, some of which (a barrage of e-mails, for instance) was decidedly over the line, but I was having a decidedly difficult time trying to find a human at eBay. When I finally found a couple, they did make an effort to solve my problem, offering to make a note on my file that this album was okay, blah, blah, blah. Some people have criticized me for not stopping there, being reasonable, and letting it go.

The greater issue was that I still didn't know what the "copyright infringement" issue was. Someone out there, namely the RIAA, was tagging my sales as infringing. Meanwhile, there were a gazillion sales going on every day with mp3 collections -- despite the fact that no one had released a single album containing mp3s at that point. The "watchers" couldn't seem to find any of them, but I was getting tagged as infringing for legitimate content.

I saw an ethical problem with letting eBay simply mark my file as special, namely the rhetorical question of what happens to the next poor schmuck that they do it to. Did every indie musician following the DIY path have to go through this?

After almost two months and a standing offer of a $100 credit on my account if I shut up, someone finally looked at my ad and explained the source of my problem, which actually turned out to be worth the effort to identify. Our problem was that we had named more than one influence in an attempt to describe our music, an offense described as "keyword spamming." At the time, the RIAA was using some kind of search-bot to scour the text of ad copy.

I took the $100 credit and put any discussion of influences in a graphic, which the bot cannot read. Problem finally solved, and more than one other idie act wrote to inform me that they had been having exactly the same non-specific copyright infringement issue. In addition to their eternal gratitude, I still have a $50 balance. Spent the first $50 to sell one or two CDs.

During this process, I started to question the validity of what the RIAA was doing. After waiting 30 years to get access to the resources to do an album, these morons were hard at work trying to take the resources away and putting up active roadblocks to market access.

Everything that the RIAA sees (or has seen) as a piracy threat could accurately be described as tools for those of us trying to create music. From tape and ADATs, CD-Rs, CD-burners, mp3 files (not to mention mp3.com), peer-to-peer networks -- these have all opened up new horizons for musicians seeking an audience and the RIAA has actively tried to stomp out each one.

If they are now making an effort, however feeble it may be, to disable the ability to make a stereo mix, it becomes another example of a decades-long pattern of behavior to make sure that they block every path to success that they do not own. Everything they come up with to stop the invisible pirates works equally well to stop new works from being distributed without them.

This used to piss me off. Now that we can see the spectacular results this approach consistently brings the record companies, I have learned to welcome each new stupid idea they come up with. Each one provides another advantage to having an old computer and another disincentive to getting a new one.

The RIAA has saved me countless thousands of dollars in the last 10 years. No new hardware, no new software. And, of course, no new RIAA CDs. I hear it's illegal. Leaves me some money to spend on video games and an occasional concert ticket.