Could bad quality MP3s stop file-sharing?

IPM Music

IPM Music

Fremen
I was just reading another article about saving the music industry, and one of the commenters brought up this point:

Does the technology exist to degrade an MP3 file as it's shared, eventually leading to an unlistenable copy?

It would work like this, I guess - You legally DL exactly 1 copy of the 320 mp3 from iTunes. If it is then transferred in any way, via file sharing or re-uploading to another site/computer/device, the quality drops to 128. From there, it gets even worse.

I can already think of some issues, as it pertains to getting it from your computer onto your OWN device. Maybe the Cloud can identify original ownership by your registration credentials? The same tech that doesn't allow iTunes library sharing without Senuti or something.

Anyone have thoughts on this?
 
it could work but why bother mp3 is cr@p quality anyways (about 1/4 of wav 44.1kHz 16bit)
 
tbh, I do'nt believe the common joe will care about the quality of the mp3. And, by common joe, I mean those kind of person who don't even care about the quality of the song, as long as he/she can listen to it.
 
File sharing will never be stopped.

Does the technology exist to degrade an MP3 file as it's shared, eventually leading to an unlistenable copy?
Click to expand...

Basically you're asking about a willfull/deliberate generation loss. In fact, IBM already owns a patent for an "aging file system", but I don't know if it applies to music or video files. But, everything is 0's and 1's so I don't think it's hard to pull off.
 
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