You can’t read this interview at Engadget with Elliott D. Frutkin, CEO of TimeTrax, and not think, “Smart guy.” He’s
the head of the firm that offers time-shifting and space-shifting for satellite digital radio broadcasts by connecting
a satellite radio receiver with PC software that can grab the tags and records discrete chunks. The recorded audio can
be played back anywhere, but it has your subscriber ID embedded which makes it less likely you’d share it. (I had this
idea with a colleague long ago: you’d put an eBook buyer’s credit card number on the first page, making it very
unlikely they’d share it.)
Read the rest of the interview over at Engadget. It was conducted by my friend and colleague J.D. Lasica who is writing
a soon-to-be invaluable book on the war Hollywood is waging against what he calls the digital generation.
1. You wrote:
(I had this idea with a colleague long ago: you’d put an eBook buyer’s credit card number on the first page, making it very unlikely they’d share it.)
Early on, one of the ebook vendors did this - don't remember if it was peanut press or fictionwise. The books came in a proprietary encrypted format. The decryption key was the credit card number used to buy the book. You might give it to a (really close) friend, but you certainly wouldn't post it one the internet. Of course, with one-time-use cc numbers, that wouldn't work as well today.
Posted at 4:15PM on Jun 16th 2005 by Sys Admn