The Bride Of Macrovision

Marty writes: "Coming soon to a CD near you, Safeaudio, the Bride of Macrovision. Those wonderful people at Macrovision, who brought us such wonderful technological innovations as, well, macrovision copy protection on VHS tapes, is now taking a stab at the CD market with a new scheme called Safeaudio. The press release about the beta test can be seen here, which I found initially on Stereophile. It's designed to prevent copying of audio CDs to a CD-R (no technical details are given). Might as well get rid of that whole pesky fair use provision of copyright law, right? After all, according to Macrovision, "We believe that SAFEAUDIO provides an opportunity for the music industry to regain the billions of dollars lost to unauthorized casual copying." Better we all buy multiple copies of the same CD so we can keep one in the car, one at work, one at home so the music corporations can regain their rightful billions that we've stolen by making personal copies or compilation CDs for our own use."

Comments

Re:New revenue for an old dog

[Squid]

Only $43.45? CDs will be that price in two years anyway.

Re:Slashdot will never give in

[Misch]

How else other than through the slale of records is an artist supposed to create his music?

I'm not sure what you're asking, but i think you mean "How else other than through the sale of records is an artist to support themselves?" It's called "Go on tour." You know how much artists royalties amount to from a song on a CD? 8.5 CENTS. They get much more from sales of tickets & band merchandise at concerts.

How much do you think it costs to purchase instruments and rent a recording studio? Don't know? Let me tell you then it's quite a bit!

And the price is dropping every day because microphone prices and digital mastering equipment prices are dropping through the floor. More and more people have access to high-quality recording equipment. Get a few good microphones, some good recording equipment, and some space away from ambient noise, and you have a decent recording area.

Would you like the work of your inspiration to be copied without regard to your rights as the creator?

Finally making a good point. What about the will of the artists? The will of the artists went out the window once they signed their recording contract.

I think you're missing the fact that there are a couple of different camps on this issue. There's blatant piracy, and then there's this issue of FAIR USE. Blatant piracy is obviously wrong, but telling me I can't make a copy of a CD I purchased to take to work with me so I don't have to carry a whole pile of CD's with me is wrong

Big question

[ocie]

The big question that must be answered here is the following. Fair use provisions allow consumers to make copies for their own use in different formats, etc. Is it then legal, or illegal for distributors to add some measure to prevent this fair use?

As I see it, fair use is something that applies to the consumer. I.E. a freedom from prosecution connected with copying media for personal use. There was no restriction placed on the record companies, except to keep them from sueing end-users.

Somehow, I don't think the record companies will be found guilty. After all, they are not coercing people to buy their product, and are not applying things retroactively. I'd like to be wrong about this, but who knows.

The way to fight this is to find out when the first such CD will be released, and organize a protest. If a lot of people go out and buy the CD, try to make a copy for person use, and then return it the next day, that might do something.

Re:Big question

[Richy_T]

As I see it, fair use is something that applies to the consumer. I.E. a freedom from prosecution connected with copying media for personal use. There was no restriction placed on the record companies, except to keep them from sueing end-users.

I would rather see it as something upon which copyright law does not encroach. The natural state of things is to have the freedom to copy anything at any time. Copyright law is a restriction of that freedom. Fair use is recognising that there are activities where application of the principles of copyright would harm society rather than advance it. And after all, copyright law is all about the advancement of society, right? Right?

Rich

Re:Big question

[ocie]

The problem is that this is no longer a question of law, it is a question of technology. Prior to the mainstream adoption of copyable digital media, the only way to prohibit copying was a legal remedy. This remedy was struck down as conflicting with fair use.

Now, the record companies have (or think that they have) a technological remedy to prevent copying. Since fair use provisions never prohibited technilogical measures before, there is no reason to think that they will do so now _automatically_.

As an example, I am free to copy CDs to tapes to play them in my car. But if I still have only a reel-to-reel recorder and a turntable, I can't _technically_ accomplish this feat. The law doesn't prevent me, technology does. In this case, I could go buy the necessary equipment to remedy the problem, but if the record companies implement their plan, I will have no such remedy.

IANAL, but as I see it, the question is weather fair use _guarantees_ me the ability to make copies of my CDs in such a way that the record companies are violating that guarantee. Or is it instead merely the _freedom_ to make copies of my CDs provided that I have the technological means to do so?

Re:Big question

[Richy_T]

IANAL, but as I see it, the question is weather fair use _guarantees_ me the ability to make copies of my CDs in such a way that the record companies are violating that guarantee. Or is it instead merely the _freedom_ to make copies of my CDs provided that I have the technological means to do so?

I see where you're coming from. I would say that no, fair use does not guarantee that you have to be given access. However, if there are methods that companies will put in to attempt to prevent copying that would be considered fair use, then people should be quite free to attempt to circumvent those methods. Unfortunately the DMCA puts paid to that. Theoretically anyway.

Once again, I think we have to come back to what the purpose of copyright is. That is to encourage artistic activity and enrichen our culture. Currently, it is being used to generate profits and homogenise and dub down our culture.

Unfortunately, politicians are corrupt bastards so long as the big industry bucks keep rolling in, they aren't going to have any incentive to change.

Rich

Correct me if I'm wrong...

[Psmylie]

I was under the impressrion that the macrovision copy protection required both a hardware and software element... meaning that if the recording device and the media being copied both have macrovision on it, then the copies fail (or the signal is interfered with so it records funky). I used to have 2 VCR's, a newer and an older one. If I tried recording from the old to the new, it would crap out, but if I did the recording on the old one (without macrovision on it) then everything was hunky-dory.

The point I'm trying to make is that if this new copy protection works the same way, then it will only work on brand new hardware... so just hold on to those older devices.
Of course, they could try to release cd's that only work on macrovision-enabled cd-players, but I don't think that would go over too well("You mean I have to buy a new cd player to listen to the latest Britney Spears P.O.S? Fook that! I'll get it off the net!")

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong...

[Squid]

OK, the five-cent tour of Macrovision:

In between video frames there's a short delay called the Vertical Blanking Interval (VBI). It's there to give the TV's electron beam time to go back to the top of the tube in preparation for the next frame - so the TV should ignore everything in that interval (about 80 lines worth).

Macrovision stuffs the VBI with high-intensity garbage. As you may expect, this would confuse the hell out of a VCR as it tries to lay this signal down on tape - its automatic gain control is gonna be going nuts trying to figure out how bright or how dark the signal really is.

TVs are usually unaffected by this because they are supposed to throw away everything in the vertical blank. VCRs don't have a gain control between tape playback and video output, so if you straight from VCR to TV, the VBI garbage gets ignored. We hope.

Circumventing Macrovision is easy enough: it's all in the timing - once you figure out where the frame starts and stops, you can simply black out everything in the VBI. Any device that takes apart the video signal and reassembles it - and isn't designed to specifically reinsert the macro noise - will inadvertently remove the macrovision signal. This is why some older VCRs are unaffected by Macrovision - in their attempt to clean up a signal that would probably be coming from the antenna on your roof, they'd tear down and rebuild the signal minus the garbage in the VBI.

Amusing: newer TVs sometimes use the same auto gain circuitry as VCRs, and thus are affected by Macrovision.

Neat trivia: Betamax is unaffected by Macrovision because it uses a different gain control method. I have a later Beta deck from 1985 - it happily copies Macroed tapes, garbage and all, and plays them back just fine, but the result cannot then be copied to VHS because the Macrovision is still intact on the tape! Older Beta decks probably cleaned up the incoming signal as described above.

Re:But will it be as successful as vhs macrovision

[lizrd]

Likewise with me. I've got an RCA DVD player both my old crappy emerson VCR and my new Panasonic VCR work fine unless I try to record.
_____________

Re:Why do you have to make copies?

[SnowDog_2112]

I take _all_ my CD's back and forth to work. All 200 or so of them.

I also scratch a fair number of CDs taking them out of the wacky book I have to use to carry that many CDs. Making backup copies of the CDs would avoid that problem. I'm just too lazy to do it, honestly.

And then there's the making of your own 'mix' CDs, home-grown "best of" type compilations, etc. There's even (gasp, I know) making a nice little mix CD for a friend of bands s/he might like (Is that illegal, or fair use...? The world may never know).

The point isn't even why ... the point is we're allowed to, and there's enough reason for us to want to that our right to shouldn't be destroyed because the industry is afraid of piracy.

Argument of convenience doesn't work

[Fervent]

Better we all buy multiple copies of the same CD so we can keep one in the car, one at work, one at home so the music corporations can regain their rightful billions that we've stolen by making personal copies or compilation CDs for our own use.

And you can't physically take the CD from one place to another? Too much effort? Once again, the argument of convenience simply doesn't work. You can't transfer the argument for "backup" copies to any other physical material -- I don't ask for a copy of my television when I purchase it, so I can see it somewhere else. Or a copy of my car.

Let's face it. If you use superficial arguments to argue for copy rights for consumers, you get disregarded.

Re:Argument of convenience doesn't work

[SpinyNorman]

Huh? You've never taped a CD to listen to it in the car?

If this CD copying prevention stuff works, I guess it'll be a major blow for car CD manifacturers, and a return to tape.

Re:Argument of convenience doesn't work

[Sethb]

Not to mention MP3 player manufacturers. I just got my nifty Rio 500 to listen to while I work out. I've outfitted it with 128MB of storage, and now you're telling me I can't take the music off of my CDs and copy it to my device? But CDs skip, and they players are much more heavy and bulky than my little MP3 player...

Fair use is a legit concern here, and I'm hoping that this technology dies a quick death.
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Re:Why do you have to make copies?

[einTier]

You obviously either don't have a large collection of music or a wide variety of musical taste. Or, maybe you just don't really care what you're listening to.

Why do I need to carry a bunch of CDs with me? Because I never know what I'll want to listen to. I might start out the day listening to Tori Amos, and then by the end of the day decide that I'm really in a Metallica mood or maybe a Stevie Ray Vaughn mood. I have no idea when I leave the house what kind of music I'm going to want to listen to on the drive home. Just to et a good representation of my 1000+ CD collection requires me to carry about 80 or so CDs around with me. That's about $1600 just sitting around in my car while I'm at work -- so I bring it in -- then it's $1600 laying on my desk at work. Then, invaribaly, I need one of the CDs laying around at home.

So, I coded every CD I own into MP3. That resides on a server at my house with a broadband connection. I can get my music from anywhere that has a broadband connection. Not only that, I can carry around the same 80 CDs (using the AIWA mp3 player in the car or the Rio Volt elsewhere), but have almost my complete collection at my fingertips, and if it's stolen a few hours of my time and $20 will replace it. The actual real CDs are safe (enough) at home.

And, as far as the pricing goes, I'm tired of the bullying tactics of the RIAA and the big four. I was mad when they started their crusade against the Diamond Rio and mp3s in general. I got madder when they started in on Napster (where I get music they don't want to sell me -- at any price). I finally got pissed when it was revealed they were price fixing (no really!) and only got a slap on the wrist for it.

It does not cost $20 to manufacture, ship, sell a CD and compensate the artist. Sell me a CD at a reasonable price, and allow me to get my music in the format I want it (more for the CD, less for the mp3 on line), AND uncrippled, so I can do what I want with it. As of now, I'm not buying any CDs. I haven't in over a year, and I'm getting to the point where I don't miss it. I used to be one of the big four's biggest customers, now I am not a customer at all -- and will not be until they get off their high horse.

The MPAA should watch out too, because right now I'm about half satisfied with them. I think $15-20 is fair for a DVD, it costs that much to go see the movie at the theatre -- and even though I don't approve, I understand region incoding. However, the DeCSS thing is really leaving a bad taste in my mouth. Plus, I wonder if I wouldn't spend more money on DVDs if they weren't just a bit cheaper.

Re:Why do you have to make copies?

[Nonesuch]

I have a 12-disk changer in the car, the cartridges for car changers are incompatible with any home stereo changer (I know, I looked).

I have some disks that are 'out of print', and cannot be replaced at any costs.

I keep CD-R duplicates in the car, from originals I own, partly for convenience, but mostly so if the CDs in the car get scratched, stolen, torched, etc, I am out a few bucks in CD-R media instead of a few hundred in original CDs.

D2A2D

[Stavr0]

Duuh-obvious. CD to Line out to line in to CDR for the first copy, that cleans the MV then it's free-for-all from then on. (Oh and a 192+kbps MP3 for good measure while we're at it)
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Re:D2A2D

[BarefootClown]

This is true, but it also requires specialized hardware to be in the VCR and TV.

Macrovision Primer:

Automatic Gain Control: an automatic system for adjusting the amplification of a signal so that the output is at a standard level. This allows input signal variances to be compensated so that the TV displays consistently between sources. May be "fast" (responds quickly to change in signal level, similar to a "peak" level meter) or "slow" (responds to sloweer changes, like an "average" level meter"). TV's have slow AGC, VCR's have fast.

A frame of TV has several components. It contains a timing (sync) pulse, a threshold (black level, a baseline used by the AGC to determine what voltage corresponds to "black"), and the actual data being conveyed. Macrovision is a system of rapidly changing the black level, thus confusing a fast AGC and rendering the signal unwatchable, while (theoretically) leaving slow AGC's unaffected (as they respond to the average black level, not the instantaneous). By confusing the fast AGC of the VCR, the signal is deteriorated to the point where it is unwatchable. This system is augmented in newer equipment by Macrovision hardware, present in all newer VHS equipment (as required by JVC, the holder of the VHS license). 8mm does not have Macrovision circuitry, and is not affected by Macrovision; in this, it is like the "A" in the D2A2D of the previous post; however, when copying to 8mm, the Macrovision stays on the signal, it just doesn't manifest itself until copied back to VHS (i.e. the 8mm is a carrier, not affected by the disease).

If this new system can be implemented in such a way as to take advantage of differing signal properties of recording and playback equipment (note: most recording units do have different AGC's than most playback units), the system could conceivably work; this is unlikely, though, because TV signals carry information that is never viewable (by design); analog audio signals are pure signal, with no extraneous information. The best bet for such a system in audio would be to make a deal with the license holders for various recording technologies, and get the license holders to mandate the anti-copy hardware, the same way Macrovision is currently handled. This would likely result in a situation similar to the one with Macrovision, where old equipment becomes desirable specifically to circumvent copy prevention. Everything old is new again :-).

For a much better explanation of Macrovision, as well a plausible (read: I haven't tested it, but it looks reasonable) Macrovision remover, check out Antti Paarlahti's page here. Another Macrovision remover, this one using PIC's, can be found on Andrew McCubbin's page here

Hope this is useful to somebody!

Re:D2A2D

[Aggrazel]

Yes, its obvious to most slashdot readers that there are numerous ways to get around this... but this isn't really targeting the tech-heads, they are going after the casual user with this, and it might just work for that.

So if they use this method to sell a few million more CDs to people who have no idea how to get around this... well, they'd say it was a success.

This would be a good thing, if, of course, the music industry decided to lower the cost of individual CDs to compensate for the lower instance of copying... but we all know the chances of that happening...

Re:D2A2D

[neto_gle]

They actually use some processing on the commercials to make the sound more audible without pushing the volume up.

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Re:D2A2D

[Squid]

but this isn't really targeting the tech-heads, they are going after the casual user with this, and it might just work for that.

I imagine there's a lot of casual users who basically use their iMac or cheap Circuit City consumer PC as a glorified CD player. But then, they have to make the connection between the copy protection and the fact that they can't even play it legally.

Re:Vaporware - and what is it meant to do?!

[kettch]

I really don't think that it will be anything special that is implemented on the CD, in hardware, or software. Their new antipiracy protocol goes like this:

you go into the store, and buy a cd, the clerk takes your money and hands you your cd in a bag (why the hell do they always insist on putting single items in bags anyway?) As you walk away, she will sneak up behind you and clamp a chain around your ankle. When you ask her why she did that, she will reply:

"this is our way of making sure that you won't pirate the songs on that cd." you will then notice that the chain is attached to a 7 foot tall 300 lb body builder named Crusher wearing a t-shirt that says "piracy" with a big red X over it. The clerk goes on to explain that he will follow you around forever and will umm encourage you to not make illegal copies of music.

Once the technology is perfected, the RIAA will probably just embed hypnotic suggestions in all their music therebye forcing us to give them all of our money in return for getting hypnotized to give them more money.
----------------------

Re:Just goes to show you..

[StandardDeviant]

This just goes to show that the RIAA is always lying through their teeth when they way "We aren't concerned about casual copying. We are just trying to stop mass piracy."

Well, far be it from me to argue on the side of RIAA et al. (fuck them and their children in the ass) but I'll play the devil's advocate here.

This is intended to stop mass piracy. E.g. people making black-market copies of CDs and selling them en masse (like software pirates). Pirate sells disc for $5, makes huge profit, buyer gets perfect digital copy (presumably they'd print up labels and inserts too), musician gets zero (which is just slightly less than they get in the normal scenario after the record company fucks them). Just like software makers, they don't care if individual consumers' lives are made more complicated as long as they can zap the big counterfiters in places like SE Asia and central/south america (see the machine-locking of windows licenses on recent machines from places like Dell).

--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org

Re:Macrovision conflicts with projection TVs

[FallLine]

I've got a VCR and Projection TV with Line Quadrupler at home, never had any problems in that regard. Of course, it was professionally installed, but I've moved other VCRs to it in the past, never had to disable anything. As for the specific settings on the line quadrupler, I cannot comment. It's possible that the installer had to tweak something, but it's not on the frontend at least.

affecting the CONSUMER cd-cdr appliances?

[TheGratefulNet]

there are already cd->cdr ('audio disc') appliances on the market. these MUST be 100% legal since all the major brands (philips, sony, etc) are making them.

they already tried (and with some people, succeeded) in charging more for the audio discs as a 'copy tax' and since cdr's are so cheap, they disallow them in those consumer machines.

imagine how pissed off Joe Bestbuy will be when he comes home with the shiny new philips 'make my own music mix' stereo component and finds that the music mafia has put yet another obstacle in his way. he's already paid for the right to copy his discs in the price of the silver cd, paid the copy tax in the 'audio disc' blank he was forced to buy, and now his whole setup is now inoperable.

yeah, that will endear Joe to the music industry. uhuh.

before he copied only for personal use. now he's pissed off and will copy FOR SPITE at any occasion.

you want a war? you got it.

--

Re:affecting the CONSUMER cd-cdr appliances?

[TheGratefulNet]

Digital recorders are fully legal, just so long as the RIAA is getting their tax on the player and the media.

of course they're legal. no major company goes into mass production without doing their homework.

so what's this, then, about MORE read-protection (again, its not copy protection; its read protection).

are't the taxes on blank media enough?

--

Re:No matter.

[Squid]

That's true - I forgot the DMCA. Under the DMCA they could "encrypt" the CD with XOR and you'd be up for fines/jailtime just for noticing it. Never mind 9 times in 10 you'd be doing this for reasons of interoperability - i.e. trying to legally play media you bought in a system you own - since 'interoperability' is ignored just like 'fair use' and 'due process'.

The RIAA, MPAA, lawyers and government are all undead zombie demons from the Dimension of Pain. As though you needed more proof of this.

Re:multiple copies of the same cd

[jfk3]

You must not be old enough to have had the experience of a CD "going bad" on you. They do scratch, break, etc. I always make copies of anything that I might miss if something happened to it. Lets see, do I give the kids (3 and 5) a twenty dollar computer game disk to play with or a copy I made for 15 cents? So the answer to your question is TWO!

Re:Something's got to go.

[Squid]

At least with VCR's the Macrovision signal is supposed to be out of range of the TV's display circuitry, but in range of the VCR's recording circuitry, so, in theory, you don't get signal degredation.

In theory.

In practice, I've heard of TVs being made with the same AGC's as VCRs - and thus they react the same way as a VCR when fed a macroed signal. And I don't just mean light-dark and slight picture distortion.

Re:multiple copies of the same cd

[RandomPeon]

I take orginal CDs and immediately copy them. The originals go in a CD rack, never to be disturbed unless the duplicate gets damaged. Perfectly good way to protect my investment.

Re:Vaporware - and what is it meant to do?!

[Grey]

OK, so are they trying to stop people copying to tape by screwing with the signal? That's been tried before as well: the Beatles were among the first, adding a high-frequency tone to their LPs to interfere with the bias signal on a tape deck. That one didn't get anywhere either: again, it broke on some players, and was trivial to circumvent (low-pass or notch filter, anyone?).

I don't think that the high-frequency tone was to prevent copying. after all they made their last LP in want 1972? where there that many cassette tapes then? Plus in Gorge Martin's autobiography he says that the 20+kHz sound was Paul's idea, "music for dogs", plus you will not that the sound is only in a few songs, and only on sarget pepers IMHR (Good morning, and the end of "a day in the life") Note something like an industry wide copyprotection scheme.

Probably.

[Bobs2paksVegaSwirled]

This looks to be a clever exploit on the way CD readers work. References: http://www.ttrtech.com/tech.htm http://www.ee.washington.edu/conselec/CE/kuhn/cdau dio2/95x7.htm Apparently, CD readers are capable of reading the data from audio cd's in two different modes: a generic-data-style read and an audio-data-style read. The audio-data-style read is meant to be directly converted to analog music via D/A converters in the unit. The difference is that the generic-data-style read imposes some data-integrity checks which, if fail, cause the reader to report a read error or return erroneous data. The audio-data-style read can ignore these errors to avoid interrupting the music. This exploit appears to intentionally insert bits into the EFM stream so that a general-data-style read will fail or produce erroneous data. Since all CD copying techniques must use this type of access, they will fail as well. Normal consumer CD audio players will correct or ignore the errors with no impact on the music. High-end audiophile CD players that allow for custom DSP and D/A algorithms and use a generic-data-style read could suffer as well. If a CD reader unit could be hacked to capture the data immediately after the error correction and before the D/A converter, then this technique could in theory be defeated.

Re:multiple copies of the same cd

[Squid]

and the free music bands will make their money selling T-shirts and concert tickets

Most acts have to do this anyway. The RIAA talks a big talk about protecting the artists, but for some reason they don't seem real keen on paying them much in the way of royalties. Touring is where the artists actually have a chance of seeing some money - Ticketmaster at least leaves some flesh on the bone.

Re:Vaporware - and what is it meant to do?!

[SlippyToad]

There was a high-frequency tone put on the end of Sgt Pepper's, as a joke from John Lennon. He wanted dogs to have something to listen to on a Beatles Album. Documented in George Martin's "The Making of Sgt. Pepper." Other than that, I seriously doubt there was any other such attempt. I taped many Beatles albums when they were on vinyl, as well as CD. Never heard any such thing.

Re:analog-to-analog is preventable

[dufke]

VHS is an analog format.

VHS is an analog but time-quantized format. The signal follows a specific machine-readable cycle (the refresh rate). Which gives the MPAA something to fuck with.

Now, analog audio is not like that. It doesn't have a 'sync', nor a specific period in which it is not audible. The signal is not delivered to the speakers in frames. It is 'all content'. Which means that if the RIAA wants to mess with it, they'll mess with the content. (They might be desperate enough to do that, but I wonder if consumers are desperate enough to buy it...) Now, digital audio, that's a different story.

dufke
-

I hope you're being sarcastic!

[2nd Post!]

Makes me want to sink my movie buying dollars back into VHS.

I mean, that's where all this Macrovision headache started in the first place; in your VCR! It just migrated into the DVD player from the VCR, and at least some brands of DVD have the option to turn off the Macrovision.

Geek dating!

Re:multiple copies of the same cd

[Azog]

Of course I make copies of CDs. All the time.

I have a 12 disk cd changer in the trunk, which is a relatively high risk of being stolen. There's no way I want to lose 12 CD's along with the hardware. Insurance doesn't cover CD's, either.

Especially since some of those CD's are out of print and are irreplacable. And many other CD's have only a few good tracks. And most music CD's only have about 45 minutes of music, even though I can record at least 70 minutes onto a CDR.

There are lots and lots of excellent, completely legal reasons to make CDR copies and compilations of music CDs. If they take away my ability to do that, I will either work (hack) around it, or refuse to buy such CDs. Prediction: If this catches on, the market for used, unprotected CD's will explode.

Hmmm. I wonder if the music world will eventually split into a "closed", copy-protected, mass-marketed, Limp Britney Eminem Metallica Bizcuit Big Record Company world, vs. an open, non-copy-protected, listener-supported, word-of-mouth marketing Internet music world. I just hope the bands I listen to end up on the good side. (U2 is the only "popular" band I really like, so I might be lucky).

Maybe someday we'll see "open music" and "free music" like open source and free software - and the free music bands will make their money selling T-shirts and concert tickets.

Torrey Hoffman (Azog)

Re:And this is going to work *how*?

[delay]

OK, we in Germany (Europe maybe, too) already know this. BMG used a copy-protection on a popular album of the finish gothic-rock group HIM. I think that this might have been the previous version of the Macrovision-copy-protection (Read on for more info...)

This copy-protection is really simple, but yet effective. Simply the TOC (The initial few bytes that contain the offsets of the tracks on the cd, and thus the position of the songs on the disc) is manipulated in a way that confuses CD-ROM drives, so they think the CD is invalid and refuse to read data.

Most cd-players ignore the manipulated bytes and can play the CD without major problems. There are some exceptions: on some players the music plays, but the time of the songs doesn't display correctly or jumps back and ahead... Very old players refuse to play such CDs...

But it isn't very difficult to read in such CD digitally: if you have a cd-player which has digital-out, you can simply plug that into your soundcard's digital-in, and read in the cd without any quality-losses...If you burn the digital data back to a cd-r, you will have a perfect digital copy, without any quality-losses, but with removed copy-protection!

After the CD was on the market, BMG announced that they won't realease any new albums with that copy-protection until it really has matured... Well, since Macrovision tries to sell it to the big players now, it maybe has...

So we tech-people won't have much trouble, but the usual user is fucked...

Re:analog-to-analog is NOT preventable

[Svartalf]

Once you know about the nature of the copy "scrambling" signal, you can usually scrub it out (because it HAD to be largely undetectable to begin with to be usable in this sort of context...)- and there seems to be a large number of Macrovision strippers on the market.

What makes you think that anything that would be largely inaudible to the human ear would be any different?

Re:Don't just sit and sulk--do something!

[Richy_T]

The DMCA (PDF), however villified it is here on Slashdot, was not intended to turn out as it did. Sen. Hatch's intent was a law that would allow digital copies to be made. The no-circumvention clause that we're all familiar with was supposed to be a pot sweetener to prod the recording industry into releasing digital media. Unfortunately, we all know how the law was abused by those it sought to protect.

Sen. Hatch's office has links to a number of letters and opinions regarding his true stance on the issue of digital media copying. I don't doubt he will bring this issue back up, and as the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee the old media companies will be in the hot seat for what they have done.

So he was just negligent and stupid rather than malicious?

I mean, he's an elected representative, he asked for the job, he gets paid well. He should do the job that he's paid for and read legislation and understand its implications before he votes for it.

When I was taught to handle a gun, I was told to always treat it as if it was loaded. Legislation is in many ways more dangerous than a gun and should be treated with the approprate respect, not just rubber stamped.

The man is a buffoon. I do hope you're not being an apologist for him. Unfortunately, he's probably in a republican safe seat and will be back in next time.

Rich

(Not that it's much better in the UK. Maggie Thatcher (ex PM) signed over a huge chunk of the UK's sovereignty to Europe without even reading the relevant treaty. She later claimed she regretted it. Well, too fucking late, bitch)

Re:MP3

[Sethb]

I feel the same way about Microsoft's new protection schemes with their software. My legit copy of FrontPage 2000 refused to let me install it on my home computer one day, following a fresh install on a new hard drive. I had to call Microsoft and get them to unlock it for me, something that they'll only do a maximum of ten times. I'm a power user, I upgrade a LOT, and am always re-partitioning to play with some new Linux distribution, etc.

My solution? Simple, I pirate it from work where we have licensing program copies that don't feature the lock-out mechanism. Thanks for making me a pirate, Microsoft!
---

Good theory but they'll sneak it by...

[sterno]

The RIAA and MPAA have become very good at sneaking by their draconian technologies without anybody noticing. DVD is a prime example of how they can get away with this sort of thing. They offer superior fidelity, multiple audio tracks, digital surround sound, etc to get you to buy it. Once you've adopted the technology you then find out that you accidentally sold your sould.

Market forces already do the work of a boycott. To illustrate this, take a look at Divx's failure. This is really the scheme that the media companies would prefer to use but people found it very unpalatable because it provided no real benefits and had all of the draconian drawbacks.

Just wait, they'll come up with some reason to get people to buy into these new technologies.

---

Re:Just what is "Fair Use"?

[quinto2000]

Fair use has been well defined through precedent and copyright law. It covers all of the exceptions to copyright law. Some of these have historically included education and parody. With computers, a backup copy has become part of these provisions as well.

Here is the relevant law:

Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified in that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.
In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include --

• the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
• the nature of the copyrighted work;
• the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
• the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

More information available here.

It might be possible

[jonathanclark]

It's possible to create CDs that use polymers that degrade after they are exposed to laser light. It would be too expensive to make the whole CD out of this stuff, but the first part of the CD is all you need and it adds a few cents to the production cost.

I don't think this is what they are doing - but I've seen a company or two try to implement software copy protection this way. It allows the install program the ability to determine if the CD has been installed before. And as far as I know this is compatible with most CD players.

Assuming you were able to corrupt the right bits of a music CD, then it wouldn't play anymore.

Pretty nifty idea, but I worry that a customer's computer might crash or lose power during install and then they wouldn't be able to install again.

Re:It might be possible

[Squid]

It's possible to create CDs that use polymers that degrade after they are exposed to laser light.

I seem to recall some company was accidentally making CDs this way after an accident at the plant several years back. :-)

Re:It might be possible

[clare-ents]

"It's possible to create CDs that use polymers that degrade after they are exposed to laser light."

"I seem to recall some company was accidentally making CDs this way after an accident at the plant several years back. :-)"

Wasn't this the PDO plants in the UK, they used silver / random cellulose stuff to make the disks from, it reacts quickly with sulphur causing discoloration and corruption of the CD's. Problem was, the produced lots of singles with it in suphur rich cardboard packaging.

Re:Obvious...

[BeBoxer]

That's the obvious tact. A more costly tactic is to purchase a Safeaudio CD, take it home, and when you find out it won't play return it for an exchange. They'll give you another one which also won't work. Pretty soon, all of the stores inventory will have been opened and can no longer be sold as "new". Almost certainly, all of the opened CD's will get shipped back to the RIAA member who published all the defective CD's in the first place.

While some CD players will play the "Safeaudio" CD's, I can almost guarantee that some of them won't. New Mac's for example have digital USB speakers. There is no way for new Mac's to play CD's except by ripping the audio off of them. It is perfectly legitimate for the people who own these systems to buy the "protected" CD's and return them as defective.

I'm sure some troll is going to respond saying how immoral it is to intentionally buy CD's you know you are going to return. To that I respond, is it moral to knowingly sell defective products to your customers? Because that's what these CD's are. Plain and simple. They are defective products which do not meet the Redbook CD audio standards. I wonder if they will even be allowed to use the "CD" logo on them?

Now, we just need to find out where they are going to release these CD's first. If their initial public tests results in significant losses due to returns, that will get the program scrapped early.

SafeDisc� for CD-ROMs, not CDs

[pbryan]

I found some more information about SafeDisc® here.

It seems from their description, this is intended for CD-ROM interactive programs, not for audio compact discs.

This makes much more sense because of the requirements this would impose on equipment manufacturers, and how it would deprecate any previous equipment purchased by consumers.

"The digital signature is added to the Glass mastering using a Laser Beam Recorder (LBR)." This smacks of the old-fashioned burn-a-laser-hole-in-the-floppy-disk routine of the 1980s...

really doesn't affect me

[mr_burns]

I don't buy their music anyway. I do buy CD's. I buy lots of them. But it's pretty much independent labels now.

Think about it. RIAA member companies churn out infectios memes (about 2 per 14 track cd) and the other 12 tracks are crap. I'm not going to waste my money on atoms carrying 1/7 good songs...and even then, they're only "good" because they figured out the formula for effectively marketing a song.

I go to indie rock shows now. They cost less than the cost of a CD to get in, you see 3 bands, and you rock out way more than you could to ANY cd. There's no substitute for live rock'n'roll. Never will be.

And I buy their CD's. They're my friends, and I want to support them. But they haven't sold their soul to the RIAA yet, and I'm not about to either. It takes them so long to put out a cd that they actually have 14 good songs on them....unlike the big label bands who are contractually obligated to produce x songs per year...regardless of quality.

All I want from the RIAA bands is a song or 2. Usually not the ones they put out on singles. I really don't consider it theft if it isn't offered in the legitimate market. You can't steal a product they don't make. If they made it, I'd buy it. But they're forcing me to use gnutella to get access to it, because they won't give me the opportumity to buy it.

Well...not without paying for a bunch of filler crap. And it's not just me that feels this way. I got that meme from Courtney Love.

So that's why their copy protection doesn't concern me. I'm just not going to come across it. I've found better music than they sell on their SDMI/protected/unconstitutional violation of fair use media anyway. Hang out on your local scene. Liberate yourself from the RIAA's marketroids.

And this is going to work *how*?

[Russ Nelson]

And this is going to work exactly *how* if I rip a CD, decode the MP3 into a .wav file, and burn an audio CD with it? Or even, God Forbid, download the MP3 from the Internet? Do any of these people think for more than a few seconds about these things?
-russ

Re:And this is going to work *how*?

[keesh]

Marketroids: It stops thoe evil hacker people copying your music.Record Company:OK, we'll use itMarketroids:Excellent. That will be fifty billion dollars please.Record Company: Erm...Marketroids: Well it's that or get copied. Oh, and we've patented it so no-one else can do it.Record Company:OK, we'll take ten please.

Seems to me as if they did think about it quite well...

Re:at least mp3 did one good thing for us

[Squid]

then came mp3. it taught us that content was usually more important than raw audiophile quality. at least as long as the audio was listenable; which with good mp3 encoders, it is.

Blasphemy! I WANT my huge expensive stereo system so I can listen to Celine Dion!

Or not.

there is no standard on earth, imaginable or real that can prevent an analog copy (since you have to be able to LISTEN to it at some point) from working.

Quit saying that! They'll only take it as a challenge. Surgical implants, anyone?

Then again, they'll do surgical implants just as well as every other technological solution they've proposed. It'll sound odd, cause headaches, and run on Windows CE. You'll spend hours trying to update the firmware on your cochlear implants so you can hear the latest Alanis song on the radio (without the implants it sounds like modem noise - wait, this is Alanis we're talking about, how would you know if the implants were working?), to no avail, before you finally give up and go to the Ani DiFranco concert instead.

Re:Just goes to show you..

[raju1kabir]

This is intended to stop mass piracy. E.g. people making black-market copies of CDs and selling them en masse (like software pirates).

No it's not. The record companies know it and I know it; surely you can figure it out too. This works on the kind of equipment that you buy at Circuit City, which - surprise, surprise - is not what large-scale pirates use. What, they have rooms full of monkeys changing tapes one-at-a-time and hitting "record"?

You think an outfit in China that has access to genius engineers with otherwise-zero earning potential is going to be held back for even a day by this? Industrial-strength piracy is just too lucrative.

Best I can figure, the recording industry mafia is upset about all the piracy but feels impotent to stop it, so they slake their thirst for revenge by fucking consumers up the ass.

And it probably works in the mafia's favor in the long run: Consumers get mad, the mafia says "we had to do it because of piracy," and then consumers say "Oh my goodness, piracy is awful," and vote for the candidate who's willing to put the most hurt on Vietnam for failure to clamp down on piracy.

An approximately similar strategy would be for the pharmaceutical companies (who are to illegal drugs what the RIAA is to pirated music: the legally-sanctioned provider of a more expensive alternative) to drive through the suburbs spraying Agent Orange in people's backyard gardens, claiming it's because of the drugs the residents "might" be growing, and then paying someone like you to post on Slashdot that it's a powerful strike against the Columbian drug cartels.

Fair Use

[merlin_jim]

I would like to issue an apology to the music industry. Apparently, making a copy of The Matrix soundtrack because I had left mine at the house was simply aggrevious. I'm sure that making that compilation CD of love songs for my girlfriend last Valentine's Day cost the industry billions. And encoding all my CDs into MP3 and burning a single disk with all that audio data on it, so my new MP3 player in my car will work, must have put several recording companies out of business.

Once again, my apologies to a bloated industry which seems to be concerned only with stopping a technological revolution, at the cost of freedom, dignity, and profit.

Re:Don't just sit and sulk--do something!

[Steve B]

The DMCA (PDF), however villified it is here on Slashdot, was not intended to turn out as it did. Sen. Hatch's intent was a law that would allow digital copies to be made.

"Was not intended" by whom? As Orwell noted in Politics and the English Language , the passive voice tends to obfuscate.

IMO, the RIAA most certainly did intend the law to turn out as it did, and pulled a scam on the legislators.
/.

Re:Vaporware - and what is it meant to do?!

[ewhac]

I have a copy of that very album. Yes, you could copy off the content (which is of course first-rate), but there's just something ineffably cool about a three-sided record.

Unless I'm remembering my Red Book spec wrong, there's no reason you couldn't apply the same technique to a CD. Someone in a pressing house should give it a try.

Schwab

Its copy protected right until it gets delivered

[crovira]

All these schemes are trivially defeated by a screw driver, a pair of wire cutters and some solder.

Your CD player won't let you record a copy? Will it let you listen? At the extreme delivery end, you open the speaker cabinet, splice onto the speaker wires, hook up some potentiometers for volume control and sample the stream at 44kHz.

Your VCR won't let you copy? Will it let you watch? Same crap. Instead of an audio card, you need a video card. Big deal.

I have never seen such a lame-ass ineffectual attempt to "protect" alleged intellectual property. DeCSS, DMCA. The media "powers that be" are trying to fight a "traditional" war in a wired world filler with a bazillion guerillas. Their customers are their enemy. It makes real hard to do business.

The media corporations are desperatly trying to retain their profitability as exemplified by the old adage "The power of the press (or any "broadcast" medium,) belongs to those who own one". Mostly its the power to advertize.

And they are trying to retain ownership over ephemera. There is nothing as incredibly valueless as last month's "Who Let The Dogs Out" or "All Your Bases Arew Belong To Us." Just ask the content creator how valuable it was.

The broadcasters don't want to pay the content creators and they don't want the consumer to know how badly he's been ripped off.

And as long as the content pimps control the means of production, content creators have to apply lips to orifice and bend over the L-shaped table for the opportunity to try to get something "out there."

Maybe... If you fit into their nice, bland, unimaginative, unoriginal categories. (Have you noticed that there are tens of thousands of musicians out there, enough to support instrument makers, magazines, live bands in venues all over the world, but Tower Records doesn't stock their CDs? That's because They didn't have this month's "sound." Because they didn't apply lips and won't bend over the table. And your ears go thirsty because you don't control the pipe.)

But on the internet, there are search engines and alternatives to all those voices crying out in the wilderness and charging dinars for the bland, safe, unimaginative din.

Eventually, we will win. If only because we'll run out of money ("No money? Get lost. This ain't no charity.") and we'll always be able to masturbate for free.

Letter to mchuang@macrovision.com

[PhunkySchtuff]

Dear Mr Chuang,

I feel I must write to express my disappointment with Macrovision's latest venture into copy protecting media, SAFEAUDIO.

As one who enjoys a exceedingly wide range of music, I strongly believe this will do nothing more than hurt the market it is designed to protect.

The following quote, taken directly from your press release at http://www.macrovision.com/press_rel_2_27_01.html is particularly worrying: "We believe that SAFEAUDIO provides an opportunity for the music industry to regain the billions of dollars lost to unauthorized casual copying."

If I understand the press release correctly, what this means is that I will be unable to copy SAFEAUDIO from one medium to another.

I purchase quite a lot of music on CD to listen to at home and have a MiniDisc player in my car. I travel quite a lot and like to listen to music while I do so. Under existing copyright laws I am permitted to record a CD to MD for my own personal usage, and indeed I pay a tax on every blank MiniDisc that I purchase just for this privilege.

Can you please assure me that I will be able to continue to do this in the future, even with SAFEAUDIO protected media?

Thankyou,
--
Kai Howells
IT Specialist.


Verbing Weirds Language.

Re:Slashdot will never give in

[nightfire-unique]

The recording industry knows these things are perfectly legal, but they are so greedy they are willing to sacrifice our ability to do these perfectly legal things to secure for themselves a few more dollars.

The shame of it all is that in the end, they will bury themselves. The more restrictive the technology they use to distribute their music is, the sooner the public will lose respect for them and their copyright. They will force people like me to use unprotected, unpayed-for MP3s, because while we want to listen to (and pay for) music, we are unwilling to do so on their terms.

I mean really now - when faced with the potential options - purchase (for $20) a SuperDigitalMediaDevice which includes bizarre contracts and anti-copy provisions, or make your own for 1/10th the cost, from high quality, free, unrestricted MP3s, the legality becomes a non-issue (for most people).

And the situation gets worse when they start using proprietary formats that are unsupported in unpopular environments!

--
All men are great
before declaring war

Re:Slashdot will never give in

[Sc00ter]

"Finally making a good point. What about the will of the artists? The will of the artists went out the window once they signed their recording contract."

This comes up all the time. HELLO! Nobody is forcing people to sign these contracts, if they don't want them, they can go to another non-RIAA record label, or produce something on their own. Every artist that is on a RIAA label and is "getting ripped off by the record industry" got there because they put themselves there.
--

Mandatory labelling

[Greyfox]

CDs using this technology should be required to be labelled as such so I know not to buy them. I prefer to give my money to companies who don't blatantly trample all over my rights. Of course, I can't even remember the last time I bought a CD (And no, I don't use napster.) I think it was from MP3.com about a year ago...

Re:Obvious...

[Tiroth]

That's not going to work unless there is a clear up-front cost to consumers. The average person isn't concerned about the philosophical implications of buying into a system that prohibits fair use. They just want to go to the store and get music.

The 10% of people (max) who are concerned about these things don't have the economic power to make a difference, except by enlightening the 90% who know nothing about the DMCA.

Re:Obvious...

[BeBoxer]

Ummm. Before you go calling people idiots...

Apple part number T2587LL/A Harmon Kardon SoundSticks. These are USB speakers. Which, as if to prove my point, have the caveat Older G3's with hardware-based DVDs running DVD 1.3 software will not work with Soundsticks. They require newer, software-based DVD's running DVD 2.x

Macrovision filters now illegal in Australia

[B.D.Mills]

Macrovision filters are now illegal in Australia, because macrovision is a "copy protection technology" and such filters are "circumvention devices" within the meaning of the amended Copyright Act.

Stupid government. Bring on the election.

--

Re:Why do you have to make copies?

[raju1kabir]

It's the music industry's right to say what can and can't be done with the object that they've sold to you if you consider a sale of this type to be contractual...

It most certainly is not. That's not a sale. Only in the case of external legal baggage (for instance, coventants on real estate) can such a thing happen. Generally, in other cases, they must provide you with something on an ongoing basis, in exchange for which you must adhere to a commitment you have made (such as not to duplicate the CD). Beyond that, they can refuse to do business with you in the future (this is how vendor/distributor/retailer policy relationships are enforced), but they cannot arbitrarily constrain what you do with something you own. This is why software companies try to pretend that the software is licensed and not sold.

How about if you sell me an apple on the condition that I not eat it. I will eat it in front of you while you search for redress. Good luck.

If they want to control what people do with them, then they are free to lease CDs.

Re:New revenue for an old dog

[Richy_T]

That CD would cost you 46 dollars and 49.15 cents after tax!

This must be stopped.

Jeez yeah, I don't know where we'd be supposed to get 0.15c pieces from

Rich

Depends on how it works.

[Christianfreak]

I think it will stop Joe Luser but won't stop anyone who knows how to make exact images (copying the bits on the disk). Still if they can do it, it defenatly sets a dangerous precident. I can understand the Music Industry's point when it comes to Napster, but fair use of your own stuff? I hate lawsuits but I sure hope that when this hits the market that someone decides to stand up for the little guy... (maybe we need Homer Simpson).

"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

But will it be as successful as vhs macrovision?

[Chuck Flynn]

If the copy-protection scheme is to succeed, it must be as undetectable as possible by the end user. I don't mean that he won't realize he's using a copy-protected format, but that his ears won't be able to tell the difference between a copy-protected one and a non-protected one.

VHS macrovision is popular precisely because it's undetectable in how it alters visual quality. You'll hear lots of complaints by people who are unable to copy videos correctly, but you'll never hear a complaint by anyone about how macrovision has degraded their signal -- it hasn't.

We're almost at the stage where digital watermarks are completely seamless. Ten years ago, inititives like this would've been scoffed at. Now, they're becoming reality.

The reason they think they got us

[Nagash]

The reason the the music industry thinks they can do whatever the hell they want with the notion of copy protection (not copyright protection) is brought to light by a Dennis Miller line:

"The only reason Steely Dan's latest album is selling so well is that the 50 year olds who buy it don't know how to download it for free."

They seem to think that the public, if given enough hassles, will simply stop attempting to convienence themselves by copying music for their own use. They assume we are crooks. What will bite them in the ass is that consumer drive is more powerful than law (eventually) and their copy-protection will not hold (A million monkeys at a million typewriters... it's along those lines). I am very willing to pay for music if I believe my money is going to good use. But I am not interested in buying multiple copies of something just to convience myself.

I share mp3's, but with my friends only. I don't run a public FTP server. Those who I give access to are those who have an account on my system. This is the same idea as giving a CD to a friend (we've heard this argument before).

We are not all 50 year olds. We will be eventually and we will not be the same as the current crop of 50 year olds. Hilary Rosen had better wake up and realize digital music is what people want.

Woz

Mirror?

[Dman33]

Could somebody please mirror the crack for SafeAudio?? :)

Safe from what?

[SnowDog_2112]

Folks have been talking about this since at least May 2000 (thanks to Google for quick search results):

http://www.prostudio.com/studiosound/may00/comm_ eu r.html

So this isn't really _new_ news. On the other hand, the fact that it's being tested probably is.

The real story here is something we've known all along. The big companies see a huge loss of income from the teching up of the people. As we get access to cd burners, computers with broadband, etc... they see their traditional revenue streams eventually drying up. They're grasping for straws.

It sucks, really. They couldn't make it illegal to copy content for fair use, so instead they just standardize it out of existence. Since they're all in bed together anyway, we all stand to lose in the end.

They won't be happy until the only way you can hear music is a streaming connection, for which you will pay by the second....

Re:Safe from what?

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

They couldn't make it illegal to copy content for fair use, so instead they just standardize it out of existence.

Sure they can. They make it technically hard to use in a way they dislike (i.e. you need to work around some stupid system), and under the magic of the DMCA it is ILLEGAL (according to at least one Federal judge) to do so or to help someone do so by giving them a tool or telling them where to get a tool, or if that certain judge gets his way, even to hint that such a tool might exist.

Anybody can essentially write their own "legislation" outlawing certain uses (including fair use - fair use is NOT a defense to the DMCA) by implementing a protection system. A one bit (key) encryption (invert every bit) and a decoder which "respects" the "rights" in the digital rights management software which controls access to the work would very likely be all that is needed to outlaw any "unauthorized" (by the whim of the copyright holder - fair use provisions of copyright law are overriden) use.

Good bye freedom.

Slashdot will never give in

[MSBob]

Whatever form of copy protection gets proposed slashdot editors are always first to get their panties in a knot. No thought is given to the implication of the piracy of media content or intellectual property. How else other than through the slale of records is an artist supposed to create his music? How much do you think it costs to purchase instruments and rent a recording studio? Don't know? Let me tell you then it's quite a bit! Even if they could scrap through to buy a battered guitar or drums what about feeding their wives and kids? Would you like the work of your inspiration to be copied without regard to your rights as the creator? Think about it. The so called community gets very upset at every hint of violating the GLP license but if someone else tries to protect THEIR own intellectual property then all of a sudden it's not right and it's restricting freedom? Yeah, right I'm with you all the way on this one!

Re:Slashdot will never give in

[Richy_T]

HELLO!

Oh, shut the fuck up you Valley-speak wannabe asshole.

Anyway, ad homniem attacks out of the way, the guy you relied to was responding to the question

Would you like the work of your inspiration to be copied without regard to your rights as the creator?

i.e. The "rights of the creator" doesn't come into it since those rights have been sold over to the record company anyway. Unless you really believe that the will of the creator is "I wish for the record company to do whatever the hell they want with the music I sweated over including only printing up 10,000 copies and doing absolutely no promotion"

Rich

Re:Slashdot will never give in

[SnowDog_2112]

Yes, there is a vocal contingent of anti-intellectual property folks out there who want nothing more than to see all copyrights fade away.

But there also a bunch of us moderate folks who are annoyed that we're being stopped from doing things we have every legal right to do, through the power of these media companies.

If I buy a CD, I can do with it whatever I want, for my own use. I can copy it onto tape so I can listen to it in my car, since I don't have a CD player in my car. I can burn it into MP3s so I can have a 1000-song jukebox in my PC. I can make another CD copy of it, so I can archive my original and not lose anything when the CD gets scratched (which does happen, this isn't a weird "what if" scenario).

The recording industry knows these things are perfectly legal, but they are so greedy they are willing to sacrifice our ability to do these perfectly legal things to secure for themselves a few more dollars.

Re:Slashdot will never give in

[norton_I]

The problem isn't that people (well, at least me) think that the music industry should be able to defend their rights. I for one, would be happy to see Napster shut down... What I object to is that they try to take away my legal rights to fair use, etc. under the guise of "protecting their intellectual property". That is what this technology does (or claims to do -- I am skeptical that it works). Almost no illegal uses of CDs will be prevented by this, and many, many cases of fair use copying will be prevented. That why the RIAA is evil.

Re:Vaporware - and what is it meant to do?!

[Pig Hogger]

Unless I'm remembering my Red Book spec wrong, there's no reason you couldn't apply the same technique to a CD. Someone in a pressing house should give it a try.

I don't think that the 44 khz bandwidth of a CD will faithfully reproduce a 20 khz or more signal without seriously mangling it (by aliasing it)...

--

Installed Base

[WinPimp2K]

That should really say it all, but the folks at Macrovision are 'forward looking'. So, lets look forward to:
Macrovision 'protected' CDs going south faster and with less reason than unprotected ones.
A 15% (average) increase in the retail price of music CDs to cover the royalties going to Macrovsion for their 'protection'.
If you doubt the price increase, reread the bit about how Macrovision will control when and how the 'technology' will be 'upgraded'.In short, they are fishing for a constant revenue stream from the music distributors.

Re:Installed Base

[Squid]

The price of CDs will continue to go up until you need a damn financing plan.

Oughta make visits to the bank more interesting: "I'm interested in a CD."

"A certificate of deposit?"

"No. The new Sarah McLachlan album."

"OK, well, we can get you financing at 0.9%APR, $200 down and $90 per week after that..."

Actually, now that I think about it, the music biz probably wouldn't want to pay Macrovision for this technology if they can raise the price of CDs 15% and pocket it all themselves and CLAIM it's copy protected (since under the DMCA the verbiage "this is copy protected" alone probably constitutes a protection system that's illegal to circumvent).

Way to go, guys. Combat piracy by raising prices. That never fails! Oh, and while you're at it, make up the difference by buying laws, because history has shown so clearly that making things illegal actually deters people.

Forgot to mention ...

[crovira]

The internet is a vastly superior medium for content distribution. I sometimes like to listen to Blue Grass music.

There are exactly 0(zero, zip, nada, none, nicth, nul,) stations in my area that broadcast Blue Grass. Not popular enough. You'll never attack the advertizing revenue you need to pay yourself, pay the rent and pay for that license.

I log into http://www.OzarkMountainAirwaves.com/ and listen all I want. They "narrowcast" 24/7/52 over the net.

You can tell the power that be to screw their high price of entry (millions for a broadcast licence,) when you can use a T1 or T3 switch and you're in business shoving packets that YOU like all over the planet.

Freedom of choice!

Re:Why do you have to make copies?

[cje]

Why do people demand that they be able to make multiple copies of music CDs to store in different places?

Fundamentally? Because it is their right to do so.

Oh, there are plenty of good practical reasons why you would want to do this (you've already been given plenty to think about.) But when it all comes down to it, the simple fact of the matter is that making personal copies for your own personal use is covered by fair use of the material. End of story.

Re:New revenue for an old dog

[generic-man]

$43.45 is a lot of money for one CD. In Pennsylvania, sales tax is 7%. That CD would cost you 46 dollars and 49.15 cents after tax!

This must be stopped.

Sauce for the goose...

[vrmlguy]

Did anyone else notice this?

The SAFEAUDIO Toolkit will be distributed with Macrovision's SAFECAST(TM) digital rights management technology that enables 'time lock' and 'number of usage lock' functions while providing persistent security. This feature ensures that CD replication facilities will always be using the latest release of SAFEAUDIO and by allowing Macrovision to control the timing and delivery of toolkit upgrades.

I love it! Macrovision apparently doesn't trust the recording industry to not make copies of the software!

--
Dave: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL: Screw you, Dave!

That's why I asked first

[mblase]

When I bought my first DVD recently, the store employees told me that connecting it through the VCR wouldn't produce a good picture -- for precisely that reason. (It'd be a pain to have to turn the VCR on everytime I wanted to watch a disc, anyways.) The store showed me where I could buy a $40 box which let me switch between the two with a button press -- another inconvenience, but a more intuitive one than turning on the VCR -- and also pointed out that all new room-size televisions today have multiple inputs to solve this problem.

In other words: the industry is aware of the problems, and is trying to make the Macrovision inconvenience as little as possible. If it's a pain for you, well, it's not their fault your television predates VCRs and practically needs to be retrofitted to watch tapes in the first place.

Re:Why do you have to make copies?

[wadetemp]

All good points. I like your comment.

I'll start out by saying that I have a very wide variety of musical tastes, and a large collection of CDs. Not as large as yours, but large enough. It's not uncommon for me to listen to a classical CD, then a punk CD, switch to jazz, and then move into rock mode.

Our "must have everything now" culture (see the Slashdot story about web in the car) makes us indecisive... but demanding. We don't know what we want, but we want it now! So it just seems to be not acceptable to people to leave 99% of thier collection at home and just choose 1 or 2 special CDs for the day to listen to, to enjoy, to analize, and to listen to from front to back to figure out why it's a good or bad CD. People buy CDs and then listen to only one track! If you really listen, there's alot more to those other tracks then you may realize... all the CDs I have had at least a dollar per song enjoyment from after listening to the CD all the way through a few times! And I continue to buy select CDs at the current high prices, knowing that I will spend quality time with those CDs to learn everything about them.

So my suggestion is take some time and care about what you are buying! Don't demand everything all of the time... then the need to make copies of your entire collection won't seem like such a big deal.

None of these protection schemes matter

[_pi-away]

Let's just say for a minute that this protection scheme really works. Let's say it doesn't break compatibility with regular cd players. Let's say we somehow can't raw read it even with something hardcore like blindread. There is a simple way around these sort of protection schemes, and its name is VAC.

VAC (Virtual Audio Cable) is based off the idea (mentioned in a few other posts) of looping physical cables from your soundcard's output to it's input to record the audio. VAC creates a wave i/o device (or multiple i/o devices, but only one is needed for this sort of thing) that can be selected as your wave out device, and also as your wave in device in a recording program (soundforge, wavelab, hell even microsoft sound record would work). To the player you are simply listening to your cd, but in reality the signal is recorded without ever leaving the digital domain, and you now have a perfect copy.

The only downside to this is that you must do it all in real time. But of course once you've done it, then its a regular unprotected file, so do with it what you will. Also note that this works for recording real audio and other streams that are not supposed to be able to be recorded.

rehash of old apple ][ days...

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite likely this tech would be similar to the nibble-count sync/code type copy protection
schemes that were used in the mid to late '80s for disk copy protection or more recently the
media distribution format that microsoft used in the mid '90s to cram more sectors on a disk.

I imagine it'll be as successful as these schemes turned out to be... not!

If I was a betting person, I'd be guessing some combo of a bit pattern in the track lead-in
area and a deliberate CIRC error. Disk copiers will correct the CIRC error and the data
on the disc will not match the original data. Carefully timed errors in conjunction with
bit hiding in the lead-in area could make life difficult for current generation cd-bit
rippers, by changing the form or mode of the sector where consumer devices don't care...

Other candidates are the radial track wobble, extra-bit stuffing, or PQ subcode errors, but
these might break current players too much...

The more things change, they more they remain the same... ;^)

Uh.huh.

[PopeAlien]

Well, If this is anything like Macrovision, you need to get all that hardware compliant.. I can see getting the major manufacturer to get together and install limitations on those home CD recorders (non-pc based), but won't this limitation have to be hardware installed on all those no-name burners as well?

Macrovision sucks bad by the way. When I first tried to run a signal from a DVD to my TV, I had to go through my VCR (really old TV, no RCA inputs).. The Macrovision signal would f*ck with the signal level coming through the VCR, and it didn't matter that I wasn't trying to *copy* the DVD, it wouldn't let me watch it. What sort of complications would this introduce to audio CD's, and *WHY* would people purchase new hardware that is less reliable? Shiny new packaging?

Re:Uh.huh.

[Tower]

Hmmm, that's exactly what I experienced in my old apartment... with my DVD player hooked up to my roommate's TV (one of the TV/VCR combos). The only RCA input on the thing, and the TV did the bright/dark thing constantly... it's what prompted me to buy a real TV. Who would think that the only input to a TV would be protected...
--

Thank you RIAA and MPAA

[Richy_T]

Several years ago, I bought myself a CD player, my CD collection was proceeding apace. Over a year ago, I bought a DVD drive for my computer.

I haven't bought a music CD in over a year, maybe two, a new one in maybe three. I have one (1) DVD (The Matrix, I had to try out the player after all). I just find it impossible to do so, the thought of contributing money to these Jabba-the-Hut like entities just gives me a bad taste in my mouth.

But am I bitter? No. There's music on the radio and the stuff I used to listen to sounds as good today as it ever did. I'm intending to learn the guitar which will be more entertaining than listening to the latest pop pap. Movies come on TV sooner or later and a trip to the theatre isn't as simple when you have a small child anyway.

but the reason I say thank you is that I am on the verge of being debt free and owning the house I live in. The abuse that these companies have dealt out has given me a Pavlovian response against consumerism. I still like nice things, still want goods and services but there's no longer the overpowering compulsion to acquire things that there once was. I am regaining control of my finances.

So yes, I say thank you RIAA and MPAA. May you rot in the grave you've dug for yourself. Bring the music back to the people where it belongs.

Rich

Just goes to show you..

[norton_I]

This just goes to show that the RIAA is always lying through their teeth when they way "We aren't concerned about casual copying. We are just trying to stop mass piracy."

They really want to take away your rights to use music you purchased legally.

I can see the case for macrovision, at least on rental videos: When you only pay $2.50 to rent a video for 3 days (or whatever), you shouldn't be allowed to copy it, even for personal use. But trying to apply the same logic to CDs that you buy is just wrong.

Since maybe .1% of all music copying (legal or illegal) is cdda->cdda (as opposed to MP3 or other file formats, possibly on a CD), they really have no justification for doing this, other than to screw their customers.

Re:Just goes to show you..

[raju1kabir]

I hate big Pharma about as much as anyone, but to suggest that they're behind the war on drugs is stupid and dishonest. Recreational drugs have nothing to do with medical products like Pepcid, Claritin, or whatever else they're trying to sell so much of today.

Pepcid and Claritin are not where the money is. The relatively mundane products have plenty of competition and many have been around long enough to be facing the Dread Generics in the market.

The big dollars come from the descendents of Prozac, Zoloft, etc., the parade of "lifestyle" pharmaceuticals of the last few years, which are expensive, unique, and in hot demand. Americans spend almost $10 billion a year on antidepressants alone. It is very difficult to come up with more and more people who have upset stomachs or allergies; these things are more or less tied to nature. However, you can always convince a good number of people that they have psychological problems requiring medication. Have you seen the commercials on TV recently? "Are you too shy to make friends? You may have a serious medical condition doctors call wallfloria gullibilia. Take our drug!"

And, the very rare legitimate case aside, the people using this stuff are the same people who'd be using pot or coke if their socioeconomic status were different, or they had different friends, or the drug pushers south of the train tracks had the ears of thousands of doctors and billions of dollars to spend on advertising.

If you have the chance, read this page. It's footnoted, and I even checked out some of the references and they were on the level.

I'll give you the prison industry though; they've been lobbying like mad against decriminalization.

Re:Just goes to show you..

[Squid]

They must destroy what they don't understand.

Actually something dawned on me. The war on MP3 trading, that's pretty obviously because they're scared people might decide on their own what music they want to hear, so manufactured acts like Britney Spears would no longer be an automatic sales draw. But this - there's NOTHING to be gained here, usually when the RIAA wants to take away people's freedoms there's a bigger issue. What are they afraid of? People didn't buy one CD for home, one for work and one for car BEFORE CD-Rs, and certainly won't now that a CD of a movie soundtrack often costs more than the DVD of the movie.

Answer: this one came from the lawyers and/or the company that developed the technology, and the RIAA would simply say "sure, why not."

Sheesh. At least Microsoft PRETENDS to be on the customer's side.

Re:Vaporware - and what is it meant to do?!

[ewhac]

OK, so are they trying to stop people copying to tape by screwing with the signal? That's been tried before as well: the Beatles were among the first, adding a high-frequency tone to their LPs to interfere with the bias signal on a tape deck. [ ... ]

The Beatles attempted copy control on their albums? This is the first I've heard of any such thing. Those guys were richer and more popular than God, and they attempted copy control? Do you have a reference for this? Was it at the band's request, or did the publishing house try it behind their back?

Schwab

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Moderation

[cavemanf16]

Can I mod down Macrovision for trolling on the issue of 'protecting copyright'? Has Slashdot developed a moderation system for moderating websites? :)

Yet another troll technology that will probably be a lame attempt to protect those with money like *cough* DeCSS *cough*. Oops, I meant, tried to protect the rich...

Re:Why do you have to make copies?

[cje]

It's also the music recording industry's right to produce a physical piece of plastic, which they sell to you. It's the music industry's right to say what can and can't be done with the object that they've sold to you if you consider a sale of this type to be contractual...

If you sign contracts when you buy CDs that prevent you from copying them to tape, making MP3s out of them, or listening to them in your car, that's your business. Speaking for myself, I can attest that I have never signed such a contract. The use of the CDs is governed by the same laws that establish the use of any other copyrighted material, be it a CD, a magazine article, a movie, or a book. If you don't know what "fair use" is (and it sounds like you don't), a Google search should promptly rectify that.

Realize that fair use will not go away simply because the RIAA despises it. It is the law of the land. The RIAA has a vision of an authoritarian police state where people are required to register their CD purchases with the government, where armed RIAA agents can come into your house at any time to personally verify your CD collection against what you have registered, and where technologies such as CD-R media and recording devices are banned outright.

You can espouse this police state if you wish, but I must inform you that those of us who value our freedoms will not allow it to come to fruition.

Just what is "Fair Use"?

[Ralph Wiggam]

Like a vast majority of Slashdotters, I am not a lawyer. We also throw around the phrase "fair use" a whole lot. Could someone that really is a lawyer (or close) give the legal difinition of "fair use", please?
Marty, the story submitter, claims that Macrovision, as well as this new system, SafeAudio, are crushing our rights to copy stuff that we paid for and own. Are companies really required to give you a "plaintext" version of the music/video you buy so that you can make personal copies? I wouldn't think so.
Then you can get into the whole discussion about how companies are allowed to encode content, but people are not allowed to decode it because of the DMCA.
I own an old Apex 600a DVD player so Macrovision doesn't concern me much.

-B

Re:Just what is "Fair Use"?

[Jeremy Erwin]

Just wanted to comment: although the Copyright Act of 1976 references fair use, "fair use" was a judicial doctrine, and if Congress defines "fair use" in such a way as to materially diminish it, the courts are free to ignore that definition.

As for the commercial aspect of "fair use", the Supreme Court has noted that a parody, however commercial, may not be a copyright infringement. However, insubstantial parodies are not "fair use." A finding of fair use involves a weighing of the totality of the individual factors surrounding a possible infringement, including the commercial nature of the infringing work, a determination of the transformative nature of the offending work, the amount that was copied, and the effect on the marketability of the original work.

If I copy 1000 pages out of a phone book, that may be fair use. If I copy a few pages that constitute the "heart" of some memoir, that may not be fair use.

Because "fair use" claims are often complex, and should properly be weighed by a court of law, "fair use" constitutes a defence against copyright infringement claims. However, this does not mean that a moral right to fair use does not exist.

But, IANAL.

Re:Just what is "Fair Use"?

[jfk3]

IANAL... But last I checked The Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 (U.S.A) gives us the right to make copies of our music. See: http://www.hrrc.org/html/ahra.html for more info.

Another copyprotection that doesn't work?

[WhizzMan]

I have seen other "copy protected" CDDAs and CDROMS. Most of those were impossible to copy with "standard" CD recording software. However, lately, most CD recorders give you the option to do a "raw" read / write, no checksums are done by the recorder itself. More and more CD copying programs are emerging that support this feature. If they want to remain compatible with the current base of installed players, they can't make these copyprotections work against raw data copies. There are no technical specs of this copyprotection scheme available, my guess is that it's just another program that puts bad bits in the stream to make checksums go wrong and you can actually still copy the disk if you use a modern burner and software that both support raw data.

Vaporware - and what is it meant to do?!

[Cyberdyne]

What are they actually trying to stop here? Me ripping CDs to disk with cdparanoia? Copying CDs on those CD+CDr hifi systems? Copying to tape?

The first one has been tried - just screw with the error correction info on the CD. That way, "dumb" audio CD players are OK, but CD ROM drives do extra error correction and "correct" the signal wrongly, screwing up the rip. Nice try, but it didn't work reliably with audio CD players, and ISTR you could bypass the problem with raw reads on a CD ROM drive anyway. Oops. Can't remember who tried that one, but it didn't get very far - CDs kept being returned "It doesn't play in my CD player!" etc...

CD->CDr copying would be much the same, I imagine: properly designed, it should just be ripping straight from one drive onto the other. No chance there, then.

OK, so are they trying to stop people copying to tape by screwing with the signal? That's been tried before as well: the Beatles were among the first, adding a high-frequency tone to their LPs to interfere with the bias signal on a tape deck. That one didn't get anywhere either: again, it broke on some players, and was trivial to circumvent (low-pass or notch filter, anyone?).

So: They claim to have some magic bullet anti-piracy solution which blocks copying. No indication what sort of copying, or how it blocks it, just a press release... Why do I get the feeling it's not going to get very far?!

Re:Vaporware - and what is it meant to do?!

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

I heard of something for data called SafeDisk 2 (SD2). Uses strange bit patterns in the signal whichwhen sent through the scrambler turn into regular bit patterns which confuse the EFM encoder and cause a bad burn. The scrambler is a defined substitution algorithm designed to minimize the cahnce of data causing such patterns. So SD2 takes the bad bit patterns, applies an algorithm (the inverse of the scrambling algorithm perhaps) which, when sent back through the scrambler, result in those bad bit patterns.

Some burners (Philips I believe) can handle this situation. They weren't designed to defeat it, so DMCA doesn't apply yet (but perhaps a certain judge in New York might disagree). However, with VCRs they added a special provision which illegalized any VCRs which did not get messed up by Macrovision, even though they were already on the market and not designed to circumvent. They could pass a DMCA update which mandates a bug in burners to make the protection work, just like they mandate a bug in VCRs to make Macrovision work (which was a sellout of our rights to the content providers and to Macrovision - any other copy protection people got screwed too - how ironic)

Re:Vaporware - and what is it meant to do?!

[ewhac]

I don't think that the 44 khz bandwidth of a CD will faithfully reproduce a 20 khz or more signal without seriously mangling it...

No no. You cut two spiral tracks in the disc. The head will lock on and track whichever one it finds first. Yes, a given track will be "moving" twice as fast as it ordinarily would, but I can't imagine a CD player that couldn't handle that.

Schwab

Re:Obvious...

[Otto]

The new macs play audio digitally; without converting the digital information to analog - but this doesn't mean you can't listen to CDs on these machines without 'ripping the audio off of them'.

Reading the audio digitally == 'ripping the audio off of them'.

That's what a ripper does. It takes the audio off the cd in a digital format, and saves it to a disk.

What the normal method of CD playing does is to convert it to analog (headphone jacks) before letting you have it. The whole idea behind any secure format is to not allow you to access the digital media. So any method of "playing" which requires the digital data will not work.

---

Re:Will this work???

[GreyLurk]

It will probably work similar to DVD's, where only licenced players will be able to read these CD's, and Licenced players will be policed so that they cannot do a direct CD to CD copy, and the industry will prosecute in court any company which builds a CD to CD copy-capable drive.

The problem with introducing this so late in the game with CD's though, is that there will still be a lot of old CD-RW drives and CD ROM drives on the market that can bypass the whole scheme.

Re:LOL!

[FallLine]

I answered the question directly, now maybe I could have included a bit more information, but that would have involved going home and checking. Believe it or not, some people that are capable of enjoying high end equipment do not obsess over their belongings so as to remember the brand, make, serial number and all specs, even those that are otherwise skilled in technology, especially when the purchase was made a couple years earlier. You confuse being a _techie_ (i.e., someone that knows the above buzzwords and brandnames inside and out) with being skilled technically (i.e., someone that is actually capable of doing more than regurgitating words, like meaningfully advancing the art/science that they work in).

How does the fact that at least ONE unit, albeit nameless, works without any noticable loss of quality equal zero useful information? It answered his question and it is somewhat useful. If one unit works, then we know at least that the problem does not evidence itself with _all_ such units. If this information were merely worthless, it could be ignored. Your problem is that you have serious issues with the fact that maybe someone has a bit more money than you.

By the way mosch, real men will still troll without the AC, even when they've been shown to be foolish and insecure.

Huh?

[mwalker]

But how does it work. They claim you can use existing mastering equipment to create cds like this. Even more impressive, they claim:

The SAFEAUDIO Toolkit will be distributed with Macrovision's SAFECAST(TM) digital rights management technology that enables 'time lock' and 'number of usage lock' functions while providing persistent security. This feature ensures that CD replication facilities will always be using the latest release of SAFEAUDIO and by allowing Macrovision to control the timing and delivery of toolkit upgrades.

If you can lock the number of times someone plays a song, you are NOT making a cd that will play in a cd player. You need software for that, and it sounds to me like this is software for win32 pc's only. This sounds like yet another attempt to create cds that will execute a program on your computer that decrypt tracks on the cd. Even though it now has DMCA protection, all these schemes have the problem of either needing an external conduit (the net) to give the user the key, or embedding the key on the cd, which is all too easy to hack.

This is an old (and stupid) idea.

Prove me wrong?

Re:Huh?

[MindStalker]

Read it again, this is a software lock against the record labels. Meaning they have to pay so much for every million or so cds they produce, and this software will stop working once they have made so many cds. Yes something else to drive UP the price of CDs while reducing their value.

Re:Huh?

[SnowDog_2112]

I didn't say the huge loss of income was today, or even tomorrow. But it's coming.

And even if it isn't, it's potential loss of revenue. Folks have more disposable income than ever (well, maybe not so much now as 8 months ago, but ...) and so maybe they think we actually _would_ spend more than we are, even though we're spending more than we used to.

Something's got to go.

[bill_mcgonigle]

The technology was developed jointly by Macrovision and TTR Technologies, Inc. in response to the widespread availability of CD burners and disc compilation software.

Hmmm, they're not even trying to pretend this is to stop piracy? This is so people can't make their own compilations? Surely this is prime fair use.

But the cat's out of the bag on CD's. They can't sacrifice backwards-compatibility so they either have to mess with the digital signal or put data in the non-music blocks on the CD. Open source tools already know how to read CD's and skip non-data blocks.

At least with VCR's the Macrovision signal is supposed to be out of range of the TV's display circuitry, but in range of the VCR's recording circuitry, so, in theory, you don't get signal degredation. I can't see how they can accomplish backwards compatibility, unadulterated audio signals, and effectiveness (unless they plan to attack linux cd tools with DMCA). Pick any two.

A warning to the music industry

[Anonymous Coward]

I intend to start applying a restrictive license to everything I post to the net. It will permit all of the usual uses, such as reading online, archiving a copy, etc. But it will specifically require that the first page of any printed copy of any such work, even if it is contained within a compilation with other such works, must contain the full copyright notice. As one individual, I can't expect to ever prove that they have run afoul of my license. But if thousands of us do the same, it may work.

And if the copyright holders on music that the big labels aren't interested in put similar restrictions on songs they release as MP3s, we could easily see the recording industry violating the licenses of indy artists in their overzealous search for fair use that they don't like. A class action lawsuit on behalf of the very indy artists that they aren't interested in distributing could be an excellent test case for re-establishing fair use in the modern networked world. Hopefully, there are some lawyers out there interested in free speech issues looking for a chance to do just that.

Re:Yeah, silly us. Thinking we own what we buy.

[UnknownSoldier]

> What's next?

Well, let's run down the checklist of what you "own" when you "buy" something:

1. Land? No. Very hard to get the allodial title. Taxes prove you don't own your land.

2. Cars? No. The dealer submitted the Manufactor's Statement of Origin to the government, which in turn gives you "permission" to "drive." (You just threw away your Right to Travel.)

3. Software? Nope. Most "End User License"s don't give you permission to make copies for your friends.

3. Music? Whew! You "own" it. For now... But if the RIAA has their way, you will license music in the future.

Food for thought:

If you "own" it, then WHY do you need a license to use it as freely as you like??

--
"The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite." - Thomas Jefferson

Re:RIAA a Monopoly

[RandomPeon]

Is there anyway we can get a group of big wig tech heads (Stallman, etc.) to ask the Justice Department to investigate the RIAA the same way M$ is being investigated? I mean, making non-standard audio formats to lock smaller labels out (DVD-audio anyone?) and trying to kill our fair use rights is EVIL. It'd be nice if we actual got JUSTICE once instead of just the LAW.

Nitpick - the RIAA is technically a collusive system, not a monopoly - all the players in the market get together and agree to things that would never happen without the communication - their behavior is no different from price-fixing.

Unfortunately, there a couple reasons the RIAA will never see a federal courtroom any time soon:

1) Bush is president. As a rule, Republicans don't bring antitrust suits. Reagan ended the antitrust case against IBM (admittedly there were reasons why this might make sense). With comments already coming from the Bush administration about how they "don't litigate lightly" you won't expect to see them mopping up the floor with megacorps anytime soon.

2) The RIAA is politically aware. Microsoft didn't know what a lobbyist was until they were served half a dozen lawsuits. These boys have already pushed through the DMCA, the Sonny Bono copyright extension, and are now buying even more Republicans to oppose any sane changes to these monstrous laws. If they can purchase copyright extensions, they can purchase an antritrust exemption faster than you can get David Boies on the case.

3) There's no business complaining. Sun, Netscape, AOL, Apple, and dozens of other companies had all seen Microsoft's tricks firsthand. They were battered, but they lived to tell the tale, and lobby Congress and Clinton to do something. It helps if you can show a judge a beaten corporation - they don't give a damn about consumers anymore.

Unfortunately, the RIAA beat its competition out of existence decades ago. There are no corporate victims to parade around, just consumers. If only Clinton's judicial appointments hadn't all been roadblocked....

multiple copies of the same cd

[didjit]

how many people actually need multiple copies of the same cd? i've never burned extra copies of cd's i own so i can have one for the car, one for home, and one for the discman. i usually just bring the cd to where i want to play it. man that's really complicated.

Re:multiple copies of the same cd

[TheGratefulNet]

how many people actually need multiple copies of the same cd

ever had your car broken into and your cd's stolen? ever loaned out a cd to a friend only to never get it back, or get it back in a very scratched manner?

ever have them 'missing' from work?

--

Re:multiple copies of the same cd

[Enry]

I own close to 300 CDs. When I go on a plane, or take a drive, I don't want to lug all 300 CDs with me. I shouldn't have to. This is why I bought a Nomad Jukebox - so I can take that small device with me and listen to all of my legally purchased music whereever I am.

Meanwhile...

[PopeAlien]

..Meanwhile there's a pirate-factory out there pumping out copies of Suzanne Somners 'Thigh-B-Gone' workout tapes on an assemblyline with Macrovision intact. Why? because Macrovision doesn't eliminate the ability to copy the video signal, just the ability to copy it on consumer grade equipment.

Sure, we can all go out and buy our $40 boxes to make our new $200 DVD players to work, or better yet a brand new room-size television. but why the hell should we have to, when it is unneccesary from a technological viewpoint and does nothing to stop illegal mass-duplication?

Yes, my TV predates VCR's and DVD's, oddly enough though they all work with the good old NTSC signal which predates any and all A/V equipment I have. In fact, for a while I was running my DVD through an even older Beta VCR BECAUSE it predated Macrovision, and therefore worked fine!

Next up... neurodongles

[sdo1]

This comic says it all...

Doctor Fun 010306

-S

New revenue for an old dog

[scoove]

Better we all buy multiple copies of the same CD so we can keep one in the car, one at work, one at home...

Imagine the new revenue opportunities for the recording industry as you check out of Best Buy:

Sales clerk: Now we just have a few questions before we can sell you Tupac's Greatest Hits. First, will this CD be for home, office, auto or portable use?
Purchaser: Well, I guess mostly for home. But I'll probably listen to it in the car too.
Sales clerk: Oh, then you'll want our enterprise license. It'll allow you full locational use rights. Do you ever have passengers in your car?
Purchaser: Well yea. Sometimes.
Sales clerk: OK. We'll mark you down for the 10 seat license expansion. As you may be aware, CD media is subject to wear and tear and replacement can be expensive. Would you like the optional RIAA replacement warranty, allowing you to obtain a replacement CD should this one become damaged, for only an additional $9.95?
Purchaser: Err... I guess so.
Sales clerk: Fine. That brings your total to $43.45, not including sales tax. They'll ring this up front for you.

*scoove*
"RIAA: Revenue Increase Absent Artists"

Several questions

[Chris Johnson]

I have to wonder about several things here...

One, is this sort of thing related to the music data or is it simply a matter of screwing with catalog data? If it, or some later attempt to do this, is related to music data, what is that going to do to BLER rates? For those of you who don't do this professionally, BLER rates is the amount of uncorrectable burst errors in the actual music data. 2X burning has been tested and proved to produce the lowest BLERs, other burn speeds (and 80 minute media, BTW) are worse or much worse- this is all in the context of a CD that will still play on most players, it will simply interpolate fake data to cover up burst errors. A trained ear can hear this interpolation on detailed sounds as a blurring or muddying up of the musical textures. So... are the major labels preparing to put out 'CDs' crammed with BLERs to try and trip up copiers? Will they (as with the watermarking) trade off the already limited CD fidelity on the assumption that consumers don't need high fidelity CDs for their $20?

Two, is this an increase in momentum towards a state where the labels spend nothing on their actual product (the artists) and everything on media control techniques (for all values of 'media' ;) )? I recently read an interesting interview with several members of Little Feat (Bill Payne and Paul Barrere) in which the subject drifted onto Napster. Payne's reaction was contempt- not for Napster, but for the record labels! His position was that he'd started working with the labels in the early seventies when artists had a certain amount of creative input into the process, and got support and artist development from the labels to produce better music. His scorn for current industry practices had to be seen to be believed- said that they had been doing nothing but churning out hit single 'product' for years, and that this was going to come and bite them in the ass (_his_ phrase). He asked, where are the labels going to be in ten or twelve years, spending nothing on artist development? He saw Napster as basically the 'infinte internet radio' concept, not directly bringing artist revenue but serving as a resource that hardworking independent artists could make use of- and in his opinion and Barrere's, although the new state of affairs requires a consumer to make more effort to find music, people are ALREADY putting forth this extra effort, and will be turning more and more to the indie/online/free resources. Not because they are innately evil criminals at heart, but simply because the record industry, in its own continued efforts to minimise expenses and maximize promotion and sales, is no longer putting out a quality product. The idea is that people don't really want to buy Britney Spears, N'Sync etc: it's just momentum and habit that keeps them buying from that source, the industry, and the momentum IS BEGINNING TO FAIL.

Like the man said- in ten years, the industry will be in a self-created hell. Maybe 'time loves a hero' but time hates last year's one-hit wonder! Given that the industry doesn't develop artists any more, that they don't pay and that they don't _completely_ control distribution channels (just _traditional_ distribution channels like Sam Goody and all the legal FM radio stations), there is less and less of a reason to interact with the industry on any level- whether as a customer, an artist, or even a support technician like a mastering engineer: I've seen a mastering guy admit his little secret, that half his business comes from indie musicians who want their CD to sound better than other indie musicians. The guy was leery of even mentioning this because he didn't want to jinx it. Well- he needn't worry- in ten years _all_ the competitive indie musicians will be turning to indie studios (on their own dime up-front) and indie mastering engineers to produce indie CDs (see Ampcast's upcoming program to burn to order from _red book_ masters- basically, soon indies will be able to match industry standards on ALL levels right down to the UPC barcode) and compete with other indies in a REAL market, one defined by lots of people selling their stuff with easy access to the market, the market being defined purely on the basis of product quality, not what the labels let you know about. Artist A's CDs might be incredibly well produced, Artist B is an incredible performer but the CDs are made off mp3s, Artist C's just a gifted amateur but is selling for $5 a CD- you get to pick what you want.

THAT is the future. If the industry's attempts to cripple its own products make this happen sooner, or make indie media more reliable and playable and usable than industry stuff, then I would have to say go to it guys! Go nuts, add copy-control onto heavy watermarking and make it so you can't play the product in half the CD players out there. You'll earn my undying gratitude by committing quality suicide in this way...

My only concern would be, keep a sharp eye on the legislators. It's one thing for the industry to mandate something- it's another for them to railroad through legislation that deprecates existing stuff. For instance, if they come up with a new Audio CD format, that's one thing, but if they get legislation made to massively tax, or prohibit, humble ol' Red Book CD Audio format, then they'd get to arbitrarily handicap the indie producers. If they get to define a replacement format and it's like DVD then they get to prevent indie producers and consumers from even having access to the authoring technology (see the stories on Apple DVD and what the MPAA has forced Apple to do). This is the hot issue, not whether you have a right to fair-use copy any company's specific product. You can survive doing without Britney but it's another story if nobody is permitted to do their own music and media and put it out alongside Britney, over the Internet. Public access to authoring and media is a _must_.

whipersnappers!

[Transition Cat]

Back in my day we didn't have digitally perfect copies and hackers to defeat copy protection.

We made our copies onto analog cassette tapes in real time and traded hissy compilations amongst ourselves and we liked it!

....

Re:But will it be as successful as vhs macrovision

[NMerriam]

You'll hear lots of complaints by people who are unable to copy videos correctly, but you'll never hear a complaint by anyone about how macrovision has degraded their signal -- it hasn't.

I take it you've never had one of those visit's to a friend's house where they complain because no matter what they do, they can't get the DVD/VHS player to work right. Oh, yeah, you can't plug a DVD player into a VCR that's connected to a TV. Or a VHS player through a cable box, or a DSS box, or anything else becasue the Macrovision screws it all up.

God forbid someone should desire to plug all their stuff into the TV at once -- you're trying to rip off the content producers!...

---------------------------------------------

Re:Better be COMPATIBLE with older CD players.

[billcopc]

Counterpoint: The market won't force anything. The recording industry doesn't give a flying fsck about the market, it is an international cartel that imposes its own dictatorial grip on pricing and distribution. If the RIAA decides that we should all pay 50$ per cd, then that's what they will start charging in stores worldwide. They've heard of supply-vs-demand, and they bought it out with capitalism.

Re:Sure, just look at the success of DAT!

[billcopc]

Success needs support, which was lacking for these products you mention. Laserdisc has garnered quite a following among the more purist among us. We even have Laserdisc movies in our local libraries by the thousands.

The plaguing factor for MD is its lossy compression. Granted, it is still very high quality and much better than tape, but at the time of its launch it was yet cheaper to obtain a home stereo cd recorder, and of course blank cd's have always been cheaper than proprietary MD media. Minidisc is nice in that it is very compact, but otherwise has no true benefit against convention CDs. It came around too late, too expensive.

As far as DAT are concerned, you're just aside the topic altogether. DAT is still immensely popular within music professionals because it is more convenient and reliable than CD recording. DAT tapes do eventually corrupt their data but it takes many years, and even then you can just re-record them, they don't just go bad or skip like recorded CDs. CD mastering plants still take DAT tapes even though home-recorded cd's are becoming quite popular, simply because DAT was the industry standard for so long.

Just because something isn't popular in the mainstream doesn't mean it's a failed product.

Re:You can't copyprotect what you can see/hear

[Eric Smith]

No, because they'll also build copy protection into the media and players, and under the DMCA it will be illegal to circumvent that. Thus you will not be able (legally) to make a perfect digital copy.

A microscope can be used to extract the raw bits from a DVD, without regard to the copy protection. Are microscopes now banned by the DMCA?

No matter.

[supabeast!]

This one will likely be just as successful as Macrovision's pervious attempts at CD copy protection, Safedisc and Safedisc 2.

Both Safedisc and Safedisc 2 can be defeated with generic cracks that were released as soon as the schemes came on the market. Safedisc and Safedisc 2 software are almost always released with specific cracks in .iso format before they ever hit the stores.

Macrovision's attempts at copy protection are worthless. They are sold to moronic executives with little technical knowledge, people too ignorant to realize how useless Macrovision protections on CDs are.

Re:No matter.

[Eric Smith]

The problem with the introduction of a new copy protection system now ISN'T whether it is hard to crack. The problem is that in the past, they could do this sort of thing, but the consumer could lawfully circumvent the protection (provided that he or she didn't violate the copyright). This allowed for fair use.

But now, thanks to the DMCA, it is illegal to circumvent any new copy protection system they come up with, no matter how cheesy it is. The DMCA only requires that the copy protection be "effective", and in the one major test of the legislation to date, the judge decided that the lame copy protection of DVDs was "effective" because the DMCA made it illegal to bypass it. (What a wonderful example of circular reasoning!)

The DMCA also states that it does not limit fair use. However, the same judge decided that fair use was not a defense against DMCA actions.

Locks are for the toolkit itself, not CDs

[Jammer@CMH]

I think that the time lock and number of usage locks are applied to the SafeAudio toolkit itself, to restrict the usage of the toolkit by the replication facility. This can ensure that the facility is always using a recent version, as an old version would lock up.

Not a problem for the consumer. Just quality assurance for the labels, and a pain in the butt for the replication facility.

Re:You can't copyprotect what you can see/hear

[Eric Smith]

Intel is already trying to move the decryption of digital media into the speakers and monitor. If they are successful with this, there is NO question in my mind that once it becomes technologically feasible (probably MANY years from now), they will try to push the decryption into the human.

I used to think that such suggestions were paranoid to the extreme, but now I realize that with all the billions of dollars that the RIAA and MPAA *claim* to lose every year, they will be delighted to fund research into the necessary technology.

Re:A nit...

[norton_I]

Ok, I will one up you. Intellectual property isn't a right either. It is a privelege granted by the copyright laws, in accord with the constitution to encourage creativity and invention. This is much different that the "fundamental rights" regognized by the constitution. IP is a means to an end, not an end of its own.

I would also argue (though I doubt that a court would agree) that under the any exclusive rights granted by IP law that can be shown not to encourage creativity and invention is unconstitutional and should be repealed.

The fact is, the courts have regognized that certain types of personal use falls outside the juristiction of copyright law. Basically, these are:

1) Any copy needed to use the product as intended: you can copy software from a CD to a hard disk, or copy it into memory to execute it.
2) Backups for archival purposes: You may create backup copies of stuff to protect you in the event that the media is destroyed.
3) Copies made for personal use: You can copy a TV broadcast to a tape to view later (time shifting) or create compilations of music tracks for your own personal use. You can create MP3 encoded versions of your CDs so you can play 600 hours without changing disks.

The right/privlege to do these things are all granted to you implicity when you purchase software/music/etc. Not they they only apply to things you have lawfully purchased: That is the primary reason why using napster is illegal (you are making a personal use copy, but of someone else's CD), and the basis of the ruling against MP3.com (they were making they copy for you, which the courts ruled was not the same as you making it yourself, even if it was the same bits).

Why not get Philips involved?

[fmaxwell]

1. Philips is the developer of the Compact Disc.

2. They control the licensing of the logo, technology, etc.

3. Philips manufactures and sells CD recorders that use the music CD/R media.

It would be in Philips interest to see that the CD logo, name, etc. did not appear on technology that was purposely made incompatible with the CD standard -- especially if it rendered their CD recorders useless. Maybe I'll give their U.S. office a call...

Bitter, are we?

[FallLine]

i believe you for about as much as i believe that britney spears is jesus reborn

I do have one. So maybe you should consider joining a new cult, eh?

even if you weren't so full of shit that your eyes turned brown, your post is equivalent to some moronic tech support guy going "it works for me" without researching the problem at all, with the exception that it tries to inflate your pathetic ego by mentioning that you have a "Line Quadruler".

The person that I was replying to asked if anyone that had such a device had problems, I answered him. Period. Now I do not pretend to be an expert on hi-fi or macrovision, nor do I pretend to be a support "guy", so it really is not at all equivalent.

the fact of the matter is that macrovision doesn't affect every projection TV, but it does affect quite a number of them, as it does quite a number of image preprocessors.

And your point is? I neither affirmed nor denied that it _works_ on all without issue, what I did say is that it works on mine and gave the context.

As for the specific size of your penis, I cannot comment, as I don't have access to a scanning electron microscope.

Perhaps you should be considering self-examination. Clearly you're the one with issue. I gave an honest and direct answer, but you can't handle it because you have issues with your self-esteem and/or relative lack of wealth. Grow up, or at least learn to troll a little better.

at least mp3 did one good thing for us

[TheGratefulNet]

it lowered our expectation on sound quality.

I used to chase hi-end audio till it drove me to the poorhouse. it was a never ending quest to get that perfect reproduction of music.

then came mp3. it taught us that content was usually more important than raw audiophile quality. at least as long as the audio was listenable; which with good mp3 encoders, it is.

so how does that relate to this story? well, if we have to start making copies by going via the analog domain instead of purely digital, then so be it. that used to be a big no-no, but with the widespread acceptance of mp3 and its lower quality sound, a regular old analog-to-analog copy (actually, digital, analog, analog, digital) doesn't look so bad anymore.

there is no standard on earth, imaginable or real that can prevent an analog copy (since you have to be able to LISTEN to it at some point) from working.

so far the music industry has declared war on its own customers. do they think we'll just take it sitting down? restrict our LEGAL right to make personal-use copies and not only do you risk litigation and more black-eyes but we consumers will always find a workaround to your madness. and angering us will only persuade us to NEVER line your pockets with our spare change ever again. create an enemy in us and you'll go poor sooner than if you had just let us use the music as currently allowed by law!

--

Obvious...

[KurdtX]

Well, the obvious solution to Safeaudio would be to buy no copies of any disk that uses it. And then continue boycotting until they realease a copyright-law compatible version. There isn't any CD out there that would drastically affect my life if I didn't have it.
No sales -> No consumer support -> No Safeaudio

Kurdt

Better be COMPATIBLE with older CD players.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why will people want to junk all their CD audio equipment and buy more just to protect the RIAA.

If new CDs won't play on old players, people will just not buy the new discs, and market forces will FORCE the record houses to comply.

And if the new CDs are backward compatible, then they remain copyable.

Re:But will it be as successful as vhs macrovision

[abischof]

• Ok, I'll admit some ignorance here, as I don't own a DVD player, but couldn't you hook them up in a different order?
  
  VCR -> DVD -> TV

Theoretically? Maybe. Actuality? Nope -- I know of no DVD player that has A/V inputs :-/. Being that consumer DVD players can't record, it actually makes sense that no A/V input is provided.

Alex Bischoff
---

Re:LOL!

[mosch]

Yo minidick, I always sign my trolls.

And you're so right.... I'm just INSANELY jealous that you obviously have more money than me.

No, I'm not being sarcastic, really. I wish I was JUST LIKE YOU!

You crack me up, dillweed.

--
"Don't trolls get tired?"

Re:But will it be as successful as vhs macrovision

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

As for the USA, such boxes are now ILLEGAL. Thanks to the DMCA.

Re:LOL!

[FallLine]

Clearly this explains why you took the time to reply! I guess I just won't be a dillweed anymore if real-winners such as yourself troll me.

FYI, I just got home, it is a Faroudja VP400. All I want to know is, how is your cult going to jive Britney Spears as the "Virgin" Mary? Ooops, I did it again...

Re:don't support the industry

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

It is a cat and mouse game where the gov't, with the DMCA, has made it illegal for the mouse to run from the cat.

1. Fair use was legal.
2. Content controls stopped one from making fair use.
3. People found a technical means to make fair use despite the content controls.
4. GOVERNMENT made number 3 illegal.

(start of rant)

Not RIAA, not MPAA, not DVDCCA, not Cactus, not Macrovision corp, not TTR. GOVERNMENT. Using our tax dollars to restrict our rights with ARMED force. A court is just a shield to make the guns of gov't pointing at your head socially acceptable. It is still force. Fight even for a right that the law (which includes the Constitution) says exists, but gov't does not, and they'll sentence you to prison or order you to give them or some other party your money. Resist and you literally can have Federal marshalls putting a gun to your head and even shooting you. GOVERNMENT IS THE PROBLEM HERE FOLKS. CSS and all the other schemes would not be such a big issue. If DeCSS was LEGAL, the DVD mess would not be as bad. Even if it is legal under law, Judge Kaplan, who can and has fired the guns of gov't at the DeCSS defendents (albeit it figurativly) is a man with an opinion that counts more than yours or even the law if you end up in his courtroom.

Sad but true, even if you can afford a good or great lawyer AND are right you can still LOSE. The DeCSS defendants did and are barred for life from distributing their product and are ordered to pay for the costs of the procedings against them!
(that is adding insult to injury).

(end of rant)

#1, #2, #3 were all legal. It was a technical ballte which each attacka nd counter-attack was legal. Gov't was not involved. It was capitalistic. Then gov't stepped in, made #3 illegal. This is merchantilism - where the gov't restricts the free market to help the corporations. This is a lot like Fascism/National Socialism's economic policy.

Now #2 is legal, #1 is legal in theory, but since 1 is impossible without doing #3, and #3 is illegal, #1 might as well be illegal. It is either impossible or illegal if you take steps to make it possible.

So the gov't can say fair use is still legal - even if any method to make it possible is banned.

They get their fascism but can deny they banned fair use. They just say they are stopping illegal "hacking"/cracking. And gloss over the distinction between breaking into someone else's system, and hacking a system YOU OWN. The anti-"hacker" hysteria works to their advantage. DMCA is seen as pro-capitalist when it is anti-capitalist, pro-merchantilist, pro-fascist, and un-American.

Re:analog-to-analog is preventable

[TheGratefulNet]

Essentially it was a 'notch' at something like 8Khz.

no it was most certainly NOT like that. there was never ever a change in the audio stream, it was a set of bits ('generation flags') in the CONTROL stream that defined scms. I know - I used to build and sell scms strippers for dat and cd use (I still have a few hanging around, totally unused, since I've not done dat->dat copying for ages).

it was somewhat simple to get access to the control subchannel and find the q-bits, set them to '00' (unlimited copies) then rejoin the audio and subchannels in the spdif stream.

scms is still alive in MD and consumer DAT. pro DAT has never had scms. and any consumer could buy a pro dat machine just for a few hundred $$ more. no proof of being a 'pro' even needed - what a farce!

--

This technology is not required in Canada

[dstone]

There's an aspect of Canadian law that really:
1) makes me happy we have this law currently
2) will piss me off if technology like this takes off

In Canada, March 19, 1998, Part VIII of the Copyright Act came into force. Until then, copying any sound recording for almost any purpose infringed copyright. Part VIII legalizes one such activity: copying of sound recordings of musical works onto recording media for the private use of the person who makes the copy.

Specifically, the Copyright Board says their ruling "does not legalize (a) copies made for the use of someone other than the person making the copy; and (b) copies of anything else than sound recordings of musical works. It does legalize making a personal copy of a recording owned by someone else." So to fufill the spirit of Canadian copyright law, I assume Macrovision's technology will continue to allow me to make copies of all my friends CDs for my own personal use (which the law allows).

Re:#1: I didn't sign anything to get music.

[UnknownSoldier]

> No signatures. No "I Agree" buttons to click before I get to hear my music.

You've hit the nail right on the head. Since you didn't waive your rights via a signature, you own the music.

> he added his son to deed, so when the father died there was no "changeover in ownership".
Congrats ! You're one of the few people that "truely" own your land.

> Today this also avoids income and inheritance tax since there was neither.
Corporate Sole's are another legal way to avoid the inheritance tax, since they legally exist for perpetuity. ;-)

Re:we shall overcome!

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

Good points.

Let me spell it out for those that don't get the DMCA's full implications.

With DMCA:

Fair use being difficult = Fair use being illegal.

"Hacking" "protection" (restriction) systems fixes the technical issue, but causes a legal issue.

"Hacking" is irrelevant to allowing use to LEGALLY make fair use. Fair use is, when not wanted by the copyright holder, illegal, just as piracy is. If fair use is illegal, just as is piracy, what is the legal incentive for people who want fair use not to pirate? Either way they break the law...

DMCA encourages piracy - before there was a legality distinction between fair use and piracy.

That is no longer the case.

Macrovision is a joke.

[BigBlockMopar]

Macrovision merely targets the black areas of your vertical blanking interval. VHS VCRs use this area to set their record level. Screw around with the VCR's recording level and you interfere with its ability to copy stuff.

*Unfortunately*, as a collector of antique TV sets, and as someone who enjoys watching old movies and Honeymooners reruns on them, Macrovision upsets the purpose of the vertical blanking interval, defiles the NTSC standard, and makes several of my TV sets roll vertically round about when your videotaped copy would be flashing between bright and dark. This is very much a problem with very old (1940s and 1950s TV sets) because even when they were new, they tended to be rickety and unstable. 40+ tubes and hundreds of paper capacitors = even when they were new, you'd turn it on and wait 20 minutes before the set is stable enough to watch.

Now, because you're not going to use this to make personal copies of DVDs to VHS or like you'd use an "educational-purposes" pay-TV decoder, how do you scrub Macrovision? Simple. Build a circuit with an LM1881 chip that resets a counter when the vertical pulse happens. Turn on a circuit that clamps the video signal at 0 IRE (0.3V) during each scan line until the counter has counted out 25 scan lines. Release the clamp and wait until the next vertical pulse.

Or, just run the raw video into the Video In jacks on an old Beta VCR, then back out the Video Out jacks to your VHS machine. VCRs usually regenerate crucial parts of the video signal as they pass it, and Beta VCRs don't set their recording level from the vertical interval.

Hey, anyone looking to hire a computer geek with lots of broadcast video and audio engineering skills? Perfect blend of skills for streaming media websites! E-mail me.

Re:But will it be as successful as vhs macrovision

[Squid]

but you'll never hear a complaint by anyone about how macrovision has degraded their signal -- it hasn't.

That's because most people haven't figured out WHY the picture curls at the top, or why it keeps getting lighter and darker on a cycle. Until I researched Macrovision I thought all my storebought tapes were being damaged at the checkout line when they demagnetize the anti-shoplift tags!

Fair Use Explained

[Anonymous Coward]

You can check out Stanford's fair use web site for more information. Also, see EFF's Understanding Fair Use Rights.

Re:But will it be as successful as vhs macrovision

[gotan]

I think that should be a perfect reason for returning the DVD or the VHS or both, since it probably isn't mentioned on the box, that this device doesn't work with the other. Return it to shop, and demand another product until u get it working. If they don't want to exchange it make a ruckus so everyone in the store gets the message. And by the way there should be enough organisations which would happily take up the issue and force the Manufacturers to print it on the outside of their box in big enough letters.
Then you only need to wait for the day when "Macrovision can be disabled" becomes a salesargument.

Don't just sit and sulk--do something!

[dmccarty]

Congratulations, Slashdot, for once more posting a story which--however factually accurate or inaccurate--is written with such bias that it infuriates everyone who reads it. Well folks, instead of just reading stories like these and getting angrier and angrier at "them," use your irritation to actually do something that will have a positive influence.

The DMCA (PDF), however villified it is here on Slashdot, was not intended to turn out as it did. Sen. Hatch's intent was a law that would allow digital copies to be made. The no-circumvention clause that we're all familiar with was supposed to be a pot sweetener to prod the recording industry into releasing digital media. Unfortunately, we all know how the law was abused by those it sought to protect.

Sen. Hatch's office has links to a number of letters and opinions regarding his true stance on the issue of digital media copying. I don't doubt he will bring this issue back up, and as the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee the old media companies will be in the hot seat for what they have done.

So get moving! Do something that will have a real impact. Write your represantitive! Many of them were elected on non-technical issues and don't really know about the topic. Maybe it will be your letter that shapes their opinion.

MP3

[nightfire-unique]

It's a shame, but the industry is forcing me to "steal" their music.

I need music. I want to consume music under the terms granted in copyright law. If the big boys can't follow these terms, then I don't have any choice other than to "steal" the music by downloading MP3 versions of songs I like, with no money going to copyright holders or artists.

I wish there was another way. But, alas, it looks like "theft" may be my only option.

--
All men are great
before declaring war

Right: Doesn't matter.

[powerlord]

It doesn't matter that the copy protection is worthless.

Thanks to the equally worthless DMCA (a most agregeous piece of tripe, and a good example of why all officials in office when it passed should be ousted, since they refused to do a roll-call vote and specify who was involved), cracking the protection scheme, and possibly, distributing the crack, are now illegal (within the U.S. anyway).

What the end results of all this mean, depend on how the DeCSS trials go.