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CD Copy "Protection" in California
Tabercil writes "According to this New Scientist article, the SafeAudio system has been employed here in North America in an unidentified CD which has already sold 100,000 copies." It'll be interesting to see what CD it is. My biggest concern is the car CD players that actually are computers not being able to play these discs. Presumably the copy protection will be broken soon enough, so thats not really an issue.
I keep waiting for someone to sue one of these companies for violating consumers fair use rights. I can't be the only one thinking about it.
Some car players run off of computers. Computers can't read the disc. Make sense now?
Anti-piracy CD system raises distortion fear 16:03 16 July 01 Barry Fox Anti-piracy compact discs that cannot be copied by a computer have gone on sale in California. The first CD title has already sold 100,000 copies, but it is causing concern among audio experts because they fear that the music may be audibly distorted. Photo: FPG The SafeAudio system was developed by Macrovision, a California-based company best known for its anti-piracy video systems. The technology stops people "ripping" music CDs to create high-quality digital copies on a computer hard disc or for downloading to a portable player. The system also prevents people creating digital files from the CD to swap over the internet or copying music onto a blank CD - although it would still be possible to make a poor quality copy by converting the analogue output into digital code. SafeAudio works by degrading the digital code. The CD will still play on an ordinary player or through a computer's speakers or headphones. But it cannot be copied. Macrovision says that the changes made to the music are not discernible. Bursts of hiss Macrovision is reluctant to discuss how SafeAudio works, but has told New Scientist that it is based on work done by TTR Technologies of Israel. Patents filed by TTR describe how a "copy-protected audio compact disc" works. The patents say the system deliberately gives some of the digital code on the CD "grossly erroneous values", adding bursts of hiss to the audio signal. In addition, the error-correction codes on the CD, which would normally correct such errors, are distorted. So error correction fails, leaving tiny gaps in the music. When this happens, a consumer CD player bridges the gaps. It looks at the music on either side of the gap and interpolates a replacement section. A computer does the same when playing CDs for listening. But the computer's CD drive cannot repair the digital data going to the hard disc. So the hard disc copies nothing, or a nasty noise. TTR says the repairs made by a music CD player are not audible. Macrovision has improved the TTR system, says David Simmons, managing director of Macrovision's British subsidiary. Golden ears The company says it has spent six months playing discs to consumers, and to professional listeners - known as "golden ears" - at two major record companies. None detected any distortion. An as yet unidentified album with SafeAudio copy protection has also gone on sale in California. "There was no increase in return rate or complaints," says Macrovision's Heinz Griesshaber. But this doesn't placate hi-fi buffs. "It's a dreadful, dreadful thing to contaminate the sound deliberately, says Martin Colloms, a British hi-fi expert whose columns are syndicated around the world. "We all hate piracy but the idea of mucking up the sound of a recording is reprehensible. It's like slashing paintings in a gallery to stop someone stealing them."
Tough for you. I'm going to cite it anyway. The Supreme Court said in the Betamax case that non-commercial use is presumptively Fair Use. Not just that timeshifting was Fair Use (they only needed to show ONE significant legitimate use for the VCR to toss the studio's case out on its ear).
And in the Rio case, the appeals court rejected the RIAA argument that people have no right to copy music onto hard drives, saying that Fair Use applies to all media, not just AHRA-restricted ones.
If a CD contains pops, hisses, or is otherwise unsuitable use it should be returned. Here is an interesting question, when I buy an Audio CD, isn't it implied that it will be to the Orange(?) Book standard? Obviously, this scheme violates the standard. Can they still call this a CD and use all the Philips logos? Since an Orange Book CD can be ripped, it is reasonable to expect that a CD can be ripped, and therefore, the inability to rip a CD should be grounds enough for returning it. Of course, I do seem to remember that a players up to Orange Book standards are not supposed to allow access to the raw digital data if the copy protection bit is set. Sounds to me like SafeAudio is tooting its own horn. I cannot believe that such a system would be even moderately difficult to defeat. It really bothers me when there is a good, established standard (like Audio CD) and it is deliberately screwed up for no real gain. This is going to set off an arms race of copy protection/ anti-copy protection schemes, and Audio CDs will eventually be in the shape that copy-protected computer CDs are in right now, with incompatibilities between CD and equipment. Lastly, as far as the quality of a 'poor' analog copy goes, I doubt many people could tell the difference between a direct digital copy and a copy that went through an analog stage. The weakness in analog has always been the media (lp, tape), not the electrical signal. The big problem is that the first copy would need to be made in real time, which means that it would probably be faster to obtain a digital copy from the internet than it would be to make your own. Kind of ironic...
I should have charged the company for breaking their multimillion dollar encryption.
maybe because there's no such thing as PCM out or in. there's s/pdif or aes/ebu, and aes/ebu doesn't send track markings down, so if you want to copy cds, you use s/pdif.
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good quality PCI alternatives? you mean like the $40 zoltrix nightingale that i mentioned in the previous post?
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Even if they make something that my cd-rom drive doesn't like, I can still just connect the digital out on my cd player to the spdif in on my sound card. WHOOPS, did I just get a perfect digital copy? MY BAD!
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My MOTU 2408 has a perfectly functional, non-resampling s/pdif input, and my MOTU 308 has 8 of them. If you're on a budget, i think you can hack a zoltrix nightingale for $50 to have non-resampling S/PDIF.
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it's sorta like saying "okay, you can LOOK AT this bag of dog shit, but you CAN NOT make more bags of dog shit and give them to your friends."
oh darn.
--
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
If the article's speculation is correct, the copy protection simply consists of inserting bogus samples in the digital recording. A regular CD player interprets the samples as errors and interpolates over them, while a ripper copies the errors and hence leaves nasty noise in the ripped audio file.
:-).
If memory serves me correctly, programs like CDParanoia already interpolate across unreadable samples when ripping a CD. It seems simple enough to check for "obviously" bogus samples and weed them out. Viola - end of copy protection.
OK, now someone who knows what the real deal is can explain to me why this argument is complete hogwash
When *I* was in college, around 1975, a high-priced LP was in the $9 range. Using the Cost of Living Calculator at http://www.newsengin.com/neFreeTools.nsf/CPIcalc?O penView we find that $9 in 1975 is the equivalent of $29.44 today. In other words, if a CD today costs $15, then its about HALF the cost of a music recording in 1975.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Eventually, I can notice the difference between a fresh tape and an old one, but it'll take more than one re-use to get there.
She also can tell the difference between CDs and analog sources, such as cassette tapes.
The difference between a cassette and CD is annoyingly obvious to me. The different between an LP and CD is also obvious, but at least the LP is tolerable. Interestingly, my wife can't tell the difference.
Geoff, who can tell the difference between live and Memorex, and often even between live and CD
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso
That is a pisspoor excuse. The US is a society very much based on what you could get away with last year. Tolerating this sort of BS now will only encourage more of this BS to occur later. While today only entertainment media is at issue. It will all too soon be applied to the text of laws, minutes of legistlatures and educational materials.
Napster or not, this sort of thing is damn inconvenient for those of us who don't want to risk breaking our master copies or just don't want to LUG around 100+ CD's.
Being able to shrink a CD to one TENTH of it's original size adds considerable value to it. The RIAA is trying to gouge out it's eyes to spite it's face really.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
should be from 44.1 KHz (CD) to 48 KHz (AC-97 native frequency), not the other way around
The SP/DIF in on most soundcards converts the audio data from 48.0 to 44.1 kHz. The quality of this conversion varies. I've heard that the SBLive conversion algorithms are fairly crude
Recording CDs in the anlog domain is no job for a computer. I had a great deal of trouble with analog noise until I ripped the analogue cable from my CD and soundcard, and replaced it with a digital cable. Now, I use an external DAC.
DAE provides a staic free copy-- the best possible staringpoint for a Vorbis or MP3 encoder.
When you buy a copyrighted thing, you are granted fair use rights. This is simply an attempt to underminde fair use.
it is, as you say, perfectly legal to rip your cd's to mp3 as you say. however, it is also perfectly legal for the record company to try to prevent you from doing this. (and unfortunately, now, thanks to dcma, it is illegal for you to try to circumvent that. but that's another issue)
as much as people here like to talk about it, there is not, and never has been any legal right of fair use. while the concept of fair use has been held up many times in court to prevent making vcr's, cd-r's, and other such things with legitimate uses illegal, there is no law that states what is and is not fair use. moreover, there is no law that requires companies to give consumers those rights.
in short, you can not be accused of illegal copyright infringement if the courts consider what you are doing to be within the guidelines of fair use. however, it is completely legal for companies to use technical measures (but not legal measures) to try to prevent you from doing those things. this btw, is precisely why dmca is so dangerous: it turns any technical protection measure into a legal one as well.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
A quote from the article:
The patents say the system deliberately gives some of the digital code on the CD "grossly erroneous values", adding bursts of hiss to the audio signal. In addition, the error-correction codes on the CD, which would normally correct such errors, are distorted. So error correction fails, leaving tiny gaps in the music.
Well, this wouldn't work with my yamaha 8424 cd burner because the thing acts like a miniature cd player when used in burst mode. Basically all this copy protection means is that when real errors occur (i.e. scratches), that they won't be repairable through c2 or other means. Plus with this kind of trickery they won't get the CD digital audio logo certification.
-Moose
Well back when *I* was in college, around 1987 or so I purchased my first CD player.
CD's cost me $15-17 at the time.
Today I buy them for $13-15.
I don't know about cost of living, but that isn't a price increase in my book.
Like most CS labs, many people brought in CDs and listened to them on their headphones using the CD-ROM drive on the machines.
But then you must find another place to leave your beverages.
__
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
There is a long-standing judicial 'fair use' doctrine, which comparatively recently was generally codified into law by the Congress. However, although the Congress is capable of significantly enlarging (or negating the need for, by reducing copyrights themselves) fair use, it cannot move against the courts and eliminate it.
Section 17 of the US Code is basically where you're going to find actual copyright laws. Cornell University has a nice database on the web.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Well, there is an argument to be made that self-help is unacceptable in the realm of copyrights and patents, as they are grants given to authors by the public under specific conditions, etc. That is, there is a quid pro quo in which the public temporarily, conditionally and partially surrenders its right to freely copy and disseminate works but expects that authors will only be permitted to use the legal system against pirates as no technology is capable of discriminating between functionally identical fair, public domain and illegal uses.
If you pursued this line of reasoning (which is not half bad) then by implementing such a system, the copyright holders would themselves be commiting an abuse of copyright, risking its revocation.
It would be easier if the Congress would do its job properly and simply write into law the requirement that copyrights grants have such strings attached.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Nope, it's actually "Yoko Ono: The Polyester Years".
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So long as I can buy CDs with cash, I don't exactly see this as being a problem. Although a mark-of-the-beast style purchasing scheme would kind of make sense, what with Hillary Rosen being the antichrist and all.
YOU HAVE NO CHANCE TO SURVIVE MAKE YOUR TIME
There will be ways around that and hardware makers will upgrade their firmware to adapt. Remember old Atari and Apple games in the 80s and how they used bad sectors to prevent floppy copies? They got around that. Sometimes with bad data (e.g., the bootleg copy of Zork III for Atari was missing a paragraph of text), but most often things were just fine.
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You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
No, but it WOULD be a violation of trademark if they included Sony's "Compact Disc Digital Audio" logo on the disc packaging anywhere. If it isn't compliant, it probably doesn't have the rights to use Sony's logo. Similarly, "cheaper" DVD players out there that can't play cdrs also don't display the sony logo, since cdrs normally follow the standard (Abiet as loosely as they can get away with).
--
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
not to say that we have to like it but.... "making backup copies for personal use is permitted under this law" is not the same as "allowing you to make backup copies for personal use is required under this law" it should be legal to circumvent this scheme if you can figure out how, and make a backup copy for yourself. but then DOH, you've just violated the DMCA!
"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." --Kurt Vonnegut
My vote is definitely for John Tesh (I got a good laugh out of the ad he did for that new show on Comedy Central).
Back in college I worked as a consultant in the undergrad computer science lab (only CS students had accounts). Like most CS labs, many people brought in CDs and listened to them on their headphones using the CD-ROM drive on the machines. Ocassionally someone would forget their CD when they left, but we'd just put them next to the machine and they'd be back for them. One time someone forgot their John Tesh CD. We put that one up next to the blackboard with a big arrow and something like "Whoever forgot their John Tesh CD it's right here->".
Nobody would claim it.
It sat up there for the next month until the semester was over and the CD was, presumeably, discarded. Hence my vote is for John Tesh all the way!
-"Zow"
difference you are alluding to...Educate me please
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
more like a coupon for 10$ off more shitty music, with the copy protection scheme included. God Bless America, please, SOON, because we NEED it.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Funny, but I came to the LP game later, in 1983 or so. And at that point, most albums were $$8 with, yes, the premium titles with gatefold sleeves and booklets and holograms and crap at $9. Double albums were $11.
Were were you buying records? Sam Goody? Mall chains? (Where, incidentally, most CDs sell for $17 in-store today, not $15. They're $15 online, where the difference is mde up in handling fees.)
By my calculations, an album that ran $8 in 1983 is $14 and change in today's dollars. Which is about right at most of the places I shop--independent record stores.
However, inflation has just gotten us there. By my reckoning using the same calculator, CDs should have been selling for $10-$12 ten years ago if they were priced to mirror vinyl pricing. And since the early '90s, CDs have been much cheaper to produce and distribute than LPs, and are less vulnerable to heat and water damage or breakage while in transit.
Why should we be upset? This, my friends, appears to be the perfect copy protection scheme. It is, in fact, so perfect that it cannot be detected.
Prehaps the CDs we're been buying all along have had this protection.
With 100,000 CDs sold and no large scale complaints, it may be the case that this new form of copy protection is exactly the same as having no copy proection at all.
Score one for the RIAA!
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
What's Louisiana's basis for a legal system and how does it difffer from common law?
If I remember correctly, Louisiana law was originally based on the Napoleonic Code, owing to its status as formerly French territory. The only notable differences that I know of are in the areas of estates and inheritances and stuff like that...
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
Completely true, however in concert with making ripping harder, as you know from the Napster situation they've been coming down hard on distribution mediums: While those alternate systems might be every bit as feature rich as Napster (or more), they are fringe products and nothing has remotely the mainstream penetration that Napster had.
It also should be said is that if they make ripping harder, less people will rip. Those who will will have a higher probability of subpar rips, poor spelling titling the product, etc. It's that sort of stuff that makes it inconvenient for the average Joe.
Apparently you have forgotten the golden rule of car audio: All cassette car stereos shall eat 50% of all cassettes placed into them, without fail. It's funny we talk about this because one of the benefits of the CD revolution is pollution wise (well...apart from the fact that billions of cassettes were dumped in the garbage, cast off as obsolete): I remember being younger and quite frequently you would see several hundreds yards of tape floating down the street, or a case smashed into a million pieces, etc. Because of the "stereo must eat cassette" cardinal rule people were often quite frustrated and hurled the result out the window.
I have to admit that I have never dropped a CD in the car, and I haven't had a CD that was so scratched that it was unplayable since the sunrise of the CD revolution (when I was a little less careful).
Cost-wise I don't know if I agree with your assertion: You're talking about a dupe, so given that we should compare a CD-R to a good blank cassette - Here in Canada I'd say that a 100% quality CD-R is about $0.70 CDN each, whereas a good quality cassette (it's been a long time since I bought one) is about $2.50.
Yup, you're right. :-)
In a humorous coincidence I was actually just coming on here to post a follow-up correction: My memory was spurred when I pulled up IMDB to check if the consensus opinion on 13 Days was as bad as I found it to be.
They state that it doesn't prevent analog copying, so yes you could copy the analog signal.
Copy protection is not what most "everything for free" Slashdotters think it is: It is not black and white, and just because a techie with a lot of free time can "break" it doesn't mean that the protection is a failure. It doesn't have to be 100% effective to be effective.
All copy protection has to achieve to commercially protect a product is that it makes the process more inconvenient for the average Joe/Jane than simply going to the store and picking up the CD: Whether it degrades the quality enough that they are willing to just buy a copy, or it makes the process inconvenient enough (i.e. The deCSS process in the early days was ridiculously inconvenient for the average Joe, which is why they sought to squash it in the early days before it becomes a Windows "wizard" to rip a DVD to a MPG), or it takes too much of their time: For the $15 level that we're talking about it's a very small "nuisance factor" that will lead most average citizens to just go buy the product rather than waste their time. I've ripped MP3s just because I can go in and select a track (and through IMDB instantly it's even titled correctly and everything), and it automatically pulls an MP3 copy. If, on the other hand, I had to sit here pressing record and stop at the right moment, and prune off the ends, and live with a degraded copy (all audio-in channels on the major soundcards are garbage), and manually identify each track: There's no way I'd do that, and while there's lots of little kids with nothing better to do who are willing to, a large majority of the consumers would rather part with $15 than deal with the hassle.
It's similar to the software market: There are warez channels on IRC, and to most people that is the downfall of the software industry...then after a couple of 1GB+ downloads which were corrupt you give up and never touch warez again. Even if you duped the CD off a friend, often you need a crack and most people are extremely wary of cracks (trojans, viruses, etc.), so they'd rather just buy the product that endure the risk.
Or, more likely, both.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
there is no law that states what is and is not fair use. moreover, there is no law that requires companies to give consumers those rights.
There is case law. The Betamax case is the most famous, but there's also some that relate to video games (maybe modchips) I think. Actually, now that I think about it, the Audio Home Recording Act is a "fair use" law.
however, it is completely legal for companies to use technical measures (but not legal measures) to try to prevent you from doing those things. this btw, is precisely why dmca is so dangerous: it turns any technical protection measure into a legal one as well.
You sound confused. If DMCA turns a technical protection measure into a legal one, then by your previous sentence this means that companies can't do it. That would actually make DMCA a good thing.
You've stuffed up somewhere in your logic, but I'm not sure where. I think it's where you draw a distinction between technical measures and legal measures. I don't think there's any such distinction, and the laws apply to any measures (legal or technical) which restrict fair use rights. The more interesting question is has fair use been restricted if technical measures prevent lossless duplication, but allow lossy duplication?
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
Sure, but no-one says you /have/ to buy the CD in the first place. Although any CD that purports to be uncopiable should be labelled as such.
Why is it that many people who claim to support standards have such atrocious spelling and grammar?
The newest driver in CVS from opensource.creative.com (CVS tag v0_15) have support (as of a couple days ago) to do PCM passthrough at 48KHz instead of downsampling to 44.1. (Yeah AC3 passthrough has also been supported for a long time too) Actually, the Linux drivers at this point rock the windows ones as far as control over the hardware goes. (Let's see if the windows driver lets you download DSP microcode!) The only feature missing at this point is support for the software synth, which IMHO isn't as big a deal as a lot of people think. Anyone who is seriously using MIDI is probably using external synths anyway. Plus, it's planned...just last on the list
~GoRK
Oh frigging great, So my Cd player with the SPDIF out will start streaming crap instead of higher quality audio.... This HAS to be the case, otheriwse I can make a perfect digital copy of this "protected" CD with my computer (SBLIVE platinum) and my CD player by using SPDIF.
If they added crap to the audio stream, they really slit their own throats with every audiophile.... but then they might just be doing this to rap and grunge.. then noone will notice that anything was done to the audio.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
First, they aren't mucking with the TOC, but putting delibrate errors in the data, and mucking with the ECC
However, they are still selling CDs which aren't standards compliant. This leads to a rather interesting question: If you sell a "CD" that purposely doesn't conform to the standard, is it fraudulent to sell it as a CD? It could be possible to claim that as their CDs don't have the proper ECC, they are lacking a standard feature present in all other functional and non-damaged CD's, and the manufacturers are knowingly selling a defective product.
I doubt that they could be hit under fair-use laws, but if the packaging of the CDs claim that they are normal CDs, without mentioning the copy protection, they might be liable under consumer protection laws.
Nobody expects the Suburban White Boy Posse!!
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
I have a Delta Dio 2496. It works perfectly, plus is has a digital channel mixer which can move sound into any i/o port on the board (including loopback.. ehh hehehe)
There's linux sound drivers on the site as well.
Pan
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
Read the article. It's a different company and a different technology.
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
No. Read the article. Different company, different technology.
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
Even better - it's probably illegal for you to distribute tools that help work around this problem. Although from the description, it sounds like the method of protection is to distort the actual CD audio and depend on the CD player to interpolate; to work around this you would have to write code to do similar interpolation, which might be non-trivial.
OTOH, interpolating the music that's missing isn't as clearly illegal under the DMCA as distributing a program to crack DeCSS - you could argue that interpolating music tracks in this way is a reasonable thing that anyone would want to do with their CD so that they could play it at their computer.
As always, IANAL.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I actually had just ripped a CD to my computer, and used it in my car for a few days. It turns out that I dropped it, and got lost under my seat, and in the process of adjusting the seat, the CD was split in half!
The article is talking about SafeAudio from Macrovision. The Charley Pride CD is using Mediacloq by Suncomm.
Q.
According to the article it does corrupt the actual stream.
(I don't usually respond to trolls. But this is an insidious meme that must be fought.)
The reason for your lack of power is that you are apathetic. You say that other people do not have the power to change the world, but that is not true. You can not deny that change happens. And it must always start with an individual.
But you attempt to discourage others from working for change, so that they will become impotent like you. You are using what little power you have to try to make this negative change occur. That's not a very nice thing to do.
-=Ivan
Its all about charging what the market will bear. You can also hear software companies whine about how much copyright infringment costs them, but an unprotected game (Quake 3) will cost just as much as one with super protection (Alice with Safedisk 2).
If they (record or software companies) really want to be principled, they'd charge less for stuff with protection. But they don't, and I doubt they ever will.
I'm going to steal all your money. But it will only be for my personal use. What's illegal about that?
Moron.
BilldaCat
Maybe I'll go into his house, copy all the source code behind a company he's starting up, and spread it all over the net.
Tan.
BilldaCat
Why folks don't just use a CD player with PCM output and a burner with PCM input is beyond me. IMO, this is the best way to play music.. Why not record with it as well?
Lowmag.net
Yes, but the BIG point is that while it is legal for you to excersise your right to fair use, the makers have no legal obligations to allow you to exercise such right. Now if the government started getting directly involved with helping corporations invade your right THEN a law is broken. For example if the government created a law that said you cannot break a copy pertection, then that would go against the fair use law. OPPS they already did. Nevermind.
If you read the article, basically the cd is designed to be unreadable by a CD-ROM but readable by a regular cdplayer. Depending upon how they did it, one method recording errors, a bit by bit copy would be playable in a cdplayer but not a CD-ROM, another method mentioned by another poster, would be to have pits that are half-depth. Which would be read as a regular pit by a CD-ROM thinking they were burned by a CD-R, and not read by a cdplayer, these half pits would be reburned as being all the same depth, and then you have a completly errored disc that won't read on either type of player. Either way it will take reengenering of the CD-ROM to be able to rip these disk. Of course you can always line-in the disk.
Probably not, since the copyright is most likely held by the record company.
...country music singer Charley Pride's "A Tribute to Jim Reeves" cd.
According to this, someone's already posted mp3's of the tracks, but the label denies that the copy protection was truly circumvented.
And, incidentally, this looks like old news--the press releases I saw were dated in May.
So it's really true that you can't duplicate this disc using a writer technology like that produced by Rimage? We have some of these writer towers where I work, and I might try to copy it, if I knew which disc to try. Their writers seem to happily duplicate anything I've thrown at them.
Of course I have only copied CD's that I actually own.
You're totally right. I had forgotten about that. Makes things even worse.
Now, I wonder if I can get Maryland to get the tobacco companies to give me coupons for free cigarettes. I'll even bring them several pounds of 'defective' smokes ("Yeah, look at this, I burned it, sucked on it, and all that is left is this little cotton bit. I want a new one.")
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
How many joysticks did that game break? And not the usual 'out of frustration' thing:)
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Funny thing for me is that I only have two CDs that are badly trashed and that I would have liked to have had backed up. One is Prince (1999, I believe) and the other is Metallica (black album). Guess which one I likely won't replace?
(FWIW, I've been collecting CDs since 1985 or 1986 when my father got his first CD player. Single disc JVC. ~$400, marked down from $700.)
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
To the end user (plaintiff) the individual suit is usually better. But it's a tangled web:
If I sue Sony in small claims court and win, great. But there is an up and a down. Up is, I win, and it wasn't too expensive. Down is that there really isn't any precedent that is applicable to you (unless you live in Charles Co. MD, USA)
But, it probably won't happen. From what I heard somewhere (and not only am INAL, I'm Not a Good Listener:) Sony will likely try to get the case moved to some larger court.
Okay, let's say that it goes to a larger court. I need a lawyer to make my $15 claim. He doesn't want to do work for a contingency fee of $5, so he says "how 'bout a class action?" So we get a bazillion people to sue Sony. Sony says no, but really means yes (to the class action, that is). We're going to pay the same amount of lawyers (companies like that don't have small court cases) and take care of a bazillion cases. So immediately, they have saved a bazillion*(number of cases-1) dollars.
So, I win my $10. I may or may not have to pay my attorney's fees. And my attorney gets fees + bazillion*$5 (he's getting a contingency on all members of the class).
So, 'my' attorney wins, Sony wins, and everyone else loses.
Pretty shitty system, huh?
(Of course, there are many other ways that this can happen, but Sony knows that the real costs are attorneys, not plaintiffs. If they want class action, or a quick settlement, it should automatically mean that that is not in your favor as a plaintiff.)
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
No, you were right the first time. You bought the CD. Last time I checked, you didn't sign some B$ license saying you only bought the right to use the data on the disc in some proscribed manner.
Don't expect this to last, though. Sooner or later, Congress (and/or the courts) of the US will change this to saying that you did NOT buy the tangible property, you merely licensed the data on it for specific uses.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
LOL. Hahahaha! Man, that is the funniest shit I've heard in a long time.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Didn't think of this earlier:
/., eh?) but I don't think this tech should preclude doing that.
You ripped a perfect copy. If you burn the copy, warts and all, wouldn't it still play identically to the copy that you bought? I haven't read the article (unusual on
It's like some of the old copy-protection schemes for computer games: if you copy the disc, warts and all, you were successful (Yes, I remember that sometimes that only worked on REALLY good floppy drives, and under some other circumstances, but the last ditch effort in copying a game was just to do a damned good bit-by-bit copy)
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
From what I've read (which isn't exhaustive, mind you) - the way these types of things are supposed to work is that they prevent a CD-ROM device from reading the CD on a hardware level. Apparently, regardless what commands you give to your CD-ripping application, the CD-ROM drive will be more picky about the way it reads the CD than an Audio CD player. And this pickiness is what gets it in trouble - the 'wildly erroneous' data that they've introduced confuses the firmware of the CD-ROM such that it believes that the data recorded on the CD is absolute garbage - and basically reports errors back to the OS, much as it would if the CD were scratched to hell.
I read about this in a previous article on Slashdot. From what I understand, all these schemes work from the same concept.
Well for one thing, steganographic signatures can be overlayed on the music which, while not discernable by the human ear, can be detected by analysis, even after a sample has been "degraded" by the analog conversion. Expect steganographic signatures to become very widespread on music distribution media soon. MP3's would be traceable to the source they were copied from.
-----
I'm tired of hearing the same old tired argument of "so what if they implement stuff like this, somebody will just crack it anyway". The implicit message is that it is acceptable behaviour for companies to implement any level of copy "protection" that they want. It isn't - the message that consumers should be sending is "it is not acceptable IN THE FIRST PLACE", not "it is acceptable, go ahead, somebody will crack it". The former approach deems the RIAA's behaviour "good" and the crackers' behaviour "bad". The latter approach deems the RIAA's behaviour "bad". This is a very important distinction. Whether or not someone will crack it, "somebody" shouldn't have to crack it in the first place.
And I don't disagree that recording companies should be allowed to protect their IP - those who push this argument are missing the real motives of the recording companies, which is not just to protect their IP, but to monopolize content creation and distribution channels, as well as to eventually implement pay-per-view ubiquitously (with elimination of fair rights use being a side-effect).
-----
You could get really good copies if your CD player on your stereo had a digital out and your sound card has a digital in(Like the SB Live). My main problem with doing this is time. I like the ability to rip from a CD into MP3 quickly. I recently reconverted my 200+ CD collection into MP3. I would have detested doing the conversion if it had taken the same time as playing each disc.
The catch is that an audio player reads bits off a disk and dumps them into a DAC. No attempt is made to correct any of the data under the premise that if a couple bits are wrong, no one will ever be able to tell.
When the drives switches to data mode, a single bit can kill a program. In this case, heavy ECC is called for. CD rippers work by reading an audio CD in data mode. The 'burst of sound' are designed to confuse the ECC algorithms. The answer is new firmware or a driver that will disable the ECC routines of the drive.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
I'm not familiar enough with this audio-mangling technique to know for sure (and possibly not interested enough to hunt down the answer myself) so I'll just ask the question:
Is this technique only effective when a disk is encoded as an MP3 or other lower bitrate format, or does it corrupt the actual raw CDA audio stream?
The difference is important, because with storage becoming so much cheaper over the next few years, I expect more and more people will simply either copy the CDA files, or "rip" to WAV format anyway, eliminating the MP3/vorbis/whatever encoding step entirely. Would that buy you anything in this circumstance?
Any insights?
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Now the big question is *How many times?*
"Hi, this madonna cd wont play in my machine, id like to exchange it for another copy"
"Hi. Remember me, this one wont work either"
"Hi. Remember me, this one wont work either"
"Hi. Remember me, this one wont work either"
"Hi. Remember me, this one wont work either"
"Hi. Remember me, this one wont work either"
"Hi. Remember me, this one wont work either"
"Hi. Remember me, this one wont work either"
Sure, I'll take my money back and go away. But before i go, ill buy this Insync cd.
"Hi, this madonna cd wont play in my machine, id like to exchange it for another copy"
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
I thought there were costs built into blank CDs to offset some of thus. Does this mean the prices of blanks will decrease?
Also, since this wonderful copy protection prevents piracy, will the cost of a CD go down because of the increase in revenue on more sales of "originals"?
--
Charles E. Hill
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
In all cases, there's exactly one D/A conversion--either at the CD-ROM drive, at the sound card, or at the speakers.
Oops, my bad. It just means the conversion occurs closer to the speakers, so you (theoretically) get better sound. The inside of your computer is electrically noisy, so it's best to keep things digital while they're in there.
I'm not too sure about the details here, but I knowApple switched CD playback mechanisms with a fairly recent OS release (either 8.6, 9.0, or 9.1), and I know it went from analog-out from the CD drive to digital-out. Why did they do it? I'm not entirely sure--I can only guess. At least it doesn't suck much CPU time (1.5%).
It's because the audio is already analog by the time it hits your sound card - your system never sees the bits. The cd-rom drive contains the hardware to act as a player, and outputs analog audio on a separate wire to the sound card, which plays the analog audio directly.
Ever since MacOS 9 (I think), the MacOS has handled CD audio digitally. The digital data goes into memory (DMA, I hope), and is converted into analog by the sound chip as with any other digital sound signal. The advantage is that, if you have digital speakers, there's no unnecessary D-to-A conversion.
Macs will either be able to rip these CDs, or they won't be able to play them. Seeing as Mac users are a particularly rabid bunch (perhaps even more rabid than Linux users), it will be funny to see what happens when they Mac-attack the big recording studios.
--
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
I agree with Martin Colloms. I cannot believe the gall of the record labels to (apparently surreptitiously) deliberately introduce errors and data corruption into music CDs that customers are expected (and "legally required") to purchase with their hard-earned cash.
Agreed. What we need is a new version of the PMRC to strong-arm the record companies into putting a "WARNING: This recording included explicit purposely introduced errors, your listening experience could be degraded" label on all such protected disks.
Say, Tipper probably isn't too busy these days...
I think we all know that the main reason for these laws is not to stop "legitimate" back-ups, but rather to prevent pirating music (or anything else). Shoving your head in the sand and saying "well *I* don't pirate" is pointless. Everytime this topic comes up, people start screaming what about their rights and screw the rights of others with opposing views/opinions regarding copy protection.
:)
Why is it a Crime to break into someones house and steal their stuff?? I never do that!
Why is it a Crime to kill people? I never hurt anyone!
It goes on and on.
Maybe I am totaly wrong...that is Ok...this is just my view.
Wariac
Remember it, write it down, take a picture, I dont give a fsck!
Very true...whenever something has copy protection, you can bet that someone else will break it. So they should just stop trying? Should all devs out there just accept the fact that once they create something they lose all rights to it (for the record, I have a couple gigs of MP3's etc)?
I heard somewhere once that the only reason we have locks is to keep honest people honest. Very true and very applicable to the topic of copy protection: Copy Protection keeps honest people honest. No more, no less. From what I have learned working for a software company, that is an acceptable goal.
Wariac
Remember it, write it down, take a picture, I dont give a fsck!
All of this depends on 2 things: your player and your hardware. Conventionally, CD-ROM drives have a CD-Audio decoder built in to the drive. In this case, any player you use will just control the CD-ROM via hardware commands (stop, skip, ff) and the computer never sees any digital data. A stereo sound cable carries the analog signal of the playing audio to your sound card, where it is amplified.
On the other hand, there are systems in place now (Windows Media Player for one) that will use OpSys syscalls and extract the digital data from the disc and decode it through software. When this happens, the data no longer transmits via analog stereo cable, but through that pretty ribbon on your CD-ROM.
Taking the data directly from the CD-ROM to the disc is exactly what ripping is. In effect, players that use digital playback are performing a temporary rip and then discarding the audio data when the buffer clears or the application exits.
-ttam
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
I know I've occasionally encountered a dialog box that says "Copyrighted SPDIF CD Audio will be muted during recording." when I'm recording something to WAV. I just tried it with an Aerosmith CD and Sound Forge though and had no problems recording off of the digital audio out of my Creative PC-DVD Encore drive.
I know a Plextor 12x10x32 CD-RW I just installed had digital audio out on it right next to the standard one, so I think it's becoming more common. I'd never seen it before I got my DVD drive 2 years ago.
-Sokie
------
Where are the slash-groupies? I distinctly remember being promised slash-groupies!
You're right - I'd remembered reading about the Charley Pride thing a few months ago, and figured this is what the article was about. My bad :) I should have suspected there would be competing copy-protection schemes.
<flogging_self>Read references first!</flogging_self>
<flogging_self>Read references first!</flogging_self>
Saving some face, at least the Amazon link has some nicely annoyed feedback and - I should point out - there are no goats anywhere in my previous links.
This is the link to the SEC filing mentioning the CD...
http://www.secinfo.com/d1157k.43b.htm
And, of course, here's a link to buy it at Amazon.
Does it matter with this? The "digital" quality of the sound has already largely disappeared via the "copy protection" scheme - you're hearing mosly interpolated bits, so nobody can even claim to produce a purely digital rip of this stuff...
Not really.
If they were smart, they'd only replace samples where the typical interpolation done by CD players would hit the original sample value on-the-nose, or close enough as not to matter. There should be PLENTY of those.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I thought there were costs built into blank CDs to offset some of thus. Does this mean the prices of blanks will decrease?
It might be interesting to institute a suit to block any company producing copy-protected CDs from receiving their share of the "tax" money. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Heh, Macrovision says it's not discernible.
Funny that Macrovision's video "protection" is quite discernible...
In Canada we have the same thing, what Quebec being under the Napoleonic Code, and the rest of the country under English Common Law. So now what happens is that of the I 9 (I think? or is it 7?) members of the Supreme Court, 3 have to be from Quebec to deal with the different system.
-- "Is this death or is this Ohio?"
um, actually there is, at least in the USA there is, Title 17, chapter 1, section 107, "Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use". Here is a copy online http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html.
-- free as in swatantryam - not soujanyam.
Actually, no...
It is entirely reasonable to write code that communicates with the operating system's "sound card interfaces". This code would receive digital data that the system thinks will be played sonically, but simply redirect the data to a file. Hasn't this been done already?
How does this indiscernable change in the bits compare to digital--> analog --> digital? Basically, to a trained ear which sounds worse? Ripping from a CD to a wave at 44K 16 stereo sounds a lot better than ripping to a 128K MP3, so what's to prevent me from ripping from CD to wave to MP3? Sure, I lose some of the quality going from digital to analog but wouldn't that be masked by the MP3 compression? IOW, does the option to rip a CD in analog in Musicmatch already defeat this copy protection since MP3s are lower quality anyway?
I'm not a pro by any means, but I can hear most little inconsistancies in my music. I wish I knew which album they encoded so I could try to find it and try this myself.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Wow, the RIAA has really got us now. First they get Napster to conform to their demands (re: shut down until they will reopen and we can pay them $20 a month to download tracks that we can only listen to on our computers three times. Or something like that...) and now this. Huh, I wonder what their excuses will be when revenues in 2001 fail to shoot up incredibly. Oh wait, "trying economic times." Nuts.
The filters in the soundcard's DAC should remove the ultrasonic frequencies. So there's no need to build a filter, just use a loopback cable.
--
It looks like this scheme will only stop you ripping the CD to a WAV file (eg for MP3 encoding). It will still be possible to make 'perfect' (errors intact) copies of the CD.
--
IMDB? I think you mean CDDB...unless there are features of IMDB I'm unaware of.
Hello little man. I will destroy you!
If it's digital, you can just do it in software.
Doesn't cdparanoia allow for error correction when ripping cds, if the cd were perhaps scratched and not likely to be in the range of normal data?
I don't know that much about the software, but if somebody knows of a cd that has this protection, see if cdparanoia can work around this..
Windows has had this option (to intercept CD Audio control commands, and play digital audio aquired using raw reads through a sound card) since Win 2K, perhaps earlier. OS/2 has had a similar option as far back as 10 years ago. However, since a thin minority of drive manufacturers refuse to enable raw reads on their drives (because of pressure by copyright holders), this defaults to off -- rationale: it will work on the widest range of machines. In any case, you've always been able to do this under Windows using CD player software that extracts the audio directly instead of using CD Audio control commands (e.g. the winamp cdda plugin).
Of course, if the copy protection involves inserting data corruption beyond what ECC can repair, it will cause similar amounts of problems for anything doing raw reads, whether it's running on a Mac or a PC. (So, I don't see why a regular CD player would read it correctly... but that's another matter).
However, you might have more luck if your CD-ROM drive was actually playing the audio -- and thus decoding the ECC, perhaps correctly -- and had an S/PDIF digital out connected to an S/PDIF digital in on your logic board (term preferred by mac users, interpreted roughly to mean "motherboard" in standard jargon) or third-party sound hardware, thus doing a digital-to-digital copy. The majority of newer desktop PCs (~ last two or three years) have CD-ROM drives and sound hardware with the appropriate connections.
Apple is now an old hand in the world of IDE and PCI devices and uses commodity CD-ROM and sound chipset hardware (rebranded, of course) just like everyone else; I wouldn't be suprised to find that they've gone this route as well.
I don't go making copies of CD's for friends, but if I want to make copies so I don't scratch the heck out of my originals isn't that something I should be allowed to do?
I can't think of the copyright provisions that grant me this right off the top of my head, someone help me out here.
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If it can't be read by your CDrom drive then your CD player isn't gonna read it either. You are correct about it not being like MP3's vs WMA vs Ogg. What will happen is windows won't mount it as an autoread cd ... but that doesn't mean the laser can't be forced to pass over the medium and send whatever 1's and 0's to a program. Then this program, most likely a hex viewer/editor, will be how the crackers will crack the data.
... it shouldn't be much more dificult than cracking a nintendo rom, which only requires the right 50 dollar ICE module. Someone will just write a program that doesn't require the CD to be mounted by the os. There is nothing new about that.
As for being difficult its all a matter of finding the resource
Code softly but carry a big magnet.
Many newer model car cdplayers are more then just cdplayers. Some even run a version of Windows CE. The point he is trying to make is that since the computer in the cdplayer isn't trying to just stream the data ... its actually trying to mount the disk so the OS can read the data ... the mount might fail and you'd never be able to play the CD in that device.
Code softly but carry a big magnet.
I'd like to then copy both of your wealths, if you don't mind. You can have a copy of mine when I'm done. :-)
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
Interesting. I would how a digital console would react to such an incoming digital signal. The desk might balk and not recognize it at all.
It would be interesting to try this.
Rich...
Ignore Alien Orders
What? What the hell does that mean?
You mean the author's copyright to the work? I would suppose that the owner of the copyright (either the author or the publishing company) would have given permission for the manufacturer to do this.
I can't believe this was modded up to 4.
deconstruction
74321 22749 2
I've got very good hearing, and that signal has prevented me from listening to my original bought CD after the first time.
The other tracks are fine though (but lousy songs)
it's in my head
For the $15 level that we're talking about it's a very small "nuisance factor" that will lead most average citizens to just go buy the product rather than waste their time.
All it takes is ONE person to go through the hassle of ripping the CD and breaking the copy protection. That one person shares the mp3s out on Gnutella or OpenNap, or inserts them into Freenet. "Average citizens" then are able to download them without any trouble at all.
--
PaxTech
All movements for social change begin as missions, evolve into businesses, and end up as rackets.
If this new protection scheme doesn't work in car radios, can I "protect" a few of the cd's owned by the little thug-wannabes in my neighborhood?
No Michael J. Fox is the anti Elvis, and Elvis is in Joan Rivers but he's trying to get out. -- Mojo Nixon paraphrased
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
That's not true at all. CD-ROM drives are different hardware than cd sudio players. They are two different specifications. There are ways to stop a cdrom from playing a disc that will play in a normal audio device. It's not just a matter of software. While it may be possible to write a driver to try and get around it, this may not be possible on all drives.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Which is why they won't say what the cd is. They're trying to stop people (us) from intentionally buying a cd we wouldn't otherwise buy just to return it to prove a point. This way they have the ability (or the hope that they will be able) to in the future say see "we didn't have any more returns on this cd than any other, this copy protection does not affect the consumer". It's likely, given this premise that the cd is one that would be used by very few geeks, who would, hopefully, figure out why their cd was different, but by a demographic group that is the least likely to play in in equipment that will cause problems and least likely to return it if it did. (I.e. hillbilly's, just kidding). In this way they will try to ensure that they can point to return and complaint numbers and have them be no higher than usual. And allow them to ignore later complaints when cd's are released, and there is foreknowledge of the protection. So it's actually kind of important to find out what the cd is and complain.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
No I doubt it, see my post above for more detail, but I believe that this is a plan by the industry to try and ensure demonstrable success of the scheme. If they were concerned about someone cracking it they would want that done as early as possible, to minimize the money invested. Besides, don't you lnow that it's illegal to circumvent copy protections schemes, according to the DMCA (grin).
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
No you are wrong, even without a typo. Not all cd audio players implement those features. Those features are not required by the audio standard. You've proven my point, many car stereos do include those features so they won't be able to play the protected cd's. You're acting as if the data tech came out and instantly all cd players use it. This is patently untrue. That's why this particular form of copy protection works. It exploits those differences.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Uh don't forget to figure in the cost of production. A vinyl lp cost ALOT more to manufacture than a cd. You need to weigh all of the factors... not just the ones that make your point.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Actually, I don't think that would work. Disabling the error correction would allow you to copy the songs but there would be breaks in the audio (as discussed in the article) which ECC would've corrected in a normal CD player.
My [deity name here]! Someone who got a Mojo reference...
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
"Even if it is (forgive me) Kenny G..."
Yes, but if it is it isn't like anyone would notice. Kenny G is, of course, the Anti Elvis...
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
Well, maybe, but Brad Mehldau isn't really that obscure in the jazz world at least, and I don't think it was his personal decision, probably something on his producer's or the record companies' part. In any case, his music is good.
This has happened previously. One of Brad Mehldau's CDs released last year I believe (One of his Art of the Trio CDs) had the SafeAudio protection on it. I wasn't able to play it on my Plextor CD-R drive but my five-year old 6x drive was able to play it in Windows (it can't extract the audio digitally though). For those of you who don't know, Brad Mehldau is a jazz pianist.
Sounds like we will need to start using analog rips. Not a huge deal, sound cards are pretty good at the recording, it will just go slower.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
Well, you could always rip and reburn the CD.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Is it one of these schemes where an ultrasonic component is added to the sound that confuses MP3 encoders
I've seen LOTS of rips that include significant energy at 15,734 Hz, the horizontal scanning frequency of NTSC and PAL60 television (60000/1001 fields per second times 262.5 scanlines per field). The worst offenders are TV soundtracks such as "Schoolhouse Rock," but I've seen it on all sorts of discs. I deal with it by first using the 15.7 kHz signal as a clock to remove wow and flutter and then using a simple antiresonant notch filter to remove the clock signal. (Because the signal is close to a sawtooth wave, containing both odd and even harmonics falling off at 6 dB/octave, you also need notches at 31,468 Hz and 47,203 Hz if you're sampling at 96 kHz.)
filter it with a low-pass analog filter of some sort
Why, when a digital Butterworth bandpass at 10 Hz - 17 kHz works just as well and introduces less noise? Avoid phase distortion like this: reverse, filter, reverse, filter. (The bidirectional filter corrects for the inherent phase problems in IIR filters.)
kind of like a watermarked JPEG that's blurred, sized down a little, then resized up, to remove the watermark
Or just notch filtered to remove the specific spatial frequencies that contain the watermark.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I was going to buy it just to play around with it. It's totally ludacris to say it can't be copied.
I'm not really sure what Ludacris would say about this protection, but I bet he'd think that it couldn't be copied, and would jump on the bandwagon as well. Oh, wait, you meant ludicrous.
That long?
Huh. What money from shareware?
Because the record companies screw the artists out of their rights anyway, the label usually OWNs the copyright already anyway. Thus...
Look at the article. All they did was put virtual scratches into the CD and make sure they screwed up the ECC as well.
If anything, I think it's time we put some effort into the scratch-removal parts of MP3 rippers, and that such effort would have the secondary benefit of clearing this little mess up as well.
I wonder, however - what effect would this have on the durability of CD's? If it's already got a virtual defect in it, would it be more susceptible to skipping due to a physical media defect?
Let's assume there won't be a price drop. We already shoulder the cost of piracy in CD's, or so they claim. Therefore, not dropping the price is an admission of one of two things:
1. The copy protection scheme is ineffective.
2. They've been lying about the costs of piracy to extract more money out of us.
At the risk of a -1, redundant, if you could get to the slashdotted article you'd find that they know "If it can be played, it can be ripped" so have gone for the solution of making a sufficiently broken, non-standards conforming disc that it can't be played on hardware with any decent kind of error correction. Most cheap so-called 'hi-fi' cd players junked proper error correction circuits a long time ago as needless expenditure, which is why cds seem so unreliable and easy to scratch compared to in the past, and they are counting on computer-only users and people with quality equipment to be a small enough minority to get away with it. Personally, I don't own a player that doesn't have a digital out connection, so I can't see me playing these broken discs anyway.
Mind you, I'd most likely just buy the vinyl if they try this on something I like...
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Or, easier still would be to just use a standard CD player with a digital output (SPDIF with either toslink or coaxial) and record it with a sound card with a digital input.
:)
Yes, it means that you'll be "ripping" at 1x, but 1x is infnitely faster than 0x.
Ian
No, because the copyright owners (namely the record label, _not_ the artists) are the ones asking for this. They can do whatever they like with the music, including hacking it to bits (after spending $19-zillion to over-produce it in the first place).
That situation was underscored last year in a failed attempt by BMG Germany to push secure CDs using technology from Israeli security company Midbar. After shipping 130,000 copy-protected CDs, BMG was forced to abandon the project in January as complaints piled up from customers, who said the discs wouldn't work on their players. ---
Doesn't this new tech come from an Israeli security company?The article says that CD-player error correction overcomes the introduced garbage, wouldn't a CD-ripper's error correction ability be able to overcome this as well? Even if current software rippers can't, it doesn't sound all that hard to deal with...
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
Maybe we can tell her that this corruption of data will inevitably lead to the corruption of youth, and therefore something must be done so that parents can know if their children are purchasing corrupted material.
Cryptnotic
My other first post is car post.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Don't be an ass. You know what he was trying to say.
Let me sum it up in 2.5 words:
NYC - Investment Protection
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Do you even know what a search engine is?
Understanding Fair Use Rights
It was the 4th hit on google. See the concluding section. NOW!
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
My DVD-ROM drive has a digital CD output. I haven't listened to a CD though its analog out in two years. How would SafeAudio get around this?
A question I have is, what if the CD gets scratched? If the error correction is already strained by having to interpolate between their deliberately induced data corruption, will audible distortion occur sooner when the medium is actually damaged? And since you now have no way to make a backup copy.....
--
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
Similar audio CD protection system was already tested over here in Czech Republic several months ago and I must warn you that it's not a simple matter to crack it. The main problem is that your CD-ROM does not recognize it as CD (data nor audio) at all. The effect is the same as if your CD ROM tray contained empty (unburned) CD. So you cannot even play the CD in your computer, much less grab it. Special CD copying software (CdrWin) identified that there's SOMETHING on the CD, but failed miserably when trying to copy anything from it (not even raw sectors), presenting the error "CD Drive returned invalid status code" or something like that. In my standard CD player the CD worked without any problems. What's most interesting, if you look at the CD itself, there are visible gaps between the tracks (like on vinyl LPs)!
--- Frantisek Fuka (Yes, that's my real name and you have no idea how it's pronounced)
Great Black quote by the way...
If you don't have anything nice to say, say it often.
If you don't have anything nice to say, say it often.
- Ed the Sock
MG
Randomly distributing Karma whenever possible.
You'd have a hard time proving that.
Even in temperate weather if you leave a tape inside the car it will eventually (2-3 weeks) get mushy.
Besides, how the heck are you gonna impress the girl in the other car if she looks over and you have an old cassette audio system!
------
C'mon, flame me!
No sig for the moment.
It doesn't have to be 100% effective to be effective.
Tell that to the Napster Judge.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Well, if I ever end up with one of these, it's back to the store with it.
If they won't take it back because "it's been opened", a phone call from one of my lawyers should do the trick.
wishus
---
We lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt
My debut novel AMITY now available: http://jeremydbrooks.c
I am wondering how J.Random User will view this: the CD works fine when they buy it, but starts playing badly after about a month. They're bound to notice sooner or later...
Joe Sixpack doesn't care, because he's most likely not making copies of his cds. He can still listen to what he wants, just not make copies of it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I bet this was the music they played in the test of audio quality between Ogg, MP3 and other formats. According to the article, the encryption is actually bursts of "hiss" that a CD player should interpolate out of playback, but which an encoder will use to create noise.
The "golden ears" people in those tests placed Ogg close to the bottom - I bet this is the CD they tried to rip from.
My bet is on 4 weeks before something hits Slashdot about someone cracking this code....any takers?
I think it will take 28 days to post a solution to Slashdot because of the following formula:
4 days to crack the encryption. It shouldn't prove too difficult to filter out the level of erroneus coding they're using.
24 days to retain a lawyer, to develop an anti-DCMA strategy, and to mail-order asbestos underwear.
What about windows media player playing CD's by ripping the digital audio right from the CD and playing the music through the soundcard instead of using the internal analog/digital lines from the CDROM to the soundcard?
Is this going to play in that situation? I think not.
I have a shinny apple for the first to identify the CD.
Don't like apples? Ok, I'll give you a beer.
Spring is here. Don't believe me, look outside!
We are the priests of the Temples of Syrinx
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
It's like slashing paintings in a gallery to stop someone stealing them.
So if someone were to, say, slash the tires on various RIAA figureheads, you could then argue that you were doing them a favor (beyond the obvious speed-hole benefit) in making it so no one will steal their tires. They won't notice the difference anyways (at least our test group didn't notice).
So, anyways, we want to be able to have a backup copy of our media because we all love Kenny G/John Tesh so much that their joint CD gets played 24/7 and gets too scratched to be useful (or is that just the copyright protection kicking in after too many uses?).
Why don't we just copy some US currency and then we can buy as many copies of KG/JT as we want. That's fair use, right? I'm just backing up my money in my wallet. Really!
--
Garett
Music prices have quadrupled in the last 15 years? When was the price of a CD ever $5? Or even an LP for that matter? Heck, by shopping online or at large merchants like Best Buy I can still buy most new CDs for around $13, not a real dent in the pocketbook considering the prices of more important things, like food or housing, that really have experienced vast increases in price.
I do not have a signature
In my version of history the preferred medium was vinyl LPs, which I recall typically paying $8 to $12 for. Nor do I recall in 1985/6 paying only $5 for cassettes-- and I wouldn't compare those cassettes with any CD I paid $20 for today (which leads me to believe you're buying imports or you're in Canada).
I do not have a signature
I wouldn't be surprised if this were their plan. Doubt it will work, though, as nobody buys DVD-audio now, and people really will resist the copy protection. Ripping CDs to MP3 is too mainstream now for the industry to kill it, I think.
sulli
RTFJ.
and read the Amazon link. People are already commenting on Amazon that it's copy-protected! Bet that slows sales down a bit...
sulli
RTFJ.
What this looks like it does is throw off the error correction used by cd-rom drives but not mess up the error correction used by a regular cd player. So couldn't you just get a digital dump of hte raw data, then doapasover it using whatever error correction a cd player would have used?
Well, your certainly welcome to take a copy of all my wealth if you want. :)
I remember when CDs first came out. They touted the benefit that your CDs would "last a lifetime!" because nothing would wear them down. And the audio salesmen loved to show demos where they would stick little 3mm sticker dots on the CD and still play it, to show off the robustness of the ECC.
Could this be the start of planned obsolescence? Probably this would be a good point to make to consumers.
OTOH, IIRC the original ECC was made pretty strong to overcome flaws in even an unscratched CD, since both the pressing process and the method of reading (at economical levels) was pretty new at the time and prone to error. I suspect that CDs made now are better (in terms of raw error rates) than the ones that came out in '83.
if we can play it on a computer why can't we write a driver that captures the data going into the sound card, (like a screenshot or in this case a "SOUND SHOT")?
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
Right now www.newscientist.com just brings up the Microsoft webserver screen...
The music I buy is about $20 as well, but that usually gets me a double-CD set,thus netting about $10 per disc, which is more in line with the cost of music when tapes were around. Of course, this only applies to the music _I_ buy. ;-)
you might be able to, but ive noticed problems with trying to dupe software with similar protection schemes. the bit copy almost has to be a clone of the disk, and not just a bit for bit copy, because some of the bits will point to others (breaking up the tracks). try copying a Black & White cd for instance with a regular cd burning program, youll have no luck. with a cloner though...you have more success
admit defeat, live in decline, be the victim of our own design
good point. if this were the case it might be possible to just sample the audio, using some lossless method to get around the transfer of the raw data
admit defeat, live in decline, be the victim of our own design
really...come on...all it would take...(and there are many really easy ways around this but here is one)...is some one with a digital mixer to dump its tracks over and then cut a new cd....and that would even be a lot more effort than needed.
admit defeat, live in decline, be the victim of our own design
Is it one of these schemes where an ultrasonic component is added to the sound that confuses MP3 encoders and generates low-level lound beat frequencies when played back ? Well, whether it's that or not, here's what's going to happen : people who have an ear for musical quality (such as music professionals) won't like this at all, and may actually be able to hear distortions in the masters.
As for the rest of us who can't really distinguish between a 128kbps MP3 and the original on CD and really want to create an MP3 version of they CD to play on their MP3 player, they'll just bypass the protection by playing the original, filter it with a low-pass analog filter of some sort, re-digitize it and MP3-encode it (the hardware to do this is a PC with a full-duplex sound card, and 50c worth of electronic components anybody with two hands can solder together). Most likely, most people won't hear much of a difference in terms of quality if the process is done right, kind of like a watermarked JPEG that's blurred, sized down a little, then resized up, to remove the watermark : sure, the photo isn't as good as the original, but it's good enough if you're not a professional photographer.
All in all, a hassle for everybody courtesy of the copyrighted music mafia.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Its going to be very difficult to break "protection" on a CD that won't even be recognized by your CDROM drive as a real CD.
It was nothing to do with MP3 vs WMA vs Ogg or anything like that. It will do the same thing under Windows or Linux.
It still blows me away that so few people seem to care about this kind of thing. Does Joe Sixpack user honestly not care that somebody else gets to determine what he can and cannot listen to, for example?
#include <sig.h>
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
When it's broken can we have another go'round with 2600 and wear it on our shirts and say Freedom of Speech? Just need to know this so I can figure out how many shirts I'll need to print up. (c=
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
--What is IBM part #7320154?
hmm... is it a PC? Does anyone know?
"Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental." -Slashdot
More inconvenient than getting a job? Nothing exists for the "average Joe."
After I have received the wisdom of good teaching, I will untiringly teach all people. - The Teachings of Buddha
The article claims that it prevents ripping by introducing "wildly erroneous" data and also munging the ECCs. So what; if you leave ECC off (an option in MusicMatch) or rip in Analog mode (also an option in MusicMatch), I would assume these things would not really be a big deal. The quality would still be good enough for most people. Then if you need a copy you can use on another computer, you simply burn one from THAT rip, not the original. What's the big deal?
(Aside from the completely ODIOUS idea of deliberately introducing distortion, of course...)
--Brandon
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
We'v taken care of everything, the words you read, the songs you sing, the pictures that bring pleasure to your eyes....
01101001 01100001 01101101 01101110 01101111 01110100 01100001 01101100 01100001 01110111 01111001 01100101 01110010
I also find it intresting that they don't what to reveal which CD title has this protection scheme. What do YOU think they're afraid of?
A steaming cup of soykaf would be real wiz right now.
Of course the record labels don't care about killing the CD. They want it to exit stage left because:
1) People are catching onto the fact that the CD only costs ~$0.80 to make, and they have been raping us in higher costs, and
2) because CDs and MP3s get along so nice, they are a menace to profits, and finally,
3) they want everyone to replace their entire CD collection with the new DVD-audio, which has built-in encryption.
It is actually a pretty good plan: screw up the CD, so the audiophiles move onto the DVD-audio, and the MP3 problem with everyone else dies off.
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
I'm quite concerned now that this will impact the quality of the sound if you use the digital output of the CD to go directly to your Amp... They are assuming everyone is going to convert to analog before amplifying... This will piss off the audiophiles... (I hope I'm wrong, but from the descriptions, this is what will happen :)
BA
-- Huh?
If it can be played, it can be ripped. There is no such thing as copy protection that REQUIRES the thing be decoded to audio that will not be EASLILY bypassed.
The sooner the morons in the record industry realize this, the sooner they pocket the $millions they are wasting developing such crap.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
When you steal his money he does not have any more... When you copy a music file the other person still has it.
Dumbass.
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Surely it's completely impossible for a CD to cantain an ultrasonic component? They only sample at 44kHz (approx, 44.2 maybe?). The highest recreatable frequency component is half of that (Nyquist's sampling theorem). Traditionally, anything above a certain frequency is filtered out. I believe this is 20kHz, but it has to be some frequency thereabouts. In theory they could choose to leave this in, but that would be insane as there is a good reason this is filtered - rather than simply not being recreatable, these frequencies cause aliasing (spurious low frequencies) which is obviously a Bad Thing. Since human hearing range is nominally about 20Hz-20kHz, nothing can be recorded onto a CD at ultrasonic frequencies (plus I personally can hear well into "ultrasound" and it doesn't seem that uncommon to have a pretty large hearing range, so a lot of people would be a little miffed at the inclusion of sounds we supposedly shouldn't be able to hear.) Tell me if I've missed the point:-)
Molf
Sec. 107. 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 by 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 - (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) 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.
To me this neither restricts nor permits personal "back-up" copying. One could argue the whole research/non-commercial angle but that could be a fairly weak argument.
Another poster argues that Monkeydo's rejection of the Betamax case is not fully convincing and I think they have a point.
I think we both misrepresent the Library aspect of limitations to exclusive right, but f- it, if you wanna figure it out go to Monkeydo's link and read it for yourself.
Monkeydo, I'd like to see those legal "precidents," or precedents as I like to call them, that are against me. Don't cite it if you don't have a reference.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
Why would the breaking of the copy protection help those with cars? Maybe I'm just being ignorant or misunderstanding the above statement, but I don't see how this would work.
Given a reasonably level playing field, who would win a fight between a bear and a shark?
Maybe you should just try making copies of his money instead. For personal use only, of course.
Maroon.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
Until recently country music was the best selling genre. Hip-Hop has taken over within the last 2 years. The difference is that with country music the purchase demand curve is consistant for a long timeand you'll see albums on the charts for a very long time 30 to 60 weeks easy, while the hip hop music is purchased very quickly and demand slacks off within 4 months. you'll see stuff only 30 weeks old falling off the charts that were top 10 hits when they first came out.
Country music is a very powerful force.
ONEPOINT
if you see me, smile and say hello.
Hell yeah!
But don't worry, you can read protect any CDs you are exposed to with a sharpy. Hmmmm, now pass me the Yanni CDs they need read protected as well.
--
M0571y H@rml355.
I could have used this technology back when I didn't have any money for a distortion pedal for my guitar. Instant distortion of music - does this mean I'll like Britney Spears now?
$45 per U Colocation Special
The patents say the system deliberately gives some of the digital code on the CD "grossly erroneous values", adding bursts of hiss to the audio signal. In addition, the error-correction codes on the CD, which would normally correct such errors, are distorted. So error correction fails, leaving tiny gaps in the music.
Sounds like they are trying to distort the sound to me. From later in the article:
When this happens, a consumer CD player bridges the gaps. It looks at the music on either side of the gap and interpolates a replacement section. A computer does the same when playing CDs for listening.
But the computer's CD drive cannot repair the digital data going to the hard disc. So the hard disc copies nothing, or a nasty noise.
It seems to me that if the CD player can automaticly compensate for the missing piece while playing, it shouldn't be too hard to write a piece of code that can do it while on-the-fly to the hard drive instead of doing it on-the-fly to the standard output
Lawrence Lessig is my personal hero.
And this is old news, here's when I first submitted it:
2001-05-15 14:01:23 Copy Protected CDs Arrive (articles,news) (rejected)
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
If they released this test CD just to check the system out, they should have done it out in the open. It seems somebodys scared of having their project cracked 2 seconds after releasing it (which will probably happen) and losing their funding.
Inserting "grossly erroneous values, adding bursts of hiss to the audio signal" sounds like a pretty shaky protection scheme anyway.
I couldn't fail to disagree with you less.
Hip-hop artists are messing up my spelling.
Hey, instead of messing up the quality of the songs, why don't they just issue licenses with each audio CD. If you want 5 copies, buy 5 licenses. I know I wouldn't pay the extra money, but there are people out there who would, just look at the money from shareware...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~ now you know
if you're recording the analog out, it's not going to be as good. However, it would seem the correct thing to do is rip the track into a wav with horrible clicks, than pass a filter over it with logic similar to cd players to look for obviously erroneous data and to interpolate the correct data in that situation. Heck, once the algorithm is out, I'm sure lame and other ripping tools will easily incorporate it so that it's not even an additional step for the user.
Actually, on my win98 laptop, if i remember correctly, just inserting a cd started a cd player, and there was a loopback function, so you could record the mucsic as it was going from the cdrom to the speakers- which means the errors would already be remove. i haven't studied cdroms on modern computers, but it would be easy enof to do something like that, and not even give a crap about diffent software/hardware. or use a ripper that corrects errors!
"It'll be like stealing candy from a baby... why, that look like a lark!" - Mr. Burns.
It's the "RIAA's greatest hits CD!"
--
If for no other reason, this scheme is horrific for the fact that it intentionally degrades audio. From the article:
... the system deliberately gives some of the digital code on the CD "grossly erroneous values", adding bursts of hiss to the audio signal. In addition, the error-correction codes on the CD, which would normally correct such errors, are distorted. So error correction fails, leaving tiny gaps in the music.
The company claims that no one can notice the difference, but I think their test group was too limited. I have a friend whose wife will only use fresh VCR tapes because the distortion caused by reusing a tape is noticable to her. She also can tell the difference between CDs and analog sources, such as cassette tapes. Again from the article:
But this doesn't placate hi-fi buffs. "It's a dreadful, dreadful thing to contaminate the sound deliberately, says Martin Colloms, a British hi-fi expert whose columns are syndicated around the world. "We all hate piracy but the idea of mucking up the sound of a recording is reprehensible. It's like slashing paintings in a gallery to stop someone stealing them."
If it doesn't play right in your car, return it.
any senseable person would agree that the CD has a defect if it does not play as you expect it.
If enough people start doing this, The record companies will get the idea that this is unacceptable.
http://www.theMediaBunker.com
Ok, I once had a CD that I stupidly let my girlfriend borrow; which I never saw again. Annoyed, I decided to download the cd from an undisclosed location (starts with DAL, ends with NET) and burned it to CD. now she received a gift and I lost nothing.
Does this scenario sound familiar to anyone else?
CDs should be GPL'ed!!
I find absolutely nothing wrong with what I did.
As for the basic idea of song-swapping:
Who here has never recorded a duplicate of casette tape (remember those? think hard...) to give to their friends? Burning CDs is the same thing, except your "friends" are seperated by (n) miles of CAT-5 etc...
In the future, everything will be instant, but the DMV will still take like 9 seconds
Firstly, for every single employee they have working on protecting music, there are thousands, if not millions of computer geniuses out in the world who want nothing more than to break it. They cannot win this battle..
:) GIVE IT UP! you're wasting money and resources on a problem that can't be solved this way.
As long as you can go out to the store, pick up a compilation of music and take it home.. it can and will be able to be pirated and distributed on the net.
I mean, what is to stop me from just simply going out, playing a "safe" cd on my walkman, piping the audio to my soundcard through the line in or mic in jack, making it a wav file and then converting it to mp3 that way? nothing! while they may add a little more steps to the process, once it's an mp3 file and on the net, it doesn't matter anymore does it?
;I find absolutely nothing wrong with what I did.
.. therefore you wouldn't have a right to the music yourself :) much like going christmas shopping, buying your girlfriend a cd and making a personal copy for yourself.. legally that is wrong..
.. but I personally never copy cd's or download mp3s.. and I certainly do not have almost 10 gigs worth .. (wink wink)
Well if it were a gift, then you'd have given it away
do I care? heck no! copy away
That would make the CD more susceptible to small scratches. Intentionally selling a damaged product (with a reduced lifetime, to ensure that the consumer must by another CD soon)?
I'm not a lawyer, but it could violate consumer protection laws.
For the particular case in question, it seems almost trivial; more like a minor repairing of the data rather than breaking a scheme.
-- MarkusQ
> Its going to be very difficult to break "protection" on a CD that won't even be recognized by your CDROM drive as a real CD.
I can see how computer CD software might not recognize it as being a "good" format, but I can't see how the hardware would fail to read it, since the essentially same drive hardware is being used in both cases (the consumer black-box audio device and the computer). So breaking it would just be a matter of writing some software.
Now, this may be a problem since only major corporations can write software and none of them would be motiva--oh wait, I forgot, some scattered individuals write software too. So yeah, I suspect it will be broken.
-- MarkusQ
"SafeAudio works by degrading the digital code. The CD will still play on an ordinary player or through a computer's speakers or headphones. But it cannot be copied. Macrovision says that the changes made to the music are not discernible."
If this is so, all we have is software protection. This can be broken. End of story.
This may be an obvious question, but what about regular old CD copy feature of my burner's software? Will the duplicate CD still work in my walkman? Or will the duplicate be all scratchy like a mp3 ripped from one of these protected CDs?
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
"My biggest concern is the car CD players that actually are computers not being able to play these discs."
Yeah, right.
Your biggest concern is that you won't be able to make copies of these CDs.
Just be a man and admit it.
...and you can't blame meteors for everything.
There've been a few cd sold here in Europe with various protections systems.
I used to be a big fan of Phillip Boa, until his newest CD was sold with copy protection. Yes, I grab mp3s of my music, so I can listen to them at work or on my computer. Yes, I make copies of my music for friends, so that they get to know different bands.
And what's illegal about that? I'm not making any profit out of it, I'm not making my own music and copying stuff from other people - it's all for personal use!
And what about the radio stations, which all use digital systems? Won't it be difficult to get airplay if all the modern radio stations can't digitalize and play the songs? As if they would grab the cd from the archive, insert it, etc..
-- sigs are like parking spaces - all the good ones are occupied
If a CD costs $15 to make and i pay $17 that's fine.
But if it costs $0.10 to make and I'm paying $17, fuck that.
I don't work my ass off to give money away for free to wealthy, shady, corporations.
i said no text
arent all cd players a computer some sort of another?
they all need some sort of processing...
but if you mean they are somehow able to filter the data going on between a cd-rom and the actual computer it would be really interesting to see how the current standard encoding does have anything to do with the effect... :-\
my blog
Who here actually gives a shit about fair use? The question in my eyes is whether we'll be able to illegally duplicate this copyrighted property so we can enjoy it for free with our friends and family. And of course WE (the geeks) will, because we're priveledged with the skills and support network to make it happen, but the problem here is that the people who really can't afford it (and just about everyone reading this CAN afford to pay) are going to have to revert back to paying for it, just as we were getting close to making the technology accessible to these people. It's now very aparrent that this and other information technologies that might make for a more upwardly mobile lower class will just continue to be snuffed in the name of conserving our intellectual property rights. And the real pisser is that WE(the middle class and myself) are the ones inducing this sort of reaction from the system by ripping IP in the first place. The thought of under-priveledged people having to pay for their information (Its hard enough for them to take an interest in information in the first place) is pretty shitty. ---FuntshotIV "...I could explain it but no one would care."
Use baby oil, Pam, or Rainex. You put a little oil/grease on the CD and LIGHTLY polish so the scratches are all filled in. Then you burn a copy. As soon as something (your thumb) touches the CD the scratches will come back.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
I have been reading through these comments and you are the one with the only reasonable answer to the problem. I mean who cares if they are a pirate or not. Or if it is legal for music companies to do this to CDs or not. And I have to wonder was this all brought about because of napster. Come on people it is just music not some government briefing.
What are you talking about? It is already that large I mean it seems lately the law is based on how much you can pay an attorney. And where you stand in the publics eye. how much does a music CD make a difference when you see all the other stuff that goes on in this country. The main point is why have digital technology so you can reduce the quality of the audio to that of a tape.