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Macrovision CD Protection Bypassed
LoPan writes: "The defective CDs that have recently arrived on the market have already had their copy protection broken according to The Register. What I'd like to know is if the discs do not conform to the Red Book standard, and if so, can they actually be sold as audio CD's, with the logo? Are they marked, warning consumers that they're buying a defective product?" The cdfreaks article referenced by the Register article tells you all you need to know. It's Windows-centric, but give it a few weeks and I bet cross-platform answers will show up.
Most CD's contain a phrase in small print that goes something like this "...unauthorized reproduction, copying and rental of this recording is prohibited by law." For the average home user reproduction and rental are non issues. A copyright holder can't take away your legal right to make a copy of a recording. This really has nothing to do with the DCMA as far I as can see.
Interesting... from the "last 10 visitors" section, when I viewed it...
6. 1 August 21:28 Software A.G. of North America, Reston, United States
We don't need no Net Explorer We don't need no Thought control
That's right.. you are "no different than.." the avg. consumer. You let corporate america and your elected reps kick you in the balls and then you smile and go by more of their products.. yes, you are an idiot :) tell me how it feels to be an american idiot in the new russian america??
If they aren't distributing their tool "for commercial advantage," then they can't be charged with a criminal violation of the DMCA. However, Macrovision can still file a civil suit against them, probably leaving them in debt to Macrovision (and to their own attorneys) for the rest of their lives.
Has anyone tried cdparanoia? I would think that it would work on this intentional read corruption. Does that put the author of cdparanoia in violation of the DMCA? Shit, so I can intentionally scratch some cd's of mine and call it copyprotection while sueing that guy for writing cdparanoia?
How does one define a copyright protecting system?
Answer: badly.
It's not really a rhetorical question. The DMCA defines a technological protections measure, basically, as a process that applies information in order to gain access to the work in question. It is indeed THAT broad.
Not only is it ridiculously broad, it is of course a bad definition. Note: the Macrovision CD protection is the same type of "copy prevention technology" that CSS is: it does not in fact prevent copying, or even access to the work. It makes it difficult to read the work when it is used in a strictly controlled tech environment (ie, read in the environment of the copyright holder's choice). Both tpms do this, though, with "application of information in a process", so they count as tpms. But of course this isn't copy or access prevention, but access adulteration.
Only because the copyright holder is able to control the tech with which you read the work you have purchased or otherwise legally stolen, is - so far - any post-purchase access-adulteration "copy protection measure" even remotely conceivable.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
This software shows all of the ".cda" files on the CD as ".wav" files.
Question: Is there any loss of quality in converting from the CD native ".cda" files to the ".wav" format?
Sig free since 2/6/2002
Except that there are two classes of works subject to the exemption from the prohibition on circumvention of technological measures that control access to copyrighted works. The second is
If they are sold as audio CDs with the logo but are not Red Book compliant, then this exemption clearly applies, since the technological measure is clearly addressing a mechanism that fails to permit access due to malfunction.
that's interesting, but when you take into account section 1201 (see my post further "new-ward" on the top level of this threat and tell me if i'm missing something important), DeCSS and CDFreak's software are perfectly legal. Basically, from all that i've read, creating or proliferating a device or technological measure for use in accordance of fair use laws (read: archival duplication of electronic media) is A-OK by the DMCA
Thanks. My sentiments exactly.
ah, n/m, found the handy mirror. I feel sheepish.
Since the recording needs to be played by the cd-player, can't the recording just be done analog? I know MusicMatch has this capability. Sure it takes a little longer, but just fire up the recorder before you goto work. It will most certainly be done when you get back! And since the recording all stays inside the pc, the analog is just about (not entirely but VERY close) to as good as the all digital version.
What I do think will make a difference is when the record companies come up with (1) an easy way to obtain and pay for music online, and (2) methods of making piracy so difficult that people would rather just fork over the cash. Obviously, we're not going to like it if/when that happens, but that's what they're shooting for.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
I was originally going to post this as a response-to-a-response, but i got enough replies with similar content to reply outside the thread.
... a technological measure that prevents unauthorized distribution or public performance of a work would fall into this second category"
I think my big problem here is that I don't fully understand what the DMCA actually -says-... so i looked up some key passages, let's read along:
"Contracting parties shall provide adaquate legal protectiona nd effective legal remedies against the circumvention of effective technological measures that are used by authors in connection with the exercise of their rights under this treaty or the Berna convention and that restricts acts, in respect of their works, which are not authorized by the authors concerned or permitted by law."
Now, since the electronic reproduction of digital media for archival purposes is legal, how can the creation of a tool that enables this practice be illegal (i apologize for posting this sentiment twice, but im going somewhere different with it)?
Also an interesting little gem:
[paragraph pointing out that circumventing copyright controls to -accessing- information is illegal, but not copying it. and then...]
"This distinction was employed to assure that the public will have the continued ability to make fair use of copyrighted works. Since copying of a work may be a fair use under appropriate circumstanses, section 1201 does not prohibit the act of circumventing a technological measure that prevents copying. by contrast, since the fair use doctrine is not a defense to the act of gaining unauthorised access to a work, the act of circumventing a technological measure in order to gain access is prohibited."
Sounds pretty clear-cut to me. By those guidelines, the DeCSS boys should have been clean as a whistle, same with the CDFreaks crew.
Oh, and check out the footnote to that page:
"'Copying' is used in this context as a short-hand for the exersise of any of the exclusive rights of an author
Further down is a list of exceptions, section 1201(f), very interesting:
"Reverse engineering. This exception permits circumvention and the development of technological means for such circumvention, by a person who has lawfully obtained a right to use a copy of a computer program for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing elements of the program neccessary to achieve interoperability with other programs, to the extend that such acts are permitted under copyright law."
"Encryption research (section 1201(g). An exception for encryption research permits the circumvention of access control measures, and the development of the technological means to do so, in order to identify flaws and vulnerabilities of encryption technologies."
Now, it was mentioned earlier that CDfreaks could still be presented with a civil suit, but lets take a look at "remedies".
"Any person injured by a violation of section 1201 or 1202 may bring a civil action in Federal court..." Since, according to said sections, no injury took place, no civil suit can be brought to court.
Also interesting was the mention that nonprofit orginizations, archives, and educational institutions are excempt from liability.
If you check out the new section in table two, section 512, "System Caching" is also excempt from liability. Since the CDFreaks software caches the audio track into RAM, wouldnt it be excempt?
For all the DMCA bashing that goes on, actually reading it, it looks pretty fair and reasonable.
The only possability then, is that the Powers that Be are all either unintelligent or receiving large bribes from the media industry.
My Windows 2000 computer has a USB Sound Device.
I bought the Microsoft USB speaker system they sold a few years ago (now discontinued). No sound card in the machine. Really nice sound.
Current systems CD-ROM data paths usually return an audio sector that has been verified correct, one that has been corrected, or the raw correct-or-not sector data. They don't usually return the error correction bits so that software can analyze the sectors and fix them.
If I'm way off and most CD-ROM drives out there provide a simple way to read the data with correction bits, then you are right. The software will be able to do the same interpolation the player hardware does.
You can still rip at 1x using your CD-ROM's audio path. And, as you said in your post, mp3 is lossy so the loss of quality caused by going D to A then A to D may not bother people as much. They're just upping your CD rip time from 10 minutes to 60 minutes. Once ripped, the file can float among all the others in the great P2P file sharing netherworld.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
If this is true, won't they allow copies (albeit, just as limited copies) of these CDs to be made?
If so, any suggestions, favorites?
Yup, I got that they were European. I simply said they'd probably get a nastygram (not necc. a lawsuit). Just because they're in Europe doesn't mean that a US company won't go after them. Remember DeCSS, Adobe? Just because the "offending" parties were not in the US (Norway and Russia respectively) didn't stop squat.
If you don't have anything nice to say, say it often.
- Ed the Sock
Speaking of defective, as I understand it, these 'protected' CD's deliberately introduce imperfections that the CD player's built in error correction will be able to deal with. The article mentions that this is the same way that the CD player deals with scratches and smudges on the CD and laser misreads. (I know, elementary, but bear with me). These 'protected' CD's may play fine when they are brand new, but what about after a couple of months when the CD player has to deal with scratches, smudges AND slightly corrupt data. I'd be willing to bet that this protection method will significantly reduce the playlife of the CD's. But do these jerks care? No - they just push the consequences of their actions into the future, and somebody else will have to deal with it later. These kind of 'fire and forget' tactics really tick me off. It's kind of like selling snake oil in my opinion. I hope these guys get it right in the ass.
friends don't let friends teleport drunk
You're right that they're not quite in the same legal boat as Dmitry, but think back to the case against 2600 Magazine-- they merely printed a method of circumventing a security feature and that landed them in court (though not in jail, thankfully). I don't think CDFreak gives out the source-code to their VXD though, but really they pretty much explained it in the article, they just used plain English instead of C or C++.
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
I wonder how long it will take for these guys to end up a prison somewhere..
Carl G. Jung
--
"With one breath, with one flow, You will know Synchronicity" -La Policia
I might then try to rip it by recording from analog in. I would have then circumvented the protection and broken the law without knowing it.
Consider the situation where the CD were not protected at all: you can analog-record it. And with the protection, you are still able to analog-record it. With that in mind, how does one argue that Macrovision's process is a "technological measure that effectively limits access"?
I suppose in a while they'll make voting with your feet illegal too. It's a logical next step.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This is one of the protected CDs...I bought this CD and wanted to rip it to play on my MP3 player.
CDDA paranoia ripped this CD fine...here's how... You can't turn on the "accept no less than perfect" option...you will see errors during the read (V), but the end result is fine. You can only rip at 1x...I belive this is the key...most CD-Rippers will try to read at the fastest drive speed. I belive there are some portable CD players that read at faster than 1x (to fill their anti-skip buffers faster?)...obviously these CDs won't play correctly in these drives. And yes, there is no apparent CD-Audio icon on this disk.
but on the other hand, if you're exposing yourself to new music using mp3s, you're also subverting the economics that the record companies expect. they expect that if they force you to listen to something on the radio or mtv, then you'll go out and buy it. that's why n'sync and all the other shit like that is popular. nobody likes it because they normally would find it appealing. people like it because they're trained to like it.
if you start liking music on your own and ignore the schlock that you're force-fed, then you're adding unknowns to the system, and the record companies can't consolidate their catalogs to accomodate a universal taste, a goal to which they've been aspiring recently. During the merger-mania the record companies were going through last year, a lot of bands were dropped to slim down the rosters to a small pile of the most profitable "musicians." They WANT to produce as little variety of product as possible to reduce costs, and still sell enough to keep a nice fat income. finding new music on your own gets in the way of that goal.
#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}
F(#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}%cF(%s))
From the CD-R FAQ at http://www.cdrfaq.org/faq02.html#S2-4-2
"One last piece of advice: do not assume that any disc that doesn't extract cleanly is copy-protected. There have been many, many postings on message boards from people who think they have found a protected disc, or how some specific piece of software can defeat the protection (sorry guys, CDFS.VXD is not magic)."
The evidence at the cdfreaks sites seems rather thin ("Recently someone reported to our site that there is software that is able to rip SafeAudio protected CD's very easy."). Shouldn't we reserve judgement until there are more specific details? Can anyone name a single title with this type of copy protection?
cdrdao:
cdrdao read-cd --read-raw --datafile [filename.bin] --device [bus,id,lun] --driver generic-mmc-raw [filename.toc]
Get it here: CDRDAO
Reported is that all software that is able to rip at Burst Copy Mode .... is able to rip SafeAudio protected CD's.
So does this mean that these Burst Copy Mode programs, while previously legal, are now "circumvention devices" under the DMCA?
If so, can I make a "protected" file format that Microsoft Office just happens to be able to read, and get Bill Gates arrested?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
No, all you need is ONE key. Each player contains a key that is used to unlock all discs.
Hmmm... the DMCA states, "...`(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls...".
So, that means that anything that's purpose is not circumvention, but use, should be legal. IANAL, but I speak English, and that is what those words mean.
If that's the case, then why are we losing the DeCSS case? DeCSS is only a part of what was supposed to be used for playing DVDs, so why is it illegal?
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
They don't usually return the error correction bits so that software can analyze the sectors and fix them.
You're absolutely correct! I read the CDFreak article and I'm not convinced of anything at all! It sounds like they managed to get the audio data without the CD-ROM drive constantly complaining of errors, but they don't say anything about interpolating over the clicks, pops, and noise added by the Macrovision process. Unless they have a technique for recovering the ECC codes and syncing it with the data in their .WAV files they haven't bypassed the technique. Unless they left a lot of important stuff out of their article, I don't think they really bypassed the Macrovision.
As has been posted before, this is a hardware, not a software issue. Having new drivers or ripping software will not help if your CD-ROM drive doesn't return ECC codes in DAE mode, and I know of none that do.
No doubt! In comparison to vinyl, the sound of CDs suck. If the industry did go back to vinyl to spite people ripping MP3s, that would be a great day for audiophiles.
I think for most people, the delibrate defects won't hit until it's too late. By delibrately munging the error correction, it seems that the CDs won't fail for the non-CD-ripping public until after the CD has been used and abused for awhile. At that point, your only options are to suffer with a broken CD or buy another copy. Smells like a bit of a scam to me.
I just started to backup my DVDs on Divxes (A K6-300 is really not enough for that) and I'm just amazed by the amount and the quality of tools available to, well, slap the Hollywood barons. Most of them are open source, and they kick ass!
Earth to Hollywood: You will never get us!
Nobox: Only simple products.
Don't you get it already. You aren't supposed to bypass a copyright protection no matter how easy or difficult it is.
Not until the Supreme Court rules DMCA illegal.
I have not notice any Macrovision logo's on the video tapes that I have??? But I do notice it when I watch the tape!!!
As far as the measures being taken by the RIAA in order to block my rights to time shift music that I purchase, to quote Rage Against The Machine: :)
"FUCK YOU I WONT DO WHAT YOU TELL ME!!"
"FUCK YOU I WONT DO WHAT YOU TELL ME!!"
"FUCK YOU I WONT DO WHAT YOU TELL ME!!"
"FUCK YOU I WONT DO WHAT YOU TELL ME!!"
guitar riff
"MOTHERFUCKERS!!! UNG! UNG! UNG!"
"Klaatu, verada, necktie!" -Ash
..Yeah, its about as suprising as Sony selling hardware to rip CD's on one hand and releasing CD's protected against ripping on the other hand..
I'm sorry, I forgot.. Who's ripping who off?
air and light and time and space
Time to bring up the quote about law and sausage.
One can just imagine the hollywood lobbyist chatting up the Senator over a drink -- "Did you that under current law, it's perfectly legal for people to modify our cable boxes and disc players and make perfect digital copies of our content? And using the Internet, tney can take our content and give it away for free to anyone who wants it?"
To the Senator, that wouldn't sound right, and hense the DMCA was born out of good intentions. Sure, at some point someone considered the implications of this, and a a bunch of pro-fair use language was tacked on to the bill, but the core bit of allowing content providers to have legal 'access control' rises above all of that. It would have been a pointless law otherwise.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
The new *Nsync CD my daughter purchased had that SafeAudio protection. My Mac read the CD and told me the CD was "corrupted" but I was able to continue using it. I ripped an MP3 from it amd it worked fine. I guess SafeAudio doesn't work on Macs.
Give the lawyers time to draft the nastygrams, I'll start downloading the software...
Maybe I'm a total ninny, but it seems like SafeDisc was doomed from the start.
Think about it... they rely upon the data-correction system within RedBook CD Players to cancel out their intentional twiddling with the data. They're counting on computer players in raw data mode to send these errors, without correction, onto the software.
Problem is, when you read in raw mode, you also get the correction data. So it's a simple matter of taking the data you got and correcting it in software. Thus, you end up with the corrected data stream.
Am I missing something here? Seems like MacroVision was really grasping at straws with this.
All opinions presented here aren't mine.
At one time, "ripping" a CD and "encoding" an MP3 were also tasks that only hard core hackers knew how to do. Nowadays it is bundled with Windows. How long until the technology for mounting a CD in audio-mode will also be available in such an easy to use method?
As for a couple of posts i've read about CDFreak being in danger of legal repercussions, their case is different from Dmitry's in that (please correct me if i'm mistaken) they're giving the software away for free, not selling it to make money, so they're not breaking any laws, even under the DMCA.
IIRC, the DMCA makes trafficking in circumvention devices illegal. This is what made DeCSS (free) still illegal under the DMCA, and what presumably makes CDFreak's software illegal as well.
My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!
p.s. Forgive my grammar I was rather blown away by that figure. My 2 year old cousin speaks more clearly than that! :P
Jeremy
Well, I just can't afford NEW CD's, copy-protected or not. Especially now that I can't "preview" them on Napster. I spend $10 and buy second-hand at the used music store or even pawn shop. It's not like there isn't a vast back-catalogue of music to pick from, and with enough patience, you can find almost anything semi-mainstream... And I don't mind paying $17 to Righteous Babe or some other smaller label for truly innovative, fresh music - once in a while as a treat.
Freedom: "I won't!"
Sorry, you asked for it (literally), but you are mistaken. From the DMCA (as reproduced by the EFF):
Notice it does not say they have to "selling" the device, only "traffic" in it. Now while Sec 1201, subsection (a)(1)(E)(2)(C) (is that how you reference it?) says "is marketed," that has been interpretted in the past as meaning something along the lines of "offered" and not necessarily "offered for trade."
So it would seem that yet, they can still be tried criminally under the DMCA.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
On page 2 there, there is a link to "Download".
That page has a Description and a tab labeled "Download" but no link to download.
The page for the author's home page is out of business.
Looks like the RIAA beat us to it.
There's a gang of lawyers out there chomping at the bit to prove whoever it was that said "you can't litigate the laws of nature" wrong.
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
Probably not, I'd guess that'd be akin to copying a DVD to VHS which last time I checked was discouraged, but not illegal.
When someone yells "Stop" or goes limp, or taps out, the fight is over.
The earlier article sited on /. (I can't seem to find the damn thing right now)
didn't
say that attempting to rip protected disks would
result in an error; it said that you'd end up
with bursts of static. This technology works
by placing bursts of static in the audio
stream and marking them with a wildly wrong
checksum. Audio CD players will interpolate
over these bursts. Data CD readers will read
the static in and (except for some models
running at 1x) ignore the checksum altogether.
The driver that CD Freaks points out is kind of cool; it means you don't need a dedicated ripper any more. The article, though doesn't indicate how it gets around the problem with the ECC codes being missing.
Given this, and given knowledge of the way that CD-ROM drives work, I'd bet anyone here dimes to dollars that the CD Freaks "solution" won't be any more effective at circumventing the copy protection than any other CD ripper.
From what I read in the article, this "protection" works from the fact that a computer CD drive will read the data differently than an audio-only drive, since it would treat the data as corrupt.
Does that mean that those CDs will not play on a computer CD drive at all?
I happen to not own any other cd player than my computer's CD drive, and I'm about sure I'm not the only one...
"I remember Y1K, every abacus had to get another bead"
Gets into interesting territory: in general, I know, an ignorance of the law does not preclude one from being prosecuted for breaking it ("gee officer, that's a COCA bush?! And here I thought I was makin' SALT down in my basement" will not get you off the hook), although it may be considered in sentencing (as long as you're not facing a mandatory minimum, natch)... Yet this seems to be a case where ignorance could justifiably be grounds for questioning whether the law even applies. Are these CDs really "encrypted" in the first place? Bollocks, I say - they just have a bunch of junk on them. Teaching your computer to ignore bad data on a CD is hardly decryption.
I think Macrovision is well aware of all this. They were floating them to find out a)how long it takes the story to break b)how big of a public stink about it would occur and c)how long it would take for audiophiles and compunerds to come up with a fix for the problem.
Answers:
a: practically instantaneously
b: only among a sadly tiny cadre of the technological intelligentsia c: not long at all. Thank you for playing, better luck next time!
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
>you're an atheist, aren't you?
And so what if he is?
thats interesting. If they rewrote the article to handle generally screwed up cds, they could claim ignorance - how the f--- should we know that the cd was copy protected and not just dirty?
I want transparency effects. I want so much transparency, I can see the back of my monitor! http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/
And to all of you people who replied sarcastically to this poster: You're all idiots. If the only evidence for the earth's roundness or the Holocaust was press releases, fluffy news articles, and Slashdot posts, I'd have a hard time drawing any conclusions too.
So let me repeat my plea:
I don't care about how this makes you feel, or what your friend told you. Thanks.
Us'm Rednecks don't know nuthin' bout rippin no CDs, thems CDs is plasticky and don't rip too nice. June Bug tried rippin one and got lil' pieces of plastic in his tooth. Shure is good fer shootin tho'.
"He was arrested IN the US. Therefore, as long as the company stays in Europe there is no problem."
;-) I went twice, once for 15 minutes, and it's enough for a couple lifetimes.
Right. If you don't want to go to jail, just don't go to the 'land of the free', the whole wide world knows that. You know, that place where a dictator gives others readings on 'democracy'. I'm planning a trip to China. You'll never see me in the U.S.
All your base are belong to U.S. -George W. Bush
> By that rationale, no one can sell a CD player without the permission of the copyright holder.
That's pretty much how it works for DVD players. Expect them to try their damndest to phase out CD's for audio DVD's.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
"Try to return an opened cd to best buy and see how far you get. They'll happily exchange it for another copy of the same disc, but exchanging defective for defective is still defective."
Oh I have no problem returning CDs as many times as necessary to get my money back. Best Buy is right across the street and I'm there all the time. I just say "Hey this is the 3rd time I've returned this CD. I can't read it and there's something wrong with it" and show a couple of receipts with their return clerk's initials on it. After that I usually get my money back.
After damaging some hard to find CDs, I immediately make a backup and stick the original in the closet. If I can't, back to the store it goes.
Well, maybe - but the thing is, the 1-2% of people who have the knowledge to do this can distribute ripped mp3's to the world via "File Sharing Protocol of the Month." Joe Citizen doesn't have to be able to rip SafeCD's - he just needs a net connection.
"Yes your honor, the primary purpose of this software is to be a Tetris game, and cracking copy protection is only a secondary feature." :-)
I'm neither a troll (since my post politely pointed out my lack of knowlege on the subject and asked for a clarification), nor have I been living under a rock (my attention has been focused elsewhere).
However, I have been browsing the 57 page document and it's summary, and the actual Act itself seems to -preserve- fair use extremely well, it dosent trample over it at all. The way in which it's being interperated and misused by the large industries that have the money to throw at word-bending lawyers, however, are the culprets responsible for repressing fair use to nickle-and-dime the consumer base.
In its twisted way, it is an anti-deterrent. Suppose they come up with a 100% fool-proof way to stop CD ripping. What would happen if someone wanted an MP3 from that album? They would turn to one of the many file sharing applications of course! Somewhere out there, there will be a digital copy. Eliminating 95% of the ripping does not mean that the MP3 would be 95% less avialable. The logic of need for CD protection is flawed beyond comprehension. The record companies should be doing the oposite, putting good MP3s on the CD with the regular stuff, making CDs that are easier to read on computers. They are trying to protect themselves from the people who are actually buying the CDs. By locking up the CD, they are giving people even less insentive to buy them. Most manufacturers make an effort to make their products easier to use, but for some very odd reasons, the record companies have decided to the way to increased sales is by making their product more difficult to use. Unfortunately, cracking the copy protection is the wrong solution to this non-sense. The correct solution would be for consumers to reject the CDs like Divx.
Nobody should be talking about how to break this until someone can confirm a title that has this problem. Fellow /.'ers lets stay focused... I know we all suffer from some sort of ADHD!! I will go out and buy the CD tonight if someone can confrm it.
----------
No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come.
- Victor Hugo
Well, I say let's *ALL* make an illegal copy *right now* and let them try to throw us in jail. Might be fun. :/
KangarooBox - We make IT simple!
tell cdfreaks to steer clear of the good old USA unless they want to end up in prison.
a few more good programmers who will be put in jail if they ever visit the USA.
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
Maximum PC made reference to what they saw as the first.... A quick look through the ones I have laying around here didn't produce a title for you, but as I recall it looked like yanni and smelled even worse.
Wheeeee
Yes.
Isn't this always the case..
The more people you piss off by inventing some restriction, the higher the chance is somebody smart is going to crack it. Therefore protection on mass media (film, music etc) or popular software (Office suites, games) will not ever work. As we see now.....
The DMCA specifically establishes two categories of circumvention devices, those that provide unauthorized access to a copyrighted work and those that provide unauthorized copying. The former is illegal, but the latter is legal.
In order to be illegal under the DMCA, a circumvention device must provide you with a way to access a copyrighted work that you don't have a legal right to. If the device merely permits you to make unauthorized copies of work that you do have a legal right to, the device is not illegal.
Tools like DeCSS, SDMI cracks, and Elcomsoft's eBook cracker fall under the "access" category, because they make it possible to access the protected content without a legal right. Any software that allows you to rip CDs (or to rip DVDs - with encryption intact) merely falls into the copying category. This distinction was specifically made to protect fair use doctrine and to make the DMCA compatible with the Audio Home Recording Act.
So, to answer your question, there's no legal difference between using a D->A->D bridge to copy an audio CD and using software that digitally removes the error bits. Both methods are legal.
CD's are encoded at the physical level in 14 bit words. This was not for security, or error correction, but due to the physical properties. Let me explain. CD's are enconded with physical pits and lands. Lands and pits are not distinguishable by an ordinary CD reader, and both represent binary zero! (really, I'm not making this up). The CD reader can distinguish the transistion between lands and pits (thank you destructive interference), and these represent binary ones. Now, the reason for 14bit encoding is that the encoding rules require at least 3 zeroes between each one, and no more than 11 zeroes between each one. There happens to at least 256 14bit words that fit this criteria. The CD reader does the 14bit to 8bit conversion after it performs error correction. There are two level of error correction.
I'm getting kind of pissed about your tagline.
It never connects.
Is one of Ted the Rat's little thugboys doing a DOS on the site or what?
Well, they'll have to decide exactly what it means, but the DMCA itself (from the EFF) says in Section 1201, subsection (a)(3):
You'll notice that even "impairing" a technical measure is illegal - if you do anything to "avoid" the measure, that is still illegal. It would seem to me that this device would fall under this terms, as it "impares" or "avoids" the measure designed to protect copyright...
As for whether or not what Macrovision is doing is a "measure" to protect copyright, it would seem that it is, as a "process or treatment" (namely error correction) is required to "access" the work. Which means that most likely, those of us in the United States, the land of the Free*, cannot legally use this system.
* Does not include tax, title or license. Some restrictions may apply.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Actually, this is how many rippers have the capability of working... and I would guess that they would rip copy-protected cd's fine.
There is an analog path, and a digital path, from the cdrom drive to the computer. The analog one is the one used to _play_ the audio cd's, and works much like a standalone cd player. The digital one is the one that this copy-prevention scheme is supposed to block.
Using a ripper such as MusicMatch Jukebox (3.0 - from about 3 years ago) that does analog ripping (there are probably many more, I just happen to remember this one doing it) - it should be very easy to legally 'circumvent' the copy-prevention.
All you would be doing is playing the cd, and having your software automatically record it at the same time.
You're either a troll, or you've been living under a rock.
Yes, the DMCA tramples all over fair use, by making acquiring a version you can use for archiving or platform-shifting or otherwise viewing outside of the Authorized Medium illegal. Why do you think people are so up in arms about it? If you really are that far out of touch, go read up on it, there's mountains of information out there.
As for the DeCSS authors, Johansen had cops overrun his house and conviscate all of his machines and haul him and his dad to the jail, despite the fact that he wasn't the primary author, and that reverse engineering is explicitly legal in his country. I'm not sure of his current legal situation.
Meanwhile, Dmitry Skylarov, a Russian citizen, currently rots in a US jail for writing a program that allowed the legal owner of an e-book to decrypt the copy protection so they could make "one archival copy" or view it on an alternate platform or do any of the other things fair use is supposed to protect.
If you buy one of these CD's and it turns out to be defective, can you take it back to the store and demand a refund?
Glad to see that the billions(?) of dollars Macrovision put into researching their new copyright protection technique (purposefully damaging the CD so it emits noise....absolute genius) payed off. I mean they delayed burning for a whole 2 weeks, that probably saved them -1,999,999,999 dollars. You cannot stop the copying of audio or video media.....hmmm lets see, set my PC to record a .wav file and link the headphone jack of my CD player to the microphone jack, or just play the CD really loud and use a computer microphone to record it.....yeah it sacrifices quality but so does purposefully inserting loud static hisses on to the CD. Give it up and concentrate on making your products better so they will actually be worth the money you charge, use your copy-protection money to put posters and special things inside albums to encourage buying the original, that might actually work.
"
rather than a "stupidly fucked up CD," for which the creation of a "repair technology" is simply the perogative of the discerning consumer.
or those of us who own macintoshes with USB sound devices.
Those need the digital path to be functional to work at *all*, right?
As an atheist, my morality is based on what is "right" and ethical and true, as opposed to most Christians' morality being based on fear.
Posting anonymously so the zealots don't kill my cat or poison my dog
Um, uh, is it just me, or is there no file to daownload? I can't find it anywhere... can anyone help me out here?
That's about as innovative as MS Windows. Filesystems that treat the audio tracks on CDs as files, have been around for many years. I think I played with one on my Amiga, oh, about 4 or 5 years ago (and it was old then)?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
(A) to ''circumvent a technological measure'' means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner; and
(B) a technological measure ''effectively controls access to a work'' if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.
Sorry, DMCA doesn't even remotely apply.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
BeOS has had this capability built-in since 5.0 and had it as a seperate download since I believe 4.0...
Nothing mind-boggoling [sic] here... mad old drivers that kick ass.
Most people will install anything they can get their hands on. I am talking about most computer users, not most Slashdot nerds.
Website/Friend/Enemy/Hacker/CDinmail: Look cool new program
User: Clicks setup and installs it.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
I have been offering this file on my gnutella node for the last 3 or 4 days under the name "(alternate)cdfs.zip". As of now, several people have downloaded it, so it may be spreading on the network, and be more available to anyone on gnutella.
-j
There are some CD-ROM players that allow you to read a CD and know where the apparent errors are. These are popular amongst people wanting to rip data CDs. Since I came across this a few months ago I can't remember which drives provide this facility, but if you hunt around the internet then you are bound to find one.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
How is this redundant? I found it funny.
Yeah, I get that, but that's not the truth.
The _REAL PURPOSE_ of DeCSS is to allow the playing of DVDs, the _METHOD_ is the circumvention of CSS.
I understand that the DMCA isn't interpreted to allow that, but that's what the real meaning is, in English.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
>>I have yet to see any titles of these so-called protected CDs. Until I see a title, I don't believe any of it.
>Be careful you dont sail off the edge of the world either..
There's no such thing as "the edge of the world." I know this because i've never seen it.
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
I have yet to see any titles of these so-called protected CDs. Until I see a title, I don't believe any of it.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
What will they think of next? Going back to good ol' vinyl because there isn't a direct way of ripping them to mp3? I mean, if we are sacrificing quality to stop a few mp3s, then why stop there?
How could you possibly misspell "impair" when you had it right in front of you from your quote? Can't you even copy a word correctly?
Check out the nedstat for CD Freaks.
I know this may seem strange, but think about it. The only tech issue the public at large understands to any degree is napster. napster napster napster. Now there may be legal action against DeCSS stuff, and Sklyarov may be in jail, but no one seems to know about that. What most people do know, though, is that mp3s exist and have some sort of controversy associated with them.
/. folks are so familiar with.
So what happens if people get prosecuted for this particular violation of the DMCA? it makes the news. People hear about how they can't even rip their own cds and play them on that $200 rio they just bought. People might have wasted their money. Now of course, if people are prosecuted for violation of the DMCA, which incidently they did break, they will be convicted. The next thing to do is appeal up to the supreme court on the grounds that the law is unconstitutional for all the various reasons that we
If the Court has any sense, they'll agree, and the DMCA will be out of our lives.
If the people prosecuted as violating the DMCA win it is possible that the law is never appealed and eventually we all get screwed when the US completes its deterioration into a corporate republic.
Information wants Coq
At first glance I thought "Oh no, these guys are going to get a nasty lawyergram from Macrovision, RIAA, etc."
Didn't you read? It was a European company. In Europe there is no RIAA, no Macrovision, no Bullshit =). In a global structure, like the net, location-bound laws just don't work.
There goes my karma...
I just hope that Macrovision isn't suprised by the news.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
Wow, crackers work fast! I wish I could advertise that sort of turnaround for my sluggy freelance. How long since this was announced? 2 weeks? Something like that...
At any rate, we saw it coming.
Music is free speech. The most important part of music is the sounds it produces and the message it conveys. By this definition, Metallica, Kid Rock, and Dr. Dre is NOT music. So who cares if they don't offer their "music" for free? It's garbage anyway.
In the future, everything will be instant, but the DMV will still take like 9 seconds
By that rationale, no one can sell a CD player without the permission of the copyright holder. No, the only way the DMCA is going to apply is if they stop the backward compatibility. The key phrase here is "with the authority of the copyright owner". CD player manufacturers do not have this, so neither must software CD player manufacturers.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
Use this alternate CDFS.VXD cd driver on Win9x to show Audio CD's as WAV files IN THE FILE SYSTEM! This replacement driver shows WAV files in a variety of qualities. It works on any CD drive that Windows can support.
Then you can use your favorite Wave Editor program to read directly from the CD.
Put it in your \Windows\System\IOSubSys directory, and reboot. You can rename the old CDFS.VXD to CDFS.old for archive purposes.
The workaround is simple, just replace the file cdfs.vxd on your Win9x machine, then when you go into explorer and open up a music CD, you will see a list of WAV files in various formats. Simply drag them onto your HD, then use whatever software you want to convert from WAV to MP3.
The author's site isn't responding, but you can download the file from Dave Central fairly reliably.
Sorry, but it still *does* work unless you're among the 1% of the population who are comfortable with hacking this problem away or even know about Slashdot or CDFreaks.com. If you're my parents, aunt and uncle, or other non-techies, this copy protection works perfectly in denying you your Fair Use rights. Remember, the labels know they cannot stop hackers, but they don't care - they're trying to stop the 95-99% of their customer base who aren't remotely techie.
I think it's funny that they introduced these special CDs onto the market in the first place. People buy CDs for the high-quality music, and then they go and release this "copy-protection" scheme that purposly screws up the data so bad people can't copy the music to their computers.
I can see your point, and I agree. Again, the record industry isn't concerned about those 1-2% of us who can hack or use someone else's hack to restore Fair Use to our music - they just want to make sure they can stop 98-99% of the general, non-techie public from making copies. They've still won.
Instead of trying to find a way to prevent people from using the CDs that they've bought at a normal store, how about figuring out a way to encourage online users to support the bands who actually make the music....
Because that runs contrary to the general business practices of the RIAA. It is not their job "to encourage online users to support the bands who actually make the music," it is their job to maximize revenue while ensuring that their costs are minimized (production costs, loss to theft, artist royalties, etc).
Cheers,
Chuck
If you own a plextor drive you already have this protection beat. The Plextor Manager software has included an altered cdfs.vxd for years now that accomplishes precisely what the article describes.
At best, Napster had a couple million users on simultaneously at any given moment - whereas CBS managed to get some 30 million to watch Survivor at the same time. If Macrovision were to round their return percentage figures off to the nearest tenth it would probably be sufficient to make all those returning due to unrippability dissapear. They also probably picked a CD that was unlikely to go over with techies very well, the better to slow down discovery. After all, they want to put the best possible spin on a fairly trivial protection scheme - remember, they could give a rats ass about end-users, their real targets, their consumers, are record companies.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
There is a provision for interoperability. I think it's a matter of semantics whether it falls under it or not.
I don't think my last post did an elegant job on it. We all know that the code that allows you to bypass the Macrovision CD copy protection is a DMCA violation. That should be obvious.
But isn't it just as much of a violation to bypass the Macrovision copy protection via sampling an audio stream, or recording the analog stream to another device?
By doing so, you are bypassing their mechanism to prevent the CD from being copied. And nothing in the DMCA says that it has to be 100% effective against all means of copying.
So does that make analog copying a violation because you are bypassing the digital protection?
(How many people ever got around sending money to the artists after Naptering/etc. the music? Not many.)
Many.
Remember, the studies show that Napster users buy more CDs.
Listening to a CD does not require the authority the copyright holder. Using a CD player does not require the authority of the copyright holder. Correcting errors does not require the authority of the copyright holder. Unless there is a patent on the process of playing a CD, which someone else claims there is, but I did not see any evidence of this. Actually, even if there is a patent, this probably wouldn't apply unless the patent holder is also the copyright holder.
By your interpretation of the DMCA, browser makers need the permission of the copyright holder in order to display a webpage. HMTL is a technological measure which requires the treatment of data to gain access to the work. And you are clearly removing the measure when you parse the HTML and display it on the screen.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
Frankly, there is no inconsistency. Audio CDs are free of access controls, so you can legally make copies for purposes covered under fair use provisions, regardless of what copy protection measures they introduce, and no matter what method you use to copy them.
Resampling digital audio always has detrimental effects. Doing it twice (44.1 to 48 and back) makes these issues worse. Three times (44.1 to 48 to 44.1 and 48 again on playback through an SBLive!) is obviously quite a bit of comb-filtering bit-munging.
Better to just buy a card with a non-resampling assortment of SP/DIF I/O, such as the plethora of "pro" cards from Lexicon, M-Audio and the like.
Or, a $30 Zoltrix Nightingale (or about any other card [including some motherboards] based on the CMI8738 chip) will do the trick nicely with coax or toslink. Also works well as a hardware format converter, and an SCMS stripper.
While I'm on the subject, the error correction of a CD player takes place well before the bits reach the digital output.
While I'm on the subject, it occurs to me that such things as SafeAudio lend a hand toward legitimizing filesharing services. "Well, your Honour, I didn't have any way to utilize Fair Use and use this CD in the MP3 player that came with my new Mazda, so I downloaded the files from someone else who was able to figure it out."
Kid-proof tablet..
~~~
Why didn't this warning appear at the beginning of your posting?
WOW!
Four to Sixteen cents???!
As an author I can definitely say that Book writers make a LOT more than that per work sold! A beginner author could make 3-5 bucks a book sold EASY.
That is a total rip-off. Granted a good artist is gonna sell a million copies easy..
If book sells just 20,000 copies (Not many at all) thats quite a few pennies...
Heck technical authors are even replaceable! You cant replace a pop star as easy you have to create a new one..
RIAA has quite the scam going.
Jeremy
Existing not-out-of-the-ordinary technology was used to break the CD "noise." It is sad that the CD companies thought they had it licked, when, again, their efforts were trounced by basic human ingenuity. It is really terrible that calling the bluff of the CD makers puts one into "a legal gray area." It should be unambiguous (it is law, after all).
I wonder if the media companies are doing this on purpose to create a pool of defendants they can publicly crush. Seriously, predictable noise on CDs and two thousand year old ciphers (PDF encryption) can't be the product of real engineering prowess on the part of the companies. Is this some sort of sick game the media companies are playing?
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
You could try BlindWrite
Blurb from the page: What's all this, then?
The BlindWrite suite is a tool designed to perfectly reproduce most CD.
To be or not to be (RAW mode compatible) ?
RAW mode is needed to produce perfect backups of some protected CDs !
DAO mode is even better. Almost all protected CD can be perfectly backed up using with DAO.
Blindread / Blindwrite are perfect tools to produce backups in RAW and DAO mode.
Don't know if that's what you mean?
Michael
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
Again you did not read...
it says Dmitry Sklyarov, a programmer at Russian software company Elcomsoft, who was arrested after giving a talk at Def Con 9 in Las Vegas. He was arrested IN the US. Therefore, as long as the company stays in Europe there is no problem. It would be a silly world when crappy laws in the US just allows the FBI to arrest people in different countries and execute them. Get real
Sorry, but you are wrong. Audio CDs do not have access controls like DVDs do (CSS). And because of the published, unencrypted storage format they use, they will never have access controls that qualify under the DMCA. Macrovision is only a copy protection measure, not an access control measure, and the DMCA permits you to circumvent measures that are only copy controls.
That isn't the way the garbled cd's would work. When you play an audio cd, two values side by side on a cd should be very close together (Noone goes from low to high in 1 data value)... an audio cd player will notice the HUGE misvalue there, take the value in the next part and interpolate between the two so it sounds continuous without any static or freak sounds. This is because when playing an AUDIO cd on the computer it goes straight to the sound card from the cdplayer that will handle it like this.
Ripping audio tracks, however, are a different matter. While ripping, tracks are taken off in DATA mode and does not do this interpolation! (How would you like the values of your spread sheet interpolated? (reference to an example in the cdrfaq (http://www.cdrfaq.org/)). It should rip them as data straight as they are, so the static/freak sounds are ripped with them.
Check out http://www.cdrfaq.org/ for this info (I took a weekend and read the thing a few times.. VERY informative!)
`(B) a technological measure `effectively controls access to a work' if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.
Doesn't this seem terribly broad? I mean, doesn't reading material printed on dead trees require the application of information (like information about the alphabet and vocabulary of a language) and a process or treatment (like assigning definitions to the words one has extracted from the encoding)?
Is there any copyrightable material that *doesn't* qualify as "protected by a technological measure" by this definition?
That's what I figured. But that still leaves the inconsistency about being able to do a perfect digital copy using a CD player with a digital out and a soundcard that accepts digital in. Since the CD player is doing all of the error correction you are in no way circumventing anything at all.
That's the problem I have with 1201(a)(3). If I write a program that does error correction on data pulled off a protected disc I (most likely) run afoul of the law. If I use the above mentioned CD player / soundcard setup to do a bit for bit copy I have circumvented nothing and therefor have broken no law. The outcome has been the same (I have a digital copy of copyrighted material) yet one way of achieving it is legal, the other illegal.
If you don't have anything nice to say, say it often.
- Ed the Sock
When the whole issue of copy-protected audio CDs first came out, I called Philips and spoke with one of their attorneys. I urged him to get Philips to refuse to license the CD logo to these non-compliant discs. I argued that the return rates and subsequent problems would cause consumers to lose faith in the CD standard and could eventually cost Philips business as consumers embraced other, non-Philips standards for recorded audio. As you see, my 45 minute long phone call apparently did little to sway Philips' opinions about this matter.
There is an essay on kuro5hin about a similar thing today.
The REAL sam_at_caveman_dot_org is user ID 13833.
I have a Ricoh MP6200S which I bought several years ago. It's 6X read, 2X write/rewrite, but I won't trade it for anything in the world. The only CD I havent been able to duplicate on it thus far was Black & White (not worth copying anyway).
Most new cd ripping software typically does not support this drive since its so old. I'm still using a dos-based copy of DAO (precursor to CDRWIN). I originally got this setup in order to copy my PSX disks (which require raw reads) so I had all my games at home and at college.
Anyhow, if you want a powerful (albeit slow) drive, look up older models on eBay.
Please don't tell me that correcting errors is illegal now too. Is it?
Gov't likes laws that criminalize the whole population. "Oh it's not really enforced" is the toss off explanation. What it really means is that when the gov't can bust you anytime, anywhere, for any reason. The official arrest report, will list some obscure law. e.g., "years of tax evasion" for unpaid sales tax on mail ordered goods.
I don't think so! You've been reading too much Katz. FYI, Sklyarov was arrested for selling copies of his crack program, NOT for giving a speech.
Also, you may not know this, but the DMCA contains exemption clauses that specifically permit circumvention of access controls for "good faith" encryption research and for legitimate (Compaq IBM BIOS style) reverse engineering. It also contains clauses that make it clear that it cannot be used to infringe on existing law regarding freedom of speech, freedom of press, etc.
The vast majority of people don't care that artists don't make any money. A lot of people use that as an excuse, but in reality they just want the free music. (How many people ever got around sending money to the artists after Naptering/etc. the music? Not many.) Most people don't feel any responsibility towards someone that they don't know personally, and so they don't see anything wrong with taking the music for free.
Sounds like you really are serious about getting money to the artists. Good for you. But even if the distribution of money changes, piracy isn't going to slow down much.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
How I wish that were true. How about looking at this April press release about the EU's latest directive on the subject, which member states now have 15-odd months to implement?
when you read in raw mode, you also get the correction data. So it's a simple matter of taking the data you got and correcting it in software
CD-ROM stores 75 sectors per second. Red Book sectors contain 2,352 bytes, or (44100 samples/chn/sec) * (2 channels) * (2 bytes/sample) / (75 sectors/sec). CD-ROM sectors recorded in mode 1 (the vast majority of computer CD-ROMs) contain 2048 bytes of data and about 300 bytes of error correction data. For more information, read http://www.eaglevisiontv.com/General_Information/C DROM_Formats/body_cdrom_formats.html.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Too late...
the DMCA doesn't specify a need for intent.
that is, if you make something which circumvents copyright protections, it doesn't matter if you intended it to circumvent or not. trafficking in the device is enough for a conviction.
I wonder if the driver authors could get hit by the DMCA...
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
of the good old days when commercial pc games were "protected" by putting bad sectors on the diskettes (yes when they still fitted on a few disks and were twice as fun as modern games)
This news item came out a week ago:t ections_safeaudio.shtml
http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_pro
Yet another reason the law should punish "conduct" and not code.
If you don't have anything nice to say, say it often.
- Ed the Sock
I just want to ask again, does ANYONE know which CD's were altered in this way?
Legal, but not moral by my book. I hope more artists will see it this way too.
If you're not a Christian, move on. Nothing to see here...
Free unix account: freeshell.org
What boggles my mind is how no one here ever realizes that /. (aka, the geek community) is a very very small percentage of the general population that buys CDs, DVDs, or any other product that uses some form of annoying copy protection.
/.
Didn't anyone see Fight Club? If the total cost of the out-of-court settlements is less than the total cost of a recall, they don't do a recall. Unless the Major Car Company (re: RIAA) is losing money with Macrovision protection CDs, they won't ever stop using it.
The analogy is simple. Macrovision is implemented on CDs, so now the majority 90+% of average CD consumers can't rip their CDs. So the only money the RIAA is losing is on the 1% of sales that the geeks used to buy. The geeks, we have our way around it, and we're happily ripping all our favourite music, but the general public is clueless as to how to do it. They just see that big red "X" pop-up in Windoze when they can't rip their CD anymore.
Until there's a nice little program that the AVERAGE (or below average) person can download through their AOL dial-up account (re: that's why Napster got so popular...it was luser-friendly), or that comes pre-installed on the Gateway system that Grandma buys, Macrovision, or any other copy protection will save the RIAA money and therefore be deemed "effective".
No copy protection scheme will ever be 100% effective, but as long as the RIAA keeps making money, it's "effective" to them. Just like the "Major Car Company" in Fight Club.
Folks, remember that the world is a lot bigger than
Probably 60% of you reading this do the same thing.
I agree with this statement, but it is simply obvious that the phenomenon here is not associated with all reality. Slashdot, is probably no more than 200,000 geeks, who do that. I'd guess about 90% of them rip their CD's right off.
The real world is an entirely different place.
Any and all encryption / security device is just a deterrent. Someone who wants it bad enough will go out and get it.
Now, most people value their time, and there is a certain threshold where they'll just fess up and stop trying to crack something.
RIAA knows this, Microsoft knows this, and even the people who wrote the DMCA know this. (The DMCA just raises that bar for everyone... it's meant to make copying happen less often, not try and make it more difficult.)
The creators of DeCSS were never found. A kid in another country got the code from the creators and released it, and last I heard, he never revealed where he got it from. Even though such code is legal in the kids country, the MPAA still managed to get him arrested (although I don't know if they managed to press charges) and his computers confiscated.
2600 wasn't just strongarmed into removing the code, they are in an ongoing court battle over being able to just link to people who have the code. So far, this has been the only assult on the DMCA, and it hasn't been going well (sure, people say that Dmitry is an assult also, but until it reaches court, there is no chance of the DMCA changing because of him).
BTW, until courts rule otherwise, the DMCA supercedes fair use. If there is no copy protection, fair use applies, but if there is, then the DMCA applies. At least, IANAL, but that is what I think.
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me.
I think it's funny that they introduced these special CDs onto the market in the first place. People buy CDs for the high-quality music, and then they go and release this "copy-protection" scheme that purposly screws up the data so bad people can't copy the music to their computers.
Here's a little knowledge-nugget© for you record-producer-type people, some of us rip songs from CDs into MP3 format because it's WAY more convenient to listen to. That doesnt mean I'm going to share the data with the world just to spite the record companies... I know there are people who no longer buy CD's because the music is so easy to find online (and they should be punished for doing this), but I've actually bought MORE CD's in the past year or 2 because I had listened to the music online first.
Instead of trying to find a way to prevent people from using the CDs that they've bought at a normal store, how about figuring out a way to encourage online users to support the bands who actually make the music....
I would imagine the "secure" audio CDs would still conform to the Redbook Standard, since the CDs are only "secure" because the fidelity of the recording is garbled ("corrupts the data", said The Register) in a way that a Hi-Fidelity playback device would be able to deal with, but would cause A CD-ROM drive to error out. Since the redbook standard seems to focus primarily on the physical composition of the compact disc (and the leadin track and "stuff") and not the format of the data on the disk, I would imagine they're still "redbook kosher", they just have intentionally error-riffic data imprinted on them.
CDFreak's software is really neat, from what i've read about it. It reads in the audio track into RAM and mounts it as a volume, and involved creating a custom VXD, sounds pretty innovative.
As for a couple of posts i've read about CDFreak being in danger of legal repercussions, their case is different from Dmitry's in that (please correct me if i'm mistaken) they're giving the software away for free, not selling it to make money, so they're not breaking any laws, even under the DMCA.
Hello!
Non-Linux user here.. I know it's a sin here
But i noticed this CDFS Linux version while trolling the Net this afternoon.
From the site:
CDfs is a file system for Linux systems that `exports' all tracks and boot images on a CD as normal files. These files can then be mounted (e.g. for ISO and boot images), copied, played (audio and VideoCD tracks)... The primary goal for developing this file system was to `unlock' information in old ISO images. For instance, if you have a multisession CD with two ISO images that both contain the file 'a', you only see the file 'a' in the second session if you use the iso9660 file system:
Perhaps this could be of benefit to the plethora of Linux users out there.
Cheers!
-KJ
Of course, macrovision could always respond to that by purchasing Xing and having all of it's members eaten alive by wolverines...
Worse, people who would normally never consider buying a pirated CD will start patronizing the pirates in order to get copies without copy protection. As long as the pirates don't use spam to promote their products, they will have my blessings when they break those copy schemes.
This reminds me of copy protection schemes for floppy disks that worked by deliberate corruption. Changing the checksum for a particular sector of the disk, or something, so it would appear that any read had failed. It wasn't done at the filesystem level because even a 'raw backup' would fail.
I remember thinking at the time, I wish this machine would stop trying to be helpful and check the validity of what it's reading, and instead just give me the data with no questions asked.
I know that CDs use some kind of Gray code or other ECC to encode 16-bit sample values into 20-bit words or something similar. Then there are other error-correction measures, checksums and so on. That's why a CD holds only 650Mbyte (or a bit more) although the physical capacity in terms of raw bits is much higher.
Is there any software or hardware to give a genuinely 'raw' CD image, before any of the error correction has been performed? Such an image would probably be around a gigabyte in size.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
If it's a digital input it just grabs them bytes!
The comments below indicate that the new NSync album (comment doesn say which one) may be one. Another comment states that Beetles One lacks the CD-Audio icon and experiences severe errors while ripping.
It clearly passes both of your tests: It is a technological measure which requires the treatment of the data to gain acces to the work. The CD must process the data and apply specific (if general) algorithms to remove and reconstruct the original work. The fac that the decoder existed before the encoding process is not addressed, and is therefor irrelevant. Your authority comes in the form of a purchase reciept. You are clearly removing the measure when you place the unencumbered audio on your HD without the additional data. It no longer requires the application of the decoding process to listen to the copyrighted material. The only loophole I see here is the "without the authority of the copyright owner." Since fair use doesn't require additonal permission other than that granted in the initial acquisition of the work, it could be argued that you have permission to do this for fair use purposes.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
yeah, I agree 100% with you.
I like to make mp3 cd's for my discman, and shortly my car. I cram like 5 or 6 albums on one disc in 192kbps and don't have to carry...5 or 6 albums...
in another event...we still haven't found out "what disc" has the protection, if any..
I would think that if a cd "had protection" it wouldn't be able to play in my cd player, like how an mp3 cd won't.
.kb
Two Wrongs Don't Make A Right-- But They Make Me Feel A Whole Lot Better
Of course, the software industry went through a copy protection phase too. They ultimately decided that it was too much of a pain in the ass. A lot of customers simply avoided the copy protected software because it was such a pain to deal with the protection. Others copied it anyway because cracks always came about. The problem with "losses" is they don't reflect on the sales sheet. If you tell investors "We implemted foo copy protection and our sales dropped off" because the people pirating weren't going to buy your software anyway, the copy protection goes away pretty quick.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I haven't seen any of these titles, but if someone has one, can they try cdparanoia on it? It's a great program to remove all those scratches and so on...
How does this "technology" affect BeOS users? BeOS has the ability to mount CDs and read the WAV files right off them.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
They didn't actually write any software, just pointed to the location of a previously written driver. The driver itself isn't a violation of DMCA because it wasn't originally written to bypass the protection.
bah..I hear ya...I do however know, that its pretty hard to rip the last song of a disc that is one of those annoying "cd-extra" where the data is at the end of thedisc...but other than that, I'd like to see one myself, too..
.kb
Two Wrongs Don't Make A Right-- But They Make Me Feel A Whole Lot Better
ftp://ftp.braz.ru/pub/drivers/cdrom/cdfs.zip ftp://ftp.braz.ru/pub/drivers/cdrom/cdfs.zip ftp://ftp.braz.ru/pub/drivers/cdrom/cdfs.zip ftp://ftp.braz.ru/pub/drivers/cdrom/cdfs.zip ftp://ftp.braz.ru/pub/drivers/cdrom/cdfs.zip ftp://ftp.braz.ru/pub/drivers/cdrom/cdfs.zip ftp://ftp.braz.ru/pub/drivers/cdrom/cdfs.zip ftp://ftp.braz.ru/pub/drivers/cdrom/cdfs.zip ftp://ftp.braz.ru/pub/drivers/cdrom/cdfs.zip
not relevant. simply talking about a bypass mechanism is now in a legal gray area.
Yes, that was mentioned but it was using a different technology and not the macrovision technology. Apparently the experiment failed because lots of people returned the CDs because they often would fail to play on regular CD players.
The technology we're looking for is from macrovision and discussed in this article:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/07/19/007240 &mode=nested
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
They just want to get the law in place to trample over fair use, so that when they finally have the technology to keep your fair use away, you're fucked already.
Liberty.
According to the CD Freaks article, this operates at the extremes of error tolerance.
Wouldn't this mean that the fine scratches that most CD players currently shrug off would suddenly become the monsterous gashes that make us glad we keep copies of our music in the first place? Oh wait, we can't copy the CD any more, I guess we'll just have to go buy a replacement.
"Conspiracy Theory" or "Revenue Stimulant"?
Does the DMCA criminalize technology that already existed BEFORE the copy protection was created? Software that allows burst mode reading on cd-rom drives has been around for a long time. A lot of the ripping software has this built in already. The programs weren't specially designed in the last month to tackle this new Macrovision protection and get those Charlie Pride mp3's onto the net asap! In fact, I wonder if Audiograbber could sue Macrovision for attempting to interfere with their existing rip technology by circumventing standard copying technology.
Somehow it's not supprising that the protection would already have been broken.
Fare thee well, poor comment. For thou hast been cast out amongst wolves.
Oh, and first post
I think the reason their return rate is so low is that most stores won't accept cds for returns. Try to return an openned cd to best buy and see how far you get. They'll happily exchange it for another copy of the same disc, but exchanging defective for defective is still defective.
All stores where I live will exchange CDs for store credit, no questions asked. Most only give you about 75% back, unless you tell them the disc is defective (in which case you get 100%; in theory they might want you to exchange for the same title, but in practice the store clerk won't care)
Question: Is there any loss of quality in converting from the CD native ".cda" files to the ".wav" format?
Will I retire or break 10K?
ouch, quantum mechanics flash back..... no, must not fourier.... NOOOOOO
Humans are slow, innaccurate, and brilliant; computers are fast, acurrate, and dumb; together they are unbeatable
You should really read the whole DMCA.
As I posted elsewhere in this thread, the DMCA differentiates between those copyright protection measures that serve as "access" controls and those that merely serve as "copy" controls. The DMCA only makes it illegal to circumvent measures that control access. Examples are measures that require you to obtain an encryption key or product activation key to access the work, or those that require you to use a specific device to access the work.
This "Safe Audio" BS does not control access to a CD - you can use the CD in any old player without obtaining a key, code, or device to get access to the content. Similarly, Macrovision doesn't control access to video content. These are merely copy protection measures, which can be legally circumvented for the purpose of making legitimate copies (fair use).
I don't understand how people can listen to music through the computer. First of all, there's all the extra background noise (HD, fans). Second, even the absolute best set of computer speakers pales in comparison to a relatively low end consumer quality amp & speakers. Third, if you're using an analog sound card, you're picking up lots of extra noise from the nasty RF environment in the case, and if you're using a digital card, the digital mixer is introducing distortion. Finally, unless you're encoding at a minimum of 192k, and preferably 256k, your mp3s are suffering an easily audible loss of fidelity.
What music do you listen to that you aren't bothered by this? Heck, even my car stereo sounds better than every computer I've ever heard. Besides, if you're worried about damaging the original disc, why not just copy the CD and use the copy in your stereo?
Nyaaaaaaaaaaaah!
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Your comuters CD-ROM can read a music CD as audio or data. When you use your noraml play back most software will treat it as a audio CD and will play the CD just fine. When being treated as a data CD your CD-ROM will not use the error corection unless there is a real error. Since many "errors" but are not real errors your CD-ROM will happly copy them as is. CD-Players use error corection evry time they hit a "dead spot" that could be from a scrach or planted. This protection work becuse your CD-Player is to dumb to find real errors and your CD-ROM is not.
Where are our insiders and leaks in the Macrovision labs?
Co-founder of GerbilMechs
Surely CD ripping software will soon be updated to cope with this Macrovision.
Once this happens, will they just give up and go back to real CDs?
You can't copy from DVD to VHS either. DVD's have MACROVISION!
Someone just needs to write a program and distribute it.
Then quite possibly all the user needs to do is point and click.
As for the DMCA, there may be legal reasons why the copy protection method does not make such a tool illegal. There may be legal reasons that it does make it illegal. Even if legal, Judge Kaplan might still rule against you.
RIAA know they can't only win with technology, since any program can make a hard operation easy.
So they fight back with (unconstitutional) laws.
I am afraid, that if this hack is legal, that the DMCA will be tightened to outlaw it and anything similar.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
If an artist get's only a few cents by CD and the same artist would get about $10,00 for a CD bypassing the recording company he would get more money even if they sold 50 times less. This means that even tought 1 in 50 people would buy the CD that pays the artist and not the record company he would still get more money.
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
p.s. oh yeah, to add to that, it could be my encoding software, too, it might not be the "latest."
.kb
Two Wrongs Don't Make A Right-- But They Make Me Feel A Whole Lot Better
I still don't get how they think this is a deterrent... The most frequent use of ripping discs these days is to make MP3's of them.
Well, mp3 encoding is lossy (although unless you are foolishly stingy with the bitrate the loss is very slight). Since someone ripping mp3's is willing to accept a slight amount of degradation, they should also be perfectly happy with a nice digitally filtered copy of the song with all the Macrovision glitches removed.
Heck, if your CD player can do it, so can software---your CD player doesn't really do anything all that fancy with filtering anyways.
Then again, don't be surprised---it's not like Macrovisions stuff ever really stopped people from copying VHS tapes or dubbing DVD's onto VHS for their friends...
I they notice a distortion, they will likely assume, after checking for scratches and the like, that it was a problem in the studio, blaming the artist, not buying their future albums, instead of returning the disc.
I find that hard to believe. The first thing I do when I get a CD is rip it, so that I can listen to it from my computer without risking scratches to the disk.
Does this make me better than the average consumer? More "tech-inclined"? I don't think so. Probably 60% of you reading this do the same thing. I don't think we're any different than the average consumer.
Since the only CD's with this protection are country, I haven't gotten any yet. But, when I finally do, you can be sure it's going right back to the store. If they try realasing something popular with this protection, they'll find this out in a hurry.
Free unix account: freeshell.org
This crap happens all the time. "Let the courts hash it out." If constituents aren't happy with the law (as interpreted), the congress can claim they didn't mean for it to be interpreted the way it was... and then proceed to "fix" it.
All I want to know is ONE confirmed fucking title! This must be some sort of giant lie that we have all taken hook line and....
----------
No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come.
- Victor Hugo
If the DMCA applies in this case then circumventing the protection, however easily, would be illegal. I am not sure if it would apply here because the copyright enforcement mechanism seems to be based on the way certain combinations of software and hardware rip audio files from CDs. In general the DMCA is bad for technological innovation. No one will be able to reverse engineer any competing products that use encryption. So no one will know which are snake oil, because to make this determination would be illegal. There will be a prevalence of shoddy products which will inundate the market. Eventually, designing viable and secure solutions will become unprofitable.
that's what this macrovision copy protection is. i've seen this question posted several times on /. when this topic comes up, but i have yet to see an answer: does anyone know (for sure) of a specific title that is so copy protected? title and artist. SOMEONE has to know. please post a list.
Not relavent. Linking is possibly liable as it is trafficking the breaker. However, the issue here is that the protection does not prevent access to the media, it is just designed to make it unplesent. That may be enough to consider it legal....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I agree with you completely. Also, the poor artists did sign something so that hopefuly they would get fame. I don't realy like the way they are the "poor artists" "poor victims".
When we come down to money matters, they are business men, no artists. I suppose they signed a contract that was the best thing they could get to run their business.
I do however think the parent coment is correct about the right equation, but I think it's about the price and nothing else. If the price is too high for a music you like but you don't think it is worth the money, well.. We see..
Besides the respect problem you are talking about, there is also the fact that most people "prefer" to behave as rightly as posible, so I think if the costs weren't so high, the piracy problem would significantly reduce, to the point where they would *really* (that is, if they did at all) try to stop it, in order to protect the consumers from bad quality products..*sigh*
I don't know, but I think there might be an interesting study to be done about finding the "dead-lines" where people will prefer to buy an original over a copy. (It's a think line).
Taking into account how much is spent on copy protections schemes, on copyrights enforcements etc. and on losses anyway, maybe they would find out that they would have bigger benefits by just lowering their prices to a certain point.
En fín....
Sincerely,
In the end, it doesn't really matter what kind of copy protection methods are employed for audio CD's. Even if someone came up with the ultimate copy protection scheme that wasn't possible to "break," you can always run the analog outputs of your CD player into your computer, record a bunch of wav files, and burn back to a CD. Wash, rinse, repeat. While it's not an exact copy, for most purposes I think it would suffice. I wonder if this would be considered a violation of the DMCA, since I suppose you are technically cirumventing copy protection schemes. Better yet, the manufacturer of the CD player, connecting cables, computer and recording software (Windows Media Player?) would be the one's who developed and made available the technology. The possibilities are endless...
It is very common now to buy CD players with digital outputs. How does this anti-copying mechanisms work with these outputs? Isn't it just the case to connect these outputs to a soundcard with a digital input? I know the SB Live! has such a connector, altough it "upsamples" every input to 48kHZ PCM. I know the Santa Cruz by Turtle Beach also has such an input, but am not sure if it also does this "upsample". Well, you wouldn' lose quality by transforming the 44.1 to 48 sampling rate, but if you would then downsample the 48 back to 44.1 I don't know what the algorithms would do. Would they just take the original 44.1k samples or get some of the "generated" samples?
Doesn't that make an audio CD player a device for copyright protection circumvention? If it won't play in a computer CDROM when reading the raw data, it would seem that using an audio cd player to make a copy is circumventing the copy protection!
For instance, if I found a way to rip a Macrovision'ed disc that de-mungs the munged error correcting data I could see how that might run afoul of the DMCA. But what if someone simply pipes the music through the analog inputs of a soundcard, or rips the CD from a cd player with a digital audio out? Since no "circumvention" took place in these cases we now have a situation where, while the destination is the same, one "journey" is legal and the other is illegal.
This has always been true. It's pretty much a waste of time for RIAA and its ilk to attack duplicating, since we all have that capability, or could get it fairly easily if we don't already.
They go on about the "quality" of the recording, but in the end it all comes down to how much the intermediaries make off the artists. I was recently at WOMAD, where I bought a whole bunch of CDs for $16 and was glad to do so, since they get a major cut of the money (many dollars), not the usual 4 to 16 cents per CD that most recording artists get. Which is why I also buy my music from touring bands - more money to the artist.
Until someone does something about that basic equation, I doubt piracy will ever be impacted.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Hmm. Remember back around the time of the first DeCSS case, when DMCA supporters made a big deal about how "computer code isn't really speech" and that enforcement of the circumvention clauses would never be extended to limit [real] speech?
Don't hear that line much anymore. Actually, it's probably a good thing. Let them push their way deep into First Amendment territory before it hits the SC.
All I have to say is HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
It seems that every bit of protection they [RIAA] come up with (SDMI, SafeAudio), it gets cracked. The article summed it up in one line: "of course most of the CD Freaks visitors are able to bypass the protections, but the average home user will not". Once again, this just proves that they're not preventing people from copying music, but just pissing off the regular buyers/listeners.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
The problem with many of the copy-protections systems is that they only make it difficult for the your average listener to copy the data. Commercial pirates will always look at all possible ways to break the protection, as they see an incentive to make money. This means that while fair use is stamped out, nothing is realistically done about the people the record industry should really be worrying about.
The truth is what-ever copy protection system exists, it will only be a matter of time before it is broken, since on the one hand people want their rights back and on the other you have some people wanting to make money whatever the costs.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
It is a very interesting line of thought. By releasing a DIGITAL copy protection, they've managed to turn all the existing devices and software used for analog copying into criminal devices!
You don't have a legal way to make a copy of even a piece of audio on a CD anymore.
Have you seen this software? It's a psuedo Windows NT sound driver that intercepts a sound output (from, say, cdplayer.exe) and saves it to a .WAV file. Yes, it's still D->A A->D but at least your audio doesn't have to travel through that crappy $2.95 Radio Shack patch cable attached to your sound card.
I found this link on Chris Lightfoot's software page.
It's very annoying to have paid $100usd yet the program doesn't even pop-up an error message that could give any hints why it's not happy. Did I mention that I'm annoyed?
Maybe a generic fix for this nonsense will end up in Wine? That would be nice...
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
but if you would then downsample the 48 back to 44.1 I don't know what the algorithms would do.
The inverse fourier transform of the rect function (1 for |f| < x; 0 otherwise) is sin(Pi*x*f)/(Pi*x*f), a "cardinal sine" or "sinc" function. Convolving an input sample with sinc (either in FFT or in FIR space) will remove ALL energy above frequency f, which is generally set at just below the Nyquist rate (half the sample rate) and, if implemented well, will not add appreciable noise to the signal beyond the -90 dB SNR of 16-bit linear PCM.
Will I retire or break 10K?
What has continued to surprise me is that no one seems to have caught on that this particular copy protection like this only affects DAE (digital audio extraction, isn't it?). Good ol' analog ripping - by way of the MPC/2/3 CD-Audio out from the CD-ROM drive, or even a 1/8" stereo mini plug, or better yet, a pair of composite RCA type plugs... into the line input of your sound card, or hell, any other recording device - would be a, perhaps inelegant, but still effective way to rip... and is that even circumventing anything? Is recording from a supposedly secure standalone CD player illegal yet?
/. post some time ago, no I don't remember where/when) It's a great what-if about the possible future of secured music, and he makes a damn good point - all of the mechanisms for effecting complete control over what and how you listen are being slowly and for the most part quietly put into place... and that scares me.
I'm not bothered so much by purposefully garbled music as I am by the idea of authentication. Music that requires a certified legitimate player to show its papers, players that require music to do the same, all in the name of preserving the profit of record companies... Read this great article by Jaron Lanier over at Discover Magazine. (first saw it on a
It won't work that way. It will instead be the wedge that allows worse laws to get passed. "Your Honor, if it is legal to reasonably restrict criminal speech designed to allow pirates to steam content, is it not also reasonable to restrict the discussion of creating weapons?"
A few years from now you won't be able to print a picture of a gun ina book, or talk about the chemistry of explosives. This "circumvention" stuff is just the beginning.
I was waiting to get my hands on one of those CDs with copy interference and see if I could hack a CD player to supply raw digital data to some kind of aquisition board or something connected to the computer. I know some electronics but very little about CD players so I thought it would be a fun project. Maybe an EE could do it as a digital design project sometime.
Anybody know where I could find specs or schematics or service manuals for old Sony Discmans (Discmen?)...? Or any other info useful for such a project?
There is NOTHING int he Macrovision spec that prevents copying. Absolutely NOTHING. You can still stick them in your Unix box and copy those AIF's right off it. You can still do an EXACT copy of the CD with any off the shelf CD burner. Don't call it copy protection. Call it what it is, "Conversion Protection".
If anyone callsit "copy protection" stupid Joe Reporter will pick up on it, and use it as a buzzword.
Burn Hollywood Burn
How many people out there are going to install a .vxd on their system with no source, no explanation, and no information about the guy who wrote it? Gee I think I'll let Joe Schmoe run arbitrary kernel-mode code on my system. Real smart...
I would like them (RIAA, Macrovision, etc) to explain why I don't have the right to convert CD audio into another format. I have a Creative Nomad (MP3 player that uses smartcards) and it is 10x better than a CD player (IMHO) - never skips, great quality, lots of features, etc. Isn't it fair use of the CD to convert it into a format that my MP3 player can understand? It's not like I'm ripping the CD and giving it to someone else - it's all for my own use, just like copying it to tape which, afaik, is perfectly legal (now, I understand that tapes are lower quality and this lower quality is RIAA's main reason for not caring).
;).
???
Good thing I'm in Canada and not subjigated to the DMCA... oh wait... dammit... they're bringing that over here.... arugh.
Even so, I buy very few CD's anyway. Most of my favourite artists either give away MP3's and/or sell unprotected CD's. I adore the old Amiga tracker scene and all those great songs... so I'm happy
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
Here is part of the article, since the site appears to be slashdotted.
-=-
SafeAudio, you probably already heard about it. It's the music industries latest technology to make sure they will get their money from the public.
I've never seen a industry that is so keen on money and tries in any way to protect it's products so desperately. Since they have stopped Napster they are disliked by more and more people, but they don't seem to care.
Altough SafeAudio is rather easy to bypass I think Macrovision can already market it as a success as it seems a lot of record companies have adopted the technology. Soon Macrovision will publish their results and I'm very curious how much they've made this year.
...
SafeAudio protects a CD only from ripping. This means that converting your CD to MP3/WMA files should be impossible. Stupid of course, as there are MP3 players on the market, just like a walk/disc man that you can carry around and for those you NEED to convert your CD's.
...
Macrovision and TTR (that started developing this technology) say that the error corrections that are done while you play a CD in your normal CD player/computer can not be heard, for now there is no reason to believe they are wrong.
The main questions rises, can we bypass it ?
...
Software that is able to do that, and besides that is always very handy is a modified version of CDFS.vxd. (Download here) Before installing this new windows CD-ROM driver you should think about 2 things:
It does not work for Windows NT/2K/XP and with all CD-ROM players
Make sure you have a backup of your original CDFS.vxd file (or just rename the old one to CDFS.old)
You can find the CDFS.vxd file that has to be replaced in the folder:
C:\Windows\System\IOSubSys
If you have succesfully copied the file, you need to restart your computer so the file can be loaded in the OS.
If all went well you can now open your Windows Explorer, and when you have a Audio CD in your drive it will show you all kinds of maps with choices of wav files. You can now pick the file you want and drag it to a folder on your HD !
By dragging and dropping all the files to your HD you have a very easy to use way of making a backup of SafeAudio protected CD's, and damn what will those Macrovision guys feel bad
-=-
see the actual site later for more info.
Enjoy.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
The file. CDFS.ZIP turned up after a search on Google with a number of links to download from.
It seems that this file is at least a few years old. So I believe nothing has really been 'broken' here as the file has been floating around the web for quite awhile. Although useful, it's nothing revolutionary..
Taken from AfterDawn.com
This is an incredible software driver for you lucky ones who have a supported CD-ROM drive. This file replaces the existing Windows' CDFS.VXD -file and after installation shows the content of your audio CDs as WAV files which you can copy directly to your hard drive. So, if your drive works with this one, it makes ALL the external CD rippers obsolete. Not for NT, sorry..
http://www.afterdawn.com/software/specific.cfm/50
- KJ