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Sony Sells Defective, Damaging CDs in Eastern Europe
parvati writes: "Newscientist.com is reporting that a new form of anti-piracy technology for audio CDs could potentially damage audio equipment. The new system, called Cactus, developed by Midbar Tech (Tel Aviv), is similar to Macrovision's but prevents both CD-to-PC copying and CD-to-CD copying (Macrovision doesn't prevent the latter). Cactus adds fake control data that's not decoded by the original player but, when copied, is read as music and produces distortion. However, certain audio wave shapes have the capacity to damage the circuitry of the player and/or speaker equipment. Midbar has already sold unidentified Cactus-embedded CDs in Eastern Europe."
...if these rumors are being spread by those who want to implement a protection scheme so the geek public does the research on workability for them.
"Gee, I have an idea.. wonder if it can be defeated? I know, lets SAY we already done it and see how folks say they'd bypass it. Then if they can't figure, we actually do it. Otherwise we try again. And we don't have in research costs of feasibility study costs!"
Of course, anything with AUDIO OUT is defeateable at some point, or it is useless.
--
The Coward
Something smells like bullshit here. Now wither it reads the same for either purpose, or, everyone is hearing distorted audio.
I mean, with high quality PC speakers with subs almost the norm now, I get better sound out of my computer than I do my stereo.
So, basically, these people ARE selling defective products, because I cannot play them in my CD player. Worse, they prolly wont take them back, so im stuck with expensive coasters. Suck.
A CD copier don't see music or control codes, it sees blocks of data without differentiating purpose. There is no difference to the burning software because it doesn't decode the content of the disc!
Secondly, the only way distortion can damage audio equipment is at high frequencies and amplitudes where it poses a threat to tweeters. The frequency and amplitude ranges of CD audio are tightly defined by standards, and you control the amplitude with the volume knob. The only possible way I can see this being true is if high amplitude garbage well above the threshhold of audibility is generated by copying, and that's impossible as shown above. A copy is a copy.
Imagine being told that a particular page of a book will photocopy correctly but that the copy will damage the photocopier. That's what this article implies. It's total bullshit and depressing as hell that, as of this time of posting, none of Slashdot's supposedly technically savvy audience has mentioned it.
If your current "old" cd player were to play "old" scratched discs and not reject sectors that didn't pass the error codes, the resulting damage to your current audio system could be catastrophic. This means that some sort of fall back to compensate for an unreadable sector is *required* for all usable audio CD players.
Often, *really* old systems substitute the previous sector data when the current sector errors are detected. A better thing to do is to try the forward error correction before giving up and replaying old data.
Now more modern CDs have 2x or higher spin modes so with a large audio data buffer, the player can actually buffer data and try to reread the data one or more times on an error in hopes of getting it right before the buffer empties. This is what the "anti-shock" CD players do.
Whatever your CD player does, it *HAS* to have a fallback when a scratch makes the sector unrecoverable (even with all the forward error correction capability and the data scrambling).
All this copy protection does is make it impossible for the CD player to read the sector correctly because it's recorded on the disc incorrectly.
The *REAL* problem is with the CD copier which when it can't read the sector, it sometimes tries to get "as much as possible" and puts valid forward error correction codes and valid error detection codes. This has the effect of "validating" the bad data.
Now the CD player that is playing back the copied disc has no way of knowing the data is bad.
*IF* the cd copier deliberatly recorded a bad sector exactly as it was read from the disc, this wouldn't be a problem. However, most cd burning software doesn't have the capability to burn a bad sector.
A better thing to do would be for ripping software to do something intelligent with unreadable sectors. Current rippers do stupid things, but if they instead put their own audio data interpolation schemes into the ripper, then this would defeat this copy scheme.
The problem is that people who write rippers usually aren't audio experts and often don't know how to do very good audio interpolation schemes. They often have the naive view that "well, the cd says the sector is bad, but I'm gonna ignore that and just copy the data anyways"
Real CD players have to give up eventually (or the audio will pop and skip). But the copy-at-all-costs mentality of most ripping software isn't smart enough to know when to quit.
The "commercial" rippers will probably say your cd is damaged. However, even if they do data interpolation, they would, of course, respect the serial copy management bit and will only allow you make your one "legal" archive copy.
Only if these lazy CD ripper hackers would get there act together, nobody would care...
Try this.
ftp://ftp.ecma.ch/ecma-st/Ecma-130.pdf
Not true. The Redbook Standard specifies that every CD audio track has a "no copy" bit. Every CD I've ever seen, as well as all CD writer software sets this bit. Yet everyone, all hardware, and all software, ignores it. In the HFS file system on Macs, all files also have a "no copy" attribute bit. And because everyone, including Apple's own Finder, ignore it, it is today known as the "bozo bit".
History repeats itself.
1. If it has the little "CD" logo, it must adhere to Red book standard. Therefore these disks, not being adherent to standard are defective
OR
2. By putting "CD" logo on it while knowingly not, companies are violating their license of aforesaid logo and committing fraud.
Which do you think that the companies will prefer.
Not to mention several other obvious factors, such as fair use being legally protected in other countries. Sure America doesn't have any legal protections for fair use, and it only can be invoked as a defense against a claim of copyright violation, but hey, we all know America isn't the world. Right? By using this technology, there is a potential can of corporate whoop-ass being served up.
At least in other countries. It is entirely within the realm of possibilities that this could be used in America.
Duh.
Of course, USC 17 gives no rights is because congress no longer legislates new rights. They only legislate new restrictions and punishments nowadays.
You never look in US code alone for the a listing of your enumerated rights, cause there ain't any.
Rights are granted these days through the courts, and not by any other governmental body. USC 17 for instance doesn't say that you have a right to own a device that can record TV shows, but the supreme courts has said otherwise.
I'll be both impressed and pissed off it they can pull it off.
--
- A.P.
--
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Of course it destroyed any data on the disk you had in the drive, and if you were unlucky, the drive itself. Fortunately the 1571 "sneezed" instead of "knocked" like the 1541 did.
You still have the legal right to back up these CDs. It just became a bit more technically challenging to do so.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
If this is true, then Fair Use died with the DMCA. Since the manufacturer can use any sort of protection method they want (even ROT13), and it is illegal to break such protection then you can never make a copy and Fair Use has no meaning. This truely is a sad day.
I read the internet for the articles.
(2) This is also true: just because YOU do not have, say, ribbon tweeters does not mean nobody does.
(3) Finally, the systems that would BE harmed by high-volume damaging sound are also the more expensive ones- in a way, this only underscores the point.
It's true. They are being a bit confused in suggesting that the _electronics_ can be harmed by such content- not unless it excites ultrasonic resonances and blows an amp that way, and the term for such an amp is 'broken'. But the effect on speakers is no different from transistor clipping, and it's widely known that in some cases weaker amps will blow speakers easier (esp. tweeters) for just this reason: clipping, and the high frequency components this produces.
The report is confusing and vague, but there is much truth to it. Just because _your_ tweeters are not delicate enough to be injured by this sort of thing...
This reminds me of the old Activision copy protection for floppies that supposedly would damage your equipment if you tried to copy them.
I heard rumours of games (back in the Amiga days) that only used maybe the first 60-70 tracks of the 80 on the floppy, then, somewhere right near the outer edge of the disk, was a chunk of metal attached. Under normal use, these outer tracks would never be touched, but if you tried to copy the disk - BANG! bye bye drive head.
Never believed 'em though.. too much chance of a bug in the game causing it to read the wrong track and destroy your drive. :-)
If anyone knows for sure of a specific title, I'd like to get a copy just to look at the line output from several different CD players on an oscilloscope and a spectrum analyzer to see whether there indeed is some tweeter poppin' high frequency noise bursts. If they have really done such a thing, it goes way beyond being a mere product defect.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Clearly you're an ignorant clod.
Thanks to the DMCA, we are effectively prevented from exercising our fair use rights even if we are able to. If there is anything that could be construed as a protection of the copyrighted work, we are not allowed to circumvent it in order to make fair use of the content. Thanks Congresscritters!
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
If the CDs are designed to produce this sort of distortion, and it can lead to the destruction of pc or stereo components, then a consumer would probably have a pretty good case. Copying is a normal use of a CD. If they designed their product in a way that it would damage your equipment as a consequence of normal use, you should be able to sue them for damages.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
You just aren't allowed to circumvent it for the purposes of violating copyright. If you circumvent it for fair use, then you haven't broken copyright, so the DMCA doesn't apply.
I don't think you can say that. The DMCA is worded quite vaguely. There is no way to be certain what you can or cannot do legally under this law. Until the courts decide what it really means, free speech and fair use will be severely curtailed. Programs like DeCSS offer the ONLY method for most people to exercise their fair use rights with regard to DVDs. Without the ability to distribute such programs, we cannot exercise our rights. The same will happen with CD copy protection and protection for other forms of media.
We've seen 2600 get sued (twice) for distributing a piece of code that could be used to create a program that could decrypt a DVD. This program would allow people to exercise their fair use rights with regard to the DVDs they own. But the MPAA and DVDCCA seem to think that such a program is illegal under the DMCA.
We've seen Professor Edward Felton threatened with a lawsuit under the DMCA for giving a presentation on SDMI's watermarking techniques. We've seen Dmitry Sklyarov arrested for writing a program, as an employee of a Russian company, to covert Adobe's e-book format into their pdf format. Even though he was not directly responsible for the program's distribution in the US and even though such distribution had ceased, and even though Adobe backed down from their charges against him, he was still arrested and is still being held without even a bail hearing.
Any of these programs and/or information provide what is usually the only way to exercise your fair use rights with regard to such encrypted copyrighted works. However, under the DMCA, such programs are illegal to distribute. Therefore, only those who know how to program and write their own software to allow them to access such works are able to exercise their fair use rights. This constitutes only a tiny portion of the population of this country. The rest of us have lost our rights thanks to the DMCA.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
but all the hysteria here about suing Sony for 'defective' CDs seems misplaced
You miss the point, the encoding on the disk that creates that destructive effect in a copy does not conform to the CDDA specification, thus, it's defective.
Actually, I have a game for the Atari 8-bit (It was a cross-country driving game) that had a sticker on it that mentioned this, so if it was an urban legend, it was propagated by Activision itself. I'm not sure if the sticker was on the package itself (I still have the folder the software came on) or on the shrinkwrap. I might have to go looking for it if there is any interest.
I'm hoping someone takes Sony to task over these CDs (though I don't hope someone gets their equipment destroyed). I'm sorry, but damaging customers equipment in the name of copy protection is just plain wrong.
Well, then one knows what to do - don't buy such a CD. If you come to a CD that has a writing on it saying "I'm defective" in bold friendly letters - why would you buy it? Just to tell Sony it can sell you a single left shoe for the price of the pair?
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Ironic since in the Supreme Court decision known as the "Betamax" case established the consumer's right to make copies for permitted use (in the USofA) and allowed the VCR market to develop. Sony was the party trying to establish the right to copy in that case. Now that they own the market....
sPh
Joe Sixpack & Co. might twig onto what they're doing and put a stop to it by the ways we're proposing people do about all this BS.
"What? You mean I didn't buy this album? I just paid good money for it- I'm taking it back to the store... What? I can't take it back? F that noise- I'm not buying another one."
They want the change subtle so that people won't notice- like cooking a live frog, turning up the heat slowly, he'll cook, not noticing his peril.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Depends on the gear- not all consumer units are good about reading discs as others. You could have a person with an earlier model unit or perhaps they're running it on a PC and using the CDDA data to mix it locally with other sound sources instead of using the analog out of the CD drive (Which IS legit!)- in either of those cases, the equipment COULD be damaged by the original disk.
In this case, Sony would be liable since they're selling non-compliant discs that can damage equipment.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
It's pretty much as good or better than most of the stuff on CD players. And this comes from monty of OGG Vorbis fame... I'd say he knows his stuff pretty well when it comes to audio approximation, etc.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
The act of copying requires the use of the CDDA specification for CD-Roms and CD players.
That's raw data access. I can, if I want, mix real-time, the stream from the CD with any other sound source- and by copyright law I can.
If I can't do that, it's not complying with the CDDA spec and therefore isn't a Compact Disc- it's something that is sort-of one. If it's labeled as such on the package, then the disc is fraudulent or defective- take your pick.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
In order for the system to WORK, the CD player has to ignore the bad data. Older models may not do this. If you've got a fast enough machine, you're going to use the CDDA feature of your CD drive instead of the analog port for peak fidelity.
In either of those cases, it's going to hit a piece of equipment with an original disc.
Don't buy off on a fobbed off statement to the public about it won't harm things- think it through.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Bull. The problem can be any of the following:
There are lots of fair and legal ways to use MP3's. Interfering with them may not be illegal, but I expect damaging equipment is.
Yes but.
This is purely anecdotal, but I believe it is illegal to boobie-trap personal property to prevent theft. So you can get sued by the prick stealing your car stereo when he loses three fingers to the razor blades you attached to the underside of the chassis.
(American point of view only here, I don't have anecdotal evidence for other regions)
I'm pretty sure that if M$ wrote something that would wipe your system if you installed a stolen copy of office, that it would be illegal. Otherwise, they would be doing it!
Casca
The name 'C' is not trademarked (could it ever be?) and hence there are no restrictions on its use. Furthermore, the GCC documentation explicitly states its deviance from the standard. The CDDA logo is trademarked and the licenced under the condition that discs and players bearing the logo conform to the CDDA specifications. So I think it would be illegal to use this logo on a non-standard disc. I haven't seen it used on many discs anyway, though.
And wouldn't it be delicious if the audio equipment damaged was some brand new Sony gear? If Sony's not at fault because of the CD, then they're at fault in the question of "defective in materials or workmanship" under the warranty terms on the audio equipment and liable for the cost of repairs. Then as soon as it's fixed, you play that same CD they said wasn't faulty, and let them know they've got another repair bill to pick up. Lather, rinse, repeat. Eventually, you can probably invoke some sort of "lemon law".
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
You're making the mistake of personifying a corporation. It's bad enough when done as a matter of law and/or legal precedent, and worse when we start to think of corporations as people.
Sony is a very large company, dare I say a 'megacorp'. The 99th hand does not necessarily know what the 101st hand is doing, and may well be in competition with it. Sony actually has a track record of some divisions of the company coming out with products that trump another part of the company. The best example that comes to mind is that of digital video cameras from a few years back. The Consumer video division's bottom of the line "no frills except what pro/semi-pro film and video people want" model *completely* trumped the entire Pro video division's lineup of small digicams, and was cheaper to boot. One division of the company had made another's entire product line moot with but one innovative product.
So the deal is this: those working in the consumer electronics division probably actively dislike the whole copy protection business, as it threatens their potential market size and ability to design and market new products that might allow copying (ala Tivo, etc.). The ownz-all-da-media-rights side of the company naturally has other ideas, mostly surrounding protection of their back and forthcoming catalogs of titles.
Some engineer is not doing their job if they can't handle arbitrary data input to their device.
I think the devices that could be damaged were in the signal path following the CD player. Maybe the signal drives amps into clipping and destroys the speakers.
Just junk food for thought...
I like your thinking Unitron :)
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
will damage your equipmewnt while performing a LEGAL BACKUP you will win in court hands down. I do not know what the laws in Eastern Europe about Fair Use, but here in California selling that CD with a CD label on it makes them guilty of criminal fraud, possibly with intent to destroy property. If your PC and or equipment is worth 1500.00 then it can even be a felony here.
note IANAL, just a retired COP so don't bank on my advice.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Companies are persuing an impossible task...I'm glad there's a lot of people actually selling them coloured glass, mirrors and other forms of useless systems and making money from it.
They can build as many new-amazingly-stupid protection schemmes but we always return to point 0.
IF YOU CAN HEAR IT, YOU CAN COPY IT
That's all...
The ultimate copy protection would be stop selling CD's at all
-OR-
Develop a new distribution system more suitable for this century...
Imagine how far they went that now, the first purpose of CD audio it's being forgotten (HI QUALITY) is being lost for a new concept (HI QUALITY + INDUCED DISTORTION).
I'm sure that companies will charge some extra cents to cover the costs of developing this new-soon to be drop-protection shemme.
Hence, if your equipment cannot create the exact duplicate of what they provided, or even if they could, I doubt any court would side with you on this.
... there go your speakers, perhaps even your audio card.
Although IANAL, it is nevertheless obvious that Sony is very liable for damages which occur in at least some scenerios:
Consider: You buy a Sony CD burner (the consumer kind that sits in your stereo rack, not the PC kind, although I suspect it wouldn't matter if the PC brand also came bundled with software that includes audio CD copying capabilities). You buy a sony pressed, unmarked Cactus CD. Or perhaps its even marked with a small icon, but without any message warning you of the consiquences.
Two scenerios where Sony would clearly be liable for any and all damages, and quite possibly punitive penalties as well:
1) you play the original in your high-end PC player, which is connected to your high end speakers via your high-end audio card, in turn via the CDs digital port. Pop, crackle, zap
2) you play a copy of a Sony CD in a Sony player, made by a Sony CD burner marketed to you expressly for copying and burning CDs (perhaps even burnt onto a Sony blank for good measure). It blows your speakers, burns out your amp, whatever. Sony sold you at least one piece of equipment fraudulantly. They cannot have it both ways, either the CD Burner/Player were sold under false pretences, or the CD was sold under false pretences. Consumer fraud at the very least, criminal damage to private propterty quite possibly.
[insert rant here about how CEOs of such criminal cartels should be spending at least as much time in prison as CEOs of other well-known crime cartels]
--
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I'm not sure about that.
Otherwise, all that chip music would have destroyed my sound card, and my NES would have destroyed my television.
You have to be the fucking lamest slashdot user I've ever seen. Go get laid, or something.
I thought that "I cannot be played on record player X" stuff was just a hypothetical example...
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
No, it's called optical out. Most high end (and quite a few cheap) CD players have it.
Well, it figures.
Don't get me wrong, every piece of electronic equipment that I own that can be made by Sony is made by Sony. (Okay, 4/5 boxen ain't bad).
It just figures that they would create a technology that would so damage one of their other products that you would have to buy the second product again.
The funniest part of the whole thing is this (funny as in cynical):
1. User buys new Yanni CD.
2. Sticks CD in Sony CD player, Yanni is so powerful that the CD player starts making crazy noise and then stops making any noise at all.
3. User goes out and purchases a new Sony CD player. (Hopefully not another 52k hi-fi edition)
4. User tries to play Yanni again. Good thing that he has the Sony warranty, but I'm sure the warranty doesn't cover damage by the encoding of their own cd's. (smart).
5. User realizes that the cd broke his player, yet Sony still will not acknowledge any fault on their part.
6. User tries to return the evil Yanni cd, yet Best Buy (and any other store, for that matter), will not accept returns of opened cd media. (who would want to copy Yanni anyways?
Yes, I love Sony... but they do seem to shoot themselves in the foot sometimes.
-S
Scott Ruttencutter
We Apprentice Developers and Designers
On the one had you have the EU (European Union), and on the other you have European countries which aren't part of the EU. Currently none of the countries in Eastern Europe are part of the EU. If these CDs do make their way onto the shelves of EU countries, then we might see an uproar, especially since consumer rights are considered very important - even more so than in the USA.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Wouldn't the soft clipping feature found on many mid-to high end amplifiers fix this problem? (I know my NAD C 740 reciever has this feature)
------- Oh damn.... the Sigfile escaped... -Great OM
And all you people are rushing out to by PS2s, PS2 games, and other Sony products. Way to go.
BilldaCat
Exactly how long can it take before someone does a "error correcting" cd reader programme?
--
Best regards,
Steen Suder
Best regards,
Steen Suder
-- for email: send to
AUG 2001:
SonySoftVision today announced that they have introduced a new copy protection mechanism for CDs. The new copy protection mechanism prevents infected.. er, I mean.. "protected" CDs from being copied, both on PCs and on consumer CD players. The new protection, called "KickInDaNutz", has been secretly included on several thousand CDs which are targetted for North American distribution.
KickInDaNutz works by taking all of the music data and replacing it with random noise; or, in some cases, a computer virus. The result is a CD that, when inserted into a computer, causes the computer to email all of the MP3 files contained on its hard drive to the RIAA.
KickInDaNutz has the side benefit of making the CD completely unlistenable, even for those who bought it. According to a spokesman for SonySoftVision, "The customer gets fucked, but because of the 'no-return' policy at almost every CD store, they have no recourse to recover their money. In some cases, that customer might even buy another copy! The great thing is that they won't be able to tell beforehand which CDs are corrupted! Besides, if they want to listen to the songs, they should just turn on their radio where we can subject them to advertising."
The new copy protection does add a bit of overhead into the cost of CD production, according to SonySoftVision. This will force the price of CDs to rise to US$35.00.
Consumer response to this new form of copy protection is not expected to be negative, according to the experts. "Most consumers are used to paying exhorbitant prices in order to get one or two good songs per album; we're only reducing that number by one or two. Besides, some people might LIKE random noise."
In other news...
No you read it backwards, he said
"only Sony Burners will be able to copy Sony CD's."
Meaning the Sony CD's won't be copyable except by sony burners, sony burners will obviously be able to copy other cd's. Doing otherwise would be stupid.
The names and holiday addresses (on the French and Italien Riviera) of eastern european mafia bosses are known to all. These guys don't copy CD's, they run the factories that press them in tens of thousands.
Pirated music and software is a multi billion dollar/year business in the ex-eastern block. Everybody knows it but who is doing something?
Instead of coming down on guys who have people out on the streets hawking CDs for $2 by the thousands, the industry will have us believe that it is the college student copying a couple of titles given by a friend who will put them out of business.
What would happen if Sony got Interpol to arrest one of these guys poolside?
Use your imagination, or think federal building sized explosion with different logo on the wall...
These are two nasty groups of people: multinational corporations and organized crime. Guess who the little guy in the middle is?
realkiwi
I don't have much to add, but I wanted to say you're not alone in thinking that.
It's getting big in the industry to protect something with another area of law, because it couldn't be protected with the first.
For example, fair use allows copies. So make any device to make copies illegal, but still allow copies to be made.
Also, Playstation games... The boot rom checks the first n-bytes of the CD, if it matches the boot rom, the disc is allowed to boot. If it differs in a single bit, it isn't allowed to boot. But this code isn't actually used to boot, it's simply checked to see if it's a "valid disk". If you use this boot code, you're copying Sony's copyrighted boot code. They can't sue you for reverse engineering playstation and making games for it, but now to do so, you have to violate a copyright, so it's illegal.
Ditto with other companies who, for instance, put their trademarked logo into binaries, and check for that. If you write code without their logo, it fails to work. If you copy their logo, it's trademark violation..
Similarly, patents can be used. Patent something, then 'open' an API. Catch? To use it, you have to use their software patent. Either license it or get sued.
IMHO any linking like that should render the trademark/copyright/patent either void, or freely usable in that context, by everyone. I'd vote for void, to punish companies that pulled that crap.
HIM is a grunge-like band from somewhere in Scandinavia I think. Could be Slovak as well. Anyway, they have have gained some popularity all over Europe and as soon as these CD's appear inside the EU, Sony will encounter quite a bit of bad publicity and possible some nasty lawsuits.
I wouldn't expose my nice pair of Dali loudspeakers to HIM anyway, but I would be rather annoyed if they would be damaged in the process.
-- Spelling and grammar errors tend to be a sign of erroneous thinking.
Incidently, another proof that people tend to only complain about rights (in this case, fair use) that are lost, and not about rights that they were never granted or able to use.
What am I talking about? The use of copy protection that goes back to the early eighties: on video games. Remember those C64 games on tape and disk? The media had al sorts of non-standard stuff to stop tape-to-tapers and disk copiers. And making a backup of those crappy tapes really wasn't a luxury. I wonder how many of them still work nowadays, even if kept in safe storage.
So why not complain about backing up PS2 and dreamcast games?
Uh, so if i send you a document with virus that only destroys your computer if you e-mail it to someone else, does that mean i didnt do anything wrong?
(document with a virus. Hah, thanks for that whole fucking concept, Microsoft)
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
You are right in that allowing me fair use probably does not bother the recording companies, and indeed does allow everyone and their brother to run amok with piracy...
the statement I will pose, though, was originally made by Courtney Love in her outlash against the industry's condemnation of Napster et al (paraphrased):
The recording industry has spent decades now
making music commodity, and now that it IS,
they're pissed!
I think that there is a significant portion of the world out there that no longer feels that music should cost money (or maybe it shouldn't cost $19 for a cd with two good songs on it)
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
I just *love* how anyone who wants to do any of the following is labeled a "pirate" by the music industry now:
-burn copies of cd's so it's not necessary to keep $1800 (100 disks) worth of original cd's in the car
-play cd's on high-end car audio head units that are really the more high-quality cd-rom drives and not the dumbed-down cd players that hav no problem with corrupt and missing data
-rip and encode 300 cd's and place on 30 mp3 cdr's for use with high-end car audio cd-mp3 players
-countless other activities
I would personally be very pissed of if I was one of the companies that have taken risks to bring portable mp3 players, cd copying software, car-audio mp3 players, and very high-end cd players to the market just to have them pissed on by the record industry's anti-piracy campaign of the week!!
what the hell ever happened to trying to please consumers??
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
Sony Music begged them not to release it, but the hardware div didn't give a damn and released it anyways. Sony Music was pretty pissed off of course, but there was nothing they could do about it.
.mp3s/.oggs for my listening pleasure, I will return it to the place I bought it from and get my money back. Simple as that. And if it destroys equipment I own, without any clear, large-print warning about that possibility, there will be liability suits to repay the cost of said equipment. Can you say "class action?" I knew you could!
Seen in a Sony Music Canada complex in Toronto: this famous poster.
Irony; this poster was about 20 meters from a trio of computers in the staff cafeteria for browsing.
Greater irony; several people at Sony that day ripped on the record industry for helping to hold back high-end audio formats by demanding "better" encryption (CSS2) and watermarking (for SACD) schemes. Nice job, shitheads.
ObOnTopicComment: If I ever run across a CD that I can't rip into
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Living in Central Europe, I'm not going to risk it. If I see a sony title I want, that I may not be able rip to mp3 and listen to on my laptop or mp3player, I'm just gonna go find the mp3 on gnutella.
dumb move sony.
If everyone that is so aginst this stuff got together and came up with a few hundred thousand ways of doing copy protect as well as ways of defeating that copy protection and then patented it, then the group as a patent owner could keep sony from ever using it.
Introducing technology that physically harms an individual's real property is a far cry from data noise that makes it annoyingly difficult to exercise that person's right in a debatably legal manner. The real kicker, though, is the lack of any warning! I've got a couple of CDs that include tracks of shuttle launches and avalanches and such, and they have warnings that playing them at too high a volume could damage my equipment.
This is in some ways similar to beating someone to death after they've broken into your home (which is an analogy I'm sure some industry spokesperson will make), except that what a music fan is doing is not necessarily illegal and it certainly isn't a threat to life and limb. It's also worth pointing out that in many cases the home owner could still be liable in a civil court, even if they didn't do anything criminal.
When they stop losing money on piracy, are they going to make CDs cheaper?
DC... isn't that what transformers are for? Does the same apply to sound cards? can you give me a sample to prove it? do pigs have flight capability?
-tfga
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I'm surprised that the slashdot readers here are so quick to believe this story. I think its very unlikely that you can send data to a cd player that will damage it... maybe if you turn the volume on your 500W amp and plug it into your little headphones, or if subliminal messages on the disk causes domestic animals to piss on the circuitry but otherwise you can take it with a pinch of salt.
/., but they are not going to argue with a big fat check.. lol.
All this BS leads me to the conclusion that everyone in the entertainment industry is high on crack and they are so desperate to keep their daily fix going they will pay poor engineers just out of uni ridiculously high prices to comeup with theses dumb ideas - Macrovison, CSS, AudioSafe etc. just so they can get that little bit of extra cash to get some blow. The engineers don't care if it can't be done - they're not dumb, they know that if you can hear it your can copy it, they all read
-tfga
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Also interesting, the company's name "Midbar" means "Desert" in Hebrew. "Cactus" fits right in.
I am getting so sick and tired of typical /. sensationalistic and baseless posts.
Aren't there laws in the US about selling intentionally defective goods and not advertising the fact that they have been made defective?
The original CDs are not defective. Stop making it seem like someone needs to contact the Consumer Protection Center, like its "Johnny Switchblade" or something (might be too old for you to remember).
having to face questions about their product quality and safety
What questions about quality and safety?? The CD's don't damage a fucking thing! God I can't believe I'm letting such a troll get under my skin.
the CD's can damage equipment
*No*they*can't!* If you COPY the CD's then the COPY can damage your equipment. Has anyone thought that perhaps this technology is being released in countries that do not require the buyer to be able to make a backup copy?? Sheesh.
--
Steve Jackson
Intelligent Life on Earth
Hmm, suppose you had a bunch of microscopic springs with weights attached to them, embedded in radial gaps in the polycarbonate around the edge of the disc. On the other side of the gap is an electrical contact. You've also used some thin-film voodoo to create a battery or other store of electricity in the disc.
If you drop the disc to the ground, only the springs on one side make contact. But if you spin the disc at faster than a certain speed (say, 1000 RPM, above the highest speed any CD will spin when playing back music at 1x, regardless of the position of the head), all of the springs make contact with the switches at once.
*boom*!
Problem: You stole their property.
Solution: Pay for their music.
Your arguments only avoid the real problem. That people are pirating the shit out of the record-companies.
.mp3 :)
Even if US law wouldn't allow this, you must agree to that this is a nice feature instantly hitting all little evil pirates out there.
Real men listen to their music as
I thought that gap was because there was fifteen minutes of silence before a hidden track of sorts, and you could actually see it.
I don't really mind double posts on
Unless there's a disclaimer on it, do we have grounds to sue for damages?
I'll call Foul. FOUL!
Would all the idiots constantly parotting "just do a bit by bit copy with dd or similar disk dumping software" pls try it before you open your mouths and make idiots of yourselves? That won't even work with non copy-protected cd's.
I'm not familiar with European copyright laws, but I would amagine that this isn't going over too well. Any lawsuits start as a result of this?
Um, this is my sig.
I think action is called for. We know that this is a digital format - nothing digital is beyond interpretation, modification and if necessary rectification. This is the cause of their paranoia. But like CSS before it, this too will fall to a determined opposition. We owe it to ourselves to shift the point of balance to where it become obvious that there will be NO tolerance of this kind of audio sabotage, and continued patronage of music that we choose, when (and if) we decide we like it.
Why does the music industry see declining profit and falling concert attendance? Well, Destiny's Child, Sisquo, NSync, blah blah blah - manufactured and overproduced pap. You aim at a market with immature taste, you get sales corresponding to a market with zero disposable income. In other words you try and sell us shit not even as good as the Monkees and we're not going to buy it.
We owe it to ourselves to see that every sabotaged CD is distributed, in cleaned-up MP3 form, via every file sharing service we can find. In the long term the whores of the RIAA will be defeated by their own greed. The artists will not suffer because they could scarecely get a worse deal no matter what we do, and because it has been shown countless times that fans buy what they love no matter how many MP3s are available.
Software copy protection has NEVER defeated people determined to copy it in all its history. In addition it has never been shown that copy protection improves sales or denies determined "collectors" their aim. The RIAA is about to learn the lessons that game publishers did all those years ago. Why is Carmack driving a Ferrari? For sure it's not because nobody could play Quake without trying it out first.
Thankfully we can probably stop this while it is in the stage of "protecting" the most populist and profitable of their wares. Happily that's the end of the music industry I like least.
Actually, there are many divisions of Sony. It just so happens that the Sony audio hardware division knew there would be a huge market for selling a CD copier. Sony Music begged them not to release it, but the hardware div didn't give a damn and released it anyways. Sony Music was pretty pissed off of course, but there was nothing they could do about it.
End Of Line
Sony Sells Crap
Is this news?
New Sony CD's will actually explode when the user tries to rip them. The new CD's have a microchip build in to detect rip-like laser movements. When the user tries to rip the CD to make a legal back-up or MP3 copies, the microchip create a small explosion, which will ignite the CD in hopes of destroying the CD burner. Sony representatives say, "Those fucking pirates are getting off easy. If we could track them better, we'd fucking kill those motherfuckers!"
--
microsoft, it's what's for dinner
bq--3b7y4vyll6xi5x2rnrj7q.com
it's a sig, wtf?
The trouble here is that only your 'illegal' copy could damage your system. Which is your fault, since Sony did not produce the CD, you did. More frightening than the copy-protection technology is the fact that the industry has long since forgone the notion of fair use. This is what we should be livid about ... like people who complain about getting a parking ticket. YOU parked there, knowing you would get one.
... I vohemently oppose ANY copy protection scheme. The fact that this one might (/might/) damage your equipment should you exersice 'fair use' of your CDs is secondary to the fact that fair use seems like an old bedtime story that every company out there is desperately trying to forget.
/didn't/ damage your equipment next week, they'd look like heros, and with respect to this case alone, no one would seemingly have anything else to complain about.
I don't care if the copy protection scheme makes my stereo taste like a 22oz prime rib steak
What really scares me is that we're making all this furor over the fact that it damages your stereo. If Sony were to licence a copy-protection scheme that
Oh wait, except the fact that Sony denies the existance of FAIR USE. Bah.
"Old man yells at systemd"
- Buy a Sony CD to CD machine.
- Buy a Sony CD thats protected.
- Burn copy of said CD.
- After copy fails, sue Sony in a class-action for false advertising and false representation of a product: they imply that their machine can burn ALL proper CDs. Since they are selling these screwed CDs under the "CD Digital Audio" label, their disks supposedly are correctly licensed and proper. Their machine does not copy them, thus it is defective.
Everyone should get their money back. Sony would lose a good chunk of profit and good will and perhaps realize the boneheaded nature of their actions. And yes, I know these different divisions of Sony are under different managemnt, but i'm sure an order from On High could be enforced in each sector if it was desired by the company. Sound good?It's simple. Just copy the cd, test it out at the Sony store and see if it blows out their speakers.
It would be a trivial matter for a CD ripper to validate the resulting rip to make sure it didn't do stupid things like signals that blow up speakers and such. It would just make the rip slower that's all.
Sounds like a whole bunch of FUD to me.
Not that I'm in favour of ripping CD's mind you. The poor musician is one who really gets screwed (after already being screwed by the recording companies).
If you'd read the article all the way through, you'd see that damage may or may not be caused based on the garbage data they throw into the command blocks. They can put whatever garbage they want in there...however if they choose to put a square wave in, that is the waveform that will damage your speakers (not your player...). I highly doubt they would fill the block with the square wave, since i can easily invision someone copying a cd for personal use, then having their equipment damanaged and sueing over it.
If I owned one of those cd-cd copiers and I got one of those 'damaged' cd's, and that cd WASN'T labled as copy protected with a warning in clear labeling on it, and I copied it and the copy destroyed my speakers, Well that record company would be hearing from my lawyer about damages it owed me.
I thought the whole idea of copy protection was to boost the sales of 'legal' cd's. Not to bring the sales to a halt because everyone is scared of buying a cd that could damage your player when you try to make a rightfull and completely legal copy for backup. But then again... noone can make illegal copies when no legal copies are sold :-)
Its not the engineer's job. My guess is the engineers didn't design their hi-fi euipment to play high frequency noise (read high freq. square waves). Square waves are really really bad for hi-fi equipment. That wouldn't be the fault of the engineers.
IANAL. Compact disks are supposed to conform to standards. When you buy a CD you should be able to expect that it conforms to those standards. If not you aren't getting the fidelity, and the functionality that you paid for. There are consumer protection laws in the United States which I think should cover this. If the recording industry shipps CDs in the US which use these copy protection schemes, then they should have to label the CD's apropriately. If not, they should be sued or fined, or whatever the laws call for.
Sony has secretly tested Cactus by treating several thousand CDs sold recently in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, but the system was not set to cause damage on this occasion.
The shipping CDs aren't set to produce coppies which will damage equipment. The copy protection system would allow them to create such CDs, but it wasn't done on the ones they shipped.
They're not "defective" as in they don't play, they're "defective" as in they don't conform to the standard cd audio format and are not marked as such.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
I first read that as "Kafkaesque" ... and you know, that works too.
--
Midbar has already sold unidentified Cactus-embedded CDs in Eastern Europe.
Until specific titles of CDs are given, I'm very dubious about all these weekly claims of releases, cracks and damages. It sounds like RIAA-sponsored FUD, not actual discussions of real technologies or real products or real damages of real equipment.
[
BFD. Someone will be passing out a crack on efnet tomorrow.
Is it technically possible for the copied CD to have this damaging content when the original doesn't? When making a copy, wouldn't it be possible to make a bit-for-bit copy of the CD instead of an "interpreted" version?
And is it even possible for content on the CD to physically damage the electronic gear that plays it?
I can't see how that could work.
$0.02 (CDN)
Can we charge the legal fees for defendng these patents to your VISA? It's your idea, after all.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Watch out for the "spikes"!
:)
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
The original CD will not work on computer cd-roms. I listen to CD's most of the day on my laptop, whilst writing my thesis. If they were to blow my sound card on my lappy, they would be in for a A$3600 bill. Also a problem for those high end CD-players that make use of a normal IDE cd-rom drive, and expensive ADC converters - If I buy a CD, I expect to be able to run it on all my equipment, no matter the quality of it, especially, if the quality is good!
It reeks of the CSS scandle - I bought the DVD, I freeking well expect to be able to use it on my operating system - it does not work, you compensate me. You damage my equipment, while I try to use it normally, you go to court, buddy!
TimC.
It is the high amplitude, high harmonics that destroy the speakers. Filter out the high harmonics, and you now have a brand-new lo-fi system, with no high end frequency response, just so some fool (RIAA) can protect their (unethically obtained) income. Personally, I like my high end freqs, and I rather not put too much in the signal path such as relays, or solid state switches that might distort the signal just that little bit more. TimC.
The gist of the matter is that such CDs have been deliberately constructed to hinder copying of their contents. Now, whether that renders them defective would seem to depend on the jurisdiction and the labeling of the product. If the juridiction permits copying and the product is not clearly labelled as being copy-resistant, then you can make a good case that the product is defective. If, additionally, the product has been constructed in a way that the manufacturer knows has the potential to cause consequential damage when the buyer uses it only in legally permissible ways, well... at the very least I'd expect the consumer protection organisations to be very interested.
Different jurisdictions are going to be a pain to any company wanting to use such a scheme for a mass-market product (which is why they're lobbying for global consistency in IP and copyright laws, merged in whatever directions most favour their own interests). To use this copy-hinderance mechanism at present, they will either have to produce different labelling depending on the different laws (which will escape notice only until some enterprising journalist investigates the differences), or they have to produce a form of labelling that is legally safe in all major markets.
And even then, they can expect trouble from consumer organisations if they try to push a deliberately restricted product to buyers at the same price as its unrestricted predecessor. Be sympathetic, folks, it's not easy being a mass-market content distributor....
If they don't want people copying CDs, why do they sell this CD recorder?
Actually, the Betamax case made it legal to make a copy for personal use. However, it did not make it nessecary for copryright holders to make it easy to do so, or make it required that they not use any sort of protection (Macrovision anyone?).
Fair use means you are not commiting a crime for making backups for personal use.
Fair use *IS NOT* a doctrine stating that companies have to facilitate the process.
I was thinking about that at lunch, and you are absolutely corret -- the premise of fair use as consumers see it is severly hammpered by the DMCA. Puts it in a whole different light.
This isn't a case of them "not making it available to you". This is them taking it away from you. There is a difference.
You have the right to make copies for your own use. They are purposfully taking measures to prevent you from exercising that right.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I would expect that this may cause significant trouble for the retailers who sell these disks to the end-users. Certainly, until the retailers know that they are selling Cactus-enabled products, they will end up eating the cost of damage to the end-user's systems.
While this may or may not be a legal liability for anyone involved in the retailing of these products, it is not difficult to imagine that this is exactly the sort of situation that will lead to an increase in the use of sites like MP3.com and the new-and-improved napster.
This is a desperate attempt by the record distribution industry to keep themselves from becoming irrelevant. Sadly, this will probably only accelerate the acceptance of alternative distribution channels. And, at least some artists are begining to realize that they don't need the record distribution services of an AOL/Time Warner or a Sony if they have other partners who are willing to take a lower % of the proceeds.
Aren't any /.ers even slightly conversant with Merzbow? Shit man, if Merzbow can't blow up your speakers, a pussy little square wave isn't going to. Actually, there is one person who might be able to fuck your speakers AND your CD player.
JLIAT
He has dicovered that giving sounds a particular negative DC bias can actually crash CD players. The first time I've heard of any content EVER doing that. Please don't make me do bad ASCII art, just go to his site and check out his findings.
-- Your ad here $20 --
The Sony CD's are not the ones which can damage your speakers, your copy is. Sony has no liability here, because the CD you made yourself is the one which is going to damage your CD player. Sony's lawyers would correctly point out that no one forced you to make a copy, so whatever happened with that copy is not their problem.
=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\
Well, I don't know, all the posters I have could burn if I really wanted to let them catch fire...
Anyway, yes, your suggestion for giving a reason to buy a real product is a good idea IMO. At least its a lot better than letting big companies ruin our kit when we want to make backups.
If not now, when?
Also, my car's been broken into a couple of times, so I'm leery about carrying around the originals...
So, no piracy here. Nevertheless, Sony is going to blow up my stereo? They better put a big, fat, red warning label on their "Cactus" CDs so I can make an informed decision.
---
CD players with a digital output use the "Sony Philips Digital InterFace" to connect to external D/A converters, and in quite a few cases their own internal D/A converters too. (With a little luck you can even find an S/PDIF pin on the chips inside your CD player even though there is no plug on the back.) S/PDIF is converted into a standard digital interface in a chip from Crystal named CS8412. Place that part on a PCI board and you got yourself a CD copier. The hardware isn't harder than what can be made during a colleage course. -- Fruit flies like a banana, what do the other flies like?
[sarcasm]I like this, but then I think that artists should not be paid for their work ... [/sarcasm]
Some really good CD drives can simply return raw sectors. There are 2352 bytes of data and 96 bytes of control information per sector. At this level, there are no differences between data and audio!
The CloneCD program is one of several that can make a good copy of a protected CD-ROM disc (usually for games and such). I'm sure the same techniques can be used for audio. To my knowledge, no audio ripper has this functionality yet.
The question is, how to find these techniques? All good CD copiers I've seen are closed source and usually only for Windows. The authors of them have clearly spent a lot of time reverse engineering the low level programming of various CD-ROM drives. Now someone needs to reverse engineer their reverse-engineering :-)
Super eurobeat from Avex and Konami unite in your DANCE!
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
I glanced at the patent, and it seems to me that it's mostly the same as Macrovision's scheme.
The only difference I could find is the flagging of the altered data by using the P channel. Macrovision's scheme doesn't mention this.
Cactus here seems that it would protect against accidental playback of the corrupted audio samples by this flag. A CD-ROM drive would read the P channel and see that the frame is "data" instead of "audio", and not attempt to play it back. The actual protection technique seems to be the same for both Cactus and Macrovision.
Both schemes work by finding sequences of sound samples that are in a straight line (such as a triangle wave or a gap of silence). You can then safely remove the middle portion of this line, as it is redundant. The CD player will "connect the dots" and exactly reproduce the straight line! The audio that you hear will be unchanged, even though many of its samples might be missing.
The removed samples are replaced with random or corrupted data, and the error correction codes of the CD are set to mark this data as bad (so it won't be accidentally played).
I'm surprised this hasn't been thought of before. What would be funny is if Macrovision and Cactus spent a lot of money fighting over who got the patent first, while the rest of us simply make a small patch to cdparanoia and continue ripping away :-)
Super eurobeat from Avex and Konami unite in your DANCE!
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
I agree there are a lot of concerns with this system, but one thing I haven't heard mentioned was the "distortion" of the sound. Audiophiles are pretty notorious for claiming that things like different digital cables affect sound quality, or that some exotic element makes better cables than another. As picky as they can be, what are they going to say about a system that is deliberately designed to mess with the quality of the music?
Sony has secretly tested Cactus by treating several thousand CDs sold recently in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, but the system was not set to cause damage on this occasion.
I think that this paragraph in the article bothers me. If the system is set to cause damage, someone had to set it to do that, which means somewhere in the algorithm, someone changed
CauseDamage=0; to CauseDamage=1;
Mabey its just a typo - cause if it can be set to cause damage, then they're knowingly selling a defective product.
~z
sig?
Just because it was her best doesn't mean it was ever any good . Have you heard it? Follow that link and listen to "Why?" or "Touch Me". Yikes.
Plus, what the hell is "no wave"?
I'm not saying it wasn't ground-breaking. It just sucks ass.
--SC
You read fiction? I write it! Lemme know what you th
Stay away from this stuff, I'm telling you!
--SC
You read fiction? I write it! Lemme know what you th
I thought that I could copy my own cds for my own use under the fair uses laws? so they are saying I can not copy my cds to mp3 for use on my rio, or on my computer which is litter to carry then 100's of cds.
Nope, I've no idea who these bands are.
I think what we need to consider here is, if Sony tries to sell CDs in the United States that could potentially result in damaged equipment, their liability would be pretty high. Take me, for example. It is my *usual* procedure, with any CD that I actually give a damn about, to immediately make a backup copy, store the original on a shelf, and listen to the backup.
If doing so damaged any of my equipment, Sony would likely find themselves at the other end of a lawyer really fast. I imagine I wouldn't be the only one going after them, by a longshot. I'm sure their corporate lawyers would anticipate this fact too, and I think it would be a good guess that they would insist that Sony take steps to minimize/prevent the millions of resulting lawsuits.
Can you imagine how well Sony CDs would sell if each one had to come covered with all sorts of warning labels that it could damage your stereo? (Or your computer, or whatever else you listen to music on?)
Sounds to me like Sony is just asking for trouble. When I buy any audio CD or software I usually make a backup copy. It just makes sense to do that. Either spend 50 cents now to back it up or pay 15 to 300 dollars to replace it.
I guess from now on I'll have to ask the record store if the CD is copy protected before I buy it. Just to cover myself.
Also, why does Sony feel they need to damage thier customers' equipment? They know damn well that every recording can LEGALLY be copied for backup purposes. To block something like that is a clear violation of the law and I hope something is done about it.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Ah, but the flamethrower on the car isn't intended as an anti-theft measure, it's a self defense mechanisim. The fact was that over there (somewhere in Africa, wasn't it?) it was a statisitical likelyhood that if you were a victim of a carjacking, you'd be killed. Therefore, the courts reasoned, it was reasonable to assume that a carjacking was an attempted murder. Therefore, you could actively defend yourself against a carjacker.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
And I have paid for the music. And now the provider wants to destroy my equipment. Lawsuits and boycotts are in order.
I like to play classical music at the office. But I'm worried about the CDs growing legs and walking off. So I've been burning copies of my own classical CDs; keep the originals safe at home, keep the copies in the office.
What happened to our right to back up our own cds? This technology assumes that any copying of the cd must be for piracy. And should they implement the 'damaging' factor (not currently used in the European trial) and it destroys audio equipment, I see lawsuits up the wazoo. Once again, the 'golden ears' say that it may cause some drop in fidelity. And of course I'm sure these cds aren't marked as copy protected, either.
Copy protection like this is what we ALL need to get this resolved once and for all.
Once the American press latches onto the story about how Joe User fried his $300 CD player when he played a copy of his personal CD, and he created that copy because he wanted to keep the original in new condition and not because he was "pirating music", then maybe we'll get rid of this stupid copy protection bullshit once and for all.
Also, many people like to back up their music. If I scratch a CD, why should I have to pay $20 for a new one? I don't see any service offered by any record company to replace scratched discs for new ones at minimal cost. Until they offer such a service, they cannot expect people to stop backing up their stuff.
And the original discs are defective anyway. Error correction is built into CDs for a purpose. I don't know the technical details, (so I might be wrong here), but let's say error correction can allow a CD to play with 10 scratches on it. Now, if that error correction is being taxes by artificial defects, that disc may not play corrcetly with more than 2 or 3 scratches.
And just one more comment (a bit off the topic of this particular thread)... I hear these record companies saying that CDs are so expensive due to piracy. Do you think if they ever developed some magical copy protection that actually worked that CD prices would fall since piracy would be extinct? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
People who say "money does not buy happiness" are just people without money trying to make themselves feel better.
The interesting thing about these so called copy-protection schemes is that all they do is piss off consumers - professional pirates already have specialised equipment for doing 'bit-by-bit' copies - mucking with the audio data, or the control data is going to do squat.
In any case, unless it is a HUGE amount of bum data that they are putting on the disc, it should'nt damage the hi-fi - CD players are designed to check the data words they read and interpolate if a data word is way off wack from the data words either side of the bad word. (Trust me, I used to work for a Hi-Fi company that makes decent stuff: Meridian Audio)
For them to put so much bad data on a disc is grossly irresponsible, as it is poorer people that will suffer the most, as it is cheaper CD players that are likely to not have over designed error correction circuitry like the high end players.
'The best thing about deadlines is the wonderful WHOOSHing sound they make as they go by.' - Douglas Adams
We will keep seeing poorly tested copy-right protection being released to the market, and it will ruin more that just a few audio components. Eventaully we will become sick of it and downright *scared* to purchase and play cd's that come from the record company, and turn right around and download it from the internet, where we know it won't damage our equipment.
I'd say N'SYNC's "music" is abrasive too.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
It is illegal to do it yourself undef the most strict, Kaplanesque interpretation of the DMCA.
Circumvention itself is now illegal too. Fair use is illegal unless the content provider decides to not stop you.
Fair use is kind of pointless if the content provider can make it illegal for you to engage in it, even the DMCA claims to not hurt fair use right in one of its clauses, but the fact stands:
At least one judge (Kaplan) won't let that inconsistency or the Constitution stop him.
And as a Federal judge he can get armed marshalls to enforce a judgement, and take almost everything you own. Or, if you "profitted", lock you away 5 years like Dmitry Sklyarov (in this case the US broke SEVERAL international laws in the process - just like our "enemies" are known for doing).
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
--- .sig in order to have your advice
Hi! How are you?
I send you this
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
They can't stop you from making a copy, but what law prevents them from making changes to their product that affect your ability to make perfect copies?
(I don't know the answer, I'm just asking because all the posts I've read so far claim that the user has a right to copy the CD, but I haven't seen a clear explanation of what Sony's actual legal obligation is to facilitate that copying.)
--- .sig in order to have your advice
Hi! How are you?
I send you this
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
If I own a CD-CD copy machine (in the same spirit of dual tape players of old), will this prevent me making up my own compilation CDs for my own personal use?
Surely the implication is this protection will break the terms of the licence I have for my media (i.e. the right to make a backup, or a copy for personal use)?
Ach. First they want us to copy, then they don't.
Why, pray tell, does Sony make a big deal about MD recorders being "great for Internet music", and then go about making their own CDs uncopyable?
I thought the whole point of such things was compilation listening, or listening in places where CDs shouldn't go (such as long trips in China.) Both these purposes are foxed by this mindless garbage. Never mind the fact, too, that people are spending piles of money on MP3 based hardware... beautiful. Just beautiful.
Perhaps the manufacturers of MP3 hardware ought to get together and create "recording adapters" that get around this sort of scheme, just so people can use the equipment they've bought. Will it be illegal under DMCA? Not at all! It will be big hardware makers working against other big hardware makers. The only time law would come into play is if there was a money inequality.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
We're *all* in the wrong industry. Why aren't we all out there trying to sell useless snake oil to recording and movie studios? It's been established that they want this snake oil like no one else, and will bite at nearly anything. They're desperate. This stratagem would accomplish two things.
1) Give a few of us a life of levantine luxury, as deluded media executives lavish the lucky charlatans with cash.
2) Fill the field of secure music with so much balderdash that eventually some company will tire of the money hemorrhage, be a "daring cost-cutting pioneer" and go back to what's simple and works. Then, no one will respect this stuff ever again, which would undoubtedly be a win for everyone involved.
Sounds like a plan to me.
The war on music is a lot like the war on drugs- it's ultimately pointless, painful mainly to individuals, and is, just like any war, essentially a big black hole to throw money into. They are both propped up by shrill, head-in-the-sand moralizing, and like all crusades of their ilk, will hopefully go the way of Prohibition.
If we're lucky.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
The article IS true and such CDs are being sold in Czech Republic for at least 3 months. Here is one of them available in online shop. (It says the release date is 2000 but I think that's a mistake.) Dan Barta is very high profile singer/musician and the album sells very well (it's still at #11 in the charts). Note that it's in fact released by Sony Music. The CD cannot be played in any PC CD-ROM and - in fact - is not recognized as CD at all. The players/rippers act as if there was nothing in the CD drive. It cannot even be read with low level sector-read, the program simply says "there is no CD in drive". Believe me, I tried very hard with various ripping software... What is very interesting is that if you look at the CD, there are visible gaps about 1mm wide between the tracks, as on LP. The CD has a sticker with crossed-out cartoon computer looking sad and smoking, with the words "NELZE PREHRAT V PC" ("CANNOT BE PLAYED IN PC").
--- Frantisek Fuka (Yes, that's my real name and you have no idea how it's pronounced)
Intelligence: Finding an error in a Knuth text.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
Not true. There is lots of electronic music/noise out there. Any decent synthesizer can reproduce virtually any waveform at any audible frequency, and this stuff has been recorded. If Pictures at an Exhibition by ELP doesn't damage your speakers, its unlikely that this would.
Intelligence: Finding an error in a Knuth text.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
If it prevents copying as the 'bit for bit' version has code that the player thinks is music but isn't, how does this affect ripping to MP3?
I dunno 'bout you, but I don't often COPY CD to CD. Why would I?
Maybe an analogy might help...
Everyone knows that you can drive through a tunnel and get to the other side. If you drive around a neighbood and see a tunnel, and decide to go through it -- and around a blind corner spikes are protuding... well.. I am sure you can get the rest
What you are saying may be true.
But when you look that Sony sells cdrw's saying how they can be made to make custom audio cd's, it kinda goes up in flames, ne?
Sony sells cdrws that make custom cds.
Sony sells a cdrom that WILL damage equipment if played from ripped/burned copy.
Customer buys a cdrw drive from them and a cd from them. Tries out this feature and winds up with their crap blown up.
Fair use, ne?
Try again... this is old news. Cactus Data Shield has been around for some time, not just in Eastern Europe (CDs with it were sold in Germany too, for example). More info can be found here.
By the way, because Cactus caused so much trouble for legitimate users it has been quietly phased out - though it seems they are planning another assault in other parts of the world now!
What would be an interesting case is if this guy's CD-CD machine was manufactured by Sony, and was damanged by a copy of a Sony disk he made using it.
--------
The ivory tower has never had to reach so h
I'm sure it won't hurt your computer's CD reader, but if it harms sound cards, that should be legal grounds for class action... something or other.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
Well here in Ireland, it is not illegal to copy and distribute, it is illegal to copy and distribute for profit. If I want to, I can run off a copy for my own personal use (if you want the law references - give me a few days. My grandfather's law books are in storage. He was a TD (see congressman) so they were very up to date) If I cannot copy a disc for my own personal use, I can return the disc to the shop and by law I will get a refund (sale of goods act - not fit for purpose. It is a cd, I should be able to copy for my own use).
Off-topic: Nice thing about Ireland/Europe, the majority of the disclaimers on product licenses and manuals are illegal/ irrelevant. You cannot have your rights as a consumer under law removed/restricted by the licensing practised by a lot of american megacorps.
- This sig deliberately left blank. Nothing to see, move along.
I seem to recall a similar case where a company knowingly distributed defective goods. Remember iomega and the famous click of death?
Anyone see where I'm going with this one? If this is hurting everyone so bad, lets bind together and start a class-action lawsuit against macrovision, sony, riaa, etc whomever we can deem to be the best target to stop this bs.
These companies are violating the Copyright act (at least in the US), once the flaws in the DMCA are patched (ie, the ones that take away all fair use from the consumer) then maybe we can get this country (and maybe the world?) back on track.
After all, who wants to become part of the RIAA/MPAA/Microsoft.commie environment?
-since when did 'MTV' stand for Real World Television instead of MUSIC television?
I am wondering here about my right to make a back-up copy of CDs I purchase. I scratch my CDs regularly because I am not careful with them.
Dear Federal Mint,
I am wondering here about my right to make a back-up copy of dollar bills I earn. I damage and/or lose my cash regularly because I am not careful with it.
Thank you for your consideration in this matter.
It sounds like this system affects audio transfered in the digital realm (as in between the cdrom of your computer and a set of USB speakers). This is where the actual media is likely to prove 'defective' and damage you sound system.
Also I wonder how it will work with external Analog-Digital converters used in premium sound systems (of course Sony is likely only encoding N-Sync albums, limiting the potential damage to quality audio equipment).
Finally, by ripping to WAV and using an audio package (like soundforge) to remove artifacts you should be able to clip the claws off this beast (without much ADDITIONAL damge to the music).
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
Yes. Defective -- probably. I'm not familiar enough with gcc's departure from the standard to say for sure. If it encapsulates ANSI, but adds some other options for syntax, etc., it is enhanced. If there are things in ANSI that gcc cannot do, then it is defective. Netscape's and IE's html renderers are both defective and enhanced, for example.
So if I make a personal copy of the CD, I will get no errors from CD copying software, yet when I play the copied CD, I can trash my $500 stereo. I hope their licensing fees are high enough for them to pay for the damage.
I'm not a lawyer, but wouldn't they have to warn users what the end result could be, and cisually mark the CDs with a special logo or something. Especially since people could just be making copies to listen to in their car.
Eventually, the software industry decided that these schemes were a waste of time, and that they weren't really stopping piracy. They apparently decided that they could sell more software by lowering the price and making it easier to buy, instead of locking it up. (I suspect newer hardware platforms, like the IBM PC, also made this type of copy protection impossible.)
Now we have the music industry moving in the opposite direction. Apparently, consumers can't be trusted with the latest Britney Spears CD if they plan to copy it. I'm not even sure how many illegal copies of CD's are out there, but I'd be willing to venture a guess that there are proportionally more copies of obscure, hard-to-find artists than there are of Eminem, N'Sync, and the Backstreet Boys. If it's easy enough and cheap enough to buy a CD, then most honest people will buy the CD. If you're hearing an obscure disc that your friend bought in a small shop (a place so underground, they used to sell some pipes), the temptation's much higher to make a copy.
It makes me think about the memory card market. Some memory cards have copy protection features, and labels that distinguish them from standard cards. Sony could duck this if they introduce a new standard (they, along with Philips, were instrumental in redbook) and label the discs accordingly. (CDMG = Compact Disc Magic Gate, perhaps make ECD or some other feature a standard part so they can hype it as a benefit to the consumer.) They could also revise the SACD specs to allow the CD layer to contain this data.
I'm also reminded of a few court cases involving a home owner or car owner who put traps on their property to injure trespassers and thieves. In each of these cases, the person who set the traps was liable for the injuries to their trespasser.
Of course, standard disclaimers apply, IANAL (I just play one on tv), some cars not for use with some sets, YMMV.
I'm sure Sony must realize that the harmonics will end up being filtered to circa 20kHz regardless of the fundamental frequency of the square-wave frequecy.
Editor - GadgetSquad.com
Yume ni ikiteiru.
Obviously they want reactions to the "enhanced" media without potential lawsuits mixed in.
------------------rhad
Slashdot needs to interview Natalie Portman.
This is great! I hope they sell millions of these tainted CDs all over the U.S. It will make one hell of a class action lawsuit. I can just see someone's grandmother getting up on the stand to testify during the trial.
Prosecutor: Now ma'am, when you bought this CD you had no idea that it would damage your sterio system when you played it?
Granny: No sir, I've never had any problems playing CDs on my sterio. Even the Elvis compilation my grandson made for....
Prosecutor: Er, thank you ma'am. That is all your honor...
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
4n0nym0u$ C0w4rd Sayz:
Give up and start putting special items, such as posters and stickers, into the CD cases of your Albums to encourage people to buy them.....you can't burn a poster.
Well.....
apparently you've never used a high rez "D" size color scanner & a high quality color plotter. I've been making my own posters for about 2 years now. Working at a engineering firm has it's perks, sometimes.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
How did I ignore the facts, you moron? My scenario: Old lady on the stand during a class action suit, explains to the judge that the original CD screwed up her sterio. She then proceeds to explain that all of the other CDs she's used on the Sterio, including the ones made by her son, worked fine. The lawyer didn't need the extra info, so he cut her off. I suggest you figure out why you are flaming someone before you start. Moron.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
When CD protection schemes like this are released wo/titles, we should boycott the record company that released it. Its not fair to release a scheme preventing fair use without a warning.
Information wants Coq
CDs utilizing this protection method can be identified by the sharp points cut around the edges, much like a circular saw blade...
I am not an electrical engineer, but I wonder, can this data be captured, made avaiable and reproducable in mp3 format, then inserted into say, Britanny Spears or BackStreet Boys MP3's, then 'made available' to teeny boppers everywhere, with the intention of damaging their equipment?
-Mynn the Museless
Face it, people are stupid, and the internet is the place where they all meet.
So what good would making a legitimate backup copy of your original CD do?
If the original is damaged, stolen, whatever, the backup is worthless. The backup is unplayable - it can damage equipment, and I doubt anyone would want to even risk that. It's instantly a coaster.
Apparently the recording industry is trying to remove any and all possibility of CD-to-CD duplication, damn the concept of fair use/legally entitled backup.
___
"Jesus saves, but everyone else in a 10 foot radius takes full damage from the fireball."
you're not living in the US, you're living in south africa.
well, okay, they use flame throwers to protect their cars, not electricity. go here if you don't believe me. the device in the quicktime is on sale in South Africa, and has been since '98 or so.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
unfortunately, the song the 1571 made didn't sound nearly as good.
it wasn't all that loud. it was pretty cool though. and it scared teachers. :)
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
My Sony pre-amp has fiber and coax in and outputs for digital channels. I have used this since the Soundblaster Live came out to connect my pc to my stereo, now if I just route the sound from the cd player to the pc and record the sound from the digital channel, I will get a signal as good as the cd-player can handle(which also has digital outputs) without getting those nasty junk data.
--------
For sale: Rhesus-Monkey-Torture-Kit 40$
According to Copyright law, it is legal to make one copy of -any- electronic media (games, movies, books, music, etc) for archival purposes. Furthermore, software or hardware technological devices that allow end users to exersize this "fair use" portion of their copyright agreement (read: CD Duplicators and the like) are protected under law....
Just thought I'd elaborate a bit more, as I can see the flames coming....
It's perfectly legal for me to modify, back up, and unencrypt anything to which I have bought rights. (Skylarov, listen up.)
It is not, however, legal for me to then distribute these unencrypted/backup versions.
This is where the problem arises. People are making legal backup copies, and then illegally distributing them via Napster, Gnutella, or whatever. This is why the RIAA is up in arms. This is why a Russian national is in jail in violation of the Vienna convention. This is why Sony is making CD's that destroy my CD player. (I never liked them anyways.... just another reason to boycott them.)
It's our own damn fault that the record companies are taking these steps. If people didn't copy the CD's, then the record labels could lower the price on the discs. But if they lowered the prices, people wouldn't copy the CD's. It's a death spiral, and the record companies are trying to break it by putting in a hardware (or software, depending on your perspective) limitation to hinder the illegal distribution. Somebody has to take the first step to break the spiral, and personally, I can respect Sony's decision. I don't like it. I think they're going about it in a boneheaded manner. But somebody's gotta take steps that will eventually lead to lower prices for Joe Consumer.
Personally, I'm just gonna go back to vinyl until they figure themselves out.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
Simply use one of the Sony CD recorder to make the copy and a Sony CD-R. It is easier to find who is liable in this case.
WARNING: This email is copyrighted (c) 2001 ubernostrum. All rights reserved. Copy protection schemes are in effect to prevent unauthorized copying and distribution of this email message. If you or anyone else attempt to send unauthorized copies of this email message from this computer, the protection scheme will attempt to remove all data on all hard drives on this computer as a preventive measure.
MESSAGE TEXT:
Hi! How are you?
I send you this file to ask your advice...
And now there's a copy protection scheme that directly inflicts damage on my equipment? That's absolutely ridiculous, and something should be done to protect the consumer.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
1. Buy a Sony CD recorder.
...OR...
2. Copy a Sony music CD using the Sony recorder.
3. Play the copied CD on your Sony stereo using stock Sony speakers.
4. Sue Sony when their CD blows their system.
Protest by not buying their music CDs anymore and avoid purchasing their music equipment.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~ the real world is much simpler ~~
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
Sony manufactures consumer CD burners, and now they are selling a product that their burners can't copy! Doesn't this seem very wrong? It's like if the people who sold stun guns to people who wanted to protect themselves also sold countermeasures to criminals!
My other sig is extremely clever...
Just how do you come to use the word 'should' in that sentence? It's quite apparent that recording industry concerns will attempt to maximise their profits, and this won't be a surprise. But why 'should' ??
CDs do not come with a EULA of any kind however. They do not say what my rights are and are not. I would assume I have a "right" to make a copy for backup purposes. I suppose Sony could sell me a CD saying "No, you don't have the right to make a copy of this", as if I buy the CD I agree to the terms.
...(since I haven't been told otherwise and as I pointed out is a right I have in similar media)...
You don't have the right just because you assume. Legally you don't have the right to copy a CD unless they explicitly give you permission, as often done on computer CDs.
Yes, you have the right to make a copy due to fair use; however, fair use does not guarantee any degree of quality, it just says you have the right to make a copy, and you can still make an analog copy to tape.
This is what came up earlier regarding copying DVDs and CDs.
Just because a similar media gives you the right doesn't mean all creations of the same media offer the same right; again never assume.
There are two or three problems that came into my mind... .wav files, burn a CD of it then all the protection is gone no matter what protection they included in first place.
(if you come up with sound-quality issues now -
i think you can do quite good copies these days, even analog if it shows that digital does not work)
... u know, all the noise... what happens if this ol' bastard gets on of these protected CD's????
first:
if i play my CD in a normal CD-Player, record them to
second:
If this protection system makes it to market, this could be the end of any "multimedia"-cd say music cd with special features like music-clips and things.
third:
My old portable CD-Player (Sony D-99) can play data cd's
just my 2cents
.sigh
That "garbage" is called "New Country" and belive it or not, some people like it.
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
rant.java:1: 'class' or 'interface' expected
My other car is first.
If you read the submission carefully, note that it says that copied CDs can cause distortion, and it is this distortion that can damage audio equipment - evidently, the original CD will not do this. I have no idea whether any of this is true, but all the hysteria here about suing Sony for 'defective' CDs seems misplaced : what is going to ruin any equipment are the copied CDs, so if anything is defective it is these copied CDs - not the originals.
I just want to know what happens when you play one of these CD's backwards. Something like:
"Help, I'm trapped in a CD factory!"
I've become intrigued by all this CD corruption and decided to get a better look at it myself. So I've been looking for Philip's Red Book standard for CD-DA and the best link i got was this Philips site. To download the documentation you need to be a licensed company. Anyone has ideas for where to look?
SIGSIG -- signature too long (core dumped)
I don't doubt it in the slightest. If these CD's are not clearly marked then there is no reason that I shouldn't feel able to make use of my fair-use rights. Which include a single backup. Since I always play the backup, and not the original, I'll be hit by this 'protection' and my speakers will be damaged through no fault of my own.
Would easily expand into a class action suit, and considering the cost of many audiophiles system it won't be one that's cheaper for Sony to settle out of court.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
What I do know for a fact is they had some type of sneaky copy protection where if you tried to copy the game (short of using Copy II PC or the like) it would not only produce a non-working copy, but your original wouldn't work anymore. I managed to end up with a non-working Rampage disk because I normally copy games so I can play the backup copies and store the originals away. Thankfully, I only wrecked the 3.5" disk (this was when they gave you both 3.5" and 5.25") so I was still able to use the 5.25" disk; by the time I got a computer without a 5.25" drive Neverlock had long since removed the copy protection check from most of my games, Rampage included.
An article posted here suggests that Midbar's Cactus Data Shield may already be a moot technology. According to the article Plextor drives can read protected CD's (which normally cannot be read by CD-ROM drives). Also CloneCD can remove the Cactus protection.
Watch out, or I'll have the penguins eat you.
Oh...and, I'm liquid talent
Sony? I doubt it, why? Because the CD they provided WON'T damage your gear, only the one you make.
Hence, if your equipment cannot create the exact duplicate of what they provided, or even if they could, I doubt any court would side with you on this.
This isn't meant to be a flame, but how can they be liable if they didn't create the product that produced the damaging CD? Could you hold the CDR manufacturer accountable? (doubtful), or the Buring Software manufacturer accountable? (doubtful again - but probably easier)
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
See DVD region protection.
See RPC2 DVD Drive.
See RPC2 DVD Drive refuse to play DVD.
See user download hacked RPC1 firmware.
See user flash RPC1 firmware to drive.
See drive play DVD.
See user laugh hysterically at MPAA.
See user buy 'protected' CD.
See CD-ROM drive fail to copy CD.
See user download hacked CD writer firmware.
See user flash or burn new firmware.
See user copy 'protected' cd.
See user laugh hysterically at RIAA.
See ludicrous company in Tel Aviv selling snake oil to gullible executives crash and burn.
Cryptimus
P.S. See user laugh at claims that audio waveforms can do anything other than damage your speakers. Delicate ciruitry indeed.
Where's the list? Has anyone started working on something like this?
All it would take is a pinch of elbow grease, some bandwidth, and a little publicity.
A GeoCites guestbook would do for now!
I bet it plays fine on Sony stuff... :)
.kb
Two Wrongs Don't Make A Right-- But They Make Me Feel A Whole Lot Better
Doesn't this tell us something about the current music distribution system thats in place? I mean, people have discovered that the original audio cd is not the best medium to store music on, that more freedom can be obtained through the use of mp3 compression, and high capacity digital medium storage. This is a revolution for music. All of a sudden record compaies are not restricted by finite combinations of music that are only fully enjoyed by a handful of people. They could revolutionize the community by creating programs which allow custom mixes to be made for a reasonable price, downloaded through their official servers while you sleep, and burned as soon as they finish downloading, garunteeing you the songs you want at a high quality of audio. Of course the program would also support just downloading the songs so you can throw them on your mp3cd, flash card, or micro hdd that plugs into your car stereo. The system would be all legal, and the majority of people would use it. ... and you can actually listen to the music rather than just look at the pretty colors on the shiny disc.
Welcome back to the real world. This new technology must be scared by definition, it is new. The age old distribution methods must be kept. When you want to use that music that you bought for your own purposes, the cd is only a license to use the data. When you use this license to hear the music to transfer it to a seperate medium, bang they think up a damanging solution. So these technophobes decide to prevent this, and since they can't legally stop it, they resort to impairing the ability of you to listen to that music, be it by limiting the readability of the data, or by making it harmful to certain audio systems under certain conditions. They are selling us impaired goods.
So I go out and buy a US$25 cd that just came out, run home, load it into my cd-rom to copy it to my car mp3 player, as I never use normal cd's anymore, and I can't even transfer this music to that medium. Instead I just bought a cd that might as well be used as a coaster, because only my old fashion 'Compact Disc' players can play it. Whats the end result of these kind of situations?
Record compainis fail to realize that the public can only be pushed so far, and when you restrict their freedom, regardless of what it is in relation to, the rebel. Also, they fail to realize that if the public becomes estranged from them, other distributions methods will become more and more appealing. Spending $20 for a cd that you can't use vs. Downloading for 20 minutes on your dsl modem to get the entire album. Hell the downloading option saves you $60 per hour
Record compaies are failing to see the true issue with copyright infringment, it is the symptom of an antiquated disturibution method, and obsolete distrribution medium. The answer is not to restrict the freedom of use of the product your selling, but increase its appeal. The industry is going to have to meet a facet of reality that they have been detached from for so long.
Record company, meet Commerce.
Commerce, meet Record company.
**AA: a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes
Minidiscs already have copy protection schemes built into them that allow for fair use. You can make a copy of the original, but you can't make a copy of the copy.
"Knowledge makes us accountable." - Che Guevara
One thing to consider is that for the RIAA purposes of discouraging piracy they don't need to break people's equipment, they just need to make them worried enough that they might. Equally they don't need to introduce no-rip CDs, they merely need to convince people that ripping may not be possible in the future.
The various technologies are not particularly believable for several reasons. Not least the fact that they all depend upon implementation artifacts that are almost certain to be corrected in response to their actions. In the case of Macrovision the company appears to be doing no more than exploiting some already irritating bugs in the standard Microsoft Windows CD Rom driver. The 'halt on read error' was always a problem, try ripping an older CD and you will see the same problem. In the case of the Sony scheme the system can only possibly work by exploiting some design error in certain players.
The schemes might be viable as a legislative prop, develop some ridiculous copy protection scheme then go to congress to insist that all future CD Rom players have stuff in them to detect 'copy-protected' disks.
I suspect that the RIAA has been wearing out its wellcome on the hill though. There are several formerly pro-RIAA Senators who are publicly saying they believe they were lied to. The RIAA would be taking a big risk if it went to buy fresh legislation, could end up seeing its earlier gains reversed.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
"Thank you for buying this audio CD. You should be aware that in an attempt to increase profits, compact discs are now being released by major record labels which have been engineered to limit your ability to use and enjoy your personal music collection. These CDs may interfere with the legal translation of audio files into formats such as MP3s, legal CD-CD copying for back-up purposes, may not play correctly on all of your CD players, and may even damage your audio or computer equipment when played. Because these CDs are not necessarily identified as different from a fully functional CD, you may inadvertently purchase one. If you do so, we urge you to return the defective CD for a full refund of the purchase price. In the meantime, please rest assured that this CD is fully functional for all the modes of playback you expect from your audio CD collection. Thank you again for your purchase."
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
If you are a musician who self-publishes or publishes through an indie labek: it is officially time to start enclosing a little throwaway card in your self-produced and/or indie produced/distributed music CDs. Look, I've even written some helpful text that is (C) J. Hamlow 2001 but which I hereby license unlimited use in any and every capacity by anyone free of charge -change it, make it better, spread it around and spread the word: "Thank you for buying this audio CD. You should be aware that in an attempt to increase profits, compact discs are now being released by major record labels which have been engineered to limit your ability to use and enjoy your personal music collection. These CDs may interfere with the legal translation of audio files into formats such as MP3s, legal CD-CD copying for back-up purposes, may not play correctly on all of your CD players, and may even damage your audio or computer equipment when played. Because these CDs are not necessarily identified as different from a fully functional CD, you may inadvertently purchase one. If you do so, we urge you to return the defective CD for a full refund of the purchase price. In the meantime, please rest assured that this CD is fully functional for all the modes of playback you expect from your audio CD collection. Thank you again for your purchase."
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
personally I think its a plot to force us all to buy sdmi compatible cd players by wrecking the ones we have.
Allowing fair use for you (and, let's face it, if all that was happening was what the past few posts have described, the industry would have no problem with it) also, coincidentally, allows massive copyright violations by people giving copies to their friends, acquaintences, or masses of people they don't know over the Internet.
How do you allow you to make a copy for your car without allowing you to make a copy for 10,000 of your closest friends?
"Fair use" for you should indeed take a back seat to promoting arts, science, etc. by securing for the authors exclusive rights blah blah blah.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
> while increasing the artists' promotion. And
> isn't that the point of copyrights in the first
> place?
No. It is my understanding the purpose of copyrights is to promote works by allowing the producers to gain a livelihood from it.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
How long have cd's been out anyway? mid 80's? sheesh. thats a long time since this is the age of technology. I've been curious as to what new form music will come in. Looks like mp3's... so why won't the record company embrace the new technology? Everything around us is becoming more compact and convienient, we just want our music to be the same. Record company is sly enough to figure out a way to make a profit off of this newer technology, but they want to throw a temper tantrum instead. what a shame!
That it is only possible to damage audio equipment with the (non-functional) COPIES!
At least the original product will not damage your system, so maybe the manufacturor will claim that they didnt sell a defective product!
As long as the original still sounds perfect and cant damage your audio equipment then is there really any chance of us being able to lodge a reasonable complaint.
What really worries me about these copy protection systems is the effect it will have on the durability of the disks. If they have already killed the error correction in some parts of the CD so badly that the played has to interpolate then you had better hope you dont get any dust/scratches near-by!
Microsoft's New Slogan: We're taking you somewhere today dammit, and you can't stop us.
I posted and all I got was this stupid sig
I am wondering here about my right to make a back-up copy of CDs I purchase. I scratch my CDs regularly because I am not careful with them.
Microsoft's software comes with a EULA (as does most other software) that says, among other things, that I MAY make a copy for archival purposes.
CDs do not come with a EULA of any kind however. They do not say what my rights are and are not. I would assume I have a "right" to make a copy for backup purposes. I suppose Sony could sell me a CD saying "No, you don't have the right to make a copy of this", as if I buy the CD I agree to the terms.
I however find it unfair for Sony not to inform me that they are selling me a CD which if I use the rights I assume I have (since I haven't been told otherwise and as I pointed out is a right I have in similar media) and make a copy, I will damage my equipment. I think this is potentially inviting lawsuits for damaged equipment (IANAL).
Lawrence Lessig is my personal hero.
Personally, I consider copy-protection companies, like Midbar and Macrovision, to be technology bottom-feeders. Why can't they do something useful, instead of making dumb hacks and selling them to mega-corps? After the stuff that came out of defcon, I'm starting to think that they are all snake-oil salesmen, peddling their crap to gullible media companies, who inflict it on unsuspecting consumers.
I can only hope that they, like the IBM-PC copy-protection creeps I mentioned earlier, go the way of the dodo, as their lame algorithims get cracked faster than they can produce them.
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
Hmmm..
And I thought that was the intro to the new Slayer Album.
I thought for a second Heavy Metal was back.
~I Am the man on the siver mountain
...class-action lawsuit?
IANAL, but Sony selling cd's that don't exactly conform to the CDDA standards (which is a whole other deal) and will possibly damage sound equipment under normal operation has got to be illegal underom SOMETHING.
And "unacceptable" to harm a consuer's audio equipment DELIBERATELY? Uh...yeah, that's about as unacceptable as them just breaking into my house and smashing my speakers with a crowbar.
How much longer until some idiot encodes an MP3 or other format (maybe even a virus/executable) that contains the type of square wave (and information on how to play) necessary to blow speakers?
is for someone to go deaf or have their ears damaged by this and the lawsuits will start pouring in.
Got Freedom?
Thinking?
On a side note, since it was not explicitly mentioned, does this protect against cd to wav copying(the article implied that it only protected against cd to cd copying). I guess if that's the case the whole point is moot, but still something to think about.
Got Freedom?
Thinking?
If you have it, you can copy it! Or, as another poster put it, if you can hear it, you can copy it. Why do we suppose they have a magical way of stopping something like this:
I am not against due copyright, but if I have an album, I want to be able to backup it!
Linux *is* user friendly. It's not idiot-friendly or fool-friendly!
cdrecord dev=0,0,0
I have done this countless times for data CDs. /dev/hdd would read the raw image, not try to look up any partitions or anything like it. But of course, I could be terribly wrong.
Linux *is* user friendly. It's not idiot-friendly or fool-friendly!
If they really don't get this information, they can still correct the errors, since the good and bad audio are distinguishable. If Sony puts in a square wave--all the better: that kind of noise is more easily detectable and removable than just about anything else.
As a last resort, people can still copy from analog audio; given the reduction in quality that formats like MP3 cause anyway, nothing is really lost (but you have to do this in real time, of course).
I wonder if this will effect MiniDisc recording as well - I know they're not that popular here but they're huge in Europe and Asia.
Sound waves should be free!
Aren't there laws in the US about selling intentionally defective goods and not advertising the fact that they have been made defective? Giving something a fancy name and calling it a security measure should not protect these companies from having to face questions about their product quality and safety. If this latest thing is true, the CD's can damage equipment, then something has to be done, it's absolutely ridiculous for companies to sell CD's that are intentionally messed up and damaging to our players. If anyone knows what the actual law is on this matter, please inform the rest of us. I know there is the Better Business Bureau that can protect consumers from malicious acts like this, but is there any real legal action that can be taken?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~ now you know
If more CDs are being sold with anti-copying technologly in the music industry. Why not revert back to audio cassette where its all pure analog, and rip cd's from that source.
The funny thing is: all you're talking about is damaged hifi equipment. Listening to very high amplitudes of sound, such as created by digital code, with headphones or - even worse - with earphones could easily damage your ears. And then ? Sue Sony/whoever for a pair of new ones ???
I say fight fire with fire...
;-)
1. We need someone to take a quick trip to Belize.
2. We need someone with a REALLY damp basement and a lot of Britney Spears CDs or maybe '80s hair band stuff?
3. Then, does anyone have a spare crop duster we can take into Czech airspace to do a little CD disintegrating?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
.
From the story:
and
See. Sony is really just a nice guy and they don't want to harm your system. But, if you *insist* on being one of those evil people that copy their disks, you are going to leave them no choice but to whap you upside da head with a damaging CD. So it will be your fault for forcing them to do this. (And, if they have to do this "It is going to hurt them a lot more than it will hurt you...")
So, Sony is acting like North Korea, firing a missle over Japan. They want us to know that they have a big stick and can use it "as people use new attacks."
Hmmmm... Why the Czech Republic and Slovakia? Small markets that might be easier to test in. I can't imagine that there would be that much piracy there in the first place. But then again, I think Sony can expect fewer class action lawsuits.
______
______
Once: you're a philosopher. Twice: a pervert.
Professional CD pirates will definitely find a way around it. Casual MP3 coders and swappers won't be affected by it - I don't think MP3 will encode a square wave very well.
Who does that leave? Home users trying to make a backup or a copy for a friend, both of which I believe are legal.
--
Lets say I'm a musician. I have 2 CD's out. I want to make copies of them for myself and others because the originals were really expensive to get printed and I want to save them to sell at my shows. I cant believe that I'm assumed guilty because I bought blank CDs.
Don't Tread on Me
Public Static Void RANT { .sig {
Rant.String.Equals("Am I the only one arround here who is at least mildly INFURIATED by this! It seems that the "big buisnesses" out there are plenty happy to compromize quality for "safety". Is it just me, or does this feel like an almost personal attack on anyone whishing to copy-compile-backup his or her music. Do they really think that threatening us will cause us to say "ohh, were sorry, heres your CDs back." I think not, we will hack our way arround it, inevitably, and all this will provide is a temporary frustration.")
}
Public Static Extra {
Extra.String.Equals("In other news, this discussion could use more trolls. And do forgive my Java code, it has been a long time since I have coded.")
}
Public Static
Sig.String.Equals("-Optical Time Domain Reflectometer. Sounds made up, doesn't it?")
}
-Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
I realize I'm posting this a bit late and as a result I doubt anyone will see it. But, I thought of this this morning, and it reminded me of something else I read in the news.
In Brazil (I believe) a bartender was having some of his liquor stolen, so he put some rat poison in some of the liquor and waited to see who got sick. Turns out the people who were stealing his liquor stole the poisoned bottles, drank it, and died. The bartender probably going to get sent to prison. It doesnt matter that people were stealing from him, he's not allowed to punish the theives himself.
Its the same thing with Sony. It doesnt matter if you *are* making illegal copies, they dont have the right to damage your equipment. If they want to make it so the copied CD wont play, that's their business. Your stereo equipment has nothing to do with it.
If you came to my house and stole some of my CDs, I wouldn't be allowed to go to your house and smash your stereo. Not an exact analogy but the point is- I'm not allowed to take the law into my own hands, and Sony shouldn't be either.
-J5K
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
The DMCA has made us a Pirate Nation.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Anyone know of a company producing an 8-track player that will fit in a 5.25" drive bay?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
_______________________
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
"Fair use" for you should indeed take a back seat to promoting arts, science, etc. by securing for the authors exclusive rights blah blah blah.
Hmm... Fair use should take a back seat to promoting arts... Let's see, an artist's CD, marketed by a record label, costs about $18-$20 these days at a typical store (ignoring the argument of online retailers that can save you a whopping $2-$4, woohoo!). Now the average listener would like to listen to/own several new albums a month, perhaps dozens. Let's see, the average listener does not have $200 month/$2400 a year to spend on new CDs, roughly %10-%20 of income after taxes (for some of us, 40%-50%). Result? That music is not purchased legally, because it CANNOT be purchased legally. Therefore, in your perfect world where copies cannot be made, those artists' work was NOT promoted... Hmm, great argument. I hope you didn't spend all day coming up with that one.
The record labels have done a great job of promoting artists, for the intent of maximizing profits, while disregarding the necessity to maximise the number of people who can legally acquire the artists' work. Thus your argument falls through completely. Halve the price of CDs, and you'll sell 50%-120% more CDs, reducing music-whore profits (boo-hoo), while increasing the artists' promotion. And isn't that the point of copyrights in the first place?
No. It is my understanding the purpose of copyrights is to promote works by allowing the producers to gain a livelihood from it.
So giving an artist <1% of the revenues, and undoubtedly <5% of the profits, while hording the other 95%, consitutes providing a "livelihood" to the artists? Admittedly, the <0.1% of artists who actually manage to make enough money to buy a house, (let alone a mansion and a fancy car that you probably envision all artists having) are provided a "livelihood", as you call it. The rest live in squalor compared to the vanities of the record labels. You are sadly mistaken if you think that $18 CDs provide a "livelihood" to the artists whose music is being pimped by the record labels.
So if I spend my money on this new CD, I won't be able to make a copy for the car(don't want the Texas heat to fry my new CD), but if I download a MP3 that someone has already "fixed", I can burn it to a CD and not have a problem...
So I have to spend time to track down an 'illegal' MP3 even though I should have the right to copy the original CD that I purchased(for my own private use). Why should buy the original since I don't get any of my "fair-use" rights with it?
Hopefully the Supreme Court continue to make decisions that are in the best interest of the Public and get us closer to what the original intent of Copyright was to provide...
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
ALL of sony's consumer digital cameras's are the single chip variety. Many of the camera's in the PRO lineup have three chips. That is one for red, one for green, and one for blue. The quality is an order of magnitude better on the 3 chip variety compared to the single chip variety.
I hear many people use that argument with MS's C/C++ compiler.... Besides, that's different. Not implementing certain ANSI features is better than changing the meaning of things, which is what cactus is doing. I mean, those things are in CDDA for a reason. Its like MS going out and saying that for security reasons, "int" will now be a String type.
Back in the day, us Apple II owners had a nifty utility called "Copy II Plus" that was used to make archival copies of copy-protected software. This was very useful for someone like me who schlepped stuff between home and school and back -- those 5.25" disks weren't terribly durable...
IANAL, but does the DMCA actually prohibit the creation of a modern-day "Copy II Plus" for the production of archival copies of legitimately purchased material?
m00.
What stops us from writing new CD copying algorithms that are just as smart as our CD players about ignoring this bogus data?
sHi
Good point, which prompts me to surmise that this move could be aimed at using Sony's audio CDs to bolster their CD-ROM sales. Sony is in the perfect position to be the first manufacturer to release a cdrw that can actually read/copy the bogus Sony CDs (ie. applying the same tactics that stereo systems use when encountering this bogus data on a music CD). Hmmm...
sHi
I agree. Many of us have been REAL collectors for many years, I myself have been collecting CD's and have nearly 1,000 CDs. I have nearly 5,000 MP3s on my system, but they are ripped by me from the CD's I bought and paid for.
I had other artists on 8-track, Cassette, and Album. They are the one's I download, because I'd like to hear them since I don't own a phonograph any more and the *Record Industry* decided those albums and cassettes were not worthy to be reproduced onto CD.
I enjoy my MP3 player in the car, I love taking 50 cent CDs and not having to worry - on NO! you stepped on my CD or Sat on it, or it got scratched by accident. I had had real CD's get stolen, and beatup that way.
Another thing, PS/2 games should be able to make backups, because kids are kids.. $50 a game, I rather have the kids play with a 50 cents CD - how many times do you tell them take care of the CD.. don't toss it around. My son lost a few games due to scratches.
Also, I used to work for the record industry in a manufacturing plant, I know what they have been doing over the past years. Making components cheaper and cheaper, yet the price has increased on individual units instead of decreasing. For example, pick up a CD from say 1986, and feel the weight. Now pick up a CD from 2000... you can tell the difference. Crap is crap. I know in the eraly years they used to do 12x oversampling, but that became too expensive by the year 1995. The Mfg quality at our plant was surpassing Sony and Phillips, something like 98% overall. Then the profit gouging hit, QA and R&D were cut. Their attitude changed from, lets provide this service for the highend consumer, so our product sounds great in high end equipment. So the audiophiles will tout our product. To, the fucking consumer can't tell the difference, fuck them, they can't tell the difference from sampling rate to another. We work on averages, the average piece of hardware in a persons home doesn't do more than 4x sampling (at the time) so thats what we focused on. Now that players are coming out that have higher sampling rates... they skip more often, because they can't read the crap the industry is putting out.
I have CD's bought after 95 that I can't play on car stereos - too light, skip on the first 3 tracks, or wont play on the last tracks. I've seen CD's that you can see thru, meaning they are now thinning down the aluminum to a point that is just above minimum allowance. Also, I seen were the spincoating on the CD's have been distributed unevenly, making the CD's wobble more which cause it to skip - or just sit there and not do anything.
All I know is the Record Industry is out to screw the consumer anyway they can. Heck, they have been doing it from 85 when the first CD came out. Even then it only cost about $.35 to make a CD, and they charged $18. Reason was, because CD's meant piracy could be done more easily and yeild better results.... hmm. that was in the early 80's when artists were freaking out over CD's.. and demanded a Protection Amount, to cover the Future Piracy that would occur when CD's were released. Hmm... Remember when albums and cassettes were $8. They doubled the price of the CD, because it was better quality and would last longer.
Uh, sure the originals won't damage your system. And Microsoft (like all other companies) isn't out for a monopoly. Folks, we have here some premium A-grade BULLSHIT!
Point by point:
Remember, kiddies! Cactus isn't copy protection, it's a scheme for Sony to get you to buy speakers from them!
Hold it in your hand and watch it disappear - set it free and watch it remain.
A CD copy protection scheme that can damage your /.ers
audio eeuipment is BULLSHIT! Aren't any
even slightly conversant in electronics?
The only possible way that damage could happen is
thru distortion, and then only if the distortion
is severe and/or you crank the volume way up.
You can blow a really nice set of speakers with
a real shitty (high THD), low power amp.
Conversly, you can run some really shitty speakers
at fairly high power using a good amp and a clean
signal.
All your ignorant are belong to us.
Well, get an old fashion style cd player and plug into the way-in of the sound card, record into wav & encode it. Otherwise, buy a good old walkman. They are dirt cheap. I guess its depressing we got to get back to the tapes... But then who really cares, it's not like we need that music to live...
Yes, it was nagging me, but I couldn't quite figure what other thing there was about it. Excellent point! I am sure it will be more sensitive. And they know that, and they want that. Their goal is to make us buy as many cds as possible... If they can make us come back to buy the same cd over and over, great for them!
Yes music can be purchased legally even given your assumptions. What can't happen is you can't have all the music you want when you want it. Just like I can't have that house in the Caymans even though I want it.
While I do have issues with the music company's pricing/distribution models, I think the problem here is that your desires exceed your means.
Seems like Sony tries to punish end user for trying to use pirated copy of disk, in spite of the fact that the end user can be uninformed of fact of illegal copying. In addition, it makes possible for various evil thinking persons to damage playback systems belonging to other people (or community) simply by inserting and playing illegal copied disk. Again, what about fair use issues?
Everyone responsible for his own (and only for his own) doings.
Jack.
According to Copyright law, it is legal to make one copy of -any- electronic media (games, movies, books, music, etc) for archival purposes. Furthermore, software or hardware technological devices that allow end users to exersize this "fair use" portion of their copyright agreement (read: CD Duplicators and the like) are protected under law....
..Depending on who you are, and who you're pissing off. Although the above is precisely accurate with regards to the copyright law and the DCMA, corporations own enough senators to break as many laws as they like.
as another poster pointed out, it's organized crime duplicating media in the tens of thousands of copies that's damaging revenue, not the small end-user population that distrubutes media en masse through the internet.
Do you remember DOOM? everyone liked DOOM, right? Or better yet, Wolfenstein. How do you think those games got so popular? I mean, sure, they were great games, but they were out of the ordinary, and wouldnt have caught on if not for PIRACY.
Thats a source of some debate in the history's industry. The full versions of wolfenstein and doom were pirated heavily, despite the free "teaser" demos.
To take it a step further, Quake and Quake 2 were released just when CD-Keys, authentication, and other anti-piracy measures were beggining to get popular/grow in popularity. These two games had none of these, and were prime candidates for piracy, since they had the best "quality-of-game-to-piracy-prevention" ratio.
Not everyone who pirates media purchases said media legally later on, but (with games anyway) many people do.
The point remains, though, if a company impliments piracy countermeasures to the extent that the product is less useful than it was before, people will stop buying that product. I, for one, have no interest in purchasing CDs that can't be (easily) archived on my computer. For that matter, I have no interest in purchasing any electronic media that goes out of its way to hinder my "fair use" of the product. Only by refusing to purchase such products, and encouraging people less "in the know" to do the same, can we send a clear message to vendors.
A company that makes a -good product-, without encumbering it with easily defeatable piracy countermeasures, will inspire more brand loyalty than a company that purposely makes products that are less useful to the consumer.
Thats right, I am now using "The Executioner" to stop people who may steal my car. The system is very simple, when I press the Skull Button on my keychain a large amount of electricity is allowed to run rampant over the surface of my car. Anyone who comes into contact with the surface of my car is instantly fried. Yes accidental contact may occur as well as legal contact (a police officer issuing a ticket) but as long as there are thieves who would take my car, I feel I am within my rights to protect my property. In order to demostarte this product effectively I have randomly placed 100,000 cars of different makes and models all over the US, in order to maximize the effect several are parked illegally in various ways.
.wav file, then burning it? I know it would supposedly decrease the quality, but from what I'm hearing it sounds like they are already doing that themselves. These companies need to realize that THEY WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO STOP US FROM COPYING AUDIO MEDIA. Give up and start putting special items, such as posters and stickers, into the CD cases of your Albums to encourage people to buy them.....you can't burn a poster.
If you in any way questioned the legality or ethical implications of the product mentioned above then you can not support this copy-protection or you are a hypocrite.
On a side note, whats to stop me from playing a CD into the microphone of my computer and recording each track as a
"
Ever hear of fair use laws? Copying CDs you bought for personal use IS NOT ILLEGAL, and the fact is on older cd players and maybe even on newer ones the original CD COULD DAMAGE THE EQUIPMENT. I usually don't flame flamers but people who conveniantly ignore the facts of a story deserve it, either you knew about fair use and ignored it, or you don't read any of the other 10,000 posts that mention it. Copying a CD and selling/giving it to another is illegal, not just copying it.
"
hmmm, or maybe thats why they first released it in countries where the consumer is not protected by the law as well as they are in the US. By the way, if I have 4 Elvis CDs and I take 3 songs from each CD and burn them onto one CD for my personal use, that is not illegal and yes it is an "Elvis compilation". Acutally fair use does not even sau they have to make it easy for you to copy, only that they can't sue you for copying....but if I make a copy then I'm not doing anything ilegal....if they put noise in their CD that will destroy my equipment and do not properly label it...that is illegal. Also, their technology relies on CD players auto-correcting errors to get rid of the noise.....maybe an older or cheap CD player wouldn't correct the errors as well, wouldn't you agree thats a possibility? As for having lawyers....if lawyers never made mistakes I guess that all the lawsuits against companies going on right now are BS, after all ow could any company with lawyers ever do something illegal when their lawyers would obviously tell them not to....your logic is as flawed as your personality. Learn to read and express your opinions in an intelligent manner, then you can start posting to /. again.
"
I bought a copy of one of the European "Official" Pearl Jam bootlegs a while back and recently I decided to rip it to my hard drive for use in college (i don't want to bring all my cds with me)
When I put the cd in my cdrom drive (a new Plextor burner), the cd wasn't even recognized by the system. This could be my system but I only point it out because Pearl Jam are on the Sony music label.
I just find it hard to believe that they would protect their bootlegs from being bootlegged though. And as I have seen mp3s of the bootlegs online there must be a workaround for this problem.
It's called a 1/8" male-male audio cable.
Okay, first off, some of these replies claim that the end user has a "right" to make a backup copy of a music disc. Where is this written and why haven't I been informed? That's a serious question, one that I'd like answered. Don't get me wrong, I hate this new issue as much as most of you do, but I just don't think we have any rights anymore. Anyway, it should be easy enough to circumvent. Just plug the digital out on your CD drive to the digital in on your sound board and record the damned thing as a .wav then rip it to .mp3. More work, yes, but that's really all there is to do, until someone breaks the encryption.
As soon as someone finds one of these CDs, post the name of it so work can be started on breaking the process.
Instead of pouring millions into a "copy-protection" scheme, why not use the money to teach people basics of copyright laws -- posters and ads in music stores and what not.
When you release a piece of music or software comercially, your revenue generation depends upon the honesty of the people to whom you release it.
Until they decide that it is no longer worth it to release records, they are going to have a piracy problem.
Just take the track into the analog domain with some high-end gear, re-master it (perhaps even improving its fidelity--depending on your taste) and then dump it back to digital.
Send a copy to a friend, he sends it to 10 friends, and presto, a lot of money spent, and thousands of damaged pieces of equipment for nothing..
If you can't beat them, join them.
no text
Simply stated, this is not possible. All CD-DA discs are encoded (and interpreted) in the same 44100 Hz, 16 bit PCM format, giving a maximum of 32767 voltage steps on either side of equilibrium.. the result being that when fed thru a standard DAC, there is no possibility of creating some type of 'killer' audio frequency and/or harmonic sequence that would fry your equipment. The fact that people would even take something like this even remotely serious is absurd. Such a technology would require compliant hardware and supplemental DAC equipment designed to send signal flow with ridiculously high amperage.. and since I don't know of any home audio hardware components designed to deliberately damage your speakers and/or reciever (yet), it's pretty safe to say that your home reciever and/or speakers won't be exploding anytime soon.
It would be wise NOT to pass over the parent of this reply.. this "technology" is BULLSHIT.. NOT POSSIBLE.. and yet there are hundreds of replies alledging the so-called "*COPIES* can damage your equipment" READ THE PARENT. IT ISNT POSSIBLE. ITS COMMON KNOWLEDGE. APPARENTLY GROUP IGNORANCE IS BLISS.