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."

Comments

Ironic

[sphealey]

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

Re:Can someone say...

[stripes]

Problem: You stole their property.

Bull. The problem can be any of the following:

1. Your CD player is a Mac (say on an airplane, or in your dorm room). You put this thing in, iTunes fires up, and automagically makes an MP3 and starts playing it. Pop, there go your speakers.
2. You only like one or two tracks of the CD, you take it and a few other CDs you only like a few tracks on, pop'em in your computer, select them, pop a blank in the burner and make a mix CD for your car. Go for a drive and Pop, there go your car speakers.
3. You make a legal backup copy (as far as I know that's protected by fair use), later after you accidentally leave the CD out and put your coffee on it you go to the backup...Pop, no more speakers.
4. You decide the CD has good jogging music so you move it to the tiny lightweight no skip CD paler, and Pop, no earphones...

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.

so now I'm a pirate?

[CrudPuppy]

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??

Sony=Hypocrites

[briancarnell]

If they don't want people copying CDs, why do they sell this CD recorder?

I've found one!

[SpookComix]

Europe my ass. A friend of mine bought this album from Amazon, here in the States. When he put it in my CD player, I experienced headaches, nausea, and anal hemorrhaging, plus it blew my speakers and fried several components. It wasn't even a copied CD!

Stay away from this stuff, I'm telling you!

--SC

There ARE specific titles!

[fuxoft]

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").

Re:Until there's titles, this is all horse-stuff.

[Peter Dyck]

The article is wrong in claiming that Cactus is a brand new form of copy protection. Click here and here for more information.

They (mainly BMG in Germany) tried it in Europe already in 2000. I still have Ministry's CD that won't play on CD-ROMs or DVD-ROMs but plays perfectly on an ordinary stereo CD player.

How to get Sony

[KarmaBlackballed]

1. Buy a Sony CD recorder.
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.

...OR...
Protest by not buying their music CDs anymore and avoid purchasing their music equipment.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~ the real world is much simpler ~~

That distortion has a common name.

[canning]

there are bursts of distortion as the player tries in vain to decode the garbage.

That "garbage" is called "New Country" and belive it or not, some people like it.

The CDs are NOT defective

[tmark]

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.