Record Companies Sued Over Charley Pride CD

DevNova writes: "This posting describes a woman in California suing Fahrenheit Entertainment, Inc. and its label Music City Records over CDs she has purchased which use a proprietary music encoding scheme that prevents them from being listened to without the user identifying themselves. These CDs won't play on standard CD players, are not encoded in the popular MP3 format, and will not play on a computer until the user enters personal information. A large part of the suit is that Fahrenheit discloses none of this information on the packaging."

Comments

let's join the underground

[perdida]

i am a musician and i give away all of it. i dont sell it.

this is the only way to keep out controls like this.

this shit is just going to get worse, and it makes me very quiet, i feel like everyone around me is a little fascist now. i won't take an opportunity in music although it's not likely i'd get one anyway since i don't look like britney spears.

i guess that i am willing to get sick and die and not go to a hospital, or to have my own teeth fall out because i don't have benefits, so a corporate system doesn't own me.

in a few months my honeymoon will be over.. if i don't post anymore it means i am gone for good.

A little off

[Sawbones]

These CDs won't play on standard CD players, are not encoded in the popular MP3 format, and will not play on a computer until the user enters personal information.

Actually the suit says that they won't play in standard Audio CD drives in computers, not that the CD won't play in a stand alone CD player. I should hope that the music stores them selves would refuse to carry something that won't even play in a regular CD player.

Summary not correct

[Hieronymous Coward]

The letter makes no mention of the CD not working in normal audio players. Apparently the CD will not work in CD-ROM drives, but allows the user the ability to register with the record label and download a proprietary encoding of the song to play on their computer.

Re:Summary not correct

[Alan]

You own the physical disk, and have the rights to listen to it. I think the issue in question is "what devices do you have the rights to listen to it on". According to what the RIAA is saying it seems you have the rights to listen to it on any "normal" CD player (home or computer or car or mobile).

According to this company you do not have the rights to listen to it on ANYTHING but a home CD player. You aren't allowed to convert it to another form to listen to it (ie: rip to mp3 to play in my car mp3 player) and you have to register with them if you want to play it on a computer CD player.

Since I got myself a MP3 CD player for my car the idea of being able to buy mp3s instead of CDs is stronger and stronger. I rarely listen to normal CDs anymore... why would I want a format where I can only fit 10-20 songs on a disk instead of 200+ songs?

I'm interested to hear if this is a windows only thing or if a linux CD player would play the CD normally?

No wonder no hacker has heard of this yet.

[ruebarb]

They're probably using this as a test for the RIAA...and they knew no hacker would try to break it cause no hacker would ever want to.

I can hear the sales committee to RIAA 6 months later.."See, our propritary technology hasn't been cracked - it's safe to implement for all CD sales...

Two weeks later...teenage munchkins find out they can't listen to Limp Bisquit and break the encoding...end of story.

Funny as hell...why Charley Pride? Covering Jim Reeves, no less?

Re:Who the crap is Charley Pride?

[steevo.com]

Charley Pride can perform & sing.

He can perform both kinds of music... Country AND Western!

the sneaks!

[Maditude]

This suit should be interesting to follow...

"A large part of the suit is that Fahrenheit discloses none of this information on the packaging."

My wife just bought a cd (arg! I can't remember the artist name, Toby sumthin-or-other, your basic country crapola [metal rules, imho]). Anyways, there was NO indication anywhere on the cd that it was copy-protected, but it absolutely could not be backed-up with ezcd (she likes the security and convenience of having copied-cd's for use in the car, and leaving the original at the house). After a couple of tries, I moved on to attempting to just rip the tracks to .wav files, which I would burn later -- not all of the tracks could be ripped, and the ones that DID, were full of static noise. Luckily, CloneCD didn't have any trouble at all.

My point (having wandered a bit away from the original topic), is that more than one record company seems to be trying to sneak this sort of crap past consumers.

Re:the sneaks!

[FooDog]

Now this is a damn good point! I've had my car broken into TWICE and had some miscreant make off with all of my original, fully paid for, not burned off the computer CD's. After that I started making copies of every CD I BOUGHT (If anyone from the RIAA is reading this, please make special note of that last word. Here, I'll even spell it out real slow so you can understand it: B-O-U-G-H-T....) so that I could put the copies in my car. If they got stolen, I just make new ones. If someone breaks into my HOUSE and makes off with the originals, well, I probably have bigger problems. :)

Nice suit, but...

[Masem]

If you take a look at the last few lines of the linked article, and most the suit, in fact, it talks about how this is all falling under deceptive practices for not labelling the CD package as containing a non-standard CD format or having a privacy notice on the CD.

I'm worried that all the recording companies will do is add in the fine print at the bottom of the back side cover that says something like "This CD is protected by the use of the FairUseSucks System and may not play on computers without entering personal information. Please visit www.weownj00.com for our privacy policy; opening of this package indicates your agreement to this policy". Bingo, they have just gotten out of a lawsuit.

At this point, one would then need to envoke the infamous time-shifting case to fight back for fair use.

Easily fixed

[fobbman]

Day One

"Hi, I bought this CD yesterday but cannot get it to play on my PC at home. The other CD I bought yesterday plays fine, so this must be defective. Can I get a replacement?"

Day Two

"Hi, I got this replacement for a CD that wouldn't play on my PC yesterday and this one seems bad, too. Might be a bad production run of CD's. Can I try another?"

Rinse well, repeat as necessary until all CD's of that recording are sent back to label marked "defective".

Package warnings

[bigdavex]

For the interested, the outside packaging of "A Tribute to Jim Reeves" says this:

This audio CD is protected by SunnComm MediaCloQ (TM) version 1.0.
It is designed to play in stardard Audio CD players only and is not intended for use in DVD players.
Licensed copies of all music on this CD are available for downloading.
Simply insert CD into your computer to begin.

On the inside, there's an insert that says this:

Thank you for purchasing Charley Pride's "A tribute to Jim Reeves." This product is protected with SunComm's MediaCloq (TM) Digital Content Cloaking Technology designed to prevent unauthorized duplication or distribution of Digital Original(TM) audio files. To listen to "A Tribute to Jim Reeves" on your computer,
1. Log on to the internet.
2. Once you have established your connection, insert cd
3. MediaCloQ (TM) will do the rest.