Michael Jackson Releases Uncopyable CD

Derek Jeter writes "NTK.net is reporting in their weekly newsletter that another copy restricted CD has surfaced, this time Michael Jackson's newest single, "Rock Your World". "When loaded into the CD drive, the disc spun continuously as though the drive was trying to access the TOC of a blank or corrupted CDR." Ughh, Doesn't this violoate the Red Book Standard?" I wonder how long before MP3s of this song exist despite the copy protection. So far its just free promotional copies of the single. I tell ya I'm gonna be pissed the first time I buy a CD and discover I can't listen to it in my computer.

Comments

Re:If it's audible, it can be copied...

[dboyles]

Why do a d/a or a/d conversion? Just about any CD or DVD player costing more than a few hundred bucks comes with a digital output these days. We just need to take that feed into a soundcard with a digital input. I doubt you could get a bit-for-bit copy, but since most people are compressing to MP3 anyway the difference should be negligible.

As others have mentioned, the other option for fighting this is tearing the plastic wrap off and then demanding a refund because the CD isn't Red Book compliant and won't play in your CD player. In other words, it's defective.

Re:Stupid, just stupid.

[zpengo]

Remember when businesses tried to *please* their customers?

Remember when businesses found out that ripping customers off was more profitable?

The blames lies at least partially with us, for acting like cattle and continuing to support these things. We still buy Nikes, we still use Microsoft, and (some of us, I would imagine) still listen to Michael Jackson.

It probably does violate the Red Book standard...

[dpbsmith]

...but where on the CD case does it say that it conforms? As a matter of curiosity, does this CD actually have the "Compact Disc--Digital Audio" logo on it? Even if it does, does this mean that it complies with the standard--or does it mean only that it will play on players that comply with the standard?

I used to wonder about the companies that broadcast scrambled pay-content over regular television broadcast channels. Weren't THEY violating FCC standards by transmitting a non-NTSC-compliant signal? Didn't seem to matter...

As for PC vendors, they've been playing fast and loose with standards for ages. I remember first getting into this with people that kept insisting (incorrectly) that the Apple ][ generated NTSC video. Apple in fact had a carefully worded but misleading statement that said something like "the video is designed to be viewed on monitors that comply with the NTSC standard." That is, the signal was (way) outside the NTSC standard, but the NTSC standard for MONITORS requires them to be very tolerant...

I keep hearing horror stories from DVD enthusiasts. Apparently, in this year of our Lord 2001, it's not at all rare to find DVD X that plays in player A but not player B... and DVD Y that plays in player B but not player A. Not because of copy-protection or anything like that. Just because of bad standards, lame engineering, and NO watchdogs.

You know the sort of thing... the standard may say you can do thus-and-such, but very few DVD's actually do it, so lots of DVD players can get away with not implementing it quite right...