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NSync Copy Protected CD
admiral2001 writes "This article from NewScientist.com details the most mass market venture into copy protected CDs. Namely, NSync's new CD will be released in a least 3 different versions (with different copy protection techniques). Also, one of the types has (small) labelling saying that the CD cannot be played on computers."
Oh I can see it now, "Why do I care, I am a l33t d00d who only listens to great music and not N'Sync." Well, I hate to tell you, but this is only the first step. If it works and only a few people complain then they will start doing this to every CD and that is when it will cause problems for the rest of us. I won't buy this CD because I wouldn't like it but that doesn't mean I'm going to ignore the bigger problem.
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Oh bother.
So, if pirated copies do show up they can just say "Oh, the copy protection worked. This must be from the insecure UK version." Just like the Australian version of the Charley Pride CD. Clever.
"Slashdot is about legos and staplers." -Cmdr. Taco
Ok, tell me exactly why copy protection won't lead to more MP3 swapping. Copy protection (at least some kinds, I'm not an expert) prevents the CD from being played on a computer, so not just anyone can rip an MP3 of it, you'd have to set up a conventional CD player in to your line in, which not everyone knows how or has the motivation to do.
So I want to have MP3's of CD's I own on my computer (fair use), what am I going to do? Go looking for someone else's MP3 of it! That's what! And I thought they were trying to reduce the number of MP3's being curculated around.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
Look, NSync is about a million times more popular than that first case that got posted here a couple of weeks back. (See? I can't even remember the name of that artist.) If this CD gets out there and there isn't alot of blowback, it will open the door for more copy protected CDs.
What can you do about it? Offer to make copies of CDs for people who already have them. Tell them, "well, you have more than one CD player, right? Like one in your car, a portable one you walk around with, and maybe even one in your bathroom. Wouldn't it be more convenient to just have multiple copies of something you already own? .... Hmmm... my computer can't read it. Must be broken or something. Take it back!"
Or... "Hey, let me try and listen to that in my computer." (since most of us must have at least decent sounding rigs) "WTF? This thing doesn't work at all! Take it back!"
This is the opportunity to let Joe (or Jane) Public learn about copy protection and how it infringes on THEIR rights.
Where the wind blows, the tumbleweed goes.
when the horse has already run out.
I would be willing to venture that the number of people downloading music illegaly has pretty much stabalized since the demise of napster. No other network has achieved the market penetration that napster had. Now is not the time for the record labels to do things to prevent people from ripping CDs.
There was a time when I used napster etc. I can even remember hunting for ftp sites that didn't have a ratio. Anymore I just rip my own CDs so that I can leave them in my car and still listen to them at home. If anything moves like this increase the chances of me going out and hunting for songs online. If I can't rip my own CD digitally I'll either 1) Do it analog myself or 2) Find it online and while I'm at it, find several other songs too.
All that this will do is stop the most casual of copiers. The hard core rippers will find a way to force the CD-ROM drive to recognize the CD. The general public dosen't rip what they own so they won't care. So the only people that this really affects are the casual copiers, and they will just go out and find a copy that someone else has ripped.
"You can't fight in here! This is the war room" --Dr. Stra
Well N*Sync isn't the greatest music ever written, but they're actually pretty good. And why wouldn't they be? They have some of the highest-paid writers, voice trainers and musicians working for them. That doesn't mean that any of the people behind them are the next Beethoven, but they know how to write a catchy tune that sticks in your head.
All in all, some decent music is produced under the N*Sync brand. Their ballads are clearly targeted towards their early teen and pre-teen female audiences, but they're musically sound. Their more up-beat songs are actually quite catchy. The Backstreet Boys are more consistent in their sound, and I think that generally their music can be considered catchy more often, but when the N*Sync brand gets it right, they product some absolutely great tracks, such as "Bye Bye Bye," and "I Want You Back." Still, it's getting difficult to market the Backstreet Boys brand as the models creep closer to 30 and get married.
But that aside, we should be worried about this copy protection. If this technogy turns out to be reasonably effective for this market with few complaints, it will be much easier to roll it out on all future CDs. Remember, the RIAA doesn't assume that any technology will be 100% effective, but if it stops 99.9% of the population, then it will have done its job. Sure the geeks will still be able to obtain it, from ripping themselves or through obscure P2P clients, but the vast majority of people won't be able to get their hands on the MP3s, and that's all that really matters for the RIAA. The DMCA will take care of the misfits.
- j
So you don't like N'Synch?
/.ers) * $15 return = an assload of lost revenues.
Don't let that stop you from helping!!
Buy a copy - open it - return it, complaining that it is defective. Hey, you don't even have to listen to it. No cost to you, and they can't resell it after the packaging is open. While you're at it, do it at the most expensive record store around.
Let's see, (# of
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
That is why this makes a good testbed.
The overlap between CD-rip artistes and boy band followers is presumably slim. Therefore, negative reactions to this toe in the water will be slim.
If they'd tried this on the new Basement Jaxx, Garbage, or Bob Dylan, the hue and cry would disturb the 'speriment.
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
We'd never buy the CD to begin with. THUS: 1. They are testing the more general, less technical home CD makers to see what kind of response they get
OR
2. They are trying to get us all to buy the CD out of curiosity and rake in the dough off of a new market.
This strategy did several things: provided data on which bands / music were listened to by people who rip to mp3 (which when combined to the demographic info they have on the listeners of said music provides all sorts of opportunities e.g. a niche-marketing "public service" campaign against "pirating"), bolsters their demographic info on their audiences (if you posit that using mp3 describes at least a modicum of technical knowledge), increased the validity of their return-rate data for protected cd's by applying the test to varied demographics, and not of least importance, kept the protected discs out of the hands of those who want, for whatever reason, to find ways around these odious "protections".
Not terribly dumb was it?
Now they have moved on to the next phase: testing various rights management implementations (I'm going to stop calling it copy protection because that's not really the point) in large scale settings. You think that this large of a sample size isn't important to the record companies?
I would hazard a guess that the initial phase of testing noted that there was no increase in return rate of cd's among the test cd's released to the "N'Sync Demographic"--it lets them proceed with the large-scale testing with a greatly reduced risk of class-action suits.
The good thing about this is that after months of not knowing if certain cd's had copy protection, now we know of one that has 4 different protection methods. Now people with an interest in understanding these technologies can do so (which is of course a good thing).
Protege Posterioram Tuam
Quite right. I'll bet a lot of kids in Nsync's "target demographic" (a much more accurate description than "audience" or "listeners") have computers in their rooms, but no other music playing systems. I don't have any kids, but it would make more sense to me to supply them with a PC with a CD drive than with a PC and a seperate stereo. You can't change the skin on a stereo.
This is going to irritate a lot of other people when they start applying this to music that *isn't* disposible. Even high-end audiophiles are ripping to hard disk, using systems like the Linn. They've discovered that digital audio played back from a hard disk and re-clocked is free of the jitter inherent in even the best CD players.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
Everybody buy a copy of the CD. And then return it a few days later, complaining that it doesn't work on your computer or CD player.
I doubt that will work. Most stores will refuse a return on Audio CDs, Computer Games, or DVDs that have had their seal broken. For a return where you get your money back, the CD has to still be sealed. You can't exactly claim the CD doesn't work on your computer if you haven't opened it to try.
If you go into the store claiming your CD doesn't work and the seal HAS been broken, the best they will do is provide you with a replacement of the same item.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
Well, since you commented in the thread, apparently you'll be capable of giving it neither.
w00t!
Damnit, what is it going to take for the minions of Slashbots to quit cracking the comments about the copy protected artists not being worth copying? I was getting ready to Moderate this damned thread but I kept finding myself modding posts down so I gave up.
I do not care whether the copy protection is on an artist I like or one that I dislike. The point is that this travesty is creeping into the mainstream music industry, and if nothing is done the cost of adding this protection to future artists you might care about will be so insignificant that it won't be an issue whether they do it or not.
So get a damned clue people. This shit needs to be acted on now, either through letters to the labels involved or through active cracking of the protection schemes. The audio passthrough cables don't count here, as we need something that is so painfully easy to use (recording one long-ass wav file then editing each song out is normally fine for most studio works but try doing that on a live album with no breaks. I've done it and it sucks) that it's almost seamless in its operation.
Don't get complacent about this shit, because by the time they copy protect YOUR favorite artist it might be too late to stop them.
I would like to request that people stop using the phrase "copy protection" and instead use the term "copy prevention"
This has a number of advantages:
- copy protection implies that copying is bad (which it is not)
- copy prevention implies that the music industry is preventing me from making a legitimate copy. (which it is)
- copy prevention (somewhat) signifies that it is futile to prevent people to make copies. They can try and they might stop 90% of the people but it just takes 1 person to get this on MP3 and upload it to the net for the cat to be out of the bag.
Easy, once the CD sells the guaranteed millions, the cd-protection will become standard, meaning everyone else will release these CDs.
If this CD doesn't sell beacuse of the copy-protection, it will make the world a safer place.
With the RIAA's latest move it has become much less clear exactly what we are purchasing from them.
If you're paying for the license to listen to the music, then you should be allowed to copy the CD, transfer to another medium, etc. As long you don't violate the license.
However, if you're paying for the media (i.e. the CD), then once it's in your possession you can do whatever you want with it - including duplication.
It's fucked up antics like this that piss me off about the RIAA. Either I'm buying the music or I'm buying the media - which is it? From now on, if I buy a CD and find out its copyprotected, I am going to assume that what I've purchased is the media, not the license to listen to the music, and should I figure out how to rip MP3s from it then I'll freely trade them with whomever I can.
By that argument, Frank Sinatra was no good, because he didn't write his material.
Actually, I bet a good many 14 year old (and younger) girls do play audio CDs in their PCs all the time. I know when I was a 14 year old boy (and frankly, listening to music every bit as insipid as n'suck) I used a computer to play CDs. I was ahead of the curve for having one with a CD-ROM at the time, amongst my generation, or in fact for owning my own computer at all, but still. Those children are not stupid, and it will not escape their notice that the CD will fit in there. Since windows will autoplay the audio CD (dunno about LackOS these days) I imagine this is a lesson which will be rapidly and positively enforced.
Also, a significant number of pop music CDs have come with an interactive portion, usually some silly director movie which will play audio tracks, sometimes with some additional audio or concert footage, etc. Hence further reasons to put an audio CD into their computer.
Teenage girls are unlikely to boycott n'sync even when they put the CD in their computer and can't play it. I suspect their response will be "This is dumb! It won't work!" or similar, and then they'll go looking for some other device to put it in, and forget all about it until the next time they try it. They are certainly intelligent enough to remember any symbol associated with it and avoid it if there's a choice of recordings, though.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"Sure the geeks will still be able to obtain it, from ripping themselves or through obscure P2P clients, but the vast majority of people won't be able to get their hands on the MP3s, and that's all that really matters for the RIAA. The DMCA will take care of the misfits."
All it takes is a couple of geeks to make mp3s from the CDs, release it on IRC, and then it's available to everyone.
Witness how easily Marilyn Manson's last album was spread everywhere a month before release, or more recently Tool's Lateralus a week before release. And these were CDs not even released yet!
They can stop 99%, but all it takes is 1% to make it available for the other 99%.
I'm not sure I understand where the fuss about copy protecting audio cds.
you can still play them in your $90 portable CD and record them through your fancy sound card at high enough bit rate that you can't tell them from CDs unless you're an audiophile which most of us luckily are not.
so I ask you. What is the big deal?
Dayna.
But then, you go into the shop the day after, and tell them that the replacement won't play on your PC. And ask for another replacement. Repeat as necessary.
Works best in a big store, where you can hit different memebers of staff over a few days, until the returns stack up and they return a delivery as a "bad batch". Unless they call the record company, who explain it isn't meant to play on a PC. Then all you can hope is that vocal complaints about this not being pointed out more clearly will get you your money back.
Fwiw, I seem to remember this being raked over in another CD protection discussion.
-- in March '00, a 40/60 cash/stock split for my compensation seemed like a great idea ...
-- now where did I put that
If it's true as reported that the disks will not copy on home CD recorders, then the consumer is being cheated of a right he has bought AND PAID FOR.
The whole CD recorder/"Music CD-R"/SCCS system promises that, in exchange for a PER-COPY FEE built into the price of the "Music CD-R," I have the right to make single-generation digital copies of CD's.
Now the music industry is saying that even after I pay that fee, I can't make the copy. They aren't even willing to live up to their own one-sided bargain.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
If I were the RIAA, I would release a special "difficult customer" edition that's totally unprotected, for people who return a protected one, and look geeky. Then a bunch of geeks get stuck with NSync CDs.