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More Copy Protected CDs?
Mahonrimoriancumer writes "There are a lot of CDs that have been released recently which can't be played on the computer or *laugh* ripped. Apparently only a few markets have the 'copy protected' CDs while the rest don't. Here is a list of some that are 'protected.' Does anyone know of other CDs with this problem?" I own at least one CD on that list and it ripped just fine, so perhaps that are different versions of the CDs on the market
hes got the n'sync cd.
The 'anti-rip' technologies all work by exploiting bugs in the CDROM drivers that cause the ripping software to break. If the CDROM drivers start to break on large numbers of CDs then the manufacturers will be forced to fix them.
I suspect that Amazon and the like will find these CDs unecconomic to sell as the number of returns is going to be high. The CDROM driver bugs are not going to be unique to CDROMs. Expect Amazon to start pro-actively warning customers that certain CDs have a very high rate of return.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
The System of a Down cd ripped fine for me, although I have Jimmy Eat World: Bleed American and I can't rip it. Musicmatch Jukebox gives an error of "buffer too large, switch to analog mode" when using DAE and in analog mode it just crashes.
"A good conspiracy is an unprovable one." -Conspiracy Theory
I remember reading somewhere that there was a copy protected cd released, that you could play on your computer, it had propeitary software and 128 kbps mp3s.
I got a CD the other day with the only truly unbreakable copy protection I've seen. They did it by leaving out the metal layer and, apparrently, the pits which seem so easily copyable. The result is a disc which is almost completely transparent.
Sadly, the disc is unplayable on any of my equipment. Perhaps the publisher anticipated that kind of problem, and that's why they didn't label it, and included it for free on the top of a spindle of CD-R's I bought.
Hopefully, someday all copy-protected CD's will be distributed that way.
What sort of anti-backup protection exists for CD-ROMs? Are corrupted sectors used, as was the case with magentic media?
Helevius
sooner o^&%$r later )(^the p@#$%rogrammer@$#%s of the w#$%#$orld wi@$#%ll find@#$% a wa%^&@#y past (*&^:the ju"%@#$nk data~!$ in tho>umans %*^%will fin":?+d our w#@%!%^ay throug_){"h this (fi%$#rst?) po#$st
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
In a brilliant new move by a consortium backed by Sony and Microsoft, companies are now beginning to use copy protection that prevents the playing of the CDs in any device whatsoever.
The companies are convinced that this move will keep sales up while thwarting evil hackers.
The funniest thing is, that most cds are being ripped months before offical release... probably from a source that does not have such protection. And I bet all those albums on protected list are already ripped and availbile on internet.
As far as i'm concerned... such protection just lowers overall quality of CD.
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
.
Good thing my musical tastes are almost entirely classical--I hardly saw any on that list. Brahms forever! :)
The coolest voice ever.
I can't get Bush's new cd "Golden State" to play in Winamp. It only works when i press play on my cd-rom drive. Hum, wierd.
Is there a running list of 'protected' CDs someplace? Someone should just get protectedcds.com, keep a text list, and throw a banner ad at the top. Then /. could make a slashbox for it, thus eliminating the need for these flame-bait stories.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
They can rip these CDs. They don't use the CD drive's analog playback function. Their drivers were designed to play CDs digitally all the way drom disc to speaker, and are not vulnerable to this copy protection thru intentional corruption scheme.
Now I wonder how long it'll be until someone sues Apple for making too good a CD player. Or forces them to downgrade their drivers.
I think this makes a good point! Lately, companies have been preventing users from doing things by preventing fair use: DVDs, E-Books and CDs. This is the future, face it.
The music industry needs to take a look at its model of doing business. The current model is fundamentally flawed.
I've seen mp3s of some of these "copy protected" songs floating around Kazaa.
So apparantly it's not stopping anyone.
-J5K
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
You like Micro$oft's activation as well don't you?
Many of the CDs on that list can be copied with CloneCD with most of the newer burners. Only some burners, however, can clone a SafeDisc2 CD.
I own at least one CD on that list and it ripped just fine...
Yeah, N'Sync: Celebrity (USA, BMG/RCA) right?
I have that one too! I ripped it fine, and played it at my friends brithday party! Great stuff! Gotta love track 7!
-N'Sync Fan Boy
Presumably the digital out on my CD player is unaffected? If I have a digital in on my PC, could I rip all CDs then?
How come nobody makes a big deal about the copy protection almost every big computer game?
[This is directly copied from: http://cdprot.cjb.net/ ... I'm copying it here so it doesn't get /.'ed]
;-) A friend tried copying this CD with a custom audio CD copier (Philips CDR 765) which actually worked. But if you haven't patched yours to be able to write low-cost non-copyrighted CD-R's with it this is quite expensive. This copy will be able to be grabbed on a normal way.
:-)
:-) Then I removed the stickers and pushed the CD back in. The last part I had to push a bit harder to make sure the CD would be totally inserted and fit on the spindle again.
;-)
:-) If the first track will play but not grab skip the first 0.01 seconds or the first block. I use Easy CD-DA Extractor which offers this option (at the bottom of the extract window).
Let me start off by saying that I don't even know for sure if the protection I am talking about is indeed MediaCloQ(TM)....... The symptoms look like it, but I read that MediaCloQ(TM) protected CD's would transfer you to the MediaCloQ(TM) website automatically (as soon as you insert the CD into a CD-ROM drive) where you can download music files.
I recently wanted to make a personal backup of my own CD called "The Loveparade Compilation 2001". CD2 copied fine, but CD1 could not be read by any CD-ROM player or CD burner. It would however play in any normal audio CD player. Now as a decent reverser you must understand my frustration
So, next evenings I spend trying to understand what was going on here. I found out that after insertion the laser first goes to the center of the CD (the TOC or Table Of Contents where the index of the CD is stored). After this the laser went to somewhere on the outer side of the disc and started to try to read there. This is where the reader would never stop doing this and some players will hang forever in this phase.....
So what idea could be easier than to prevent the reader from reading this outer part? I made 3 paper stickers of about 25 x 20 mm and placed them on the outer side of the CD. Now the reader would read the inner TOC, then go to the outside again and after not being able to read anything there because of the stickers, the reader would be 'smart' enough to decide to stick with the inner TOC, go back to the center and read this TOC as the one and only TOC
I am certainly not an expert on CD readers but I think this is what is going on here. If anyone has better ideas, let me know. This protected CD has a so called Multi Session TOC. This is the same when you burn a CD-R and set it to MODE2 / Multi Session when you burn an empty CD-R for the first time. After this a MODE2 CD-R can have multi sessions appended afterwards. For every new session a new TOC is written (with the old data about the files already on the CD-R included). My theory is that this protected CD has also a MODE2 / Multi Session TOC which makes a CD-ROM player and burner decide to search for the latest TOC from the outside to the inner side. With the placed stickers it will not be able to and most CD-ROM players will decide to stick with the center TOC.
So now the CD-ROM player will read the CD but unfortunately it will not be able to read the last tracks because my stickers are placed there. So now a second trick is needed. I used a paperclip to push into the little hole on the front of my CD-ROM player to open the door manually. The reader has no idea at all I was doing this so it came out spinning
Guess what? I could now play and grab all tracks as I would do with any non-protected CD! I must say that on one CD-ROM player (TEAC) I had to skip the first block (or 0.01 seconds) in Easy CD-DA Extractor for the first track only (still have no clue why). My Plextor 16/10/40A burner and another CD-ROM player had no problem with this first track.
I did try to move the stickers to the outside of the CD until my audio CD player would just be able to play the last track until the last second but the CD-ROM player would not read it anymore. In fact, I would have to move the stickers a whole lot more to the center of the CD before it would be able to read it again. It might be possible that there is no TOC at all on the outside; the inner TOC just points to some music track which will of course not be understood by the CD-ROM player as a valid MODE2 TOC...... The reason why this CD does not automatically transfer you to the MediaCloQ(TM) website like a MediaCloQ(TM) protected CD would do could be that the protection I discuss here isn't MediaCloQ(TM) at all. But it could also be due to the fact that this CD was almost full and that there was simply no space left for a real TOC and a valid data section where an autorun.inf file could be stored which transfers you to their website.
Now to summarize this little trick:
Place 3 (or maybe more on better CD-ROM players / burners) non-transparent stickers of about 25 x 20 mm on the outside of your CD along the edge. Make sure that they wont stick outside of the CD and press them well, otherwise your CD-ROM player will start making funny noises
Insert the CD into your CD-ROM player and see if the CD-ROM player accepts it (you can see the tracks in your Explorer). If not you can try to move the stickers a bit to the center or place more stickers. Note that my laptop CD-ROM player and one burner I've seen would not be able to read it at all so no guarantees are given here......
Now we have to wait until we are sure that the CD is not spinning anymore. After the CD-ROM player accepted the CD it can still be spinning for a few minutes (my TEAC stopped after more than 3 minutes). I guess to be sure, wait about 5 minutes. If you are impatient here you risk to eject it while it is still spinning and this could damage your CD and who knows the laser of your CD-ROM player, so be warned!
Now using a fine screw driver or a paper clip push into the little hole in the door of your CD-ROM player. The trays of some CD-ROM players can be opened totally without the CD-ROM player noticing but I saw one that would re-read the CD after closing the tray again so I would have to open it until halfway, until I was just able to get the CD out. Push your paper clip into the hole until the tray opens. Then pull it out manually (be careful and do it slowly!).
Now remove the CD, remove the stickers and place it back.
Now push the tray to close it again. Do it carefully. At the end you have to push a little faster to make sure the CD will be inserted entirely. If not, take it out again and try again.
Now you can play it and grab it like you would normally do
Enjoy and be happy !
That page offers a list of things you can do, like not supporting the labels or buying and returning the CDs, etc. If you're the amoral type, here's something else you can do with a "factory-damaged" CD:
Rip the CD, analog style or with a Mac or whatever, and put some or all of the tracks on your web site. Blatantly label them and submit the page to search engines. Put a note there saying something like "these tracks came from a copy-prevention enabled CD, so if you see any MP3's here, you're imagining things!"
Then when the lawyerbots come by, take it down, and reply to them apologizing profusely and saying how important you think copyright is and all that jazz. I think if the labels see all these tracks traded on the internet exactly the same as all the other CDs, they'll start knocking on the door of the CD-protection company asking, what the hell did we just pay you 50million$ for??
Of course, I prefer just avoiding the labels and their music completely. Here's my rule of thumb: if you think you could send an email to both the head of the label and the artist, and get a personal reply within a few days, that CD is probably not going to be crippled. In fact after getting the CD be sure to email both with your compliments. And some of the bigger indie labels have also taken a anti-anti-copying stand too, like Projekt.
So I am starting to wonder. If it hasn't begun to occur already, what has to be done to bring a class action suit to the offending record companies? There are three things I see as a defense on our side.
1. It seems to me that someone would be able to find equipment that the CDs actually sound worse in.
2. Prove the lost ability to make a backup copy.
3. Show how you are suddenly limited to where you can play the $20 cd at.
Without a warning, I just can't believe its possible for them to do this. However, at the same time, I'm uncertain what law says "this cd must play in all cd players." I understand it isn't our right to play the cd anywhere, but at the same time, it is also our consumer right to know what we are buying can and can not do.
I own at least one CD on that list and it ripped just fine, so perhaps that are different versions of the CDs on the market
Hmmm, what OS did you copy the CD under? In the link they mention that "Copy Protection" doesn't affect Macs and Linux.
Quote from the aricle:
2. Don't buy the music. Remember, while we may be able to vote in elections every 2-4 years, we vote daily with our money. If they don't have your money, the labels will (probably) be smart enough to stop pulling this kind of stunt.
This is the way to go. This is "speaking the right language". Don't whine about this - do something about it.
Don't buy Sony electronics for example; it's wrong to think "what difference can I make" - you really make the difference.
I ask because I don't see the new Garbage on the list and this CD is distributed by Universal even though the label it's produced under is something different. I walked into the store last week with the intention to buy it until I saw "Universal" on the back, which lost them a sale. I'd still like to buy it if the CD isn't actually corrupted, so does anybody out there have this CD? Does it have the intentional corruption on it?
-----
Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
My copy of Slomotion doesn't have any protection on either CD, but the Watchmen are Canadian, so maybe they're just doing it to you American jerks :P
I have not purchased a cd (unless it was blank) in the last 3 years. Record companies are no longer need to *tell* us what is *good* and take a fee for this *service*.
If you really want to support the music you love, then goto that concert. Concerts are where most of the money is made (% wise anyway) for muscians.
This copy protection is bullshit.
Read the above posts: copy prevention lowers the quality of the CDs. They become more difficult to play, even if no copying is intended. They may be (and often are) unusable even in CD players without CD-copying capability.
I seem to be getting less and less tolerant to commercials too. The radio in my car is tuned to NPR, which is commercial free 50 weeks out of the year. Even if it is the all Afghanistan all the time network these days. I'm about 99% RIAA free these days, I think. They'll probably get that declared an act of treason soon... feh... bastards.
Speaking of which, how much did they give your guys this year? We should get a petition going for a constitutional ammendment forbiding any incorporated entity from giving money to any politician.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Unfortuneately that makes it impossible for me to "legally" listen to their new CD and being a fan I'll have to download it from somewhere.
I'd even be perfectly happy to buy a "copy protected" CD and just through hoops to convert it to MP3, but sadly that's a federal offense because of the DMCA.
I don't understand why the music industry is so hostil towards their good customers...
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
yea, but if a company makes it hard or near imposssible to copy it, there's nothing illegal or wrong with that.
They are selling the items as "Compact Discs." My computers, JVC MP3/CD car stereo, and Riovolt portable MP3/CD player all play Compact Discs. So if I buy a disc and it does not play in them, it is not a Compact Disc. The companies producing the disc in question will have wasted my time -- with is worth far more than the $19 price of the CD.
There is a standard for audio CDs and it is well documented. If these companies are going to sell something that does not meet the standard, then they should not be advertising them as being "Compact Discs."
Is go out to kazaa and to Morpheous and download all the music we want, then write a check and mail it directly to the artist themselves! This RIAA and DCMA stuff is getting so out of line it's not funny! How can a industry get away with isolating millions and millions of their customers??? I say go out and buy everything from 2nd hand music stores! Isn't it our legal rights to use a CD as we want? I can make copies for my use, I should be allowed to play this music on any CD player I have? So how about a class action lawsuit for depriving us of our rights??
is this "protection" going to become mainstream? I don't even own a CD player, but I use my computer all the time. Truthfully, I could care less about the stuff on that list since I mainly listen to metal (the more obscure stuff). But if this becomes standard practice I think they'll probably lose my business entirely. Get a CD player? I don't think so. If they adopt this scheme, how long will it be before they say "oh, looks like they figured out how to bypass the last scheme, so lets make a new one that isn't playable on the newer CD players". Like I want to be stuck on a perpetual hardware upgrade cycle just to play a freaking CD. If most of the smaller labels don't adopt this, I actually think it will help. These big corporations will only shoot themselves in the foot since people will HAVE to get the ripped version to listen to it on their computer.
... of the Software Publisher's Association meeting room. How many times do you think some marketing guy has asked why they can't do the same thing for CD-ROM's?
If it's happened less than 3 dozen times, I'm utterly shocked.
I picked up beautifulGarbage and my roommate managed to rip it to MP3's just fine.
Sadly, the album itself wasn't nearly as good as Garbage's first two, which left me fairly disappointed.
...if i can listen to it, i can copy it.
EOF
Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
I wouldn't download a rip of those CD's anyway. Let alone buy them.
I don't think the list is very trust-worthy. DCTalk's Supernatural has been out for 3 years, and I have copies, both legally bought and ripped. Maybe they added protection on a recent production run, but that seems unlikely because any "piracy" damage is already done. Not to mention DCTalk is a Christian band; they want their message spread as wide as possible, even if it means losing some money.
I think some people are just reporting any disc they have trouble with, without investigating things like bad hardware or scratched discs. Just spreading paranoia.
I got the Live - V, System of a Down, Aerosmith, and the Tori Amos cd to rip without problems.
Wow... I must be a 1337 h4x0r.
--Chemguru
I have a feeling this will backfire in one of two ways: 1) they will drop the copy prevention after a public outcry, or 2) there will be new drivers or tools published that make it possible to rip/play these CDs, and they become common enough to make the copy prevention irrelevant. This will mean that the only people truly affected will be innocent people with limited technical expertise (mom goes and buys a PC, puts her new CD in the tray, and it doesn't play; mom gets mad and calls you). This will only further giving a black eye to the RIAA.
A third possibility is the nightmare of DeCSS -- that someone publishes a method to defeat this copy prevention, gets sued, goes to court, etc. But as we've seen with DeCSS, it's pretty hard to stop it once it's out.
Robotiq.com is heavily tested on animals
2Pac-Until_The_End_Of_Time-2CD-2001-RNS
Aerosmith-Just_Push_Play-2001-KSi
Tori_Amos-Strange_Little_Girls-2001-EGO
Dc_Talk-Supernatural-RNS
Nsync-Celebrity(Real_CD_Retail)-2001-RNS
System_Of_A_Down-Toxicity-Retail-2001-STA
The_Watchmen-Slomotion-2001-EGO
I don't care, because I'm a reckless youth, but does it bother anyone that we are so blatently stealing?
The changes made to the disc help "protect" it from unauthorized copies, much like encasing your stereo in cement protects it from being stolen.
Here in Europe I've gotten a copy of Heather Nova's "South" which is copy protected and has the warning on the back. However in a Plextor 16/10/40A I can more often than not play the CD in the computer and with a simple program I wrote using the ReadCD command.
There are data sessions after the audio so most Windows98 programs and such believe that it's a data cd and won't let you rip it, however if you just write some simple read cd commands to this particular drive it is in fact rippable. However, at least with firmware 1.03 sometimes in windows you could insert this audiocd and attempt to play it in CD Player about 2 out of 3 tries. When it didn't work to play any further audio cds a reboot was required.
The catch: It takes quite some time as the drive error corrects the "bad" sectors so it can take you maybe 5 minutes to rip a single track. At least this was the case with this particular cd.
I have a copy of Strange Little Girls here (although not the American one) and it's not protected.
Corporations are supposed to do whatever they can to make money, and their current strategy seems to be working pretty well.
I question follows me everytime I hear anything about copy protected CDs.:
Does the owner of this technology (AFAIK Philips owns the patent) have any kind of official opinion about this? Is it allowed to modify the technology and keep using the compatible logo?
Can anybody help me with this question? (thanks in advance)
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
I have heard that Aphex Twin's "drukqs" is copy-protected or whatever, but I'm not paying $20 to find out. So what if it's 2 CDs.
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Except, the requirement to use the little CD icon is paying money, not meeting the standard. They never claim to meet the standard anywhere.
... aren't complaining about this.
A lot of the big retailers for music - Best Buy and the Wiz come to mind - are also electronics retailers. Besides selling conventional CD players that may not be able to handle the "protected" CD's, they sell PC's with CDR's, CDRW upgrade drives and digital music players. In fact, with conventional CD players having become a commodity, digital music is probably an important source of profits for retailers and manufacturers. If enough of these "protected" CD's get out there, it's going to start spooking consumers; how can a retailer convince customer to buy a CDRW drive or a dashboard CD player that will read CDR's if half of that customer's music collection won't work on one of those. No customer wants to get "betamaxed" again. Instead of being able to profit by selling both the software (the music) and the hardware (playback devices), retailers are going to find out that spooked customers aren't buying either.
Worse still, a lot of digital music hardware may become the target for false advertising lawsuits. While retailers may not lobby the record companies on behalf of consumers, I'll bet you they will on behalf of their own profits.
I have thought about this and believe that this would allow for both sides to get want they want. No distribution of music while allowing the consumer to play anywhere and back up as much as they wish.
;)
The recording companies will sell high capacity memory cards @ the cost of manufacturing them. Each card has a random identification number embedded in it which will also be 'salt' for the encryption.
Any location re/selling music will be equipped with a digital recorder. When you purchase music you take your high capacity card with you. (You don't actually purchase tangible media). You give them your memory card and they load your purchased music on it, whish is also being encrypted while being stored (using the embedded ID#). The music store then stores your ID# and the music selection to their database.
You take your memory card home to your home stereo system and upload the music from the card to the radio's internal drives. You can also upload the music to your computer, car radio (also equipped with an internal drive) etc... And in order to play the music stored on ANY of these items, all you need to do is pop in your memory card.. the id number on the memory card is used to decode the stored music and then played if it decodes correctly.
Optionally if you want to play music on a system that does not have your music in it, simple copy the music selection(s) you wish to here to you memory card before leaving your home and play it anywhere right from the memory card. If you copy the music from the card to someone elses drives... their card won't decode your music because the ID that is read from their card is different from the the code used to encrypt the your music.
In the event of a total loss of music, you can go back to the store where you purchased the music from and tell them you need the selections again.. and give them your card.. (Remember earlier I mentioned they stored your ID number and music selection) and then they could give you back ALL of your music at not cost to you - Providing the card you give them has the same ID number that they have in their system.
I am not saying this is fool proof, as nothing is! But I believe this would satisfy everyone and put music distribution back to what it was in the days of cassettes.
This concept could also be used for dvd and game purchases also.
Any thoughts?
Oh and btw.. IF this would be used.. I hereby announce this MY idea on this day 11/11/2001
Hey! - You never know!
Never try to beat a professional at his own game!
its the N'sync cd that you own, now isnt it? :)
dont worry I estimate within ohh 5 minutes thousands of people have already found a way around this.. if there is a way to protect it there must be a way to reverse engineer it.
Daddy would you like some sausage?
I could read CD 1 on my computer, although the whole CD appears as one 51 minute track. CD 2 it can't read at all. cdparanoia says "Unable to open disc". My portable CD player and even my very cheap stereo sometimes have trouble reading the discs, though stopping and restarting them fixes the problem.
I would never have thought that Aphex Twin would do such a thing, even though he says the only reason he releases his music is to make money (he only releases what he thinks his fans expect from him and he keeps the really innovative stuff for himself, because he doesn't want to be copied by everybody.
It's pretty clear to me why records companies are distributing both clean and copy protected versions of the same CD. They are collecting statistics on consumer acceptance for the copy protection scheme. They release two versions and then look at the return rates for the two versions to figure out how many people have CD players that reject the copy protection scheme.
jeff
Why is this article titled "Your Rights Online"?
It's got nothing to do with online, and everything to do with copy prevention that disallows one from playing one's music on the equipment of one's own choosing.
It's not necessarily online. In fact, it's better if it isn't. RIAA's really pissed about the MP3 trading. It's not nearly so pissed about the Rio and other personal music players.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
That site lists System of a Down: Toxicity as encrypted. I have that CD and I ripped it to both my home and work PCs and both sound fine.
The site comments pretty much show one guy complaining that he can't copy it to a CD, another guy complaining of weird noises and probably 10 people saying "nope, mine works fine."
I rip my CDs to encrypted windows media to avoid any trouble from some idiot trying to pin me for pirating music. The IT folks have burned people in the past for running Napster servers with 10GB+ of MP3s (all pirated), so the workaround was to let employees have music files as long as they rip them from their own CDs and they use encrypted windows media. So far all my CDs have worked fine.
A bit OT on that site:
As it is right now the site is not very usable. Also look at the "banned books" list that does not explain who banned them and why.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
from the register :
m l
"Aussie pop star (and former Neighbours actress) Natalie Imbruglia has won the race to produce the first copyright-protected CD on general release to the UK public.
White Lillies Island, which includes current anti-melody hit single That Day, features Cactus Data Shield protection. This is designed to prevent MP3-ripping by corrupting the table of contents so it won't play on a PC, NTK.net reports today.
Needless to say, it's been ripped and copies are already up on file-swap sites (in fact they were there before the album was officially launched)."
I have to say if i'd paided to have my album "copy protected" like this i would be calling a lawyer right now...
NTK.net:
http://www.ntk.net/
The register:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/22759.ht
Except, the requirement to use the little CD icon is paying money, not meeting the standard. They never claim to meet the standard anywhere.
If you sell something as a Compact Disc, you are advertising that it meets the standards for a Compact Disc. Philips/Sony licenses the logo, but they do not verify conformity with specs for each item that bears that logo. It is the responsibility of the manufacturers using the logo to assure that the products that they sell meet the specification for audio Compact Discs.
Licensing issues have nothing to do with false advertisement claims. Suppose I license the USB logo and then produce a "USB mouse" that doesn't work with the USB ports on most computers. I would still be guilty of false advertisement even though I licensed the USB logo.
I own at least one CD on that list and it ripped just fine, so perhaps that are different versions of the CDs on the market
Yes correct. There are limited batches
I have Tim McGraw's Greatest Hits CD which is on the list. (The only CD I've bought in the last 2-3 years.) It ripped just fine.
--
Runnin' around, robbin' banks all whacked on the Scooby Snacks...
Oh dear, if this is the way all CDs go then I'm screwed. When setting up my home Cinema system I got a DVD player with dual lasers so that I'd get good quality CD play. This is then hooked up to a Yamaha Radio+Amp and Boss Accustimas speaker system. Then I ditched my old Hi-Fi because I no longer need it.
The only place I listen to CD's is in the Car, on my PC in the Office and on my DVD player in the lounge. So I'm going to be relegated to only listening to new music in the car! Even this might be compromised. With car crime being what it is, I don't often want to leave expensive original CD's in the car, so sometimes burn a copy for car use only. I'm within my personal copy rights to do that aren't I?
So basicly I could be really screwed over by this
i just got a copy in the mail, everytime i try to PLAY it my computer locks up. Im running windows 2000, and this is the ONLY thing that ever has locked it up to the point that i had to hard boot my computer. I thought it was just a fluke...how strange.
________________________________________________
Before laying down cash for CDs, always check in advance if anyone has managed to rip it. Perhaps the central CD databases should also start providing blacklist information on possible "protective" restrictions.
If the one you buy still happens to be "protected", return it as faulty for a refund. Unless you're intent on supporting the gr***y labels that are pushing this down our unsuspecting throats. Do they really want customers to stop impulse purchasing due to the fear of restricted goods? Or do they expect the passive masses to give the expected response - and do nothing.
We should pay for the music we really like and "use", but unless I'm clearly offered "rental terms" I expect to have the right of fair personal use.
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
I've heard a lot of folks complaining on other boards about downloading MP3s that are "bad rips" from "protected" CDs.
Now, my personal opinion is simple here. I don't believe the protection method is AT ALL fair, since it has the potential to prevent paying customers from making fair use of their media. However, I can't stand hearing people complain about "wasting time downloading useless MP3s", since that's not fair use in my book.
Some people say sharing files with others is fair use. Legally, this may actually be so, but it doesn't sound fair ethically to me (with respect to the artist and the people behind the album production). On the other hand, the ability to copy my CD for my own personal use, or to rip it to a series of MP3 files is critical to me. It's also nice to know my PC CD player won't barf on a CD (since I almost never use "standalone" audio equipment anymore, all linked into my PC).
Any thoughts on that? Anyone heard of similar complaints or "issues" with bad MP3 rips to due this?
i've just recently picked Godflesh's "Hymns" cd and while it plays fine on win98/Me/2k machines in winamp and cdplayer and windows' media player (v.7), everytime i put it in an NT machine the damn thing skips like i'm kicking the machine or something. is this an NT specific problem? at first i thought the disc was 'protected' because of this, but as soon as i got it home i ripped a copy for work (which won't play at the NT machines at work either).
FreeBSD for the impatient.
In all seriousness this should be fought and does not constitute fair use. if the record companies were not such crooks they would not face the current situation. I just dropped a few hundred bucks on an MP3 player and need mp3's. Also people have the right to listen to music on their computers. I mean it is more convenient to have playlists and track titles so we can listen to our music for hours without switching cds. The truth is that if a consumer with minimal equipment can copy a cd for less than a dollar in less than 5 minutes just shows the ridiculousness of cd prices. i understand needing to make a profit and protecting their investment. but in all seriousness do record companies think consumers are retarded. $20 for a cd that cost the record company, with all of it's overhead and costs, less than $5 is insanity. Instead of wasting money on anticopying protection, they should do the right thing and sell cd's for $7-$12. Most people who pirate would not normally buy if they cost $20 the cds anyway so what is the point, no sales have been lost. With lower prices and added value cds would sell better while keeping the customer happy. What the labels are doing now alienates consumers and really makes life difficult for the technically astute.
Just because a couple of people used cheap CDRs and produced a couple of coffee mats they put the CD on the list... The DC Talk album mentioned is something like two years old - it predates the invention of this protection! (And I've played it on my computer dozens of times).
"I own at least one CD on that list and it ripped just fine"
My guess is N'Sync!
:-b
Ummm, Jon, aren't you supposed to be dead...? - Otter(3800)
(I'm an avid reader and infrequent poster, I don't even have an account)
*Most* Christian bands are in a flux about this. They do want the message out there as far as possible, but then they have to examine their own income, their purpose and mission with making the music. Is it to spread the gospel? Is it to fulfill a label contract? Is it artistic expression? They know mainstream record labels will screw them over completely, but they (i mean most) aren't totally consumed by the thought of being rich and famous. It's interesting to see who exactly will speak out and who will wait until copy prevention (if it does) becomes so prevalent that no one discusses it.
The only opinions I've heard are from Jennifer Knapp who says she's doesn't really care, but she'd like to be supported too, and from Sonicflood who had their full length 128kbps mp3s on their site for awhile until they were mysteriously removed. Most other Christian artists distribute samples from their websites in windows media, realplayer, or some other proprietary streaming format -- sidestepping the issue of what rights listeners have to copy music.
If you don't know, the paper version of the canary trap is the idea of altering the punctuation, but not the text of a document in a certain way uniquely for each copy of the document you give out, and keeping track of who gets what. Then, if a copy of your document is leaked to the media, and they show text from the document, you can find the snitch in your organisation.
Couldn't something similar be done with music? Not that it wouldn't be possible to undo, but if you don't know exactly what's been done, it's difficult to be 100% sure that you've undone the trap. Then the RIAA couldn't threaten very serious penalties. First off, you'd be certain to lose your job, but they couldn't also conceivably go after you for lost revenue for every copy of the song derived from the copy you originally made. And they'd have a method to prove that they came from your copy too. That'd be enough to bankrupt anyone.
. --- If you're looking for free e-mail you won't find it here! http://www.noemailhere.com
The best suggestion is on fatchuck's site:
Every time you go to a CD store, buy one of those broken CDs. Take it home, open it, play it, return it as defective and demand your money back. Just be sure you go to a large outlet, not an indie shop.
No lawsuit is needed, just simple economics.
-B
It is times like these that I move to good old fashion getto ripping. I have a cd player which outputs to my soundcard and then I record the tracks by hand. Whenever I come across a CD that won't play on my computer I simply do this. Then I rip unprotected copys and trade them on the street for sex.
Not a bad choice, but I think the title is really held by the first chord of ``Hard Day's Night''.
Now let's see just how far off-topic we can get here. :-)
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
When I was first introduced to the concept of MP3s, years back, the only way that I knew of ripping them was using a stereo-jack cable from the headphone-connector on my CD-ROM drive, and connecting it to the line-in on my sound card. It took a lot of work making it sound OK, but many of the MP3s I created that way had OK quality. How could 'copy protection' possibly prevent people from taking their stereo equipment, that is able to play the 'copy-protected' CD, connect it to their computer, using their stereo-jack-cable. Then they could simply record the songs they wanted, and *whoops*, you have a MP3 of the 'copy-protected' songs. When this MP3 reaches the net, it spreads extremely quickly.
My point has to be that there is no such thing as copy-protection, and it amazes me that none of the bigger labels are able to comprehend that simple fact.
Your problem is that the NT HAL (hardware abstraction layer) and drivers don't like the cdrom drive. In windows 9x, the ripper/player can directly access the hardware, and in linux, there are syscalls to do basically the same thing.
A friend of mine has just bought a copy of this cd in the UK, and when he tried to make a copy of it onto minidisc so he could take it into work, the copy failed. He couldn't make it work in his laptop either, except for using the low quality digital versions in the data section on the disc
So, he brought it round for me to prod and poke it. Turned out that in my drive, it ripped fine. I've written it back out to cd, and now he can make minidiscs, and listen to it in his computer.
All seems a little pointless to me, but aparently its progress.... thank god for the RIAA and similar bodies, where else would we be otherwise? ;)
This post will enter the public domain 70 years after my death, unless Disney buys another extension.
So my answer would have to be: Yes, it can be copied.
You're using her as bait, Master!
The article uses the phrase CD corruption. I'd rather see THAT come into common use than "copy prevention". It's more meaningful to consumers who might not realize that "copy prevention" is bad or what it might mean to them. Do you think they're going to knowingly buy a "corrupted" CD? No way. When the answer as to why it won't play on their equipment is "the CD is corrupted", they're not going to stand for it. No one cares WHY it's corrupted. If the term "corrupted tape" had come into common usage during the height of the VHS Macrovision fiasco, it's quite possible that your DVD player today might send a proper signal to your TV instead of a corrupted Macrovision signal. Then you'd see the same clear, steady picture I do with my hacked Apex 600A ;)
Does anyone know of other CDs with this problem?
I bought From Zero's One Nation Under CD back in July and noticed I couldn't play it in my CDROM drive (though it played fine in my "normal" CD player). I was able to rip it with CD Paranoia, though it went very slow. I just assumed the disc was warped or something, which I didn't mind so much since I was able to rip it to MP3s (which I always do with the music I buy).
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
More importantly, return the darned unrippable CD's ! I was horrified to see people on here saying "yeah, I have this CD and I can't rip it..."
If you can't rip it, it's defective and you should have the store replace it. If the repalcement can't be ripped there's something wrong with the production run and you should demand a refund.
If every slashdot user stopped buying CD's today, the industry would note a certain percentage downturn in sales and mark it up to the economy.
However, if every slashdot user returned every unrippable CD we get to the store/vendor, the stores would start wondering why the hell certain CDs are getting returned all the time and start complaining to the labels. Then the labels would have their sales channel angry with them and would be more likely to have to do something about it. A returned CD is an expense to the store: they have to store it until they have a batch to go back, and then return it to the label and wait for a refund or credit. If they start getting a lot of returns on one album they'll pull it from the shelves. (Hasn't that already happened once with Tower Records?) The stores will put up with much less nonsense than the labels are willing to either deal with or create.
And, of course, we could have the correctly mastered CDs which give us no problems, which really we have no gripe with in the first place.
I do, however, also recommend learning about your local musicians and independent musicians who may pass through your area. In the last year I've bought maybe a dozen CDs, just about all of which were purchased directly from independent musicians, and I must say I'm much happier with that music than with any of the commercially produced garbage they play on the radio these days.
If it can be devised, it has a demise.
The labels will eventually find out that their lovely little method has backfired on them, when one or all of the following happen: the encryption is cracked, people stop buying the music, or people start copy and selling the copies of the cds with cracked encryption.
No matter what happens though, the results will not be good for the labels-which is good fo rus as consumers usually-however on the interim, it will bite consumers in the rear, because we'll have to deal with these "corrupted" cds.
I can already see one way to copy them: go out of a device with an S/PDIF output, into the S/PDIF input on your Sound Blaster Live. The recording should (this is in theory and assuming the encryption doesn't pass through on the digital output whihc I don't see how it could) be flawless. You have a working rip then, which you can record to a CD-R and play on your computer or other similar devices.
Derek Greene
On the other hand, spotting those tracks is the reason I know they've got a new disk out. Because somebody ripped the tracks and distributed them, The Tea Party has made a new sale. :)
-Erf C.
Cthulu always calls collect...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
From the artical (my Translation:)
"Possibly soon German judges will have to deal with the question whether intentional violation of the Red Book Standard by manipulating the TOC is a criminal use of 'incorrect or incomplete data'. It will be also important wether digitally reading an Audio CD into computer memory is considered as data processing."
The German Criminal Law has in the section "fraud" a the special Paragraph 263a about "computer fraud", which I translate as follows(IANAL, but I am married to one):
263a StGB Computer fraud
(1) Who damages the assets of another person with the intention of providing himself or a third person an illegal pecuniary advantage by the fact that he affects the result of a data processing procedure by incorrect design of the program, by use of incorrect or incomplete data, by unauthorized use of data or otherwise by unauthorized interference with the process is punished with imprisonment up to five years or with fine.
This paragraph is usually used against people tampering with ATMs or a company's computer systems, but I see no reason why my personal computer should not be protected by this law, and for me it is unquestionable that all these CD copy prevention systems are feeding incomplete an incorrect data to my computer, and reading a CD into the memory of my computer is definitely a data processing procedure.
As I know the courts, proving damage is often the crucial point. I think that a clear label stating "This CD is intentionally damaged so that it does not play on most computers and some CD players." would probably save the publisher, but anything short of this IMO constitutes fraud.
In this case there was no warning sign on the CD, so when I buy such a CD I do not get what I pay for. If I bought the CD just to listen to it on my MP3 Player or use a duplicate in my car stereo (my CDs do not last very long when using them in the car), then the value of the CD is zero. And even if I get a refund, it probably takes more than an hour to manage it all, which is a significant amount that easily surmounts the value of the CD: I am tricked, my assets are damaged. This is even simple fraud under 263 StGB, and even a particularly serious case under subsection 3 (repeatedly defrauding a large number of people), which is punished with imprisonement up to ten years.
I am very curious about the outcome of this case, but I would be happy if courts would stop greedy corporations trying to screw me with intentionally damaged products.
If not, I will react like many people: I will stop to buy any music at all; I will fill up a terabyte disk with enough music for the rest of my life in one afternoon, and those record companies can fuck themself.
p.
Without order, nothing can exist. Without chaos, nothing can be created.
The RIAA and MPAA announced today that a deal has been reached with manufacturers of consumer audio and video equipment. Beginning next year, new CD and DVD players will drop the letter "L" from the Play button, which will be linked to the consumer's credit card at the time of purchase.
Edith Keeler Must Die
ok, what happens if you lose your card or it gets damaged or stolen? why do you think they want a cashless society? your record of purchase can and will follow you. but, again you have the same problem of the card being lost, stolen, damaged or pirated. solution? chip implant id`s!!!!! hell just brand`em, opps! my bad, hitler already tried that...
Given that the corrupt CDs just have a multisession TOC that points to a bad TOC at the end of the disc, we ought to be able to make a ripper for linux using the CDROMREADRAW ioctl. Basically you'd bypass the hardware TOC read, completely to rip the disc, then parse the resulting stream of raw bytes for track starts and stops, in a smarter way than the hardware would. They have to be there if a normal CD player can read it, right? Then WAV-ify the raw byte streams (tracks), send them to LAME, and into my Rio500!
Is this possible, or am I off the wall on this?
Not a bad choice, but I think the title is really held by the first chord of ``Hard Day's Night''.
A solid choice, but that first chord on Time on DSotM never fails to send chills up and down my spine. Sitting back, eyes closed with your headphones, the subtle ticking of the clock, followed by the cacophonous ringing of the alarm bells -- fading into that huge, perfect, dramatic chord. I should also mention that that intro has the best dramatic drumming in R&R history.
I'm not sure how Pink Floyd compressed a philosophical study of life, death and the nature of time into one guitar chord, but they did it. :)
Can you tell I'm a fan of that album? :)
It's amazing to me how good that album is, from the guitar work to the drumming to the tape effects to the amazing Roger Waters lyrics.
"Then one day you find, ten years have got behind you, no one told you when to run -- you missed the starting gun."
"Far away, across the field, the tolling of the iron bell, calls the faithful to their knees, to hear the softly spoken magic spells"
"So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking, racing around to come up behind you again." (has there ever been a better mental image of futility?)
"The paper holds their folded faces to the floor, and every day the paper boy brings more."
The thing about DSotM is not that the philosophy is hugely deep or original, but it's the poetic representation that is so awesome. Everything just comes together so well.
Well, all except the song "Money". Maybe it's just been overplayed, but it never seem to fit all that well. :)
Sorry to go on and on, but I've been listening to Pink Floyd a lot lately. Heh.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
It is a gray area, however as factors like "affecting the market" come into play. Ripping a CD for distribution as MP3s 'affects the market' but ripping a CD to put it in your car probably wouldnt.
-
[Aphex Twin] only releases what he thinks his fans expect from him and he keeps the really innovative stuff for himself, because he doesn't want to be copied by everybody.
Well the solution is obvious. Aphex Twin needs to patent his innovations. Why, I bet the USPTO would be happy to open up a new market of intellectual property customers. Just think how much money you could make if you've got a patent on Salsa, or Grunge.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Gotta agree on AHDN. Leave all the philosophy and all that behind (other post re: DSOTM). That first AHDN chord is just so FULL of anticipation/life/energy/whatever!
creation science book
Fair use is the boundary that a copyright holder may not cross when spelling out the restrictions on how copies of his work may be used. Regardless of whether or not he explicitly grants you the right to make copies for personal use, you have that right. Fair use assures it. Or rather, fair use is supposed to assure it.
Edith Keeler Must Die
alternative Digital Rights Management Scheme that
allows legitamate fair use ( which does not include peer to peer file sharing of tunes you
have not already purchased, but does include making compilation cd's of tunes you have)
then you are just wasting valuable time.
I think it should be called !Kafka.
I have some of these cds, all have ripped fine in OS 10.1 with iTunes. And they have also ripped fine in OS 9.2 with iTunes. I don't know if they are considering the multi-media on the cd's copy protection, because if they are thats quite riduclus.
Would it useful to try to organize a one-day protest/boycott of the major stores selling this stuff? Or perhaps of one label?
If enough people could purposefully NOT buy any Sony music for one day in even just one geographic region (midwest, for example) would that not send enough of a message? I worked in a medium-sized music store in a mall years ago - we'd take $5000 on busy days (xmas season, etc). That was just one location - there would easily be 100 or so medium to large music shops in just SE michigan (where I'm located). If you took away $500/store x 100 stores just in Detroit area, that's $50k in 'lost' sales. Would that impact be big enough to get a point across?
Just wonderin'...
creation science book
The greatest single guitar note/chord in rock and roll history? It's the first one Hendrix plays after the second verse of "Machine Gun". Utterly awesome. The rest of the solo is, too.
Second place goes to Jefferson Airplane, "The Ballad of You and Me and Poohneil".
Several posters pointed out that the Mac/iTunes will rip these CD's just fine.
The Mac is now a circumvention device under the DMCA...uh oh!
Oh, wait a minute, maybe that is why the iTunes installer wiped out MP3 collections, so it would not run afowl of the DMCA...
I get it...
If it is not on fire, it is a software problem.
Oddly enough, Dark Side of the Moon is one of their LPs that I like the least. (Go figure, eh?) As far as Floyd chords, I'll take the first one from Fearless over Time. Takes all kinds I guess.
``...except the song "Money". Maybe it's just been overplayed...''
Yah, you got that right. Maybe that's why I don't like the rest of the LP as much. Damned radio stations...
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I'm Soooooo glad that i like old music so i don't have to worry about the latest release being copy protected. hell, the latest release was something like 20 years ago. then again thats when at least some music was artistic and not just a money-making scheme. Its nice to see that no-talent hacks that make what passes for music today are showing their true colors. unfortunately the recording industry is still sapping billions of dollars a year from the public for providing a disservice to them. Just what we need, more restriction on what we can do with the things we have payed to own; Thanks RIAA, as your profits rise and your quality plummets, you charge us more and expect us to go along happily for the ride. Stop the world, I wanna get off.
You report, Slashdot decides
Prevueing you're poast ownly hellps iff ewe no how two spel inn teh furst plase
Oddly enough, Dark Side of the Moon is one of their LPs that I like the least. (Go figure, eh?)
What's also oddly enough is that I didn't think DSotM was all that great the first time I heard it. I was like, "Yeah, that was okay, but I'm not seeing what all the hype was about". It was one of those albums that the more I played it, the more it all started fitting together and growing on me. In fact, I think I put in on the shelf for a few years before I pulled it off again.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
making n'sync cd's that cannot reproduce is a *good* thing.
Karma only matters to me now and zen.
that doesnt stop me from using that nice shiny cd player hifi sepearte with digitial out and a nice fiber "cable" to my nice digigtal in on my nice sound card does it. If anything people that cant rip it will be less likely to buy it and more likely to download it. I personaly see cds like that as a challange ;-)
The Americas
2-Pac: Until the End of Time (USA, Universal/Interscope)
I think the fact that they are still coming out with 2-Pac CD's is ever scarier than the fact that they are coming out with Copy Protected CD's. Hey guys, HE'S DEAD. Stop putting out the albums already.
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
Or is that just a buzzword nowadays?
.. I know of a university library that has a collection of 20K+ CD's available for checkout, is why I ask ..
My question -- has anyone asked the American Library Association what they think of this, or has the ALA been keeping a low profile ever since the DMCA was passed? This would seem to step right dead center on their largest and most painful toes
73 de N5VB (ex-KD5BIV) AR SK
Hehe,
I am very disapointed that the Sony MP3 players are protected. The player locks the MP3 on your machine so you can't use it until the music is checked back in to the computer from the player.
I had bought one, 1 day later I took it back to Dixons (Uk) and demanded a refund which they gave me, one of the sales clerks said that he had many people do the same thing.
The sad thing is, I bought it because I like Sony equipment. I have a Sony stereo, a VIAO laptop, etc. They have lost me as customer for any portable stereo electronics until I am sure that this won't happen again. Even their stupid memory sticks are now having the secure music as a feature.
I just bought a Intel Pocket Concert and love it. Sounds great, easy, sexy and no hassle. Didn't look as nice as Sony's, but at least intel isn't jerking me around as a customer.
Just from talking with the retailer I bought it from, it sounds like sony's mp3 player sales are not very exciting at all.
It's great someone maintains the list of copy-protected CDs.
Personally, I consider it as an insult. I have a moderate collection of CDs (close to a 1000). I habitually play them on my computer and want to keep it this way.
In addition, I am thinking of getting the professional CD recorder/player (such as Yamaha CDR1000 or Sony CDR W66, or HBB) to use as a high-end transport, and to feed digital output into DAC. All these devices is professional equipment, never intended to deal with non-red book compliant CDs. Incidently there is lots of high-end equipment on a market also no capable to deal with non-compliant CDs.
I'm not sure how to deal with those CDs. One possible scenario is to simply let the vendor know that you are not going to buy it and the reason why. Another is to do what the article recommend. Purchase it, and then return. Which is probably better. An active resistance is always better than passive resistance.
here.
I don't know what's so different about cd-rom drives compared to CD players, I guess there's some sort of idea behind it (I'll bet they invested enough in it). I havn't encountered any of the CDs on that list, I'm particularly unlikely to purchase the album of gregorian charts. But if I decide to purchase a CD, and find that it's copy protected what am I going to do about my £250 mp3 player (or infact, IC audio player as it has sonys dubious SDMI/OpenMG thing). Actually hang on a second, I appear to see at least 5 sony music publications on that list! So, if I can't rip my CD as described in my sony branded "OpenMG Jukebox" manual will sony send me the music in a format that I *can* use on my sony NW-E3? Perhaps I should phone them up and ask them? I may get back to you on that one, shouldn't they have warned me that they would have deliberately have rendered their own software unusable?
Just by way of related information, the new Aphex Twin album 'drukqs' contains copy protection on it's European continental distribution through Zomba.
The UK and US releases are unaffected.
CD Player + Person + Memory = circumvention device...
Or:
CD Player + Person + Lending to another person = circumvention device...
My advice? Sit back and laugh; these enormous dolts of corporations are so insanely desperate to stop this free tade of music, and they can't. In any way at all. HAHAHA! :-)
Security through promiscuity is no better than security through obscurity.
Words cannot effectively express the sorrow I feel at not being able to rip my new Right Said Fred album.
CD to CD player. RCA to stero microplug. Insert to line in. Record. Duh. :-)
Is it hard? Yeah, at first. It's real hard knowing you're not going to be buying the latest CD by your favorite artist, and you won't be the first on your street to have it - but really, what is it worth? I still listen to music, I still listen to all my old CDs, and my vast collection of MP3s, which I might add, grows larger every day. I'm not buying the CD, so I'm downloading mp3s wherever I can find them. If I enjoy the music enough, I'll start looking for it at the local used CD store. If I find it, I'll buy it, if not, I'll do without. If I can't find the CD in a reasonable amount of time, I'll send a couple of dollars to the artist or delete the mp3s completely.
It's just a different way of looking at things. Speaking of, if the MPAA keeps insisting on following the "progress" of the RIAA, they'll be next on my shitlist. All I need is one more arrogant action or a decent distribution system for movies.
-------------------------------------------------
A number of people have commented on the "Drukqs" cds, so I thought I'd join the fray. My edition comes from a New York internet company, so it may be unusual. But it is definitely American made, not European. Here's the skinny: there does appear to be some form of (very weak/experimental) copy protection on disc 2. None of my many music players (winamp et al.) were able to launch disc 2 from my (audio-enabled) DVD player. They were, however, able to play any cda track individually. My no-audio cdwriter did not experience this problem. As to the general topic, copy-prevention is yet another reason to actively oppose the music industry. Though two wrongs don't make a right, this initiative makes me want to grab a parrot and put on an eye patch. Mix-cds are the greatest musical advance since the LP and I'll fight to keep pumpin' out my custom cds.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
An excellent summary of what's wrong with the current copyright scenario.
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
--
There's one thing computing teaches you, and that's that there's no point to remembering everything.
--Doug Copland
You do know you can do a custom install and not install spyware, do you?
It works in Linux because of cdparanoia; the code of which is very careful and will read a sector over and over until it gets it right, even if the ECC bits are mangled. Also, this means *BSD, Solaris, etc. are also unaffected. I don't know what the Mac software does, but it's probably a lot more robust than CD Jukebox or whatever Windows users use. So, my question is, does WinDAC work? As I recall, it has it's own code for doing CDDA reads from a variety of drives.
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
...worth far more than the $19 price of the CD.
I don't know which is worse, not being able to copy cds, a relatively new problem, and the fact that people are willing to pay 19 dollars or more for any cd. SUPPORT YOUR HOME GROWN STORES!!! There's a place down the road from campus here with just about anything you want for cheap, and if they don't have it, they'll actually offer to order it for you instead of going over to where you just looked and saying "Nope, we don't have it." If not a local store, at least go for best buy or target, where most cds are are around 13 bucks.
"I gotz mad tuba skillz."
After checking the website, I found that the largest contributor was the National Association of Broadcasters with total lobbying expenditures of $5,200,000 and $657,892 in campagin contributions. Now, as far as I know (which isn't that much since I'm not actually a US citizen) there are about 300 million people in the US. If just one person in three hundred decided to give their relevant congressman or woman just five dollars, you'd easily match if not exceed the contributions of these corporations. So instead of complaining about evil, multinational corporations with seemingly bottomless pockets, why don't you dig deep and contribute something yourself? If more people did this, chances are your congressmen and women would not so readily accept money from people like the National Assoication of Broadcasters because they wouldn't need to. True, the big corporations could easily up the contributions more, but there's one thing the big multinationals don't have that we do - numbers. And if enough people contribute to campaigns, return defective CDs (which violate the Red Book standard and hence cannot carrry the Compact Disc Digital Audio logo) and write letters to the RIAA and politicians and anyone who'll listen then something just might be done about it. Hey, it's a better option sitting on your ass and complaining about it.
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When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is no longer our friend.
I live up the road from him, shall I go around and kick his head in for not keeping it real??? ;)
If companies are so confident these new protection schemes are worth using to prevent a certain amount casual copying, perhaps they should reduce the prices. Isn't one of the reasons they're so expensive (particularly here in the UK) due to music piracy?
And if they're not willing to drop the prices, they obviously don't believe it's going to work in the long run anyway.
These cds have multiple forms of copy protection on them. Well at least the CDs I've seen. However, some of it is embedded within the music data itself. In some cases, the table of contents can't even be read on some drives that i've attempted to play it on. The drives themself, even in Linux, will continue to spin trying to read the table of contents which doesn't work. It seems to fuck with the firmware of the drive itself at least in one case as I have had to reboot after trying to play one of the CDs in Linux and Windows. The CDRW drive i was using couldn't correctly play any CD on that drive after the copy-protected one was attempted to play (in the few times that the drive could actually read the contents).
I own a burnt copy of Toxicity. I think it was a straight burn, with no mp3-wav conversions. It plays great. Though I've only tried it my car 'Discman', I doubt copy protection would get transferred to a copy (how ironic), though I don't know the details of this type works.
I believe there are requirements to stick to the spec in the licenses, but I think a more fruitful approach would be the various product labeling laws. Using the CD logo and the spelling "compact disc" probably makes one legally obligated to stick to the Red Book Standard.
An engineer who ran for Congress. http://herbrobinson.us
I have Toxicity by System of a Down and it plays fine. Oh yeah, it's the vinyl LP - suck it biotch.
I belong to the ______ generation.
in my pants! Toxicity burned just fine for me.
I don't know which is worse, not being able to copy cds, a relatively new problem, and the fact that people are willing to pay 19 dollars or more for any cd.
That's a great philosophy if you want the latest Backstreet Boys, Goo Goo Dolls, or Mariah Carey CD, but purchasing rare import CDs, doubles, etc. means that you aren't going to find them for $13.
There's a place down the road from campus here with just about anything you want for cheap, and if they don't have it, they'll actually offer to order it for you
I often buy CDs at lunch and whatever store is the closest to my work is the cheapest. As the old adage goes, time is money and if I spend an extra 15 minutes buying a CD for $6 off, I'll have lost a lot more in billable time than I could possibly save on the CD. I don't mean to sound like a snob and I remember when I used to have to save up to buy LPs that I wanted (yes, I'm probably a bit older than you). Back then, I'd drive all over town looking for the best prices. Now I pay for convenience. I go to the mall or shopping center near my work, grab lunch, drop by the CD store, and go back to work. Boy oh boy, my life sounds boring!
The new Incubus CD burned just fine, and I've been playing it on my PC since day 1 (the only place I play my CDs). I don't see what they're talking about, are only some CDs within a certain set "copy-protected"?
Anyway, Incubus' "Morning View" is highly recommended, good stuff.
- sig? who is this sig of which you speak?
I know I'm a bit out of date respondin sooooo late but if a CD will play in an audio system can't you connect the spdif to your sound card and get the data that way? I know it's slow but it lets the audio player do the TOC and Reed-Soloman stuff.
My nomination:
Opening chord on The Beatles: "She's a Woman"
Would someone be so kind as to mod me out of AC wasteland? I've left my password in my other jacket.
DrMutex
This form of protection will never stop those whom it is targeted at, namely those 'scum sucking napster users', macs are it seems immune and so are linux machines. Now i wonder how many users of music distribution software fit that category. :)
All it will take for the hordes of windows users to do the same is for one person to create a hack.
It will however stop me using my Hi-fi system in which i use a dvd player as a cd player. Though even if i did have a dedicated cd player it wouldnt even work on that because they all of the high quality ones use cd-rom technology because it is more reliable and can compensate for damaged cds better.
So in summary they have failed entierly to stop ''illegal'' users and have made it impossible for dedicated music fans to even listen to their own cds.
Why? I mean whose GREAT idea was that? Did they not see this happening?
User Info for fmaxwell: fmaxwell has posted 561 comments.
Hahaha! That's rich. Do I have to explain it? Ok, if fmaxwells' time is so valuable, what's he doing pissing it-away on Slashdot? Pressed for time? try www.gemm.com
Ok, if fmaxwells' time is so valuable, what's he doing pissing it-away on Slashdot?
I participate on Slashdot for relaxation and entertainment. Trudging all over town to buy a CD is neither relaxing nor entertaining. Any decent contract software engineer -- even those just out of school -- make enough that saving $6 on a CD is not worth 15 minutes of their time.
Do you think that Steve Case's and Bill Gates' time is worthless because they occasionally go to a movie or take a vacation? Your lack of logic makes me think that the computer industry may not be the ideal career path for you.
Your average CDROM, burner and computer however, do not meet any of these.
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However, look at it from an artists perspective as well. One can somewhat see why the law is that way... if you own something, and someone else wants to do something with it, there shouldnt be new laws to make it illegal to do something with it if its use is generic. Follow?
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WTH does the RIAA think it's going to get by stopping play on computers and ripping??
1. Companies WILL make RIAA-enabled drive models.
2. Clever people will find ways. A quick way I figured is to hook up a discman or another cd player to the Line In on your sound card, and Rec away! What, is the RIAA gonna disable headphone communication and make people stick their fingers into the headphone output and feel the tiny shocklets??
+ Sony has a portable CD-RW as you probably know. It also has Discman features besides that. So could it play them? Perhaps. If it could, that means it can copy them as well!
Hey,
It occurs to me that the best way to get copy-prevented CDs such as these eradicated is to complain to the owners of CD technology, namely Philips.
If lots of people write to Philips and complain about these low quality (ie. They don't work) CDs then Philips will be encouraged to take the appropriate actions to protect the identity of their product.
Let Philips know that this is damaging the public's opinion of CDs - that's something they should care about.
--
Andy
testing my posting abilities
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.