BMG Backs Down Over Copy-Protected CD

An anonymous submitter sends in: "As reported by The Register, on the 5th of November, BMG released the UK's first copy-protected CD (more information on Eurorights and Fat Chuck's). It uses Cactus Data Shield by Midbar Tech, which aims to prevent CD to CD or digital CD to Minidisc copying, along with converting to MP3, but may have other bad side effects." The submitter continues: "There were complaints from fans and many took their CDs back or wrote to the record company and record shops. Their hard work seems to have paid off since Virgin Megastores has responded to a complaint from one of their customers and said that BMG has set up a helpline to allow people who bought the corrupt version, to exchange it for a real one. Virgin and HMV will also be bringing in new stock of uncorrupted CDs. The message was originally posted to the Official Natalie Imbruglia Bulletin Board (free registration required) in the "White Lies" and "Lillies vs Cactus" threads, but several threads containing complaints against Cactus Data Shield have been deleted so the email has been mirrored on the Free-sklyarov-uk mailing list. This is very good news, but more work needs to be done. Hopefully with pressure from the public other retailers will follow Virgin's example. Also record companies need to be made clear that selling copy protected CDs, that infringe on the public's rights, is not acceptable. The battle isn't over until no new CDs are shipped in these formats so if you find a CD that is copy-protected then report it on Eurorights for the UK, or Fat Chucks for elsewhere, take it back to the shop, and let them, and the record company know your feelings on the issue."

Comments

hmm

[nomadic]

I think the recall probably had less to do with consumer feedback and more to do with the fact that they could have been liable for damage caused by copied CDs, especially since fair use law allows you to make copies in certain situations...

Re:hmm

[Jebediah21]

I think the recall probably had less to do with consumer feedback and more to do with the fact that they could have been liable for damage caused by copied CDs, especially since fair use law allows you to make copies in certain situations...

I doubt it. The RIAA isn't concerned about rights. They have spun the situation so well that almost everybody believes making a digital copy for any reason is theft. If a few hundred people have damaged hardware from these CD's that is the price that must be paid for trying to steal their music. The RIAA is a cartel, and cartels do not care about rights.

Re:hmm

[Tony Hoyle]

There's no fair use law in the UK, so it's probably not that.

Stores *care* about the consumer backlash, especially if the chattering classes get wind of it - uncomfortable interviews on Watchdog to follow!

Re:hmm

[SmileyBen]

Erm, that is sort of true, but not entirely. In the UK you can expect goods you buy to be of a saleable quality, and that means they have to 'work' in some sense. Often this sense has been interpreted quite broadly, since it's so vague, so you could certainly argue that the presence of an ability to make a back-up counts as correctly working. Obviously these CDs don't just limit their life in terms of being corrupt - they also limit their life because you should be able to make a back-up and use that if the first one breaks...

Re:hmm

[darkonc]

since it's so vague, so you could certainly argue that the presence of an ability to make a back-up counts as correctly working.

The presence of the ability to play the damned things is more what we're talking about here. A CD that threatens to trash your speakers if you simply try to play it on some CD players isn't just questionable -- it's broken

Re:hmm

[Billly Gates]

A lawyer would cost a hell of alot more then a new pair of speakers or even a speaker/stereo combination. The record companies know this and this is why they don't give a rats ass about consumer rights or about potential lawsuits and went along with the new format. They know they can't be sued by individuals due to costs involved. Sure they can be sued but it would cost more then a new stereo so no one with an IQ over 80 would do it. If you try to take them to court they would probably delay and prolong the trial as long as possible so you would have no choice but to throw in the towel. ALso if you are just thinking about going to a small claims court where a lawyer is not required, think again! The RIAA knows that if a judge rules agaisn't them that it could open the floodgates for real lawsuits. Basically they have the power to send lawyers to the claims court and promote your case it to a higher court of law where a lawyer would be required. After this, a defendant like yourself will run out of cash and the RIAA would win or you would have to quit. ALso the MPAA is known for moving trials in their own districts with lobbied judges. I am sure the RIAA would do something similiar. IF this is the case then you would certianly lose unless you have lots of money and don't have a job. Lawyers are very sneaky and sleezy.

Regardless anyway that you could buy several stereos several times over for the price of even a short trial, the RIAA will only fear other corporations. Other corporations who have the balls and the money to sue.

Individuals and consumers are not in the same class. This seems strange since all the laws were originally written and the courts designed to beniefit citizens and not corporations. However, in todays world the exact opposite is true.

Re:hmm

[acceleriter]

A lawyer would cost a hell of alot more then a new pair of speakers or even a speaker/stereo combination. The record companies know this and this is why they don't give a rats ass about consumer rights or about potential lawsuits and went along with the new format. They know they can't be sued by individuals due to costs involved.

Two words: class action. This is the kind of attitude that suing as a class was made to defeat.

Re:hmm

[Zeinfeld]

A lawyer would cost a hell of alot more then a new pair of speakers or even a speaker/stereo combination.

Not in the UK, there is legal aid available in civil suits. Also the RIAA has to pay the costs of both sides if it looses, so the incentive to litigate consumers into submission evaporates

All this is going to do is to force the manufacturers of CDROMs to fix the broken drivers. The 'copy protection' schemes do nothing more than exploit bugs in the sloppy error handling of the standard Windows CDROM driver.

Another idea would be to use the Reverse Dimitry Sklarof tactic. Find out who is writing the Catus Data Shield and see what they can be prosecuted for.

Re:hmm

[Pakaran2]

Also, isn't there a company that holds a trademark on the term "CD"? If you sell something as a CD that doesn't comply with the established format, then you'd likely be infringing the terms under which the trademark is licensed.

Re:hmm

[gidds]

I doubt it. The RIAA isn't concerned about rights...

The RIAA? Since when would an American organisation like that have any relevance here in the UK?

Re:hmm

[Jebediah21]

The RIAA? Since when would an American organisation like that have any relevance here in the UK?

Since most major American recordings go through the RIAA. Last I knew people in the UK still listened to American music.

Re:hmm

[ibis]

Yes, and the class action would be led by audiophiles. I'm sure they wouldn't take kindly to having a pair of QUAD ESL speakers blown out. Or a $30,000 pair of monobloc amps.

Oh, wait a minute, real audiophiles don't use CDs, they still use vinyl.

Never mind...

Re:hmm

[CMiYC]

All this is going to do is to force the manufacturers of CDROMs to fix the broken drivers. The 'copy protection' schemes do nothing more than exploit bugs in the sloppy error handling of the standard Windows CDROM driver.

I was under the impression that this scheme exploited the error correction of a CD. I wasn't aware it had anything to do with error handling. This scheme makes use of the fact that if you trash the error correction bits on your CD, a digital device won't understand it. Your audio CD player doesn't care.

Say you read 3 data chunks. 0x34 0x35 0x36. The checksum values come back telling you that 0x35 should have been read as a 0x37. Well, an audio cd player won't know who the believe. The data or the checksum. So it chucks it. Our ears (as we are told, won't hear it get filtered out.) However, our CDROMs say "fine, make it 0x37." Well you do that enough times and your digital file is no good. There are no audio filters built into a cdrom to correct for these errors. The inherient nature of a Audio CD player's error correction scheme makes it rather simple audio filter. We lose that once the track is ripped into a digital file.

All of the pops and stuff that are actually on the CD, get played back by our computer. It doesn't know that 0x35 was really 0x37. It recorded a 0x37. There isn't anything wrong with the CDROM drivers... they work the way they are suppose to.

Re:hmm

[mvdwege]

lso, isn't there a company that holds a trademark on the term "CD"?

Yep. That would be Philips. And according to an article in the German magazine C't their legal department was very interested in hearing that people were selling CDs with the CDDA logo, while not being compliant with the standard.

From what I've seen in their marketing lately, Philips is doing the right thing. They are a hardware company now, after selling their music division 3 years ago, and they just want to sell good hardware. I think Philips may very well be interested in keeping 'fair use' alive if that means shifting more CD/DVD RW players.

Mart

Re:hmm

[Sloppy]

Er, I think you missed the point. They don't need to be concerned about rights; they just need to be concerned about covering their ass against liability. If there's $10 of profit in selling each CD, but 1 in 10 CDs sold results in a $1200 damage claim, then they lose money since $100 is less than $1200. You don't have to be sensitive to rights to be able to compare numbers.

What a lot of people are missing, I suspect, is that audio CDs are a real standard, and because of that, there is a very wide variation in implementations. When you violate the standard, there's no telling what some of those implementations will do. What I'm getting at, is that if copies of these CDs could damage equipment, then it is very likely that the originals could damage equipment as well!

If you willfully corrupt a CD and then sell it, you're taking a big risk. Up to now, the risk has been that your customer won't be able to listen to the music they bought, generating bad will and returns. But this scheme ventures into the realm of physical damages. I guess BMG is having second thoughts about getting into the losing money business. Smarter than your typical dot-com, eh? ;-)

Re:hmm

[Zeinfeld]

This scheme makes use of the fact that if you trash the error correction bits on your CD, a digital device won't understand it. Your audio CD player doesn't care

Oh so I get it an audio CD player is analog but a CDROM is digital... Bzzzt.

The point is that the CDROM drivers should not just crap out when they get an error. They should report the fact that there were errors in the data and continue to read the next block.

This should be in the drivers in any case so that they can read scratched CDs. In most cases a single bit error can be handled transparently by simply substituting the average of the samples on either side.

The scope for fixing data on a digital CDROM should be much greater, the PC can do error recovery tricks no CD could ever do, like a Fourier transform on the good data and interpolating for the bad.

Re:hmm

[innocent_white_lamb]

their legal department was very interested in hearing that people were selling CDs with the CDDA logo, while not being compliant with the standard.

Now this is indeed interesting.

Why would Phillips have any "say" about someone selling a CD that (a) doesn't say that it's a standard CD, and (b) doesn't follow their standard?

Is anything that looks like a CD subject to the law of Phillips?

I don't understand this at all. If I make a shiny round thing that happens to look like a CD but is, in fact, a wind chime or a bird feeder, then is Phillips entitled to shut me down somehow? If not, then why would they be entitled to do anything to someone who's also selling something that looks like a CD but neither states that it is a "real" CD, and is, in fact, not a CD according to their definition/standard?

Re:hmm

[Trepalium]

What they have is a trademark on the compact disc logos, and license it out to companies that make CDs and hardware to read those CDs. If you made a wind chime and put the CD or CDDA logo on it, you'd be in trouble.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm, under British copyright law there is no real provision for fair use - expecially in CD's - you can't copy them (near enough) full stop.

Recording a CD you own to a tape to play in a car, for example, is copyright infringement.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the recall probably had less to do with consumer feedback and more to do with the fact that they could have been liable for damage caused by copied CDs,

Umm.... that bit doesn't make sense. If you meant damage caused by the public not being able to copy CDs, it's still hard to find a legitimate and calculable damage claim in there.

especially since fair use law allows you to make copies in certain situations...

Here's the big problem. Fair use law allows you to make the copies. It doesn't mean that you have to be ABLE to make the copies. Fair use says that "making copies in these situations is okay" (mostly not the situations in question here - are so many people concerned about backing up their CDs? Is Natalie Imbruglia educational?).
It does protect MP3ing the songs for your own private use, but it only says "you can't be sued for copyright infringement if you do this", it doesn't say "you can sue for damages if you can't do this".

It's good to see though that there is enough public anger about these crippled CDs to actually send a message. If nobody knew about it, I doubt the technically-minded alone could organise an effective enough campaign to get any action taken - we need everyone to understand how they are being screwed and what this means to them.

Unfortunately from the looks of the e-mail, I suspect the only 'action' will take the form of remembering in future to place a warning sticker on the cover of the CD.

Re:hmm

[anthony_baxter]

If there's $10 of profit in selling each CD, but 1 in 10 CDs sold results in a $1200 damage claim, then they lose money since $100 is less than $1200.

Not just that - if you get sued for a defective product, and it comes out that you knew it was defective, but used logic like this to justify not fixing it, you can get smacked pretty hard with punitive damages.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, but all the coolest bands come from the uk...
curve.. the cure... um, even bush...!

Re:hmm

[CMiYC]

Dude, slow down. You are getting all your stuff mixed up. I never said audio CD players are analog. A CDROM driver has nothing to do with reading the bits it receives. The CDROM does all that. All it does, is report the data back the driver. You are right about a single bit error. What you negelct is that by the time the CDROM driver sees the bit, it doesn't know that it was ever an error.

What you want is a driver that does an excessive amount of post processing. It has nothing to do with fixing buggy CDROM drivers. The driver doesn't have to do the FFT. It doesn't know its suppose to. It just sees bits and bytes. If you want to fix a 'protected' CD, then write a program to run your FFT.

CDROM drivers crap out when they get an error because the entire packet is corrupted, not one bit. Remember when you are ripping a CD, you are ripping the digital bits. Therefore, the drive (and its driver) treat it just like data. It does not care that the data it is reading is suppose to be audio at some point.

Re:hmm

[gidds]

Last I knew people in the UK still listened to American music.

Some do; but not necessarily a lot. Less than 2% of my (1000-odd) CD collection is from the USA (most of that soundtracks and a 5-pack of old blues tracks). Sorry to disillusion you, but there are recording artists in other countries too :)

i don't care

[crowke]

Whatever copy protection they invent, there will always be a workaround...

The movie industry has been thinking so long about an "uncrackable" movie format. They really believed it was secure because otherwise they would have never supported it. Only a few months (I guess) after the release, it was already cracked and DVD-rips are floating on the web everywhere...

If we can crack DVD, why wouldn't we be able to crack this new cd-protection?

Re:i don't care

[Gorgonzola]

It is not so much whether they actually believe uncrackable formats are possible, it is much more whether they believe if it is possible to deter Joe Sixpack from casually copying their stuff.

The professional, so-called pirates, will get around anyway, but Joe Sixpack doesn't generally buy many bootlegs. The proverbial geek in the basement and the hardcore fans do not add up to enough marketshare to count.

Most readers here forget that having a flawed protection is perfectly rational as long as it keeps the masses buying your stuff. It is the difference between a managerial and an engineering mindset, the difference between good enough and technical perfection.

Re:i don't care

[crowke]

My opinion about the piracy-stages in music & movie protection:

1. some nifty guy cracks the protection
2. it gets rumour on the net the protection has been cracked
3. the hardcore crackers start using it
4. the advanced PC user uses it
5. some company releases a software package that allows even my grandmother to avoid the protection...

I think about this because yesterday I saw an advertising for a budget sotwarebox which allows everybody to rip DVD's to DivX and burn it on CD with an easy point&click interface for less than $20... It just remembered me about the early DVD-rip days when you were almost a hero if you could rip a DVD :)
In the early days of MP3, you had to use non-UF commandline tools to rip a CD, nowadays even Windows has it's own ripping tool :)

It's only a matter of months before these "ripping4everybody" tools implement the latest protection-bypassers.

I guess these new protections only help small software companies sell the newest version of their copy-tools...

Re:i don't care

[chris_7d0h]

Exactly, and here is the big flaw in the reasoning of the music companies.

They admit that the protection will not stop "real crackers" / pirates but will prevent "casual Joe" from doing copies.

Now.. What does the music companies think casual Joe uses to make copies?
Hey, suprise, the same tools as the pirates!

This means that the protection will be useless for even casual copying.
Then what will the net result be? Well it will make everyone very pissed until "Frank Cracker" has figured out how to evade the protection, publised his findings onto the Net and X hundred of developers have made their own clones based upon these findings. These clones will be "Grandma" friendly and casual Joe will migrate to these tools.

The Music companies (still not getting it) will close the circle which has been going on since decades, by suing randomly, creating a new protection, releasing that to the public, it being cracked and the circle spin on and on.

It's amazing that IP interest groups haven't learned one bit in the last decades. Piracy has nothing to do with technology. It's a mindset that something is not right (or that it is the right thing to do?).

.. Or, the IP interest groups are the only ones sane on this planet, since 99,9% (rough estimation, I have no figures to back this claim) of the inhabitants of this planet do in fact have "pirated IP property" (Never mind that many hold these legally since laws differ from contry to country).

Re:i don't care

[-Harlequin-]

Whatever copy protection they invent, there will always be a workaround...
If we can crack DVD, why wouldn't we be able to crack this new cd-protection?

This thinking is both incorrect and dangerious IMHO. It works in their favour.

First of all, one MAJOR reason we could crack DVD was that in order to comply with US crypto export law, the encryption was pathetically weak.

Next format, we'll be up against serious armour, PGP-strength crypto built into the hardware. Thus breaking the crypto won't be an option - we'll probably have to hack to the hardware.

Law changes are in the works aiming at making it illegal in the USA to aquire ANY digital device that doesn't have copy-controls and cripples built in, and it's already illegal to tamper with the cripples. Naturally, you then won't be able to buy hardware that doesn't lock you out.

So if we keep thinking that we can just break whatever they come up with, we might just end up in a situation where you need a soldering iron and a shitload of illegal knowledge to remove the cripples, and you become criminally liable in the process, and you have to go through the work of soldering and chipping for each and every playback device to wish to liberate - no instant copies of DeCSS source here - but sheer manual labour from highly skilled individuals who risk their careers and livelyhoods with each crack.

In other words, we've got to prevent phase two of the RIAA/MPAA hijack of copyright law - if we sit back with the assumption that whatever they come up with we can crack, then we run the risk of being dreadfully wrong.

Also, IMHO, if joe average on the street can't make a personal copy, it doesn't matter if you or I or other "tech elites" can - the cartels have won and our defense of the copyright balance will increasing come to be viewed as illegal hacking (and economic terrorism if the RIAA gets their way :) by ordinary citizens.

"You're recording a movie being played on HDTV? Isn't that illegal? My digital-VCR tells me that recording is disabled for the sunday night movie on digital TV. What happens if they catch you?"

You go to jail.

Don't lie back in overconfident belief that you can thwart whatever they come up with. You might just be wrong.

Difference between CD players?

[Overcoat]

I read where the Cactus Data Shield works by corrupting the table of contents on the CD so that a PC's CD player software can't play the music, but a standalone CD player can. What's the difference between how the two types of CD players operate that makes this type of copy protection possible?

Re:Difference between CD players?

[Anonymous DWord]

Stolen from http://www.uk.eurorights.org/issues/cd/overview.sh tml:

The most recent format that's come to light is the Cactus Data Shield from Midbar. The earlier German tests also came under the name of Cactus, but it appears that Midbar's protection technology has developed since then. Like SafeAudio, this new method corrupts the audio signal on the CD. However, the method used is different. In this case blocks of audio are replaced with blocks of control data. A normal CD player ignores the control data and fabricates the sound of that block using its error recovery circuitry. Once again, the blocks must have been carefully chosen so that the sound is not disrupted significantly. Again, reliability of the CD will be affected. When the CD is copied using a computer or CD-to-CD copier, the control blocks are interpreted as audio, which means that the manufacturer can insert whatever sounds they wish into a copied recording, even sounds designed to damage speakers.

Re:Difference between CD players?

[_typo]

The error recovery algorithm in CD's is a perfectly documented standard. Implement it in software and you're off.

Kind of redundant

[Fat Casper]

Michael Jackson is already copy protected- I won't put a pedophile on my computer.

Still, it is nice to see that they've come up with a "protection" method that pisses off non-geeks. They're the ones with the numbers that'll make returning defective merchandise really hurt.

It takes balls to pretend that they're looking out for the artists. Piracy can't come close to hurting them as much as the RIAA does every day. It doesn't even occur to them that I might want to store my music somewhere usable instead of on a shelf. Bastards.

Re:Kind of redundant

[Billly Gates]

HEHE

I have a co-worker who is a big Michael Jackson and has been playing the new cd for quite awhile now. I am laughing right now because he got the cd before the album even came out. Basically This means the anti-piracy thing is useless and already circumvented! So now we all "legal" consumers are screwed for making legitimate copies while the pirates like my friend have all gotten away and are making copies to their hears content. This pisses me off more then anything. I never pirate anything yet I am the one who can't copy it or play it on my computer. ???

As I am typing this my pirate friend of mine is copying the mp3's made from his so called anti-circumvented jackson cd right now to his nomad mp3 device so he can listen on the go. Keep up the good work RIAA. Your making me consider pirating more and more everyday!

generic anti-protection arguement

[vectus]

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."
- Plato

Copyright protection will never really work out, because those who want to break it, will break it.. and those who follow the law anyways, won't bother with breaking it.

I have some pirated mp3's on my computer, but they are of bands whos cd's I would NEVER purchase. Generally, if I like even two songs off of the same CD, I go out and buy it.. and most other people out there are similar in nature. The RIAA is just shooting itself in the foot with all their crappy attempts at copyright protection.

I mean, the arguements against copyright protection have been posted here so many times, I think we all know the reasons that it will never work out.. I guess all we can really do is crack all of the crappy little attempts RIAA members make, and then laugh at them for dumb things like this.

Re:generic anti-protection arguement

[Anonymous DWord]

Yup. Why, just yesterday, I was talking to a friend about (crappy) songs of times past, and she mentioned Don't Talk Just Kiss, by Right Said Fred. Well I had no recollection of said song, and her rendition left much to be desired, so I felt a download of the original was in order.

Two minutes later, I had my mp3 in hand. You know what that was? Music Piracy!! Yup, I broke the law. I'll probably do it again sometime. I've spent over $30,000 on music in the past few years, so the record labels will get no apologies from me. If I want to download a song I don't remember from a band I never liked that only had one hit anyway, that's a goddamned MISSION, and all the copy protection in the world ain't gonna keep it off my stereo.

Re:generic anti-protection arguement

[Mike McTernan]

I have some pirated mp3's on my computer, but they are of bands whos cd's I would NEVER purchase. Generally, if I like even two songs off of the same CD, I go out and buy it.. and most other people out there are similar in nature.

You are entirely correct. I do the same. In fact, the process I used to use to decide whether I was going to buy an album was something like this

• Hear a good single on the radio/in club/wherever...
• Goto Amazon and find the album.
• Amazon samples are crap. Usually only have the first 30 seconds of each song (which is therefore often intro and not real song) and often don't have samples for all (if any of the songs).
• Goto Napster, start pulling some of the songs.
• Listen to them and evaluate them.
• Often listen a few times before deciding if good or not (some songs are real growers, while some are the other way).
• Optionaly buy it.

I think Amazon should carry the whole tracks instead of 30 second samples & the RIAA should goto hell.

Re:generic anti-protection arguement

[Anonymous Coward]

Not all people are 100% good. Not all people are 100% bad. The penalty for violating certain laws has kept me from breaking those laws; and I'm not talking about paltry misdemeanors, I'm speaking of capital felonies.

How I pine for the days of legally sanctioned duels.

Bahaha

[Whelkman]

The result: a CD-R full of noise, not music. Worse, the generated waveform is of kind to which hi-fi and loudspeaker circuitry is particularly sensitive. Play the noise-filled disc back at too high a volume and - bang - your speakers are toast.

SONY says: That'll teach you to pirate music, you little bastards!

Poor Joe Consumer will be so confused he'll be certain this is because he hadn't bought SONY brand speakers along with the SONY brand DTS professional stadium concert decoder.

Re:Bahaha

[Anonymous DWord]

I can't wait until somebody with SONY brand speakers and a SONY brand DTS professional stadium concert decoder plays a SONY CD-R they made from a SONY album on a SONY burner in their SONY computer and blows out their brand-new $8,000 system, takes it back, and makes SONY EAT THE FUCKING BILL.
That'll learn 'em.

Re:Bahaha

[Anonymous Coward]

Some day you will drive your sony down to the sony to pick up some more sony, while you wifee sits on the sony, watching the sony and eating some sony, and the children are playing in the back yard on the sony.

Re:Bahaha

[Eccles]

It's not the $8,000 system I want to see blown out, it's the $140,000 one mentioned a couple months back on /. Then, hopefully, with the judgement check in hand, the audiophile will see the lunacy of his ways, so you have two good things...

Re:Bahaha

[Lumpy]

First off, unless you play your music insanely loud. the bullcrap that the ripped noise will destroy your stereo,speakers,leave socks on the coffee table and drink all your beer is pure and total lies from people that dont know crap about audio equipment.

Ever listen to heavily distorted electric guitar? ever look at it on a scope? Wow it's a square wave, digital noise? pretty much the same but to a lesser extent and at multiple frequencies.

If you play anything with digital white noise bursts in it cranked all the way up then you deserved to have your stereo trashed, because whoever play's there stereo past the 3/4 volume level is a moron to begin with. (Ever hear of harmonic distortion? your stereo has a THD of 0.05 at an RMS rating.... at max volume level it's 1-10% THD (and anything from fischer or pioneer home audio is at 30-40%THD out of the box.)

BTW. my Sansui amp from 1980 has a THD of 0.005 at 100Watts RMS.. and it still kicks the crap out of anything sold at most high end shops.. Must be the fact that the output voltage is around 200volts (GRIN) yes I can shock you to death with my speaker wires. I just wish I could buy another one or a few Marantz Model 16 amps from 1978. playing fine while spitting blue flames out was freaking awesome... but that's another story.

Re:Bahaha

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't get that Smashing pumpkins song, did ya?

Re:Bahaha

[Lumpy]

why thank you..

that's the best compliment I have gotten all week
too bad you didnt have the guts to post it with your own account.

Thank you very much anyways :-)

Re:Bahaha

[HD Webdev]

If you play anything with digital white noise bursts in it cranked all the way up then you deserved to have your stereo trashed, because whoever play's there stereo past the 3/4 volume level is a moron to begin with.

I think that you're a moron for turning the volume up past 11/16ths.

This would not happen in 2003 in Europe

[jneves]

With the EUCD (European Union Copyright Directive), that is starting the process of getting incorporated into national laws, BMG would have the law on it's side and copying CDs with this kind of protection would be a crime, even if it was under a "fair use" clause. This is the main problem with this law, for the first time any company can restrict how you use its products. Until now copyright law only affected copying, distributing and modifying the product.

In the USA the won't probably do a recall because all this is legal under the DMCA. Providing "fair use" became optional.

Re:This would not happen in 2003 in Europe

[SectoidRandom]

I disagree that anything will change in two years, or that it is very much different in the US with the DCMA. The fact of this case is those cd's are in a very noticable way defective.

Thats why im sure many people returned them, if you cant play the disc in their computer they think its broken. Your average Joe, may be annoyed knowing that he can't now copy cd's so easily, but much worse he'll be quite pissed off that he cant play it in the way he play's the rest of his cd's!

As others have said before, we /.'ers may be vocal, but at the end of the day its not us that will make them change, its that damn critical mass thing again. :)

Re:This would not happen in 2003 in Europe

[darkonc]

As others have said before, we /.'ers may be vocal, but at the end of the day its not us that will make them change, its that damn critical mass thing again. :)

Being vocal and informed has it's advantages. Most of us here are on the 'technically savy' end of the spectrum and probably known as such. Remember that when someone comes to you and complains about their 'copy protected' CD. Tell them that they should just take it back to the store they got it from and return it as defective. Remind people that they don't have to put up with corrupt buisness practices or corrupt CDs.

Our knowledge in the technology space gives us a leverage that is greater than the raw numbers might indicate. We can guide how this thing goes by what we say to the people around us.

Re:This would not happen in 2003 in Europe

[Alan Cox]

Actually in many countries the EUCD adds a limited notion of fair use beyond what there is. The EUCD has some serious problems like directly conflicting with existing law and basically ensuring anyone who helps the blind read ebooks goes to jail (compatibility is ok but people dont count as compatibility....)

The current protected disks are actually possibly criminally illegal in the UK anyway. The CD causes an unauthorised modification of the contents of the computer (viz you dont get the proper data when issuing legitimate commands that are actually needed eg for USB speaker kits) and it "impairs the operation of any such program or the reliability of any such data". Finally the "knowledge that the modification he intends to cause is unauthorised", which I think we can safel y assume to have been demonstrated.

I don't know if there are similar US state laws or not. The Hammonds Suddards Edge book makes passing reference to that being the case but does not cover them.

Alan

Re:This would not happen in 2003 in Europe

[anthony_baxter]

Tell them that they should just take it back to the store they got it from and return it as defective. ... and this is how to defeat this idiotic scam. If enough people complain, if enough people take the CDs back to the store and make a noise, things will be changed. If you get some guff about "too bad, you shouldn't try and play it that way" then demand a refund. Don't be rude to the staff (there's no reason to be), but make sure you get a reaction. Make sure the record store knows you're an unhappy camper - eventually this will filter up to the clowns who make the decisions. Visibility is the key thing.

(As an aside, if the RIAA's "There's no such thing as a customer, just a potential pirate" attitude gets wide publicity, they'll find themselves losing the argument.)

Re:This would not happen in 2003 in Europe

[Pakaran2]

As a note - don't return defective CDs to the store - drop them at the store and cancel the charges through your credit card company. If the store challanges that, they're imperiling their ability to sell to users of that credit card.

Also, I wonder who it is that owns the patent on the CD format, or administers the 'CD' trademark. Whoever it is has very good grounds to sue for very, very large amounts for people selling CDs that don't comply with the established formats.

Re:This would not happen in 2003 in Europe

[arkanes]

I just looked at a bunch of my CDs, and most of them actually don't have the CD trademark on them - it's on all my blank CDs and most of my games, however. As for who actually owns the trademark, I'm pretty sure it's Sony, so...

Re:This would not happen in 2003 in Europe

[mindstrm]

Providing 'fair-use' was never something these companies were requried to do. Fair use is not something they give you or permit you to do..

it's something copyright law says you are allowed to do, period.

Except.. the DMCA conflicts with that.

Re:This would not happen in 2003 in Europe

[Svartalf]

It's Philips that developed the CD format and owns the trademark. Anything non-compliant with the specs they've handed down can't be labeled as a CD or a CD-DA disc.

Re:This would not happen in 2003 in Europe

[SiliconEntity]

Providing 'fair-use' was never something these companies were requried to do. Fair use is not something they give you or permit you to do..

it's something copyright law says you are allowed to do, period.

To clarify, copyright law says that you can't be sued for making fair use of copyrighted materials. It does not obligate the copyright holder to make it easy for you to make such use, it just says that you can't be sued if you do. However as you say the DMCA adds additional restrictions on what you can do in terms of circumventing restriction technology.

Re:This would not happen in 2003 in Europe

[theancient2]

There are those "implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose." I forget exactly what they mean, but I believe one of them had something to do with being able to use the product for what you'd expect it to be used for. (i.e. if every other CD worked on your computer and this one doesn't, that breaks one of those implied warranties.)

But I could be completely wrong.

Re:This would not happen in 2003 in Europe

[sh00z]

I just looked at a bunch of my CDs, and most of them actually don't have the CD trademark on them

Are you looking in the right place? In the US, it's typically molded into the upper-left corner of the jewel box the CD came in.

Error correction

[Anonymous Coward]

CDs have tons of error correction encoded on them. This helps the CD maintain data integrity when it gets scratched.

The copy protected CDs use phoney error correcting codes. Audio CD players skip over the invalid data, while the CD player in your computer 'corrects' the data for you. The result is crisp clear sound on your stereo, and pops and cracks on your computer.

Software such as cdparanoia can fix the mangled music.

Everything I wrote above was hearsay, originally read on Slashdot. You have been warned!

Re:Error correction

[praedor]

How does one use cdparanoia to avoid such CD corruption and get a decent recording?

Re:With a small warning I think its fine.

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, kinda. I remember when I bought the X-Files soundtrack (songs in the key of X - tv version, not the movie) and how it said it didn't comply to the redbook standard. It didn't comply because it had some negative tracks. It wasn't compatible with my CD player of the time but I didn't mind - they weren't trying to screw me, they were just playing with the media and trying to have some fun with it.

This however is different. They're trying to rape me over a cheesegrater. I copy my music to OGG so I can have a long playlist (try as a might - I haven't yet found a affordable 200 disc changer and my computer will have to do). I'm not stealing from them. I paid my money. I want to listen to the music in my way. I will get angry, and write stern letters, and not buy CDs that try and restrict me in any way. I'm not a theif - and I don't like being treated as such.

Taken From FatChucks

[Meffan]

Mac OS X/iBook-DVD: Track 1 doesn't play or rip, rest okay
Mac OS X/iMac-DVD: Track 1 doesn't play, rest okay (ripping not tested)
Mac OS 9/iBook-DVD: All tracks play and rip okay
MiniDisk: Refuses to record digitally
PS2: Track 1 won't play, rest okay
Linux: Tried extracting tracks (cdparanoia), disk is not always recognised first time. Out of 12 tracks, only track 3 extracts cleanly - all others hang with read errors (probably work better with a better drive than mine).
Windows: Runs a custom MP3-player from the CD, playing data from a 30Mb data file of unknown format (according to a report I've just had).

This could be a good wake up call for Joe Six-Pack, if only for the PS2 having problems with the disk. If the industrys can pass it off as "Something that only affects Home Hackers", they can keep the attention down. When it starts going wrong in mass produced home appliances that could never be used to copy it, maybe the public will pay attention?

But this has been said before, last time it was about in-car CD players not playing protected disks...We can only hope public intolerance is cumulative, and people will start to vote with their wallets, because that's the only way things like this will stop.

I bought Codename Outbreak last week, and the copy protection on that game doesn't allow my (Original) CD to be read when the game boots...Have to "Hang" the system to kick start it every time. The site's forum is full of people with the same problem. Copy protection in itself I don't mind, if people want to get paid for their efforts I don't see why they shouldn't. But when you can't use the product you just paid for, something's gone awry.

Re:Taken From FatChucks

[WowTIP]

>But this has been said before, last time it was about in-car CD players not playing protected disks...We can only hope public intolerance is cumulative, and people will start to vote with their wallets, because that's the only way things like this will stop

Isn't it funny that these are the companies that said napster damaged their business? Now they are working their asses off to make every average Joe that used to buy his CDs legally into an audio pirate. When ppl learn that the CDs they bought at the store won't work in their very expensive players, they will probably start looking for other places to get CDs that works the way they want.

My guess is that the only ones that will make any money out of these protection schemes are people that sell unburned CDs and the real pirates.

Re:Taken From FatChucks

[_Sprocket_]

Copy protection in itself I don't mind, if people want to get paid for their efforts I don't see why they shouldn't. But when you can't use the product you just paid for, something's gone awry.

Copy protection doesn't work. I watched the industry pull out an entire bag of tricks during the 80s. In each and every case, I watched an entire community who dealt in illicit data sidestep these hurdles.

And even more telling, I watched legitimate users who's purchase price had gone towards funding these copy-protection schemes turn to the underground community to remove these protections. Copy protection had become so intrusive that it interfered with the product's functionality.

Eventually the industry gave up. Copy protection schemes were expensive to develop and deploy. They were quickly circumvented. And they interfered with customers.

At least - thats what it looked like. Seems we're about to go through the cycle again.

Midbars patent application for Cactus Data Shield

[sjmurdoch]

Even though Midbar deny there is any chance of Cactus Data Shield damageing equipment, you may be interested to see an extract from Midbars patent application for the technology.

Of particular interest is the section:
During duplication the CD encoding circuitry merely sets the P-channel=0 while recording to the data are, and therefore the P-channel setting of portion 60 is ignored. Thus, during playback, the substituted audio data portion 58 is provided to the digital-to-analog converter as normal data, resulting in audio distortion and potentially damaging the output circuitry. (emphasis mine).

They also don't seem to be as confident about audio quality as I would have hoped:
Thus, the substitute audio data portion 58 of FIG. 4B is ignored, and instead an interpolation, substantially equivalent to the original portion 50 of FIG. 4A, is output, thus resulting in little or no net difference in audio quality between the corresponding track port 44 and 52 of FIGS. 4A and 4B (again empahasis mine).

If I buy music, I want the CD to be as close as possible to the real thing, not with any noise added.

Bottom Line

[TACD]

It's such a shame to see the (inherently good) idea of copyrighting, patenting, copyprotection etc. all coming down in such a shambles.

I just sit back and laugh, personally. Because if it is possible for the medium to be recorded and perceived originally, then it can be again. This is why there will never be an end to forgery, illicit copies and that sort of thing.

On that note, why has the music industry not taken a tip from mints? After all, why don't more people forge money all over the place? Because it is too expensive. (i.e. Printing equipment, speical paper, etc etc.)

Just remember it is not the copying that is the problem, it is the distribtion.

Re:Bottom Line

[awol]

"It's such a shame to see the (inherently good) idea of copyrighting, patenting, copyprotection etc. all coming down in such a shambles."

What makes copy right such an "inherently good" idea? It would seem to me that "inherently good" ideas are incapable of being made to look so stupid. Ergo, copryright is not inherently good.

And as for the money analogy it is just so flawed as to be trollworthy. Money is a "representation" of a thing, not a thing itself, it is a measure of value. Forgery usurps that agreed (by consensus more or less) measure and so the printing of money devalues the "thing" itself (which is the amount of value in society). The technical difficulty of forging money is not the real impediment to forgery it is the rather significant sanction of our erstwhile governments for such fraud, for good reason. When one forges money it is not the breach of copyright on the notes that is the thing for which one is punished. Indeed in (some might argue) less sophisticated times, certain individuals were entitled to draw their own bank notes and they did (certainly in England). These are just a few of the problems with the money as copyright analogy, there are many more.

Public Awareness

[Unfallen]

As a UK resident, it's really gratifying to see some headway being made. A lot of this is thanks to the hard work put in by many to make sure that the general public is aware of what's happening, along with the alertness of some media quarters to bring the story out as much as possible.

All of this has meant that the technology hasn't just been introduced with nobody noticing, or putting up some resistance (as I'm sure the music industry would have loved...) - bringing the damage here to the attention of the public is surely greatly influential in BMG and Virgin's decision to back down somewhat.

This is indeed only the beginning, but at least it's a beginning, before it's too late. Pressure needs to be kept up. At Cato's recent
The Future of Intellectual Property in the Information Age conference, Mitch Glazier, legislative counsel for the RIAA stated (somewhat hypocriticaly, imho):

"There's only one huge question nobody knows: what the consumer wants, what will succeed... At the end of the day, I think consumers will be pretty happy with the number of competing services out there."

I can't speak for everybody else, but the RIAA doesn't seem to be anywhere closer to the answer than it was a year ago...

Re:Public Awareness

[Dynedain]

Although these things may be readily broadcast on European channels, don't expect too much in the US. When the media is run by for-profit, private companies, instead of public supported channels like the BBC, things often fall wind to the whims of the owners. Remember, AOL/Time/Warner is now a television media provider (WB Network, CNN, Turner Networks,...), internet provider (AOL, Compuserve, and purchase of broadband networks...including the plans for ATT and !Excite) a television service provider (see cable, ATT and !Excite) a internet content service provider (AOL, Compuserve, etc.), a print media provider (Time/Life, etc.) a music producer (Warner Music), a major motion picture producer (Warner Bros.), and obviously a major member of the RIAA.

When media becomes corporate, discouraging news about parent companies/corporate partners is often convieniently "not newsworthy." How much coverage has NBC given to unfavorable events for Microsoft? Virtually none because they are partners in MSNBC. Just like that don't expect to hear news of these bad CDs being mentioned on any sations on the WB network, and especially not on America's pride and joy of unbiased pinnacle television and magazine news sources: CNN and Time.

Re:Public Awareness

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

How much coverage has NBC given to unfavorable events for Microsoft? Virtually none because they are partners in MSNBC.

Ouch. It hurts to see a pretty decent argument shot in the foot by one careless example. As a matter of fact, MSNBC has been relatively hard on Microsoft during the whole trial mess... more so, as far as I've seen, than network TV or CNN.

Nonetheless, the point that mega-mergers are hinderng the true freedom of the press is a good one.

Re:Public Awareness

[the eric conspiracy]

don't expect too much in the US. When the media is run by for-profit, private companies, instead of public supported channels like the BBC

And PBS is just what then?

The problem with media in Britain is that it's run by and controlled by the governement. In my opinion that is far worse a situation than what we have in the US. Especially given the lack of an equivalent to the First Amendment in Britain.

Re:Public Awareness

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with media in Britain is that it's run by and controlled by the governement.

No it isn't. Even the BBC is at arms length from the government (despite relying on laws enforcing compulsory subscriptions to fund it) and regularly proves it - during the Thatcher regime the BBC was regularly the only part of the media willing to fund criticism of the evil cow. And the BBC runs only two of the five antenna TV stations, the others being advertising funded corporations.

And given, from what I see, the US media is comprised entirely of people terrified of being cast as "liberal" who go out of their way to whore for the Republicans, I don't think you can accuse the UK press of being any more controlled by the government than that in the US, NPR/PBS being an ironic honourable exception.

Posted anonymously by squiggleslash because this is off-topic.

Re:Public Awareness

[gorilla]

The problem with media in Britain is that it's run by and controlled by the governement.

No it isn't. 3 out of 5 terrestial channels are commerical, and the BBC has a long tradition of going against the government's wishes. Digital & Satellite channels have an even higher % of commerical stations. Note, the BBC is where you can get bin Laden's speeches uncensoured - something that NO American media will do.

Re:Public Awareness

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with media in Britain is that it's run by and controlled by the governement. In my opinion that is far worse a situation than what we have in the US. Especially given the lack of an equivalent to the First Amendment in Britain.

The Human Rights Act included the European Convention on Human Rights in British law. This includes a right to freedom of expression. Sounds like an equivalent of your First Amendment to me.

Oh, and the BBC is independent. It's funded by the government, but not controlled by them. Of course, Americans often have some difficulty with the idea that it's possible to receive money from someone without becoming their slave... hence the problems with your media, the DMCA, and so on.

Flame bait?

[CheezWizFire]

I had a reasonable argument and I backed it up with a reasonable idea. If we all sit around and say that encryption is bad, we are just shooting ourselves in the foot. I think that we need to quit fighting this on an encryption by encryption method and make some real progress. In the end we all want to be able to access music and software and other things online, and in the end this means that there are going to have to be control systems. We should back up, and start fresh with some new inititives that are followed by a wide variety of companies.

Re:Flame bait?

[Phibz]

Thats all well and good, but this is not encryption. Noise is intentionally added that 'hopefully' won't be heard when you play the cd but will prevent a copy from taking place. If you forget the piracy aspect for a moment and think of this clearly as a quality issue the record companies are reducing the quality of the product you are purchasing and not informing you about it. The price is already seriously over inflated you'd think that would already be able to account for their losses.

Re:Flame bait?

[squiggleslash]

No, you didn't.

This isn't about preventing people from "stealing from the store", this is about preventing people from being able to cook what they've bought on the majority of standard cookers (make personal copies, even play their own music on DVD players, modern computer systems, and car stereos) because of the tiny risk that some might have guests around for dinner (might share their copy with someone else.)

It's not fair. It's not reasonable. And companies who do this deserve to go bust and have their work ripped off.

Re:Flame bait?

[Anonymous Coward]

... you're missing the point. trusted-client, symmetric-key crypting of media (e.g. css) is dead, and can never be resuscitated, because all it takes is one smartass to recover the key and crypting algorithm (by examining any css- [or whatever technique] licenced app. it's not going to protect anything ever.

Re:METEOR!

[Dynedain]

Unfortuneately some (like those of us in Los Angeles) can't see it due to weather conditions (what the hell is this? fog? in LA?!?!) and/or the wonderfull joy called Light Pollution (what officer? my headlight's weren't on? are they now? I still can't tell)

Good news, but more work still needs to be done.

[sjmurdoch]

I'm glad to see BMG have been forced into seeing sense. Hopefully BMG will have lost enough money in this pointless exercise so that they won't try this sort of trick again. I also hope they realise that to customer loyalty is easily lost, but hard to gain so they need to treat the public with more respect. Virgin Megastores, in contrast, have the right idea, they seem to actually care about their customers. Top marks for them!

Also I wholeheartedly agree with Virgin's statement: "As retailers we do support the fight against copyright theft, however this should never be at the expense of the customer."

I have no objection to meaures that prevent only illegal or immoral behaviour, but by preventing digital copying the record companies are preventing the public from making legitimate, legal and moral uses of their CD, such as making a backup copy for safety reasons or transferring to a MP3/Minidisc player. I am also unconvinced that such draconian measures need to be put in place since the availibility of MP3s has not been shown to decrease CD sales, in fact the contrary seems to be the case, as shown in the paper "The Use of Conventional and New Music Media: Implications for Future Technologies" by Brown, Geelhoed and Sellen (2001).

This paper argues that intangible files, such as MP3s will never replace the role of physical objects such as LPs, CDs and casettes since music enthusiasts are collectors, and just the ability to listen to music is not enough, rather a tangible object is desired. Instead of trying to eliminate duplication of Music (which, both historically and technically, can be seen to be impossible), they would be better to use it to their own advantage, which would help them, the artists and the public.

Exactlty! Great comparison!

[Dynedain]

The money comparison is a great one! If I wanted to copy mony for my own purposes (i.e. to extend the available funds in my Monopoly board game or for use as a gag gift for a friend) it would be absolutely no problem whatsoever...I could put a bill on a photocopy machine, or if I wanted to make it a little fancier I could use a color one or my scanner and printer. However, if I wanted to use it illegally (outside my rights) and therebye distribute it, things would get difficult. I don't think my local Quick-E-Mart cashier will take my black and white one hundred dollar bills printed on cheap bond paper.

Before someone gripes, yes I know that it is illegal to copy US money without resizing it to make it obviously not legal tender...but thats not the point...copying for personal use is not an issue whatsoever because distribution is nigh impossible.

Re:Exactlty! Great comparison!

[Weird Dave]

Actually, copying for personal use is still illegal under U.S. law. Besides, the analogy you think is great is really stupid. There's no REAL legitimate reason to copy a U.S. dollar, and that's why copying it is illegal.

Besides, I emphatically believe letting people copy music is good for the *talented* artists. Sorry, backstreet boys. I just went to a concert last night of a band whose albums I've never bought. I don't think I would have gone to the concert if they were as big of assholes about the whole mp3 thing as Metallica.

Copying U.S. money is ALWAYS a bad deal for the US government, so you can see why the analogy doesn't hold water to rational thought. Yes, I know this is slashdot, but I still believe rational thought *should* win arguments, even if you can't understand why.

Re:Exactlty! Great comparison!

[innocent_white_lamb]

There's no REAL legitimate reason to copy a U.S. dollar, and that's why copying it is illegal.

I can think of one right off of the top, and there may be more if I gave it some more thought.

Art.

Perhaps an artist wishes to incorporate a US dollar bill (or a fifty, or whatever) into a painting or photograph to further his artistic statement. As an expression of his artistry, why should that be illegal?

Re:Exactlty! Great comparison!

[Walter]

It happened several years ago. The SS (secret service or the Schutzstaffel) forced the artist to repaint the currency in question before allowing it to be photographed or viewed in public. IIRC, it was a $20 bill that got him into trouble.

Re:Exactlty! Great comparison!

[TACD]

My point is not the about the reasons and laws to do with forging, it is about the means. If people could, they would copy money willy-nilly, obviously much more than people copy CDs etc ATM. But people don't, partly because the penalties would be higher, and partly because it is a very very difficult thing to do.

The music industries are approaching it from the wrong angle, if they want to win. Making music impossible to listen to is not the sensible way to stop forgeries. The sensible way is to make it unprofitable for the forger; bump up the prices of CD burners, change the medium at a base level to make it more difficult to copy, something like that.

Now, clearly these ideas are almost as absurd as what they are currently doing (and far more impossible). What they really need is to start seling music on a brand new and very-expensive-and-difficult-to-copy medium, and sell it only on that medium. That would solve the 'problem', but it is of course the most impossible solution of all. Hurrah! :)

Re:Exactlty! Great comparison!

[Weird Dave]

Whoa, dude! I wasn't shankin' on YOUR analogy. I was saying that the guy who I replied to used an analogy that didn't hold water. I realize yours was different, and he misinterpreted it. Oh, well.

There's a weakness

[J.C.B.]

A normal CD player ignores the control data and fabricates the sound of that block using its error recovery circuitry. Once again, the blocks must have been carefully chosen so that the sound is not disrupted significantly.

So, they can only currupt the data under certain conditions. Perhaps someone could determine under what conditions the errors are correctable, and use that knowlege to manually correct for the them? By only chosing particular blocks, the protection is giving the cracker clues as to how it works.

Re:Midbars patent application for Cactus Data Shie

[Alan Cox]

Do the maths and work out what the loss of one section of each frame is over a complete CD - its a reasonable portion of one track that is effectively missing.

Nothing is said about the fact you are buying a faulty product either, nor that chunks of it have not been supplied.

Can Copy Protection damage HiFi

[candyuk]

I guy at AudioT in High wycombe (Excellent HiFi chain in the UK) who is quite knowledgeable about HiFi electronics told me that some copy protection systems can blow some high end audio kit due to the noise at frequencies not normally present being transmitted through to the speakers.

Apparently the out of normal frequency range signals can bust the tweeters and crossovers.

Has the copy protection system been throughly tested in this regard? I doubt it.

Also how long before someone developes a way of gettign round the copy protection, has the record industry learned nothing from the digital watermarking debarcle.

Re:Can Copy Protection damage HiFi

[Anonymous Coward]

suggestion shop for high end audio elsewhere... this guy is an idiot.

he knows nothing, and telling you that proves it.

The ONLY way to do what he says is to play it insanely loud for an extended period of time.

and the crap about the crossover? he is so full of crap it's funny.... but what do you expect from a salesperson, they lie no matter what.

Re:Can Copy Protection damage HiFi

[Lumpy]

HUH?

The guy you talked to is a liar.

first off you have an audio amplifier there, not a broadband amplifier. there is built in (intentional or just to keep costs down) filters that remove subsonic and hypersonic elements. reproducing anything above human hearing is a waste of money and anything below 20Hz is moronic. (I doubt you have a room in your house that can hold a wave from anything lower than 40Hz. Otherwise you have to be in the near field (2X the speaker diameter in distance from the cone) to hear it.)

Second, there is nothing your stereo can produce except distortion or massive power that can destroy a crossover or speaker. that is why when you buy 3000watt speakers and put them on a 100 watt stereo you can toast them in minutes. (harmonic distortion will take out anything.)
While a 2000 watt stereo driving 100watt max speakers can drive the speakers so hard the they sound great up to the point you either melt the coil or rip the suspension out of them.

So, if I play digitally created white noise, I have a cd player that will play a CDrom track as audio... kinda wild to listen to slackware 8.0 .. I can listen to it safely at normal listening levels.... and give myself a headache or annoy the neighbors, the dog, my daughter, what have you.

Hell I have a set of speakers I can plug directly into the wall outlet and all I get is a really really loud 60Hz hum. (Bose 901's)

your stereo guy obviously knows nothing about audio, let alone high end audio. I suggest learning about audio yourself and then have fun making these salespeople look stupid.

Re:Can Copy Protection damage HiFi

[candyuk]

Fair enough the myth is exploded. however to slag off audioT is a bit harsh as they sell nice hifi without pressure or snobbish ness.

Believe me that is a rarety in the UK. Also bought my cyrus system from them and it works fine.

Re:Can Copy Protection damage HiFi

[ShawnD]

Hell I have a set of speakers I can plug directly into the wall outlet and all I get is a really really loud 60Hz hum. (Bose 901's)

I looked up the specs on those speakers:

• 10-450W
• 8ohms

On a standard 120V North American circuit an 8ohm speaker would be drawing 15A . This is 1800W or 4 times the rated power of the speaker.

How long would the speaker last in this condition?

Re:Can Copy Protection damage HiFi

[Anonymous Coward]

You probably wouldn't notice if it did break, as it is the fine Bose quality

Re:Can Copy Protection damage HiFi

[Lumpy]

You recieved new specs... the 901's from 1987 are rated at infinate ohms.

The speakers are heilically wound and increase in resistance as the power increases.

anything made by bose today is pretty much innovative enclosures with el-crapo drivers inside.

Probably even simpler than this

[fleabag]

First up, this is pure hunch, so flame on if I'm wrong. There seems to be two pieces to this problem:

1) The TOC appears to be nailed so that many players looking for data can't find it. Stereo components look for the lead in track - not the TOC, so they are unaffected. PS2s and PCs look for the TOC - hence are affected.

2) If your player overcomes the TOC issue, then the data itself is full of errors that can be fixed by a domestic D-A converter, but not by blindly accepting the data (as PCs tend to do if the CRCs stack up). The algorithms in the domestic D-A converters are well known.

Neither of these problems seem impossible to resolve. I give it 3 months before all rippers have a check box labelled "rip as domestic CD player" or similar. This is not an "encryption challenge". It is a challenge of emulating a domestic CD player's D-A converter in software. This is the achilles heel: they have to maintain compatability with the huge installed base of CD players out there.

Re:Midbars patent application for Cactus Data Shie

[Thor Ablestar]

"instead an interpolation, substantially equivalent to the original portion 50"

It means that the already-ripped track image can be processed in similar way giving the result equivalent to the audio player's one.

Not too suprising

[Coolmoe]

The record companys are going to be just as effective at alienating thier own customers as Microsoft and that is what will bring about real change. I am all for it go ahead copy protect CD for players that were NEVER designed to have that done. I promise it will not affect my music listening habits on bit. Wait ... who's there? The FBI! Sorry gotta go.

so we're already at no.4:

[steve.m]

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
- Mahatma Ghandi

Re:so we're already at no.4:

[Anonymous Coward]

How cute.

Remember that Gandhi said that in reaction to the harsh treatment at the hands of imperialist Britain, not because of copy-protection.

I swear, Slashdot is full of children.

What happens when...

[Bongo]

What happens when a company sells a product that nobody wants? Um, let's see, that can't be hard to figure out.

They're killing the format. Plain and simple. And forcing people to think of alternatives, big time.

You don't understand

[t_allardyce]

We are lucky that people^H^H^H^H^H^H geniuses like P.Diddy and eminem grace us and allow us to listen to their music. If they so wished, they could keep the music to themselves, but they choose to share.

These people are practically gods in my view. They could out-perform the likes of Beethoven and Vivaldi with their eyes shut. Infact, i would go as far as to say that Mr. Diddy invented most forms of musical notation, and Mozart simply finished it off.

Along with mathematical super-minds like Bill Gates, these people are the ones that drive civilization forward, unlike hippies such as Torvalds who think everything should be free and open "Ohh yeah, lets dance around in a free open world where sunflowers grow and where there arn't any bad people." I for one, think eminem should get all my money, I would actually work as the great mans slave - simply paying all my money to him.

This post is not flaimbait, trolling, offtopic or even sarcasm, it is my actual real view into the troubled world of copyright and IP.

it won't work

[DewDude]

Ok, this copy protection stuff has been talked about for a while, and I can tell you, it's here weather we like it or not. Why do I say this? Because, every law is on the record companies side aganist piracy, the only thing that might go against the DMCA is the Home Recording Act which was implemented in 1992 when the MiniDisc came out. It clearly states what's fair use, and many laws allow making backup copies and some even go as far as to say copy protection is illegal. But, are these CD's totally uncopyable? No. As many have pointed out programs like CloneDisc and Nero are capeable of making 1:1 copies of audio CD's if your hardware supports it. So, you make a perfect 1:1 copy of a copy protected CD, theoritcally, it should play fine. The biggest problem is ripping to (crappy) formats like MP3 or (even worse) OGG. (I'm a MpegPlus man myself). The CDFS.VXD ripping program uses burst mode copying, and therefore doesn't auctually use any error correction, but, it can recover from errors better than using say, EAC's Secure mode. My G.F. bought the new Michael Jackson CD and brought it over to my house saying it wouldn't play in her car or her DVD player. So, I popped it in my Apex AD-3201 and nothing, it wouldn't play it. It showed up as an audio CD, but both the analog and digital outputs lost sync. Popped it in my Sharp player, and it played fine, my MD deck even recorded from it (as most CD player's digital out's aren't RAW data, they're error corrected PCM). So, after some reading I found it was copy protected. I put it in my drive, and tried to rip it, alas, nothing. I then switched EAC over to burst (XP Pro doesn't support CDFS.XVD to my knowledge) and granted it ripped at 3.4x, it ripped (my DVD drive usually gets about 8x) They say the protection won't affect audio quality as much, bull. If you have good ears, you can tell the audio lacks a certin oomph (same oomph missing on CD that's on Vinyl, it's not really noticeable, but, it's there) Also, let's not forget HDCD, HDCD is dependant on a good audio stream, if they corrupt part of it, theorically, AFAIK, HDCD won't function.

Re:it won't work

[DrSpin]

In short, the position is: Protected CDs can be ripped and copied, but can't be played in your car? This is a technology that is intended to reduce piracy?

The customer is practically driven to buy the CD, copy it, and then return it. Under the "Sale of Goods Act" it is against the law to sell CDs like this in England - the legal term is "goods not of merchandiseable quality - unfit for the purpose for which it was sold"

As an aside: If you are making minority interest music, you probably depend on piracy to advertise your work! fans hear pirate copies, and then buy a legit copy Its only chronically commercial dross that is adversely affected by piracy.

I would not let Eminem kiss my butt

Re:it won't work

[DewDude]

I think what they forget to mention is how much MP3's and Napster have auctually hurt sales, they haven't. My friend who works at Sam Goody says he gets more people in the store who heard the music online from Napster or the like, then buy the CD. The record industry says they lost money because they lowered the price of CD's by like, a dollar and they had less profit than compared to last year.

Re:it won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

"crappy formats like mp3 or (even worse) OGG"

*shaking head* ...and we're supposed to take anything you say seriously..you obviously talk out your ass about things you know little to nothing about. First of all, OGG is not an audio codec at all. Perhaps you were thinking of ogg vorbis. If this is indeed the case, ogg vorbis far surpasses mp3 both in audio quality AND format design & features. If only people like you bothered to inform themselves before talking out their asses...

Anti-pirate system bypassed

[Midnight Thunder]

Given that one of the so-called anti-piracy systems has been bypassed, according to this link, I wonder why the companies even bother. Also, these work-arounds are more likely to be used by bona fid pirates than someone unhappy that they have a CD they can't make their MP3s from ( yes, I know its a generalization, but the general point remains ).

Re:Anti-pirate system bypassed

[Legion303]

They make laughable security schemes that are broken within days so they can go lobby congress: "See, these evil pirates keep stealing money from us despite our best efforts. That's why you should back the DMCA2 we're introducing next week. Here, have some money, and my aide will give you a suck job after lunch."

-Legion

The geek vs. corporate war....

[ebbomega]

I still stand by the idea that copywrite protection laws are the first casualty in the war between geeks and corporations that will eventually end in the anarchistic Geek-governed utopia, which is simply a slight variation on Socrates'/Plato's Utopia.

All I know is that I'm keeping my DNRC card handy.

(Please save all flames saying I'm a moron for believing this. I know I'm being delusional, but heck... a man has to dream...)

Re:The geek vs. corporate war....

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not a flame about your delusions - just a correction of your terminology. If you had read your Plato, you would know that The Republic is not an anarchistic system at all! And I doubt the average "geek" would compare to the philosopher-kings envisioned by Plato.

Re:The geek vs. corporate war....

[ebbomega]

I guess anarchy would be the wrong word...

But why not the geeks? In honesty, I've found that geeks (the grown up ones) on the most part tend to be the most well-rounded and politically savvy people I've met. And by politically savvy I _don't_ mean politically enabled, because government IMO has as of late become a corporate smokescreen to deviate attention away from the fact that our lives are governed by the decisions businesses make and not ourselves. I guess that's why the term "politics" has become synonymous with "all the bull-crap that surrounds an issue without actually resolving it".

(Insert comment here about how I'm a bleeding-heart left-wing pinko, right?)

All this protection will promote SACD + DVD-Audio

[Lord Hugh Toppingham]

I imagine that all these copy protection schemes which add noise to an already poor quality format like CD, will simply serve to motivate consumers to migrate to the new high-resolution digital formats such as Sony's SADC (Super Audio CD) and the DVD-Audio format.

Then they can sell us the music we already own YET AGAIN on YET ANOTHER format.

Re:METEOR!

[squiggleslash]

He's probably just worried that if he watches the meteor shower, he'll wake up the next morning blind, unable to protect himself against the triffids that have taken over the world...

That's funny

[Anonymous Coward]

Puff Daddy "out-perform the likes of Beethoven and Vivaldi" ? That's funny. He don't know shit !

Re:That's funny

[Anonymous Coward]

Puff Daddy "out-perform the likes of Beethoven and Vivaldi" ? That's funny. He don't know shit !

True, but Beethoven and Vivaldi are dead.

wtf "uncrackable"?

[posmon]

you don't even need decss to crack it. once writeable dvds hit a reasonable price, you can literally click'n'drag the files from the original to a blank and you'll have a perfect copy.

Re:wtf "uncrackable"?

[toast0]

(assuming dvd is encrypted)

i believe if you do that, you'll have a perfect copy of the encrypted data, but without the key file. i'm pretty sure that there is no provision to write to the 'key area' of any of the writable dvd discs.

Re:Kind of redundant [And OT at this point]

[UberOogie]

I have a co-worker who is a big Michael Jackson...

I know it is a typo, but it reminds me of that Simpsons episode where the big, white mental patient thought he was Michael Jackson.

Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this now mean complaining is now a means of Circumventing the DCMA?

Re:question

[Anonymous Coward]

if you read what you cut and pasted you'd notice the reg's journalist said `allegedly pirate', genius.

Canada

[JediTrainer]

There IS a fair-use law in Canada.

I'm allowed to make copies of my music for my own personal use.

I'm allowed to lend an original CD to a friend.

That friend can copy it for their personal use.

I am NOT allowed to make a copy and give it to a friend.

If I make a legal copy of the music (say for my own mix CD) and it damages my equipment, you'd bet I'm going to go after the music companies. We don't have the RIAA here.

Re:Canada

[Pig Hogger]

There IS a fair-use law in Canada.

• I'm allowed to make copies of my music for my own personal use.
• I'm allowed to lend an original CD to a friend.
• That friend can copy it for their personal use.

So what's the RIAA's next move?

Blame Canada!!!!

Re:Canada

[FFFish]

Hey, friend, buddy, pal, maybe we should exchange CD lists and see what we can do...

Re:Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't have the RIAA here

No, we have the CRIA, which no doubt is the organization responsible for that tax we pay on blank CDs.

Re:Canada

[JediTrainer]

No, we have the CRIA, which no doubt is the organization responsible for that tax we pay on blank CDs.

That tax is only on blanks which are labelled as 'for music'. As we all know, there's nothing preventing us from buying the much-cheaper 'for data' CDs. I'm not complaining - I buy them in bulk for somewhere between 50 - 75 cents per disc.

Re:Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

The levy applies to all blank CDs. It is 77 cents for the "music" CDs, and 21 cents for the "data" CDs, which are identical except for a single bit in the ATIP. You would probably be buying CDs for 29-56 cents each if there was no levy (unless you've avoided paying it somehow). http://neil.eton.ca/copylevy.shtml

TV?

[brunes69]

I don't think the record companies understand that ripping a cd isn't the only way to pirate the music.

Increasingly, the MP3's being traded online don't come from CD, but from television. Nowadays, with digital cable and Sat TV all over the place, the quality of the audio coming in over your TV is as good as any CD. Digital audio out to the PC, a little record and waveform edit later (to get rid o fthe beginning and ending you messed up), and boom, perfect track.

All they are doing with these stupid schemees are annying people. They are not solving anything.

Re:TV?

[alannon]

the quality of the audio coming in over your TV is as good as any CD

This is generally not true at all. The audio tracks in the music videos are never identical to the album track. In fact, often, their quality is greatly reduced for the simple fact that almost everything that's destined to play on a TV has its dynamic range hugely compressed. This means that the volume difference between the 'quiet' and 'loud' bits are reduced. This is because most people listen to music videos on 20" TVs with 2" speakers of terrible quality. The music tends to sound better on these speakers if its dynamic range has been compressed. It does, however, kill a portion of the 'feel' of the original music.

In addition, the original video/audio feed is an analog stream. It is then digitized by your cable providor and sent to you. This may eventually change as more channels are natively digital, but this is quite a few years in the future.

Re:TV?

[WowTIP]

Heh, all I have to do then is finding a station that plays complete albums. :)

But, good point.

Re:TV?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the quality of the European music channels broadcast in Europe are digital, and the sound of most of them is better than CD quality. The sound is not compressed, also, on these channels. The tracks sound identical actually, I must add, to those on the actual CD's. One of the best quality channels is Magic TV which has the widest sound bandwidth. You can also listen and get the digital signals broadcast by various radios on digital satellite.

These music channels are natively digital. It seems to me that these European music channels are better than the ones you mention (cable channels?) which is good for us of course!

A possible way to rip these CD's?

[beefstu01]

I haven't really read all of working of this, but from what I understand is that they won't play on computers, but will on normal CD Players. SO! All you need to do is to play the CD on your stereo, and plug the recording output (I've got 3 on my JVC amp, 2 on my JVC cd changer) into your audio input of your computer. With this, you can record it on your computer with the sound recorder, or download one. Sure it's a very roundabout route, but won't it work? Because this way is more or less sticking a microphone infront of the speakers, but with much higher quality. I'm not too sure, but thats my $0.02

Re:A possible way to rip these CD's?

[dakoda]

yes, this works (done it a few times, usually with cassette tapes i wanted to rip though).

the onyl bad part about using this method is lost quality from line noise, the extra da/ad conversion (if from a cd, tapes are analogue already), and from lousy sound cards, which i have at present (that makes all samples biased a little bit). this, to me, is the simplest way around ripping 'protected' cds that work in regular cd players. no way to prevent/protect this route.

Something very basic these companies don't get

[Pakaran2]

If you sell a copy-protected CD that makes it next to impossible to rip, it may well prevent 99% of people out there from ripping it.

Those 99%, as well as all the people who don't want to buy the CD because of its damaged nature, will get on their favorite file-sharing service and search for the songs.

Care to guess how long it will take for the cat to be totally and irretrevely out of the bag? Remember the proportion of MP3's out there that were recorded live, which is also exceptionally difficult to do.

question

[PW2]

It will make an interesting test case when a punter sues Sony for blowing up their loudspeakers after playing an allegedly pirate CD...

Why is The Register calling my backups, pirate CDs?

Surely a reason NOT to buy CDs?

[skunkeh]

It looks to me like the record companies are shooting themselves in the foot. If word spreads that CDs are being crippled in this way surely it will discourage people from buying CDs in the first place? Why spend money on something that has been crippled when you could just download the album from a file share somewhere...

What about Car CD players?

[Anonymous Coward]

Judging by everything I've read, not just here, these copy protected CDs won't work in my Sony car CD/MP3 player, even as a CD. I bet there are alot of other car cd players out there that they won't work in either. Stupid stupid stupid.

Ah well, it's not about the little people anyway. It's all about greed and control...

Re:Good news, but more work still needs to be done

[OmegaDan]

Also I wholeheartedly agree with Virgin's statement: "As retailers we do support the fight against copyright theft, however this should never be at the expense of the customer."

Isn't that always how it works though? The last steinberg product I ever bought was a copy of LM4 -- it had this *whacky* copy protection that was incompatible with win2k (the installer always detected a pirated copy in win2k, and we're only talking about a 60$ program here) ... So I ended up having to use the pirate version anyways ... Steinberg! listen up! I'll start buying your products again when you grow the fuck up. .

It would fscking help if I were able to see them!

[Anonymous Coward]

It was overcast where I was- thank you so very much for reminding me about that fact!

Kudos.

[Weird Dave]

Thanks for making me see the light! Why would I want to support a band who doesn't want me to listen to their music? I really mean it.

For some reason, this issue WAS pissing me off, but now I see so clearly that if I let the RIAA tell me what to listen to, then I am clearly part of the problem.

Punishment

[jimbolaya]

From the Register article, and from the patent filing that another reader posted, it sounds as if the speaker damage might have been a design goal, or at least a side-effect that they are using to pitch the technique as "punishment" for "pirates." "You copy our CD, will ya? Let's see how you enjoy it when you play it on your blown speakers?!?" Well, let's see how many CD I continue to purchase to play on my blown speakers.

Former record retailer viewpoint

[erik_fredricks]

I ran a record store for several years, and we had a great copy-protection scheme in place-we didn't allow consumers to return opened product. This policy exists specifically to prevent folks from copying something and returning it. Once you opened it, you kept it. As far as I know, most retailers still stick to this policy.

The main reason for this was that the distributors only let us return opened product at a penalty, if they let us return it at all. We'd replace defectives for the same title, but that was the limit of our liability.

Of course, now that the labels are sending out intentionally defective product, I'm glad I'm no longer in the business. These are the same labels that promised us that cd's would be less than $10 within a few years after the arrival of the format.

Thing is, one of the ugly side effects pointed out in the letter is the fact that the fallout from this whole thing unfairly places Mr. Retailer right in the middle. The label doesn't have to listen to consumers' complaints. Grr...
--
erik

Re:Former record retailer viewpoint

[Anonymous Coward]

Thing is, one of the ugly side effects pointed out in the letter is the fact that the fallout from this whole thing unfairly places Mr. Retailer right in the middle.

If the retailer is going to take the heat for the defective products, then a mutant retailer who researches the products they sell, and screens out the defective ones, may have an evolutionary (profit!) advantage.

This leads to an environment where the record companies make defective CDs, but the stores will not accept them, so that title is never on the shelves, so no one ever hears the music, so the record company that makes defective CDs has only expenses but no sales. Evolutionary advantage goes to the companies that produce defect-free CDs. Long-term, fraud doesn't pay.

Re:Former record retailer viewpoint

[Todd Knarr]

Unfortunately, in most of the US a retailer can't get away with refusing to accept returns on defective products. The UCC requires warranty of merchantibility and fitness for purpose, and manufacturers and retailers aren't allowed to disclaim those warranties. All it takes is one customer getting ticked and talking to a lawyer, and the floodgates open.

And yes, the retailer's caught in the middle. A smart retailer would look at this and refuse to carry product that's going to cost him money. The label doesn't have to listen to consumer complaints, but they'll sure as Hell listen to major retail chains that won't carry their product because the retailers can't make a profit on it. Which is the only thing that'll kill these copy-prevention schemes for good.

We won!

[eyeball]

The Slashdot Scooby gang wins another one. We can all go home now.

Re:We won!

[ilsa]

And they'd have gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for those meddling kids! ;-)

What's the point?

[The Welsh Avenger]

I can't see the point in investing in these elaborate copy protection technologies in the first place. There's always going to be a workaround as long as there are stereos with audio outputs and PCs with audio inputs. It just means that you need a stereo and an audio cable and an extra 2 minutes to hook them up. As someone already noted this will deter Joe Sixpack, but not serious music 'pirates'.
It doesn't matter how difficult it is to copy the music, because once it's copied it can spread illegaly as much as any other song through filesharing systems. Only now people are forced to use the mp3 if they want to listen on their computers, and casual listeners can't easily copy the music to mp3 for personal fair use. Schemes like this will hardly affect music 'piracy' at all, if anything they'll make it more rampant by marginalising PC listeners.

1 guy is enough

[xant]

So hardcore cracker geek takes down the protection. Coos to all his friends: "I broke it!" Copies the tracks for them. They sign on to Morpheus (so does he). Now tracks are in Joe Sixpack's home, 2 days later. Next week, everyone on the net has them.

Oops.

Re:1 guy is enough

[Bourbon Man]

Or, Joe Twelvepack has a CD/MP3/ETC player, and now his new music CD won't play. I have one at home and in my car, there's no way I'd buy this crap

And lest we forget. . .

[xant]

Joe Sixpack attempts to legally make copies of his own CDs for backup (as I do, with all my CDs). NOW the copy protection makes a difference, because he can't do that.

So he signs on to the net, downloads the copies illegally for backup instead.

Oops.

Sony wouldn't shoot self in foot.

[Anonymous Coward]

Won't this hurt Sony's interests in producing portable players? I'm sure they thought of that, so there's probably a back-door designed specifically for Sony software to rip a sony CD, in a "sony format" for sony's new portable sony player.

I thought it was legal to rip MP3's for personal use, such as playing them in car stereos, or using a hard drive as a CD storage device. In fact, I think there is a whole industry who believes this...

Any portable electronics made in any other country? It's time to demand a tarif on Japanese electronics, because they harm the interests of other electronics companies. (Yea, I know it's just sony, but can most countries tarif a specific manufacturer)

He's got a magnet...everybody BACK-UP!

[GISboy]

Ok, I'll admit I am not a l337 |-|4X0R, but seeing as the "corrupted disks" contain a player for the tracks on the computer (if I read that right) would it not be possible to correct the errors on the cd?

Exactly like the DeCSS key were obtained, in a way, one company (Xing in DeCSS's example) does not protect the keys in the app enough and one person discovers this.

Or, compare the data track to the pre-ripped mp3's for a higher quality rip (say 320K vs 128K) by using the ripping routines compared to the data extraction routines.

I'll probably wind up repeating myself (developers, developers...) but the mp3 codec is not "bad/illegal" in and of itself but it seems as if the 'use of' is being villified or "circumveted" (ins't that illegal under the DMCA?).

Sometimes I really, really wonder what the MPAA/RIAA et al hope to accomplish with these so called "technologies", but all too often it is over looked that your rights of "fair use/space/time shifting" are not at issue but the excercising of those rights are.

Trying to legislate morality, humm, deja vu, all over again.

Re:He's got a magnet...everybody BACK-UP!

[Kanon]

They don't. The cd has a data track that contains *very* poor mp3 copies of the songs in a single big file and a crappy player.

Some comments about the Cactus patent

[mochan_s]

P-channel that corresponds to portion 58 has been set to 0. This is because standard 908-compliant CD encoding circuitry does not directly provide for the copying of the P-channel from a source CD that is being duplicated. Rather, the CD encoding circuitry itself decided when and how to set the P-channel. During duplication the CD encoding circuitry merely sets the P-channel=0 while recording to the data are, and therefore the P-channel setting of portion 60 is ignored. Thus, during playback, the substituted audio data portion 58 is provided to the digital-to-analog converter as normal data, resulting in audio distortion and potentially damaging the output circuitry.

Why does this prevent ripping? You can rip to WAV (ignore the p-blocks which a CD-reader does)? It only explots the fact that CDR specs has a "fault" on it when you directly pass them bit for bit data it just doesn't flag the control data at all.

I mean (not to violate DMCA or anything), there could potentially be software that would strip these p-blocks out of the read stream before passing it to the CDR drive since the p-blocks are just "potentially circuitry damaging" signals and don't contribute to anything to the positive CD-features.

A Precident for Liability

[Stonan]

In British Columbia (as well as other areas, I'm sure)if a theif slips on some ice while breaking into your home, he can sue for damages. In the 80's a theif successfully sued a car owner for putting razor blades on his car stereo and caused the theif to loose 2 fingers.

Blowing up your speakers (which couls also do damage to whatever they're hooked up to) as well as inconvienence, trama (from the 'explosion), public embarasment (if it happens while you're hosting a party or blowing someone else's system if you lend the CD to someone)could equal a very large and nasty lawsuit.

If you can sue for your coffee being too hot, why not go for the gusto?

Consumer electronics

[havana9]

I think that recording industries making deliberatly damaged cd will
upset not only consumers, but also AV electronics manufacturers.
In a mall or in an household appliances show, the devices you could
find are DVD players, CD recorders, AV amplifiers (with digital inputs),
and ghetto blasters or similar small CD/Tape/Tuner combo.
Separate power amplifiers, tape decks or tuners are a rarity in these
shops, not to mention turntables. If you will buy one of these, you have
to resort in a specialized hi-fi shop, and even in one of these you
can find more CD writers or DVD players than cassette recorders, and
anyway a decent dual tape deck costs more than a CD/CD-RW combo.
The average consumer, having to buy some appliances, is easy that
will buy a DVD player plus an AV digital amplifier rather than a
standard CD player. And these damaged discs will not play, either because
the DVD player got confused by the wrong TOC or because the DAC into
the AV amplifer doesn't recognise the damaged signal from the Toslink
input.
If the consumer goes into an hi-fi shop to buy a new CD player, is
possible that will have similar problems: newer ones that will read
both CDR and CDRW, can also handle multi session audio CD. I think that
a person that buys, say, a 900 euro Marantz CD 6000 KIS, or a 2400 euro
Teac VRDS-25X could become a bit upset if can't listen most of the new
CD has just bought.
Maybe will tell what happened to one of his friends, that will stick
to the older CD player and instead will buy a 1000 Euro Thorens TD 166
and a 600 euro Ortofon MC 20, a decent soundcard, and then will make
mp3 of all new 33 rpms he bought. :-)

This whole argument is simple math...

[Newer Guy]

When I buy a CD I pay for 100% of the music. When a record company deliberately puts errors on the CD so my player is in error concealment when I'm playing a pristine CD, they are robbing me of my $$ and MY MUSIC! Unlike error correction, error concealment TAKES AWAY DATA (read: MUSIC) THAT CAN NOT BE RECOVERED!! Now, let's say that I get a scratch on my (formerly pristine) CD. NOW there are NEW errors in addition to the ones PUT THERE by the record company. NOW my CD won't play at all...but a CD without THEIR (added) errors would. Therefore, the math is this: I pay 18 bucks for a CD and get about half of the data that's supposed to be on said CD. Also, I'm getting a CD that isn't nearly as tolerant of scratches as the older ones. Also, I'm getting a CD whose songs I can't put on my Rio...or play at my computer..or on the DVD player in my living room...I can only play it on the stereo in the den... Finally, I'm getting a CD that just might blow up the amp and/or speakers of said stereo in my den.... In other (simpler) words, I'm being RIPPED OFF!

Re:This whole argument is simple math...

[Anonymous Coward]

When I buy a CD I pay for 100% of the music.

Stop right there. This is the US -- post-DMCA. By now, you have paid for exactly what the vendor says you paid for, not what common sense or past law (fair use included) would lead you to believe you paid for.

Remember, the fact that I have a sofware CD in hand, along with a receipt for it marked "Paid in full" means only that I have purchased a license to do whatever the vendor has decided I may do, even if that includes never running said software while sitting in a chair different from the one I was sitting in when I installed it on the only PC in the universe that I will ever be allowed to run it on.

bleh

[Velex]

Ruri put it best: "They're all idiots."

Ok, so Sony, who cowed my college into banning downloading of "copyrighted information" (not just Sony's, mind you, but everything, which, because of current common law, actually does include everything, even copylefted stuff), is going to create CDs that, when copied, destroy other people's real property.

gah

Ok, let me get this straight: I can play the original, because it is read. But, magically, I can't play a burned copy? Ok, if this works with traditional copy methods, why not just instead ignore distinctions between all kinds of data on the cd, control, audio, digital, etc., and just copy an exact replica? Correct me if I'm wrong, but if it can be read, it can be written. Anything else would mean that it couldn't be read in the first place.

Re:bleh

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in [an on-campus apartment] here at GVSU and I still have my ominous warning that was put into our mailboxes about a month ago -- does this look familiar?

NETPORT USERS
Copyright Infringment Notice

Students living in on-campus housing who have netport connections -- please read this information. You do not have authorization to download certain materials, specifically recordings, that are copyrighted. There have been several instances this semester in which students are using Aimster to download sound files which belong to Sony Music Entertainment, Inc. When Grand Valley State University receives a complaint from Sony (or other parties) about copyright infringement, we are obligated to take action and the netport connection to the room will be disabled. If you have questions contact...
EOF

Oh, goody! I'd get to have the cable company hook me up with a cable connection and just get my Internet service through them instead of Happy Valley! sigh.

Competative Product

[_Sprocket_]

On that note, why has the music industry not taken a tip from mints? After all, why don't more people forge money all over the place? Because it is too expensive. (i.e. Printing equipment, speical paper, etc etc.)

Quite a few years a go, I spent some time in the Middle East - Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. At the time, these countries did not honor international treaties concerning copyright. There was an entire industry of counterfeit products - some of which caught my attention were software (you paid for the floppies which were duplicated while-you-wait), software manuals, and music.

Counterfeit music stores were everywhere. Racks and racks of cheap, unlabled tapes housed in cheap covers with questionable artwork (side note: artwork blacked out "excessive" female skin in accordance with local laws but Madonna's erotica-laddened lyrics went unscathed). The recordings themselves were suitable enough. The tapes made use of extra space by including a few tracks from simular artists (kind of a bonus). And the product, while cheap, was inexpensive.

One would expect that legitimate music products couldn't exist in this environment. One would be wrong.

First - at the time, it seems that CDs were too expensive to create (CD burners weren't as inexpensive then). Legitimate CDs were sold on racks right accross from the counterfeit tapes. Which kind of makes sense - the product was too expensive to create and sell cheaply, yet there was added value in this format. There was a market for them.

I was very suprised to find legitimate tapes at a store in Kuwait City. Most of the music stores I had seen were, frankly, low-budget affairs. This particular store would have been at home in any mall in the US. It was chock full of CDs, listening stations, stereo equipment, conterfeit tapes, and a wide selection of legitimate tapes. Prominent over the legitimate tape selection was a (I believe Sony) sign extolling the high quality of legitimate tape music products.

And the legitimate tapes were selling.

The price for the legit tapes were a bit more than the conterfeit tapes. But they had obvious advantages in quality. That combination of a reasonable price and better quality tape offered a competitive product to cheap knock-offs.

Its interesting to watch the music industry now. Their control over distribution is crumbling. The market they're used to is being eroded by the free flow of data (legitimate or not). Its got to be stressful to watch your industry's business plan evaporate.

But all's not lost for them. They've competed in this kind of market with the Middle East. It all comes down to a competative product. Provide something of value at a reasonable price. The music industry has the resources to create a great product at a price point that would be difficult for conterfeiters to compete with - and may even make it worth the public's time to purchase rather than try and copy/pirate.

Re:Competative Product

[Anonymous Coward]

"the product, while cheap, was inexpensive."

Er... are cheap products <i>ususally</i> expensive?

Re:Competative Product

[_Sprocket_]

I was making a little joke. Cheap quality. Inexpensive price. Yea - I know, it was lame. :)

Easy enough to mod your COTS cd player

[SegFault]

All COTS cd players have a DAC. Acheiving perfect digital reproduction is a simple matter of intercepting the clock, channel, and data lines going to the DAC. The cd player control circuitry has already made the error correction, and this data is ready to be converted to analog. The data will almost always be in I2C format (I squared C). Some professional equipment uses this format and can accept it directly. There are commonly available chips to convert i2c to sp/dif (this is how you can upgrade your old analog output cd changer to a analog + digital for cheap). There is also the possibility to build a usb interface for ripping. If you do that you might as well hook into your cd player's control buttons and make a computer controled cd changer.

Would be a fun project for some EE student.

Beyond Insightful - mod this up

[Anonymous Coward]

and if you don't, at least read the damn post

a good example is RATM

[Technodummy]

they have a US bill with "You are not a slave" on it in what looks like red texta.

But there are also other reasons to copy money. If you are trying to convey the meaning of money without text, a picture is the obvious way to go.

Some very good points.

[WowTIP]

I would also like to add that in "my" opinion, the problem isn't the illegal copying, the problem is the overpriced CDs.

Here in Sweden, most CDs cost more than $15 and an empty CD cost less than $1. Considering that the music companies probably don't even pay anything near $1/CD when pressing them, you'll wonder where all the money goes?

Yes, they do have marketing costs, recording costs and salaries, but do the really need a $10(?) margin for every CD sold? And IIRC, LPs cost around $6 to $10. Don't try to tell me that it would be more expensive pressing CDs than LPs. Guess they noticed that ppl would still buy CDs at a much higher price even after they reduced the manufacturing costs.

I don't think most people would go through the hassle of downloading and burning CDs if they could get an original press for, let's say, 6 to 8 dollars?

But I guess it is easier for them to sell 5 CDs than 15 and still make the same amount of money. Logistic costs and stuff like that.

Re:Midbars patent application for Cactus Data Shie

[Chris Johnson]

I don't think they can guarantee the same method of interpolation is in use in all CD players. Some might interpolate between surrounding good samples, others might just hold the last good sample until the next good one comes along. You can't guarantee what sort of error correction is in use.

For that reason, the name 'Cactus Data Shield' is very appropriate: when ripped it is full of 'spikes' ruining the music, when perfectly interpolated it may possibly be sample-for-sample identical (assuming the substituted samples are ONLY those where surrounding samples interpolated will return the exact, precise amount- I'm not at all sure this is a safe assumption), but when imperfectly interpolated the _best_ output still has traces of the 'cactus spines'- like stubs :)

On a CD player with inferior interpolation it is probably slightly more sonic degradation than you get from DVD-A watermarking because watermarking is bandlimited to avoid the more sensitive areas of hearing, and this 'residual cactus spikes' effect will reach into the highs and spit out artifacts on steep wave slopes.

I know that in debugging azumith-correction algorithms I could hear high-frequency artifacts of just one sample duration when they were of this nature- a departure from the even slope of a waveform. I would respectfully suggest that the dangers of inadequate error correction are more severe and audible than the CDS guys are ready to admit, and that on many CD players traces of high frequency crackling and grunge will still be audible even after 'interpolation'...

As an indie music maven and audio tool coder I have to say I am just tickled by all this. How nice of the music industry cartel to ruin the quality of their products FOR me, thus making it easier for people in basements and dorm rooms to produce music that's actually better than the cartel makes. A few more years of that and they'll have done serious damage to the former popular opinion that industry music is more professional than unsigned music :)

Re:Good news, but more work still needs to be done

[benb]

> I have no objection to meaures that prevent only illegal or immoral behaviour

I don't know such a thing, nor can I imagine one.

My conclusion: All "copy protection" is evil, only more or less so.

(BTW: My personal, *absolutely minimal* requirements for "fair use":
I own the work for my personal use and that of my household. I can do with it whatever I want as long as I don't give it to other people (or those of my household).
Most importantly:
- I can copy it, with full quality, any number of times, for backups, my car, my mp3man etc.
- I can use it fully with standard software (i.e. complying to open standards, implemented by open-source software)
- (Implied by the last requirement:) No one controls or watches the *use* (play etc.) of the work.

Any copy protection violating any of that is unproportionally deprives me of my rights and is thus IMO unconstitutional (even if written into a law).

subsonic / hypersonic audio and hi-fi audio amps

[Brian Ristuccia]

first off you have an audio amplifier there, not a broadband amplifier. there is built in (intentional or just to keep costs down) filters that remove subsonic and hypersonic elements. reproducing anything above human hearing is a waste of money and anything below 20Hz is moronic. (I doubt you have a room in your house that can hold a wave from anything lower than 40Hz. Otherwise you have to be in the near field (2X the speaker diameter in distance from the cone) to hear it.)

Aah, but that's just it. Most good hi-fi audio amplifiers are broadband amplifiers. For example, my NAD 2200 power amplifier uses 25mhz transistors, resulting in bandwidth far exceeding the audiable spectrum. The unit has two sets of inputs, one of which has subsonics and hypersonics filtered and one which does not. If you're using a pre-amp and CD player which you trust not to induce its own junk into the audio path, you use the unfiltered lab inputs. If not, you use the filtered inputs to avoid wasting capacity amplifing signals that may potentially waste amplifier capacity and damage your speakers. In an unfiltered configuration, you could in theory damage your speakers by playing a CD with lots of subsonics and hypersonics just like the poster describes.

Re:Good news, but more work still needs to be done

[nathanh]

This paper argues that intangible files, such as MP3s will never replace the role of physical objects such as LPs, CDs and casettes since music enthusiasts are collectors, and just the ability to listen to music is not enough, rather a tangible object is desired.

This sounds wacky, but I think it's true. I got a bunch of MP3s of Primus. I had heard the odd Primus song before and after hearing a whole bunch of MP3s I realised I liked them.

Now I could have just burnt their songs onto CD-R and be done with it. I only listen to CDs on a discman these days anyway, so I don't care too much about sound quality. 128kbps MP3 is good enough for me.

Instead I went and bought every Primus album I could find. I'm not sure why. It would have only cost me $5 to put all the MP3s onto CD-R, print off the album covers, and I'd have something not half-bad without the effort. Buying the CDs was a relatively difficult thing to do!

Re:subsonic / hypersonic audio and hi-fi audio amp

[Lumpy]

your speakers are not designed for this. your crossovers (if you have any... real high end is tri-amped with active DSP systems shaping the audio for each driver.) will dump to ground anything over 50Khz and dampen the low frequencies.

Low end, the worst thing possible is DC, and your amp and crossiver will not allow that in.
High end... >50Khz will do nothing to a tweeter... it cannot make it past the inductance that is the speaker coil, let alone the components.

It's just basic electronic theory.. capacatance, resistance and inductance. then in speakers acouatical engineering comes in... but that has nothing to do with the audio source just reproduction of the audio.

copyright and DVD player

[bob_jenkins]

I just bought a DVD player. I peeked behind my entertainment unit at the big tangle of boxes and cords, found some promising terminals, and plugged it in.

The picture cycled from clear, to grey, then back again. Hum. Checked the user manual, and it was due to copy protection! The DVD player had to be plugged directly to the TV or it wouldn't work. But I wanted to play the sound through my good speakers, not the TV's speakers. I tried plugging it into the amplifier. Now the video was clear, but the sound was distorted. User manual says, copy protection: it's supposed to be that way. OK, so I hooked it directly to the TV. Now I could play DVDs. But now the VCR wasn't plugged in. Perhaps I could hook the VCR through the DVD player? No, no terminals for that. Perhaps the TV had two sets of video terminals? It did!

I still don't have the DVD playing through my good speakers. I haven't exhausted all combinations of terminals though. Perhaps there's an audio output from the TV that can be routed to the good speakers, without turning on the copy protection noise or the video distortion.

If the TV didn't have the spare set of video inputs, I'd send the DVD player back because the copyright protection measures would prevent me from using a VCR. But the TV did have a spare set of video terminals. Not being able to play the DVD through good speakers isn't annoying enough to be worth the effort of returning it.

Re:copyright and DVD player

[Anonymous Coward]

what sort of el-cheapo DVD player doesn't have seperate audio output(s) to connect straight to your amplifier?

Re:copyright and DVD player

[Anonymous Coward]

"But I wanted to play the sound through my good speakers, not the TV's speakers. I tried plugging it into the amplifier. Now the video was clear, but the sound was distorted"

He did try pluggin the seperate audio outputs into the amplifier. It resulted in noise. Read a bit mroe carefully next time.

Re:copyright and DVD player

[Anonymous Coward]

Return it anyway, please !

It's broken (deliberately, to be sure, but still broken). By keeping it, you're telling the manufacturer that we'll accept broken hardware. Please, tell them instead that we won't - then they have an incentive to stop making broken hardware.

Boycott 'em all

[gruntvald]

I will not be participating in the DVD "revolution", and I stopped buying music, cold turkey, last year after Napster was shut down, and two reports came out : 1) record profits for the music industry *despite* napster, 2) admitting they'd been grossly overcharging for CD's for 18 YEARS!!!!!!! Forget 'em, I won't fund their greed any more. Use the money you'd be donating to these obnoxious pigs and spend it on a high speed net connection, large hard disk, CDRW setup. It's payback time.

Music channels?

[SuperKendall]

I don't know about you, but my cable system has a lot of pure music-only channels - I don't think he was talking about grabbing the audio off of music videos.

That sound stream may be equally compressed, but I don't know of the details offhand.

You're Right... and Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh so I get it an audio CD player is analog but a CDROM is digital... Bzzzt.

Well, you're right, but you've missed what's going on:

The audio standard (for CDs) trades longer playing time for reduced ability to absolutely correct errors. (There's less redundant data.) The digital standard (for CD-ROMs) includes more check-data with lower absolute capacity. (You can't get a CD's worth of .WAV files on a CD-ROM.)

The playback/reading methods are also different. When you load a music CD and press play, the resulting digital datastream is routed to an onboard decoder chip which converts the digital audio data to analog and sends it to the drive's audio outputs. The decoding process designed to tolerate all but the most severe errors: First it corrects any errors that it can, then attempts to conceal any errors that it can't correct. Only if the concealment doesn't work does it fail, and then only for a limited time. (A 1/2-second burp on a 79-minute disc shouldn't prevent the rest of the disc from playing.)

When you're reading a data disc, (or when you're using a rip program that reads the audio CD as digital data), you use the drive's internal data-validation routines. With data, you (usually) don't want errors that can't be fixed to be quietly concealed (think tax tables with wrong numbers in them, or a one-byte error in an .EXE), so the drive is set up to choke if it runs into an error that it can't correct.

What the Cactus and related systems try to do is add just enough bad bits to the data stream that CD-ROM drives will choke when reading the disc as data, without adding "detectable" degredation when the same data is processed as digital audio through the audio decoder chip. Problem is, that assumes that all players have the same tolerance for bad data (unlikely), that the all players will react to bad data in the same way (so you can predict what corruption is "safe"), and that all listeners have the same standards for what's "undetectable" (don't make me laugh). Plus the fact that intentionally corrupting the data makes a less robust disc; one more likely to fail if things like fingerprints, scratches, or dirty laser lenses further degrade the signal. Not pretty!

Yes, there should be a way around this. IIRC, cdparanoia does something like what you suggest. I don't think you'd want to implement this at the driver level, though, unless it was coded to allow you to switch the correction routine on and off. Because, as noted above, there are times you need to know that the data's bad and can't be fixed (or has been fudged).
----------
Quality AC posts since 1999.

Gratuitous Link

[Anonymous Coward]

Info at CDDA Paranoia Homepage.

hmmm

[Scooter]

1.. If the player can read the original, then so can a copier - I don't see how the data can be magically readable by one device and not by another when both devices predate the format.

2.. I hope this doesn't catch on - I don't want to go back to furtling around though boxes of 5 inch plastic disks to find the track I'm after - making you keep the distribution media is like having to keep all the packaging from everything you ever bought.

This is not the way to go - ownership needs to be registered somewhere (or "right to listen/watch etc"). Thats the way software license mostly work - physically posessing the distribution CD does not mean you have the right to use it - this is dealth with elsewhere - the disk is irrelavent. Just as having a brick in your hand does not give you the *right* to chuck it through a shop window and rob the place. This crypto CD plan is like trying to invent a brick that will only allow itself to be used for wall building - "Powered by stoopid" will be the logo no doubt.. (or "idiot outside".)

Stand up for your right to edit

[epeus]

In the name of Digital Rights Management, corporations prevent you from editing or copying stuff they have published to you. This is odd, and at at odds with the spirit of Copyright.
No-one can tell you how much of their book to read, or the order you can read it in. Why do they presume to do so with sound or video? Why must I look at a green FBI notice for 15 seconds at the start of a DVD?

It is the act of re-publishing where the potential copyright violation occurs, not the act of viewing or editing.

Reject uneditable content and say why. Rights are for people, not digits or management.

trivial workaround with regular CD player, cable

[fanatic]

1. Put cd in regular CD player.
2. Cable from line-out of CD player to line-in jack of sound-card
3. Start sound-to-wav converter and CD player.
4. Encode wav to mp3.

wavrec and bladeenc work good under linux for steps 3 and 4, but there has to be something similar for windoze.

It's easier to rip straight from the CD, but the quality difference probably isn't noticeable after MP3 encoding (this is a guess). This method guarantees that there will be MP3 on the net of any decent tracks 20 minutes after the CD hits the shelf. And once the first one's out, that's all she wrote baby. Eat my dust, RIAA!

But while we're doing this, don't forget to oppose the SSSCA absolutely and to agitate for the repeal of DMCA. The real danger lies in the next generation of hardware and formats, where more protection is built into the hardware.

Re:Exactlty! Great comparison! - Copy protection

[Anonymous Coward]

Many color photocopiers implement copy protection (seriously!). They will detect that you're trying to copy money, and screw up the colors so it looks fake (unless you resize it). Try it sometime. I'm not sure if color printers have the same "feature".

Re:subsonic / hypersonic audio and hi-fi audio amp

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt a any real high end audio buff would admit to having a DSP anywhere near his/her system.

Some high end and not so high end amps have NO DC protection.

Re:subsonic / hypersonic audio and hi-fi audio amp

[Anonymous Coward]

whatever, if you dont have DC protection then you bought crap... Ever hear of Fuses? only the crappiest amps dont fuse the outputs.

warez/mp3 kiddies

[Anonymous Coward]

all these posts to the effect of "cant i just plug my 20$ stereo into my 5$ sound card and encode the resulting wav with my latest eleet hax0r copy of XING/FHG/whatever..." perfectly illustrates why i stopped collecting music retrieved from the internet a long, long time ago. If its good enough to listen to, its good enough to either own the cd or acquire the cd from someone who does and rip it yourself, if you give half a shit about quality.

Three words...

[Tassach]

"Small Claims Court". Small suits like this are what small claims court is all about. A lawyer is not required (but it helps to talk to one first) -- the procedures are steamlined and are designed so that non-lawyers have a fighting chance, even if up against a real lawyer. There's a statutory cap on the damages you can claim ($2500 in Maryland, IIRC), but other than that there are few restrictions. It's about the only venue left where an ordinary person can get justice against a megacorp -- frequently they will accept a judgement without a fight, because it would cost them more to send a lawyer then it would to pay off the claim. The downside is it can take a very long time to get a court date, because of the tremendous backlog, and you do have to pay a bunch of fees and do a lot of paperwork yourself.

Be careful.

[Anonymous Coward]

A similar thing happened here in Oxford - a student was found to have downloaded four (yes, four!) MP3s of Sony material. Suspended, I believe.

Taliban copy protection system

[__4096]

The Taliban had an effective method of preventing people from copying cd's... Unfortunately it also meant never listening to CD's (or tapes or radio or TV) ever again.

Re:Midbars patent application for Cactus Data Shie

[realdpk]

Sure would be nice if we could mod up past +5, thi s deserves a +10, Funny, Informative, FootInMouth

Re:Old amps

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, yes. I still have a scar on my finger from an incident with my Dynaco Stereo 400. While DJ'ing a gig, I noticed that the sound had stopped from the left channel. Upon investigation, I found that a metal buckle had fallen across the output jacks. I reached over and pulled it off--Damm! it was nearly red hot. Even more impressive was that the sound immediately resumed. Back then 200 Watts a channel meant (FTC rules) 200 Watts RMS from each channel, all channels driven, basically all day long (I think the test was an hour, but anything that could make it through the test could do it forever). Unfortunatly, consumer electronics companies bought a majority share in the FTC, so the "400W" amp in the store today couldn't sustain 400W if it was on fire.

Re: I know

[Jebediah21]

All I was saying was that the RIAA can (and does) affect people in other countries. I know and listen to plenty of stuff from Scandinavia, England, and elsewhere. It still sounds like you have gone through the RIAA to get about 20 of your CD's.