Slashdot Mirror
Next Restricted CD Coming Soon
jroysdon writes: "Music industry quietly unveiling copy-proof CDs - 'Gariano said the CD case would carry a copy protection sticker and an insert explaining the technology. Record stores will accept returns, even if the CD case is opened, if buyers are unhappy with it.' I say we specifically look for titles with this sticker, purchase them, give them a whirl in our PCs and see them not play, and return them. Vote with not just our money, but their overhead costs to handle all the returned merchandise and bad publicity when stores don't want CDs with those stickers." Read the article - there are some great quotes there.
"I own upwards of 800 CDs, but it seems like they're on a crusade against me," he said. "It's a strange development when you seem to be hellbent on alienating your best customers."
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Yet another 'uncopyable' cd format. The way I see it, they're actually screwing themselves, because now people will crack & rip mp3s AND still be able to get their money back. Lets hope this one backfires on the RIAA real quick.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
But would the RIAA even get the message after record stores stopped accepting said CDs? I mean, they sort of have a monopoly. If they wanted, they could run all the music stores out of business :/
you know they put this on such a random, sure fire non-platinum cd for a reson. they want to see us break the shit so they can make it better ! Which I'm sure people will do.
it seems like the solution to piracy is to make it not play in your computer. but then it doesnt play in dvd players and mp3/cd players. so i think companies that make these products should also be complaining. and are these cds red book standard?
If only Apple would have known about this....
I laugh when I hear that something has copy protection. I give it a month before someone cracks it.
Any task seems complicated until one learns how to do it. After that, it's just another task.
Hook it to a soundcard with optical in, problem solved.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
I would like to know if these CDs can be played in the Xbox? Microsoft want's the next X-station to be the bridge to the home entertainment PC - so now what? I don't have a home stereo because it's supposed to be a PC that can do everything. And I can't play music because the audio industry hates the PC.
Quite the little map for the future me thinks.
"Thoughts are more powerful than any weapon, and I don't even let my people own guns." --Joseph Stalin
Before you return them, rip em with a good ol' Hi-fi settup, and then post them on all you favorite swap services. In otherwords, give the labels a double finger.
If I buy a CD I want to be able to rip it. Seems to me pre-ripped CDs would sell better than normal CDs, these again better than copy-fooed CDs. This should be apparent to the buisness people in the companies (not the idiot lawyers), and the copy-fooed should soon head the dodo's way.
This is not a signature.
While the poster's plan to return these cds will show an increase in sales, the massive amount of returns will hit them where it actually hurts. People that don't have computers (or burn cds) will buy roughly 80%-90% of these cds, the 10% of returns will drive stores insane and they will "prefer" not to stock them even if the album sells well.
While a record company doesnt care, a store has a vested interest in not having 1 of every 9 or 10 of an album returned with an angry customer. The stores want to keep the customer happy and these cds piss them off. Do the math.
Remember you are dealing with people who cant handle jobs that require thought.
They wont allow you to return the cd because it's open. because they were told not to.
you need to open it, return it for another, open that and continue for 3-4 of the stock and then get a manager, explain how you have tried several and none work, take your open disc and have the manager try to play it on a dvd player or a pc.
The manager will probably clear and return the whole stock of the offending item to keep his annoyance down.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I'd just like everyone here to know that I'm to blame for all this.
I copy files like crazy on Kazaa. I burn them on CD's. I seldom buy music anymore, because I can get it free.
A big sorry to all those of you who will be able to listen to less and less music on your computers/in your car. A big sorry to all those who use Kazaa for only legitimate purposes (hi Dan!)
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
I say we specifically look for titles with this sticker, purchase them, give them a whirl in our PCs and see them not play, and return them. Vote with not just our money, but their overhead costs to handle all the returned merchandise and bad publicity when stores don't want CDs with those stickers."
I think that we should simply _not_ buy these CDs. That alone will speak louder than purchasing said CD and then returning it. Check the label (man are they stupid for marking these things), if it has the "new" copy protection, move on. They'll get the hint after a week or two of no sales.
We don't want to hurt the local retailer, or even the big chain. That is one sure-fired way to get the increased costs passed on to the consumer.
There was an article on this in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, Dead Tree Version. They mention "slashdot.com" in the article actually.
Anyway, they say that the new CD's won't play on Macintosh, but are designed for Windoze. It's More evidence that WMP and WinXP are designed to bring DRM restrictions to the desktop, and most individuals either don't know or don't care how bad this is.
"This is not about piracy; this is about controlling consumer behavior," Von Lohmann
Love that quote.
Perhaps as they slowly introduce it to the rest of the population people will realize that thier habits will have to change(my mom rips and so does my little brother to avoid playing toaster oven all the time)
Perhaps they will force people to educate themselves on which CD's to purchase and not purchase. perhaps not.
-THIS SPACE FOR RENT!
From the article:
Midbar Tech's Noam Zur called copy-protection critics a fringe group that probably are pirates themselves. "Mainly those people have a large number of compilations on their PCs," Zur said.
Oh really Noam? At least you're not making any broad assumptions there. Say, did you know that music piracy actually STEALS billions of dollars from the industry each year?
Maybe he should call the EFF and hear what they have to say about it? After all they criticize copy protection.. therefore they must be a fringe group that supports piracy. I bet they have lots of "compilations" on their PCs, which we can safely assume are illegal (who would want to put songs on their computer if they already own the CD?)
What amuses me is how useless they'll find this to be. It only takes one person who can get a clean digital transfer, to populate file sharing networks with a song. They can't seriously think they'll prevent 100% of the copying. Of course they'll fight any attempts at interoperability (they call it piracy) with the DMCA.
As long as you can hear the music, there is no way they can actually copy protect it. You can simply connect the line out of a CD-Player to the line in of your sound card and then record the resulting song on a computer. Any watermarks in the song though will still exist, but as long as you have software that ignores those watermarks it should still continue to play.
I guess in the future they could also design all sound cards and recording devices to detect watermarks. Then you would be stuck looking for technology that predates these restrictions. I'm sure the music industry has a long term goal like this.
Bide your time. Wait a couple years. Let the recording arts industry invest millions into changing over all production to the new uncopyable CD format.
THEN, crack it.
Seriously though, I fail to understand the whole concept of copy protected CD : if I were to buy one of these CD at the price they're sold and I couldn't MP3 it directly with cdparanoia, I'd just play it on my standalone CD deck, digitize the audio and MP3 the captured data. In fact, I'd do that just because the RIAA doesn't want me to. The only thing I would lose is a little quality (not much, my deck is a good one), a little time to split the audio block into its original tracks, and no time at all renaming the tracks to what's written on the CD cover (which I always do/have to do anyway). The most time-consuming task of course would be to split the tracks at the right position, but I'm sure a small C program can help me do that in less than 5 minutes. Then after I'm done, say after 10 minutes of manual work, and 1 hour MP3ing everything and burning the files onto a CD, I store my original CD in a corner and enjoy the convenience of my MP3s anyway : it's a one-off job, and it really is worth doing, so at the end of the day, the RIAA's brain-dead schemes will just end up annoying the crap out of everybody and not prevent any copying at all.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
vote with not just our money, but their overhead costs to handle all the returned merchandise and bad publicity when stores don't want CDs with those stickers
And what will this prove? That you really *were* going to copy the data to your computer and likely let your friends to the same? Look, if you're against this sort of thing then you shouldn't be looking to a giant record company to be providing you with your music. Listen to freely available MP3 files instead. Oh, they suck, do they? Well isn't that a surprise.
This won't become the standard. Contrary to popular belief, the music industry does like people using portable players, computers, etc to listen to music. They just want it in a secure format. Once they brainwash everyone into dropping CD and adopting a new format, you'll be able to activate your disc online, make a certain number of copies to devices, etc., before they decide it's time to deactivate your music.
Of course none of this restricts anyone's fair use rights, and consumers won't find this at all annoying. I'll be happy when their carefully thought out scheme is adopted by exactly zero people, like DIVX and SDMI..
Before, the one person who ripped the cd and put it on the file sharing networks had to pay for the cd. Now, with this new ruling, he'll open the case, rip the cd with his stereo+optical out+sblive and RETURN THE CD TO THE STORE. Wow. That's cool, prestige in the ripper community at zero cost and risk. That takes all the fun away.
Um... I didn't do it!
I buy music cd's because the dvd-player (wonderful invention, that) won't play cd-r or cd-rw. If the dvd-player won't play the cd's I buy out of stores, where is my incentive to buy music cd's?
AC.
They mentioned that 3 of the 5 major labels (possibly the most frightening fact in the article...only FIVE?!?!?) are signed on with Midbar Tech. What I wonder is whether stereo component companies like Philips (and other makers of audio-CD only player/recorders) will raise a stink against this. If it becomes widespread, it means major hardware revenue losses for them.
WTF? Who in their right mind would link a page to Modesto Bee? Granted, they've always carried Dave Barry's column for as long as I can remember, I just never expected to see a link to Modesto Bee... Blech. Well, few more hours of work, and it's time to head over to Modesto to see my parents...
Ok, so they're trying this "protection" out on the music tracks for the movie "Fast and the Furious".
So, now that its hit SlashDot, I expect hundreds (to thousands?) of curious geeks may travel out to their local music store, and buy a CD of a pretty awful movie that they (the readers) most likely would not have purchased under normal circumstances.
So, you're all going to head out in the name of science, and dump $20 on a CD, and plug it into your computer/DVD player. 80% of you will probably be using older drives/hardware (I still own a 2x IDE drive) that wont listen when this CD sends the copy-controls crap, and most likely you'll be able to read it like a normal CD. Or, wait a week for software upgrade, and you will. In any case, sooner or later you'll be able to rip it like normal, and the stores sure as hell won't be giving refunds.
Well, you're now stuck with a CD, and Universal just got a nice surge of capital to work on the development of "NeverCopyCD v2".
Show your anger by not buying it! Better yet, don't buy anything put out by Universal this Christmas, that'll shock them a lot more...
This will *never8 stop the true pirates...the ones that make thousands of CD's and have people selling them on street corners in big cities. It only hurts "casual copying", which is a small % of the overall problem. Same as Microsoft's activation policy...since when did the average consumer become the enemy?
Hey music industry: crack down on the counterfeit rings, that is where you are losing billions of dollars.
and when you do, be sure to share the mp3 on gnutella, for those who don't have such a good deck.
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
that this continuous bullshit actually ends up hurting the already-ailing economy (here in the States). Sure, they're trying out their lovely "technology" on less-than-outrageously-popular CDs, but that doesn't help retail outlets any...
A lot of folks here are talking about sticking it to them where it hurts, namely by buying the CSs and then returning the after they're opened. This *will* hurt retail outlets who stock the discs. Unfortunately, we don't really have any other true recourse in the matter, so I have to support this course of action.
Yes, it's true that after a few thousand returned CDs, the retail guys and gals will probably get fed up and refuse to stock such "protected" CDs. The RIAA will eventually have to stop playing these stupid, asshole games with their customer base if they want to see their precious money continue to flow. How long it will take to get this through their thick heads is anybody's guess.
In the end, IT DOES NOT MATTER WHAT "PROTECTION" THEY ATTEMPT TO USE. If I can play the damned thing, I can use hi-fi equipment to dupe it. From there, I can do anything I want with the information. I can keep it for my personal, private fair-use play, or I can post it to every file-swapping network in existence. Will I personally post music ripped in this manner? Probably not (although the temptation is growing, yes indeedy). I'm CERTAIN that many, many other people will post the ripped tracks, however.
The folks behind this insanity are just plain stupid. They've been slow to embrace the concept of selling their music properly over the net, and choose instead to spend their money on dead-end paths such as paying attorneys to harass people. I laugh my ass off at them every time one of these stories breaks.
RIAA and pals, have fun hurting the economy while you can. You're only hurting yourselves in the end.
Web hosting by geeks, for geeks. Starting at $4 USD per month.
If you're gonna email, use the public key!
Let me get this straight. They want to make CDs unable to be transferred to an electronic format that can be copied over the internet. Plus they want me to buy an electronic copy (which, incidentally, can be copied over the internet). Am I missing something here?
This "copy protection" is silly. It won't be long before somebody cracks it... even then, there is still nothing stopping me from putting one of these CDs into a regular CD player, piping the audio into my line input jack, and encoding from that.
In fact, I prefer to encode all my CDs because I can mix/equalize them easier on my PC making them sound much better than unequalized CD audio. I do that because my PC is primary entertainment device... I made an investment in a nice sound system for my PC, and I'm sure that I'm not the only one.
This whole "copy protection" concept is really silly, and I believe it violates my right to fair use of the products I will purchase. I will continue to encode my CDs, thats all there is to it.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
Why do people rent videos, instead of copying them from a friend who rented it?
Because renting a video is easy and cheap.
If there was a service that let me download music legitimately, I would use it.
It would need to be easy, and the catalogue would need to be extensive. I'd need to get a better file than an MP3 - actually, I should be getting better quality than current CDs. And it would need to be cheap. There's lots of songs I'd only pay $.25 cents for.
$0.25 > $0.00
$0.25 * 100,000,000 > $0.00
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
WTF? Who in their right mind would link a page to Modesto Bee? Granted, they've always carried Dave Barry's column for as long as I can remember, I just never expected to see a link to Modesto Bee... Blech. Well, few more hours of work, and it's time to head over to Modesto to see my parents...
Tell Gary Condidit I said hello....
Consumers should show some self control and not buy any of these copy protected CDs--no matter how much they really want them.
I find it amazing that the people making these albums allow something like this to happen. Why spend boatloads of money recording and mastering an album--making it sound as good as possible--when the record label is going to turn around and intentionally add distortion to your music?
I don't suppose that even if the record labels were successful in increasing their revenues by reducing piracy, that the price of CDs would drop. We would essentially just be getting a flawed product for the same amount of money.
I would think something like "More Music from the Fast and the Furious" would have a sort of natural copy protection. Oh, and then there's that massive black market in pirated Charlie Pride albums.
Wonder if the RIAA member corporations have any pirated software on their internal networks?
Argh, matey!!
it doesnt matter who it is. stop being racest
Midbar is full of thievs and morons. Their technology has been talked about as ineffective and even non-existant.
Just about everyone in the industry think of midbar and those that run it as the laughingstock of the industry.
Basically thieves trying to convince everyone they have something to sell.
Sure it may feel great to stick it to the major labels by apparently screwing them over twice, but it surely isn't N'Sync, Britney, or even the RIAA suits paying for reshelving costs. It's the owners of the franchise outlets that have to put up with it. Those poor bastards usually have enough expenses to deal with, including ungodly rent in malls, etc. And just remember about the price-fixing crap of a few years ago (of which I think the RIAA/whoever eventually were found guilty in some suit). Just let poor sales speak for themselves.
Or perhaps food service. Would you like fries with that?
In a related article, a new copyright protection form is in place. The Music industry is now distributing music in an old IBM mainframe. In order to listen to music, a certified IBM mechanic will come and set up one sound file in machine code to play on your personal mainframe.
m l
"We need to do this in order to change the way people listen to music. Their behaviors." Mr Noam complained. "Those who can't fit a IBM in their boxes will have to come up to corporate headcquarters to listen to music in our RIAA muzak devices, or rent space at a cafe and listen to the Jukebox"
When asked if people would take to the idea of a IBM technician with a plummer's crack coming into their homes to play only one song, Mr. Noam stated, " We have a picture of a guy who looks pretty happy with his IBM MonoSound system. He's happy! Doesn't he look happy to you?"
http://www.columbia.edu/acis/history/collage.ht
http://cincyboys.blogspot.com/ Everything Cincinnati. Including the word 'Finnih'
I swear, the moment these things cross the border, I'll be on my MLA's ass like a fat kid on Smarties.
Honestly, every time I puchase a CD-R, I am paying a levy that gets redistributed to the record companies for the priviledge of being able to record music at home. The moment that I can no longer do so, it's -- repeat after me -- "taxation without compensation".
Otherwise: buy-return-complain-rinse-wash-repeat
I'm sure it will be economically unsound to distribute CDs in a format that the consumer does not want. Namely, ones that prevent fair-usage rights...the one's that I'm already being taxed on.
This is what I want to know about these technologies - what do they to the inherent error correction in a CD? A lot of them say that they are implemented by putting bad data in redundant tracks. Aren't these redundant areas used to make my scratched up CD's play smoothly? Will all my CD's need to be kept perfect to remain clear now?
I simply do not understand how this prevents the ripping or copying of CDs. Anyone who owns a CD player with a digital out (optical or SPDIF connector) and a high-quality external CD recorder can create an _identical_ digital copy (with correct track breaks). Since the copy of the original would not be copy-protected itself, it could then be used to mass-duplicate the original CD using any normal internal CD-ROM writer device. From there, MP3s would be produced and traded around the world.
By angering consumers who purchase these CDs with copy protection, the companies that promote technologies such as this are only shooting themselves in the foot. Consumers will only buy products that are usable everywhere.
It is simply impossible to prevent people from copying audio (or video, for that matter) content. If you can hear the sound coming out of speakers, it can be duplicated. Period.
While total copy prevention is bad for us consumers, no protection at all is bad for the producers. Instead of the childish stimulus-response behaviour against all forms of copy-protection, we need to work with the content producers in order to develop a scheme that helps both consumers (by encouraging fair-use) and producers (by preventing large-scale robbery of copyrighted works). They are willing to please the consumers (remember, they have to in order to keeping getting our dollars), so instead of rejecting it, make constructive criticisms. This is the only way we are going to be able to full realize the benefits of digital information.
Then obviously they'll just take off the stickers again.
I'd like it better that way anyway. It's like gambling, but you can actually win. When you catch one of the defectives, you get to berrate that guy at the store that can't appreciate your impeccable musical taste!
It's not so much of a sport as "Stump the Radio Shack Drone", but it's more challenging.
Slightly offtopic, but did anyone else have problems ripping this CD? When I used cdparanoia, it really screwed with the reiserfs partition I was ripping the wavs to. I've never had a problem with any other cd. Luckily, I use a 1 gig scratch partition for stuff like this, so I didn't have to go through the hassle of restoring the entire drive.
First, use a credit card. Keep the receipt and the packaging.
Second, take it home. Do not play it on a standard CD player. Play it on your home PC, your MP3/CD player, something likely to not work "flawlessly".
Third, since it failed to work there - take it back to the store. Insist on a full credit card reversal of charges, including sales tax. If they balk, deny the charges via Visa or Mastercard. Point out that you will do this. Ask to see the manager at the first sign of hesitation. Do not accept an in-store credit or partial refund.
Fourth, file a complaint with your State Attorney General for misleading business practices. Use the info from the insert slip that you copied down when you bought it. Each of these must be investigated as attempted consumer fraud. Which they are. You can't sell shoddy or imperfect goods as if they were standard goods, and unless the ADVERTISEMENT pointed that out in large letters, they have committed an implicit fraud on you the innocent buyer.
Fifth, file with the FTC under the same claim.
Sixth, sue them in small claims court for time and trouble, travel expense (36 cents per mile to and from), postage, and any other expenses.
Seventh, send an email to the execs of the record company who did this.
Eighth, send a postcard to the artist who had their music polluted. Point out you will never buy their music again, you are so offended.
Ninth, have a merry christmas!
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
I have no problem whatsoever with these 'restricted CD' things as long as they are clearly labeled as such, so I know they aren't a normal CD. No problem whatsoever.
Under the Electronic Privacy Act, I thought there was something that said you can't sell software with virus code in it.
This is virus code.
Sue them, as a True Canadian.
And have a Molson's on me!
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
If you've seen the movies and music that are hacked the "cheap way" overseas, you know that they're going to put up with a few DAC loops to get the music out. Copy protection takes a whole step downward once pushed through pipes like that (although its not impossible).
I WILL buy CDs from artists I like, but only buy downloading/ripping the ones I like and mailing a personal check to the band (via member,fan club/agent) for how much I think its worth.
Yes, I also pay for shareware. I can't code and sleep at night otherwise. Call me the fool, but I want the SOURCES of things I like to continue, even through the nutjob management decisions.
Right now, bands make the most money from you directly when you organize your friends to hit the club and pay the cover and then leave with discs and t-shirts.
mug
+/-
pickle me elmo
I don't understand why this is such a big deal. Sure you can't pop it into your CD-ROM drive and rip the entire CD. But, what is to stop you from hooking the Auxillary OUT of your stereo to the Line IN port of your soundcard?
If they think that this is going to stop us from ripping MP3s they are in for a rude awakening!
I'm afraid that given the music and motion picture industry's paranoia regarding piracy, some type of copy protection will become standard. I've seen quotes in recent press stories that the industry expects to loose 5% of it's customer's because of this. The person quote was perfectly happy with that amount.
The reason of course is they believe they are losing much more money to piracy!. While we in the US have some fair use rights, the copyright owners don't have any obligation to make it easy or even possible for consumer to exercise these rights. And with the DMCA they can keep most people from being able to get around copy protections. This means that only the technical elite will be able to enjoy fair use rights in the near future.
If you have concerns about this I suggest that you do 3 things.
1) Write your Congressman and Senator. Yes you hear this all the time. But the be assured that the Music Industry is doing that. That is what the RIAA is... A Lobbying group for the Music Industry.
2) Support the EFF. They are on the front lines of trying to fight this type of limiting of our rights.
3) Support the ACLU. The ACLU are also on the front lines in a wide range of issues.
One more note of clarification, the RIAA is an association of the largest music publishers. While they claim 100's of member, there are really only 5 publishers that matter. I believe these are
Universal
Bertelsmann/BMG
Sony
EMI
Aol/Time Warner
Most of the other labels you hear about are subsidiaries of these companies or very small.
Buying an returing the CD will send a clear message to anyone who's paying attention. It makes it clear that you're pissed of with the CD. If you just refuse to buy it, what does that accomplish? No one will ever get your message. A 5% return rate will speak louder than a 5% drop in sales.
WASHINGTON (AP) - There may not have been much fanfare for a new CD called "More Music from The Fast and the Furious," but that is the album the music industry's heavy hitters have decided to make sure is copy-proof.
for the record, the album appears to be "More Music for The Fast and the Furious". The article makes it sound like a movie soundtrack further down the story, although I am not positive.
while I support the idea of buying and returning these albums to make a point, lets try to realize the people working the cash registers probably aren't the ones deciding what copy protection scheme to implement this month. make a point of enumerating your reasons for a return, but let's also make a point of not getting personally angry with store level employees. if a few of us manage to purchase the cd a couple of times at different stores, I think the bottom line will speak loud enough for itself.
full length albums complete with print resolution artwork -- earth2willi.com
Obviously the previous poster is wrong! The music that you like is actually the good stuff, while the music that he likes is really shit. Thanks for clearing that up.
Uhh, yea, it's all well and good to buy a CD and return it, keeping up an endless cycle. But evertime you do that, you end up paying sales tax, and you don't get that money back when you return an item.
No man is an island, But if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie them together, they make a pretty good raft.
Ah. So if you have an iMac at home, pop the CD in, and since it doesn't work, return it to the store for a full refund. Make sure you use a credit card, and insist on a full reversal, including sales tax.
If they balk, talk to the manager, point out you will reverse the charges with the credit card company. If they balk, reverse the charges.
Then report them to your state attorney general (on the web) and the FTC (on the web).
There's justice - and there's revenge. Revenge is best served cold. In heaping spoonfuls.
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--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
I know this is an over simplification, but, as long as there is a signal carrying music to a speaker there is a signal to copy... so the only true copy protection is one that prevents the music from being heard at all which of course... negates the need itself.
I think there are poor employees in any field. That's no reason to imply all of them are stupid.
My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
Who cares? Besides, who wants to pay for music that, apparently by popularity, is considered quality by people who listen to the likes of Britney Spears, N'Sync, Backdoor^H^H^H^Hstreet Boys, Michael Jackson, Creed, and their ilk. Better yet, visit MP3.com and download quality music for free, and then go out to a local bar and watch a local band. Chances are good that the music you hear there is far ebtter than the cruft they're playing on the radio.
Mmmm... Pistol Whip...
Yes. Then the record industry will just stop putting stickers on. That way we'll have no way to know which CDs have this technology, and which don't.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
...ever made. so what if someday, when hackers and DMCA-circumventers get tired and capitulate to the RIAA's tech prowess (hah!), you can't trade the latest the N'Sync 2030 reunion album? guess what, all the music ever recorded and worth listening to will still be freely available without watermarks, SDMI, and anything else they might come up with.
even if in the year 2030 you're a 20-yr. old, wet-behind-the-ears coder frantic because you can't play the Matchbox 20 oldies compilation you just bought, all you need to do is ask one of us greybeards to spot you a file. so who cares if they successfully DRM the next (dare we hope?) Britney Spears CD?
frankly, i'm not the least bit threatened by the RIAA's gestapo tactics as far as my music enjoyment goes. however, their efforts to obliterate your and my human rights in the process leads me to believe that somewhere out there the editors of a certain travel guide are making an entry: "RIAA: A fascist organization whose members will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes," and that a copy of said guide will drop through a worm hole from the future and read "RIAA: A fascist organization whose members were the first against the wall when the revolution came."
"Mainly those people have a large number of compilations on their PCs," Zur said. Midbar's technology protected the Imbruglia CD. Zur dismissed customer complaints and said the CD works on most players. (emphasis again mine)
In other news, America dismissed Israel's complaints of terrorist car-bombs, saying that most countries don't have any problems with Yasser Arafat.
Someone probably already said something along these lines, but in case not (I can't read so many posts)...
The give us CDs and an amazing return policy, which in it self really is quite clever:
By allowing users to return their CDs what have they really done - who is really going to return the CD who wasn't going to before.
They're conceilling their true intentions; give the test dummies CDs accept that they'll be cracked within a couple weeks when the crack arises fix it. Accept the meagre number of returns resulting, if they only do this with singles it'll be easy money for them in the long run. Eventually they'll come up with something that's not so easy to overcome, when they do they'll reap back the money they lost through the extortion of singles (for the price of 4 singles now a days you can get an album) by selling one album with this new protection.
Anyone who buys such albums or singles will surely bring about the end of NEW mp3's. Luckily not everyone likes chart music, dance music etc...
Personally I'd like to see the reduction in the price of singles - so the CD single would cost a fraction of what it currently does.
just because the RIAA would love for you to buy this album doesn't mean there is no choice in the matter. I may buy it and return it like suggested, and of could would do so tactfully since the retail store employees are probably not choosing the encryption-scheme-of-the-month.
there are alternatives however, and I don't necessarily mean Napster or Kazaa or whatever flavor of P2P client of the month, although there are of course plenty of 'legitimate' uses for these programs as well.
for example, nearly 3 full albums of music is available for download complete with print resolution artwork, advertisment free, no login required, and wholly untouched by the RIAA.
slashdot gets lots of 'wacky' submissions about free energy? free energy is to life as linux is to computers.. even open source code needs power..
full length albums complete with print resolution artwork -- earth2willi.com
The essay was an interesting read, but it is all theoretical as to what the future would be. It's obvious what the authors intent writing the article was by reading the last paragraph:
As a musician, I have come to believe that free file sharing is good for the soul. In the short run, we may lose money. But we are a tenacious lot, and we will figure out new ways to make money in cyberspace. If we believe in the future of music-- and I don't mean remarketing rock 'n' roll to each new generation but rather encouraging unbounded creative exploration-- then we should celebrate the open Internet.
My point would be that we should respect what the author of a piece of music wants. If the author says they do not want people copying his music, they should respect that. If another author or musician says that people can freely copy their work, let people do so. In the end, I see it as a matter of morality (if that exists anymore...).
This guy obviously has no pre-teen or teenage children. Everyone I know at work who has kids that age talk about their kids downloading MP3's. We're not talking about rocket scientist kids only here. Everyone.
Beyond that, I'll echo the sentiments of the person who got the last quote in the article; I have 1500 CDs, and while I don't buy a lot these days, it's because music has moved on beyond my tastes for the most part, and because I have a house to support now, not because I'm downloading the same volume of music I used to get on CD.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Because I don't listen to Top 40 music I thought I would be immune to these copy-protected CD's. But it seems smaller or specialized labels are adopting this technology as well - not just Sony, EMI, or whatever. I bought Absu "Tara" at HMV, which is on a "small" label from France, Osmose Productions.
I brought it home and put it in my CD-ROM and it started making a lot of weird sounds, like when you put in a damaged CD. The CD-ROM wouldn't read it but it worked fine in my Discman. I have my entire CD collection on my computer and use it as a giant jukebox. It's an awesome album but I don't want to screw around with CD's.
I did not expect this from a non-corporate label. If record labels put politics and money before music, then can take their CD's and shove them. There's plently of other wicked music out there.
I bought (the European version?) of Eels - Souljacker today and there's a lovely little 'IMPORTANT!' box on the back of the cd case.
:)
It says 'This compact disc can be played on any compact disc player.'
And yes, it works fine.
Come on... Eels rocks!
Quietly accept the copy-prevention scheme the RIAA introduces
Wait until they commit to the technology by exclusively releasing titles with that technology
Then break the scheme and force them to go through the whole development/tech testing/market testing/release cycle again
or
Buy lame artist copy-prevented CD
Break the prevention scheme
Return CD
Repeat ad nauseum
The RIAA has said that it is planning to roll-out a new copy-protection system for CDs. The system should be introduced within a few months, but, unlike previous attempts, the association has claimed that this system will remain uncrack-able. The new system will involve new technology pioneered by Microsoft called "CD-Blank". At the pressing plant, the CD master images are put through a process known as "Blanking" where all the digital sample values are set to '0'. This results in a disk containing data as such:
'000000000000000000000000000000000000' etc.
The process ensures that the disks will remain _completely_ unreadable by PC-CDROM drives. inserting a "CD-Blank" disk in Microsoft Windows for example will cause the message "The disk is not formatted" to appear. However some independent testers have claimed that inserting it into some Windows machines will crash them. At a press conference, a spokesman for the RIAA was asked by a journalist why the CDs would not play on normal CD players. The journalist then went on to claim that the CDs were in fact _blank_ and filled entirely with 0's. When presented with this information, the spokesman went on to explain how this technology could also be used in DVDs, CD-ROMS, and other digital media. meanwhile, the journalist was escorted out of the conference by security
Several crack-taking recording industry figures are said to be interested in the technology
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
When you were told to take time off from Free Republic, they didn't mean to come to Slashdot.
WTF is wrong with the Modesto Bee, you ass??! That little paper got Walt Disney *himself* to draw their old 'Bee' mascot logo for them. And they're part of the same company that publishes the main newspaper for Sacramento - called the Sacramento Bee, of course..
Piss up a flagpole, you YOCAL!
At least they are labeling the CDs as copy protected. Also, it's good to see that the stores will accept returns on opened ones.
I'm just pointing out that it could be worse. They're only fuckin' you over your fair use.
Just write yourself a little program to...
- wait a second
- start recording and start track X off the cd
- when the track ends stop recording
- trim the silence off the ends of the track
- encode the mp3
- repeat for all tracks
Ok, you will be ripping real time, but big deal. Let it go overnight. You will also need to type in your own track info until someone writes a new freedb-like service that uses a fuzzy audio signature instead of the digital signatures.No special hardware or loopback cables are required. (well, maybe one cable if your machine doesn't let you route CD audio to the DAC input) Just a different ripper than you are used to.
Listen up, everyone: the music belongs to the music publishers, not to you. If you want to own music, make it your damn self.
If you don't like their policies for selling their music, then don't buy it. Wasting their money by buying and returning their music is not right. And don't say that it's right because they have lots of money; that argument doesn't work for insurance fraud and it doesn't work here.
generate a flood of people complaining to store managers ... and don't forget to say how upset your friends were when the presents they received didn't work.
im on board with that
________________________________________________
BMG records already had an embarassing setback with this type of scheme in the UK. Customer returns forced them into withdrawing the copy inhibited version and re-releasing a "standard" CD. They're a business, and cannot sell something which people don't want to buy. Returns cost, in real money as well as bad publicity.
It is your civic duty to protect your rights by buying and returning these CDs. The attempt to force copy inhibited products on us can be defeated simply by making digital rights infringement technologies too expensive to introduce.
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
There are a lot more college students than "Audiophiles" and those college students collectivly buy a lot more CD's...
... and maybe the RIAA will back off and stop bothering with copy protection.
That's the bargain that we made with the software vendors in the 80's. (That is, those of us who weren't pre-verbal at the time.)
On the other hand, as long as it's socially acceptable - even cool - to republish copyrighted material I doubt you'll get much sympathy from the RIAA or lawmakers. Even if digital media "wants" to be a free it'll take a decade or two for the RIAA to finally give up - not because they agree, but because they collectively make as much money as the textile or steel companies.
Just remember - by then you'll be a balding old fool complaining about kids these days not respecting the work of their elders, and I won't care, because I'll be dead.
What are you talking about? No matter what fancy tech is in the speaker, you need an analog (+) and (-) to drive the electromagnet...
And even if there was a new-fangled electromagnet that took encrypted input, there is still going to be analog sound coming out of the speaker itself. Get a REALLY good mic, and set up the speaker in a REALLY good acoustical room, and make your copy.
So to ammend the previous statement:
If I can see it or hear it, so can my "recording" device.
Digital music market analyst Lee Black of Webnoize said most people who listen to music on their computers, usually as MP3 files, aren't buying CDs anyway.
Lee Black of Webnoize is a complete fucking moron. Mr. Black, you don't have a clue what you are talking about. I don't know anyone who still listens to their original CDs; they convert them to MP3 format the second they buy them and put the CD in a box. How else do you explain the millions of portable, car and home based MP3 players being sold in this country?
OHHhhhh, that's right, you really believe that none of these people buy CDs. Nope - they all steal the music they listen to. I guess the 30GB of MP3 files on my server cancel out the thousand some odd CDs in my collection. Well, Mr. Black, fuck you for accusing me. Fuck you and everyone else who shares your idiotic viewpoint. Crawl back into the hole you came from and don't come out until you've got half a clue.
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
Tower is doing a great job putting themselves out of business as we speak. Half the shelves are empty at the local Tower here in Concord. They used to be the BEST book store around for Sci-Fi and Fantasy, now they don't even sell books.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
the used record store in Berkely has the coolest employees. The KNOW music....
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
"If you want to get MP3s, you'd probably just download them somewhere else."
So, that's how all mp3s come about? You just download them from somewhere else? Funny, but I copy my CDs so that I can load them on mp3 CDs, which just happen to let me take hours and hours of music on a single disc. It's good to know that I've been stupid this, and I'll stop buying CDs.
I mean, I figure if I'm going to be labelled a criminal, I might as well be one.
Personally, im not against "protecting" CD's this way, simply because its not me wasting my money, its the record industry.
:)
And yes, I do intend to go buy a dusin CDs or so, and complain about them not working with my CD player.
Has anyone else seen that commercial that has been playing (not sure the channel) here in Ontario by Sony for their minidisk players? They say right in the commercial "download music right off the interenet"... does this kinda, well, not go along with the rest of their practices? And how will those nice little minidisk players/recorders that come with the special PC USB adaptor to transfer music work if the CD's are protected? hmmmm.
An optimist believes we live in the best world possible; a pessimist fears this is true.
I expect that it will take people no longer than four days tops. (probably much shorter) Point your browsers at CloneCd for the latest news on the workarounds. They also list a program called Cloney that detects copy protection , but its only availble in German. It checks for all the various CD Protection schemes. Now if I could only read the instructons.
If they take it back opened, you can copy it to your PC via analog, convert it to MP3, share it with all your friends, and return it for a full refund. What a brilliant move on the part of the music industry.
My point would be that we should respect what the author of a piece of music wants. If the author says they do not want people copying his music, they should respect that. If another author or musician says that people can freely copy their work, let people do so. In the end, I see it as a matter of morality (if that exists anymore...).
"Morality"? You have got to be kidding me. How is it somehow "moral" to say that the creator/discoverer of something is entitled to dictate its use? What about the morality of societally-determined "fair-use"? Doesn't that supercede the wishes of an individual?
You say "that we should respect what the author of a piece of music wants" -- well, what if s/he only wants members of a certain race/religion/gender/ethnicity to be allowed to listen to it?
What if s/he thinks that only certain groups should be allowed to make archival copies, and others are SOL?
What if s/he thinks you should pay them $1,000,000 every time you happen to hear a song they wrote, even if you just were flipping radio channels or walking down the street?
Do you really mean that the artists get to dictate ALL the terms of a work's use, no matter how restrictive and irrational???
Fact is, no matter how much the producers of a product want to control use, they don't hold all the aces (and they shouldn't, either).
I get 1 gig for 3 dollars a month with cphosting.com
"Piracy" is a convienient excuse for the record companies when their latest crap album doesn't sell. "Ooh. Piracy".
Watch. When their crap music still doesn't sell when it's copy protected, "Ooh. Evil Hackers broke our copy protection."
Exactly the same thing happened with copy protected floppies for games. Game doesn't sell? Blame it on "pirates".
The real "pirates" run CD factories in East Asia or Central America and make CDs indistinguishable from the originals, 10,000 at a time. "Copy protection" won't even slow those guys down.
Last time I priced CDs in quantity, they were $0.35 each. Perhaps if the record companies charged a fair price for the disks?
Welcome to the Turing Tarpit, where everything is possible but nothing interesting is easy.
Vote with your money, yes, but deliberately buying and returning a product you're not interested in to begin with reeks of ballot stuffing to me.
1. Buy the CD
2. Send a letter to the record company asking for a backup copy. Since they won't let you create your own they will surely have them available on demand, won't they?
I don't give a damn how much copy protection crap they try I still have a cd player with a audio out jack and a sound card with a audio in jack. Ha I still rip it to mp3 and give it to everybody.
Once they catch on to the peeps recording off Home installed Satellite Radios they'll want to shut down that industry too.
Poor shmucks at XM Radio. Get your Lawyers lined up now. Seems no one beats these guys
is that if the average user can't rip their own Cd's to play in their mp3 player (now a very popular consumer item) they're going to look elsewhere for mp3 files. This is going to encourage piracy and illegitimate copying. If I want to go jogging and listen to various tracks from my CD collection I can either rip my own CD's or same some time and download the tracks. But, if I can't rip my own disc's I might stop buying them altogether and just download them.
If there are no legitimate uses for cd ripping left (i.e. all new discs are protected) then cd ripping will be the next thing to be made illegal. This will be especailly true if the Cd's are protected as you'll be breaking the DCMA in the USA.
Something to think about.
MattB
they'll just put a license agreement (label) on the outside of cd's and when you open you'll agree. Frankly it is time for software users (right, music = software? dude wtf am I saying?)
OPEN SOURCE TIME MACHINE PROJECT RIGHT HERE! RIGHT NOW! WHO WANTS TO GO back to the sixties? Why am I shouting?
The record industry is hell bent on alienating their customer base by treating every single one of them, without exception, as criminals
saddling consumers with all sorts of stupid shit-broken protection mechanisms
slandering and libeling customers and consumer's advocacy groups and basically anyone who dares question the supreme truth of the RIAA
Releasing vacuous drivel like "backstreet boys", "britney spears", "n'sync"... I get horrible flashbacks of "Menudo", "George Michael" etc...
And then they have the gall to whine "record sales are down". Gee I wonder why, you stupid fuckwits...
Simply open a record store. Make a copy of the CD (various methods above) and sell the two together. Since you own a copy of the original you have the right to make a copy for personal use. Fuck these assholes.
I have more than 450 CDs that I purchased over the years. I've ripped all of them to MP3 so that I can listen to them at home and at work without transporting them. I havn't given copies of this library to my friends, because it's nearly 40GB. I recently bought an iPod, and I'll be using that to listen to some of this music in my car.
How do honest customers like myself make the music industry aware that not everyone ripping CDs is trading them on the Internet?
Or is the industry just happy to have a scapegoat to distract from their fear of losing the "media upgrade" market?
With US law written by corporations defending their income, how can us ordinary citizens protect our Fair Use copyrights?
saddling consumers with all sorts of stupid shit-broken protection mechanisms
Nope, thats not why record sales are down... How many copy protected CDs have been released? One, two? I can't think, but it is a very small number. Even if nobody bought them that wouldn't dent sales.
slandering and libeling customers and consumer's advocacy groups and basically anyone who dares question the supreme truth of the RIAA
The record industry is hell bent on alienating their customer base by treating every single one of them, without exception, as criminals
Just because it gets a lot of play in the geek circles doesn't mean the general public knows about it. I have see virtually no high profile coverage of this in the conventional media. If people don't know about this it can't hurt music sales.
Releasing vacuous drivel like "backstreet boys", "britney spears", "n'sync"
Record sales aren't down because of this. Just because record companies release crap doesn't make me stop buying the music I like.
I don't know why music sales are down, and personally I don't care. If music comes out that I like, I will buy it. If I can't exercise my fair use rights on it, I will take it back.
would I need the Fast and the Furious soundtrack when I have the svc...uhhhh...never mind, carry on....
I'm sure these CD's will remain as safe as DVDs... as safe as SMDI.... as safe as a Locked doo.... as Germany's Enigm... as the Watergate scanda.... Clinton's affai...
Damn, I guess they sure proved me wrong, you can keep people from excercising their rights. Just when I thought I had the right to free speech...the stopped it by keeping me from finishing a thought.
(Harvey Corman: "Me using viagra is like putting a brand new flagpole on top of a condemned building"....not related, just funny as hell)
I guess the next step is security thru obscurity, if you can't see the code, you can't break the protection on it.
(mmmmphh, snort..../me struggles to keep composure)
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
Does any one know how BeOS handles these unCDs?
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
The RIAA could make all audio CDs actually be Hybrid Audio/Data CDs. And then screw up the Data part so that it makes the computer view the CD as unreadable, or freezes the computer up (I have seen this happen a few times on Windows with bad CDs), or gives you a virus (autorun...).
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Whether consumers will care when they see a newly bought CD can't be copied remains to be seen. Digital music market analyst Lee Black of Webnoize said most people who listen to music on their computers, usually as MP3 files, aren't buying CDs anyway.
"The majority of people who buy CDs aren't these highly technical people," Black said. "If you want to get MP3s, you'd probably just download them somewhere else."
That quote really m akes me laugh... I listen to MP3 files all the time... and evey one that I own was ripped from a CD that I bought.. not downloaded.
ugh.
Check out this essay by Jaron Lanier
Ewww.... that looks like Earse.cx. Did that illustrator get his idea from some goat site?
But then I scrolled down to the bottom and noticed the irony: a publication of The Walt Disney Company, known in political circles as the biggest corporate sponsor of the Slippery Slope Towards Perpetual Copyright Establishment Act (commonly called the Bono Act), just endorsed Napster.
Whenever I buy a DVD, I make a matching contribution to a civil liberties charity.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Is it posible that this "protection" is encoded in the bit stream itself, preventing a spdif/light pipe/AES-EBU transfer from a external source to a DAC or pc sound card?
What if you put the CD in a normal player and then tapped the digital stream _before_ it went through the DAC, feed it into a computer, and thus get a perfect copy (but without the control codes/tracks etc. Does the same not apply to DVD? All this should require is a kind of mod-chip like conversion. Or, if you put it in a nice CD player, and used a decent line cable and a good sound card you could create a copy that was basically the same (if its going through mp3 or ogg then its going to loose quality anyway.
Oh yeah, i forgot. In america, line cables are banned under the DMCA.
--- A youth was arrested today at JFK for attempting to smuggle oxygen-free, gold-plate line cables in from europe. Police estimate the stash could of had a street price of upto $19 and 12 cents! --
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Midbar Tech's Noam Zur called copy-protection critics a fringe group that probably are pirates themselves.
Good morning students. For your second lesson in blatant self-serving lies, replace "copy-protection critics" with "Isrealis", and "pirates" with "terrorists".
I searched Yahoo's Ian Hopper archive for a copy and couldn't find one (Ian writes some nice technical pieces, and I've been reading him for a while). I get the Modesto Bee each day as an email with links to stories on their site. It's kinda nice. Although I'm not claiming to be in my right mind ;-)'
Of course, I go and look at the link and now they have the story. Funny that Yahoo has a date of "Friday November 30 4:20 PM ET," while the ModBee story shows "November 30, 2001 Posted: 06:24:00 AM PST". No doubt it's just when *they* got the story.
Its called capitalism and globalisation and is the reason why the entire world hates America:
Capitalism - definition:
Everyone is free to do what they want, so companies grow.
Quickly, the small companies fall behind, and the large companies grow. Soon there is just one, this is called a monopoly (see Microsoft). Large companies affect government policies through things called 'donations' a donation can by you a law that makes it illigal for people to own photocopiers for example. Soon, large corporations create laws, and the capitalist country is no longer capitalist - it has been socialised by the capitalists (if that makes any sense). The capitalist government, soon sees that being part of the socialist movement is a well paid position and allows itself to be bought by the companies. The end.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Piracy Ruins Vanilla Ice's Career
Artist blames MP3 sharing services for slow sales
Popular recording artist Vanilla Ice released a statement today blaming MP3 piracy for slow sales on his latest rap album, Ize Back in Da Hood. The new album has only sold 57 copies since being released in July, and despite a $40million advertising campaign.
"I can't understand it," says Ice. "Other artists like Britney Spears and N'Sync are selling millions of records, and living in the lap of luxury. But nobody wants to buy my record. I know it's a good record, so it must be the MP3 pirates."
Ice, whose latest album includes the hit single "White People Smell Funny", is planning a lawsuit against anyone with a computer science degree. "What a bunch of losers. Everybody knows people who program computers are just sitting around planning what to steal or hack into next. I have to send a message to those guys, buy my new album or else!"
As of this writing there are 21 posts at threshold 3, and none of them look at what I consider to be the bigest flaw in this conflict: The 'music industry' seems to think the 'pirates' have disposable income which they are witholding from the industry out of greed.
In other words, the industry seems to think they will get more money if they crack down on so-calleed piracy. However, even if they get perfect control of the data (impossible, I know), they won't get any more money out of consumers. If we had more money we'd be spending it. If I can't get the music I want within my budget, I will simply buy less music. It's true that there are unscrupulous people charging for pirated data, but eliminating that won't improve the industries' position significantly because the people buying those pirated disks probably won't buy official disks ever.
I admit this is a broad over-generalization, but it should be obvious that the effort invested in anti-piracy is squandered. Cut back on the legal staff if you want to keep more money, Mr. Industry!
Shitty, irrelevant music (like mine) is the reason CD sales are down.
Oh, and I have a very, very tiny penis.
Sincerely,
Fred Durst
Really. I could wipe my ass on a blank CD and it would sound better than any of my albums.
Regards,
Sean "Puff Diddly Ding-Dong Doofus" Combs
If the music industry supported and rewarded quality music instead of bland, uninspiring, whiny emo-tripe (like mine), perhaps sales would increase.
And also, I might not be dangerously addicted to prescription stool-softeners.
Later,
Rob Thomas of Matchbox 20
I say we organize... on one day we all go out and buy up all the CDs with the sticker then 2 or 3 days later we all return them on the same day... not only will it eat up their resourses, it will mess with the stores inventory and bookkeeping
I don't understand the attitude about the copy protection. Half the people here seem to think that in a transaction, it's the right of the buyer to dictate terms. It not - the buyer and seller need to agree to terms. If you don't like what they're selling, then don't buy it. Buy something else, or don't buy at all, but respect their right to try to sell something, even if you don't think it's a good value.
I know people here are going to bitch about how it's a monopoly and the free market doesn't apply. That's crap. If you think this, you need to get down to your local independent record store and buy some titles from some independent bands before both of them disappear forever. It'll only be a monopoly if you allow it to be.
I have a friend who pirates stuff, both software and music, and I have debated with him many times why he shouldn't. His excuse it always that the stuff costs too much. So I always ask him, what if he goes into a 7-Eleven to buy a candy bar and in his opinion, it costs too much. So is he going to shoplift it? And he never gets it... "that's different" he says.
The Sony page tells you about all the possible protections they offer innocent record-companies to protect themselves from the evil, criminal, pirating customers... It gives less data then the average PowerPoint-presentation, boet it does give a lot of propoganada (I especially liked this one 'For quite some time the software and music industry have been suffering from the constantly increasing number of illegal CD copies. Particularly in the Business-To-Consumer sector, non-paying*) users have long since become the majority. '. This is about the only mentioning of the word 'user' on their site.
The page then links on to here, the protection Osmose uses. I think I'll fill in their form to get some more info, even if it's just to see how much this costs the labels.
The player mentioned in the e-mail is just a vague promise that the label or artist should put the music online in a streaming format and give the user a code on the CD (no sign of either on these CD's), and guess what, it's based on 'playback license management based on the Windows Media DRM'. Damn, I knew Microsoft had to be involved somewhere...
I always thought smaller, quality labels like Osmose were closer to the bands and the fans and the scene, but it seems like I was wrong and Osmose is in the same league as the big record labels, $ony, AOL/TimeWarner/etc.., and perhaps even MS. I hope I'm wrong on this point, it would be a shame to lose a label like Osmose. Ofcourse I'm gonna let the label, the band, and my recordstore know how pissed I am, and I'm gonna try to find out if they can do this without putting a warning of some kind on the products (I doubt it).
*)non-paying users? I bought both these cd's, and I pay copyright tax on CD-R's.
Oh boy the moderators are sharp today...
When you were told to take time off from Free Republic, they didn't mean to come to Slashdot.
A few days of Democratic Underground should whip you into shape...
Noam's e-mail address is noam@midbartech.com. I encourage you to write him and let him know you are not a pirate. If you do write him, please be polite.
I sent him the following e-mail...
Stand Fast,
tjg.
The Slashdot staff has said that it is planning to roll-out a new moderation system for /. The system should be introduced within a few months, but, unlike previous attempts, the staff has claimed that this system will remain idiotproof.
The new system will involve new technology pioneered by VA Linux called "Cluestick". At the comment page, the moderator is beaten severely for modding up comments such as the parent of this one as "Insightful"
The record labels are spending thousands of dollars funding the counterfeit rings so that they can claim billions of dollars lost to piracy. They get their value back in public sympathy and tax returns.
..I have not bought a CD since 1989 or so. And no, I've never downloaded a song. I just find modern music to be shit, no more no less. I have no need to be-bop my way down the street- I don't listen to music in the house since I'm always busy there, and in the car I listen to news or talk radio. Ie, no need for music. On the few occasions when I feel like listening to music, I pop in one of the hundreds of CDs I bought when I was younger.
I can see how some of you need to listen to Britany Spear's newest crapfest or rap with DJ Doggy-P-Daddy-Boopy-Boo-Funk-Monkey, but when the record companies start producing something resembling music again I may consider buying it. Perhaps some of you should re-consider your attachment to music in the first place. Only my opinion, don't take it as an insult.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
I find it very interesting that Micro$oft is the main culprit behind this new technology. Is it not their own system that also "copies" music? The X-Box has a feature built into it that allows music to be ripped to the hard disk and played during your game. In essence, they're disabling their own machine! It makes no bloddy sense!
13 year old white supremacists are shitty web designers.
Yes, almost all of the 500 CDs sitting on my shelf have been loaded into my PC. And your point is...?
Or a thin kid (like me!) on Smarties. I swear, the Canadian version of Smarties are one of your country's finest exports. Our shitty U.S. product of the same name is the lowest form of trash in comparison.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
When will people understand that 90% of the people are stupid idiots that don't give a rat's ass about "copy protection", just as long as they can buy their N*Sync albums and stare at Brintiny Spears' ass in concerts.
Of course, they'll have a short-term memory when something bad happens and forget to not vote for this one senator, otherwise we'd have the repubs kicked out for impeaching Clinton.
Democracy and capitalism is a bad combination. It's just as bad as a dictatorship and socialism (read: USSR). I still think the Sweds have the best government, though living in the US for the past 20 years has almost destroyed my faith in democracy. (Nevermind capitalism...I think it's the worse possible finacial system anybody's ever thought of.)
Zodiac Survey
How the hell is it that we, in the USA, are reduced to using techniques Heinlein was driven to using in the freaking Soviet Union under Leninist Communism, just to avoid being ripped off and cheated?
Simple. To quote the same article:
All travel in the USSR is controlled at every point by Intourist; you must buy from it all travel, all automobile and guide service, all hotel rooms, all meals -- or if you buy a meal not from Intourist you simply waste a meal already paid for.
First, some important background: Everybody may want to rip you off and cheat you, if they get the chance. This is true under Leninist Communism, American Capitalism, or Stone Age Tribalism. What is supposed to make capitalism relatively immune is the idea that, if you don't like the service that one company is giving you, you can take your business to a competitor; unlike a Communist country where competition was supposedly a sign of inefficiency (why design two different brands of something when people can all use the same one?) or weakness (what's wrong with the State hotels, that you think there should be others?). Choosing competition works: there are countless businesses (McDonalds, Microsoft, Northwest, for example) that have received hundreds of dollars of my money in the past, but that will never see another dime due to various fatal failures of product or service. I don't care if such a company continues to fail its customers, because I have chosen to stop being one of them.
So now, to answer your question, how are we reduced to psychological warfare to avoid being cheated? Because something is different in that "competition" equation, that makes people (including you, apparantly) decide that it is more worthwhile to kick and scream than to go to a competitor.
I suspect there are many such factors. Some suggestions:
People feel more "entitled" now than ever before. Tens of millions have illegally copied music, and decided they liked it. The majority of the country is expecting to be recipients of government wealth transfers when they retire. Government has finally become mostly successful at protecting individual rights, and so we want to make the list of our "rights" as big as possible. The "right" to buy someone else's music on your terms seems to be on the list of most people here. Otherwise, why complain? The CDs are apparantly going to be labeled, so you don't have to buy them.
There are no competitors here. In the narrow view, every piece of music is an individual work that cannot easily be substituted. I'm a U2 fan, which among other things means I give Island Records Corporation money. If I decide that Island Records Corp. is a bastion of evil, I can't exactly the the next U2 CD from another label, and the Backstreet Boys just isn't going to cut it as a substitute. Whoever holds your favorite bands' contracts has a degree of power over you that doesn't exist in a commodity industry.
There are no competitors here. In the broader view, the record companies have a nice oligopoly with significant control over the radio stations and the record stores, and the radio stations and record stores have significant control over what music gets public dollars (and so over what bands continue). A cartel of about a half dozen record companies makes the rules, and it's not easy for others to play.
It's sad, too, because it would be so easy to give artists another distribution channel. Imagine, say, "musichotornot.com", where you got to download a 60 second clip from a musician's track and vote on it, or just see the top voted songs alongside links to their websites? It would be nice to see some way that bands with real talent could become popular without signing their souls away first. mp3.com is a good start, but it's hard to say what they're doing wrong.
He was convinced the USA would collapse before 2000.
The only thing along those lines I recall was the prediction that, between his own health and the threat of nuclear war, he would not make it to see 2000 himself. He was right, unfortunately. He was right for the first reason, fortunately.
to me because i never deal with major releases. rarely will i ever buy anything released (or as a more exact term: distributed) by universal or...ummm, universal and...universal. as an avid music listener and composer this copy protection doesn't really bother me at all. so i can't play or rip a charlie pride or possibly some other boy band disc on my PC. i won't cry over it.
as most of us know, most of the major labels (label?) have so many middle men and procedures that very little of the money off a CD is given to the artist. the artist mostly sells their music to the label to be given promotion and financial advances to be able to pay rent and eat...barely. i was in a group that was signed to a major label which was associated to universal. the group is still paying off a loan the group had taken out to pay for studio time. i believe the label had paid part of the studio fee. the guitarist works as a ticket agent for a local theatre. the drummer is working 70 hours per week as a session drummer and barely makes 15 thousand cdn per year i think. i have to work as a customer service representative for a cellphone company to survive and focus on music in between my shifts.
a lot of the labels i do respect are small ones. one without an almost infinit budget to spend on promotional videos, banners, radio airplay, etc. most of these small labels also split the profits 50/50 between the people behind the label and the artists. the middle people who work for these small labels mostly do it for free. the most they get are free label releases and get into shows. and, most of the time, the label barely breaks even. yet they keep releasing albums whenever they can. why? because they _believe_ in and _love_ music!
the major labels might have had the right intentions in the beginning but they lost it over time. they are always worried about losing anything or even breaking even. there must always be a finacial profit, hence: copy protected CDs.
if i go on a p2p client right now and look for any music i really enjoy i will rarely find any. but if i put in nsync or some other pop stars i get hundreds if not thousands of hits. are we to seriously believe that all these mp3s i'm staring at are killing universal's profits? and even if they are, does that mean they won't be able to throw another few million towards an 'entertaining' music video, meant always to be promotional, instead a truely creative piece of visual art? i wouldn't be surprised there are many truely great thought provoking artists who are washing dishes for a living because their vision doesn't match a potential and exploitable demographic.
major labels aren't the end all/be all of music distribution. i think a lot of you are forgetting that. the music industry, as a giant corporate machine, is useless. they are simply the bigger kid with the biggest wad of cash in their pocket who are able to buy bits of your attention span and environment. this is not a new idea! you all know this i'm sure, but i get the feeling that many of you are leaving it behind.
a lot of artists look up to these great promotional machines as their way of getting larger exposure but they simply don't realize that unless they become quite big the machine will just spit them out and they will be left to fend for themselves yet again. also, major labels invest in cultural fads for finacial gain while most small labels invest in art simply because they enjoy music. who do you think i give more respect as a music lover and an artist?
i know this goes a little off topic, but it does relate to why these copy protection cds aren't really that important unless all you listen to is what universal records is putting out. i'm willing to bet that small record labels find the whole concept of copy protection laughable. they don't necessarily agree with people ripping complete albums and people making complete album copies and never investing any money into their efforts to share music they love, but they do know that mp3s are an excellent way of people knowing about them because they can't afford buying the amount of promotional space and time major labels can. personally i've found MUCH more music and artists i like because of mp3s than watching television or listening to the radio. again, this is not a new idea!
you DON'T need to eat up everything the major labels feed you because what they are feeding you is entertainment for the sake of profit. they almost never give people any challenging or thought provoking art simply because they love it.
here, i'll make it even easier for you: replace 'major labels' with 'microsoft' and 'small labels' with 'open source'. it's almost exactly the same situation.
But don't do this in the USA, unless you want to see laser printer label stock and paperclips declared illegal under the DMCA.
Will the IP mafia ever realize that they are not gods? That shrink-wrap agreements have gotten out of hand?
What I'm tired of is the frigging control of HOW I use whatever I purchase.
If I buy SW there is a gazillion pages of things I can not do with it. (Music CDs don't have this because the book wouldn't fit in the slim case.)
Who do they think they are to tell me what to do? I paid for the damn thing, it's mine. I'll stick the disc in a toaster if I want to regardless of what they write in the accompanying bible of legal-pretend-mumbo-jumbo.
What makes the IP companies so special that they are allowed to do this?
What if every company acted this way? Imagine purchasing a car and when you get home you read the legal bible which states you can only use the car in the state of Oregon (Because that model is intended for Oregonians, but sales people are sales people..). Tough for you, you live in FL and disregard this as utter rubbish. The next day five guys in suits come by, serve you a court order and claim damage for breaking the contract. Impound your car and tough luck getting your $50000 back.
Hey you broke the stupid agreement. Yes it was stupid, but that's no excuse that will help you in court.
In a society that believes in nothing, fear becomes the only agenda ~ Bill Durodié
It's a soundtrack CD for the movie "The Fast and the Furious". The Article had the correct title.
The other big change is that ripping is way more reliable than under Win98. I have a lot of old CDs, including one or two that are 15 years old. As a result I have quite a few with the odd scratch. Under Win98 this was a major hassle as each scratch would cause the ripper to do something innane - often trying analog mode which does not work on my machine since its a USB drive.
These alleged copy protection schemes are not in general designed to defeat linux users. The people who peddle these hacks do not go arround testing out every system on the planet, they just pick the most popular, Win98 and Mac. Fortunately for the alleged copy protection vendors the default drivers on those machines are pretty crappy. They are essentially designed to read data cds and have a minimal ability to read audio CDs.
What the alleged copy protection really does is to exploit bugs in the standard drivers which were written in a different age. Now that people care about ripping music Microsoft have carefully rewritten the O/S so that it plays music really well. I am seriously thinking about buying a PC to use as a dedicated music server as a part of my home audio system. It does the integration job pretty well.
Microsoft don't support MP3 encoding, but you can buy the encoder from three other suppliers for $10. Given that the microsoft encoding uses half the space for like quality and MP3 is also encumbered I don't think that is a bad trade off.
The other item of note is that Microsoft have also given CDDB the push and are running their own music database. This leads to occasional problems with some of my older and somewhat more obscure disks. It will be interesting to see the rate at which this improves since that will indicate the length of time it will take open source alternatives to get off the ground.
So in summary, the reason the anti copy companies are striking now may well be because they know that their wares (often waerez) may not be seen to be very effective in a very short time. It would be very interesting to see what XP does in response to the alleged protected CDs. My skepticism is a result of dealing with the crooks who run companies of that ilk. Cryptographic snakeoil is a plentiful commodity, there will always be companies selling anti-gravity devices.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Britney rules.
Good for the Eels. However, I can't help noticing that they're signed to MCA in Europe, so they're somewhat at the mercy of Universal.
--- Work, worry, consume, die. It's a wonderful life. -- Bill Griffith
Or telling the poor, white trailer trash to put down the pork rinds and quit fucking his 13 year old sister.
... wow, almost looks exactly like this:
http://www.bbspot.com/News/2001/08/encrypt.html
Los Angeles, CA - Major record labels are queuing up to voice
their support for MicroBlinker's new CD encryption technology which they say renders audio
CDs impervious to pirating. Called NoAudio, it sets the standard in CD copy
protection. The scrambling technology works by taking the audio signal and applying
MicroBlinker's patented TotalAttenuation algorithm to prevent the audio content from
being, 'ripped'.
This is what worries me the most - it'll end with buying music that can only be played on one machine. Probably something running Windows XP and that you have to pay a subscription fee every time you boot.
Dammit, these people SO do not represent to musos I chat to after gigs.
Midbar Tech's Noam Zur called copy-protection critics a fringe group that probably are pirates themselves. So I guess we should all be outcast to the "fringes" since we have enough intelligence to figure out what they are actually doing. I'm off to rip off the RIAA some more. This time I don't have to pay.
Let's face it, the RIAA has no clue about how to stop P2P copying. The reality is that if a very small group of dedicated fans want to make copies and can figure out how to do it, P2P technology will make it available to the world.
This fact was proven by one of my favorite (ex)bands: Smashing Pumpkins. Their last album was released on VINYL and only 25 copies were pressed. MP3's were on Napster within 24 hours and good quality MP3's took two weeks. Is there anyone who can't get a copy now?
The RIAA should spend their money trying to find a way to get us to buy rather than keep us from copying.
Viv
Gmail invites for ip
Does anyone know a site where they list all the CDs that have this bs copy protection on them so we can be aware of it. If not, someone here must be itching to start one up... How about www.cdcopylist.com, or something like that. It would be great tool for consumers to find out about the RIAA attempts to "rip" them off.
In addition, people shouldn't worry about the whole CD copy protection thing. I bet that it will be days before someone figures out how to modifiy the way a computer plays a CD in order to extract the digital data (if they haven't already). This way, one would even have to go through the hassle extracting the audio at 1x off of an external CD player. All someone would have to do is figure out how regular CD players behave differently and write a little program that modifies the way the CD is read. After all, digital data is all the same, and if just about any regular CD audio player can read it, then it can't be all that complicated.
Some people just don't fucking get it. The RIAA has proved over and over they are going after "piracy" merely for their own gain. They refuse to pay attention to the reports saying CD sales are up due to the increased exposure of their contracted artists. All of the people chatting away on Yahoo!, MSN, and AOL usually talk to one another because they share some likes and dislikes. Thus is Jonny Coolkid in Citytropolis gets Upandcomingband's New Album makes a copy and sends the best songs to all of his friends on AOL. They say "wow Jonny Coolkid that band rawks!" and soon afterwards look for a copy of that cd for their very own listening pleasure. Count the number of albums you've bought because somebody other than some jackass radio personality suggested it to you.
As for trading music files that just isn't going to stop. No amount of "copy protection" is going to do shit because every audio stream gets to a point where it can't be encrypted any longer. Besides that people won't buy shit if they know they can't make their own copies of it. Not only do I make MP3s of all the CDs I get but I make an exact copy of them as well. I haven't listened to popular radio in a couple years because I couldn't stand the shit they played on any of the stations. I go through alot of CDs because I drive alot. The passenger side of my car ends up littered with little shiny disks because I'm too cheap to buy a CD changer that I'd only get frustrated with anyways. Thus I make copies of everything so it isn't a big deal if a CD ends up with a giant gash on it because I just make another copy when I get home.
Dispite the INCREASED sales of RIAA produced CDs they need to do something about the driven that they fucking sell. Alot of the artists they sign suck and often times aren't very indicitive of the quality of music in a particular genre and then once the artist is done pouring shit into a microphone some jackass engineer gets ahold of it. In order to get the attention of radio listeners they fuck with the gain to make it louder. Not only does this make for louder airplay but it also hides the fact some dude can't sing or play guitar worth a shit. If I want my ass blown off I'll go to a Tenacious D concert thank you very much.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I welcome them to pour millions in to the development of so called uncopyable cd's. We should support this. Why? Because as long as there is something out there that can play the media, than the product can be copied. How? Real easy. Sample the audio from the player, in to a recording device (like my Sony Minidisk recorder) and then replay that to the computer via USB or Firewire or the mic in. Yes, this takes a bit longer than a stright rip from the CD, but it still gets the job done. And it sounds just as nice as a rip direct from the cd.
What I find interesting is, the music industries are crying that they and the artist's are loosing money, yet they can afford to pour MILLIONS in to these pet projects AND give BIG BUCKS to the artist's that make the music industries rich.
Am I the only one here that feels like we are being lied to?
I don't know about you, but it's been a long damned time since I felt like I was living in a free nation. What we're experiencing now is merely the final tightening of the screws. By the time everybody wakes up to the fact that we're slaves, it'll be too late to do anything about it. It only gets darker from here on in, kids!
But I'm not a nihilist. This is exciting! And anyway, the black trench coat look is so Columbine.
I like to think of this period of history as a cross between the final exam for one's personal integrity, and a kick-ass fireworks show. Buckle up and enjoy! Ten points to any objective & rational non-pod-person who lives to see, say, 2015.
-Fantastic Lad
And closed spec hardware isn't much better (see "chipping, playstation")
The problem with corporate mafias like the RIAA is their incredible leverage.
I think you hinted at this, but the overhead you speak of will never reach the record companies. The duplication cost of a CD is next to nothing. Even if the megastores return the CDs they receive back, they're still paying the shipping charges in both directions. Sure, maybe Circuit City will refuse to sell the soundtrack to The Fast and the Furious, but they're not going to refuse NSYNC's next release, even if there's a "Please shoot the salesperson" sticker on the cover. Once the protection (along with associated stickers) is pervasive this overhead simply gets passed on to the consumer by the retailers.
The result:
- they've got the added laugh of provoking all of the dissenters to spend their time and gas returning the CDs
- the record stores are funding their own demise, while the record companies shift sales to a direct, online (more profitable) business model
The only way to really hurt them is to stop buying music. Sure, it's possible, but in the end you still suffer (quality, time, or even lack of desirable entertainment, etc.).Hey RIAA: Here's a tip.. Commission Microsoft to create a database in which listeners must register their serial number to their passport. As an added bonus, they could make CDDB proprietary. Wow, what a great complement to
I'm not a musician, but currently CD sales pay my salary. I work for a large music company, one with many subsidiary record labels and a huge catalog, and I'm right in the middle of the copy-protection war... But it's going on inside the company.
There are some in my company that would agree with those idiotic quotes, about all people being pirates, MP3's are stealing, etc. But most people understand that the old enforced-scarcity model is no longer sustainable, and that a new model must be sought. While I think the investment in anti-rip CD's is a waste, it is essentially the left hand of the industry... The right hand is doing something completely different, and it's cooking up something good.
For instance, my personal mp3 collection is about 300 albums. Great. But in the very near future, I'll have streaming access to tens of thousands of albums... For a monthly fee. But I think I can deal with that. I pay $9.95 a month for my Tivo, $40 for cable... It's a cost I can bear, especially if I don't need to shell out for physical CD's anymore. I don't really need the CD's, as once they're ripped, they go into storage anyway. (And if it bothers you that you wouldn't have offline access, you'll be able to download files to wherever, and burn CD's)
I'm thinking this post is getting a bit off-topic, so I'll come back. The point I'm trying to make is that these anti-rip CD's are not the direction the labels really want to go. It's admittedly a sidetrack. Better things are coming, and there are people on the inside that have some idea of what the heck fair-use is, and whose checkbook pays their salaries. And we're listening.
that is in fact a seriously good idea! not for the music industry, however, but for the sake of computer users everywhere. ALL audio cd's should be made with a data track which merely has an autorun.exe to nuke the hard drive of a windoze box. This way, we dont have clueless windoze fucks running around propogating gay cd rips made with gay windoze software by gay windoze users. The ripping of audio cd's would be left to those who might accidentally know what they are doing, and we would all be better off.
Why not send them such a message, yet also buy and return the CD as well? That way they get hit from both sides. They'll think they lost a sale and also a purchaser.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What I'm trying to say, there has always been copying of music, only the last few years it has been in the spotlight with napster. All along it was widespread, but has happened in a less than "in-yer-face" way via the internet.
Who is going to kick down Jonny's bedroom door just because he is taping off the radio or making a few tapes from a record for his friends? Nobody. Did record sales suffer back then? No.
What are the music cops going to do next - insist that there is a certian percentage of static played on all radio stations, just to make the music uncopyable? Or better yet, each radio station must play a ear splitting screech every 10 seconds to make it impossible for anyone to record off the radio, much less off a CD. Gimmie a break!
Newt-dog
My Doctor prescribed daily nasal saline irrigation, hehe
Can I tell the difference between a well-coded MP3, an audio CD, and a DVD-Audio disk? Sure, in a back-to-back comparison. In a double-blind, single test case? No. I get no better than I would by simply guessing. I promise you, Joe Sixpack isn't going to be able to tell at all -- and that's partially what's moving the sales of mp3 players. It's a more convienent format than CD-ROM, and it sounds "good enough".
They are going to have a hard time getting DVD-Audio and SACD any kind of real market penetration. Remember Minidisk? It even allowed you the ability to make compilations (horrors!) and copy, well before a CD-R was a common-place invention. The general public didn't pick up on it, because there was no compelling reason to replace the massive CD collection they'd built up over the years. The problem the record companies have is that they have built almost the perfect physical distribution system for music. I don't really care about extras on my CDs, they are cool, but I watch them once, maybe twice, say "hey, how neat", and I never look at it again. Even the Sarah McLachlan enhanced CD I have with videos and everything gets treated like every other audio CD I have. I wouldn't have paid extra for the video. CDs are fairly indestructable, have great quality, don't degrade over time or extended use, playable almost everywhere, small enough, portable enough, and now, easily copyable. I have a hard time thinking of how to improve on CDs, short of putting them in a permanent caddy, but then that increases the size, and now there's added cost and moving parts. MP3 is the first thing that's really challenged CDs, and that's because they are MORE portable than a CD, they sound "good enough", and there's no real chance of monetary investment loss. It's a perfect medium for the consumer, and look how popular it's become without any kind of advertising, strong industry support, etc. The record companies will have a hard time now selling any digital music in copy-protected format, because people are getting used to listening to their music where ever they want, having an extra expendable copy for the car, having it on the PC at work in MP3, and on their Rio for jogging. Notice their crackdown on file-sharing sites... CD sales are down. DVD sales are up, so I don't think it's the economy, people are just shifting their entertainment dollars to a seemingly less hostile industry.
Honestly, I don't understand the strong-arm tactics employed here. In a free economy, you don't stay in business by being overtly hostile to your best customers. Perhaps the problem is that CDs aren't in a free economy, and haven't been in 60 years, and the RIAA has gotten used to telling customers what they will like and what they will do. Most consumer items I can think of are either greatly improved from their counterparts fifteen years ago or significantly cheaper -- sometimes both. Why are CDs exactly the same and more expensive?
-------------------------------------------------
Why does it have to be unplayable in a CD-ROM drive? That's not the only way to stop someone from ripping a disc. It's also not the most effective. Consider, the steps to encoding a packet of MP3 audio are:
The digital audio data can be obtained from a number of sources, and one of them is certainly the analog data. So you can not stop this step, unless you stop releasing music. Stopping (3) isn't doable either, because you have no control over the hardware or software used.
The most productive would be to stop (2). You just need to introduce, like Macrovision, distortions that are not audible but still screw up MP3 encoding. This would be a copy protection system under the DMCA, and creating an MP3 encoder to get around it (as could probably easily be done) would be illegal. I am very surprised this has not been tried, and hope I haven't given them any ideas!
And then, someone always mentions this results in a degradation of quality.
Actually, it doesn't have to.
Statistics says that the random errors resulting from noise (say, in digital-analog conversion) will decrease as the square root of the number of times a signal is overlaid over independent noisy copies of itself.
So, if you want to reduce the amount of noise in a signal by half, record the signal four times and overlay. If you want to reduce it by 10, record the signal 100 times and overlay. Depending on how much effort you are willing to put into it, you can reduce the error to any level you want.
Yep, I remember when CDs came out. LPs were selling for about $8-$10, and CDs were priced at around $15. I thought that was a little high, and I figured the price would come down as production was ramped up. How wrong I was. Now, you find many discs in the $18 range. So I figure that the new formats will remain more expensive than CDs. After all, there are helicopter payments that have to be made.
What I simply can't fathom is how the music industry can be so blind to all the hostility they're generating. I mean, people hate these companies, at least the people I talk to do. And these aren't folks who ever used Napster, so they aren't angry about that specifically. They see these companies and the people who run them as greedy, arrogant, and out to screw everyone they deal with in any way they can. Can the people who run them not see that this environment is generating piracy? The only alternative I can think of is that they know perfectly well that people hate them, but they're taking a scorched-earth attitude, figuring they can steamroll over their critics and absorb all the damage. If that's the case, I'll patiently await the day when they file for bankruptcy.
This last part is a bit off-topic, but speaking of enhanced CDs, I have Enya's original disc, Watermark, and I recall it having a sticker on it that said it contained images that could be viewed with a CD+G player. I assume this was a short-lived format, but I'd be curious to know if there's any software out there that can read this disc and display the images. I did a search at one point, but I didn't find anything. Just curious.
That light you see at the end of the tunnel might be from an oncoming train.
You actually managed to say something that could hurt the recording industry WITHOUT your speech being a crime under the DMCA. It's amazing that that's still possible!
Rocky J. Squirrel
If formats like this ever come through, we'll just see the next generation of cdrom players having a switch that sais: 'act like you are an audio player'. Either software or hardware.
Insist that this monster industry lower CD prices as was demanded by the people (aka, our government). Then the artists can have their money and we can have our music.
I've never understood the big deal about so-called "copyright"
ANY media one puts out in ANY form can be copied in some way -- if it's grand enough, people will pay for their own "real" copy of it (and that's all the "original" is in the first place, ANOTHER copy)
don't want "your" stuff copied? DON'T HAVE IT MASS PRODUCED AND DISTRIBUTED
you want it "out there"? well, if it's so great, why SHOULDN'T it be copied? because you care about the content reaching the widest possible audience? (in which case you want it copied as much as possible)
or you care about the MONEY? (then don't have it mass produced and distributed beyond your own means of verification)
and anybody reading this has the ability to create their own music cheaply with their computer -- that is the future of music: NO copyright -- and that is the only way to beat the industry at its own game
I am sitting in my office in front of my laptop listening to music on its DVD drive. If I cannot listen to a CD because it wont work then I will take it back and download it. Legally, you see, the record company has excluded me from purchasing a legal copy of their cd. They cannot claim damages from me because there is no way for me to buy a legal copy: they have not lost money, so they cannot claim damages.
This is a stupid loss for them. I buy CDs that I like. I have hundreds.
IMO if the disk is not to the Philips Red Book standard it cannot be called a CD and cannot be advertised as a CD.
I guess they could say that the disk can be played on some CD players but it could not be listed in the CD charts as that would imply that the disk is a CD (which technically it is not).
I guess that a complaint to the local trading standards bodies would be appropriate.
Anyone know what Philips have to say?
From the story author:
So, if the record companies sold a grapefruit with a label saying "This is a grapefruit, you cannot make orange juice with this." you would buy it, then return it because you couldn't make orange juice from it, right?
It's the clueless gits like you that get us into these messes in the first place.
A new kind of meat designed to appeal to vegetarians.
post a ling then dammit!
... Music's not as important to pop culture as it used to be. Seriously.
Hm... looks like you are trafficing in a method to bypass a copy protection mechanism. Off to jail with you!
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Okay so this is a slightly harder fix but cant you just compt the cd using an optical out from a cd player the quality would be the same, if not similar okay it might take a wee bit longer but hey the price you pay for theft.
try here
42
Guys:
You can not copy protect a CD. What they have done is restricted the players that will PLAY the CD. A computer can not PLAY the cd but it certainly can COPY the CD. As long as CD writers are available that write in RAW mode, you will be able to copy any CD. As long is their is LINUX, CD writers will be manufactured with RAW write capability. Almost all CDR's manufactured today have this capability, and I am fairly shure that all CDR's that are 8.8.16 or older will. Here is the URL of a company that makes a nice piece of software that will copy these CD's.
http://www.elby.org/CloneCD/english/index.htm
This software does not break the incryption so there is no problem under the DMCA. It simply does a binary image of the CD in RAW MODE. Works basically the same way as GHOST works for imaging a hard drive.
TOM
All my CDs go straight to MP3 when I get them, and then they go on the house music server, so I can access them in any room over the network.
No one is pirating these MP3s. I don't have enough of an upstream connection to do that! I'm using my music in the way of the future- these folks want to stick me in the past. Feh to them.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Don't forget to remind everyone that the left hand is going to cost you money in the long run. First there is the upfront expense of paying for the copy protection technologies, lawyers, etc. Second is the lost sales.
Like lots of people, I'm in the process of putting all of my CD's onto a PC jukebox. Right now, everything I have is ripped from my personal CD collection. All of the music is 100% legal music that the artists have been paid for. And I plan on keeping it that way. But what do you think I'm going to do if I find out that the music I want can't be converted into the format I'm using? Do you think I'm going to give up on my digital jukebox? No. Think again. I buy CD's for the express purpose of ripping the music and putting it into my jukebox. If the record companies remove that functionality, I'll just stop buying new CD's. Why would I pay $15-$20 for something that provides me with no value at all!
Rather, I'll buy used CD's for old stuff I want, and just go straight to the P2P for new stuff. That's the real problem with the copy protection: it will actually push people away from CDs even faster! The standard CD is actually a pretty good method for distributing music in a standard, widely available, and lost lasting technology. Making CD's less useful is not a way to increase sales, it's a way to decrease sales!
You should stress to the other people in your company that the sidetrack of copy protection is a self-defeating one. The industry needs to get the celestial jukebox services up and running ASAP, because the P2P services are already just about there. Until the industry has a product that can compete with the P2P, it should be trying to keep existing customers as happy as possible for as long as possible. Drop the copy protection. Hell, drop prices out of respect for the fact that the economy is tanking and people have less disposable income! But don't keep acting like the bad guy and alienating your customers. That is not the path to long term success. The people who think it is need to be "rightsized" as soon as possible.
I bought some CDs from macromedia a while ago with a student discount. After I opened them, the shrinkwrap EULA said that I couldn't use them for commercial purposes, as I had hoped to. It said that if I didn't agree, I should return the item to the store. I tried to, but they wouldn't give me a refund even though they were obligated to.
I called Macromedia and sent them letters but they gave me the runaround.
I'm using the program now, and have my documentation in case macromedia calls someday.
What do you want to bet that music stores won't honor their obligation to accept returned CDs unless your lawyer breathes down their necks?
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
The problem for the RIAA, of course, is that as long as it is possible to play music, it is possible to record it. Unless there are criminal penalties for recording your own music for your own use in the near future, I can't see any copy protection scheme preventing file sharing. Of course if I can't play cd's anymore I wont buy them. Why should I pay for a cd player when I have one on my (playstation/x-box/dreamcast/computer/dvd player/etc.) This is ludicrious. Within 15 feet of me there are six cd players, and the RIAA would like to prevent me from using ANY of them to listen to the products of their industry.
Are they trying to encourage filesharing, or prevent it? I'm confused.
Since you're AC I'm assuming you'll probably never read this comment, but do me a favor. Encode your favorite recording at 320 kbps MP3, hq, full stereo with LAME and see if you can tell me the difference. Here's a hint. You definitely can't.
I am actually surprised PS2 uses standard CD's and DVD's for games. After what happened with PSX, I thought sony would put all games on a completely non-standard disc so you couldn't make copies in your CD-R..
fukitol. BUY VINYL. support your local dj and his record shop.
OTOH, perhaps they like the idea. After all, once all CDs are locked, folks will (in theory) have to get their music off the net in some secure format and load it onto their brand new "secure" MP3 player which they have just bought from the same people who sold them the old non-secure one only a year or so ago. And you know what? Joe Sixpack is SO stupid that he will think this perfectly reasonable!
THey will just shove the DMCA up anyone's ass who decides to make a ripper for this new CD format.
Hell , they might even go far as call us terrorists!
Just received this from Noam Zur of Miditech...
y /1 83508p-1775112c.html
Dear Terry,
First of all, thank you for your inquiry. Please note, that I was not
quoted, but
paraphrased in this particular article and do believe that some of my
comments had been unintentionally misinterpreted. Midbar is a technology
provider that services the music industry. Though we take the consumer and
the consumer experience very seriously vis a vis the development of the CDS
product line, our direct involvement is limited to our relatioinship with
the recording labels. The labels and manufacuteres serve as our main source
of feedback, mostly which deals with the technical side of the equation, as
that is our mandate. Considering, I could and would never claim that
someone is a "pirate", especially without knowing this person or knowing
specifically of his activities.
I hope this clears things up.
My best wishes for a happy, healthy and safe holiday season.
Noam Zur
-----Original Message-----
From: Terry Eden [mailto: ]
Sent: Saturday, December 01, 2001 3:20 PM
To: noam@midbartech.com
Subject: Copy Protection Failure
Hi Noam,
I read with interest your quote on
http://www.modbee.com/24hour/entertainment/stor
which stated: "Midbar Tech's Noam Zur called copy-protection critics a
fringe group that probably are pirates themselves."
The major cause of piracy is because people feel they are being
over-charged. In England (where I live) CDs cost twice the price of Canada
and America - "copy protecting" discs won't stop piracy; charging people a
fair price will.
I have over 200 CD albums, countless numbers of vinyl and cassettes albums.
I enjoy making my own compilations on tape, CD and MP3. Your "copy
protection" software cannot protect a CD - as long as a signal travels to
my speakers, music will always be free to whoever wants it, be they a
professional plagiariser or a casual copier.
Thank you for your time
Terry Eden
If a square is really a rhombus, why aren't all triangles purple?
This whole thing is good entertainment! My only fear here is that we will have to deal with draconian laws for a while while people wake up, other than that, I see this whole thing as a losing battle over the longer term.
These fools should have partnered with Napster when they had concentrated the general public atttention. Had they allowed the free service to continue along with a subscription catalog sort of thing, they would be making money right now that could fund a new way to market all of their music, not just the hits.
Sad thing about this is that they could have maintained their existing marketing machine for the mega-hits while investing in new infrstructure to add value and thus profit to the losers and niche music that they currently make little from. Personally I would have enjoyed the whole thing because it would not have all this negative baggage associated with it.
Now that the public understands distributed peer to peer systems, they are fsked! Anything they build now will have to compete with those. Pretty hard to sell restrictions when everyone knows that they are artificial. Divx had the same problem look where it is today. --Good luck guys you missed the boat on this one.
As for the copy protected CDs, they can make them or not, I really don't care. When I invested in equipment for moving my vinyl to CD that problem was handled as a bonus. I could actually profit from this as friends would want the service. Great! More for me to invest in unrestricted operating systems and media.
So basically things are not changed. I buy recordings that are worth it, and trade tracks with others to determine worth. Long ago I used to hear about new music on FM. Now that that medium has been neutered, I hear new stuff by word of mouth either electronic, or acoustic. This is how things work now and they helped build it so they get to live with it.
Blogging because I can...
There seem to be a lot of posts here whining about not being able to rip to MP3s (or how easy it will be to rip to MP3s), etc. I could care less about that, really (I know the MP3s will be available if I want them - no matter what).
What I care about is - can I actually LISTEN to the CDs that I choose to BUY? I don't have a "regular" CD player anywhere in my house. All CDs get played either in the DVD player or occassionally in my Dreamcast. Will I be able to do that with one of these discs? If not, then they'll be going right back to the store - and if they won't refund my purchase price, I WILL throw a nice loud fit about it.
Of course, we only buy maybe 20 CDs each year in this household - I can't imagine we'll make much impact all by ourselves...
-Zak
"I was under the impression that there is a "copy bit" of some kind in the digital stream that prevents direct digital copying, am I mistaken ? do soundcards with digital inputs ignore it ?"
The copy bit ("serial copy management system," or SCMS) is embedded in the recording when you record via S/PDIF (coax or optical) to a standalone "consumer" machine. Once that bit is set, you cannot copy the recording if you go via S/PDIF to a "consumer" machine.
If you make the copy via AES/EBU digital-audio connection, the SCMS bit is ignored.
Most pro DAT machines have a switch or menu item which lets it disable SCMS when recording.
My M-Audio Delta-66 (six-channel sound card; four analog channels and two digital channels on S/PDIF) has a Control Panel checkbox which lets you enable or disable SCMS. Other pro soundcards (MOTU, Digidesign, Digital Audio Labs, etc.) have similar features. The Soundblaster Live! series do not (and they suck in general -- mainly because they sample-rate convert everything to/from 48kHz).
--a
Then you can just sue them for fraud.
At least in my case, it is why CD sales are down. I have been boycotting major label CDs since January 2000 because of the possibility of stealth introduction of SDMI watermarking. These new anti-copy schemes just provide more reason to continue the boycott. Since I used to be one of their better customers according to their own sales figures, they shot themselves and their artists in the foot.
I had no problems with ripping this cd. I used grip and ripped to ogg format.
I use grip, and it has bladenc as the back-end encoder. How do I replace this with an ogg encoder?
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.
And because he must return a loan of $100,000,000,- to his record company (!!) he now has to sell the rights to the Beatles music.
Could this have anything to do with his newest CD being copy-protected?
Why? Nowhere does it say that they guarantee that a CD will work in any given CD player. Nowhere does it say you are allowed to copy that CD. In fact, it specifically tells you that you can't.
They've already tried this in Europe, with no warning stickers. While there was a huge outcry from music enthusiasts (well, mostly slashdot-reading geeks,) they're still doing it, over a year later.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.