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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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!
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!
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
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.
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.
That, sir, is a key point in all this mess. People are, more and more, wanting the ability to play their media in such devices as DVD players, the XBox, their PCs, etc. The RIAA must be completely blind.
How long before the majority of their customer base (music lovers at large) are primarily using "all in one" equipment (with PC-like capabilities) to play most of their CDs? I'd wager it won't be too long. People, seemingly by nature, love buying gadgets that do everything but clean the kitchen sink, and audio equipment is no exception. The technology is here to stay, regardless of whether or not the RIAA wants to cry about it.
My question is this: how long before the major manufacturers of such hardware get together and sue organizations like the RIAA for everything they're worth, el class action style, because their consumers can't play CDs on the equipment? Think about it: I'm a consumer, and the hardware I just bought says it can play CDs. Except it *can't* play these "protected" CDs without some sort of wierd hackery. If I'm not a geek (okay, I am, but just play along here), I won't (a) know *how* to get around it, and (b) won't *want* to get around it. I'd just want my hardware to work, damnit.
So, I complain to the hardware manufacturer, at which point they tell me it's not their fault, it's the fault of music distributors using stupid protection schemes. Uh, oh. I might get a wild hair to find out how many other people had been hurt by this, and toss my own personal class-action suit on top of the heap. Looks like the RIAA is headed for a major dent in the bank accounts.
Web hosting for geeks, by geeks. Starting at $4 USD per month.
If you're gonna email, use the public key!
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.
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'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.
Hi there. Fuck you. Check out Insound for the ill shit. Also, I might add that anyone who thinks radio music is good for anything but a laugh can go pound sand. The indie music scene actually encourages the listener to "pirate" (not my word) their music. That's because most of their money is made from playing live. You know, actually playing their instruments in person for money.
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
That's a load of crap -- just because they are the seller does not allow them to set the rules. Just because they produced something does not let them set how we can or can't use the product (DMCA be damned -- that's an illegal law that needs to be overturned on constitutional grounds ASAP).
Fair use is being stepped on left and right, and if the large media companies continue to sell crippled products, its up to us to protest this illegitimate end-run around consumers' rights.
Furthermore, this is an excellent example of how consumers can "vote with their dollars" -- by making pointed complaints and showing the whole distribution network will lose money, we can possibly reign in this kind of abuse.
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.
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 ?
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 $1,000,000 every time you happen to hear a song they wrote, even if you just were flipping radio channels or walking down the street?
Do you really mean that the artists get to dictate ALL the terms of a work's use, no matter how restrictive and irrational???
Fact is, no matter how much the producers of a product want to control use, they don't hold all the aces (and they shouldn't, either).
Uhh, it's not virus code. It may be deliberately defective audio data, but it's certainly not self-propagating code. In fact, it's not code at all.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"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.
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...
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.
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".
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
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 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.
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"
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."
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.
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/
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
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 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
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.
Copy-protected CDs are, IMO, only a stopgap measure until DVD-Audio and Super Audio CD get into the market in a big way. These formats are, by their nature, copy-protected, so digital copying will be more difficult than with CDs. As for electronics makers suing over copy-protection, the ones affiliated with the media companies certainly won't, for obvious reasons. The others would only do so if this bacame a major problem, and if it were that big of a deal, the record companies would already be rethinking their strategy. These people may be greedy, soulless bastards, but they aren't stupid. Music sales are already in a slump. They seem to be blaming the Internet, and they obviously want to dry up music swapping so they'll be able to market MusicNet and Pressplay, but if this thing turns into something that really shakes people's confidence in their product, the record companies will have a major problem on their hands. They can argue that the emerging formats are superior, and audibly, they are, but will people be willing to pay $22.95 for them, which is the current price at Best Buy? I've bought some DVD-Audio discs, but the price is going to have to come down before I buy more.
That light you see at the end of the tunnel might be from an oncoming train.
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?
-------------------------------------------------
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.
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.
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.
Concur. I have an issue with the record industry stealthily foisting off fair-use disabled CD's on the public. But if they label them clearly as such, where's the beef?
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..
This is a TROLL? Ha! An angry flame, perhaps, but troll? Obviously, whoever moderated this post didn't bother to read the story.
I was going to launch into a tirade here about what a dipshit that moderator is - I've got plenty of karma to spare - but I'll hold back this time.
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
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!
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...
Good point, it wouldn't qualify as virus code, but is deliberately defective audio data.
Couldn't they be charge under the Consumer Protection Act? I remember reading about it in High School in British Columbia - as I recall, Canada has stronger consumer protections than the US, and the DCMA was never passed in Canada so far as I know.
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?