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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.
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.
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.
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
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!
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.
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.
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!
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?
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.
Fair use issues aside...
...
...
The copyright fascists always start here.
They are willing to please the consumers
You really don't seem to understand. Customer service is a cost, not an asset. It is a drag on profit growth, not a virtue. By becoming a monopoly - or close to it - you can avoid most of the costs of customer service, because no matter how badly they are treated the customers have no where else to go. That is what all the legal aggressiveness towards the P2P services is all about. The recording industry is reaping record profits. Their financial statements filed every quarter with the SEC are the proof. No one is getting hurt but the customers and the artists, but the artists were being hurt all along, before the Internet. These are the facts. Any attempt to deal with this subject while avoiding the facts is futile, and probably dishonest too.
This is the only way
There are always other ways. This is another lie often repeated, but repetition creates boredom, not truth.
Edith Keeler Must Die
"Hook it to a soundcard with optical in, problem solved."
How does this solve the problem of multinational corporations aggressively moving to quash fair use in all of its guises? Oh, I see. You just want to rip CDs.
Yeah, this solution will work great until they stop putting unrestricted digital outputs on consumer electronics equipment. Once the laws are on the corporations' sides and the consumers have rolled over for copy prevention technology the picture won't look so rosy. People who dismiss news like this with statements like, "who cares? I can get around this with technique X," are playing right into the copy-prevention advocates' hands. They're just trying to get the *idea* of copy prevention accepted by the public. Strengthening the prevention schemes is just a matter of time and money. If you don't boycott copy-restricted CDs, or better yet register your displeasure with the place you buy CDs in addition, you're letting the "content management" assholes write the rules.
If you roll over now do you really think that in 20 years you'll have an optical in/out (or whatever we'll be transferring A/V data over in 20 years) that doesn't have "content management" hardware built in?
-DA
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.
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!
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
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.