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Universal to Copyprotect All CDs
angkor wrote in with a link to a story about how Universal Plans to
copyprotect all CDs which
will render them unplayable on Macs, DVD Players, PS2s, and some CD Players.
And it won't even stop people from ripping MP3s I bet.
Don't buy em.
Vote with your wallet. It's the only true voice you have in a capitalist society.
[)amien
It will be ripped.
ender-iii
OK, so when I play it in my Discman, it's OK; (even if i go to Radio Shack and buy a couple bucks worth of cable, 'line in' to my sound card, and record)
But if I play it on a Sony CDROM drive in my computer, it's bad?
First, how *exactly* does it know? As my dad used to say, "A laser is just a laser".
Prepare for massive consumer backlash. Even if people don't want to ever "rip, mix, and burn" (thank you Apple 'Dont Steal Music' Computer) they want to listen to their CDs when and where they want to.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
There you have it, instead of letting true musical diversity create authentic, viable fan bases, the music industry has locked itself into the failing practice of top-down music manufacturing...reminiscent of a Soviet state capitalism that never worked either.
Maybe one day when a free market for music exists again, people will care.
Let's insure this prediction turns out to be untrue :-). I say we all make sure to buy and return this sucker, preferably in a coordinated effort targeted on a certain day...
What idiots... we long ago ceased being "customers" to them, now they just expect us to roll over and play dead. Forget that.
``They've been testing this in Europe and they're experiencing less than a 1 percent return rate from consumers. It really has turned out to be nothing,'' said Jerry Kamiler, TransWorld Entertainment's division merchandise manger. ``If we get the same results here, as I imagine we would, I don't think it's going to manifest itself into a consumer problem.''
It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
However, I am fed up with this charade and I would like to end it once and for all. I have the paperwork in front of me to take Universal Records to small claims court to recover the purchase price of the CD. Since Universal is not based in my area, it will be very expensive for them to send their high-priced lawyers to my county to deal with the charges. And, worst case, I will lose the cost of the CD (and best case, I will get a refund on the CD and make a political statement at the same time).
I strongly encourage all of you to do the same thing: buy whatever CDs you want, and sue the record labels if they are copy protected. Even if most of the cases get thrown out, it will be *very* expensive for the labels to take any sort of action against the thousands of individuals who are suing them.
The RIAA has been able to manipulate the legal system into standing up for their rights. Why shouldn't we do the same thing back to them?
~wally
What about the quality of the music that's being released? Did Universal, BMG, Sony, et al ever stop to wonder if part of the problem is that they're churning out bands that are carbon copies of each other? Do we really need more "boy bands" or breathy, heartbroken beauty queens? It's just like TV...as soon as Survivor became a hit, every network had to have a clone...but now that the market is saturated, ratings are terrible.
Oh, and what about the economy? I'll bet that if you're one of the million or so high tech workers who doesn't have a job anymore, buying the latest Brittany Spears CD is probably way down on your list, below, say groceries!
Piracy is always an easy card to play, and not just for the music industry. It's a whole lot easier it blame some kid with a ripper, a burner and a fast Internet connection for destroying their market than it is to realize that the industry itself, by churning out disc after disc of bubble gum flavored dreck, is killing itself.
-h-
Karma Whore alert:
Remember, don't buy and return from the indy and/or mom-and-pop shops. Buy and return from Circuit City, Amazon.com, Wal-Mart, etc. (The bonus with buying from Amazon is that if they don't identify the offending CD, you might be able to get them charged with mail fraud)
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I second that absolutely. I only listen to music in my computer, I don't have a standalone CD player. Taking away demo/bootlegged live songs from my playlist (I wouldn't be able to buy them on a CD anyway), I'm left with no more than 6 hours of MP3s in here. The rest of my music collection, I usually have downloaded the MP3 first, figured the band was good, and bought a CD or DVD. Right now I own 100 records, split 5:1 between CDs and DVDs respectively (mostly purchased in the last 3 or 4 years -- I dumped my previous CDs by that time, although I had at least a hundred of them also.)
But, apparently, the record companies are forcing me to download MP3s only from now on. I'd rather have the higher sound quality found in a CD, and the nice cover and booklets, but oh well, I'm being forced into this.
Join the NFSNET. Our prime goal is making little numbers out of big ones. http://www.nfsnet.org/
Please please please do NOT do this to the local indie music retailer. Only use this tactic against the large chains, the Coconuts, Best Buys, Wal-Marts of the world. They can afford to lose a little money and have to fight Universal to get it back. Most of their profit comes from other merchandise lines (home electronics, for instance).
The indie music store makes nearly 100% of its money from selling music, and they typically have much better/wider selections than big corporate stores. If they end up losing a lot to ship it all back to their supplier, they might not be able to swallow the loss, even if it is eventually refunded. I'm all for pissing off the music companies, but don't screw your local music stores at the same time.
Eric
So a label has announced that it will cripple all of its CDs... Did they announce that they will be cutting their prices in half to make up for the decreased functionality? I doubt it. So now all Universal CDs are effectively more expensive because you get less for the same price. Where do these guys learn their economics, from drug dealers? Get people hooked on the "good" stuff, then cut down on the amount of actual product they get for their money...
The simple solution, as others have pointed out, is not to buy the crap. More than that though, don't buy anyone else's crap either. Don't buy any CDs, DVDs, e-books, etc. Don't go to movies, don't rent movies, don't order pay-per-view, don't subscribe to premium cable channels, or possibly even cable itself. Don't buy anything because of ads on TV, radio, or billboards, in magazines, etc. Cut back on consumer electronics purchases, buy only used books, don't go to sporting events. If you do buy anything, only buy it when it is so cheap that someone must be taking a loss somewhere. The only way to change things is to get the entire entertainment industry to rethink its business model. Otherwise, we will keep getting less value.
If that is too drastic a step for you, then return the CDs right after you buy them:
Universal told retailers that it would honor refunds on all returned discs -- even for CDs that have been opened.
We're in this mess because the entertainment industry is driven by maximization of profits through decreasing value and not by delivering quality products at reasonable prices. Through marketing and legislation, they have fought to preserve this flawed model, which will succeed as long as people remain mindless drones who buy anything someone is trying to sell them. Yes, I realize that there really is no hope...
In Germany alone, one survey by market researcher GfK found that blank CD sales jumped 129 percent this year. Purchases of pre-recorded music dropped 2.2 percent in the same period.
This year in the US, the sale of matchs went up 57% indicating that teenage smoking is up over 200%.
For those that didn't get my example. How does that percent of blank CD sales mean anything as far as "pre-made CD" sales goes. People use blank CDs for all sorts of things. I have friends who make backups of there applications on CD once a day, 7 days a week. So, a spool of CD-Rs can go pretty quickly.
Back to the article. This is a difficault thing to stop, even telling retailers you won't be shopping there for the holidays doesn't work as expected. There are still a ton of dumb people out there that will buy an "approved CD player" if need be. Its only a matter of time until someone figures out a way to rip from theses.
How will computer hardware vendors handle this one. Think of the number of returns over something this simple. Personally, to make a point. I would force them to accept the return and give me my money back.
until (succeed) try { again(); }
Artists don't need the megaexpensive recording studios. These days, most anyone can set up a decent studio for a relatively small investment.
Artists don't need the megaexpensive advertising. These days, anyone can gain popularity via web media. Fansites, mailing lists, word of mouth: it's worked before, it's working now, and it's hella cheaper than MTV.
Artists don't need the distribution chain. They can post to the web. As soon as a good payment system comes along, where the artist can be paid directly and receives most of that payment, the distribution chain is toast.
The industry is fighting everything you talk about here because they see a new dawn for them: TOTAL control of media.
To totally control access to a system, you have to control the whole damn thing, input to output, re their SSSCA, CPRM, DMCA, LMNOP or whatever the initiative will be. That means that you will need a license just to input. If by law, you use THEIR tools, you'll have to PAY to buy a license to publish. After all, the industry will control this. If the industry doesn't want what you're pushing, you get no license.
If you don't have a license, and it's illegal to go around their system, well, you have no independent artists. It's that simple. RIAA and MPAA win.
"We apologize for the inconvenience."
Universal gives fuckall about small shops that simply carry their product. A friend of mine owns a small record shop (which will remain nameless) in southeast Michigan. He's been told numerous times that until he is reporting to Soundscan they will not support him in any way with posters, promos, anything that will help him sell music. It seems that Universal is simply interested in creating market share, not selling music, and they will use any little store to do so. You also need to remember that the difference between a large store like Virgin and a small store is the owner. A small store where the owner puts in 12 hour days 7 days a week doesn't have the same interest that the VCs starting up a place like Virgin do. The Virgin folks are (above all) interested in making money via their buisness, which happens to be a retail music enterprise. Most small shops are owned and run by owners who love the music enough to try and make a life out of it, whatever they can make. Most small stores don't turn a profit for two to three years, if they are even around that long. Reasons like those are why you should look favorably on independant buisnesses standing up to the corporate machine, even if they do have to sell some of their product to survive. It's turning the machine against itself. -Steve
Good article. There's another article that might explain Universal's reasoning for adding copy-protection. (HINT: It really has little to do with piracy.)
http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,49188,00.html
On Tuesday, Universal Music Group becomes the first label to sell copy-protected CDs in the United States with the release of its soundtrack Fast & Furious -- More Music. This comes at a time when the recording industry is asking consumers to pay for music that can only be listened to on the PC.
The newly released CD will keep people from listening to their music on the computer, game consoles and other digital devices. If they wanted to go through the major labels to buy the same music for their computer, the only way would be to sign up for Pressplay, one of the major label subscription services, when it launches later this month.
Essentially, consumers would be required to pay once for a physical CD and once for the digital music file. The restrictions for online subscription services and physical CDs are part of a music industry-wide attempt to stop online music piracy.
Bascially, they want to move everyone into a position where they get paid everytime you "space-shift" your music. Playing your CD in CD player? Pay for it once. Playing it on the computer? Pay for it again. <begin sarcasm>After all, we've got to keep those RIAA pockets filled, don't we?<end sarcasm>
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
1.) The thing is labeled as CD Digital Audio (CDDA), which is in violation of logo, because in order to be CDDA, it must be red-book compliant, (or whatever book it is), and this copy protected CD is most definately NOT compliant.
Speaking as someone who ran a record store for eight years, my prediction is that at some point in the next year Universal and the other labels involved in this scam will do two things:
1) They'll stop accepting returns on all copy-protected CDs. If you don't like it, go pound sand. Sony stopped accepting returns on opened CDs several years back because they felt that their production methods had improved to the point where genuinely defective CDs represented a "statistically insignificant" percentage of their output. The reality from where I was standing was that Sony's defective CDs were coming in at about the same clip as always; Sony just didn't want to deal with them.
2) Universal (and other companies involved in similar practices) will either a) ignore the CDDA red-book standards and dare them to just try and do something about it, b) bail on the CDDA and create their own in-house red-book standards, or c) lobby the people in charge of the CDDA standards to change the red book.
One or both of these things will happen, but labels will not accept an unlimited number of returns forever, particularly if they start seeing large quantities of CDs coming back to them.
While there's a big market for Britney Spears, there's another big market for "underground" music.
Thier sound or trite messages still doesn't distinguish the Backstreet Boys or Incubus from being a bunch of monkey boys who perform when you shove a quarter in thier ass.
It's all the same crap, targeted at a wide demographic of people and children, sending out the same old shit message, "Image is everything... Cultural, Political, Moral, Whatever..." (Note: Image refers to more than just external appearances. Include behavioral nuances and all elements of "culture")
What I do agree with is that these same people hawking Britney Spears have way too much influence on people. Hence, My opinions on fair use...
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
I think that what scared the original poster with the "fair use is a defense against the charge of infringement, not a right" quotation is that, just as with your murder example, even if you shoot someone in self-defense, you still get the fun (a) arrested for shooting somone, (b) tried for murder/manslaughter, and (c) drained of your finances in the process, whether you are convicted or not.
(It also implies that the defence of fair use may legally be taken away from you, either indirectly through DMCA - which is silent on fair use per se, but since you have to violate the DMCA to get your fair-use snippet of video, you still go to jail. Or directly, by whatever they do in SSSCA.)
The industry's goal is to make "fair use" a right -- in the sense that both Bill Gates and that homeless bum down the street have the same right to sleep under a highway overpass.