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DVD Drives Defeat Cactus Data Shield
jsepeta sends in a story about Cactus Data Shield, one of the schemes to be used for copy-protecting compact discs. A reporter for TechTV notes that DVD drives see right through the disc corruption that Cactus uses to supposedly prevent those CDs from being ripped.
any machine that allows you to rip MP3s. They will probably put a time limit on the grandfather clause, say a year. And then everyone has to buy a "copyright compliant" macine. I can't wait to be considered an evil hacker for having old equipment. Does that mean that rotary phones will become hacker equipment too?
Avoid The Rush, Hate OU Early!!!
throw away your dvd drive before you are arrested for having a copy protection circumvention device!!!
So now we can get back to stealing from the artists!?
What a wonderful discovery!
I saw this mentioned a few weeks ago when Patrick Norton first discovered this.
I'm glad I'm getting breaking news on Slashdot. The only thing announced first here are kernel updates. Is this site even relevant anymore?
The article stated that the NEC dvd drive (which Dell uses in much of its computer line) read the TOC (table of contents of the CD) normally.
What it didn't say, however, is if other DVD drives, such as the famous slot-loading Pioneer (which I am blessed to have), also exhibit this behavior.
In any case, this whole copy-protection of audio CD's is a sham. If I use my computer as a CD player (which many people at work do), I should be able to play the CD normally, and do what I want with it.
"It's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
dvd,s are movies, why the hell do movies need encryption? easy, they dont, riaa fuckers are control freaks and wont allow foa to ensue. fuckers.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Are you a newbie to DVD piracy?
Will this end up like the VHS market where VHS recorders started intentionally mis-recording Macrovision protected content, despite the fact they had fixed the original flaw that allowed macrovision copy protection to work? Or will the DVD drive manufacturers stand up to the recording industry?
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
That just means that another copy protection scheme to fail. They should pretty much just give up on all this copy protection stuff because no matter how advanced it is there is always somebody who can crack it or find away around it.
Time for a new media or new way around it perhaps?
Another point is that many drives have maingenance modes which allow the host computer to see exactly what is on the disk without correction. This is normally used for testing, but again would be very useful for breaking the DMCA. Just read track w/o correction and aply the correction at software level ignoring the bad bits.
I guess that a DVD-rom drive is more sensitive to errors on conventional CD's as they have much finer bit resolutions for DVDs so they alreasy have the modified error recovery built in.
Protection of CDs is pointless and it interferes with customers' own rights and annoys the customer. The original article mentions a class action against Universal about Unplayable CDs.
See my journal, I write things there
And look how us working, healthy and well-off users of recreational drugs are harassed under the "War on Drugs" laws today.
The article specifically mentions that the player software on the disk is Windows only. Will I be able to play this disk on my Mac/PlayStation2/Linux/Car CD Changer? If so, what keeps me from draging the files off of the disk (on my Mac) and ripping them that way?
Am I missing something?
KangarooBox - We make IT simple!
I went to the store today and asked for a DVD player. The guy behind the counter started to scream and yell and threatening to call the police and have me arrested for buying a 'device that could be used to circumvent a anti-copy protection'.
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
It seems to me this is just one of those CDAutoStart things that Windows responds to in particular.
I got tipped off to this by when they mention "Track 1" never plays. I BET they didn't notice the total track count go up by one, as the Windows software talking to the DVD player parses its error-handling differently (correctly), and the result is like putting a PC hybrid CD in a Mac. In fact i strongly expect this Cactus lockout thing would not work on a Mac by default, and very very likely Linux/*nix as well. The tracks would appear as normal, though possibly not that first track, because its header DOES get lost in the scrambling, maybe.
Perhaps this is hogwash, but I've heard about Macs seeing through similar schemes before. I think that these TechTV guys sort of percolated through the truth of older reports to home users that are kinda savvy but don't like leaving their Gates Paradigm Computing, thus only the windows DVD stuff, no mention of other platforms at all.
On the other hand, if this is not unique to Windows (I wonder about Mac DVD players) then maybe that program has low-level drivers which affect how the CD drive does checksums, but DVD players do differently anyway.
Yeah, another victory for the Fair Use groups, as the people designing this have their asses backwards because they're counting on all computer users (mass 37331 pirates) to be Windows computers. OOPS...
Universal, i will scout for your discs, and as a Mac user of self-proclaimed badassary, "hack" via insertion your CD, rip, burn and mail to your well-tanned California ass.... Mwahaaha... All right enough fevered fantasies of geek revenge... back to work...
--hongpong.com
As described in a comment on FatChucks
(Tested it on 'Natalie Imbruglia - White Lillies Island' with a Yamaha 6x4x16x SCSI CDRW drive)
1) Get IsoBuster (A Win32 app)
2) Rip the entire disc as raw data. May struggle/take a while. Tell it to ignore any read errors
3) Open the raw file in CoolEdit (or any decent audio editor) as a 44.1Kz 16-bit stereo sample (with Intel byte ordering)
4) There you have it! The entire CD as one big sample!
5) In CoolEdit, you can use 'Edit->AutoCue->Find Phrases and Mark' to split the tracks up automatically
6) Save 'em out, and convert to MP3/Ogg if neccesssary
Too bad this Cactus system didn't become the standard before this was discovered, then RIAA would be a laughingstock.
That's cute.. Dell uses DVD drives which by-pass the copy protection...
If they enforce the DMCA on this, they can change there commercials..
"Dude, You're getting arrested!"
Computational Madness in a round package.
Now, I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not a politician (Otherwise I'd be busy screwing around on my wife with an intern right now, or stuffing my pockets with money from lobbyists,) but this is fairly fucking obvious, is it not? What is it that these people don't understand!
"It's not a war on drugs, it's a war on personal freedom. Keep that in mind at all times." Bill Hicks
What's so famous about it?
since the data on dvds is compressed & the bits are closer together they are more sensitive to scratches & dust beacuse it affects more data. BUT the error correction system on a dvd player is usually 10x greater than that on a reg. cd player so it reads around the 'copy protection' errors.
Man and Goat
From my understanding on a system that can see through the encryption you are unable to see the first track. Would this not in fact be illegal as they are not allowing you to use a product (i.e. the first track) that you purchased, even if it is unintentional.
I stole this Sig
They keep saying that they couldn't play the first track. Of course they can't play the first track, that's what contains the filesystem with the CDS player.
Correct me if I'm wrong (nobody's perfect), but this seems pretty simple to me.
Can you imagine a MOSIX cluster of these?
Not even watermarking is going to see them out of this. Watermarks can be removed anyway, and even if they succeed in a lunatic scheme to require that every computer audio board have some kind of watermark detection circuit, A/D and D/A converters that are fast enough and good enough are cheap, widely available, and easily hooked up to a PC.
Are the record labels just clueless or is there some other diabolical plan in the wings?
Yep, just like the good old days of copy protecting software. They will lose time and time again.
;-)
The only way they'll win is if they make CDs connect to the Internet and verify with the record company everytime you play it, ala Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Or have some crappy activation featuers, ala Windows XP. Then again someone will work around that too
Read the classic Copy Protection: A History and Outlook
mogorific carpentry experiments
They're not that worried about the technically adept minority that can build their own A/D-D/A converters to rip the music. They're worried about the napsterization of the entire nation when the ripping has been made so easy that every mom and pop can do it.
All kidding aside— here is a formula that might be useful to publishers of digital data:where If L > 0, the data will be copied.
A publisher can control the level of his data's protection only to the degree that he can control these variables.
- Cm cannot be kept artificially high, due to market forces to the contrary;
- Ce continues to drop, as coding ingenuity continues to outstrip copy prevention standards almost as quickly as they are developed;
- Ca is relatively low for the end user, since it usually only involves paying for software you had anyway; and
- Pa is low because the crime is widespread and social costs are low, so enforcement at the end user level is minimal.
This leaves a publisher of digital data with two variables he can control: the data's cost and its value. This provides two options for perfect copy protection:- make the product free, or
- make the product worthless.
Since neither option would be attractive to most publishers, it would appear that widespread copyright violations (and violators) will be with us for a long, long time.But with a little effort. See, Talkback: Is Ripping a Crime? on the same site.
Lol. I was like "oh wow. Interesting... wait... a... second... what the hell?"
By making it slightly harder to turn your CD into mp3/ogg's, by the techniques described above (Macs, binary imaging, then spliting with Cool Edit, etc), groups will end up doing the releasing, like in the warez scene. This will ensure a more organized (complete cd's, as soon as the CD is release), high quality (decent hardware used to extract the audio) music album releases.
The only thing hurting the warez scene is games being so friggin big nowadays... multiple CDs, etc. You can't run bladeenc, or oggenc on a game.
Maybe DVD-Audio will help combat music piracy, but that's a bit off.
It's enough that a few people figure out how to copy the data and convert into mp3s, then the wonderful invention of the internet will take care of the rest. This is only stopping normal people from enjoying the music (my advice is to just simply stop buying CDs all together). I simply don't like their tactics, and I don't like the attitude.
People will be lining up to buy them. When they notice that they can't rip, it'll be too late- and the only response they will get is "what, you want to pirate music? You are a bad person, I ought to report you." Makes me glad that I've already got a drive.
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
undermine the DCMA. Bear with me here, but as long as standard products are able to 'circumvent' the copyright protection via encryption etc (and i used that word encryption very lightly ...) because of how shockingly bad the implementations are the RIAA is going to be unhappy (yes the MPAA etc as well) and thus will eventually get greedy and try to prosecute some/many people.
And heres where the crappy DCMA really starts to leak water, because now these products (ie. DVD-ROM drives, etc) that are being manufactured by large corporations some of which don't give a f*** about the MPAA and the DVD Forum because they allow all of that to be handled by software, are circumvention devices, and thus illegal. All it takes is a lawsuit and there is no way that anyone can tell me that this crappy law can stand up in court when multibillion dollar industries go head to head with each other. Now IANAL but in my opinion the DCMA has the quality of construction roughly equal to that of M$'s software, and that under this much scrutiny it will (and forgive the really corny wording of this but i'm tired) BSOD.
Well at least thats what I hope happens.
**AA: a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes
I didn't know Jack Valenti worked at Best Buy.
...so, if I rip Universal CDs in my DVD drive, will I be breaking the DMCA?
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Seems that S/PDIF digital output would not work anymore while playing protected CD's ? If this would work, there is no problem to connect digital output from the cd-player to the soundcards digital input and compress from there (without analog/digital convertion loss) to mp3?
It seems that everyone believe that "fair use" is a right. In fact, it is not a right but it's really a exclusion from prosecution. What this means is that if you use legally licenced copyrighted material (music, book, software, etc..) in a "fair use" manner, you cannot be prosecuted for violation of copyright. This does not mean that if you purchase a CD, you have the inalienable right to make a backup copy. There is a subtle but distinct difference.
Having said all this, record industry does have the right to implement copy protection. I'm not saying that it's good, I'm just saying that they have legal right to do so. Under current law, record company is not obligated to grant you the ability to use the material in "fair use" manner. At the same time, you are not obligated to buy copy protected CDs.
Can you tell me which company is more likely do bring a lawsuit against another company for infringing on their "right" to make DVD/CD drives that circumvent copy protection. I can tell you it certainly won't be Sony. Lets say that Toshiba is the great company to try this. Now lets say they win for some reason. They can continue to make their DVD/CD players unimpeded. So, the DVD-Forum takes away Toshiba's right to use the trade-secret (I think) information for creating standalone Video DVD players. Oops. There goes a lot more money. Do you think Toshiba would risk something like that? The DVD-Forum would probably have every right to take away that right from them.
I have talked with an Apple employee who works on the CD driver for OSX, and he has stated that Apple will fix "bugs" in it's drivers that copy protection mechanisms reveal. We'll have to see what that means in the end though.
Goatse.cx link above. Do not click.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
Think about it. Kids have to usually pay an adult to go into a liquor store and buy them liquor. That's because alcohol is not a black market item. Now think about drugs. A drug dealer will sell drugs to anybody with the money, be it a 13 year old kid or someone of legal age. When things are legal, they can be regulated. When they are illegal, the government cannot regulate them.
artists make $0 from cd sales, only labels make the money there, artists make all $ from live concerts.
Copy prot., shutting down mp3 distributions, watermarking...it all adds up to eminem! None of this crap would be happening if eminem & dre would've let their lame ass songs get pirated, same for metallica (guess they got scared of the 5 people that like them, 2 weren't paying).
// TRiPTMiND //
All jokes aside, if it can be played by a normal stereo, all it would take is about $15 worth of Radio Shack happiness to record onto your HD.
I have not been researching or reading much about the schemes they are trying to coordinate, but I know that there are a lot of different "known" schemes so far. Exactly how much money do you suppose they are sinking into this battle for just these "known" protections? I would bet it is quite pricey, and to justly support their anti-pirating/anti-reverse engineering crusades (yes..) they'll happily stick the fool still buying cds...until of course s/he realizes, "paying $35/cd sucks" and just quits buying cds then goes back to tape recording the radio. HAHA! Never ending spiral RIAA has going, they need to learn to accept diminishing returns and be happy there still is a great number of stupid people happy to pay these increased costs. As for me, I love shoutcast =)
// TRiPTMiND \\
Troll? What a bunch of winners lately...
may I ask how are they going to be able to stop people from dubbing these so-called copy-protected cds to casettes? Or are they going to deem the tape recorder a circumvention device and stop the sale of any recording device???????????
All in all I think the DMCA is a bunch of bullshit.
Here's a clue.
A guy cannot be a virgin, nothing changes after first intercourse in a guy.
You are a 25 year old retard.
The RIAA and MPAA are selling data to us-- and trying to protect themselves by making this data unavailable to us once we've bought it. If we can't get at the data, there's no point and we won't buy it, so the data will always be accessible somehow.
However, since the customer is allowed to hear the music or see the film, the data has been "released" into the wild and can easily be recaptured in other formats. In other words, they cannot use purely digital, "black-box" means to protect this data because we have nice analog visual and auditory systems that require this data to pass through the air in order for us to perceive and enjoy it.
Once the data is in the air, any microphone, nice camera, etc. etc. will be able to grab it out of the air again.
The only way I can see copy protection working is if in 50 years all "out-loud" music is strictly forbidden and illegal and instead, we have a DBC (digital-to-brain converter) implanted in our skull that accepts an input from the line-out jack on our "secure" digital music device.
There will have to be secret police everywhere to make sure nobody actually hums along, because if anyone does, someone with a hidden microphone (banned decades ago, but available on the black market, nevertheless) might capture it and distribute it, not to mention the 20 other people in the room who will hear this humming and thus "steal" the music without paying the original artist/composer for it...
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
The frightening thing is that you imagine that what you do is in some way humorous or amusing.
I bet your idea of foreplay is a half hour of begging, you think that cunninglingus is something you order in gourmet restaurants and great sex to you is merely the intercourse.
What changes in the guy with sex is that you can learn to have better and better sex -- if you want to.
I've got a Toshiba laptop dvd drive (sd-c2502), and it had not trouble at all ripping the Natalie Imbruglia cd that was Cactus Broken^H^H protected.
A couple of friends have Toshiba laptop cd only drives, and they couldn't play the cd :(
This post will enter the public domain 70 years after my death, unless Disney buys another extension.
Well, I don't know how it will end up, but I do know what it was like, for to my knowledge it was never possible to put a videotape into a computer.
Pushin' 'n dealin', shovin' 'n stealin'
This Slashdot story ought to be a nail in Midbar's coffin. But, alas, it's just a passing curiosity of no real importance.
In the Bad Old Days of diskette copy protection, the good guys eventually won. You had the usual arms race, the usual idiocy, companies wasted time devising slightly corrupted disk formats that could be loaded but not copied, schemes that would allow you to install on a hard drive but forced you to deinstall before the diskette would allow a reinstall, and so forth and so on.
You also had legally-purchased diskettes that wouldn't install because of SQA issues with the protection scheme, or hardware incompatibilities with certain drives.
But you had vigorous free enterprise producing products like Locksmith and Copy II PC, constantly improving them and developing new "parms."
This meant that the companies using copy protection had to spend serious development resources devising new and better copy protection schemes, AND were constantly pissing off legitimate customers.
Eventually the Lotuses of the world got tired of it all and decided not to bother with copy protection. Lotus has declined, but as far as I know, not one person has suggested that the decline was caused by software piracy...
Right now, CD protection is in the same stage that diskette copy protection was... and we'll have these amusing stories for a while... and occasionally decent law-abiding customers will find that their new CD's don't play.
What we WON'T have is a vigorous free-market solution. In a free market, of course, the DVD-drive companies would realize that the ability to read "copy-protected" CD's gives them a valuable competitive advantage. But, instead, thanks to the DMCA, they will probably be FORCED to become Midbar-compliant whether they like it or not.
And it will only get worse.
Unless consumers wake up... and that, alas, doesn't seem likely...
Track one is probably the data track with the offical playing software on it
Since i dont live in the glorious USA whats to stop me from reversenginering this? Presumably it cant be that hard to do
And also ironcialy this might increase sales of the first few copy protected cds. Im tempted to go out and buy one purely so i can have a stab at reverse enigerning it.
There is one route all information must go through in order to be processed by the brain, which is the nervous system and specifically the optical and auditory nerve. Taking this to its logical conclusion, the corporations will buy the human genome and engineer "security devices" into the required nerves. Attempting to circumvent this and experience something which the corporations do not wish you to sense is of course going to be highly illegal and dangerous, so reproductive sex will be completely outlawed for a start.
You thought 1984 was bad?
/usr/games/fortune > ~/.signature
Hmm... something's odd about your post...
Did you get laid recently?
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
Hmm... just had a thought inspired by some posts in here: Doesn't the DMCA's demanding that people use the products as they are defined start to sound like communism? Every time I read an article like this I keep picturing Adolf Hitler as CEO of whatever company is being written about.
You'd think the industry would learn that a new market has opened up and learn how to profit in it instead of trying to close it. The most damning thing for them is as long as Linux is around, there will always be ways to prevent copy protection from ruining our lives.
How many more subtle changes to the law will it take before it becomes illegal to not purchase a product because you saw the ad on TV?
"Derp de derp."
Read up on what 'fair use' actually means [stanford.edu] in the context of Copyright law.
Umm, no... that should be:
"Read up on what EDUCATIONAL 'fair use' actually means in the context of Copyright Law.
You people buy music? WTF? Are you folks stupid? paying $20 for a fuckin piece of plastic with music (never filled to capacity btw). Shit, getting music from friends / online is so easy it doesn't even make sense to go to the store, shit.
Cactus protection?
Don't touch the data or you will be subjected to thousands of lawy^H^H^H^H little pricks!
Talk about hidden meaning.
.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
Ever see any good music available on the internet ? It's always lame drivel so bad that it doesn't make any difference whether it has been compressed into mp3.
I don't rip CDs to steal music. I rip CDs because most of the ways that I listen to music anymore are MP3. I put 10 or 15 albums on one CD, then drop it into my DVD player (Apex) to listen at home, into my computer to listen at work, and into my portable MP3 player to listen while walking or in the car. The convenience of many albums on one CD is great.
The copy protection won't stop me anyway; I have a line input on my computer. It will just make it a pain in the ass for me, someone who DOES give them money, to use albums the way I want to.
I know you meant that as an insult, but trying gay sex is not a bad idea at all if you're having problems dating women.
Rc = ( Cm + Ce + ( Ca * Pa ) - Cp ) * Vd
Has no one ever tried to understand the formala you posted ?
The risk that data will be copied rises when the cost of recordable media rises ? Your formula should have been:
Rc = ((Ca * Pa) -Cp) * Vd / ( Cm + Ce )
Jan
didn't pay attention in history class? don't remember the nazis burning communist literature? maybe they should have just burned the commies instead. Now THAT would be a bonfire.
Since Audio CDs that are CopyProtected only work with Windows because is uses a proprietary player, does that mean that the Copy Protected CDs are closer to Software than it is to Audio? Will we be looking for Windows Natalie Imbruglia Cd or OSX Blink 182 or Linux Metallica?
This is getting quite interesting. I wonder if there's any legal ramifications of this?
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
In this battle for power. Who will win?
In the red corner weighing 330 pounds and undefeated DMCA champion from Washington DC it's RIAA!!
And in the blue corner weighing 340 pounds undefeated Copyright champion from California it's the MPAA!!
Why am I somehow not surprised at this? Anyone got information on what it sends and where, if it does turn out to be spyware? If I was the kind of fool to write software like this I'd probably have it look for mp3s on the assumption that all mp3s are by definition contraband. If I was more of a fool I'd have the program delete them or something. Has anyone studied the behavior of this apparently annoying and awkward program?
I think the real issue here is the whole notion of intellectual property. Imagine a time in the future when the nanotechnology of science fiction (not the nanotechnology of some microchip company trying to squeeze a few more GHz out of silicon) becomes reality. Imagine someone has written the algorithm for turning crap into diamonds. DeBeers would then buy out the intellectual property for the diamond creation process such that it becomes a trade secret. The prices for diamond remain high becuase only licensed corporations can use their bathrooms to create jewelry. Useless thought experiment? But this is what the RIAA has been trying to do to the lowly music consumer. Pay gold for something which weighs less than crap (as bits and bytes are essentially weightless).
In telling us that this protection scheme can be circumvented and detailing what device and procedure to use, isn't 'TechTV' in violation of the DCMA?
If so, could we use this rediculous situation to our advantage like felton...
While I doubt anyone is going to catch him on it, what the author describes doing here is a DMCA violation. The DMCA only refers to "effective" access control mechanisms... As has already been demonstrated, some pretty awful and flawed systems have been able to be called effective (*ahem* CSS). If, however, you are able to bypass the protection accidentally as the author did is there any doubt that the technology isn't effective? Sure this doesn't clear anyone for copyright violations, but it would certainly seem to clear the way for folks making a player application to end up scott free.
A less important issue is that they're never going to be able to effectivly copy-protect CDs... The cat is way out of the bag, and as long as they maintain interoperablilty with older CD players, there is going to be a way to go around it. People should be more watching the up and coming SACD (Super Audio CD format) which actually has a few hundred titles out, as well as a bunch of players. It uses a digital encoding called DSD (Direct Stream Digital) which is quite different from PCM. I head a demonstration of these puppies lined up against a normal CD player at this years Audio Engineering Society convention... It was incredible. They claim to have strong copy-protection built into the standard, but I have not been able to find details yet. With the squabling which has been going on with DVD audio, and the fact that many of the hardware manufacturers have not backed it, it stands to be the replacement for today's Red Book CD.
adam
Would you do it for some scoobie crack?
A glimpse of the future comes from the article:
With the copy protection working, a Windows PC shows the files and automatically runs the CactusPJ audio player that comes with the CD. (The CactusPJ player features difficult-to-see buttons and needs a second window to show track info. It also shows up as possible spyware on Ad-aware 5.6.)
DVD is large enough to contain software for playing the music. A programable "dumb" box can be made that depends on that software to play at all. In theory, each DVD can have a totally different encoding scheme and file format. Nasty, nasty. Oh yeah, the spyware is real nice too. Expect your smart media to get really dumb.
This have grave implications for all publishing, not just music. Free players of the future will be banned by the DCMA, and they will have to decode the player software itself to then decode the freaking DVD. It will not be too controversial to outlaw entertainment content encryption circumventers like that. Once such things are common and people are conditioned to the chains imposed, book publishers can adopt the same tricks and all but "official readers" will be outlawed. "Sure I'm litterate, but there is nothing left to read." may be heard when all the acid paper libraires crumple to dust 100 years from now. They the only way for you to read a book will be through some kind of pay per play censor ware. Do not contribute to this. Boycot such trash now and teach the greedheads what they failed to learn from DIVX.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
One difference between the previous situation with copy protected diskettes and the new copy protection schemes is that it is now illegal to traffic in cryptographic circumvention tools thanks to our largest corporations. Thus I don't imagine we'll see commercial software to break copy protection like we used to.
Off-topic? Off-topic? OFF-TOPIC!??!? Well, _yeah_, I guess, but it was surely deserving of a funny moderation. I mean, we have virginal humour, personal hygiene wrt kernel hackors humour, not one but TWO movie references, and a light-hearted jab at the end.
For a fun little diversion, go to the midbartech website and try to get information about one of the Cactus products. You'll get to a page that has a one-field form asking for a password. Get your browser to show you the source for the page, and groove on the unbelievably sophomoric obfuscated password verifier. Ha!
The RIAA should see to it that any machine that can READ a CD is made illegal. It's the only way to be sure nobody is making illegal copies.
The issue we were seeing was customer resistance to disks that were "defective". End users weren't terribly technical, and tended to call a colleague company's help line whenever their disks didn't read.
Of course, stealing copies of our program was as illegal as breaking copy protection is now, and that was sufficient for the majority of our customer base. When a customer called our help line with what turned out to be a stolen copy, we first helped them, then arrange for them to get a copy of the update release (with some bug fixes they needed!) for the regular update price.
I recollect actually going out to both a local college and high school and helping them set up whole labs of our product after they agreed to put us on next year's budget at the reduced academic rate (;-)).
Just like they were non-technical, you see, they were also well-meaning and faily law-abiding. We played to these, gained friendly customers, and got our profit margin back by selling upgrades, which were much chaper to produce than the whole package with manuals, etc. This approach allowed us to entirely avoid the known, quantified (and large) cost of copy protection. And this in turn allowed us to survive far longer than our management deserved!
My conclusion? Companies selling ordinary CDs without copy protection will have a business advantage over the ones trying to shoulder both the costs of DVDs for normal-fidelity audio and the support costs of "copy protection". Scofflaws will further reduce the profitability of copy-protected DVDs if they target them preferentially...
davecb@spamcop.net
People will pirate if the value to them of pirating outweighs the cost.
Record companies can change the value of their music through pricing and quality. They can change the cost by making it more likely or costly to be caught pirating, or by making it more costly to copy music. The latter is accomplished through better copy-protection.
The problem with copy-protection is that it is has not been unbreakable so far, and as long as it is cheaper to break than the market value of music being sold, it is rational to break it, since illegal music costs so little. The problem with law enforcement is that piracy is so widespread that it would cost too much.
The record companies' best option under this model is to cut prices. Of course, this model fails to take into account people's emotions. They may pirate anyway because they hate the record companies.
I have several apps (like Wavelab) that are capable of burning red-book spec CDs (unlike Nero, Roxio, Adaptec)- ie. able to adjust PQ codes, etc... These same apps can also extract audio. I am very curious how this software (vs. a freebie ripper) would handle a "protected CD"- (unfortunately there isn't any protected music worth buying).
.wav file at 44.1 sample rate, 16 bits... no format conversion occurs. The only issue is the layout on the CD- but the raw data is identical. I seriously cannot believe that this cannot be extracted intact through software.
I realize Universal has implied that this is a hardware issue, but I have a hard time with that "line"- my guess is that anyone could write software "error detection" that emulates that of an audio CD player capable of playing a "protected CD". My understanding, and I may be wrong here, is that a PC's CD drive uses a more exacting form of error detection (since they spin faster, and let's face it- one bit of error sneaking by in your walkman's CD playing in real time can be interpolated with less impact than on a data CD for a PC).
I also find it difficult to believe that all of the glass mastering facilities have been retooled to accept masters with "errors." Obviously there is a great difference between "pressing a CD" and burning one- and the error tolerances are very different.
The actual digital data of a CDDA file is identical to that of a
Labels need to realize that a compressed format such as mp3 poses a legitimate compromise to fidelity. It is not unlike making a mix tape on(cassette). Granted many people also are copying entire CDs with the wave audio intact, but if the labels wanted to show a gesture of good faith, they would INCLUDE mp3s at a decent audio quality (above 128!). This would at least make purchasing the CD "valuable" (since it is higher quality than mp3).
But keep in mind that we will soon see high resolution audio on DVD, and the labels will try to resell you your entire collection with audio at least at 24 bits, and likely twice the sample rates... likely with surround sound mixes, etc. This of course if overkill considering most people's listening environments. Again, this could be viewed as a value added service worth paying a premium (and I consider the cost of a new CD at that price point, considering what little you get for your money). An mp3 will look like a very inferior medium to those with discerning ears.
To address another point someone raised, it will be VERY EASY to fill a DVD audio CD- the audio files themselves could easily double if not triple, and they will likely add alternate mixes of the same songs, and dump a bunch of other multi-media crap on them... and probably add "commercials" promoting other artists or products .
They CANNOT mandate copy protection for PCs. Hardware has historically been ahead of media (think VCR if you must... or cassette tapes). Look what a flop the "pay-per-view" DVD players were... consumers voted with their wallets.
The DIRECT DIGITAL copy argument does not apply here if we consider that a blank DVD could cost more than a high-res audio DVD (which it could- for the time being). In the meantime, people need to use the technology to unseat the stranglehold that the centralized form of distribution places on content (FOUR major labels controlling everying, including the LAW?!- certainly promotes a grassroots "open source" movement for artists to distribute their wares directly- most consumers would arguably rather pay the artist than the label anyway, and arguably actual production costs are at an all-time low and are headed lower... as long as you don't need that top shelf producer).
Universal and others truly are cutting off their noses to spite their faces.
Those that suggest you "dance like no one is watching" really want to see you make a complete fool of yourself.
The "More Music" CD release is a test of copy-protection's market viability. If the test fails, Universal may change its mind about copy protecting all their CDs in the future. I just returned my first "More Music" CD to the record store today for a full refund (since it wouldn't play on my Mac). I hope the rest of you slashdotters are doing the same. When it comes to dealing with record companies, you can be sure there's nothing they really care about besides their bottom line, so get out there and hit them where it hurts!
Isn't /. groupthink great? Signal 11 please come back.
By doing Copy protection CD they'll piss off customers, customers will burn even more CD-Rs, and after that they'll shove Digital right management crap down our troats, people will be even more pissed, buying even less... and they'll blame it on piracy instead of blaming themselves.
.
:)
LOWER THE PRICE OF THE GOD DAMN CDS IF YOU WANT MORE VOLUME SELLS, I can see some mozart crap sold at C$6 at my local music shop, why would I have to pay C$20 for a metallica CD? Don't tell me because of the expenses and all, the expenses are the packaging, the design, the loans, etc etc.. YES... well, the mozart CD went thru the about the same process, Metallica sells a LOT more hense more VOLUME hense more PROFIT in the end to repay that possible loan (well now they are rich anyways), so why 20$? maybe they'd sell a LOT more if CDs would be cheaper and become the "trading cards" of the kids instead of being overpriced unreachable-to-most-teenagers-that-aren't-working
3 times cheaper would mean greater volume, greater splitting among artists, greater audience, greater penetration of the market, and I'D BUY SOME, which I don't do since maybe 5 years after being raped having to pay c$50 for imports that I really wanted and they would classify imports when they had actually a TON of them and anyways, even metallica is "imported" to canada so who cares about the "import" label. I was ripped off, I've searched for alternatives, and I got one.
You can screw people off big time and keep it up for YEARS, but history shows that in ANY circumstances, people will find alternatives or revolt when they are mistreated or abused.
I did my part, I have 100's of Original CDs, but I had it with that system, and seeing them investing massively in crap like DMCA or DRM instead of doing the obvious: CUTTING THE PRICES, simply disgust me. Again, I'd buy a shitload of CDs if the price would be right, it isn't.
For people with the lame "expenses" arguments, tell me, why are tapes 1/2 the price of the cd? it's the SAME process, heck a cassette costs more to produce than a CD, in both time and material, so why is it cheaper? there are many reasons, but I don't care, WHY wouldn't the CDs be cheaper? why would I shell C$30 for a DVD or C$20 for a CD if they could be sold for a fraction of that price?
I am not saying I copy my stuff, I don't even own a dvd player because I just skipped that technology, I'm still happy with my SVHS tapedeck. But I am really not surprised (like most of the people here) of what's happening. Someone is really high at RIAA... Towelie must be running things
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
It's quite telling that one of the first major CDs to receive copy protection is also one of the most disappointing CDs I've ever listened to in my life.
I'm serious -- her first album, Left Of The Middle, was actually really cool, and I genuinely liked the vast majority of the tracks.
I think there's like one(1) song on the entire new album I'd ever listen to again, copy protected or not. Generic tripe doesn't begin to describe it -- and this is coming from a *fan*.
Ugh.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
This is just another example of laws not in sync with technology. For that matter though is Congress in sync with anything? In the U.S. we seem to have this thing about passing laws to cover every possible thing. The Government seems hell bent in micromanaging its citizens to death. Is it just me or does anyone else notice this trend?
Error Correction (Reed-Solomon Encoding, in this case) is a system for increasing system robustness. Even with scratches, dents, and so on, the system should still work.
Security in general and Cactus's scheme in particular is a system for decreasing system robustness. Except with a precise combination of software player, disc, and equipment, the system should not still work.
So, from a theoretical point of view, they've repurposed something that added value into something that subtracted value. In practical terms, scratching your CD is now much more likely to cause serious damage, worthy of replacement.
This can, and will be proven experimentally.
The irony, of course, is that the more copy protection is added, the more legitimate the need will be to make copies. Beautiful.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
yes, as opposed to the efficient and fair organization that it currently is :)
I think a distinction to be made here is that in the Macrovision case, the copy-protection scheme predated the hardware to beat it, so that it could legitimately be argued that the hardware was designed specifically to defeat Macrovision copy protection.
Whereas in the use of the computer to copy digital media, the computer's ability to do so predates any copy protection scheme to prevent it from doing so -- it's simply what computers do. As a result, the case that computers are designed specifically to thwart digital rights managment schemes is absurd, which is why the record companies are going to Capitol Hill to buy legislation. As the law presently stands, their case against the computer industry is unwinnable in court.
You "buy" your linux OS's? Obviously you got ripped off because most slashdot people know how to get it for free.
See the release notes for the latest alpha version of cdrtools, available on an ftp site near you, for details on copying the audio data from a defectively mastered multisession CDROM. This software requires a Unix-like OS, and a SCSI CDR/CDROM drive, so it is not a universal[tm] solution to the universal[tm] problem, but it's a start... Basically, the idea, as I understand it, is that if the TOC is garbage, then .... *ignore* it. And yes, it *does* work.
First, does this mean it's Windows-only? Probably. What happens on a non-Windows system? Is the disk labelled accordingly?
Second, unless the install process ("install process to play an audio CD?") makes you sign a EULA, that spyware thing could be considered hostile code, and might be illegal under anti-hacking laws. This is definitely worth litigation.
it was never possible to put a videotape into a computer.
Alpha Micro AM1000 computers are backed up onto VHS video tape.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
Yet another problem with the DMCA... Perhaps we will soon see legislation that requires cameras to superimpose clothing on the emperor so that citizens may not document his lack of clothes.
-- http://www.swcp.com/~hudson/
Okay, but that's putting the computer into a video tape. I think what I meant was putting the video tape into a computer.
Pushin' 'n dealin', shovin' 'n stealin'
It's a vain attempt though, since they can't really guarantee your life against illness, accidents, murderers, etc. But what little room there is to meddle in the lives of others some can get - they'll take.
Go ahead, mark this off-topic... I was just answering a question.
I AM, therefore I THINK!
Use that dictionary for once.
Read up on stealing, and, more importantly, its synonyms, like larceny.
That and ripping a CD has nothing to do with even copyright violation (which is what I assume you think people will do with the liberated information). Just because its not protected doesn't mean its automatically copyright violation!
Your troll was rather pathetic.
Steps to circumvent 99% of all Copy protection.
1. Connect the line out from a CD player to the line In on a PC
2. Open a sound recording program
3. Record the music (remember ot stop for each track or at least break it up after wards)
4. Compres and be on your merry way!
(The also works with DVD players, a DV cam that has RCA inputs and firewire)
I don't see why we are complaining about copy protection this much, it is a foolish attempt at best. Maybe we should be focused more on buying CD's than ripping them. Then again you have people like me who weren't planning on buying the CD anyway.
Secondsun
You can decrypt DVD's if it keeps the kiddies out of your porn.
-DMCA
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
>Any video recording device is required by law to either be affected by the sync signal corruption or to detect it and intentionally degrade the recording quality. Unfortunately, Macrovision has all of the patents on this technique, which means that you must license it from them if you want to comply with the law.
The own the patent on Automatic Gain Control?
Nahhh. I find that difficult to believe.
Here's a link or two you'd be interested in. This isn't patented by Macrovision, and never can be. Oh, and the best part is it has uses other than for duplicating copy protected movies so it will (probably) never be illegal.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
It tries to look credibly scientific, yet it does not use any units, it tries to quantify non-constant values, it's simplistic, it's presented without any justification, and it has several glaring errors.
Have you considered a career as an economist?
"Or will the DVD drive manufacturers stand up to the recording industry?"
Just like they stood up to the MPAA about CSS, I assume..
This is record industry propaganda - the Audio Home Recording Act does grant you the right to copy music for your own personal use.
threaten to sic the hounds of the DMCA on him as well? Afterall, if you are buying a circumvention device from him, isn't he traffiking in illegal goods?
Somewhat seriously, this is nuts. This is my first post on a topic like this on Slashdot, and the whole situation is nuts. These guys have so much fscking money, they manage to lobby laws that benefit so few, but fsck over so many, it is practically unconstitional (the spirit never meant for stupid bull like this to happen, but the wording never truly prevents it).
Even worse, small-fry 'customer service agents' are starting to spout the propaganda that got people to accept this in the first place. MS even uses piracy as an excuse for extortion. Let me put it this way: Apple charges 130$ for MacOS X and MacOS 9 in the same box (9 is used for the Classic layer), and when the next major upgrade comes out, it will be the same (if 9 is still included) or drop back to 100$ if they remove 9. SuSE and RH sell Linux even cheaper (excuse me, the support and documentation, the discs are 'free'). MS does not need to be charging over 300$ for an OS with no bundled software. 99$ for the 'upgrade' cost would get me the full install CD of any other OS. MS is pulling the same 'piracy hurts me badly' stunt that the RIAA and MPAA are using to justify fscking their customers.
On a side note: my MP3 collection has breached 3GB in size, still growing, still legal. Most of the music I listen to isn't sold anywhere, so I listen to the many independant artists online who sell their wares or share their music online in MP3 format. RIAA be damned, if they don't want to support a nice wide variety of music and get it out to the people, then they aren't getting my money, 'encryption' or no 'encryption'.
If you have a rotary phone, you must be a Jew!
According to the audio home recordings act deliberate mis encoding of copyright status, generation status to prevent home copying is illegal. Although this method of protection doesn't screw with SCMS it could be viewed as analogous to doing so as it prevents the home recording allowed by the act. IANAL.
Now you can buy super-thin fingerprint replacement film to put on your fingers so you can rob, rape and murder without the police beeing able to nail you.
What the fuck is so great about crimes? Are you people mentally disturbed?
Aren't there ANY honest people left in the world?
Corporations are helping us to reach Nirvana...
Well, at least they aren't helping us reach Metalica...
Metali-who? Never heard of it. I only buy stuff I can try out in mp3 first.
Jobs' recent quote when the iPod shipped was right on the money:
"Piracy is a social problem, not a technological one."
That really sums it up. And you can see in Apple's products that they really believe this.
Ripping MP3's (or AIFF's) in iTunes is ridiculously simple. Like it should be. (Single click rips an entire CD)
Copying those MP3's to a portable music device is also incredibly simple. Even automated if you use an iPod (though iTunes works great with other MP3 players too!)
The only copy protection on my iPod is the fact that it's a one-way sync. And for what it's worth, it's a LOT LOT LOT harder to do a 2-way sync than a one-way sync. So I really don't believe the conspiracy theorists, and I think it's all about keeping things simple!
Steve's on the right track here. He understands.
There's no real technological reason that other companies can't do what Apple's doing. But for some reason, they "get it" and folks like MS, etc. don't.
Are copy protected CDs actually CDs at all? Do they comply with red book? Are they legally entitled to carry the "Compact Disc - Digital Audio" trademark? Does anyone here know?
That was classic intercourse!
The problem is, simply, that big record companies are using hot-selling bands or discs to help fund new startups or possibly dying bands or discs. Go check out major stores and look for the "notched" discs. Or find "clearance" or "big sale" items, and you'll notice most all of them are worthless titles or bands no one would ever bother with. Well, they went through the same processes as Metallica, including marketing, and yet sold barely anything.
Instead of taking the loss and deciding, "Hey, we should stop producing crap or mimicking bands," they decide they can turn out ten bands under the profits of one major one. If one of those other bands happens to make it, then they have another band to help sell more bands.
Sadly, though, this practice is done regularly, even with some of the independent labels. I just wish there were a distributor out there who would handle completely independent artists. You want to spend your money and time doing your own CDs for your band, send it to the distributor who puts out a catalog of discs. These discs can be ordered by any major chain or music store. Then it's just up to the bands themselves to promote themselves and let people know they have a disc out.
This would really make the costs dive down if people could just get into the stores without major labels and without the RIAA.
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
I don't claim to have the answer to that, not being a self proclaimed visionary (like Steve J. and Bill G., or even Larry E.)
But... it seems pretty much simple to me that :
CONTENT == POWER.
So far, Sony and AOL (yuk)-TM have been pretty good at verifying this equation.
So... the result is that no DVD can be sold if the big fishes don't use the content. And Companies like Sony are even big enough to manufacture them if they are not pleased by the others.
It's a big corporate world out there, and if you are a standard customer looking to spend money, I am afraid that you don't weight too much in the equation above. Kinda like the simplified equation of relativity if you will.
PPA, the girl next door.
-- I feel better now. Thanks for asking.
you've never been bit by the "oh shit! where's my BACKUPS???"
:)
So fucking true
'Nuff said.
Didn't the 18th amendment (Prohibition) teach us that making something people are gonna do anyway illegal just forces them to organize? Look at the facts:
... Stopping music trading/sharing)
1) Ripping CD is ALWAYS going to be possible
2) People like getting something for nothing (I rip my Cd for personal use only and don't share them, you may too but what all this noise about
3) It is prohibitively expensive to prosecute individuals for trading/sharing music only - both finically and in terms of bad publicity
RIAA, face it - you are just giving more power to your "enemies" (read customers) by making this such a big issue. If you want to stop music trading/sharing online -- make it cheep and easy to download songs! That's the only way your gonna stop this. ANY other action you take will just force the "Bad people" committing this crime against your pocketbook to organize to become more effective.
If you think that the reason they couldn't play track 1 is because the track count went up by one, ask Patrick Norton about it. I've corresponded with TechTV people several times before, including Patrick, I think, and they do write back. From seeing a couple of episodes of TSS while at my parents' house, they seem to be pretty jazzed about breaking the copy protection, although they were debating whether to release the info because of the DMCA. My guess is they'd be willing to follow up and look at various angles of this.
That light you see at the end of the tunnel might be from an oncoming train.
That's useful to know. Why do you need the MOTU if you have the Apogee? The latter seems to be doing both recording and playback. Also, can you get the input from the MOTU through a FireWire card into Linux? Are there drivers?
DMCA, DMCA....
Now wheres those millenium people with the silly costumes gone?
What we WON'T have is a vigorous free-market solution. In a free market, of course, the DVD-drive companies would realize that the ability to read "copy-protected" CD's gives them a valuable competitive advantage.
The DVD player selling under Liteon's name (System designed by them by OEMed) does sell on this point. Advertisied on the box and on flyers the company puts out tell of a feature termed "SMART-READ" or soemthing to taht effect. Basicly they calm error an advanced error correction scheme that runs physical checks and a next generation error correction scheme that reads past 'faults' that normally can't be corrected by other drives.
Long story short, this is sold in a markert where CD and DVD piracy is rampant buy those CDs are of poor quality. So far LiteOn has yet to get into any sort of trouble for their drives that make piracy easier on the consumer....
That depends, as a well-known personage once said, infamously, on what the definition of the word 'is' is. Kindly look to the meaning behind the form.
It's true that the fair use statute currently is in the form of an affirmative defense that may, depending on the circumstances, be available to some defendents in civil copyright infringement lawsuits. (See 17 USC section 107, 1988 ed. and Supp. IV.). But that's just the form of the law, not its essence.
The reason for the law (see legislative history, read Jessica Litman) was to codify a thread of case law decisions that had clarified the bounds of permissible uses of otherwise copyright-protected works. These decisions were necessary because the laws defining protection for copyrighted works were vague on the point, as was the clause in the Constitution that authorized the very existence of Federal copyright law. And the essence of these decisions and Section 107 was -- before the onset of technically and commercially feasible copy protection -- that the copyrightholder's rights to control copyright-protected content ended with the exclusive rights enumerated in copyright law (make and distribute multiple copies; for performable works, public performance, etc.).
-Anything- else a citizen (''user," if you like) could figure out how to do with the work that didn't run afoul of the particular rights reserved to the copyrightholder was considered a 'fair' use of the work. So where the law was silent, the presumption was in favor of the citizen. And there was a de facto guarantee that when the copyright term expired, the work would enter the public domain where it could be used by anyone for any purpose, because it could be accessed by anyone and the copyrightholder's exclusive rights would no longer exist. A sensible system that worked to benefit both society as a whole and those in the business of publishing new works.
But now two things have happened to foul all that up: the copyright term extension statutes (producing de facto permanent copyright protection), and the onset of technical access protection in for-sale copies of works, synergized by the DMCA statute (making the content inaccessible after the copyright term expires, preventing use).
The current fair use law bluelarva cites evolved in reaction to the old regime, not the new one, and the active controversy (thank you, EFF!) as to the legitimacy of the new regime is based in large measure on the fact that the abstract principle of fair use -- which I think can clearly be seen as a package of citizens' (or consumers') rights counterbalancing the rights of copyright holders -- has been left out. And that means the tower of the new regime is built on sand, Constitutionally speaking (certain bad court decisions to the contrary).
Note that bluelarva's interpretation of fair use would seem to make the same assumption as the new regime, namely that where the law is silent, it is the rights of the copyrightholder -- not the citizen (==the public at large) that should be favored. * s i g h *
So... I think maybe the playing field's still a little too unsettled to declare definitively that fair use is not a right. Time may yet show us otherwise.
Can someone please explain to me why if Hurd was being worked on way back in the day before linux came out that it is just now getting almost close to kinda being useable?
The trick around this is to access the invisible MP3s on your iPod with any number of free file utilities (take Hidden Hunter for example). Once you find the invisible MP3s, you can copy them over to any machine and change the invisible attribute with a file editor like ResEdit. It's that simple.
I absolutely agree with Jobs. This is a social problem, not a technological one. And Apple's take on this is apparent given the relative ease with which its technological means for copy protection may be compromised. As for Apple's social means of copy protection, read the fine print at the bottom of ads for the iPod: "Don't steal music."
Macrovision is actually now legally required (by the DMCA, of course).
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
The LotR CD is protected also, I'd assume cactus though I honestly don't know. It has 2 sessions, the first having the CD audio and the second having The application player interface. All the CD drives I put it in, (a normal drive, burner and dvd drive (iomagic)) came up with the flash interface. But friendly audioCatalyst 2.1 had no problem seeing the audio tracks and subsiquently ripping them all, (except for the last one which required using isoBuster to pull off the CD, due to audiocatalyst missreading it's length.) Do record company people honestly think any type of protection will help? The real problem is not direct copying of cd's, but sharing of files. And as long as there is any way for one person to start distribution of a file, they will be distributed. And there is always a way. As was said, it's a social problem not a technical one, and technical means will never solve it.
I do security
I wrote about this CD earlier this month in my column. I didn't test the particular DVD-ROM drive mentioned in the TechTV piece, but I did find several other ways to copy this CD, from the basic ripping utility on a Plextor CD-RW to a Philips standalone CD recorder.
Macrovision is an analogue copy protection technology and has nothing to do with the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Technology to defeat it has existed long before the DMCA, and has significant non-infringing uses.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
I set up a system for defeating Macrovision. Using a Sigma Designs Ventura MPEG Decoder board and an ATI All-in-Wonder SVGA/TV combo card, hook up the DVD decoder to the ATI Multimedia Bus input. Flip on the TV out on the ATI and run your favorite DVD viewer full-screen. This allows excellent reproduction of Macrovision-hampered DVD's on my ancient Magnavox 4-head VHS VCR. Is this a violation of the DCMA to put this info here? Do I care?
-- Anonymous Coward
Does this relate to the problem with SafeDisk II copy protection on games preventing them from being played from DVD drives?
Should be illigal very soon now...
Adult drug dealers front the drugs to kids in schools ("front" means you give the drugs and the client pays a higher price, but they pay after they sell it). Any smart drug dealer knows that schools are great markets - you recruit someone who goes to that school to sell for you. I know because I've done this (although it was a college, not a high school).
The point that the drug advocates make is that if the drugs were legal but age-restricted, it would be easier to track down people who sell drugs to schoolchildren. While many youngsters can get alcohol, if they get caught with the alcohol, there is a much better chance that the seller will be tracked down.
all they are doing is releasing the same old VHS titles in "new" DVD format.
Its really sick that legislation is passed to outlaw things so as to boost profits for record companies, while other things like fitting speed limiting devices to cars, which will save many lives, are ignored. Legislation is being driven by greed and it is totally wrong and something must be done to make politicians accountable. Democracy has been eroded and now goes to the highest bidder.
One section of the DMCA explicitly requires all analog video recorders made/sold/imported to be affected by Macrovision. One can guess that the reason it was included in the DMCA is because Macrovision is the copy-protection scheme used by DVD players - it doesn't do much good to protect the digital content if you can just record it off to a videotape by ignoring the Macrovision; at least, that's what the warped reasoning of the legislature came up with, ignoring that the reason the movie producers were supposedly so hot and bothered in the first place was that "digital copying" is "perfect"; if that's the only reason for new restrictions on copying, then why also add new restrictions to analog copying, which is "not perfect"? It would at least have been consistent to only require that digital video capture devices detect Macrovision and mark the digital data as copy-restricted in some way.
In a peer-to-peer Net, partially effective copy protection on popular mass media is analogous to partially effective antibiotics in the universe of disease: it breeds resistant strains and makes the problem worse.
Even if only a minority of users have the hardware and software needed to rip a popular CD, that will be enough to "seed" the file-sharing pool, so that the rest of the listeners can grab, share, and finish the job.
Nevertheless, the major labels will probably go for it. This will create another market paradox: small-time, up-and-coming independent musicians with absolutely NO interest in making their music "hard to get" will be competing in the file pool with big-budget acts whose label is desperately trying to make THEIR music as hard to get as possible. Independent music will be helped, and the surprisingly marginal profitability of many labels will be hit hard.
One thing I do like about these "software music wars" is that eventually somebody will get smart at, say, Universal, and realize that they could install a protected CD player that REFUSES TO PLAY RIVAL COMPANIES' CD's. Or better yet, that makes them sound tinny or low-fi without announcing it. Then the rival strikes back, and Universal counterstrikes, and oooooooh!! i like it!!!
How come this isn't discussed more? I have discovered a way to unlock ANY cd/dvd encryption both past present and future! It's as simple as playing the cd/dvd from a normal source (cd/dvd player), and outputting to the a/v inputs on your computer. Bow down before me and call me Obviousour! Seriously now...applying digital blocks to something that ends up being converted to analog signals anyway is pointless. This type of crap is why I use vinyl. Nothing like chilling back in a vinyl thong listening to Men Without Hats.
Unless you are ripping multimedia (or porn, or home videos, well you know what I mean)
or whatever its called.
Although it only works with readers & writers that are raw bit or whatever compatible.
It just copies the raw binary patern or something off the CD onto another one.
So if its a copy protected CD, you just end up with an identical copy protected CD
"Just set it up to ignore errors, so it doesn't try to amend the errors".
Yes, of course Congress would never misname a bill, or sully the laws of the "Digital Millenium" with stinky old analog requirements. Try googling, and verify that you are incorrect.
(It's also illegal to sell a device specifically to bypass Macrovision. GoVideo pretty much had to remove their dual VHS deck units from the market because they became unsable for commercial content, and the $20 'video enhancer' boxes have disappeared from radio shack. Of course, common solutions still exist.)
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Gah. I suppose I should've known better than assume logic in lawmakers decisions.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.