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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!!!
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."
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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...
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
Read up on what 'fair use' actually means in the context of Copyright law.
Hint: It isn't to do with what you think is fair.
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
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."
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)
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.
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
I had no idea it was the government's job to protect people from them selvs! I guess I missed that part of the constitution!
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?
Reagan's war on drugs
In the last 20 years the "War on Drugs" has cost us billions of dollars, many bad laws have been passed because of it, many good peoples lives have been ruined and drug abuse is worse now then it ever has been.
Today we have Bush's "War on Terrorism" which I beleive will be exactly as successful as the "War on Drugs". In 20 years we will have spent trillions of dollars, many bad laws will be passed, many good peoples lives will be ruined and terrorism will be worse than ever.
Remember, you heard it on Slashdot first.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
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.
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 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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Then they need to look at the history of software. In the '80s a few people knew how to patch a binary to bypass copy protection schemes and those stupid code wheel lookups, but once done, the copy spread far and wide (In a few cases, before the game was released). As I recall, the big motivation for the protection breakers was fun, beating the system, and bragging rights.
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?
I was recently in a local music store that carried "The Fast & The Furious" soundtrack. (First off, figures Universal would start with a CD like this--no one wants it, so there won't be a huge outrage over it!) On the back, it states something to the effect of "This CD is copy protected and it meant to be played in standard CD Audio players or Windows-based PCs"
No, it will not play in your Mac. No, it will not play in your consoles. It may play in your car CD player, but that totally depends on the model. And to be honest, I'm not sure about Linux--I'm not going to spend $20 on that POS CD to see if it works under redhat or not.
On top of the fact that this protection decreases the quality of the CD-Audio, etc., it also further extends Microsoft's monopoly. Now if you want to play an Audio CD in your computer, you had better have Windows! This is something that needs to be fought immediately. (Some nice "DEFECTIVE CD" stickers would help, I think)
An AC wrote:
> Oh joy!
>
> So now we can get back to stealing from the artists!?
>
> What a wonderful discovery!
No discovery. Artists have been stolen from all along by the recording industry. Hardly anything you pay for a CD goes to the actual artist. It goes to a bunch of greedy exploiters that call themselves the RIAA. Now they want to make the artists to work for a paycheck so all their IP belongs to the record label they work for.
To make matters worse, they want to restrict what law abiding people can do with their overpriced CD by selling broken ones (only their broken ones still don't do what they want)! As far as we know, these Universal CD's only play on Windows PCs with their crappy software, or on (some?) Windows PCs with DVD drives. If you want to play the songs using Windows Media Player on a PC without a DVD drive, you are out of luck. (Has anyone even tried to use Universal's player on a Windows XP PC? Does XP even let you run it?) If you want to use the XBox's feature to rip songs and play them as you game (or even just play the idiot CD's) you are out of luck. (Why Microsoft, patenter of the all-wonderful DRM OS and all around monopoly-abusing juggernaut, isn't screaming bloody murder here, I'll never know.) If you have any non-Microsoft OS, computer, or game console, you are seriously out of luck.
No, I don't trade mp3's. I'm not into mass-piracy, or even the "information should be free" movement. But I am also not into paying $20 (or whatever they are now) for broken CD's, especially when the money goes to greedy sharks and not to the artists. On the other hand, I happily paid $60 (and waited months to get) the two disc "Mothra 3" soundtrack, partly because it is the only way, without a US distributor, to reward Toho for one of their best Mothra movies, and because I have had so much fun translating the label and writing English lyrics to the instrumental pieces.
"They bind our hearts: 'Let's sell them again and again!'"
From the fairies' song "Infant Girl" in the Japanese version of "Mothra" (1961).
you drug advocates seem to miss how much suffering is caused to children and spouses in families where one of the parents is a drug addict.
As opposed to how much better off they are when daddy goes to jail and mommy goes to work while the house goes on the auction block?
And, naturally since alcohol is perfectly legal (if you're over 21), it must not cause any trouble at all.
Or it could be that any drugs (including alcohol) will be a significant problem for a minority of dysfunctional individuals and the rest will not have much problem with it or will have the sense to leave it alone (the same way the majority of people have the sense to not sniff bug spray).
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/
But you drug bashers don't seem to understand that alchohol and cigarettes are actually much more destructive and addicting than drugs like marijuana and to a certain degree even cocaine (but not necessarily "crack" cocaine). But despite that, I still think people should have the freedom to do whatever they want to themselves. A law shouldn't prevent me from losing my job, health, and general well-being because of my own choices. That's not what American laws are supposed to be for. They're supposed to advocate freedom, not be a straight-jacket that protects us from ourselves.
Besides, the whole "it's for your protection" thing is a bullshit reason anyway. Do all of the trees in my yard have to be regulation height so I don't jump out of them and hurt myself? Do all businesses have to line their parking lots with foam so I don't scrape my knee on their pavement? Is there any law that says that my kitchen knives can only be as sharp as a butter knife?
Drug laws were born out of the lust for money, that's still what they're about, and that's the reason why they're so inconsistent and illogical.
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?
More relevant to personal copies are the sections on libraries and archives from US Copyright Office Circular 92:
In other words, converting from an older format (CD) to a newer one (MP3) for your own personal use is legal, provided that the copies are not distributed.
No where in the documents on fair use could I find any reference to an individual's "right" to distribute copies, particularly to the general public (e.g. Napster.) Even public libraries are under significant restrictions for copying, and are not allowed to have more than 3 archive copies in circulation at a time.
If interpreted loosely, you might read those restrictions as meaning that you can "lend" two copies of an MP3 to personal friends while keeping one for your own use, provided that you own the (overpriced) CD the MP3s were ripped from.
Of course the PTO doesn't mention anything about copy protection, but as a "copy protected" CD isn't readable by my MP3 player, I believe it is legal for me to transform media to a format that is usable with my equipment. (i.e. Ripping a "copy protected" CD for use in an MP3 player.)
As per usual, IANAL.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
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.
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.
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?
The owners of the CD mark appears to be a holding company owned by Philips and Sony that licenses their patents on the medium. At this point those patents must be nearing expiry. However anyone can legally use the mark if the owner does not object and I doubt that as charter members of the RIAA it is likely Philips or Sony would.
All the cactus CDs are are CDs that have deliberate coding errors that cause the standard Windows 95 and 98 CDROM drivers to fail to read the disk. The question then is whether CDROM players with bad drivers should be using the CD mark. It would be interesting to hear from people with XP since many of the driver bugs have been fixed.
I suspect that the reason the corrupted disks work in DVD players is that they have the DVD driver which is newer and was written to support reading Audio CDs rather than 'tollerate' it.
Since the catus shield is depending on bugs in the Windows drivers to work it is not likely to be a very usefull long term solution. Sooner or later the drivers will change and it is difficult to see how the cactus folk can complain that their favorite bugs have been removed. Even on XP you can still load unsigned drivers, you can even turn off the warning when you try to load unsigned drivers. The criteria for signing drivers are written to reduce the number of bugs, Microsoft is fed up with people complaining about their system crashing when the cause is crappy kernek mode drivers. Microsoft has not made support for goofy DRM schemes a driver signing requirement.
It is a fair bet that the Linux drivers will be written to implement the red book spec in a way that does not cause it to fail on corrupted non-red book CDs. While Linux boxes are a small proportion of the market there are easily enough to support the bootleg distribution networks with ripped content.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
It's not the government. A common mistake.
It's business, specifically megacorporations that use our free-market campaign financing laws to buy laws that micromanage citizens to death.
Government really doesn't exist as an entity, and moreover, isn't motivated to steal our freedom, whatever Randites believe. In a way, our government is in the business of selling freedom.
Ah, but business, business exists to squeeze every possbile shekel, at the cost of our freedoms if necessary, from the citizenry. And corporations are the ultimate amoral thieves of freedom - they don't really exist, are nearly impossible to sue, and have no responiblity to coexist with their power. Save one: make money.
WE are the government. Hating it is like hating the face you see in the mirror.
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."
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".