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.

Comments

Now the big question: Who will cave in first?

[Trepalium]

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?

So?

[Sk3lt]

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?

Difference between copying and reading?

[hughk]

Look, I know that there is supposed to be a big difference between the error correction on Audio-CD players and the normal CD-R drive, let alone a DVD drive, but in the end, it is a digital bit stream. Bits can be copied, end of story.

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.

I nearly got arrested because of this!

[the_mind_]

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'.

A theory if you will

[HongPong]

I strongly suspect something other than the usual theory of CD-ripping protection is going on here (inserting checksum-foiling bits or some such). These guys switched from Wintels (a lot of Dell-wintels to be even more generic) with CD players to DVD players, controlled by different automatic Windows procedures. No mention is really made of the difference in how DVD players *under windows* play regular CDs differently anyhow.

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...

Re:A theory if you will

[b1t r0t]

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...

Better yet, first be sure it's got the "copy protected" label. Then insert, rip to AIFF (just a copy command under OS X, which presents audio CDs as implicitly ripped AIFF files!), burn CD-ROM with AIFF files. Then go back to Circus Shitty (they deserve this kind of hassle because of their old Divx "rental" format), whine that "it won't play in my DVD player!" and demand a refund.

As far as I'm concerned, RIAA record companies have got the best kind of copy protection of all: they don't make anything new that I would want to pirate, much less buy. And the old stuff I can usually find much cheaper used, if I care enough to want to hear it.

Just about all the music I listen to these days, aside from talk radio bumper music, is from JASRAC, not ASCAP or BMI. In other words, anime music and J-pop. And I prefer the original CDs when I can find them, because they almost always include the lyrics, and printed lyrics are helpful in one of the most homophone-laden languages on the planet.

Re:All DVD drives...or just that NEC model?

[Krimsen]

Ah, I see. Corporations are helping us to reach Nirvana by not allowing us to own property. They figure if we simply license everything, we won't own it and all of us will become Zen masters with no attachment to the physical world.... and here we are, all thinking that this is some scheme to gain power and extort more money from the hapless masses. Dammit, I knew corporations had the good of humanity in mind all along.

Another way around it:

[arbitrary nickname]

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

Re:Another way around it:

[dimator]

That's an interesting method. Here's another that I prefer:

1) Take 'Natalie Imbruglia - White Lillies Island' CD.

2) Fasten the disc to your car's bumper with a chain.

3) Drive around until there's nothing left but the chain.

Re:Another way around it:

[selectspec]

That's an interesting method. Here's another that I prefer:
1) Take 'Natalie Imbruglia - White Lillies Island' CD.
2) Fasten the disc to your car's bumper with a chain.
3) Drive around until there's nothing left but the chain.

Then take the chain, wrap it around a rafter in a high ceiling, and hang yourself from it. Do your family a favor and don't mention the CD in your suicide note.

damnit, couldn't they be quiet?

[Barbarian]

Too bad this Cactus system didn't become the standard before this was discovered, then RIAA would be a laughingstock.

Dell.

[Night0wl]

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!"

The people who wrote this article are idiots.

[amitv]

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.

Re:The people who wrote this article are idiots.

[dimator]

Well, The Screensavers is not a show for techies, it's a show for the average PC/Mac user. They usually go through the most simple of steps in great detail, probably so that normal users don't get frustrated and change the channel.

Re:Soon to be illegal...

[Anonymous Coward]

But of course.

There is an excellent review of CPRM, SSSCA and the coming "Secure PC" on The Register. Here's a short excerpt from this article:

But the CPRM gambit was an early indication that the entertainment industry was deadly serious about removing the free movement of digital media on what has been, for fifteen years, on open platform. ... In August a draft bill called the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA) was proposed by Senator Hollings (D). It proposed mandatory inclusion of copy-protection schemes for domestic and imported PCs, anything in fact, capable of recording digital media.

if you can listen to it, you can rip it

[markj02]

I don't understand why the record labels are expending so much effort and political capital on this. I mean, you can rip any CD by just connecting to the analog audio output. Sure, it's 1x, but you can do it while you listen to the CD or automate it with an audio jukebox. Given that MP3 is a bit worse than CD anyway, any theoretical loss in quality doesn't matter (and a bit of analog degradation might do the CD recording some good anyway). And once it's in MP3 format, you can send it to the whole world.

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?

Re:if you can listen to it, you can rip it

[pointym5]

Are the record labels just clueless or is there some other diabolical plan in the wings?

Sure there's a plan: digital speakers (usb?) that include tamper-proof decoding hardware. Of course they can't prevent you from mic'ing the speakers, but then microphones are just tools of pirates and kiddie-pr0n drug-snorting criminals anyway.

Re:if you can listen to it, you can rip it

[cpuffer_hammer]

Are the record labels just clueless or is there some other diabolical plan in the wings?

There may be. The copying/piracy argument is only a front. It is the CREATION of content that the studios and labels are worried about.

There economic mode is to control the access of artists to audience and make money by charging as much as possible to the audience and paying as little as possible to the artists.

So if they can get most people to use a player that only they can create content for then they can squeeze the artists. As long as it is possible/legal to may copies you can make originals.

This is why we as information smiths need to get artists on our side. Once content begins to travel from artist to audience (and the rewards back the other way) without the studios and the labels then things will begin to change.

Charles Puffer

Just like the good old days!

[wackybrit]

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

Perfect copy protection IS possible!

[Tsar]

I have a CD with the only truly unbreakable copy protection I've yet tested. The publisher accomplished it by omitting the CD's the metal layer and, apparently, the dye layer as well. The result is a disc which is almost completely transparent. Sadly, the disc is unplayable on any of my equipment, DVD-ROM drive included. Perhaps the publisher anticipated that problem, and that's why he published it without a label, and distributed it for free with spindles of CD-R's.

All kidding aside— here is a formula that might be useful to publishers of digital data:

Rc = ( Cm + Ce + ( Ca * Pa ) - Cp ) * Vd

where

Rc = Risk of the data being illegally copied
Cm = Cost of recordable media
Ce = Cost of effort needed for duplication
Ca = Cost of being apprehended
Pa = Probability of apprehension
Cp = Cost of purchasing data
Vd = Value of the data

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.

Re:Perfect copy protection IS possible!

[reynaert]

If L > 0, the data will be copied.

Perhaps you could define L? ;)

Re:Perfect copy protection IS possible!

[sjames]

Please excuse any rambling here. Your post started this stream of thought, so it's a reply to your posting.

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.

Really, the RIAA is facing nothing that retailers haven't faced since the beginning of commerce. While copying (or theft to use their term) is a bit higher than for retail, but their loss per copy is also lower.

At the same time, retailers have faced a serious threat to their profits for many years that the RIAA never sees in any realistic way....Competition in a free market.

Imagine starting a new department store in an environment where some sort of DSIA (Department Stores of America) controled every single advertising medium you might use to advertise your existance except for word of mouth.

One symptom of this state of affairs is that prices are much higher than they would be otherwise. In any sane pricing in a free market, the seller has to strike a balance between profit per unit and consumer willingness (and ability) to pay the price that results. Since the barriers to entry for the music market are artificially high, the RIAA has been able to consistantly keep profit/unit high. At the same time, they have created an unusually large population that really wants music, but can't/won't afford the price they charge. By consistantly making large profits while the artists make very little, they have also made themselves easy to despise.

That is a combination that makes widespread copying (or theft as they prefer) inevitable.

Returning to your equasion, I believe it will better reflect the real world as:

Rc = (Cp - (Ce + Cm + (Ca*Pa))) * Vd

I agree more or less with your analysis of the controlability of the variables (Though RIAA HAS tried hard to manipulate Cm and Ca through legislation and Ce through stupid copy protection scheme). Note that this version of the equasion subtly changes the meaning of Rc to utility (to the consumer) of copying.

For the sake of convieniance, I will define Cc, cost of copying, as Cc = (Ce + Cm + (Ca*Pa)).

Note that in any case where Cc < Cp there will be negative utility in copying. In those cases, the RIAA is a commodity manufacturer and gains it's profits from the efficiencies of mass production vs. individual copying.

I believe that the RIAA CAN compete with Gnutella! There is value in not having to hassle with crappy quality tracks, nodes that are too busy, or never seem to actually provide the tracks they claim to offer, misnamed tracks, etc... In addition, video tracks in free and open formats can also up the Cc without 'cheating'. If Cp is low enough, the only people who will copy are people whose time is worth nothing (who couldn't pay anyway since they are unemployed and unemployable).

The RIAA can also boost their profits through business innovations. At a low Cp, they might be best off by terminating their expensive ad campaigns and instead producing a subscription based review service. They could also capture value by charging a nominal fee to broadband providers to colo a music server (yes, charge a fee to allow a provider to colo!). The provider could then use that as an incentive to sign up and reduce their costs for upstream bandwidth.

Other sources of revenue could include providing a content rating system for parents and paid advertising in their review media (website, magazine, television show, streaming broadcasts etc).

In short, they could switch from their current strategy of poisoning every well in town but their own to the strategy that made them big in the first place: providing something of value at a reasonable cost.

Where is the profit for the artist? The same place it is now, concerts, merchandising, paid television appearances, a small cut from the RIAA's income, etc.

Re:Soon to be illegal...

[zcat_NZ]

Here's an interesting thought;

• RIAA and friends (via their pocket-reps) are trying to push through laws to force everyone to run a "Digital Media Rights" operating system.
• Microsoft have already filed patents on a Digital Media Rights OS.
• If this law was passed, wouldn't that give Microsoft control of 100% of the operating system market in any country where this law and their patent were both in effect.

An interesting turn of events..

Good for music trading after all?

[jmd!]

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.

Re:Now the big question: Who will cave in first?

[Fat Casper]

Why should the DVD drive manufacturers stand up against anyone except their own customers? These are the wonderful folks who went along with CSS in the first place. Give it a couple months and we'll be seeing drives touted as having the "feature" of being able to "play" (not rip) "copy-protected audio CDs."

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.

"fair use" is not a right.

[bluelarva]

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.

Re:"fair use" is not a right.

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

Having said all this, record industry does have the right to implement copy protection.

I've thought about the following for a while. There ought to be a two-track system of copyright. Whenever anything is released for public consumption, the publisher would make a choice:

• Forego any technical copy protection -- the data is presented in the clear. However, stringent and heavy penalties accrue for copyright infringement, and the publisher can utilize the court system to recover these penalties.
• Encrypt the data or otherwise protect it by technical means. In this case, however, no penalties would follow from circumvention of the encyption ... the works would, in essence, be public domain, with only the encryption providing protection (= revenue stream) to the publisher.

In other words, the content publisher doesn't get to eat his/her cake and have it, too. By restricting Fair Use access, by cordonning off the material from the public domain (essentially forever), the publisher loses the protection of the courts. If you don't want to play ball with the justice system, you don't get to use it, either.

This approach is entirely justifiable, as copyright is a privilege granted by the state, not a right inherent in the content. As Litman and others point out, historically, copyright has been viewed as a bargain between the publishers and the public. If publishers try to unilaterally change the terms of the game -- by, for instance, encrypting data streams -- then the public has every right and justification to revoke the copyright.

This is idiocy, it's fundamentally a paradox.

[aussersterne]

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...

Re:All DVD drives...or just that NEC model?

[harlows_monkeys]

So they're cutting out the portion of their customers who have jobs then?

No, they are assuming that those people who have jobs can afford $25 for a portable CD player to use at work.

In the Bad Old Days of diskette copy protection..

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

DMCA = Communism?

[NanoGator]

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?

Re:DMCA = Communism?

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

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.

Make that "Joseph Stalin" instead of Hitler and you may have a point...

Like 'real-world' communist governments, everything in the US is gravitating towards central control at a federal level, which makes the federal capitol a 'one-stop-shopping' node for nationwide influence. As long as central authority increases, this problem will only get worse, no matter what you do...

Like former Soviet Union government agencies, the MPAA and RIAA (and Disney and Adobe and...you get the idea) can use their influence to apply government pressure to increase their own power. Copyright 'dissenters' can be punished unreasonably (having to go to jail, make bail, have your movements restricted, and racking up legal fees defending your basic rights IS an unreasonable punishment!). Economic problems that hurt the country can't possibly their fault, it must be the fault of dissenters and other wrong-thinkers who must be punished, so that profit by a few corporations can somehow stimulate the economy. The State(tm) being a corporation itself, I don't see much difference between State owned 'production facilities' and having most 'productions facilities' run and controlled by a small number of 'non-State' corporations.

While I don't foresee it becoming illegal not to purchase products seen in advertisements, I find it frighteningly easy to believe that purchasing a type of product at below-average might be considered suspicious, and legislation might someday be introduced to track and investigate such things. ("He's not buying the requisite average of 2.3 new DVD's per month! He OBVIOUSLY must be PIRATING 2.3 DVD's per month! Call the FBI! This person is hurting the economy and our taxpaying corporations!")

(Don't forget that something like 97%, as I recall, of federal tax income comes from corporations and people who make more than $100,000US/year. If us normal people have our income cut in half by bad policy making, government feels a tiny pinch. If Corporations or wealthy people have their income cut in half, Government will go bankrupt at its current spending rates. This is a problem of inefficient central control, I think. It makes Government dependent on the profit of the wealthy, and since central control will tend to make 'The People' dependent on Government...well, follow the chain.)

Like totalitarian Communist governments, agencies give lip-service to 'the people' (RIAA/MPAA - 'The Artist' and 'The Consumer') but use their positions of influence and power to gain power at the expense of 'the people'. (The declining condition of 'The People' can be used to set up 'dissidents' as scapegoats who allegedly cause the problem. ["We wouldn't have to charge so much for CD's if it weren't for all the rampant piracy!"]

I wonder what the MPAA and RIAA have in store for us with their Glorious 5-year Plan(tm)...

No one picked up on this?

[A_Non_Moose]

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.

.

Formula is wrong

[tempmpi]

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 )

Heh, sweet

[Chris Johnson]

On top of the copy-control stuff, we also have this small parenthetical note (that was news to me): "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."

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?

Check out the "security" on Midbar's web site!

[pointym5]

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!

Re:In the Bad Old Days of diskette copy protection

[davecb]

Back in those bad old days I worked for Xanaro, a competitor of Lotus and after a fairly serious analysis of the cost/benefit ratio, we elected to ship without copy protection.

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...

Totally senseless...

[tcc]

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 :)

Autostart as copy protection

[Animats]

This thing apparently works by formatting the CD as both a CD-ROM and an audio CD, then putting something on the CD-ROM part that autostarts. This is presumably a Windows x86 executable?

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.

Re:Alternative OSs?

[thesolo]

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)

Re:IP theft galore!

[Melantha_Bacchae]

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).

Re:Unjust laws

[DarkZero]

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.

Steve Jobs Has It Right

[nbvb]

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...

[DragonMagic]

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.