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Philips Says Compact Discs Can't be Copyprotected
Tomcat666 writes "tecChannel has a story about Philips, the holder of the most CD digital audio (CD-DA) patents. Apparently, they don't like the audio CD copy protection many record companies want to enforce in the future. They break the CD-DA standard and therefore are not allowed to use the logo. As a conclusion, Philips' next audio CD copier will be able to detect and probably circumvent the copy protection of audio CDs."
This article is Auf Deutsch but the fish does a tolerable job of
making it sane for those who can't remember the proper gender of all
their nouns.
This is exactly what we need. Someone to stand up to the new practice of wrecking the CDs so they can't be played on certain players. I never actually pictured one of the larger companies doing that, but Phillips is apparently in a perfect position to do it.
Phillips will probably just create their own copy protection standard, incorporate that into CD-DA, and force other companies to pay for the privilege of using this new standard if they want to call themselves CD-DA compatible. No way Phillips is doing this out of the goodness of their collective hearts.
I'm the stranger...posting to
It's simple. Phillips is in the hardware business. They know that most of their customers want to copy CDs, and they figure that they probably can make some money by being the hardware manufacturer to sell a CD player that will copy so called copy-protected CDs.
I know that I would pay extra for a CD player that would allow me to make a backup copy. Wouldn't you?
That's really the beauty of the free enterprise system. As long as their is competition the customer gets what they want at the lowest possible price. Of course, in reality sometimes it's more miss than hit.
This is the argument I've made for a long time, and I think it's a strong one. The Red Book standards lay out what a cd is, and the CD mark you see on the back of any disc you buy is supposed to be a guarantee that the enclosed software will play on all compatible hardware. Any copy-protected cd fails this test, and should not legally be sold as a compact audio disc.
This is great news, because it will take Phillips to enforce the standards
ceci n'est pas un 'sig'
- The RIAA tries to clobber Phillips with the DCMA,
- Phillips replies in effect saying "okay fine. Since your CD's don't comply to the CD-DA standard which we licensed to you in our patents, you are in violation of the licensing agreements which allowed you to use our patented technologies."
- Phillips sues the RIAA for breach of contract and obtains an injunction blocking future sales of all or just the incompatible CDs.
- RIAA companies can no longer sell a certain amount of music until the court case is finished.
- The RIAA folds on copy protection because they can't afford to lose that much money in sales.
Myself, I'd bet against any such thing happening, because Phillips would lose alot of money as well, but wouldn't it be nice if I was wrong?...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
If it's in a jewel case that looks like a CD, and is on the shelf in HMV, and costs the same as other CDs, and is on the shelf beside other CDs, do you think that most consumers would stop to look if it has the Philips CD logo on it?
- In Capitalist America, law violates YOU!
2. The only thing Phillips could do is demand that the copyprotected CD's not carry the "CD" label.
3. I doubt that Phillips licensing agreement requires licensees to sell CD's
4. They would be able to sell as much music as they want. They just wouldn't be able to sell copy-protect disks with the CD label. They could still sell non-copyprotected "CDs" or copy-protected "non-CD's".
5. RIAA is an association of music distrubuters et al, they don't sell CDs. They would only cave on the issue if the member companies di, and rest assured they won't.
The problem with all of the arguments here on
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
This has nothing to do with patents, it's about trademarks
Phillips owns the CDDA trademark and controls what is called CDDA and what is not. It is in Phillips' interest not to call "CDDA compliant" a copy-protected disk that is not CDDA compliant.
It's definitely not a non-event, quite the opposite actually. Noone gets happy when he notices that the term under which a technology was licensed are abused, and neither does Phillips.
What matters is that Philips owns the little `CD' logo, and can control how it's used. They have decided that since the copy protected CD's do not fit their specifications, their logo cannot be used with them. This ownership of the logo will not expire like a patent. (I assume it's a trademark?)
This will not stop the RIAA. What it may do is prompt them to stop including that logo -- and it's not like it matters anyways. Back when CD's were new, maybe it [the logo] did make people happier that the logo was there. Now that most people are familiar with CD's, I doubt it matters at all.
(Of course, it may eventually mean that this logo means `Unprotected CD. Fair Use rights not restricted' and so it'll be a good thing to have on your CDs again.)
As far as Phillips making a copier that can copy these CDs goes, this really has nothing to do with the logo. It may be interesting to see how the RIAA responds to that, however -- and if Philips does actually make it and touts it's ability to copy `protected' CDs, I'd fully expect the RIAA to at least try to get them with the DMCA.
Do CD copiers `rip' the CD digitally like a computer does, or do they just take the analog output and write it to the destination disc? If it's the latter, I'd fully expect CD copiers to copy most `protected' CD's right now. (What's probably the case is that there are CD Audio copiers that work in each way.)
Even so, few people would use it or buy it. I only have two friends with CD Audio burners -- both musicians. Most of the rest of my friends have computers with CD Burners. And at least one of the musicians never uses this drive anymore -- he now uses the one on his computer, even for his own music.
The difference is important for several reasons --
Computer CDR drives are cheap.
Audio CDR drives cost a lot more
Computer CDR drives use cheap media.
Audio CDR drives use expensive media. (The media is exactly the same, but the Audio blanks have a bit set that says `Ok for Audio', which most Audio CDR drives check for and require. Along with this bit being set, there's a tax being payed to somebody (RIAA?) that greatly increases the cost of the blank.)
Computer CDR drives can do more than write audio tracks -- they can write audio tracks, data tracks, copy disks completely, etc. Even for writing straight audio tracks, the computer often makes this easier and faster (you're not limited to 1x) than the Audio CDR drive.
Anybody know what the ratio of `Data CDR media' vs `Audio CDR media' sold in the US is? I'll bet it's at least 30:1.
Ah, but there's not just a patent issue here, there's a trademark one. I belive that "Compact Disc", "CD", and simliar marks are registered to Phillips. You can't call it a CD without their ok...Phillips could have a lot of fun with that.
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