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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.
Now just give me a domestic region-less DVD player and I'll be your customer for life!
--
I like to watch.
Its good to see that some folks understand that violation of the standard would ensure that customers may not be able to use their equipment (ergo reducing their market share). I may actually go buy something from Philips because of this.
-- The Hollow Man
Non illegitimati carborundum
I'm impressed that a large corporation is acctually taking a sane stance. But, I'm wonder just how long they'll be able to maintain this position. Surely even their large pockets can't beat the endless pockets of all the other large corporations who are developing these copyprotection schemes. And what about the DMCA?
Dozings.com -- Its kinda funny... If you're as crazy as me.
Just watch it happen.
I never thought id say this but maybe having patents isnt such a bad thing after all as long as there owned by resonible people or companies
And phillips are certainly playing their cards quite nicely except for one thing. Can they be got under the dmca for this?? Although that might have the added bonus of a large coropartion with their big army of lawyers taking on the dmca
In roughly 85% of all the countries Aucio CD's are being sold, there are Fi Use laws in place that do no allow for manufacturers to circumvent copy ability.
Im glad to see Phillips is at least protecting their
property and not allowing it to be emblazoned on a CD that does not conform to those standards, would MS allow their logo to be pasted on a S/390 and say built for windows 98 ?? No dont think so.....
I hope all this copy circumvention leads to more piracy than ever before. JUST piracy of the stuff that was to be protected, maybe then theyll think twice....
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
Everyone get out there and buy a Philips product of some sort, doesn't matter what, it's just important you tell Philips what you did and why. Showing a tangible result will only encourage them in the future.
Need some ideas? The eXpanium is a sweet piece of hardware, especially the 503.
Regardless of copyright, would they not be in violation of copyright for producing a device that bypasses a circumvention method?
Maybe, but that means the RIAA would have to sue someone their own size, which would be very interesting. It also would pit the DCMA against patent rights and other goodies... I'd love to see Phillips get sued. Not because I don't like them, but because they have the means to fight back.
I suddenly feel very good about having bought a Phillips CD/CD-R for my stereo system...
The RIAA is trying to stop the flood at the highest point in its crest. Trying to put copy protection on the CDs is folly. It won't work. There are ways to circumvent this kind of self-sabotage, and everyone knows them.
What they need to do is make it worth the hardware manufacturers' while to *not* include those copying abilities. Pay Philips, JVC, et al. to remove digital copying capabilities from their devices. Obviously, this will still allow for analog copying, but as we all know, the quality of analog vs. digital copying is pretty crappy.
They need to stop the flood at the smallest chokepoint, where there are only a few floodgates to manage. They'll never stop the flood if they try to catch the raindrops.
I tried your link after having use the fish. The output was identical!
The distributers wont complain, its less code the r&d department have to write for the firmware, the RIAA on the other hand is going to have a field day with this.
I will bend your mind with my spoon
An interesting note is that most professional audio systems totally ignore this protection bit. I believe most store-bought CDs have this bit set in their stream if you use a CD player capable of AES/EBU output. We used to plug it direct digital into a professional mixing console, which should have not read it since the bit was set. I think someone didn't have the insight to know that the honor system rarely works.
No, it's not out of the goodness of their collective hearts, it's out of their desire for profit. Why the hell would people buy Philips' products - cd players and burners, if they couldn't use them? Philips "owns" no content, they just make and sell devices to do interesting things with content purchased from other companies? What interest do they have in copy protection? This comment is nothing more than nonsensical "all corporations are evil!" blathering, without even thinking about what might make a company do this.
If it ain't broke, you need more software.
This is ridiculous. Phillips, a Dutch company, has been one of the few companies to embrace progressive policies that place concern of people over profits. There is no record, to my knowledge, of Phillips fucking anyone.
So relax.
It looked like good news on the surface, but I've got mixed feelings about that one...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
IANAL, but from what I could read from the article, it seemed to say that if they copy protect the music, they break the standard and cannot use the LOGO. It seems to me that they might just quietly drop the use of the CD logo, not call themselves CD-DA compatible, and maybe just label the disks as 'Playable in Audio Players' or some such nonsense.
OK,
- B
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
Can they be got under the dmca for this??
....) it is not their fault.
No. Copy protected audio CD's are no audio CDs and may therefore not carry the CD logo. If Phillips would want to enforce that, nobody could do anything about it. The article calls copy protected audio CD's "silver disks that look similar to audio CDs but are no audio CDs".
They will likely not enforce the logo issue as the patents expire this and next year.
As to the copying itself, as long as they make audio CD copiers, bypassing any deviations from the standard (like copy protection on silver disks that look like audio CDs ) is just a form of error correction, as an audio CDs cannot have a copy protection by definition. And if people use audio CD copiers to copy something completely different (namely silver disks that
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted and ignored otherwise.
I would love to see Philips sue record companies for deceptively using their certification logo!
.de branch? Howabout the CCC? I'll send them a couple hunnert marks towards legal fees!
Can't anyone bring trademark infringement charges in Germany? Wasn't that the gist of the whole Killustrator flap? Does the EFF or EPIC or CDT or have a
A fool and his money are soon parted.
Don't you realize you already have a CD player that allows you to make a backup copy? Why would you pay extra to buy a new one?
So, if I threw a brick through your window with a note tied to it saying "We fix broken windows, prompt service, please call" you'd call us right up and say "gosh, I just happen to have a broken window that needs fixing...
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
Even though I'm not the hugest fan of government intervention in everything, Philips does raise a legitimate issue (one that we probably should have noticed first, but oh well) - that the copy protected CDs are being labelled and sold with the "Compact Disc - Digital Audio" logos even though they do not comply with the standards.
Even in Philips doesn't pursue litigation, the US Gov't could certainly prosecute the record labels for defrauding consumers. It would be interesting to see if a class-action lawsuit could be filed under similar reasoning (although a class of N'Sync fans is probably something the world is better off without).
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
If you read the article you will discover that:
I. Phillip's patents expire in 2002 and 2003. So even if Phillips goes hog wild, the issue in court will be over before it goes to trial. So Phillips is not going to try to stop the copy protected CD's in court
II. Sony is also a major CD patent holder, and is quite happily pressing massive numbers of CD's that don't even work with some of their equipment.
III. The head of Phillips made the comment that consumer activism is the means to stop CD copy protection.
IV. The Phillips CD copier hardware will probably not disable the copy protection, but just ignore it.
If I wasn't so cynical I might see this as a corporation doing the "right thing," but I cannot see this as anything but a PR sound byte. Phillips is going to sit around for the last year of its patent and collect royalties like nothing was going on. The discussion with the exec. was purely technical.
Recently law makers have been showing resistance to industry execs who are pushing cd copy-protection. Here is a recent story on this. The recording industry according to this article is rethinking copy protection all together.
Yes but every time I try to see it your way, I get a headache.
Philips tried to release a DVD-R last year too, I think. At least they demo'ed it at some expo. They are a hardware company and want to sell hardware. Think of competitors like Sony, whose vested interest is in the Movies/Music/Software instead of the products that play them. That is the sort of thing anti-trust legislation is meant to stop.
There is an interesting court case against BMG that is linked to the violations of the CD-DA standard all current cd copyproctions use. In germany it is a punishable act to use false or incomplete data to affect the result of data processing in a way that someone loses property. This offence is called "computer fraud" and is punishable with up to 5 years jail. ,disk space or your time while you try to make a legal copy as it is allowed by fair use rules. It doesn't matter how much money or property you lose.
It is easy to see that these copyprotections use false data. They all contain the CD-DA logo but contain data that isn't valid in the current standard. That there is a lose of property is also easy to show. You could easily waste a cd-r
Read all about it in a real nice article by telepolis. The article is in german, but google produces a readable version.
Jan
That's okay, just losing the right to the logo is a Good Thing. For one, it could mean an injunction against distribution of any existing copy-protected discs mislabeled with that logo -- which hurts the recording/distribution companies responsible.
:-) which silvery discs are the copy-protected ones -- namely the ones without the CD logo. We can just avoid buying those. (And encourage others likewise).
For another, it makes it obvious (well, in a subtle way
-- Alastair
Philips, the inventor of the Compact Disc, does not expect controversial attempts by the music industry to introduce CD "copy protection" technologies to last very long, because of consumer complaints. Philips is opposed to the use of copy protection systems. ... Philips could refuse to license such copy protected discs as genuine CDs, or pursue some other legal obstruction to the practice. But Gary Wirtz, general manager of the Philips Copyright Office at its headquarters in the Netherlands, believes that copy protection technology will fail all by itself.
These are good guys, just like SonicBlue, Archos, and Apple. They need our support.sulli
RTFJ.
...is really easy to break. It's a simple integer underrun error that is placed on the first track of the disc (in the LBA field of the TOC). Simple sanity checking in future cd rippers will easily circumvent this. In fact, the latest beta of CoolEdit is able to rip these discs by accident (they do the sanity checking, I think).
If anyone that writes CD rippers wants a more in depth description of how to circumvent this, just email me (m-i-k-e-f-e-l-d@engin.umich.edu without the dashes). It's really simple.
Anyhow, I only know of one disc that has this "protection" from universal on it... "The Fast and the Furious Vol. 2". I was trying to run some audio analysis algorithms on its tracks, and couldn't rip the audio... which is why I investigated. Once more discs with this "protection" come out, it will just be a matter of patching existing mp3 rippers.
mike
Note: This appears not to work in Mozilla 0.9.7. :-(
m ercare/contact.jhtml
Tell Philips you appreciate their stance on fair use (even though, yes, I realize they have their own motivations):
www2.consumer.philips.com/global/b2c/common/custo
Going to pricewatch and purchasing Philips equipment is great, but let them know your doing so and why.
One of the reasons that I became a lawyer was to avoid ever having to hire one. -SPYvSPY
You see those Phillips commercials on the music and 'techy' shows? The commercial goes something like this:
,from his collection, a mix cd for listening with dates.
"1- Guy with date plays cd and has crummy music on it. Date winces.
2- Guy goes home and 'mixes'
3- Guy then plays music with date. Date is happy."
If anything, Phillips will NOT change the standard, since all cd players operate by it. Nobody would buy thier product if it was incapible of playing other media. They cut thier own throats.
If you put this all together it makes tremendous sense.
1: Congressman makes statement questioning legality of 'Blank CD' tax (authorizing fair use in copying) and the Copy-Protection by Universal and other companies.
2: Copy-Protected CD's are not compatible with the Red Book Standard (therefore will not play in some players). In other words, Stay with Red Book, people stay happy.
3: There is a large amount of capital involved in copy protection, and Phillips doesn't want to waste money on a scheam that may flop and may be illegal (possible law suits may pursue).
And past that, more games are being copy-protected by brain dead scheams. If I could buy a decently priced, self contained unit with a reader and a writer and make perfect copies, I'd buy 1, maybe 2.
Josh Crawley
ps: About pirating, stopping making cd burners wont stop pirating. It's like saying, "The internet has caused evil stuff to spread, let's shut it down". Both are infeasible, one much more than the other.
OK, can anyone in Germany tell us if "copy protected" CD's are being sold there?
Since the "CD Audio" logo is a Trademark, and Phillips has said that "copy protected" CD's do not qualify, can't a private individual (like that ambulance chaser from the Suse and Killustrator stories) start a lawsuit against the media companies?
From the sound of the Suse case, you could even get Universal shut down even if they're not doing it yet (since they're the principal backers of this..)
Anyone from Germany care to comment?
"White Lilies Island" by Natalie Imbruglia has the logo, but it's imprinted in the plastic on the inside of the case so it would be hard to argue you made any buying decision based on that.
I'm guessing it's the "compact disc" logo that wields the power here. If it's not a kosher "red book" CD, the owner of that logo has a good case for withholding the logo and/or prosecuting its abuse.
You might also find that the mark "compact disc" is protected, so parading "compact disc"-alikes, but calling them "compact disc"s damages the mark, and could be prosecuted.
IANAL, BTW.
(no pun intended)
I just checked a bunch of cds that I have lying around my desk. Only ~50% of them carry the phillips 'CD' logo on the disc itself or on the liner. They do all carry the logo stamped into the plastic jewel case insert tho - so who is Phillips actually licensing the logo to? The disc manufacturers or the jewel case manufacturers?
I wonder if Philips has the right to sue outlet stores (Best Buy, Wherehouse, Sam Goody, etc) if they put the copy-protected silver discs that sort of look like and sort of play like Audio CD's in their CD section? By definition, since the copy-protected discs aren't CDs (Assuminng Compact Disc, CD, etc are trademarked), they shouldn't be in the CD section, because it could lead to diluting of trademark...
Hmm, that's very interesting, I doubt it is the sole legal text that applies, but let's look at it a little mor closely.
Number one, section 108 does provide for making a copy for archival purposes. I remember reading somewhere that precedent was established that a consumer IS allowed to make a copy as a backup of their digital media, in fact in every PC game I've bought I've seen that in the EULA.
This text however, says that the collections of the library or archive MUST be open to the public. And that up to three copies may be made assuming that the original is still in possesion of the copier. Let me preface this with the fact that I know it's not that simple, but this almost gauruntees the right to rip your cd's and make them streamable in such a way that you are never transferring a whole copy of the media to the remote computer, as long as you aren't making money off of it of course. I know this is a simplistic scenario and there's a lot more that goes into it, but I am also sure that there are loopholes in the laws that protect copyright holders that are ripe for taking advantage of.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
The only thing Phillips could do is demand that the copyprotected CD's not carry the "CD" label.
And run smear ads against the RIAA labels accusing them of not producing CDs. (RIAA will attempt to sue Philips for libel, but in the US, the truth cannot constitute libel.) Make like the dairy industry: "If you want real CDs, look for the logo."
RIAA is an association of music distrubuters et al, they don't sell CDs.
Common Slashdot practice accepts "RIAA" as shorthand for "RIAA member labels" in appropriate contexts.
The irony of that would be that there'd be no new music left to trade since the over produced modern pop crap is always the most popular.
*NSHIT fans will just have to find new music such as independent punk or electro.
Will I retire or break 10K?
What's different between Philips and the other players we've heard from so far is that Philips are technically astute - they know that perfect copy prevention is technically impossible and any copy protection will annoy consumers. The others we've heard from are all media companies (only Sony has a hardware business). Their interest is only protecting their "rights", but more importantly they don't recognise the futility of what they are trying to do.
In the other New Scientist article there is this jucy tidbit:
if the new laws that Bush and Ashcroft want, get passed, stuff in the public domain will be able to be re-copyrighted.
But that stuff fell out of copyright due to a technicality, not expiration; Congress is simply correcting the balance. No copyright is being enacted on works whose copyright has expired. The Uruguay Round treaty simply recognizes the same "limited" copyrights that other countries recognized.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I'm not so certain that Philips will fall in line, but a different scenario occurred to me. Perhaps the RIAA will simply dump the "CD Compact Disc" logo and put a disclaimer on that says something to the effect of "may not work in all CD(tm) players" and then Philips wouldn't have any leverage against them.
Virg
this almost gauruntees the right to rip your cd's and make them streamable in such a way that you are never transferring a whole copy of the media to the remote computer, as long as you aren't making money off of it of course.
A library may make 1 copy of a copyrighted work if it has the original in its possestion. A library may make 3 copies of an unpublished work for the purpose of preservation, but any digital copies may not be made available outside of the library. Legality of ripping CD's aside, a *library* could do this if they had someway of "loaning" the stream, and 2 patrons could not have it at once. And it never left the building. It also is not as simple as you not making money off of the use. If the use *deprives* the copyright holder of value (even if it would otherwise be Fair-Use) the use will be deemed infringing.
Backups of software is specifically covered in section 117.
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/117.html
You are specifically granted the right (or more correctly the copyright holder cannot deny you license) to copy a software program if it is necessary for the use of the program (installing it to your harddrive, copying into RAM, etc.) or to protect angainst damage to the original media. Note that this section *only* applies to computer software, not CDs, DVD, etc.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
I know that it sounds like splitting hairs, but they aren't renewed. The dates you mention are also U.S. dates. Most places in the world charge maintenance fees on the anniversary date of filing, so you are paying fees even before issuance.