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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.
What's the desired end result here? Lower CD costs? Free music? Drive the music companies out of business?
These are BIG companies with huge payrolls and tons of overhead for manufacturing and distribution, marketing, A&R, etc. Those machines eat millions of US dollars every day chewing up artists and spitting out CDs - many of which no one buys enough of to make a profit on.
I bet if you got your favorite record executive drunk and he'd even admit that they really don't care if you back up your CD or make a copy of it for the car or even if your kid makes one for his friend. Heck, at least you bought it for $18.99 and there's some extra built into that for your kid passing out copies. These people have always understood that this is going to happen.
But what happened? We, the people, got greedy. We decided we wanted everything for free. EVERYTHING. No, not you Mr. Slashdot reader who actually buys more CDs after finding new and exciting artists on you favorite Napster clone. No, not the person with the professional ethics who pays the artist directly with PayPal at their website. No, not the select few individuals who used to pay for all their Shareware in the "old" days. It's the seventh grade cheerleader who uploads her favorite boy band somewhere or shares all the songs with the entire planet of people downloading free music. Now that we can share with 500,000 people at one time those machines are taking notice.
Do you know why? They found out at the end of last year that the market for music had gotten smaller. Less people who were available to purchase music did so. These are people who could afford to buy CDs and had in the past who are no longer purchasing music that way. Big problem because these same people are finding music through "alternative" means.
This is seen as a threat by the music business, because the majority of these people are finding illegal ways to obtain the same music that sells for big bucks.
What should we expect them to do? They're going to fight tooth and nail to get that business back and grow it even more.
Sure you can rip the copy protected CDs and will probably always be able to in the future. This is just a shot across the bow - to let us know they're serious.
Wait until you see Congress (quietly) pass a bill that makes ISPs responsible for the traffic across their lines and servers. No more common carrier status. I bet lots of businesses would like that.
How about when the serial number in your next processor is turned on by default and you can't turn it off?
When everyone's favorite OS (no, not *your* favorite OS) won't play non-secure media anymore and any player for LINUX will have to break the DMCA just to play whatever the new form of CD is called. What about when that "favorite" OS wont even load a program that isn't digitally signed? Or a driver that isn't approved? Or a piece of hardware that isn't "authenticated".
What about when CDs vanish in a few years and only DVDs exist? Audio DVDs will completely replace CDs for the mass market by 2008, if not before.
How about when the first 100 college students go to federal prison for breaking the DMCA by using "evil hacker tools that could destroy humanity as we know it"? Or whatever the prosecutor has to say to get a conviction. Don't think it won't happen. Mitnick didn't even get his trial for five years!
They will not stop. They will try whatever they have to do to make it work for them and the Clipper chip will look like ROT13 next to what they can envision.
So feel free to complain and talk about lawsuits and what Phillips can/cannot do, but the bottom line is that the big guns are mad and no one is going to stop them.
Remember the U.S. is all about commerce and money. Nothing else. No one understands this better than the present government and if you think they mind trashing your supposed "rights" then you're in for a shock.
My eleven year old wants to play video games all day and I don't let him because it's bad for him. The entire U.S. population may want to download music for free, but it's bad for commerce and the U.S. government wont let them.
Tamum shud
It's Philips, not "Phillips".
Philips, Eindhoven
While I can see why people would be against any attempts to stop people from making copies of other people's works - Phillips will be incapable of realistically doing anything to stop copyright owners from protecting their works.
It is now a crime under DCMA for Phillips to circumvent copy protection. Any attempts by Phillips to circumvent any existing copy protection will result in them being continuously in court with suits from each and every company that desires to copy protect their wares (and that's not just audio CD companies).
Major copyright owners will lobby the government to stop Phillips CD players and writers from shipping (which would be one up the butt for Phillips), and they don't need to succeed. All the copyright owners need to do is keep the players off the market while the case is at trial... something that could put Phillips through immense financial hardship.
Most people who buy audio CDs (and the retailers who sell them) could really care less about the CD logo. The ones that actually aren't compatible with the standard can't ship with them, but what does that change? If you can only get the song on protected media are you just not going to listen to that artist (and any others) indefinitely?
Phillips has a commitment to build hardware and this isn't much more than an exec speaking his mind about what he'd like to see happen. In most companies I've noticed that what execs say and that actually happens/can happen is generally pretty far apart. Even if we assume that Phillips succeeds, the rest of the copyright owners will simply band together - put together a competing logo and such and print CDs in their own format that will just happen to be backwardly compatible with CD players.
Phillips has no teeth in this matter - this is just a nice consumer spot to get people excited about the Phillips brand.