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Cactus Data Shield Tries Again
autocracy writes: "Midbar, an Israeli company that developed the breakage of standard called Cactus says that they have released more than 10 million CDs to the U.S. and Europe. They now claim that there will be no issues playing it but you will lose quality if you try to copy. I'm just wondering how it is that you can play it on a system at perfect quality, but when you copy it things don't sound right. Do they not know about optical output? Lame quotes including comments by the makers of how this is a 'proven technology' can be found at C|NET."
I seriously doubt there are 10 million "on store shelves." Probably 10 million in warehouses. And I suspect they're not putting this copy protection on the most popular artists' CDs
C'mon, baby, kiss The King.
I guessing 1 month before this "copy protection" will be subverted and widespread copying occurs.
Shouldn't be too hard to write a mod for your CDROM to read these discs
If they want to make money, they should spend more time getting REAL artists and not just 'performers' then maybe people would be more interested in supporting them and buying their music.
This technology WILL cause many problems and WILL be able to be copied flawlessly within days if not already. This is how it does and always will work. Do they not see that they are losing more money tring to stop us than anything? Is it not time to give up on the anti-piracy CDs?
All it takes is 1 person to copy the CD then EVERYONE can get it. Its that simple.
Isn't copying it just coping all the bits.. now how can you lose bits when your copying them? hmmmpf?
Carpe meam simiam!
- there is an authentication server connected to our brain stem
- there is no "untrusted" way to convert sound into electricity
- the DMCA is backed by Colombia-style death squads
To those who would argue that they're "raising the bar on piracy and keeping the honest people honest," I'd ask you to consider which people copying some of these CDs love more:
- the music of Charley Pride
- the feeling of power that comes from distributing it after cracking Cactus Data Shield
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
As someone who generally buys all his music, this is VERY annoying. I've pretty much changed how I listen to music these days, and I wish companies like this wouldn't muck with it. I normally:
1. Buy the CD
2. Rip the CD
3. Throw the CD away (well, OK, store it just in case... but I rarely see it again).
4. Play the music on my machines (Either directly or via the shoutcast server I run locally, and only locally, on my network).
5. Sometimes re-burn to CD so I can listen to it on my car.
This is all legal, from what I can see. If they're preventing me from doing any of the above, then I've got a problem with it. They need to come up with something else, something that doesn't interfere with my fair use of the music.
I wish they had more details in the article. I can't honestly tell if they're going to muck with any of the above, but I've got to guess at step #2, I'll be out of luck.
As far as I'm concerned, those copy protected will stay in those warehouses and out of my purchase plans. The only way these people are going to learn is to hit them in the wallet!
Why is there all this crap about copyprotecting cd's? Tapes are just as easy to copy. Yet there was no "analog rights management" back in the eighties. Nobody launched ad campains calling you a thief if you tape your favorite show. (at least none I remember) Yet now that it's all digital, there seems to be this attitude that there will be more piracy. I still can't download bootleg movies. Maybe I'm just not a "leet" enough "hax0r" to get copies of "Rush Hour 2 special straight from in front of the projector crooked edition with all those wonderful sounds" As far as I know, "losses of revenue" due to piracy in the eighties and such were compensated by jacked up blank tape prices. Why not just jack the prices on blank cd's back up, and maybe charge a reasonable price for originals. $18 for a cd? I think not. That's what drove people to napster, that and that special rush of "getting away with something".
Shift happens. Fire it up.
We can all argue till we are blue in the face that no one is going to used a crippled product. But, how many times have we seen them come and enter the market (DVD).... This shouldn't just be posted to slashdot. This article needs to be forwarded to everyone you know explaining that this company is trying to sell you a product that is cripplied in a fashion that doesn't allow you to exercise your given 'fair-use' rights....
Successful efforts are grassroots efforts...
As Jello Biafra said
Don't wait for sassy to come around and say it. Get sassy and say it
ANYTHING that is digital will never be uncopyable. The reason is because you always know the parameters of how the digitizing is done. There are only so many ways that 1's and 0's can be put together (or taken apart) that make sense.
C'mon, seriously. Does anyone really expect 'copy-protection schemes' to actually work? How many different methods have various industries come up with to try to hinder use and/or copying? Macrovision? All that did was make me want to get a GoVideo. CSS? Cracked in so many different ways that to outlaw them all, the government would have to destroy all computers in the US. How long will it take for someone to crack this crap?
I mean, AudioCD protection? Get real. I refuse to buy CD's for just this reason. (Don't get me wrong, I like to buy CD's, and I still buy local artist's albums) But I don't listen to CD's. They get stored. Ripped and stored. It's just easier to listen to my music when it's stored on a server in the closet. Not to mention, I don't have to worry about losing the disc quite as easily. I've had them stolen, scratched, lost, etc. Does this mean I no longer have the rights to the information on it? Just because my R.E.M. CD won't play anymore, does that mean that it was illegal for me download the entire disc off the internet? (to quote the great Stigmata:) FALSE.
There will be some problem with trying to implement this new technology. I have a CD player. It came with the stereo that's hooked to my computer. It plays Red Book format discs. I don't know that it's going to play Cactus format discs. Do I expect it to? No. From here on out, I plan to buy Philips equipment, because I know that it is going to work the way I expect it to, and play the CD's I buy the way it's supposed to. If I want to buy CD's that I can't listen to, I'll just buy some bricks. At least those I can throw at RIAA executives.
And don't throw the DMCA into this. I'm sick of this stupid law. It goes against so many things I believe in, and the very basic tenant of our freedoms. This will come to a climax, and one side will fall. Whether it's the people or the corporations, is yet to be seen.
As an independent musician, you are unlikely to get radio time nor can you afford big promotions. With CDs as expensive as they are, people don't buy CDs to gamble that the music on it will be good. If people can't hear your music, you make zero sales.
So the more your music is distributed via mp3s, the better it will be for you. The more people who know your music, the more poeople will buy your CDs.
Those who have mp3s of your music and don't have CDs probably wouldn't have bought them in the first place and therefore constitutes no loss of income to you. Those that have bought your CDs do so because they have heard your music
...That's how much I spent on a dubbing cable from Radio Shack to break the last 5000 or so ridiculous copy protection schemes.
Until a player comes out for a new type of media in which every part of the transmission uses new technology, including sending the audio to the speakers, piracy will be as easy as plugging in and clicking twice.
Let's see.. the RIAA has said it lost $300 million dollars a year to piracy. In 2000 they shipped 942 million CDs.
Now that they've eliminated all music piracy through their innovative copy protection techniques, we should all enjoy the price drop: $300,000,000 / 942,000,000 = $0.32 per CD. Since they are no longer losing all that money to piracy, we can look forward to paying 32 cents less for each CD! They are basically a trustworthy group, so I'm sure they'll pass the savings along to consumers.
If it's copy-protected, it's not really a CD. Thank you, Philips.
kazaa was limited to searching for 128kbps mp3s (sans a quick registry hack), and often the "most popular" mp3 of a particular name is of the 128k variety. i'm sure for those of us who didn't rip our own entire collection, or get alot of mp3's off of mp3.com or others, 128 is perfectly fine. if reduction = 56k however...
moox. for a new generation.
How is the RIAA making money by preventing people from listening to music? Seems silly to me that they'd close a market instead of ivesting in a new one.
"Derp de derp."
Of course it won't work, nobody expected it to. It just appeared to work at the demo and everyone *knows* about demos. There are no 10 million CDs. There is no copy protection. There is no spoon.
What there is a heck of a lot of, is spouting about Cactus Data Shield, which has a really good name. We are helping launch this company, people. But how to keep quiet when the only way to express oneself is to talk / type?
We could limit ourselves to a minimum mnemonic. Don't waste words on these droids. No flamefest for lurking writers to write about. They can only write, "The Slashdot Community again voted a resounding NO with 853 negative minimum responses against CDS Corp. and 1 for them, which was by an Anonymous Coward, Guess Who."
Some likely mnemonics:
"DOWN WITH CDS" (or just "DOWN!@*%") - Full moral support for complete technical, business, social failure of the company.
"DUH" (or "DUMB", or "BAKA" if you are feeling Japanese) - Breaks the laws of physics and sociology; techies know, and their investors will get it in the end. Embellishment may be added after first keyword in caps; subsequent posters can get away with "DUH (see above)".
"CRACK IT NOW!" - Call to Arms, etc.
Now we can mail Perl-calculated tallies to elected officials, RIAA, etc. while 1) redefining target company's name as a mnemonic, 2) limiting time we waste - adds up to a man-month, and 3) creating an intelligent, opt-in, scary voice that is news by itself. Then we distribute our own software.
Slashdot might like to incorporate top recent keywords (they're in caps at the top) into a handy pull-down item to save irritation - adds up to 4 ulcers per month - while forcing DUH target to provide minimum grim satisfaction.
the product is superior in other ways to existing products (as DVD video is over VCD and video tape).
Crippling an existing format and not offering the consumer anything extra on the other hand will offer little attraction at all.
Of course with the companies claiming that piracy costs them big bucks you'd think that pirate-proof (assuming such a thing exists) CDs should be cheaper as they would not need to be defraying those costs on those CDs. Having said that I'm fairly sure that the cost of a CD is based entirely on what people will pay and has no relation to any 'costs' whatsoever.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
What offends me most about copy-restricting CD's... (copy restriction sounds far more accurate than 'protection', I'd like to thank whoever it was from Slashdot that coined that term.) ...is that they're punishing the legitimate customer, but not the people 'pirating' the music.
.WAV file, and then encode it.
Now first let me clarify: Ripping an MP3 is not piracy. By definition it couldn't possibly be. You need the CD to rip. Though I'm sure a small # of people rip from borrowed or copied CD's, the vast majority are likely to be from legitimately owned CD's. Piracy happens when somebody gives away this MP3 to people who haven't paid for the song.
Here are two legitimate uses of ripped MP3's:
1.) Use in a portable system that is far more compact than a CD player
2.) Backup copy. Example: If my CD gets destroyed, the RIAA won't replace it. Well now I can keep my CD in a safe place and listen to the MP3 version.
By preventing these two uses, you are preventing the user from legitimately protecting and enjoying their investment. The worst part is, there's nothing to soften the blow of it.
What if the RIAA were to offer a couple of incentives to buy the restricted product? "Well, since these copy restricted CD's will help combat piracy, we'll take $2 off these titles. It's our way of showing how grateful we are for your support." I'd have more respect for the RIAA then, but it wouldn't be enough for me personally.
They still need to address the issue of fair use. If they won't let us make MP3's of our songs, can they at least provide WMA versions of the song with Digital Rights enabled if we have the CD?
So far, the legitimate users have been punished severely. But what about the pirates? Now this time I'm talking about the guy who rips his songs for the express purpose of distributing them for free. Ok, so he can't rip the song directly from the CD. Yah, I bet that will last long. All he has to do is hook up the analog out to the line in and boom he an just record it to a
If that's what it boils down to in order to make the MP3's, then people willing to do that will be in demand. When people like that are in demand, then they become internet-celebrities. "Oh I know this guy, he ripped that song." As long as somebody can achieve celebrity status, they'll be willing to jump through all sorts of hoops.
So to summarize, the RIAA is putting piracy into demand, and punishing the legit customers for it. Wonderful business practice! If this succeeds, next Disney will open a ride called 'The Wedgie".
"Derp de derp."
If the RIAA is currently losing money on CDs due to illegal copying (pirating is a ridiculous term), then it seems only reasonable that, if they can prevent this copying, the revenue they'd previously been losing should rightfully belong to them. I agree that the consumer should see some benefit, but it's not something that you could morally hold the RIAA to. As an analogy, think of if you wrote and sold software, and 50% of it was used without paying. That's a 50% revenue loss, and you would be justified in saying that if you could somehow reduce that loss, the money you saved should belong to you. Right? And, since you were barely covering your costs before the savings, that money should go into making your life a bit easier. Right?
All this is, of course, purely hypothetical. The RIAA is hardly lacking for money, and I personally think the Hellmouth should open and swallow them, the MPAA, et al back to whence they sprang.
There is no such thing as copy protection. Any method attempted to stop copying is bound to fail: the hardware sees copying as just another read command, and if done in software, well, what if you don't use that software?
The only way to stop piracy with 'copy protection' is encryption. After all, what good does a copy do you if you don't understand it? (Look at CSS and the details of Cactus: rearrange some or all of the information, and suddenly the old reading methods don't work.) As if we needed another reason to hate anti-encryption legislative proposals! You can be sure that they would exempt copy protection schemes while making sure your 'private' emails remain an open book to law enforcement.
The executives of these companies seem to be completly oblivious to two points. First is, of course, that any encryption will only deter for so long (and if you use not-that-strong stuff like CSS, that isn't long at all.) Second is that (obviously) we aren't buying from them the physical disk, but the information on it.
But when we look carefully at what they are doing, we can see how they do understand these issues. They're using the kiddie-level encryption right now. I've wondered why, and came up with only one answer: they're waiting for SSCA to pull out the big guns. Could you imagine a CDROM encrypted with Rinjael, and 'kept encrypted' by SSCA??? They know that by trying to extra-legally limit the ways or means of access to that information, they would lose customers. Well, first they need to make that limitation legal...
If not for the SSCA gambit the RIAA seems to be playing (more like betting the house on!), I would suggest the proper response to this nonsense would be, like with the BSA raids, to encourage it; the faster access protection schemes are shown to be nonsense by the open market, the better off we will be in the long run. But when you throw proposed SSCA legislation into the mix this idea just gets worse. All I can suggest is to not touch these disks at all. Don't buy them, don't pirate them, and if you're a store owner, don't sell them.
I'm off to write petitions to the big retailers now. I just realized that the only way the RIAA can't raise the cry of piracy when these disks don't sell if if the vendors are the ones who don't buy them!
Do you like Japanese imports?
Why is it relevant that this is an Israeli company? I've done a search, and the country of origin is almost never mentioned, and yet here it's the third word of the blurb. It's given higher priority than any other piece of information. Why is that?
I'm not saying that I know why the author chose this contruction, but when labels are used like this, especially in the context of a critical (indeed, ridiculing) comment, it's hard not to wonder about the motivation.