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."

Comments

Proven?

[topside420]

How many times do we have to explain that no anti-piracy technology will ever work flawlessly nor will it not be broken over time.

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.

Re:Proven?

[kfg]

I have a friend who cut an album for Shanachie. Her next album she produced herself. Why?

She wanted to support the "artist."

When someone pays $20 for a CD at Tower if the artist gets a buck of it they're way ahead of the curve.

When Kenny Rogers was riding the country crossover wave he said that it wasn't until he had had five number one hits in a row that he made any money.

When I give my friend only $10 for her self produced CD I get a CD for half the price I would pay in a store, AND I know that $9 of that is profit in her pocket.

I believe in supporting the artist, and when the RIAA records a musical performance I'm willing to hand $10 to them personally for I'd be glad to do so.

KFG

When _will_ these people learn?

[base3]

There will be no effective copy protection until:

- there is an authentication server connected to our brain stem

- there is no "untrusted" way to convert sound into electricity

or

- 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

Not good.

[ratajik]

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.

Re:Not good.

[SirShadowlord]

I can go one better. For a long time I stopped purchasing CDs, and just listened to whatever was playing on the radio, or in my Cube (my 4Pod mate has his stereo system wired through 23' of cable into speakers that sit on my side of the cube so as to give him that "real" surround sound. Flatscreen monitors hide the speakers on my side and don't get all gaused up like a CRT. But I digress).

But, I was kicking back, listening to the Steve Jobs Key Note at MWSF, and I totally and completely got caught up in the patented "Jobs Distortion Field". Part of it was iPhoto (I have close to 6000 poorly organized digital pictures), and part of it was how cool OS X is looking, but withing a month of the Keynote, I am now the proud owner of an iPod, Powerbook 667, and, (and I don't think I'm isolated here), about $200 worth of CDs in the last two weeks alone.

And my process is identical to yours -

o Buy the CD (Okay, it's more like, Buy every major domestic album U2 has ever produced),
o Rip the CDs with iTunes (The 667 get's a little warm, but it works flawlessy)
o Throw the Jewelcase away and Pack the CD into my CD-208 Binder (which also handily stores software and DVDs)
o Listen to the Music on the Powerbook or iPod.

I can honestly state I have not, in over a year, listened to music being played _directly from a CD_. And, while I recognize that I'm in the minority here (I don't drive, so I don't worry about car CD players), I can say with some assurance that for every 100,000 iPods or other MP3 players get sold, the chance of copy protection being acceptable gets diminishingly less.

That's It, it's all over - If nobody buys copy protected CDs (and nobody with an iPod will or MP3 player will), it's game over. DIVX went down not because it was broken, but because nobody was interested in buying the Discs.

It's too late - The revolution has been won. There will be no Copy Protection that prevents people from converting their Music into MP3s, because nobody will buy that media.

You heard it here first. (Err, well, maybe not, but I haven't seen it written anywhere but above before... )

A little math

[CaptainSuperBoy]

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.