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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."
... implies they've tried before.
It was the "More Fast and Furious" soundtrack CD and the resulted in this discussion when it was found the protection could be bypassed with a DVD player.
While this does allow it to become freely distributed over the internet, how is the anti-piracy technology supposed to tell the difference between our legitimate copy and the pirated copy. I really don't think they can do it without seriously pissing off the public.
Can any media truly be 'copy protected'? If all else fails I can use a program like Ghost2002 or other forensic-certified disk duplication software to do a bit by bit copy. Basically make an exact duplicate of a disc.
How would this be unplayable?
Y'know what this reminds me of? If you're sick and the doctor says you're probably going to die, you're very prone to buying remedies from quacks. Even people who know better will do dumb things when faced with their own mortality.
Well, everybody is telling the record companies that they're going to die, so they react just like a human...any shaman who comes along, even Noam Zur, is worth a shot because they simply don't know what to do.
The CD is here to stay, and by its nature its unprotected. There's not a thing the record companies can do about that except release stuff that will just piss off their regular customers.
Meanwhile, they could convince people to go to a different format, but why would you give up CDs which have pretty good quality and the ability to copy freely with some unknown format where (a) people have to buy the same records over again (b) its copy protected so you can't make copies (c) there's an installed based of players that will be around for 15-20 years (notice cars STILL come with cassette decks?).
They really are screwed at this point. I have no prescription for them because they've gone out of their way to be deceitful and they treat their customers (us) like crap.
They rejected business models that could make them money (Napster).
They turn to things like copy protection (proven to fail over 2 decades ago).
And they stand behind laws like DMCA in an attempt to get rid of first-sale doctrine.
I am not crying a tear.
Why do these people continue to annoy the consumer when in the long run it will do nothing to stop sharing of MP3s. They actually manage to stop us from running the SPDIF Out into the SPDIF in, then I bet me sticking a mike near each speaker will likely be how I have to make my MP3s. Yeah quality won't be as high, but I bet it will happen. This just tramples our fair use rights. If this continues I will have to call my congressman about supporting the guy that was looking into revoking the CDR charge we pay, because the CDR make be used to illegally copy music.
A mathematical or inductive proof on data quality, access, copy protection, etc.
Inductive proof. We'll work with a single bit, and assume that it scales to multiple bits.
A single bit exists on a medium We'll use a stone tablet, and assume that it scales to thin wafers of aluminum encased in plastic.
A consumer who owns, for legal purposes we'll use own and not lease or license, this stone tablet can see the bit and can identify it as either a one or zero.
Said consumer can then copy the bit to another tablet, assuming they own a tablet and chisel. Or, theoretically, a laser and a wafer of aluminum encased in plastic.
If the consumer can see the bit, nothing can stop the consumer from copying the bit, short of a man with a knife standing over the second blank tablet. Or, theoretically, a man in a suit with a pile of papers in his hand.
GPL Deconstructed
More clearly: Cactus cannot call these Compact Disks because the trademark owner, Philips says they are not.
I suggest another name, maybe "Cruel Deceivers". More stories:
Philips moves to put 'poison' label on protected audio CDs
FEATURE-CD creator Philips blasts labels over protected discs
Bush's education improvements were
>
> 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.
Good point. I never thought of it that way, but when I buy a CD, I, too, listen to it once or twice at the most - either to find out what my downloaded MP3s were missing, and then to gauge the quality of the MP3s I just encoded off it. (Side note: LAME rocks. Rocks hard enough that I've pretty much not had to bother doing CD-MP3 comparisons, as I've stopped being able to tell the difference, even on headphones at 192. I encode at 256, just to be on the safe side. Maybe someday I'll have a stereo system where I could tell the difference, hard drive space is cheap, and I'm not uploading 'em to anyone else, so the space is mine to waste.)
But after the rip/encode day, it's computer and MP3 player from that point on. Last time I listened to a CDDA was a set of compilations/mixes that I burned for a car stereo and a long trip. Even then, I didn't even bother to dig out the original CDs to create the .WAVs, I just decoded the MP3s.)
Put it on unprotected CD-DA, and I'll buy it. Hilary still gets her 90% of the artist's money.
Put it on copy-protected discs, and I might think it's worthwhile to work around the protection to get the format I want. Hilary might still get her cut of that money.
Make it so I can't work around it, and I'll download it from a P2P source. Ms. Rosen can take a long hard suck on my arse.
U2 probably gets a buck for each album.
/.) do not make an impact on the industry's marketing decision.
Creed proabably gets $.10
Wannabes (Marketing bands such as Spears, Boyz something) proabably see a penny if that.
Artist don't make money off of albums, they make money off of tours. New artists don't get to tour much you'll notice. They're usually back in the studio for a sophomore album before they can get make money for themselves. But it's an evil catch. The record industry practically owns the airwaves and store shelves so the musician who wants to make big money signs deals to get exposure and some spare change from record sales. Then hopefully with sucess running into and after a sophomore album they can finally tour.
Unfortuneatly, I don't see the loop ending.
It doesn't really take a genius to figure it out.
They're will be musicians (and wannabe performers) who want to make a buck. The marketing nimrod actually does realize that current pop culture thrives on the shit they put out. Whenever comsumer confidence shrinks, (let's say a wide boycott b/c of non standard CD's) the industry will back off, suck up to the consumer, and then play the consumer again after they have recovered confidence. The few people that don't like the actions now (such as the sampling of readers from
Thank goodness they're will always be that small chunk of local, unsigned music that pleases me.
But it's an evil catch. The record industry practically owns the airwaves and store shelves so the musician who wants to make big money signs deals to get exposure and some spare change from record sales.
How about this: Get some artist to produce an album and then market it and distribute it entirely over the Internet. Since the artists don't make money off album sales anyway, they wouldn't lose anything in that regard. They might lose some exposure initally that they would enjoy from radio play, but maybe the 'net could fill the void. They would make make the bulk of their money from a tour...just like they do now anyway. And some of us might just be willing to pony up a buck or two for digital music delivered via the 'net if most of it went to the artists!
You're using her as bait, Master!
If I wanted to know about Shanachie, before potentially buying an album, how should I go about this?
1) Download a song or ten and listen.
2) Wait for it to play on the radio/mtv/etc.
3) Go to a store that lets you listen and stand there with cheap headphones trying to listen.
#2 will never happen if the artists isn't huge. #3 involves me taking time to go to a store for a chance of liking an artist, time I'd much rather spend doing something else. #1 might technically be copyright violation, but has a much higher chance of getting me to spend money.
And even if at the end of this I decide not to buy the music, who has it hurt?
Certainly not the artist, whose music I wouldn't have bought if I'd never heard of them.
Perhaps it hurts the stations and the promoters (because I didn't listen to the radio) but I can easily live with that on my consience.
I think if you examine it and quit spouting propoganda, you'll see that most people fully support the artists and will do so financially, if they like the art enough to collect more than a tiny sample of it.