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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.
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.
... 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.
I'm not sure if anybody noticed, but there's a crack for this in last quarter's 2600. Ta ta.
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?
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.
Again and again. Good quality analog in mix with nice encode software result: Almost perfect compressed file out. No big deal.
So it takes a little more work. How long will it take for someone to automate this process like the digital ripping one before?
Move on..
Blogging because I can...
Midbar says it is continuing to upgrade its technology
Yep, they don't do it the same way twice, so you'll never know what these disks won't play on! Play hardware roullette!
Whereas, a bit for bit rip through a player that emulates an audio cd's error correction will work every time, regardless of their new and improved method.
Anybody think they'll ever figure out it's a little late in the Compact Disc Arena to try to make such a fundamental change as copy (fair use) prevention to the system?
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
'Tain't R&D. It's marketing and management. R&D does what they're told, but all the good R&D folks I can think of know perfectly well how stupid this is.
Sometimes ya gotta do what ya gotta do to keep your job. (i.e. until a better one is available, or at least a less sleazy one)
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
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!
If I can hear it, I can copy it.
Total Recorder, a program that records data sent to the sound card is wonderfull.
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
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.
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.
Its still just the lame trick of burning a second session that defines incorrect track locations and durations for track locations. CD players that are not multisession (CD audio players usually) will ignore the fake second and third sessions. A second lame trick called Track-O is used that furthermore uses the P subchannel to assert a large region of track 1 as "silent" and it is silent and audio player skip over to second index area where begginning of track 1 audio really starts, but computers see data blocks in the first track in the beginning section with the P channel asseting silence. This hidden data area looks like a standard ISO9660 volume and further screws up players. Its an old trick from 1992 used on nearly 80 major titles, before Blue-Book Enhanced CDs (CDPlus) shipped. It only affects computers. A third sneaky trick of putting heavily corrupted data in the track lead in lead out areas to slow down auto-rippping is usually employed. And furthemore, ANY cd driver modified to trust the first session of a audio cd disk will play correctly, especially if it understands how to IGNORE track-zero tricks. Of course a raw copy of the entire disk will duplicate it, as long as the reaw duplicate deliberately ignores copying session information past the first session.
It merely needs to copy track 1 explicitely, all 2774 bytes per block on a Plextor or at least 2352 in raw mode.
Macs and PCs will soon have updated THIRD PARTY cd drivers that will play any of these things. One system will suffer the most... the newest macs... thats because to eliminate EMI audio noise, the macs force users to use digital audio extraction over ATA-ATAPI bus and SCSI bus exclusively. This is fine if the media is not heavily damaged in some sections, but these corrupted disks slow down firware in standard audio extraction modes used on macs. Apple got rid of all their A-D converters, even for audio mics. And now that thier audio D-A out is in usb and uses usb speakers no mother board interference and disk drive head interference emits on speakers cranked to 500 watts.
I miss track-0 tricks, its cool to see the world using it 10 years later.
It explains why some cactus cds can be copied except the first audio track, with older tools.
as for CDDA logo rights being removed by Philips.... Philips abused the tradmark symbol themselves!!! They placed it on some european audio CDs in 1994 that were 79 minutes long. That was in explicite violation of the CDDA logo standard that maintains a maximum of 333,000 blocks of audio allowed (74 minutes)
Even since that day, Anyone is morally allowed to violate the CD-DA standard logo because it MEANS NOTHING now and is abused even by Philips.
I wish there was a manufacturer symbol I could trust to look for that meant REALLY-CDDA not violating *ANY* part of the "Red Book" whatsoever. Then these Cactus abominations from hell could be avoided.
Sony and Universal will soon shut down web sites that explain how a cheap 5 cent resister tied across the leads of a decrypted-USB speaker input can be used as audio in source into a D-A audio card to extract formaerly-protected encrypted limited-access audio.
ha!
long live the resister!
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
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
And the geek vs. Corporate war continues.
Once again, the corporations losing this war on the basis that corporate types don't seem to be thinking on the same level as geeks.
And this is why the corporations are never going to win. They are predictable, and the geeks are innovative.
This is how it works. Picture if you will a major record company meeting room... for the sake of argument, let's call them the Big Music Guys. Systems analysts #1, #2 and #YesMan are meeting with big corporate pointy-haired type.
Management: "This Copywrite stuff is getting out of hand and making us obsolete. Help us control people's money again by providing a useless service."
Geek #1: "How do you expect to do that?"
Management: "Well, we're gonna make some way that stops them from copying our releases."
Geek #1 breaks out into laughter. Manager fires him.
Geek #2: "Y'see, the problem is that any way that we can possibly work on it to make it inaccessible, the rest of the world will find some other way around it. We can't possibly keep up with the public domain."
Management: "You're not being a team player. You're fired."
Pseudo-Geek YesMan: "I'll get right to work on it."
And YesMan, having attained his stature through ass-lipgluing as opposed to technical know-how, will spend much of his time working game #4711 of Freecell. Once he has attained this, he will spend about 12 hours putting together some simple encryption device that will fall to the suggestion of Geek #2. Management type returns to stockholders, says "We're currently working on a state-of-the-art encryption device to keep copywrite crackers from getting to our music" and stock prices go up. Shareholders revel in their smart investment as the company releases inferior technology developed by a yes-man which will get worked around approximately 12 hours after its release. Cycle continues.
Especially since these days, with the ever-rising popularity of free-information and licenses such as GPL that companies are finding it harder and harder to set standards, because the geeks are beating them to better ones, and as a result they can't make anything with any built-in security to it...
Yay geeks! We rule! Keep it up, kids.
Karma: Non-Heinous
"Dude, you're gonna go to jail!"
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
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.
So, we can make copies for ourselves by law...unless someone decides they dont like consumers to have that right?
This is just another common example that you really dont have any rights, they just like to make you think you do.
Ask ANY cop -- if they want something they will get it.
Example:
Cop: Can I search the vehicle?
Person: No.
Cop: Well, I ran out of tickets, going to have to bring you down to the station to write it up.
Meanwhile -- your car is towed for the moment (can't leave it on the street) and a mandatory 'inventory search' is put in place. Your car has been searched. Good thing we have that 4th amendment :)
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
> yet Phillips (the company who invented the CD spec) has said that it intends to try and make its next CD burner able to circumvent the copy mechanisms.
:)
I'm glad Phillips is doing this. It's great to finally see a company supporting people's fair use* and right to listen to music they have bought, regardless of the medium.
However, I've always wondered if Phillip's didn't have an exterior motivation? If [audio] copy protection worked, would Phillips have less sales of CD's? What do they have to gain by taking a stance against copy protection?
*I believe distributing music against the author's wishes is wrong. However, if I've paid for a CD, I believe I have paid for the privilege (or right) to listen to it wherever I am, and in whatever medium I choose, aka unlimited private use, or "fair use"
> So why (other than to piss off the consumer) are the record companies doing this???
Now this I can answer. The Recording Companies are desperately trying to maintain control of having people buy music. It's a loosing battle -- all you need is one person to make a perfect digital copy and they *believe* sales will go down. Personally I believe more people *buy* music when they are exposed to more of it. (Go Figure
...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.
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?
It's not about optical output, silly. When they find out that you made a copy, Roger-- The RIAA Enforcer, comes to your house and rubs a key across your copied disk. Therefore, you will lose quality.
As if the pain of losing a CDR isn't enough, the noise made during this scrating is supposed to be untollerable.
Losing 1 CDR, the CD Scratch Noise, and Roger's body oder will prevent you h4x0rz from copying CD's in the future...
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
So if you have no distribution in CA, what do you care? You weren't going to make any sales there anyway.
But, what happens if someone in CA happens to visit KY and sees your CD in a store in KY? If they liked your music, they may just very well buy your CD. That would *never* happen if it wasn't distributed far and wide.
I firmly believe that artists should be paid for their work and I do agree with you in principle that it is wrong for people to enjoy the fruits of your labor for free. But I also do know that as a result of mp3s and file sharing, my purchases of CDs has jumped by a factor of 3.
So I don't wholly subscribe to the argument that filesharing and mp3s is complete theft from artists or is detrimental to the future of the music industry.
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 = $0.32 per CD. Since they are no longer losing all that money to piracy, we can look forward to paying 32 cents less for each CD! They are basically a trustworthy group, so I'm sure they'll pass the savings along to consumers.
Okay ... but that's my point. How are people in KY going to know about you? I for one never buy a CD where I have only heard one of two tracks on it (the exception being artists that I am already familiar with).
So which would you prefer? No piracy and 10 legitimate sales or 100 pirate copies and 15 legitimate sales?
If it's copy-protected, it's not really a CD. Thank you, Philips.
No my problem isn't this,
"I bought a 129 GF$ and now they won't honor the price (Offtopic -1) "
Its with their return policy and FF2/cactus data shield.
I thought I'd buy the Fast and Furious 2 to see if the copy protection really works. The "cd" of course said I could return it if defective. I went to return it and it was a no go. I tried to explain that it didnt work, but they didnt get it.
BTW eac is able to fix the defective TOC and then rip. Not sure about the ripped audio quality, i'm not an audiophile.
Ver amo cor
Veramocor
Some people may wage this "battle" by breaching the DMCA. As you know, circumventing a restrictive mechanism which aims to prevent serialized copying, is a fellony these days. I am not going to break that law, no matter how dubious it is.
...Russia? There is no way Corporate America could get to that unless a) sabotage was an option or b) the U.S. Government was to issue sanctions against such a country.
Instead I will not buy music CDs anymore. I can live without music. And if you can too, I would suggest that you'd consider doing the same.
But I think we're missing the big picture. Why are these companies doing this? Is it because it is a fashionable thing which one can make a buck on? Possibly. Could it be that they know that the days of the CD are counted? Perhaps. Are they afraid of the Napster-like services becoming more authoritative than the labels? Damn right they are and they should be.
These companies have been feeding off the public because they are the authoritative source of music albums. What if that authority was to change? They would have nothing. Why should somebody go buy an album for some rediculous amount of money when the same content can be downloaded for very little or nothing?
These companies may be doing this because of the Napsterization of the world. Think about it. Napster was shut down, no biggie. Napster was based in the U.S. Clear juristiction. However what if the infrastructure was put in place and such a service was to move to say...
Either one could be feasible in dire straits, but certainly not considered lightly. Most likely these companies will perish when people have had enough.
Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. -Ayn Rand
ANYTHING that is digital will never be uncopyable.
While this statement makes sense, the reasoning
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.
is very flawed. Copying isn't about the ability to "make sense" of data. A CD press doesn't need to figure out that one sequence of bits can represent music and other set can represent images. That is why most people make a distinction between copy protection and copy prevention.
Further, the "so many ways" that data can be [en|de]coded is actually infinite. I make a good deal of fun on this issue on my Data Fetish web site. The same data can easily make sense in more than one way based on different coding schemes, with my favorite example (to date) being the DeCSS prime.
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."
Not sure if I am just not understanding what you are saying, or if you are misinformed.
Also, I am from Louisiana -- we are known for corrupt politics. The LA government is out there to make money, and thats it. Threy do everything from re-wording laws to make them easier to enforce, i.e. not needing to prove 'intent' simply by re-wording the law. I just finished a defensive driving class, and the cop teaching it didn't stop mentioning how corrupt the Louisiana government was and how corrupt the laws of the state were. Right down to the cops who are enforcing them. Who knows, some states might care about you, I know mine doesnt.
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.
keep in mind, this technology doesn't have to be perfect. if it's cheap for them to do, and stops piracy just a little bit, then it's a worthwhile move, from their perspective.
it's like the registration requirements on 'doze xp. it'll keep people from "casually" grabbing the cd from work and using it on their home computer. anybody really motivated can work around it.
-- p
No, no, no. You skipped the part of his post about error correction. CDs were designed to carry digital data, but data that the designers knew could tolerate less than perfect retrieval. That won't fly with your kernel, but it's perfectly acceptable to require a CD to interpolate a sample every so often because the CD surface couldn't be read. Audio CD data has suck error correction, and the drives are not designed to be able to read the audio data bit-for-bit the same every time. It just wasn't a design requirement.
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
How long have you been reading Slashdot? No doubt people are going to tear this apart and start complaining about the lack of separation between the bits and the plastic, information has no owner, and so on and so forth. But if you believe you only bought the plastic, that's a personal choice. Personal choice about the value of the idea and creations of others is the American way too. Welcome to the vacuum that is the rest of it. :)
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
>
> As if the pain of losing a CDR isn't enough, the noise made during this scratching is supposed to be untollerable.
Hey, I listen to industrial music. I might like that ;-)
At the very least, it'd sound a hell of a lot better than whatever Titney Spears has put out.
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!
Right. That's called "patenting".
The deal is that in order to promote useful progress in the arts and sciences, the manufacturer has to tell the world how to make the drug. (That's why anyone can read the patent on it.) The government, in return for this service, grants the manufacturer a legal monopoly over making the drug for the next 17 years. After the 17 years are up, however, anyone can make the drug. If you can't make your investment into Prozac or Viagra back in 17 years, then tough titty.
That's the deal - if you tell the world how to make your miracle drug or cool invention, you get to price-gouge the world for the next 17 years. After that, everyone else gets to join in the fun and you have to compete.
> BUT if I go into target, I can buy a crippled "The Fast and Furious Soundtrack" CD. Why do I own the data, and not just a peice of plastic? They didn't sell the data, and that's obvious b/c it's crippled...
Right again. That's called "copyright".
By publishing 1000000 copies of the CD or DVD with a big pile of bits on it, RIAA or MPAA tell the world how to reproduce a song, or a movie.
Sonny "I read OT-7 and can communicate with that tree!" Bono was more than just an idiot, a $cientologist and a Congressman (but I repeat myself). You see, Sonny was also working for Disney, and because of that, RIAA and MPAA get to control who gets to reproduce the bits for 75 years after the original creator dies. (And to buy another law that says "100 years after death of creator" as soon as the current "75 after death of creator" starts to threaten Mickey Mouse again.)
See the difference?
Funny, neither can I.
The smart thing to do would be to realize that digital media (software, music, movies) are no different from the sorts of things that patent protection.
Both involve an initial innovation. Both involve telling the world how to reproduce your innovation.
Yet one has 17 years of protection, and the other, 75 years after the death of the creator.
Intellectual property laws need to be reformed in such a way that both copyrights and patents expire more quickly, require renewal, and if not renewed, the works in question (if copyrighted) fall into the public domain, or (if patented) lose patent protection.
We can quibble over the numbers - and I think "17 years" is too long - but even reducing the time limit on copyright to 17 years would be a damn fine start.
"If you can't make a respectable profit on a movie or a song in 17 years, give up and find another line of work".
Say it. Feel it. Think about it. If that's good enough for Pfizer and Merck and the tens of billions of dollars in biotech research, it's gotta be good enough for a fuckin' cartoon mouse, or a chick with big tits who can lip-sync.
Viva la resistance!
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Untill they make it illegal to sell any player which does not include a complete closed audio path
I have just submitted a patent to the US patent office on a device that allow you to make recordings even if they implement a completely closed audio path.
It is an audio to analog to digital conversion device. I call it a microphone. I spoke to the patent examiner, and he said I can expect approval within the next week or so.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
a) Better picture quality
b) Better audio quality
c) Multiple audio tracks (languages, extras)
d) Multiple/optional subtitles
e) Doesn't depreciate over time
f) Instant jump to scene
g) Optional extras (Making of, screen savers+++)
h) Multi-angle
What does CDS add?
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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."
Actually, patents do not stop home manufacture of (e.g.) drugs. However, you cannot exploit it, commercially or otherwise.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
It's very simple - Philips/Magnavox is not primarily a content provider. Sony, RCA, and most of the other equipment manufacturers also have an interest in content production. Since Philips makes their money by enabling fair use, they have a vested interest in continuing to do so, against the interests of other manufacturers to inhibit it to protect their content providing divisions. If Philips is swallowed up by the AOL/TW, Sony, or Viacom behemoths, expect that to change instantaneously.
Always remember - "copy protection" isn't about preventing copying - it's about preventing a level playing field for content production. The thing the RIAA fears most is independent artists and labels not having to pay the cover charge to the party, not that John Q. Pirate is going to take a $.01 bite out of their $9 profit. If they can ruin the CD for consumers, and force an exodus to DVD-Audio or some similarly harder-to-enter market, then they are back in the driver's seat. The CD burner isn't a threat because you can copy their CD - it's because you can make your own.
Right...
One of the answers on Paranoia FAQ nicely explains all of the problems with ripping CDs, and generally all of the differences between playing CD on audio CD player, and reading audio CD as a stream of bits with a computer. These differences are exactly what is addressed by all of those so called "copy-protection" techniques.
The "copy-protected" "CDs" have to be played by audio CD players (otherwise no one would buy them), but not ripped with computers (like it made any problem with copying them, even if it's possible to make CDs completely unplayable on CD-ROM drives... When will they learn?) so all they can do, is to address the differences between them. It's very good to know, how it really works.
The legend of characters on Paranoia progress meter gives a good introduction to what Paranoia can and what it can't fix (yet):
-
A hyphen indicates that two blocks overlapped properly, but they were
skewed (frame jitter).
This case is completely corrected by Paranoia
and is not a cause for concern.
-
A plus indicates not only frame jitter, but an unreported, uncorrected
loss of streaming in the middle of an atomic read operation. That is,
the drive lost its place while reading data, and restarted in some
random incorrect location without alerting the kernel. This case is also
corrected by Paranoia.
-
An 'e' indicates that a transport level SCSI or ATAPI error was
caught and corrected.
Paranoia will completely repair such an error
without audible defects.
-
An "X" indicates a scratch was caught and corrected.
Cdparanoia will interpolate over any missing/corrupt samples.
-
An asterisk indicates a scratch and jitter both occurred in this general
area of the read.
Cdparanoia will interpolate over any missing/corrupt samples.
-
A ! indicates that a read error got through the stage one of error
correction and was caught by stage two. Many '!' are a cause for
concern; it means that the drive is making continuous silent errors that
look identical on each re-read, a condition that can't always be
detected. Although the presence of a '!' means the error was corrected,
it also means that similar errors are probably passing by unnoticed.
Upcoming releases of cdparanoia will address this issue.
-
A V indicates a skip that could not be repaired or a sector totally
obliterated on the medium (hard read error).
A 'V' marker generally
results in some audible defect in the sample.
So, however the next copy-protection of the week which this time really works!(tm) will work, I'm quite sure that it will be no problem to Paranoia, maybe after few days, because Paranoia simply interpolates over any missing/corrupt samples, like audio players do. No need to say, thay it will always be no problem to audio input on my Sound Blaster...~shiny
WILL HACK FOR $$$
Finally, a comment on this issue with a little bit of insight.
The only time record companies take notice is when their bottom line is affected. So when they see that spending $XX million on copy protection isn't helping them sell anymore CDs, they'll ditch it. It's only a matter of time. They'll keep trying--perhaps even a couple more generations of copy "protection"--but they won't ever succeed in selling more CDs because of it, so eventually they'll drop it because it will become apparent that its a waste of money.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
Many people here has commented that copy protection will always be broken by crackers. But in the case of music and movies, the reality is "worse" than that. The logic of the corporations is that it will take time and effort to crack each version of the protection, which will ensure the short-term value of a new cd or DVD.
What their logic misses completely is that the copy protection scheme *does not have to be cracked*. A one-time digital-to-analog-to-digital copy is indistinguishable from the original. Thus, all one needs to do is play the thing normally and record it digitally.
You can see how the suits think about this: they know that copying loses quality, and that people care about that. What they are confused about is that although in fact multi-generational analog copies lose quality quickly, a one-time analog copy to digital copy does not.
I think companies should be allowed to control how to make *new* material using the characters they've created. At the moment Mickey Mouse expires from those 17 years of protection, I don't think you should be able to make a porn cartoon (or whatever) starring him.
However, they shouldn't be allowed to control *reproduction* of material released more than 17 years ago, regardless of format. So if someone wants to reprint old magazines they should be allowed to, or for that matter scan it and release it on CD. If they want to take old filmrolls and make a DVD they should be allowed to. If they want to rerelease the music as an audio cd they should be allowed to. The mickey mouse game created in 1980 should be free to spread and/or port (but not to create a derivate in content)
Companies usually have a very long interest in characters created, much longer than the actual instance of them. Think of James Bond or the Star Wars movies, the Star Trek series, Super Mario Bros (how old is the first game there anyway) and so on. I don't mind them protecting that, but that's different from having a monopoly on reproduction.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I think a more reasonable data protection scheme is the Raging Cactuar Data Shield. If an attempt to copy a "protected" disc is made, a cactuar will appear and attack you with his "9,999 Needles" attack. You will quickly learn your lesson that when the record companies want more money, they will do anything to get it.
--- At my sig, unleash hell.
Yeah. The logo was just to get customers to trust CDs. Now that that's done, the logo serves no point to the RIAA. They certainly wouldn't use it to undermine their own scheme. Nope, the only protection for consumers would be a big database of CDs to avoid and a few million people who paid attention to it.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
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.
Reading the above I thought back to the heady days of 1999 when all of those old companies were going to go bust. Boo would win, Travelocity would crush everyone, Amazon would shutdown Borders, no-one would ever want to buy anything from a normal shop again.
Well call me wierd but I thought it was stupid back then. And I think the idea of not having Record Companies with marketing might and recording studios is also stupid.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Not quite. Most CD players have fairly good audio error correction, while when you rip, you try to rip a perfect copy. The perfect copy will contain willfully engineered flaws that most ordinary cdplayers will gloss over, just because they arent doing the perfect copy thing, but when you play a wav file ripped from the cd, or encode it, you will have the engineered artifacts making it sound like shit.
Of course, you're still right tho. Some ripping software is designed to do the same error correction while ripping as an ordinary CD players, so nothing changes except which rippers are popular.
The whole thing is idiotic. Introducing flaws into digital data that they expect the players to correct, which the ripper can correct just as well, with the only result being the cd's are worse actual quality and wont play on some cd players. Sigh.
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?
That's exactly how I found both They Might Be Giants and Bare Naked Ladies. Sure it might not have been mp3's and might have been cassette tapes. But without those illicit copies I never would have found either of those bands, and in the case of TMBG I own every on of the albums they've put to CD. I wouldn't have gone to shows. I simply wouldn't know any better. Well when BNL got famous I probably would have found them. But still...
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
It's been pointed out by earlier posters that a 5 cent resistor across the decrypted input to a USB driver (the actual speaker) makes a great source for a line-in. If they get cute and try potting it up with "tamper-proof compounds" the we can always decone some cheap USB speakers and get access that way.
Ok, I have a tangentially related question. For some reason it seems like the audio I get out of my CD player (Panasonic) sounds qualitatively "better" than that I get out of my computer (Sound Blaster Live Value + Altec Lansing ACS40 [w/ subwoofer]). It's not that the clarity of the sound is worse (indicating speakers), it just doesn't seem as rich. I always thought this was because my CD player has some special audio DSP in it that made the sound "better". Am I crazy? Or is my audio CD player really playing the music "better" than my CD-ROM player + audio card + speakers?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
"then it seems only reasonable that, if they can prevent this copying, the revenue they'd previously been losing should rightfully belong to them."
It doesn't say anywhere in the constitution that anybody is guaranteed profits. The issue is not whether they are losing money, it's over the extent of copyright. If I make a product, and people discover uses for the product that I hadn't intended but can charge for, do I *deserve* that "lost profit"? Am I being cheated? What if the people who use the product for the non-intended use *wouldn't* buy it if they couldn't use it this way?
"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"
NO. It can only be considered a revenue LOSS, if that 50% would have otherwise been PURCHASED. For piracy (illegal copying, whatever) this is not the case in many cases. I.e. people WOULD NOT have purchased your product anyway, if they could not pirate it. So no, you aren't being cheated of some hypothetical profit. "Hey, people in mud huts in Africa aren't using my product! They must be *depriving* me of my rightful *profits*!"
"and you would be justified in saying that if you could somehow reduce that loss, the money you saved should belong to you. Right?"
No. Am I justified in saying that if I could somehow beat up people and steal their money, that that money should belong to me? Does might make right? If so, let's go over to Africa and beat up those cheapskates for *depriving* us of our *profits*.
"And, since you were barely covering your costs before the savings, that money should go into making your life a bit easier. Right?"
Hmm...I guess I was barely covering my $1000/day drug addiction, so the money I get from beating people up should go into making my life a bit easier. Right?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
If I can hear it, I can copy it. Total Recorder
Will not be signed by Microsoft. Microsoft doesn't sign any audio driver unless it has a way of letting applications disable all digital outputs (such as Total Recorder's waveOut to waveIn redirection) that users cannot override. (Read More...)
Will I retire or break 10K?
I have just submitted a patent to the US patent office on a device that allow you to make recordings even if they implement a completely closed audio path. It is an audio to analog to digital conversion device. I call it a microphone.
Not if Congress (or your local equivalent) passes Son of SSSCA which requires all consumer audio recording devices to contain policeware that detects and responds to watermarks (which are designed to survive D/A/D conversion) and bans possession of possessing non-consumer audio recording devices by people who aren't licensed and bonded audio professionals.
Will I retire or break 10K?
so if you can hear it, you can record it
Not necessarily. Watermarks are designed to survive D=>A=>D conversion, and if the legislative bodies of the USA, Europe, and Japan (the major electronics markets) pass a law that makes it illegal for consumer audio equipment to ignore watermarks, you're screwed. (The DMCA already makes it illegal to remove watermarks or other copy management information from an existing signal.)
Will I retire or break 10K?
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.
Actually, I believe there was a Congressional investigation last year which revealed that the recording industry has been overcharging for CDs for the last 10 years.
Supposedly, IIRC, the CD was originally touted as being cheaper to manufacture than the vinyl LP and that consumers would eventually see a drop in recorded music prices. The results of the investigation were that that drop never ocurred.
MjM
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
DOS and Win3.1 (and some very old CDROM drives) cannot see anything but the first session of a multisession CD. Does this mean that such CDs would be easier to rip in DOS?
I don't own (and wouldn't knowingly buy) any of these bogus audio CDs, so I can't test this.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I believe the copy protection is designed to create an error so bad that the CD-ROM refuses to read and pass on the data to the system.
If that is the case, the firmware would need to be hacked - which would "violate" (*) the DMCA.
(*) Making a CD-ROM deal more gracefully with errors shouldn't be considered "circumvention" and there is also the interoperability exemption, fair use, the provisions of the US Constitution, etc.
But in Judge Kaplan's court, those parts of the law (or the Constitution) that protect you do not count, only the ones that can be used to attack you.
Also, it may be that in a year or two cdparanoia is as "illegal" (again, by an unconstitutional law which is wrongly interpreted) as DeCSS.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Meanwhile, they could convince people to go to a different format...
;)
2 words: DVD audio
It doesn't matter that we only have 2 ears and can only hear up to 20 kHz (if we are VERY lucky) and that CDs can handle that.
DVD's with 5 audio channels and 96 kHz sampling rate (48 kHz maximum frequency response) is just so much "cooler".
Well at least your dogs can enjoy the high notes.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
A few days back, I purchased The Avalanches' new album, and put in my dvd-rom only to discover that this disc "was unformatted. Would I like to initialize it?" I was stunned. I felt dirty. I had purchased a copy protected CD. And I couldn't even rip the damn thing so as to add it to the massive mp3 collection!
So, I brought the CD over to a friend's room, asked him to try it in his machine, and it worked just fine. In both his drives. Go figure.
Of course, the worst-case scenario is that I had to use analog ripping, and pump the output from a CD player into the line-in on my soundcard. It'd take all of 5 minutes to wire up, and would have to be done in real-time... To the best of my knowledge, there is no way to protect against this kind of copying. And if push comes to shove, I'm sure that mp3s will appear on the net which have been ripped via this method.
-Agent Oranje
-agent oranje.
Content providers using copy-protection like this are fools. All they will do is drive their customers underground to find unencumbered content that the customers can use on whatever media/player they desire, as provided by fair use.
299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Until then, I have to consider it a sham. I mean, in real life, if a business really does take a loss on something, they report it as such on their quarterly financial statement.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
I have proven to myself that Cactus-protected discs can be ripped successfully with the right hardware and software. I have heard tons of evidence from others that corroborate my experience. It's useless protection, and serves only as a minor annoyance.
In addition, their "protection" degrades the actual audio quality over time, because they're essentially using up the error correction bits for data. You need error correction to do just that - correct errors. You waste them on something else, like correcting purposefully-inserted errors, and you end up with a disc that is much less robust and able to withstand wear and tear.
This means that you must rip and burn a new copy of any Cactus disc you buy as soon as you open the case for the first time. And you must rip with multi-pass validation to help ensure that you got the correct data off the disc.
Any claims by Midbar that their protection is just peachy are BS.