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Sony Intentionally Crashes Customers' Computers
Uttles writes "According to Yahoo!, Celine Dion's latest CD will not play in computer drives. In fact: 'Should the consumer try to play Dion's CD on a PC or Macintosh, the computer likely will crash.' How is this legal?" Since Sony admits that their product is designed to cause damage to your computer system, almost anyone would likely have a good lawsuit against them. Attention Celine Dion and all musicians: crashing your fans' computers is not a good business practice. No matter what your agent says.
I think the RIAA should just use new media for music and stop using CD's. It'd be really simple for them to use a media format not unlike Nintendo's GameCube media. Heck, with modern compression schemes, they could use a higher frequency range and put all kinds of other doodads in it to make it better than the modern CD.
The media wouldn't have a drive for PC's, and if they patent the technology then nobody could release a PC drive. The only recourse would be for for people to run a cable from the device to the PC to capture the music. No matter what kind of 'protection schemes' they create, they'll never get around the fact that the sound becomes analog at some point. At least this way, they make it less convenient to copy the music.
This would go a lot farther than trying to preemptively punish me for being a criminal.
"Derp de derp."
So, if Sony has enabled this 'protection' technology on the CD's, then they are (in theory) stopping 'pirates' from making unauthorized copies. Therefore, they are not losing as much money.
Shouldn't they at least reward us for our inconvenience? I mean if Sony said "Tell you what, because we've implemented this new 'protection' scheme, we'll knock $5 off the price of the CD."
If they're not doing that, how can the use the word protection? It's certainly not us they're protecting. They should use the word restriction at that point.
Tell you what, if Sony (or any other Music Label) were to take this approach, I'd have a hell of a lot more sympathy for them. I'm not sure it'd end my boycott, but it'd be a start. They took my music rights away, therefore the music has much less value. So why should the prices be the same? That gives them the image of being super evil.
"Derp de derp."
You realize that you may have just broken the law, right?
Not that I think it should be illegal, but you could possibly get sued/imprisoned for trafficking (you helped people find it) in a circumvention device or process.
The fact that the above comment may be illegal should definitely motivate you to fight CBDTPA and fight to have the DMCA repealed/declared unconstitutional.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
The sticker's on the wrapper. The wrapper gets thrown away when you open the CD. Why wouldn't they believe you when you said your new CD had no sticker on it?
Posts like this should not get +5s.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Sony is going quite overboard with this Album; Not only are they using copy protection, but they've also gone ahead and hired NetPD to investigate any possible location of the file on any filesharing network.
We've recieved a number of complaints from NetPD when they've seen songs from the album pass through our networks on Gnutella. It's quite extreme the lengths they are going through for such a popular artist.
You'd think they would put more effort into their smaller artists. They are the ones that will be hurt more from copying, not Dion. With millions of fans, she's not going to lose that much from copying; Sure, it's illegial to copy, but apply the same protection to ALL of your artists. Not just your big seller.
Sony by warning the customer is actually admitting that they have a defect product, they know it's defective and can cause damages, and they refuse to fix it.
What? Excuse me?
It's rather easy for a "combination of bits" to crash your computer, especially from a trusted, local source (CD-Drive). It's not their computer you're crashing, it's their OS.
Do you remember the infamous screensaver override program? The one that hacked Windows 9x screensaver passwords by exploiting the autorun capability? That is just one example.
It seems to me like this stuff is just dangerous. I mean, if it "crashes" your Operating System, by definition, your OS has malfunctioned and is not working correctly. When that happens, bad stuff, REALLY bad stuff (a la Firmware overwrite) COULD happen.
It has been often said that, in order to stop pirates, the recording industry could employ teams of virus programmers (they could afford them), to create uber-virii, which they could then distribute through file-sharing programs.
That approach, as illegal and horrifying as it may seem, is probably actually more "legal" (common-sense legal, not this crazy "copyright" legal) than Sony's plan. I mean, you've bought the Damn CD, and you should have rights to play it in a CD player. Any CD player. Whereas if someone got their computer crashed due to the uber-virus, they wouldn't really have a recourse (They didn't own the files, after all).
Just my 2 cents.
That brings up an interesting point.
How could a product that existed in time before this method of copy prevention become illegal? Sounds to me like Sony is using a method that could already by bypassed even before it was ever even used. This whole computer cd player prevention doesnt seem to be a "protection" method anyway. I view encryption or protection as a higher level technology designed to keep people out. Not a design that uses existing equipment anomalies in hopes that they will not be able to read it. What if they put the output level redicuously low on the cd and you could barely hear it unless you used a special Sony addon to your headphone jack? Would connecting your own extra amplifier be a violation or a circumvention device? They are using a method of prevention that violates a generally accepted standard, not an encryption scheme.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
- Encode the source material into high-quality MP3.
- Decode the resulting MP3s back into
.WAV format.
- Use the WAV files to create the master.
- Press copies of the master and distribute to retail.
This way there is negligible quality loss, and even perfect CD rips will still sound like ass when re-encoded into MP3. More importantly, the CD does not lose functionality!Nathan
The reason that major news organizations such as CNN, Newsweek, etc., all preface "Osama Bin Laden" with the phrase "alleged terrorist" instead of "terrorist" is that if you publish something you cannot prove, as a news organization, you can be held liable for the result.
Sort of. The reason they do that is to protect themselves from libel, as in calling someone a criminal who has yet to tried in court of law. That can be very damaging to someone's reputation.
When Slashdot publishes as fact the point that Celine Dion's CD is cause for a no-lose lawsuit against Sony, that could be a potentially bad situation. What's the source? Is it opinion? It's stated as fact!
There's a reason that they are called "legal opinions". There no such thing as a "legal fact".
Be that as it may, this is totally different from protecting oneself from libel. Guess what -- the first Amendment gives you the right to say just about anything you want, including factually untrue statements, as long as you are not damaging another person or entity. Is Michael representing himself as a lawyer? No, he is not. He's stating his opinion. Who is he damaging here? Someone might believe that he's a lawyer and file a lawsuit? Without getting any further legal advice from a real lawyer? Doubtful.
Yeah, I can just imagine that courtroom scene: "Your honor, I was visiting a geek web site, and one of the editors said that this was a no-lose case! Well, no, it isn't a web site about legal issues. Well, no, he wasn't a laywer. Well, no, I didn't talk to any qualified attorneys, I just filed the case myself. Well, yes, the site does have a history of posting editorials about various stories."
Sheesh, and you call me a troll.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Despite what the lawyers want you to think, almost anything you do still has to pass a "reasonable person" test.
Would a reasonable person expect a CD purchased (or received as a gift) to destroy a computer that has successfully played hundreds of other CDs? Of course not, they won't even read the disclaimer, and if they do they will interpret "may not play in computers" as "it may play in computers, why don't you give it a try" not as "will cause temporary or permanent damage."
In other words, that disclaimer is worthless at best, and an active inducement to try playing it in vulnerable hardware at worse.
As for your example, there's the same issue with the reasonable person test. Bigots may think they can identify homosexuals at a glance, but they can't and that policy is both unenforceable and arbitrarily enforced against innocent parties.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
To anyone who hasn't read this, go to your nearest bookstore (or just order it from Amazon) and get a copy of Goedel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. There is a whole chapter on the subject of albums called "I Cannot Be Played On Record Player X". Rather funny in its frustrating repetitiveness.
/Brian
I don't think I will buy another CD. I don't want their crap breaking my machine. From now on it is straight rips so I don't have to worry about damaging my hardware.
That's just being dishonest.
If he's Canadian, he's paid for it (assuming it's CDs he copied, onto cds). If he's really honest, he can just go see the band live, where they will see a penny for their toils.
I hate to say this, but I'm going to keep banging this point into people's heads. Others should do this, too. Yes, I know it doesn't really apply to your post. In Canada, it is perfectly legal for me to possess copied works, because the government decided that they would worry about paying the artist. How about they do that isn't my problem, but for the time being, I can copy music without guilt - because I've paid a tax^h^h^hlevy on the CDs. Nothing like turning music into a public good to solve this peer to peer problem, eh. Nevermind how stupid and unworkable that is to independant artists. Or once the public is made aware of this abolution in droves, or the big kicker: If someone defends a peer-to-peer music sharing program under this law in court. That would make napster LEGAL in Canada. Oh, baby. The RIAA would riot.
This of course doesn't apply in the land of the DMCA, not to worry, we're holding (held) tribunals on what we're going to do to hop in line like good little empire citizens, too.
..don't panic