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Post-it Notes vs. Copy-Inhibited CDs
rjoseph writes "MacUser is running an article about how the new Celine Dion CD A New Day Has Come with copy protection mechanisms to prevent the CD from being played on a PC not only won't play on an iMac, but it will lock the CD tray (so it can't be removed) and fubar the firmware (so the machine can't be rebooted), effectivley killing the iMac. Ouch." We mentioned this interesting experiment in consumer relations last month as well, but now it's getting noticed a lot more. However, emkman writes: "What was first thought to be an April Fool's joke, now appears to be true. Some Audio CD protection schemes such as Cactus DATA Shield 100/200, KeyAudio, and perhaps others may be defeated by invalidating the outer ring of the CD with a black marker or post-it sticky note. www.chip.de has their report in German, here is a translation."
Precisely. I couldn't have said it better. When you get right down to it, these copy-protected discs are defective CDs. Pioneer should have surely tested for defective CDs as part of their Q&A process. Apple also should have asked themselves the same question.
Not to mention, these copy protection formats have been around for years. It's only now that they are in wide-scale production that we are learning this problem? Cactus et al talks about testing their discs in a wide assortment of players and not seeing anything significantly wrong. Did they not think to test an iMac?
This is really Ford vs. Firestone for the computer industry. Only this time there are three parties that share some of the blame for this fiasco:
Pioneer - for engineering a drive where it is possible with the wrong combination of bits or read errors to completely lock the drive and ruin the firmware.
Apple - for engineering a machine with a soft eject and no aesthetically-challenging hard backup. Mr. Jobs, would a pinhole really have offended your out-of-wack perfectionism that much? Well, I guess that's rhetorical. So then why not a hotkey during boot to eject the media or similar? Or maybe a little coverplate over the pinhole?
Cactus/MPAA - for engineering hazardous media without sufficiently warning or even preventing users from using them improperly.
Now who gets the most blame? Ford said Firestone for making crappy tires. Firestone said Ford for telling people to underinflate them. Well, now Pioneer, Apple and Cactus et al are facing a similar game of finger-pointing.
The bottom line is that it is inexcusable for a HARDWARE manufacturer to build a device in such a manner that SOFTWARE can actually cause permanent damage. That's what I was talking about with the self-distruct button.
- JoeShmoe
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-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
You guys are both nuts^G^G^G^Goverreacting AND you don't know what you are talking about. This disc does not work in your Macintosh as it says on the label and it does not destroy anything.
No one is intentionally damaging your computer BTW, it aint "malicious behavior towards a competing product" and here's the important part THERE IS NO CRIME!
Oh and if you think your computer is destroyed, I will be willing to take it off your hands for you.
lunky> c++; lunky> do{;}