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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."
Seriously, breaking someone's machine intentionally is a bit excessive. Past copy-protection schemes were okay in my book because laymen couldn't get past them and people who bothered/could were in the minority: piracy prevention but without excess. But now the little laymen who don't bother reading the little warning labels are having their iMacs broken? This is affecting the luddites who don't know or care about p2p filesharing and buy all CDs and just assume they'll play in their CD players. Is the industry trying to alienate the people who still trusted it?
Ceci n'est pas une sig
If someody were to develop some amazing new casette tape that didn't work on a subset of casette players, that would be okay. If that tape, instead, destroyed the player into which it was inserted by chewing up the playback heads, that would not be okay, even if it came with a label saying, ``Not for use on foo tape decks.''
Celine has done the latter.
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
Ummm... isn't this illegal? If some iMac owner accidently puts one of these CD's in the drive and send the thing to kingdom come, didn't Sony just damage their computer with malicious intent? C'mon, Sony has to know that the CD's are going to do this. Can we say class action lawsuit? What's wrong with playing a cd in your computer? Sure, I've got MP3's, but I also play audio cd's on my laptop, and if my laptop gets busted becase one of these damn cds, then I'd frickin sue Sony and anybody connected to the deal for every dime they've got.
Sony should realize that they're treading on very thin ice here. They need to realize that some people have very sensitive information on their computers, and if it gets f*$&# because of their cd protection scheme.....
Sorry, but these dumb moves just irritate me
No not the fact that the CD can break firmware, but the fact that the firmware can be broken by a CD.
Of course you could find it a little troublesome to read Apple's technotes when your computer is knocked-out by Celine Dion.
Why should Apple pay if Sony breaks your computer?
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You're a tool; how'd you like it if the following took place whilst filling up your car:
"Sure! C'mon, if you put our gas in your car, it's absolutely trivial to drain the fuel system and use non-protected gasoline; you'll just have to get that from...uh...er...somewhere else.
But there's no permanent damage or anything..."
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
Go out and buy one of these CDs. Take it into a computer store. Try it out in a computer.
When it gets stuck, try to get help from the sales people, but try to do it with a straight face, OK? Now you will probably have to leave it there, but make sure you talk to the highest up manager before you do.
Research on the internet how to eject the disk and come back the next day to get it.
This might work best if you bought the CD in the same store.
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
The music publishers are giving people incentives to NOT BUY CDs...
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
From the Apple Knowledge Base:
You may be unable to eject certain copy-protected audio discs, which resemble Compact Discs (CD) but technically are not.
The point here is that these *aren't* CD's. It may look like a CD, smell like a CD, and quack like a CD, but these -things- don't conform to the Compact Disc standard. If they're still putting a Compact Disc logo on these things, I think consumers have a right to be torqued.
mstyne: real name, no gimmicks
The CD format is a very well-defined standard, and Apple created a device that works perfectly with it. How is it Apple's fault if a malicious 3rd party intentionally creates a disc that violates the standard?
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I agree.
If [insert big-5 label here] made a CD that fell apart or melted in the drive, it wouldn't be apple's fault. This is no different.
S
My mother bought the new Celine Dion CD (I've been trying to convince her to take it back for not being a "real CD"). I put it in my PC just to test it. The funny think is that the CDROM won't play it as a audio CD. However, I tried cdparanoia and I can rip it without any problem... I guess it's just another case of a "copy-protection" technology prevent legal use (like watching DVD under Linux), while failing at preventing what it's designed to prevent (you can do a mirror copy of a DVD without decrypting it).
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
It's all about the companies getting greedy. Instead of 'losing' a few dollars on the price of each CD, they spend thousands to get the CD 'guarded'. Completely ridiculous, and a result of greed in our society.
Then there's the junk going on about them safeguarding the CD's so they can't be played on a computer. Personally, I'm not the richest person around, and I can't afford a CD player seperate from the computer. I lodged my money into this thing about two years ago, and continue to do so, thinking "Hey, I can play my CD's on here, and write my papers, etc., rather than drive up the electric bill (damned prices last year for electricity...) with two seperate Watt-Guzzelers, as I call them. So, I saved some money there, right?
I ended up buying a few cds the other day, after listening to them on the radio. I pop in the Lord of the Rings OST, remembering fondly the music that scared me in the movie, and waited for it to load. Instead of my lovely music, I get a webpage with a bunch of ads I don't want, and no auto-start on the music. So, naturally, I checked to see if the files were missing or something. Sure enough, they've been 'protected' against use on a computer. So, I wasted $18, and I still haven't listened to the thing once.
Now, they're making the computers crash on us, just for fear of 'stealing' their 'hard earned songs' (even though most of them are just rewrites of old classics). Next thing you know, they'll ban CD-Roms. --;
"Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do."
How can these idiots somehow assume that everyone has a stereo or some form of computer-independent CD player? You wouldnt believe how small a percentage of my friends actually plays their CDs on a stereo. Why, I once foresaw the death of stereos altogether: Why spend a boatload of cash on a huge machine that can do exactly one thing (play CDs - radio sux, tapes are dead, LPs are deader), when you can do the same with your PC?
Why have a TV/Stereo/DVD/VCR/whatever when you can have it all in your PC?
Ah, wait, if you spend a boatload of cash on huge, clunky, technologically outdated devices such as a TV or a 1x CD player, Big Business is happy. And since the government is just for show and it's actually BB who's running the place, the "consumers" really have no choice - fork over your cash time and time again, or live like a peasant in the Dark Ages, with no comfort at all.
I'm sick of this. Where do I point my gun at to get my God-given rights?
Since they're all trying to label us as terrorists I say shoot the bastards and earn the title!
I imagine it tries to boot off the CD (remember, Apple got rid of the floppy) and since the copy protection screws up the TOC, the boot process freezes. Okay, just remove the CD, but you can't because the CD is stuck in the drive without a manual eject. In effect, a stuck CD in a stuck computer with a grey screen.
Those weren't funny enough.
How about the eminently simple "Coaster," as that about describes what it's useful for.
Ceci n'est pas un post
The music companies are quietly removing the CD logo from some of these controversial copy-protected CD's because they do not conform to the Red Book standard.
So here's a way we can fight back. When you are buying your CD's, always insist on CD's bearing the "Compact Disc Digital Audio" logo.
This does two things:
* Any copy-protected disc that bears the CD logo may be in technical breach of some law, such as misleading and deceptive marketing, and you can possibly sue the store and record company on those grounds (IANAL) or make a formal complaint to some regulatory body such as the FTC.
* It lets the store know that there are people who prefer genuine CD's instead of that crippled copy-protected rubbish. Once you buy the CD, it's your right to do with it as you please, provided you do not infringe on the copyright owners' rights to redistribute the music.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
Look, don't play the music industry game. Don't bother to figure out how to defeat the copy protection that just makes them try harder.
Just don't buy the CDs.
Or better yet, buy them, open them, then take them back to the store and complain that they don't work. If the store will only offer an exchange, take the exchange and bring that one back too. Just keep doing this until they learn that they do not work.
The stores can't put them back on the shelves, they have to ship them back to the distributor. I guarantee you when 25% of their stock comes back defective, someone is going to start to notice what a really bad idea this is.
Hmm, I work right next door to a Best Buy. I could buy and return a CD every day for lunch. Might be kind of fun.
That's like Apple putting a big tempting red button on the side of their iMac labeled "Self Destruct" and then trying to claim that they are somehow absolved of all liability if someone actually (or accidentally) pushes it.
No, it's not like that at all. Don't be a shithead.
You can't design a product with such a significant defect and then refuse to take any part of the blame.
First of all, the drive isn't an Apple drive. It's a Pioneer drive.
Secondly, this drive, and Apple's use of it, pre-dates these copy-protected CDs. You're trying to apply some standard of retroactive responsibility that just doesn't make any sense. Was Pioneer-- or Apple, by extension-- supposed to anticipate this particular event?
Thirdly, you can't possibly be suggesting that a drive that fails when you put something that isn't a CD in it is a defective drive?? What's your standard these days, that the product must never, ever fail under any circumstances? I mean, Christ! Did you actually say class-action lawsuit? What planet are you on?
Sheesh. Get some perspective, and stop digging up excuses to bitch about Apple.
<SARCASM>
What do you care, unless you're an Evil Hacking Terrorist Content Pirate(tm).
Only Evil Content Pirates want the DMCA overturned. Stinking Terrorist.
</SARCASM>
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
"Apple designs its CD drives to support media that conforms to such standards. Apple computers are not designed to support copyright protected media that do not conform to such standards. Therefore, any attempt to use non standard discs with Apple CD drives will be considered a misapplication of the product. Under the terms of Apple's One-Year Limited Warranty, AppleCare Protection Plan, or other AppleCare agreement any misapplication of the product is excluded from Apple's repair coverage. "
So not only is the computer broken because you didn't see the fine print and tried to play a cd in it, but you have to pay for the repairs.
but...
If I create something that resembles an email message, but really just uses the email message format to carry a harmful digital payload to damage your system, I'm just an evil hacker who's likely to be spending time in prison.
Yup. Makes sense to me.
A new kind of meat designed to appeal to vegetarians.
Thirdly, you can't possibly be suggesting that a drive that fails when you put something that isn't a CD in it is a defective drive?? What's your standard these days, that the product must never, ever fail under any circumstances? I mean, Christ! Did you actually say class-action lawsuit? What planet are you on?
I'm damn well suggesting that a drive shouldn't fail when you put in something that is PHYSICALLY COMPATIBLE with a CD. Sure, I don't expect it to be able to handle a cheese sandwich or a sanding disc, but a correctly-sized piece of plastic should be fine.
As another poster suggested, if it's not logically compatible with what the drive is expecting, then the drive should either eject it or ignore it. It should *not* crash, and it should (*not*)^2 corrupt any firmware or do anything that can't be cured by a cold reboot.
I've had scratched audio CDs (being played as audio CDs, not being ripped) cause my computer to hang, because the drive did evil things to the IDE bus. That's just crappy engineering, like those "shopping cart" websites that read prices from a user-submitted form, or blindly pass user input to an SMTP client without stripping out escape sequences. In the real world, programs and devices need to perform sanity checks on their input, and fail properly when they're fed junk. The only reason we let the firmware people get away with it is that it's very hard to examine their code.
Slashdot geeks can rant and rave all they want about these horrible booby-trapped 'discs', but the outside world must respond for anything to happen- either endorsing the legitimacy of the 'discs' or rejecting it.
Well, this is a start.
Playing these things on an iMac means basically voiding the warranty. If, God knows how, the corrupted and intentionally damaging 'disc' manages to actually kill the iMac, Apple says it is your fault for trying to put booby-trapped, intentionally destructive junk in the machine!
This is a GOOD thing, and I hope other computer manufacturers do likewise. I wouldn't have believed that such a thing could kill an iMac, but note this: iMacs ARE BOOTABLE FROM CD. It seems possible that these 'discs' could contain something like a boot sector, to trick the machine into trying to boot off the 'disc' and then munging its BIOS. Viruses have been able to do stuff like that for years and years- this is simply the first time the RIAA has made a concerted effort to destroy people's computers.
Apple cannot possibly take responsibility for this. They're doing the right thing- staring in shock, and then quickly announcing, "We will not be held responsible for interoperating with THIS BULLSHIT!"
I say support Apple for this stance, don't criticise them. Or do you feel that computer manufacturers should now be held responsible for maintaining interoperability with VIRUSES?
You're right! I want to sue Apple for crappy firmware, too! I put a slice of American cheese in my DVD-RAM drive, and it didn't eject it right away! And now my system won't read CDs any more, and it's starting to smell funny! They designed that defect in! They should update their code to detect and eject any thing I want to put into that slot which isn't a valid audio CD, no matter how hard I mash it in!
Er. *deep breath*
I'm sure that neither Apple, nor the various third party vendors of 8cm optical disc media devices that provide Apple with drives, expected that someone would design a disc that appears to be an Audio CD but actually has trojan horse code on it intended to confuse the drive into nonoperation.
I can't fault them for that.
It's not that this copy protection system presents a few wrong bytes. It's intentionally designed to confuse the hell out of the drive, rendering it inoperative so it cannot "rip" the disc. In the process, it seems the copy protection vendors and the record labels forgot that a wide number of computers out there don't have an accessable hardware-based eject button.
Oh, well. Sony definitely lost a sale to me in this case. I'm not buying the Episode II soundtrack if I can't transfer it to my iPod.
This just leads back to the question, is it the CD maker or the CD drive maker who is at fault? Both I think. The CD maker for not making their CD to specs, and the drive maker for not having a product robust enough to sensibly handle an invalid data format on the CD. I mean really, it should just do nothing....not wreck the whole damn machine.
The CD could not "fubar the firmware." However, it could bring out a bug in that firmware that leads to its own state of fubar.
I hate copyprotected CDs. But the fubar'ed iMac CD drive firmware needs to be addressed by Apple.
USNG: 14TPU4605
Apple really isn't to blame, except maybe for buying drives with poorly written firmware.
The drive manufacturer is at fault here--it should not be possible to cause damage by inserting a disk in the drive. Really, the copy protection is only a disk that is corrupted in a specific way--the drive should have been designed to fail gracefully if the disk is corrupted.
I see many conflicts of interest here...
First of all, Sony begins using this copy-protection scheme by forcing it's children-companies to begin putting it on their "CD"s. This is apparently an attempt to prevent ripping of said "CD" tracks into MP3 or other digital media files. On the other hand, Sony is one of the larger companies who are currently making hardware to play "legitimate" MP3s, such as the Sony MP505 mini-disc MP3 players, and others.
Now, how does one go about using their Sony MP505 to play MP3s from their new Sony-parented "CD"? I mean, I understand that the MP3 players are just to jump into a market where money is to be had, but still, this seems like a case of one hand not knowing what the other is doing.
First of all, as has been stated many-a-time, the patent holder of TRUE CDs should sue the pants off of companies that are creating discs that do not conform to standards, but still market them as CDs. Perhaps the official CD logo is not there on many of these CDs, but do the record labels make any statement that these are not truly Compact Discs?
What other devices might these not work in? Some items made for the computer-oriented user that has a more CD-ROM style interface than a standard CD interface? What about MP3 players that use CD media to play MP3s, but also can play audio CDs? What about a device like my Apex AD-3201. that uses a very standard DVD-ROM drive attached via an ATAPI interface to a decoder? If not these discs, will others that are soon to follow cause problems here as well?
Perhaps I am not technically inclined enough with color book standards to understand what causes the current problems in iMacs, and why there may not be other problems here and there... but I know enough to be mildly concerned about this.
If someday I purchase Star Wars Episode II on DVD and pop it into my Apex (with region encoding and Macrovision turned off), and my DVD and mainboard firmware become damaged... I'm going to be particularly upset.
Does anyone have a webpage up yet that lists not only known discs with this protection, but also known devices, SPECIFICALLY, which will fail and how? Just curious if maybe the full impact has not yet been felt or noticed.
-Xepherys
A more fitting analogy would be if you sold rat poison pellets that looked just like jelly beans. Saying "well, if you read the fine print on the box, you would have known that they were rat poison and not candy" wouldn't cut it as a defense when you get hauled into court.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
With all this talk about how these CD's are not "CD"'s, it strikes me that a store selling them couldn't properly call itself a "CD" store. I think, perhaps retailers should separate these from the other, proper, CDDA discs.
A warning on the packaging and on the disc itself is insufficient for two reasons that I can see: 1) It would NEVER occur to the average consumer (who's only just figured out that thing isn't a cup-holder) that not only is a CD not a CD, but that it could 'break' their computer. Yes, I've seen the explanations that the hardware isn't really broken, but we ALL know that the average user isn't technically aware, and things must be kept VERY simple.
Reason #2) The packaging is not always available. I just hopped over to CDNOW, and there is NO MENTION WHATSOEVER on the page to indicate this is not a CDDA disc. It is listed in two formats: CD and Tape (and the CD is still more expensive than cassette, go figure)
Knowing that retailers are extremely unlikely to provide this service any time soon, may I humbly propose we create a CDNOT.com to catalog all these unplayable discs, and make a plugin available that will warn you, should you attempt to purchase one?
These people looked deep into my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined.
... to tell me, please, whether writing on a copy protected CD with a black marker really works? My God, one of the main points of this story has hardly been addressed, except to make jokes about banning post it notes and markers. I guess people are too busy flaming record companies and Apple to address something constructive.
I'm sorry, but people are posting a lot of drivel here and I'm getting tired of it. Mod me into oblivion for saying this, but one of the main points of this story remains unexamined.
What's up with that?
In general, it is wrong to assume that anything will comply to standards. "Be strict in what you produce and permissive in what you accept." Now it would be different if, for instance, these discs would cause physical harm to the mechanism directly (i.e., they would melt or reflect the laser in odd directions, or something). But it should be impossible for a disc with pits merely in an invalid configuration to damage the drive.
Of course, it would be fine for the drive to not play these discs. Since they're invalid, there's no reason they should work. But they shouldn't be able to damage the drive or the computer. I bet the car cd players don't make the car swerve wildly. And, if they did, I'm blame the car manufacturers more than the disc manufacturers.