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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."
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.
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
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
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.
"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.
... 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?