Slashdot Mirror
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."
How could a CD screw up the player? All the CDROM does is read bits off of a CD. The data should not be able to alter the program (in this case firmware) at all. The only way i could see something happening is if the firmware was poorly writtian and the CD causes stack overflows.
Only dead fish swim with the stream...
I was also reading on spymac.com that you can get around this with a nikko pen, but what I really want to say is what a precedent this sets for corporations:
We will intentionally cause damage to your property because you did not try to play this in an authorised CD player
I think all those affected now (and more probably in the future with CDs other than Celine) should send a nice happy bill to the corporations that produce these CDs...
Not being a legal person, how can a disclaimer cover something designed to intentionally cripple hardware? Sure you can say in a disclaimer that "it *may* do blah blah blah" but that's a whole lot different to "If you have X this CD is designed to damage this hardware"
... And I also doubt that the disclaimer is in a very prominent position either...
As someone who buys CDs and owns an iBook, I'm not looking forward to the day I pop in a decent CD I've just bought (sorry, Celine fans) I don't want to discover that I can't get the damn thing out of my lappy easily...
-- Dan >:(
Apple Knowledge Base article #106882 confirms the problem with "certain copy-protected audio discs, which resemble Compact Discs (CD) but technically are not," and says Apple will not pay for repairs even if you have a service contract.
k ba se.woa/116/wa/query?searchMode=Expert&type=id&val= KC.106882
http://kbase.info.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/
The note suggests a number of things you can "try" or "attempt" which "may" solve the problem.
The telling part is the last paragraph:
"If a disc with copyrighted protection technology remains inside the drive after following the procedures above, or if the computer does not start up normally, it is recommended that you contact an Apple Authorized Service Provider (AASP) or Apple Technical Support. CD audio discs that incorporate copyright protection technologies do not adhere to published Compact Disc standards. 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. Because the Apple product is functioning correctly according to its design specifications, any fee assessed by an Apple Authorized Service Provider or Apple for repair service will not be Apple's responsibility."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
If it isn't a "CD" does this violate the patent on Compact Disks, as it is same technology, just with a few 0s and 1s?
GL
More Fast and Furious doesn't have the logo on the outside packaging, but does use the CD Audio Logo on the CD itself. I don't know about others, but this one does.
You know, this may be the point at which intellictual property and trademark laws might come to be used (very creatively, of course) in our favor.
What do you call these discs that appear to be compact discs, but to not conform to the standards? Do the retailers know these discs are not technically CD's? Can they (record companies and retailers) even legally call them compact discs if they do not conform to the standard?
Now, I don't know who has the trademark and intellectual property rights to the cd audio standard, but I'm thinking they wouldn't even have to take legal action. There are several laws designed to protect consumers, and I believe at least some of these apply to imitations or faximilies. I would think that if a pseudo-CD causes significant problems, certain consumer protections laws could possibly be invoked, as the imitation format does not reasonably function like the origional format.
If the "copy protected" formats mearly cause people to have to restart their computer and perform a certain procedure to get the disc out, it may or may not be enough for legal action. However, if it causes more serious problems such as firmware damage, loss of data, etc, then I would bet it would definatly be lawsuit material.
Either way, I would hope the intellictual property holders would begin legal action against those members of the music industry that use this format. Certainly the I.T. holders could sue for dilution of trademark, making products that look enough like their format to confuse consumers, etc.
I'm not a lawyer, I'm just hope someone takes intellictual property laws and crams it right back down the throats of the RIAA.
--
Intelligence is definitely a recessive trait.
Are we to understand that post-it notes and sharpie pens are now contraband circumvention devices? 3M is not going to like this, not one bit.
You know, that just might be the ticket. Is there a way to tell a District Attourney that he should bring suit against somebody for illegal activity? Tip off the DA that 3M is marketting items which may be used as circumvention devices.
3M will bring in their lawerly guns blazing, and will throw lots of corporate resources at smacking on DMCA; we get our precident by making big business do our fighting for us.
Can something like this work this way?
(As a manufacturer of floppy disks, e.g., media which would be forced to have circumvention protection systems built in if CDTBPA (Is that the right 'nym?), etc, are passed, I'm sure that 3M is interested in getting rid of these laws...)
Ditto for me and a copy of "Stiff Upper Lip" by ACDC. Can't see the music in Explorer, but CDEX rips it just fine.
There's a huge difference between "not playable in" and "will destroy if played in". If their technology is specifically designed to do this or they release it knowing it will have this effect, then they are in a heap of trouble. Such intentional action is under the jurisdiction of the FBI computer crimes division as felony computer tresspass (the same as any "hacker" breaking into systems.) Every single person with so much as one molecule of their finger in this pie deserves prison time.
In the USA we have a legal right to make a backup copy. We just don't have a legal *way* to do it.
As the previous poster noted: this is data that's causing it to die. Not something that's out of the limits of the device's normal ranges (200w for a poor leetle soundcard) but something that's well within the 1 or 0 range of binary data. I agree: software should never crash, especially when it's hardware.
In general, hardware should be designed defensively. All-too-often, hardware will encounter problems provided by our imperfect world that might cause them to crash or fail. An example: I've been working on a robot recently with a microcontroller on it. The microcontroller has a power input with a very primitive reverse-voltage protection circuit on it (a diode and a poorly-placed capicitor). If you connected the voltage wrong, the capicitor blew and the device was rendered useless until you removed/replaced the capicitor. This is bad design. True, it's going out of the limits of the device's inputs, but not unreasonably so. (200w for an input that normally takes orders of magnitudes less vs. reverse polarity)
A cdrom that fail to physically function on bad data is also poor design. That's like old computers that, if certain bits were twiddled incorrectly they would physically catch fire and burn. People make mistakes (in this case, intentionally), and you as a designer should trap for them as best as possible.
one last example: this is a buffer-overrun root exploit. well, not really, but the same principle is applied: inputting data that's unexpected and causing malicious actions to occur. Buffer-overruns are one of the most prolific types of bugs that cause problems in software and people try and remove them for a reason. With that in mind, one would hope your CD-ROM would never, ever crash.
I'll say it again: it's a fucking Pioneer drive. Apple didn't design it. They didn't build it. And they didn't decide whether to put an "eject" button on it.
When Apple picked this drive out of hundreds to put in their systems, they assumed responsibility for any obvious designed-in defects. And the lack of a manual eject is definitely a design defect...
I believe this line of thinking might actually be applicable if you were to write a peice of software that would delete or corrupt data on hardware that it was not explicitly designed for. If you said "This software will not work on any computer except INSERTBRAND computer," then if Sony is not liable for what this cd does why should you be responsible for what your software does when you expressly said it won't work on anything but what you have approved?
You didn't say "Use of this software on unapproved hardware will eat your data," but Sony didn't put in their disclaimer that you may have to send your computer in for service after trying to use their disc. It seems like it would be like Microsoft selling copies of Windows to OEMs that looks at the BIOS to determine who the manufacturer of the computer is and if it's not the one hard coded into that particular distribution then it flashes over said BIOS. Thus the computer is basically rendered dead, and evil pirating is prevented!
Then when you sue Microsoft for killing your new motherboard, they will say "Well why were you trying to install 'Windows XP for Dell' on your home built machine?" Hmmm, a shocking concept.