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Another Class Action Over Crippled Music Disks

Posted by michael on from the oh-the-humanity dept.

pulaski writes "Here's a link to an interesting Baltimore Sun story. It's about the case of two Californians trying to take some major record companies to task for selling copy protected CDs. It's got the classic Cary Sherman whine but the plaintiffs apparently have some legal muscle." A similar suit was settled with the defendants agreeing to make changes in their practices.

6 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. Hole in the plaintiffs case by The+Infamous+Grimace · · Score: 2, Informative

    "...If you use an Apple computer, you can't even get the disc out of the tray. It requires the time and cost of taking the computer into a repair shop and having it removed that way..."

    Or you could just hold the mouse button down whilst rebooting...

    Apple really needs to provide an obvious external means of ejecting CDs.

    (tig)

    --
    Ignorance and prejudice and fear
    Walk hand in hand
    1. Re:Hole in the plaintiffs case by SkipNewarkDE · · Score: 3, Informative

      Actually, these copy protected CD's can sometimes so confuse the Mac, that even holding in the button at reboot won't cause the thing to eject. I had this happen a couple of weeks ago. I had to reboot, drop the machine into Open Firmware, and ask for an eject at the command line. Even this took some time to accomplish, as OF has to wait for the CD drive to quit thrashing on the disk, long enough to get an eject request in.

  2. Well... by anonicon · · Score: 3, Informative

    I for one am hoping this case either ends in a positive settlement for the lawfirms involved, akin to the way Charley Pride's label caved in over his CD when a California woman sued them for deceptive trade practices and other goodies.

    I run FatChucks.com and get a ton of e-mail over the Corrupt CDs issue every week. It would be nice if this case makes my site obsolete because big, fat warnings would have to appear on the CDs themselves (rather than Joe Public having to know about my site).

    Last, the warnings you see on corrupt CDs are so far *not adequate.* They need to warn the potential buyer of the following:
    1. Will not play on your computer.
    2. Will not play on your DVD player, Discman, CD-Duplicator (like the kind put out by Sony, Harmon-Kardon, Pioneer, etc), high-end stereo CD player, car CD player, game console (PS, PS2, XBox, etc) or MP3-CD player.
    3. Using this CD in any of the devices above may damage that equipment.

    To see this in action, check out this image for the Rosa CD in Europe:
    The Image
    In Spanish, it translates to this:
    "This disc is equipped with a device to prevent digital copying, which could impede the playback of the recording in personal computers and/or harm such devices, in videogame consoles, in automobile CD and DVD players and multi-changers, as well as other CD-ROM and DVD-ROM players."

    The record labels probably have a legal right to corrupt their CDs, but they need to *fully* warn consumers about what they are buying.

    Peace,
    Chuck

  3. Re:Hole... by Sc00ter · · Score: 3, Informative
    Newer Macs no longer have that hole for paperclips. But the poster is right, if you hold down either the mouse buttor or some key on the keyboard it will pop the CD out before booting.

    --
    Free Mac Mini
  4. Another proposed change in terminology by The+Monster · · Score: 3, Informative

    Better yet, the manufacturers should be permanently enjoined from using the term "Compact Disc", the familiar logo form of those words, or the abbreviation "CD" anywhere on the disc or packaging, because they deliberately violate the standards specified by the owner of those Distinctive Marks ... Phillips, the only big company in a position to use IP law to protect dilution of its work to fight this crap. I don't believe they have tried to do that just yet, but the company has at least made public statements that sound promising.

    --

    [100% ISO 646 Compliant]
    SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.

  5. Re:Silly Macintosh... by SkipNewarkDE · · Score: 2, Informative

    It doesn't always have to be taken back to get the disk out of the tray. On restart, though, the crippled disks will often so confuse the CD drives, that they continually thrash on the disk. Apparently they continually bang either disk inserted or drive busy messages back to the OS, because in OS X, it will get hung up on a gray screen, and go no further in the boot process. It doesn't even get to the point where a mouse button eject works. Sometimes, if you hold down X during a restart, you can bypass the problem, and get it into OS X. The other option is to drop the machine into open firmware before it tries booting, and eject the disk from there. Alas, there are situations where even this won't work, and the data integrity and convenience of CD eject under software control becomes a liability, and the machine has to be opened up to get the CD out. I've got one of the new iMacs, and the CD eject hole is nowhere to be found.