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Another Class Action Over Crippled Music Disks
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.
The RIAA President quoted in the article implies that what they're doing to copy protect disks is some kind of encryption. My understanding is that this is not the case. They're basically messing with the directory structure of the disk in such a way that computers will misunderstand what's going on and will, at minimum, be unable to play or read the music. Isn't he being somewhat misleading by calling this encryption when in fact its an issue of deliberately failing to follow the CD standard? Is this distinction going to play a significant role in the class action?
Because the consumer pays for it. Fair use law says that once you buy it, it's yours for your personal use any way you want. I can buy the finest china platters and use them for skeet shooting. I can buy a porsche convertible and use it as a flowerpot. I can buy a newspaper and use it to train my dog, or read it on the subway, or read it in the john or at the breakfast table. It's unlawful for the copyright owner to determine how I use the product I buy from them. What I am buying is, in effect, a personal license to use the product (music). If I wish to wire it into the shower so it plays loudly while my mate sings, that's fair use.
Designing the product so that it destroys or disables other products is unlawful. Eventually, rich enough lawyers will get on the right side of this issue and put a stop to RIAA/MPAA's illegal behavior. This entire post is an opinion only, as IANAL.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
I crashed a Win2k server by inserting a scratched CD. It just froze. No blue screen, no error message, it died.
Heh, I've had that happen with no CD at all. It's almost magic.
This is not intended as a troll but, seriously, CD drives and OSs shouldn't freeze up just because there is a faulty CD in the drive. This is just one more example of crappy software/hardware design. Behaviour like this gives me a strong impulse to take the computer back to the shop.
On the other hand, spitting a flawed disc out and putting up a popup with "Defective Compact Disk" would be more likely to encourage the user to return the CD and demand a refund.
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
And the big offenders will be the pirates who don't care that DMCA or whatever has made the reverse engineering illegal. It's not like they are paying attention to the law anyway.
Might as well save everyone a lot of time and effort and just piss right into a fan.
I prefer the term "anti-play" technology. That's what the technology does; it prevents you from playnig the music.
2)On at least my toshiba laptop with PCMCIA slot loaded CD tray aren't playable in windows by any practical method.
Ifthis keaps up Apple has been heavly rumoured to take the RIAA to court over phiscal damages, infringements on NDA information to get the firmware to play the embeded CD in sound mode
Not being a lawyer I personally don't see any ethical ground they have to stand on, something to be noted though is that Sony Corps is threatening to send down a writ of mandata to sony music over the horrible PR this has caused wich in essence would most likely read to stop or they'll revoke some independance
Frivalas or not the perpetual suit counter suits are just not good for Public Relations on anyones part
Who honestly in our society wants to go down in the anals of history as being a legal ass and winy
I thought as much very few people
It seems to me that the ultimate way to stop this is for the big three to form a coalition requesting or mandating a cease fire on the RIAA's part
Print new music on the new cd thick DVD's that are in readbook format on one layer of low enough quality that playing them legaly on a DVD players makes it more interesting to own than to steal making it win win. Music pirates gain the ability to have all the shity sounding music the desire the RIAA has a sense of controll and don't have to "go their" with the computer conglomerates. They'd have: No support as firmware level hacks are almost always stoped in courts (thus far as an outside sentlement)woudn't be in the bad position to potentially be purchased by MS Corporations and turned into MSNB's hoe
Btw anyone that works in the Arts and Research division of Sony Music Enterprises care to comment on the validity of Sony Corporporations threat to tell them to stop the bad PR?