Slashdot Mirror
Lawsuit Challenges Copy-protected CDs
acer123 writes "An article states that 'The five major record companies have been hit with a class-action lawsuit charging that new CDs designed to thwart Napster-style piracy are defective and should either be barred from sale or carry warning labels.'"
They should be required to remove that little CD-quality logo from packaging and say that it is a copy-protected CD. That way, people will know the quality may suck, and they can't listen to it in a computer.
Also, wasn't something like this reported a few days ago?
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
I purchased a CD for my mother for Mother's day that was one of the widely-reported copy-protected albums (Celine Dion, BTW). It wouldn't play on my parents' computer, which is the only player they have in the house. Is there any information on whom to contact to become part of the class action? Does one just contact the legal firm suing the record companies and inquire there? Thanks.
---
I'm tired of waltzing for pancakes. - Gwen Mezzrow
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
oh yeah...
5 8&mode=thread&tid=123
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/06/15/02502
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
I suppose that putting pressure on companies to not copy protect CDs is a Very Good thing. If the warning label is actually a warning label (no truth-ish "This CD comes equipped with Super Happy Fun Consumer Protection Technology!!!"), then sles will naturally be lower, and hopefully they'll stop.
The pessimist in me though, says this is only a delay tactic. LEt's hope it's not economically feasible for them to make this a new standard.
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
I know that they are going to say that they do mark the CDs (the really small print on the back) which are copyprotected, but I am getting really annoyed with having to look through a pile of CDs' small prints just to find the one that will work on my only CD player, my laptop.
Here's hoping that at the very least it'll become obvious which CDs are copy protected (maybe a sticker like the "Warning: Mature Content") sticker. Then I will be able to at least be guaranteed a functioning product that does what it claims to do.
~ kjrose
The record companies will be required to distribute rebate coupons for free Sharpies.
Best Windows Freeware
In the best case: they spin out the suit, cost the people in the class action a load of money, then put a dinky little label on the back of the CD case in one corner. Joe Average, who owns a regular CD player, doesn't care or even notice, so the money keeps coming in. Fair Use is still dead on the format.
A better one was the business that they were getting sued for Trade Descriptions for describing the product as an audio CD when it did not follow Audio CD formatting rules - anyone know what happened with that? (That could have some interesting consequences for PC CD games with mangled volume tables)
I'd imagine that since KY is a lubricant, it would make it less painFULL.
Regardless, you're using a double negative.
- The Grammar Nazi
the CD manufacturers are afrade that people will not but the CDs if they know they are fscked with. the only way this works without a large scale backlash is if people dont know whats going on untill its too late(or they cant eject their coaster) when was the last time you checked your CDs for their logo? this method capitolizes on the ingnorance and apathy of the average Us consumer.
I want 2D games back.
i put the copy protected cd in a regular cd player, i have my headphone jack outputing into my computers microphone jack, save as *.wav or whatever, then encode into Mp3.....it works very well but that's besides the point....it's obvious that a person who buys the cd isn't a pirate, they're just burning bridges with the people left who are willing to buy cds, and that's no small number, piracy does cost them a fair amount of money, but a bunch of pissed off customers will cost them even more!
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
This is insulting to a musician like me. To hear what constitutes 'right to protect my property' (nevermind it should only be mine for 14 years, not 70 years after the death of me .. oh wait, forgot I had to sell that copyright to a company in order to get it heard, anyways!) from the mouth of suits is just plain insulting.
.. the biggest battle in the history of copyrights, and really, they are arguing in favour of nothing other than technologically enforcing pre-copyright law, where publishers held the copyrights, ad infinitum (well, 70 years past my death, same thing.)
... although I wont argue that N'Sync and Nickleback or whatever already-well-off artist you love will make more money in the short term because of it!
Interesting note: It was pre-copyright times in which publishers owned the works. Now, with the big 5, you have to sign your copyright to them for them to publish. And the copyright law is now 70 years after the death of me. Its kind of ironic
I really wish people understood how 'copyrights' that labels are arguing they must be able to protect are not copyrights at all, but more akin to the Licensing act of 1722 where publishers held a monopoly in the distribution of cultural works. (Also worth noting that the Licencing Act was also the first law that allowed government, and subsequently printing houses to censor works deemed against the Church or State.)
At any rate, I sure dont need to screw up your CDROM to make a living
"Old man yells at systemd"
CDs designed to thwart Napster-style piracy...
These CD's aren't about stopping Napster/Morpheus/Kazaa/etc, they're about taking away our right to time shift and give the record companies the ability to charge us over and over again for the same music.
"Music creators have the right to protect their property from theft, just like owners of any other property," Sherman said. "Motion picture studios and software and video game publishers have protected their works for years, and no one has even (thought) to claim that doing so was inappropriate, let alone unlawful."
Uhm. Hello? Is this thing on?
DVD movies and PC games don't crash other platforms when you put them in last I checked. DVD movies work on DVD PLAYERS. PC games work on PC's. Music CD's should work on ALL CD PLAYERS.
What do they expect? If I pop'd a music CD in my PC and it locked my box I'd be awfully pissed off too.
I suppose that's why every single real copy protection for software has been abandoned, right? Anyway, the Jargon File defines copy protection as:
I think Sherman's claim is pretty specious.
There are reasons why democracy does not work nearly as well as capitalism.
-- David D. Friedman
and "protected CD's" become more common, will they be giving up the recording media tax? The original assumption behind it was that blank media would be used to copy copyrighted works, but if the works in question are "protected" from copying, then they no longer have a case for the media tax, correct?
I wanna see how this plays out and I hope someone finds an angry grandmother type who doesn't take any guff to be the posterchild for this.
Granted, the record companies have the big bucks if you want a cash settlement, but if you want to stamp this kind of thing out, I'd think you'd be better off putting the Macrovision-level companies out of business instead.
Once a few of those companies have been sued into smoking holes in the ground, their surviving ilk should be hesitant to repeat the same mistake.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
From article:
"...software and video game publishers have protected their works for years, and no one has even (thought) to claim that doing so was inappropriate, let alone unlawful."
This is just wrong on so many levels. One, as anyone in Usenet knows, there are a lot of trolls out there who claim its wrong, not that we listen to them.
But seriously, how many CD copy protections prevent the CD from being used on a majority of players?? I know of one game thats been almost endemic in its lack of functionality, and thats MS' Dungeon Siege. I've got 3 cd drives (32x, DVD-ROM, and CD-RW) and dungeon siege only worked with my CDRW. Thats the worst case instance I can think of for software lack of functionality due to media changes (MS has some lovely copy protection nonsense on the CDs). And there are legitimate complaints all over the place about that problem.
The majority of software is protected via regkeys and other software based methods, *not* by scratching the CD so only some players can read it. Someone want to come with me to smack this guy with an EUL printout or two? It'd be fun...
http://thechubbyferret.net - Ferret pictures and informative links.
Besides being deliberately designed to prevent the copying of music on personal computers, the anti-piracy technology often prevents playback altogether on PCs, and even on some CD players, Mansfield said.
If it prevents copying on personal computers, it always prevents playback on those computers.
A recent trend seems to be having the PC as the center on a digital entertainment system. If the PC can't play the CD, and it's the primary CD player, wouldn't people possibly buy from other labels? I know my parent's only CD player is the one in their computer, and I use the one in my computer quite often in stead of my music only CD player because it is more convenient.
Far more telling is that while copyrights are initially the artists', you cannot get any respectable level of distribution without signing your copyright over to a corperation.
.. they drop millions on one-hit-wonders, and have shrugged off any concept of a 'career' for musicians), and ownership most of the time of said copyright. This is just a prime example of how those in power are destined to spend the rest of their existance attempting to strengthen it rather than focusing on what got them into that position in the first place.
In that respect, the impedus of how to 'protect' those works is all in the hands of companies now, with far too much power, nearsightedness, and complete lack of understanding of technology. The 'artists', the exploited posterchildren of all of this, are really powerless to have a say, and they are being tugged around in a battle that concerns their very nature, living and wellfare, in which they really have no voice.
Labels already have what they need in the form of insane copyright terms (nevermind that none of them are signing multi-album deals anymore like they did 20 years ago
"Old man yells at systemd"
It seems to me that Phillips who owns the patent on CDDA had said that the record companies cannot use the official CDDA logo on these copy protected CD's since they technically break the standard. So a case could be make that no matter what the label (warning or otherwise) that they shouldn't be able to make and try to sell an audio CD that's not actually an audio CD by the Phillips definition of what an audio CD is.
since these are technicle not Phillips (red-book) compliant CDs, retailers technicly should not be able to sell them in the CD section. it is false advertising. so maybe the suit should fall on Best Buy or Wall Mart, to force them to separate the two disks (CDs and Copy Protected Optical Audio Discs) on the sales floor.
I want 2D games back.
If they start seeing that this crap COSTS them, THEN they'll get rid of it.
Until then, you're just suckin wind.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I ask, since some news stories have asserted that the protected version of Celine Dion's "A New Day Has Come" have NOT been released in the U.S.... It would be nice to have a data point on this. Also, did the disk bear any warning... AND (this could be significant) did it, or did it not bear the CD logo--the little gizmo that says "Compact Disc Digital Audio" on it? Supposedly Philips has insisted that since copy-protected disks do not comply with the CD standard they are not allowed to use the CD logo on it.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
In my opinion, copy-protected CDs should be packaged much like cigarettes in Canada. In other words, the government should mandate that not less than 50% of the package should be devoted to a warning similar to "This is not a conventional CD that may not play in a conventional CD player and may cause damage to hi-fi stereo equipment".
Of course, this warning label should be in big, bold, black text on a white background.
At the very least, this would make these CDs a very unattractive proposition.
But of course that is probably not likely to happen.
I think, therefore I am an Atheist.
The founding fathers would not agree at all. They debated long enough about this issue, and eventually the 7+7 years maximum limitation seemed consistent with both sides.
What would they say to an issue like this? Easy. If someone wants to distribute copyrighted materials all over the country to millions of people, without thinking how they will ENFORCE the ALREADY EXISTING copyright laws, these people are idiots and shouldn't be distributing such materials to such a widespread audience.
What the record labels should do is pay for their own internal policing force to go and find copyright law breakers. They can then go to the police, and say "arrest John Peterson because he copied one of our CDs."
Or, they can lobby their LOCAL police forces (not the FBI, not the state troopers) to go and find copyright infrindgers.
The government should NEVER pass laws "requiring" certain hardware, that's for the free market to decide on. The government should merely reinforce the original constitutional limitations, and then let the record labels work at finding those who are infringing on those laws.
Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America, issued a statement calling the lawsuit "frivolous" and defending the labels' recent efforts to deter digital piracy.
:)
It must be a frivolous lawsuit. Has to be. The RIAA has filed so many, it has to know one when it sees one
What is your Slash Rating?
> Music creators have the right to protect their property from theft, just like owners of any other property
.. the company! Really, this is all a joke .. the labels are no better than the monopolistic printing houses of the 1622s, and everybody has bought it hook line and sinker that its all for the arists! ('Wont somebody think about the arists!' .. dont believe them!) As a musician, programmer, and dude who decided that something smelled fishy, I have not a shred of doubt in my mind that 'copyright law' is currently a misnomer - how about 'monopoly law'? It's time for another true copyright law, one where the people making the actual music have a say and where economic leverage doesn't allow companies to nullify the 'creator is the owner' statute by forcing signees to sign their copyright over to the label. Thats how this trouble all got started ....
> The RIAA may have a point about piracy
No, they dont! "just like owners of any other property"???! Thats why Copyright law exists! Because owners of cultural and artistic work is not like owners of other property.
The Great Big Lie has everybody forgetting this. Everybody get it through thy skulls! Copyright, and intellectual property is and never will be physical property! So you dont get to distribute it, or protect it like physical property. End of story.
Incidentally, copyright law 2002 is much more like the Licensing Act of 1722, which the first true copyright law of the 1760s was supposed to fix. The Statue of Anne, the firtst true copyright law meant to protect the creators of the work, not the publishers/distributors was meant to wrestle control of cultural distribution and publication from the companies to the arists. Nowadays, look in those 'big label' contracts. Guess who ends up owning the copyright when you sign (the only real way to get big time distribution these days?)
"Old man yells at systemd"
I'm curious to hear the Slashdot community's response to Sherman's point. We cannot copy movies, even under "fair use" provisions, thanks to Macrovision (VHS) and CSS + Macrovision (DVD). While we can make backups of our software, it is harder to pirate them due to the use of software keys. This is a relatively effective, and unobtrusive protection mechanism.
But when it comes to music, it's no-holds-barred. There is absolutely zero protection on a CD to prevent unauthorized copying. Don't you agree that it is hypocritical to cry foul regarding CD copy-protection, but not the guards built into VHS and DVD works?
Why the double-standard? Why do we just accept that any VHS tape we buy will be uncopyable thanks to Macrovision (barring any specialized hardware to bypass it that's beyond the reach of the lay consumer), but we so vigorously oppose those similar protections on CDs? I can't copy my VHS tapes, even if I own them and want to make a copy to take on the road in my van, or to preserve the slowly-degrading quality inherent in repeated playing of such media. But we don't cry about it - we just accept it. Why?
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Never mind the fact that the software industry has pretty much given up on copy protection in favor of hardware keys and activation code methods. No it was never unlawful, just a PITA for users who paid good money for software.
The music industry however is trying to forget the Home Recording Act of 1992, where they promised not to copy-protect CDs in exchange for a "royalty" on blank CD media. As far as I know, they are still get the royalties.
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
... A Black, Plastic Disc With Grooves On It
Music bosses have unveiled a revolutionary new recording format that they hope will help win the war on illegal file sharing which is thought to be costing the industry millions of dollars in lost revenue.
Nicknamed the 'Record', the new format takes the form of a black, vinyl disc measuring 12 inches in diameter, which must be played on a specially designed 'turntable'.
(Rumours at large say that a Japanese company, named the very mysterious name 'Sony', has been secretly developing a 12 inch wide, needle-based, firewire drive remain unconfirmed, turntable. It would appear that the music industry may, at last, have found the pirate-proof format it has long been searching for.)
my dvd discs won't fit in a:
From the article: "Music creators have the right to protect their property from theft, just like owners of any other property," Sherman said.
Where do I start?
a) It's not the music creators who have put "copy protection" on, it's the music publishers
b) Whether it's the creator or the publisher, the creation is not "property". If it were there would be no patent or copyright law
c) Illegal copying isn't theft, it's illegal copying
d) What they're doing isn't like any other property, and asserting the opposite doesn't change the facts
If the context for this sentence related to the theft of a truck full of CD's then it would be correct. But I somehow don't think that's what he means.
Dunstan
The last scintilla of doubt just rode out of town
This troll was copied and pasted from kiro5hin:
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/3/8
It was used on Slashdot before:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3424
I think you forgot about region encoding ;)
What is your Slash Rating?
What happened to Hillary Rosen? Isn't the the head of the RIAA?
"Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America, issued a statement calling the lawsuit "frivolous" ..."
Suing a toy company for not putting labels that a teddy bear is not edible is "Frivilous"
Suing McDonalds for not warning you that coffee is hot is "Frivilous"
Suing somebody because you broke your leg while attempting to break into their home is "Frivilous"
I hardly see suing somebody because they sell a product with no warning that it is defective ( and yes, they are defective by definition of the CD format ) and that it won't work in your PC, MAC, DVD etc. In fact, these things have been know to kill Macs ( Celine Dion anyone? )
So no, I don't see this as being any more frivilous than the class action lawsuit againsts Firestone for their tires being defective.
... Philips take on anti piracy and copyright protection since they insists that the Compact Disk Digital Audio label shouldn't be used on copy protected CD's?
Look a monkey!
I learned after the fact that it was a copy-protected CD. To be honest, I wasn't really following the whole copy-protection brouhaha very closely. When my mom called and told me the CD wouldn't play, I diagnosed it from the point of a faulty player software or CD-ROM drive rather than a copy-protected CD. It only struck me a few days later that it might be the CD's fault.
---
I'm tired of waltzing for pancakes. -- Gwen Mezzrow
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
Just replace "CD" with "Crunchy Frog" and --
Inspector: Nevertheless, I advise you in future to replace the words 'Compact Disks' with the legend, 'Technically Flawed Compact Disks that could impinge on consumers' rights to copy music for their own use' if you wish to avoid prosecution!
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
Now, IF they had made a new name for their not-quite a CD, instead of trying to lie to customers and call it a CD, that wouldn't have been a problem - it would have been a case where the buyer has to decide if having the music is worth having it in a less useful format that might not even work at all on his machine.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
(Los Angeles)
The RIAA has issued a statement today that many consumers of Music Products are engaging in copyright infringing acts by singing along with or tapping ones foot in time with copyrighted music. The RIAA's spokesman, Bob Dobbs, has announced that the RIAA and other industry groups are working with congressional members to draft legislation banning these activities. Proposed penalties would be doubled if the violators of these new statutes are found to be engaging in illegal performances while listening to music downloaded from the Internet.
In related news, Sen. Hollings (D - Disney) has announced sponsership of a bill titled "The bladder relief act of 2002". This bill bans unauthorized lavatory breaks during commercial breaks.
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
I have 5 cd drives (24x, DVD, 48x, 32x, CD-RW), and both the original (I _bought_ a Microsoft product. The shame!) and the copy work in all drives. I didn't even find the slightest bit of protection. But, perhaps, that's because it's the german version. BTW, here in Germany, a CD that doesn't play in a CD-ROM drive is considered broken; rightfully, because it doesn't follow the standard and has no right to call itself CD. You can simply take it back to your dealer (after ripping it :-).
> in particular his battles with Warner, EMI etc
.. there are plenty of the fish in the sea like me, and we can all swim in it together. Except its more in the interest of publishers and distributors of today to cut me loose at the first sign of wishing to enter a 'battle' and pick up another me, instead of me coving my neighbourhood, and the other me covering another neighbourhood, etc, etc. Thats like me complaining that all musicians have to lift a 200 pound cinder-block to attain a certain level of distribution, and you saying former-wieghtlifter-turned-musician X didn't seem to have a problem with it.
I think the point, dear boy, is that I shouldn't have to battle for it, and that there were times when artists didn't (pre-big-label, for instance!). And he was Frank Zappa. I'm no Frank Zappa
This has been flogged to death, this 'choice' issue. When you have an example of somebody that made a choice, and hundreds of non-choicers, you have to start looking at the system instead of just working around it. I am not the brilliant musician who can risk spending his life fighting legal battles. It's hard becoming a musician in the first place. This isn't just for me, I'm altruistic in the sense that I wish it was simpler and more fair for all artists. Kinda leaves us more time to work on our art instead of having to play davids to goliaths.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Robert Fripp, of King Crimson fame, has started a record label, Discipline Global that lets artists keep their copyrights. Check out this pagefor some general philosophy of their business. Unfortunately it doesn't say there explicitly that they do this, but it does say it on the back of one my Crimson CDs.
However the page discusses 'ethical' businesses and makes some interesting points.
Oh yes, if you're not familiar with King Crimson, go out and buy some right now!
Different. Video game companies don't allow consumers to play *CDR BACKUPS*. An original PlayStation CD can still be played in all PlayStations.
The record companies don't allow consumers to play *THE ORIGINAL CD* on some players.
with a CD (or cassette, or 8 track, etc...) there are tracks, each of these tracks can be listened to individually apart from the rest of the album. fair use allows someone to pick and choose which track they want to listen too, and allows the copying to another medium to compile your own collection.
you dont rip apart movies or games to get the best songs/scenes out of them (unless they are porn)
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
I don't have a non-US region disc need, so it isn't like it affects me. However, it is still a crippling feat^h^h^h^hbug.
I guess I understand why they put in region encoding (create an artificial market so they can inflate the prices), but I think that just underscores the greed of MPAA-affiliated companies.
What is your Slash Rating?
I wanna see how this plays out and I hope someone finds an angry grandmother type who doesn't take any guff to be the posterchild for this.
Oh PLEASE let it be that "Where's the beef?" lady!!!
GMD
watch this
>with those street vendors, there was still a limit on how many they sold, overall quality of the product
.. in fact, I can safely say I've never seen one single 'pirate seller' in my entire concert going life, although I know bootleggers exist to some degree (tho they seem to concetrate on live performances, most of which never get turned into commercial releases anyhow, so theres only a tiny bit of value dillution).
.. lol, of how much other labels spend on this stuff). Which is why I have no sympathy for labels. Artists that need sympathy, sure, labels, no. The game is far to big and expensive than it needs to be, and thats the only reason the RIAA has to be so piracy-nazi about it. History is full of times where the true power shifted to the producers .. no one company/publishing house has a monopoly, but they've successfully made the game too expensive for anybody else to play.
... *poof*
How? No limit, they can just burn more.
No quality issue, because they just keep their 'gold' copy. Doesn't even cost that much to ship your CDs all over the US to dozens of street corners.
The joke is, this has never been a threat to the big-label artists (the small label artists, sure, but do you think those are the ones getting copy protected CDs or high priced lawyers to deal with it?)
Incidentally, most of those street vendors could afford to pay the artist (directly) the royalties from the CDs and still sell the CD for less than the Big 5 do. So you're justifying RIAA protecting what it owns because it has a monopoly upon which can demand higher prices (mostly because there's the ever-accelerating race for higher production value and advertising budgets needed because
Smaller labels are starting to make inroads with online sales and distribution, which is encouraging, but there is still a long way to go. Artists need the ability to protect their works for awhile with tolerable levels of piracy (some limited time span in their life, maybe 20 years), but thats all, folks. Sure, during that time frame the work should be treated somewhat like a physical commodity, but at some point, it should go
"Old man yells at systemd"
This case gets perpetuated over and over as a "frivilous" lawsuit, when in fact it was not frivilous at all. People hear the headline "millions for spilled hot coffee" and don't look further than that. According to the Wall Street journal, McDonald's callousness was the issue and even jurors who thought the case was just a tempest in a coffee pot were overwhelmed by the evidence against the Corporation. Here's a great link telling the facts in the hot coffee case...
Milberg, Weiss, Bershad, Hynes & Lerach versus the record labels. Guess, Milberg, et al ran out of high-tech companies to sue. Tough call - any way they can both lose?
[Insert pithy quote here]
If I rent a car, the car comes with locks and possibly a security system that deters theft and vandalism. This system does not inhibit the functionality of the car. The car doesn't go any slower, the car doesn't malfunction on certain highways.
This CD protection changes the CD in a way that makes it perform differently than the specification intends and differently than consumers would expect. It seems, then, that these CDs should not be labeled as CDs, but as a derivative, the way CDR, CDRW, and all those other similar formats are labeled. Call it CDP (CD Protected) or whatever, as long as its labeled. Then, I know when I see this symbol that I require a player that supports this format, the same way I know not to expect my eleven year old CD player (Well, I don't use it much, ok?!) to recognize a CDRW.
The old adage came to mind, today, when reading through all the Slashdot comments about how the words this man is using are lies, damned lies and misinformation.
"Repeat something enough times and it becomes true."
The RIAA is quite obviously using this tactic. If they repeat how something is "theft" and "copyright infringment", then more and more people (both Joe Public and Mr. Congresman) will think of this not as "something that I don't know very much about" but as "truth". After all, thinks the uneducated public, these smart people who are in charge of this industry is calling it theft then, well, it must be so! (I'm not implying that the public is stupid, just ignorant; there is a difference.)
Nevermind this is complete and utter bunk, but repetition of a lie to make it truth is the Orwellian reality.
I just hope everyone who sees lies where they are don't just come here and preach to the choir.
This now concludes our broadcast day.
They follow the blue book enhanced CD standard. At least a corruption of it. It might not even be something philips can do anything about.
I would intuitively think that this is a more dangerous tactic for the record companies, as it pretty clearly shows for thought and planning in their bid to actually disable peoples computers causing them a not insignificant expense in both time and money. The crippling of the computers wasn't a side effect of the 'copy protection' (such as it is) it was actually the plan. I personally can't see a difference between that and any other malicious act which damages someones computer.
But I do think going after the stores would be the way to go, with their thinner margins, it would hurt them a lot more. And they, in turn, would use their market muscle for ends that are more inline with their customers wishes. The last thing Best Buy, Sam Goodie, or any chain wants to do is end up in a court battling a former customer.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
Hey, if they keep copy-protecting artists like Celine Dion and Phil Collins, that's fine by me. Just don't shut down FastTrack.
In the U.S: there IS a built-in royalty payment, but only in the blank media that are designated "music" or "audio" CD-Rs and CD-RWs.
These the kind of media that must be used in "home audio CD recorders." Technologically, the media are the same as ordinary CD-R's, but they contain an encoding that the recorder looks for. The recorder contains technology that enforces recording only to "music CD-R" media, and "serial copy control" protection (it will copy a commercial CD, but will NOT make a digital copy of a copy made in a home audio recorders.)
Interestingly enough, the first copy of "The Fast and the Furious" that I bought was encoded in such a way that it would NOT copy in my CD recorder. It gave a false SCCS error.
I believe that making personal copies, backups, RIPping for download into MP3 players, etc. is fair use.
However, the ability to make copies on a home audio CD recorder is more than just fair use. Under the 1992 AHRA act. We PAY for every copy that we make, in exchange for the RIGHT to make those copies.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
if the consumer owns the packaging/media, why can't we control what kind of packaging/media we get? and uh, are you so sure that royalty goes to the songwriter? even if that happens 90% of the time, what does tha artist get? i don't know if you're aware but songs don't sell, music and shiny things sell. so when the pop icon who buys songs from 11 year olds sells a gazillion records, the 11 year old gets the royalty? fat chance. most likely they'll claim she's underage in order to keep it for themselves. the recording industry is not just an industry. it's a mafia of wealthy assholes who think they can cheat us out of not only our music but our way of life (that being our cyber life). i swear to the holy being that brings pain to the world, if any group tries to attack my liberty to use my computer, i will answer back 100 fold in a way no walking money stick could ever imagine. oops i got all doomy on ya. just forget that part about seeking revenge against evil.
Once that LNUX stock dips low enough, I'm sure he will be...
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
It's important to remember that this case has been taken ob by 'class action specialists' at a large well known law firm. Aturneys in class action suits usually take them on to line their own pockets, rather than for the greater good, so I fully expect they will be looking for a financial settlement, rather than amy more meaningful remedy. We're not talking about EFF or ACLU lawyers here. This case is esentially being brought by high class ambulence chasers. I wouldn't be suprised if we are extremely dissatisfied with the resolution to this case, regardless of who wins.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
This seems to be their most effective method at the moment.
Y2K Compliant since the late 1890s
What really needs to happen is that the court needs to rule that any "technology" which could infringe upon fair use, restrict it, or make it inordinantly difficult to excercise fair-use rights, should be illegal. Fair use rights should be gauranteed.
Failing that, however, here's the only acceptable outcome for this case:
1. Anyone who bought these defective CD's should get their money back, damages in time lost, and damages in terms of equipment damage (i.e., these CD's lock up some CD-drive).
2. A warning must be placed on the "CD" case, saying exactly what limitations are imposed, what quality problems exist, and what hardware incompatabilities exist.
3. Anyone who buys one of these defective CD's should be able to return it for a refund.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
C opy
R estricted
A nd
P rotected
discs
not CPOA discs.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Several of the copy protection companies have acted in a way that harms legal use of the CDs.
At least one of these companies has produced a product that can lock up a Mac while being used legally. It is apparently a PITA to get the CD out, and I doubt that my parents could do it. That IS malicious. There are going to be people screwing up their computers with these things for years.
Frankly, I think as a consumer you have a reasonable right to assume that a commercially purchased CD isn't going to break your computer. If someone put out a Cd that contained a virus, you'd expect them to be responsible for the damages. I see no difference between this kind of "copy protection" and a virus.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.