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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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
"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!
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.
Indeed, if you take a look around planetdungeonsiege.com's forums, you'll see a wealth of people have had installation problems in the past. I'm at work and can't go browsing game sites, or I'd link a few threads.
This is the US version I'm referring to, so I believe there is probably a difference. Copying was near impossible for a while, until someone released a cracked ds.exe file. Even then it was hard to find (not that I was looking, it was a friend at work, honest).
3 of us purchased the game, one person's worked fine in his computer, the other two of us actually exchanged the game because it did not work on a total of 6 cdrom drives between us. After the exchange, there were still problems, but after a long fight I got it installed. On my computer at work it installed fine. It just depends on the CD drive, but there are an awful lot of non-compatible drives out there for this game. Its disturbing that my newish Sony DVD-ROM wouldnt install this, and my 6 year old Ricoh CDRW would. Of course, since the CDRW is a 6x read, it took an hour for a full install.
As it is, I'm afraid to try and install it again...dont feel like dealing with the PitA that it is, despite it being a fun game. Fortunately, I got it for $20 at Best Buy, when it was still retailing for $50 on average, so I'm not worried about letting it gather dust.
http://thechubbyferret.net - Ferret pictures and informative links.
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.