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Fighting Music Piracy with Glue
Scott Granneman writes: "The New York Times (Free Blah-di-blah) is reporting that Epic Records, in an effort to prevent reviewers from creating mp3s or even playing the preview CD in anything they don't control, is not disseminating the new Pearl Jam and Tori Amos CDs inside Sony Walkman players that are glued shut. Oh yeah ... the headphones are glued to the players too, to prevent any authorized output. A low-tech answer to a high-tech issue."
"I brought this discman home with me, and I found a way you could go in the back of the CD and, like, pop it open. So I got the actual disc out."
So, they can't even use glue properly, its not wonder everything else has failed.
Get the EULA T-shirt
Let me edit this to make it actually make some sense :
... the headphones are glued to the players too, to prevent any unauthorized output. A low-tech answer to a high-tech issue."
"The New York Times (Free Blah-di-blah) is reporting that Epic Records, in an effort to prevent reviewers from creating mp3s or even playing the preview CD in anything they don't control, is now disseminating the new Pearl Jam and Tori Amos CDs inside Sony Walkman players that are glued shut. Oh yeah
This is a sig. It is like every other sig in the world, except that it is mine, and it is different.
They went to all this trouble to remove the analog loophole, going so far as to permanently attach the headphones...
But what's to prevent somebody from just cutting off the headphones and splicing another cable onto the end? It's trivial work for anyone with even the slightest bit of electrical ability.
according to my girlfriend, a RABID Tori Amos fan, this is nothing new. She's apparently always done this.
Not that it matters, though, as I've had 7 tracks from Scarlet's Walk for well over two months now...
People are really gonna buy a new Walkman every time they buy a CD. Great idea guys !
Before long, some hacker will write a program to....
oh crap.
Just clip the headphones' cables and input it to your soundcard...(yeah, i know the quality won't be perfect, but it will be ok)
this is really stupid... trying to "prevent"...
since they know they are losers from first hand, why do they just keep giving us these (stupid) challenges?
(what if we dissassemble the player and get the goddamn cd out of there, anyway)
i'm counting minutes until these songs appear on p2p
Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
Slashot editors are not checking submissions to make sure they don't make sense.
this had me scared for a moment before i read and realize this is being done to albums that are being reviewed, not purchased by consumers. and what's to stop a critic from throwing the cd player on the floor in a violent manner to miraculously break it and reveal the precious intellectual property within?
Holiday in Cambodia!
why is this remarkable? record companies have been doing this for years?
if i recall correctly, emi distributed walkmans with copies of Radiohead's OK Computer album glued into them, back in 1997. and i belive this was by no means the first time the idea had been used.
the cost of several hundred (or even thousand) cheap cd walkmans is hardly going to eat into a multinational record companies bottom line.
If applied with some care, the walkman could just as easily be broken off the disc. "oops, it fell ten stories down when the reviewer was listening to it while leaning out is office window having a smoke". Or am I missing something here?? Otherwise, just clip the headphone wire.. hook them up to plain old audio plugs, or a mini jack and off you go into a decent sound card.
I'd say the digital part has to be done differently by providing a player with the album stored in some sort of encrypted ROM chip, but even then.. sound is still sound and must be made audible at some point to be appreciated. That's where you can tap it, and make a plain MP3 out of it.
Sony are just making themselve impopular with this kind of practice. When will the big companies learn that the genie is out, it's unstoppable, and their business models just need adjustment???
Learn from the mistakes of others. There isn't enough time to make them all yourself.
the headphones are glued to the players too, to prevent any authorized output
Why not cut the headphone lead and solder a suitable connector onto the Walkman end?
Every bloody emperor has his hand up history's skirt [Peter Hammill/VdGG]
Ummmmm. I guess they must be assuming journalists are not engineers, as otherwise they could just cut the headphone wires and them connect them to their favourite input.
"...is not disseminating..."
I think you mean "...is now disseminating...". Wouldn't be very big news if the industry was failing to conform to a practice that they had never done before... like charging reasonable prices or paying the artist fairly.
In other news, several major book publishers are distributing reviewer copies of their books with the pages glued together. And paying Oprah to rave about it, so there's no fear that it won't do well.
Oh is if they are NOT disseminating music in walkmen that are glued shut, then nothing to worry about, right?
Use those greeting cards that play a tune when you open them.
Pay Tori to personally visit each reviewer with a guitar and play her songs.
Distribute the songs in Ogg Vorbis format. (rimshot)
What's your damage, Heather?
is that the reviewers will be forced to sniff that glue while writing their pieces. Possibly the only way to get a positive comment out of them ;-)
Already April 1st ?!?
;-)
Shit. Missed Christmas...
Cheers, Ulli
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
I'm gonna start reviewing CD's. Can't make a living with my reviews, but sure can use the extra income from the unglued diskmans I sell.
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
Their walkmans are scrap now. No wonder they need some money, eheh hu hoof.eef
THis is my signature bah: That's ridiculous, someone registered 'fullstar' so I had to choose 'fullstarplus'!!!
...would just have to be glued to your ears to prevent someone else from listening to it.
Wenn ist das Nunstueck git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
Reviewers don't even buy the cd, they usually get them from the record companies. The problem is rouge reviewers putting the music on the internet before the cd is released! This way, the reviewers can listen to the music and write their reviews as they otherwise would, but there's less of a chance that they'll put it on kaaza or whatever before the CD is available to the public.
Not having read the linked article, in pure /. tradition ...
Make the players pretty colors, with about 400 slightly different models to compare and collect. Make them super cheap and flimsy; it's not like your going use one of them anywhere near as much as a general purpose player.
And best of all, just use a crippled format or something. Tech support problems solved! "Um, sir, you're not allowed to open it up and put the CD in your computer ...
It seems like a waste of money to have to buy an ENTIRE PLAYER just to listen to a CD
Did you skip your reading lessons at school? This is for journalists only! Journalists don't buy anything, they receive CDs and in this case a walkman for free so that they can write reviews. Like for all reviews, be it music or software, you are not suppose to use the item in question for anything else than testing.
I think it is a neat idea to avoid journalists abusing their privileges.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
I know they are only releasing a limited supply of these to journalists, but seams to me this is very environmentally unfriendly.
Don't think a Sting preview will be released this way.
Are there plans to reuse or recycle the returned CD walkmans?
If you get modded down for a first post... What do you get for a last post?
Well I'm not an electronics engineer, but how hrd would it be to cut the headphone cord down the middle and hook up those two (left and right I assume) cables manually to a microphone, line it, noral stereo jack... well just about anything usefull to copy this cd?
Ok, so your headphones are [partly] useless but you get to copy the cd right?
Can someone in the know tell me if this doable? IS there a big loss? Is it just plain dumb?
how does one change his
Presumably other artists' CDs are put through the reviewers' own systems, set up the way they like them. Just say a fair comparison is impossible without putting these new CDs through that same system.
Of course, if you're feeling vindictive, you could always slate them instead...
Cheers,
Ian
I was walking along minding my business, when out of an orange colored sky
Flash, bam, alakazam, wonderful you came by, I was humming a tune,
drinking in sunshine, when out of that orange colored view
Wham, bam, alakazam, I got a look at you
One look and I yelled timber, watch out for flying glass
'Cause the ceiling fell in and the bottom fell out, I went into a spin
And I started to shout, I've been hit, this is it, this is it
I was walking along minding my business, when love came and hit me in the eye
Flash, bam, alakazam, out of an orange colored sky
Well, one look and I yelled timber, watch out for flying glass
'Cause the ceiling fell in and the bottom fell out, I went into a spin
And I started to shout I've been hit, this is it, this is it
I was walking along, minding my business, when love came and hit me in the eye
Flash, bam, alakazam, out of an orange, colored, purple stripes
Pretty green polka dot sky, flash, bam, alakazam, went the sky
WOW! I THOUGHT LOVE WAS MUCH SOFTER THAN THAT! (What a most disturbing sound)
How can a music reviewer be expected to give a favourable review solely by listening to the said CDs on a Walkman?
All the Walkmans I've owned have given the music a really tinny sound - even the supposedly decent quality ones.
Even if they hooked up the output to a proper speakers, they still probably wouldn't get the quality you would get from a good stereo set up - which these guys would be used to.
- Welcome the coming of the New World Odour
I'm surprised I haven't seen this on Ebay. Some diehard Radiohead fan would love it, even if just for the kitsch value...
--
THE GOOD HUMOR MAN CAN ONLY BE PUSHED SO FAR
Bart Simpson on chalkboard in episode 2F18
... by glueing the earphones to the ears of the reviewers. Disposable reviewers will be needed, though.
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
if i were a musician, i would sue the record industry for preventing fans from hearing my music and for making that bad publicity. it's unbelieveble, no other industry is treating it's customers like pirats and criminals ...
Back in the day of the original NES (and even today, I presume), Nintendo used to send a rep to the magazine reviewing the game, and he carried a system with the game bolted inside and sat there while the game was being reviewed, and the whole package was whisked away when the their time was up. Sounds like the record companies are taking a page from the gaming industry's playbook.
"All art is quite useless." -- Oscar Wilde
Why not put all of the walkmans in a safe, lock it, throw away the key, put the safe in a rocket, fire it in to deep space, and then nobody will ever be able to listen to the music.
They've done pretty well here though. How many of you vague Tori Amos fans knew she had a new album out before this article?
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
...A Mosix cluster of these?
So is hitting the walkman with a hammer an offence under the DMCA...?
Yeah, but they already DO that.
This has been done before. In 1998, preview copies of Radiohead's album "OK Computer" were sent out in sealed cassette players. And in 2000, preview copies of "Kid A" were sent out in an encrypted format on Sony VAIO digital players.
More info: http://www.followmearound.com/press/083.html
You dont even need to cut the wires and risk being discovered, you can use a pick-up coil to get the signal, or at the worst you could stick mics to the headphones. Ohh, and i hope they remembered to glue the screws on the back of the player, otherwise you could just take it apart, copy the disk and put it back together again.
I never really understood how you could review a song by britney spears any way. "Oops, I did it again, i crapped some music out my ass."?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
However, as a second thought, those sorts of features only appear on the more pricey units, I have no idea if Epic would use them. Its a funny thought though.
Why do they think that spending alot of money on cd players and then gluing them shut(ineffectivly at that), eliminating any chance of using them again, just to send to journalists is worth whatever they think they are losing just because the public hears it before they want them to? This is insanity!
registering. I seem to be allergic to javascript.
Now alcohol will be illegal under the DMCA, due to it now being a circumvention device. That should get the proles attention.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
Now, they just need to develop something that destroys the disc, if you happen to force the cover open or remove the Headphone jack.
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
"So is hitting the walkman with a hammer an offence under the DMCA...? "
Not if the disk inside is Tori Bush..er, Amos.
When are these people going to learn? As long as it can be heard by the human ear, it can be recorded. It's that simple. I KNOW IT'S NOT A DIGITAL COPY!! (The analog to digital conversion will cause loss of quality to a degree. The degree of loss depends on the equipment and skill of the person doing the conversion.) But honestly, do you really think someone who is downloading an MP3 quality file off the Internet using P2P software is going to care? I'd bet my bottom dollar 95% of the population wouldn't know the difference even if you told them.
So they are expected to review the CD's through headphones from a walkman?
Doesn't that just strike people as being stupid? How will they get a subjective review of the audio quality? Are the music companies trying to hide poor audio quality from the reviewers by making them review the music through sub-optimal equipment?
This is just a sad example of how paranoid the music companies have become...
I don't think it is a coincidence that Tori Amos and Pearl Jam were targeted. Look at their past. Both have strong opinions about the recording industry. I bet they have pissed off enough executives, that this is the punishment.
The executives are probably hoping that the reviewers will be pissed off by the stupid restriction, and vent their anger in the reviews. That way, the executives can push more cooperative bands more effectively, since Tori Amos and Pearl Jam will be sidelined.
Whenever I hear about such acts of stupidity, I get more convinced that I should donate funds directly to the artists, and just get the music online.
Stop the brainwash
Here goes my piddling little amount of karma, but this has to be said:
Did any of the moderators who modded this up and thought to mark it "Insightful" actually read the article?
Not getting at the poster, but the comment does completely miss the point - I thought the whole idea of moderation was to keep things on track. Too often it seems to be a mechanism for ensuring that scum floats to the top, as moderators just "follow the herd"...
"Put it on something that can't be digitally extracted."
8-tracks, baby!
September 16, 2002
Epic Records Takes Steps to Seal Its Newest Music
By CHRIS NELSON
The Epic Records Group, a unit of Sony Music, is approaching the sticky problem of prerelease music's being traded online with an even stickier solution.
Writers receiving review copies of two soon-to-be-released albums -- Tori Amos's "Scarlet's Walk" and Pearl Jam's "Riot Act" -- are finding the CD's already inside Sony Walkman players that have been glued shut. Headphones are also glued into the players, to prevent connecting the Walkman to a recording device.
By locking up the discs, Epic hopes to keep writers from converting the music to MP3's that can then be traded over the Net. But even a "glueman" player is unlikely to deter a diehard critic.
"I'm a pretty big Pearl Jam fan," said Bart Blasengame, a staff writer at Details magazine who was sent one of the contraptions with "Riot Act" inside. "I brought this discman home with me, and I found a way you could go in the back of the CD and, like, pop it open. So I got the actual disc out."
Mr. Blasengame said he had no intention of making MP3's . "At the same time, if I want to give it a proper review, I'm going to listen to it how I want to listen to it -- and in my stereo is where it sounds best," he said.
For several years, prerelease music has turned up online before it reaches stores, distributed without permission by journalists, radio employees, record company employees or other sources. This July, for example, a six-song sampler from Ms. Amos's upcoming album was shipped to writers the old-fashioned way. The songs soon appeared on file-sharing services like WinMX.
The Recording Industry Association of America blames Internet music-sharing for declines in CD sales, though proponents of MP3 trading dispute the group's arguments.
A Sony spokeswoman confirmed that the glued players were being used to combat piracy, but would not talk about their effectiveness or responses from writers.
This is not the first time prerelease music has received the glue treatment. Gil Kaufman, a freelance journalist in Cincinnati, said he owns a prerelease copy of Radiohead's 1997 album "OK Computer" that is glued into an Aiwa player -- an Aiwa analog cassette deck. That makes MP3 conversions a bit more difficult.
Its not a technical problem to be solved here, rather a litigious one. Sony distributes these walkmans to reviewers and makes them sign a release that they won't tamper with the cd player. When they collect the CD player, they know if the wires have been cut, smashed with a hammer, etc. If its broke, its a breach of contract and an open and shut legal dispute. Effective answer to a (potentially) pervasive problem.
All your base are belong to us!
Make vinyl records out of chocolate, that way they would only play about 3 times before wearing out. At least you could eat them afterwards, though.
"In an effort to prevent reviewers from creating MP3s or even playing the preview CD in anything they don't control, music labels are now disseminating a prewritten review of the CD, along with a bill for $17.99."
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
But not entirely. The main point of my post was that this is a Brittle system. When it fails, it fails miserably.
Having a CD that will work in ANY player being glued shut seems to be like having treasure in a treasure chest. When everyone knows where the treasure chest is, it's only a matter of time before it's picked open.
That's why I think it'd be better having it kept on some kind of memory medium. When you crack open the device, how many of the journalists are going to pop the CD directly into a CDrom and start ripping. On the other hand, how many of them are going to try to hardwire the memory to another device to try and digitally extract it :).
As funny as the thought of Music Journalists going to all those guys who rip ROMS might seem, the chances are pretty low.
Yes, yes, yes, blah blah *cough* wire cutters, etc.
Umm, umm, you could always make headphones with a chip on each earpiece that somehow modulate the receiving signal and feed it back to the player. Without the modulated feedback signal, it stops playing.
Yeah, yeah, it's killing a fly with an atom bomb. But if you're going to attempt to solve a problem, do it RIGHT.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
"If they think you're crude, go technical; if they think you're technical, go crude. I'm a very technical boy. So I decided to get as crude as possible. These days, though, you have to be pretty technical before you can even aspire to crudeness."
- from Johny Mnemonic by William Gibson
What's that? You mean he meant is now disseminating? Oh, well, in that case, Flame On!
Best Slashdot Co
Therefore, their ears must be chopped off.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
That is, by far, one of the worst ideas I've heard of in a long time.
How does the resource/effect ratio compares to say DRM?
Epic invested $3.99 and covered 95% of their area. DRM would be more like $3.99G / 97%.
Most geeks would love to crack this mom-and-pop security. Just for the fun of it. My first try would probably involve of three tiny needles. A second, a couple of mikes. A third,...
Most reviewers would just do the review and return the player afterwards.
IMHO Epic plays quite fair.
I want to know why a solid-state mp3 player couldn't be used? They could just build their own and put the songs in ROM and just have no input. Kinda like those little "tiger beat" or whatever players that just play Britney Spears and you can get them at McDonald's.
I imagine building a custom player with built-in earbuds and only one album on it would be cheaper than this dumb glue thing.
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
In this case, I'm sure that a decent lawyer could successfully argue that gravity could be used to circumvent the 'glue lock'. My reading of the DMCA text leads me to think that any device or method used for circumvention is illegal. Dropping the unit would be a method. Hmm, guilty of dropping the unit? Then jail time for you. I would not want to accept such a liability for a simple review.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
A lot of times these methods result in getting a much lower quality piece of software/media than if it were simply bought. A lot of times (mostly with software) the result barely works at all.
So is it really worth it to copy some of this stuff at any cost? I can't help but think that sometimes it would cost less time and aggravation to just go out and buy the damn software/music CD/DVD. And don't give me that "information wants to be free" crap either. There comes a point when it's just not worth the time or effort to circumvent copy protection just because you can.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
<tap><tap>RIAA? That word you keep using? I don't think it means what you think it means.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
I noticed that certain pages in my friend's twat magazines were glued together, presumably to prevent unauthorised copying.
Y'know... I bet this is some smart-alec's way of getting back at us for the 'magic marker defeats copy protection' thing.
They'd have put it on a ROM of sorts as MP3 or some proprietry format and had encryption/decryption between the headphone socket and speakers. What's to stop you using a pair of side cutters and soldering a 3.5in male stereo jack onto their headphone wire, then plugging that into your sound card and recording the audio ? Want to use the speakers... put a female 3.5in stereo jack socket on the headphone side and plug in . Glue indeed!
organic solvent...
Oh yeah...
Who would ever buy this?
NO ONE!
It seems that once again they think they can stop backing up music. Well... It's just not going to happen.
----------
Check out my blackbox styles
Between this article and the one just before it, the 'editing' is just atrocious:
" is not disseminating the new..."
and
"Last year Australian authorities tapped more phones all United States authorities combined. "
Huh? "...more phones *than*" perhaps???
well, seeing as this IS the networked age (err... isn't it?) why not do it online with DRM - in the TV business we do this kind of thing ALL the time with work in progress and sensitive advertisements. Just send the person the appropriate download or access key, backed up by a cast iron NDA for them to sign and voila! Media security achieved!
That was classic intercourse!
It doesn't really matter much, all it's doing is making the reviewers listen to the albums on what might be an inferior player. A quick search on most file sharing programs will turn up 128K mp3s of most of the songs from the Tori album, they've been up for at least a week.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
Is that the same band that went to war with Ticketmaster for overcharging fans on ticket prices? Amazing. You would think they would........aw hell, you never can tell with these guys.
Especially since Pearl Jam became the Neil Young backup band.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
what is the world coming to?
If these people don't trust the reviewers, why give them the music at all? Don't give them the chance to make copies.
For that matter, if reviewers are that untrustworthy, why allow them to review the music? They might lie, if only just for spite. Especially if you torque them off by showing them what you think of their ethics.
I wonder if the RIAA will launch a DOS attack against anyone who talks about artists without being authorized to use their names. "We're sorry, New York Times, but we didn't want you to talk about Tori(c)...."
Ad luna, Alicia! Ad luna!
This is where those audio fingerprinting techniques should come in. You don't have to worry about copies if you add a unique fingerprint to each disk. Make the reviewer sign an agreement that says they will be held resposible if copies are found with that same fingerprint. The only thing the reviewer could complain about is that the fingerprinting alters the original. It sure beats listening to it on a walkman though.
I think the problem's up your end
That was classic intercourse!
Is it April 1 already???
That music from the RIAA is not as good as we thought it was.
Been to a concert lately? It beats the hell out of buying a cd.
You can't get laid listening to cd's anyway.
Stop buying music. Go out and listen to some instead.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
It drives the cost of production up and will kill itself eventually.
We should encourage record companies to use this sort of stuff!
Proletariat of the world, unite to kill the RIAA
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
Are they charging more for these CDs? If not, it shows you just how much money they usually make off a CD sale.
If they simply lowered the price of a new CD to around $4-5, there would be no piracy..
But if you number each player, send them out, and expect them to be returned, then by identifying the missing or broken players you could pretty much work out who it was that smashed their player open and put the music on P2P.
Isn't that why they do it?
I can't help but wonder if the publicity around the stunt won't generate more press than the releases alone, after all, they just successfully told half a million slashdot readers that there's a new Tori Amos and Pearl Jam album coming out.
they're trying really hard here! I mean let's give them the benefit of the doubt here. They must have a very good reason for investing [read: wasting] money on anti-piracy devices like this. :) Although I wish if companies were gonna waste so much money on useless things like this, I wish they'd at least send some my way so I can pay my tuition bills without needing a student loan! ;)
Glueing a CD inside a walkman will make it very difficult to listen to, as those devices only play cassettes. I would suggest glueing them inside discmans instead.
:-) ), I think Tori Amos is brilliant.
Oh, for the record, (no pun intended
I just checked at 8am, out of curiosity, and I found several tracks for Tori Amos' Scarlet's Walk, and one track from Pearl Jam's Riot Act just waiting for download on WinMX.
I guess they need to use a stronger glue.....
A sentence you'll never see on an Internet discussion board: "You know what? You're right."
they're just going to hurt their own business, after all a CD will not sound as good to reviewers when played on a tinny headset as it would in a full stereo system with subwoofers. And if it's the sort of music that sounds better very loud, the reviewer will have to hurt their ears a lot more if he wants to give it a fair shake.
What next? "This CD will self-destruct in 70 Minutes".
This is just one case where record companies are trying hard to fight a real problem. Before flaming please read:
How would you like it if you would get thousands of complaints on your work before you published it, or before you even finished it? Record companies have a very hard time keeping music from leaking into the public before the release date. The music in these walkmans may not even be finished. It is sent in to the critics because it has become a habit in the industry. Not sending a copy could even result in getting no review because the critic missed the release.
More on the too-much-discussed topic: Record companies have a very hard time keeping people from stealing their products. Whether you like it or not, people are allowed to ask a price on what they do for a living. This is something that seems to be forgotten on /. You speak highly about customers rights and the legality of P2P networks, but we've forgetten something: these 'poor' bastards need to make a living. Don't like it? Don't support it: don't buy it and don't rip them off - that's what it is, don't try to sugarcoat it.
Some bands have said that they don't mind their music being copied. So be it, but they might have given the power to make that decision to the record company. Evil or not, that is how it is. If a band wants their music to be free, they can do it, no sweat, but the music in these Walkmans is made by bands selling their music and trying to make a living. Even a hugely successful band is allowed to sell their music. Don't like giving money to the rich? Then don't, but don't rip them off.
I don't like the rich getting richer, but people are allowed to choose the license they produce under. Some like it GPL and some like it M$ -style. We might like it GPL but we are not the ones to make that decision for others.
if the CD player had a digital optical output.
It would be quite funny seeing her carrying around a whole piano though
An 88-key MIDI controller plus a synth module isn't all that heavy.
Carry this!
Will I retire or break 10K?
Most reviewers have some sort of NDA Agreement. Standard Contract Law, and nothing to do with the DMC-Fucking-A.
We need smart dot, instead of slashdot. I submit good stories that are spell checked, easy to read, and the links even work, which never make it to distribution, but submit a lame story about an Apple Mac case mod and "whoa" that's news.
I want to be an editor!
... they obviously misunderstood.
the article says that about radiohead you idiot, what moron modded this loser up?
... is if it was safely contained in a glued-shut box. Not that I'd buy that crud anyway.
They reached that point a long time ago. The software industry wised up and changed their policies, although some companies with short memories are starting this crap again.
Remember off-disk copy protection? Enter word three from paragraph five on page twelve of the manual after looking up a secret code on a code wheel?
I remember cracking most of the games I bought just because I didn't want to deal with that crap. I remember buying Battle Chess and Rail Road Tycoon form my dad, and subsequently breaking both of them so he didn't have to enter codes.
The software industry, though, for the most part, learned it's lesson. Unfortunately, the RIAA thinks it's beyond the reproach of us regular joes. I said it before in a similar discussion, and I keep picturing Princess Leia saying to Darth Vadar "The more you tighten your grip, the more systems will slip through your fingers."
I feel the same way about this stuff. You want to know why CD sales are down? Maybe people are realizing what crap CDs are being put out. Maybe people don't care about the pop bullshit record companies are putting out. Maybe some have realized (like me) that every time a new format comes out you feel pressured to "upgrade". I have over 200 vinyl records and over 200 more CDs, and I simply stopped buying. It's just not worth it. I have a big video collection that I feel is worthless after getting a DVD player - but I'm not going to build a DVD collection, I'm going to rent. I look at my current collections and see thousands of dollars that could have been used much more wisely.
Just my opinion.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Since I could probably crack that player open with my leatherman, does that make it a circumvention device under the DMCA?
Why cut the headphone wires? Even if you solder them back and shrinkwrap them, it will be obvious to the record company that they've been compromised.
I think you can still buy them at Radio Shack... little suction-cup gadgets that are basically just coils. If not, just find or wind a decent-sized coil. Put it near the headphone. Quality will be very good, quite possibly better than what you hear through the headphones if they're not using good-quality headphones. For best results it may be necessary to run the output through a graphic EQ.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I swear on my mother's grave (which hasn't been dug yet), the first time I read her name I thought Torn Anus. You know you love it.
So, why not do this all the time? If they are willing to do it for the reviewers, then dispense with the Audio Cassette and CD formats entirely, and just sell self-running albums in stores, complete with headphones.
The RIAA could put the Audio Equipment manufacturers out of business, leaving only Sony, who's a record company and Audio Equipment maker all in one.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
These are CDs, they're digital. Why not just make a small, unique change to the bytes they give each reviewer, and sue his ass off the planet if his version leaks?
This is just like that 'fake buzz' crap with the Sony T68i phone. Would we normally ever discuss Tori Amos or Pearl Jam? I'd say Sony (Epic) is using the same promotional people that they used for their phone a month or two ago.
My birthday is coming up, and I delivered my list to my wife. In addition to several books, it included several Indie titles with links to some relevant pages at "www.cdbaby.com".
There is no shortage of musicians or music. Nor is there a shortage of good musicians or good music. It's simply a matter of finding it, and if you look a little harder you can find good stuff that doesn't grant any money to the RIAA.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Anyone who builds plastic scale models can probably make short work of a glued-together freebie (read: cheap plastic) walkman. Mr. Walkman, meet Mr. Xacto Knife!
But reviewers are not known for their willingness to tick off record companies. Doing so would be bad for their ability to obtain pre-release albums. And I certainly don't see anything wrong with trying to protect a pre-release sample.
If they wanted to find out which reviewers were releasing previews, the easiest way would be to send out a few hundred gold CD-Rs with each one individually steganographically encoded. When the album appears on KaZaa or wherever, look for the codes and backtrack the gold disc. Bad reviewer! No freebie cruises for you!
Record execs have been sniffing glue for years. It's about time they gave the brown nose a rest and injected it elsewhere.
PegQuin--I've got a sneakin' suspicion
If they truely DID stick the CD into a sony walkman and glue it shut.. well I must admit glueing those peices of the CD back together and then ripping the songs would be darn near impossible!
Once quick thing to do... cut the headphones off and splice in a line out jack... easy as PIE.
Try
;)
false / false
Enjoy the article.
They should make it like a magically protected D&D treasure chest.
:) makeby Sepia's Snake Sigil...
Maybe it could be Fire Trap
Maybe it could just release a posionous cloud, or shot a posioned arrow at you when opened. Maybeif the disc is removed it would call fourth a giant fire elemental to strike you down.
Great - now Hollings and Disney have a reason to make acetone illegal.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I have recently been looking into the problems associated with secure document transmission. What this ultimately comes down to is the following: There comes a point where you have to define your level of trust. If you don't want anyone to copy a document, you can't distribute it in electronic format - after all, once it's on a screen, it's not safe. You have to have a controlled number of paper copies which you don't let out of your sight.
When applied to music, if you don't trust the reviewers at all, you make them come to a hotel room where you've set up a hi-fi, give them a comfy chair to sit in, and let them listen. You don't ever give them the CD. The best they can manage is smuggling a Minidisc recorder in, and the quality won't be great.
Glued-together Walkmans? I'd only settle for _that_ if they supplied quality headphones. You can't possibly review music properly on anything less than proper hi-fi equipment. Walkmans, micro systems and the like just don't have sufficient quality.
Like car accidents, most hardware problems are due to driver error.
Not even that:
slip = Copyright Circumvention Device (technique) = Banned
Now you can't even slip without being jailed.
Let's pretend that I'm a reviewer. I have a cat. I put my "secure (BAWAHAHAHA)" walkman down on my desk so I can go get some more coffee.
Sparky, my tabby, realizes that the walkman is in her desktop sleeping spot.
Push, crash, bang, break.
Do they even have prisons for cats?
Karma: Food Fight (Mostly affected by Date Plate).
Sony's recent marketing studies show that too much information about upcoming albums is being leaked by their sales staff.
In order to curtail this problem they have instituted a new policy of placing a large amount of glue on top of each salesman's head. Having them drop their pants. Bend over...
Well, I guess we could hope that this was true.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Ok, it's pretty easy to figure out the damned impedence of a set of headphones... cut the wires run them into an appropropriate RC network, pick off the signal and shove that into your amp or audio input. Or has been pointed out, crack open the glue. :)
Just that the GRAMMAR was incorrect.
Journalists don't buy anything
Taco and friends may be cheap, but I'd hardly call them 'journalists'.
This is a joke right?
What a sweet gravy train that would be. I would never have to listen to another MP3 again because the record companies would give me CD's for free.
A perfect solution to combat the rampant "piracy" of music. Give everyone free CD's.
Maybe they should just send the music score/lyrics for review on paper... that way the reviewer wouldn't even need to hear the music other than in their heads as they read it. It would solve a big pirating problem and would sort good reviewers from the wanna be's.
General Midi.
Maybe they should glue Tori's mouth shut so she can't sing outside her contract. 'Course, her husband will lose out...
Or glue her mouth to a microphone glued to the console of a soundboard nailed down in a recording studio owned by Epic.
Ade_
/
Big Bubbles (no troubles) - what sucks, who sucks and you suck
So what do they think is going to happen after they release the album to the public? Are they going to glue all the jewel cases shut? And what about the peons who work at the CD pressing plants, there are always leaks from them.
"...more and more of our imports come from overseas." - G.W. Bush
So, how long before RIAA-people gets glued to the ground by mp3-entusiasts :)
"If you keep an open mind people will throw a lot of garbage in it."
If you don't review the CD under their terms, then NEXT time they send a CD out for review, you won't be invited to the party.
The solution can be fairly low-tech because you only get to break their trust once.
Well, my TiVo has recordings of copyrighted media inside of it, and it's likewise pretty hard, though not impossible, to get it out in perfect digital fidelity for archiving on other devices or to play on different players.
I expect to see more of this in the future as hardware prices continue to slide. Media will become more and more locked into a particular device one way or another. Your next CD player could well require an Access card in it to enable it to play the latest CDs.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
If the poor babies at RIAA are so fucking concerned that thier pre-release music might get out on the 'net, why not herd all the music reviewers into a controlled area and let them listen to it there? The CD never need leave the grubby hands of the music producers until it is ready for release.
Only superficial pop dance tunes have the instant effect. It's kinda like sugar. You get a rush, but afterwards you feel thirsty and want something more substantial. Any great work of art will require time to absorb, so preventing listeners from hearing only ensure the quality of the music degenerates. No wonder the current crop of corporate engineered bands aren't selling as well as they would like. They bitch about how they've invested in an artist, but they are the ones forcing those bands to rehash the last album. Plenty of musicians have been bullied and pushed away from exploration.
Or as U2 said it. Crap music kills the music industry. Not listeners.
> So, they can't even use glue properly, its not
> wonder everything else has failed.
Actually, they *are* using glue properly, and that's the problem!
Of course, that explains the RIAA's policies towards their own customers. Valenti must have been drunk or doped up when he compared using a VCR to rape. Go figure.
who the hell cares about your karma. call your mom and tell her all about it.
Not pirating the CD, and not buying it either, undercuts them even more. Simply playing and having the CD will have the effect of promoting it to your friends, and promoting the artists that are in bed with RIAA. Boycott them all, I say.
1. Open player with your favorite screwdriver/utility knife.
2. Remove CD. Rip, mix, burn.
3. Replace CD in player.
4. Back over player and headphones with your car.
5. Return electronic crumbs to Epic Records in plastic bag, claiming you "dropped it".
Problem solved...
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
For every journalist getting the throw-away walkman, there are 200 radio station PO Boxes that get a copy of the CD. What happens to the CD (in the case of Tori who only gets played on college stations and maybe NPR), is it gets thrown either in the trash, or sold in bulk with all the other CD's they throw away every day.
Somebody down the road gets a CD from a used record store that says "promotional copy not for sale" and they think they're elite.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
;)
It's pearl jam and tori amos, the record companies are just admitting that with a walkman that's as good as it's ever going to sound. Plus they're sending a nice little signal that if you listen to such music don't bother the people around you with it (use headphones). :)
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
Still, they might try and look at it as a problem with individuals who are flaunting agreements. It may well be within their abilities to create a special version for each reviewer and imbed some extra tones someplace within the tracks. Then, when mp3s are out, they just download them and check out which tones they are finding. Don't send that reviewer any more discs for a while. Anyway, I find their use of glue refreshing and need to get to work.
I'm no music reviewer, but it seems to me if I were to review a new album, I would want to listen to the CD on the best stereo I have access to, not a little crappy discman with $5 headphones.
I hate to burst your bubble, but she is a female, not a male.
Ship the disc in a sealed nitrogen/helium atmosphere, and make it out of a material that rapidly degrades in an oxygen atmosphere.
Now the reviewers only need to sing the song into their mic as they listen to it and release that as a mp3 on P2P. Instant crack!
Of course I'm sure it won't do too much for the record companies sales when people download and wonder what the hell happened to their favorite artists voice.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
By extension, because the hammer is a tool used to circumvent the DMCA, all hammers must be outlawed.
***JUMP PAD ACTIVATION INITIATION START***
***TRANSPORT WHEN READY***
i saw the full pearl jam album on a friend's ftp server last night..
Except this is an electronic device that can easily be reverse engineered and copied.
But Tori Amos herself can't be copied as easily. So in effect, this thread suggests that performers should use live concerts more often to promote record sales.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Um, isn't that what they make Dremel tools for?
"It's a very tangled subsystem." --Windows kernel guru
YES. Because you could be using your teeth to transmit the sound to somebody's MP3 phone ... thus, violation the DMCA. Run villain, run!
wrap the headphone cord around an iron core and extract the signal from the inducted current...
viola
- Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.
I think I read somewhere that they're also not going to seal them in a block of concrete and embed the headphones in plutonium to prevent authorized output. At least that's what I think it said...
-h-
You should read the DMCA more carefully. The device has to be primarily designed for circumvention, and must not have any other commercially significant uses. Also, it would probably be hard to argue that glue is a "technological measure" as defined in the DMCA.
The DMCA is a bad law, and I know you guys are half joking, but blowing it out of proportion like this I think does our cause disservice. Actually understanding what it makes illegal, and being able to hold intelligent conversations about it's implications -- that's what helps us.
Your mission, Jim, should you chose to accept it, is to review a CD by Pearl Jam. If your or any of your IM force be killed or captured the RIAA will disavow any knowledge of your actions. Good luck Jim.
The review CDs will self-destruct in five seconds...
Hrm. Doesn't anyone proofread what they post? I just got stunned for a few seconds wondering why you were telling me what someone was NOT doing
Epic is doing this so they can say, when they get back the bashed-open CD players, "Look at how Evil all those reviewers are!" Then they can blame the reviewers for the music "escaping". Since the ones probably putting the music on the P2P nets are the guys who mixed it it the first place, it lets Epic shove responsibility off onto someone else.
Or maybe they're just saying that these albums don't deserve anything better.
The ideal solution would be for the reviewers to not review them at all. See what that does to sales.
Welcome to the Turing Tarpit, where everything is possible but nothing interesting is easy.
There's gotta be irony somewhere in having two articles on /. about the record industry in one day.
Article 1: Record companies are sending expensive sealed players to reviewers instead of just CD's.
Article 2: Artists are fed up with being screwed over by the record industry, but the industry keeps bleating about how expensive it is to handle their artists.
I see a nice cycle here: They have to spend more money to keep their music controlled because they need to make more money to spend more money to keep their music controlled because they need to make more money to spend more money to...
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
After you dremmel out the CD, you now have destroyed the CD player... wouldn't it be easier for the record companies to just release the songs on MP3... Those that have the money will still buy the CDs, espically is they contain MP3 and the normal audio tracks. Now that would be cool, CDs with both audio and MP3.
Well I sure am glad that slashdot is reporting to me that the RIAA is NOT distributing the preview CDs in a discman that is glued shut. I don't know what I would do if I thought the RIAA would actualy do that sort of thing.
Another reason for CDs being waaay to expensive. I mean, if the record company can afford sending entire CD players to possibly hundreds of critics every time they release a mayor CD, why couldn't they make CDs a few bucks cheaper?
where's all that Karma?
The first time I saw Tori Amos live as at the alanis/tori MP3.COM TOUR! YES EEEM PEE THREEE! I think someone should hand her some glue so she can put her integrity back together.
For god's sake, all this copy protection is idiotic.
Plug the unit into the sound in input of your computer, record each song and enter the MP3 tags yourself.
Use a tape recorder.
These people are beyond braindead.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Could it be that the company wants to ID those reviewers who may be leaking/ripping the stuff before release? If the units must be returned in original condition, untampered, after they're reviewed, then this may be meant to identify leaks. The way the company figures it, if the leakers refuse to review the stuff, no big loss.
Perhaps the company also thinks that most of what it considers "legitimate" reviewers will acquiesce.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Yrggh rmph rrgh. srghh....
Ooops! Sorry, I dropped it. But don't worry, I didn't lose any parts. I glued it all back together. Ignore those minor cosmetic blemishes. And it might skip tracks occaisionally.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Why not release the music score to the reviewer and let them review it from that?
Of course, modern pop songs probably read like the crap they are.
Like the way the guy glues himself in American Pie 2 lol.
IANAL, but I think that under the DMCA, wouldn't the Dremel tool would be considered a circumvention device (the same goes for sledgehammers and big rocks) and therefore illegal? Stores like Home Depot would pull them off the shelves for fear of being ruled contributory infringers.
Sigs are bad for your health.
Dropping the unit would be a method. Hmm, guilty of dropping the unit?
Chances are pretty good that the DMCA will have already been violated by the time the package arrives at your door.
"Fra-gi-le... that must be Italian!"
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
"Well, my TiVo has recordings of copyrighted media inside of it, and it's likewise pretty hard, though not impossible, to get it out in perfect digital fidelity for archiving on other devices or to play on different players."
p hp ?s=b6f603ec80780ae802af1f8e3a59840e&forumid=24
All the FAQs and How-Tos for EASY stream extraction are right here:
http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/forumdisplay.
and for general TiVo hacks, trim a little:
http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/
Can you imagine listening to Tori Amos shriek for the rest of your life? AAAAAAAAAAAAAIIEEEEEEE!
Reviewers *are* disposable. Ever worked for a college newspaper or radio station? Quickest way to get dozens of new volunteers is to shout "free review CDs" in the cafeteria.
MHO. YMMV. Any resemblance between this post and real persons, or reality in general, was accidental.
Interesting, a group that fought for a decade to break Ticketmaster (in the name of the fan), that allows taping of their live shows, and in response to piracy: released their own live shows on cd (just as Dylan did almost 2 decades ago) would allow such a hokey marketing thing...
I wonder if there will be any back-lash from the radio or retail industry?
cut headphone cord
expose the 2 wires
attach standard line-out connector
plug into line-in on soundcard
Voila!
geeks are cats who dig a certain kind of cool
Don't even need to bother with that. Just unscrew that puppy and put a couple bare wires on the headphone jack leads into your sound card. Viola ... instant MP3!
Screw the thing back together and you're done.
Ok, seriously now, how many people read the title of the artical and thought "Hmmm, 'Glue' must be the title of some new program that tracks mp3 distribution" or somthing along those lines? :)
Music is a luxury not worth paying for. Because $15 a CD is ridiculous and now you have to buy the cd with a walkman glued onto it? I say forget the music industry. I havent bought a new cd in 2 years and not because of Kazaa. With my 56k Kazaa is just to slow and painful to use. I just do without music because as a student I cant afford it period. Oh how I wish I dormed, but I live with my parents.
why the fuck would you do that as opposed to just pulling the top off the cd player and removing the disc... fucktard..
Whose algorithm now forms the core of (or more often, an anonymously-distributed module for) every Linux program capable of playing encrypted DVDs. Nobody seemed to care then.
I havn't bought a CD since Napster got stopped the first time....
Speaking of Tori's new CD: I am looking for mp3/ogg version. Obviously, I intend to buy the album when it's finally released, but I'd love to hear it earlier. Anyone with URL?
"Man in the Moon and other weird things" - wfmh.org.pl/thorgal/Moon/
Because they want reviewers to hear a 100% non-lossy encoded copy for review, not some MP3.
Now, if they had a small FLAC supporting device, that idea might work out better. But again, if I can hear it, I can copy it. The headphone jack connects easily to any recorder, digital or otherwise.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
The Perl Jam album didn't show up on Kazaa Lite, but the Amos album did.
I guess there was less motivation to share Perl Jam than Amos.
Damn, what a time to blank on all the possible sexual puns that the situation promises.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
No you listen to me you dumb fucking redard Bush voting red-neck. At one point the cable has to split to go to the 2 different ears for the headphones, so you tap the f-ing wires separately on those 2 branches, or you fucking tap the speaker coils themselves. Hey, why not listen in mono, the FBI does on your phone. Go stick a coil up your ass, im sure it will pick up loads of crap.
:)
ROFL
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
It's not meant to be the end all solution, but I bet it will stop the casual reviewer/pirate. The great thing about ripping cds is that it is SO simple that all it takes is popping the cd in the drive. Sure it can be circumvented, but this will be effective against average person who doesn't want to mess with clipping the wires, or breaking the glue. It's also interesting to note that the price of the cd will undoubtedly include all the free walkmans that are given away.
Just cut the cable, solder in a pair of RCA jacks and presto! Analog output! Feed into your favorite sound card and BAM! Captured audio!
-ted
Just have Ethan Hunt and crew do all the reviewing... Haven't they had Self-destructing messages since the 60's? Set that system up.
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
Sooo somewhere in Idaho a reviewer with a scratched CD now has a free CD?
That'll last a woping 5 nanoseconds when they do simple math cal | ab 50*x + 5*x +5*100reviewers is
6,500....and this is suposed to be covered by who? Oh boy a free CD walkman and copies of Toni Nonamerson on my hard drive...thank you RIAA for setting yet another moral, legal, and ethical president, you're the pimadora of virtue.
I always use my teeth to strim wires - are they illegal too?
:)
So does my SO. He's got notches in his teeth in a variety of gauges -- handy, but only good for the dentist's wallet in the long run.
Also, he is a journalist, and has spent so much time messing with hardware over the last 30 years or so, he might as well be an engineer...
In any case, they're not likely to haul people with wire-stripping tooth notches away to jail anytime soon -- a lot of wrongfully-arrested tailors/seamstresses/costumers (ever heard of a "tailor's notch"?) could make a pretty big stink.
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
Autorun.inf can have an fdisk type program to eradicate the hard drive of anyone who inserts it into their computer. Also eliminating the entire mp3 collection of the poor person who tried it and doesn't have a utility to restore partition ;)
Mean - yes, warning on label - required, cheaper than giving away useless walkmans - hell yeah. Will it work every time? No...autorun can be disabled.
Or better yet...distribute it on mp3 in some really crappy sounding quality along with random "sample only" oversamples.
Or...how about just making it a proprietary file format that can only be listened to X # times on a specific system with their proprietary player?
Who thinks of this crap & still keeps their jobs?
Bash it with a rock until the discman comes apart.
The problem with glue is that it's subject to deterioration due to sun, persperation, etc.
I think they should use staples.
-- I have monkeys in my pants.
Maybe I should just patent a method of cutting open the case with a razor blade. Then I can sell something similar to those CD opener tools.
Since they're already wast^H^H^H^H^H investing money on these CD players that are glued shut, it seems odd that they wouldn't use either a non-standard format/size CD and an odd heaphone connector. Once in a long time ago, I was flying a Northwest Airlines flight and the headphone was similar to a stethoscope.. the connector was actually a VERY small speaker, if you cranked up the volume you could actually hear the audio (barely) from the connector. The tubing on the headphones amplified it, so the listenr heard the quality sound, but only the listener. Forget copying it.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Just cut the wires on the headphones, and splice it with another cable going to the recording equipment =)
A horse can't be sick, you know, even if he wants to.
The primary purpose of a human is not as a circumvention device, so the DMCA is cool with it.
The problem is that "primary purpose" is a little ill-defined. Is the "primary purpose" of Napster distributing music from free artists? Is the "primary purpose" of glue remover to get at CDs?
May we never see th
Gotta love the NYT Random Login Generator
Zodiac Survey
No, I am a meat popsicle!
How about Mission Impossible style melting CDs? When the CDs been played once the whole device fuses - making the CD unreadable. Or have I just been watching too much TV? ;o)
Video Game cheats, hints a
Solder wires to some straight pins, and push them through the headphone cable. That way, when you have to give the set back, they probably won't notice.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Is the walkman's lid or the CD glued.
:-P
If its just the lid, get a hammer. If its the cd glued to the little round metal thing the cd spins on, then you will have a harder time.
I know you can get super glue remover too so
I am stumpified as to why the RIAA is so caught up with trying to control old-time media. I am surprised they haven't gone to a subscription-based music distribution system. The technology exists, after all. In the face of existing technology, it just doesn't make sense for them to send out hard copies of recordings. They could easily start up their own network (riaa-reviewnet.com or some such creature) and allow reviewers to download (or otherwise hear) music in a controlled environment. Have the client software be some bastardized thing with copy-protection and they would be all set.
Hell, if I were a stockholder in a record company, I'd expect no less. By continuing as they do, they really are begging for a diagnosis of insanity.
Mmmmmm... Bold, yet refreshing!
So you snip the ear buds off the headphones and directly wire the leads to another cable that has a useful jack on it. Problem solved.
...that this "anti-piracy" measure will produce.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Couldn't you pick up the music signal just by measuring the changes in current to the headphones. You avoid the error introduce by the speaker. No cut wires or broken open players required.
The court was convinced that DeCSS was in violation of the DMCA, and that's a pretty reasonable reading of the existing law. (The law itself is NOT reasonable, and I think that's the main problem with the DeCSS fiasco.)
The DMCA does not make general purpose tools illegal. If that's what you fear about the DMCA, then don't worry, you are safe! (That is, until we get Digital Rights Management legislation...) On the other hand, if you hate the DMCA because it makes bona fide circumvention devices (that enable both illegal and legal uses of copyrighted content) illegal, then carry on. But really, to argue that the DMCA outlaws gravity just makes us look like a bunch of paranoid whiners.
Crap, I guess I better find a copy of "The karate kid" .. I'm remodeling, and it's going to be hell driving all those nails with the palm of my hand.. Sorry mr. miyage..
Keep releaseing Pearl Jam and Tori Amos records. Who the hell would want to copy that anyway?
You have decrypted protected material.
You and your grammar teacher are now circumvention devices!
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
From what I heard, there were a fairly limited number of the Tori Amos discs-in-a-player distributed. Once the reviewer had it for a specified amount of time, they were expected to send it back, and it would be sent out again.
So, at least they weren't sending out hundreds or thousands of these, as they would with a normal promo CD.
Okay, so God's in violation of the DMCA for creating big rocks, right?
"It's a very tangled subsystem." --Windows kernel guru
and a hyporcrit too! all environmentalists are hipocrits! Lets save the planet as long as it doesn't inconvienence me! fucking pathetic. If you're not riding a bike and using solar power for all your transportation and power consumtion needs then ur full of shit.
Let me get this streight. They are selling a CD with a CD player included? I mean, a whole, fully functioning CD player?
Has the world gone insane? This has to be the most assinine thing I've heard of. And this is done to prevent piracy?
Now, I'm going to guess that even if they get huge discounts and have figured out how to really make them cheap, a CD player and headphones has to cost them around $7 to make, and my first guess is that cost will be passed on to the consumer.
So the consumer will have to pay extra money for a CD that can only be played on a cheap discman and listened to with cheap headphones... no listining on a computer, through a home stereo, or in the car.
And this is all being done to prevent piracy, which can be gotten around with a hammer or a screwdriver.
Seriously, what are these people smoking? It appears they are going out of their way to make it tougher on the consumer. I'm trying to find a single shred of logic here, and the best thing I can come up with is that they really want CD sales to go down further to encourage lawmakers to get tougher on online pirates.
The Internet is generally stupid
If you really wanted to get the CD out, you could just break open the case of the CD-player and get the disk out.
SIGFAULT
Idiots.
;)
Glue the CD to the spindle itself, that way you risk breaking the actual CD when attempting to pry it off. There's nothing stopping people from pulling out a friggin' CROWBAR and cracking the player in half to get to the disc, if they want it that badly. Though unfortunately, the player itself might be worth more than the crap music inside.
My words are backed with NUCLEAR WEAPONS!
scissors....hot glue gun or electrical tape... run of the mill line in patch cable or similar constituent... viola! if they want it back (highly unlikely, the cd's i review for the zine i write for never have to go back..), just cut below your mod, and tell them somoene cut your headphone wires after seeing what you were listening to.
actually, this is pretty on-topic. in the article's description, the writer says "is not disseminating" when the word "now" would be far more appropriate. (read: correct)
this confused me a bit at first until i did a double take and realized how the sentence was supposed to read.
i'm sorry, i'm just sleep deprived... but bitter. yes. very bitter.
why not just ship them a pre-written review for the damn album2.
like we care about their crappy music anyway.
Thank goodness they are coming up with solutions like this for the recording industry instead of,say, Planned Parenthood.
converstion, but it's being able to hold such a discussion with a *judge* that will help us.
Have *you* been able to hold an intelligent conversation about the DMCA with a judge lately?
Neither has anyone else.
KFG
The only way to really prevent music piracy is to either publish really bad music that no one wants, or just come up with a format that can't be played at all.
Well art is art isn't it, but then again water is water; and east is east; and west is west; and if you take cranberries
Who will lose more here? -the RIAA, for not having as much market exposure? -or Jon Doe, music reviewer, for not getting a personal copy of the music?
Albuquerque PC
...will the cases be glued shut to prevent piracy as well?
You must think in Russian.
*Ahem* redundant
-Ted
-=-=- Quantum physics - the dreams stuff are made of.
Why don't they take the so cool&fancy NetMD-Players? They are the best choose then it comes to handcuffware. If you read NetMD FAQ on minidisc.org, you will see that you can't even delete the songs you put on your own recorder. I think there is even some build-in feature for `close player&disc for the paying owner forever` called *Open*MD. ;-)
`Digital Restrictions Management - restricted to everyone, everywhere, all the time.`
Can somebody please start building MD like ogg-Vorbis Players? And mircopayment for all...
and their lawyers would probably make the case for contributory infringement if a big rock is used the circumvent the aforementioned copy protection scheme. What do lawyers and the recording industry have to lose - they're are all going to hell anyway, aren't they? ;-}
Sigs are bad for your health.
I'm so fucking over this shit. I fucking can't stand it anymore. All I want to do is listen to the music I purchase in the manner I choose.
I understand they want to make sure I'm not stealing the music. Thats fine. I'm not. I own all the oggs I've encoded. I don't share em. I don't make copies on discs. I just listen to them. Thats it. Thats what the majority of us do. quit treating your customers like criminals. fucking pissing me off. god damn it!
sorry folks I needed to do that. mod me down. doesn't hurt me.
-
Does the glued in stereo-jack magically prevent you from splicing a jack onto the other end?
Don't think that it isn't being worked on.
If they glued shut the CD cases then there would be no music piracy :)
I just do a random sampling around the comments page until I've read about 5 different thoughts, 3 of which I developed myself when I read the article headline. Once I've seen 5 different thoughts, I go on to the next article because that's about all the insight one can expect to filter through slashdot mob rule. FWIW, I wouldn't bother with the glue personally; I'd have those wires stripped, soldered, and heatshrunk to a stereo headphone jack in the back of my PC in five minutes.
So wirecutters, glue-disolving solvents, and wire splicers are now illegal ;)
(yah yah, I know, their *primary purpose* is not access control circumvention, but nether is ROT-13).
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
keeping in mind these are just more forgettable pop artists the proper use of glue wouldve been to affix the disk in their buttcracks.however this does not restrict use to just the artist but also their publishing company and all the lawyers and every exec right up to hillary rosen.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
If you don't want it to appear on the net before it's released, then don't give out copies of the music beforehand!
Like reveiwer's can't review the CD once it's released or something. Who reads that crap anyway?
Oh wait, nevermind -- I forgot that this is just another play to justify $17.99 a CD.
Okay.
The cd's were glued inside only to keep mp3's from leaking before the release date. They are NOT going to be sold that way for the actual album! Sillies!
There is a Tori article where she mentions her husband was at home, gluing them together. He did it himself! I don't think this is an actual record label Policy. And they did it because she didn't want certain aspects of the album to be released before she was ready- which I can understand- but a simply worded request to her fans to wait and now dowload it would be more effective. Obviously, it got out anyway. And the more you do to KEEP it from going out, the more determined people are going to be to put it out.
This is more a question of the artist not wanting their material out until a certain date, rather than mp3 "piracy", since obviously everyone is going to put it out on mp3 once they buy the album. They are NOT copy-protecting these cd's, which is therefore, just fine! The artist (and, well, record company) is allowed to decide when their work is shown, and Tori did not want her album coming out so close to Sept 11th. And that's her right.
Just as a note: people had to RETURN the players when they were done, so if someone did splice into the headphones, they'd know who did it. I personally think that her actual crew leaks this stuff- they're net enabled, and I really don't know who else would do it if they are keeping such a tight rein on it. Of course, the single is a different matter- radio stations everywhere have it, and it's around. But the entire album has not been widely disseminated, so that is more interesting.
Anyway, as a Tori fan, I wanted to put that out there.
Like people can't remove glue, either by dissolving it with chemicals or breaking it.
Yes, then utility knives and razor blades would become circumvision devices under the DMCA.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
Place a different barely audible tone on each copy distributed. Then when it leaks they can pinpoint the source. Bad me, I hope they don't read this.
There will be plenty of time for smoking doobies when your living in a VAN DOWN BY THE RIVER.
How is this in any way important, interesting, vital, relevant or worthy of consideration on any level whatsoever which is not petty, braindead, boring and totally fucking Prozacked up the wahzoo?
This question has been brought to you by the ever-present, effervescent,
-Fantastic Lad
3. Replace CD with crappy Kenny G. CD
4. Write review about PJ's new stuff being really "mellow".
5. Return CD player to company.
It'd take them months to connect the review to the player. The look on their faces, as they opened the player, would be classic.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
Sorry, did you mean circumcision or circumvention? It makes a big difference, you know.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
"It was the music critic, in the den, with the screwdriver!"
:9
Mmmm... Clue: DMCA Edition...
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
In "firing the ass" of any reviewer who states an opinion, political, artistic, or otherwise that "gets in the way" of your well-oiled corporate machine makes you little different from press-release "news" organizations like Fox News and CNN.
If you don't think that your reviewers would be interested in the fact that Sony (or whoever) is sealing new releases in glued Walkmans to "prevent piracy" (and prevent a reviewer from doing their job by reviewing it on a hi-fi) then you're sadly mistaken.
Were I a reviewer, I would do exactly what the parent poster suggested. I'd send the damned thing back to Sony and write up my review of those who send me a CD, making a note as to why Perl Jam :-) didn't make the review and rant about how stupid "anti-piracy" has become. Anyone who fires me for doing my job (reviewing things FOR CONSUMERS) isn't doing THEIR JOB.
How bout having them slide your ASN's and Gigabit switches down the stairs of their brown truck door. I don't want to be on hold trying to get them replaced!!!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
and tell the music reviewers what to write...
or,
press and album, or send a cassette.
I know both could be ripped to digital media, but its been my experiece that those extra steps are enough to deter most people.
One of the biggest boosts to emmnemms record sales was do to the fact that a few people played it before it was available, and that drove up peoples desire for it, which drove up sales.
OTOH look at my sig.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The opinions of most reviewers are the ultimate disposable end product of the process!!
Oh yeah
Inductance, if done with better than typical equipment could tap the audio from the headphone cable glued on... Also, a small drill could be used to go into the speaker(s) for the head phones and suck out the sound...
Reply with your thoughts!
http://www.aisnota.com/slashdot/ Welcome to Logic and the Future
Epic Records should also place a distinct digital watermark inside the music of each CD that is distributed.
Then they can know beyond a shadow of a doubt from which device the music gets copied from.
If you use the utility knife to cut off your eyelids, you get great circumvision capabilities./p
Clear, Dark Skies
waits twenty seconds...
waits twentyone seconds...
I invented this idea back in MARCH. I'm surprised it took someone this long to implement it. Don't believe me? Read the link! http://www.lowendmac.com/lite/02/0311.html
Or to prevent you from listening to anything else. That's the point and perpetuator of media monopoly, isn't it?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
It's in the works. The next gen DIVX discs (That's the disposable DVD thing, not the MPEG4 codec) are supposed to be like this. The dye will be light sensitive and decay a little with each play until it's unreadable.
Of course, then you'd have to check the expiry date on your music and movies.
NEWSFLASH: The analog hole, is a blackhole, never ending,, when one part is blocked, the hole simply gets bigger... I'm not sure about these headphones, but most, you can just take the foam padding off, and pop the speakers out, they're usually just sittisg in there, or very weakly attached, an the back, there should be open contacts, attach some wires, record, pop the speakers back in, put the ear pads back over, and you have a copy, leaving no noticable trace,,, unless they covered the foam pads in glue too,, lol :)
Reece,
Further proving that a Swarm of Albino Geese would actually do a better job of running Slashdot than the current crew.
Enby in Waltham