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."

Comments

Oh yeah right

[Salsaman]

People are really gonna buy a new Walkman every time they buy a CD. Great idea guys !

Re:Oh yeah right

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just for reviewers. The point is to prevent digital copies from circulating on the Net before the official release date. Reviewers get their copies early, because it takes some time for the review to be written, published and distributed, and the record companies want the reviews to be read around the time the album comes out for maximum promotional value. Now, in the P2P era, some albums have been shared early -- either by reviewers, or others on the short list of those who get advance copies. For example, I got a copy of Madonna's Music off Napster a month before the official release. And last year, I got Cyndi Lauper's Shine -- an album for which reviews were published, but which was never actually released; the record company dropped it in between the time they sent out the review copies and the scheduled release date. (This was the full album, not the EP version that finally did come out this year, on a different label.)

Reminds me of Nintendo's tactics...

[I Love this Company!]

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.

Glue... shmoo

[fruey]

Just the sort of reviewer that is going to rip to MP3 and share these CDs is going to have enough clue to break open the case / rewire those headphone connectors. This is all a publicity stunt to get the press to talk more about the two albums in question, and to get more "filesharing is bad" vibe into the press. Poor poor music industry losing to filesharing. They have to understand WHY we have no sympathy first.

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?

Re:Wire cutting

[ChrisJones]

Well if they don't want them returned, wtf is the point of glueing the player shut? you could easily just cut it open and take the CD out. I would have thought it would actually make more sense, and be cheaper, to put the single onto a tiny device with a $10 mp3 decoder in it, so there physically isn't anything to remove, or any way to remove the track without some serious hardware debugging.
Of course sanity and media companies are rarely found together ;)

Re:The latest in IP circumvention

[orangesquid]

You don't even need wire strippers. Remember, electricity and magnetism have this nifty inter-relation. It may be possible (although maybe non-trivial) to use coils to record the sound without modifying the apparatus they distribute.

Compare this to secure document transmission.

[altgrr]

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.

Oh the Irony

[Lonath]

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...

Canary Trap

[PMuse]

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.

Re:Wire cutting

[Skapare]

You don't even need to cut the wires. You can just put a coil around the earpieces or the wires leading to the earpieces and pick up the content inductively. Most journalists won't know that, but it only takes one leak :-)

Re:Pearl Jam??

[Anonymous Coward]

WRONG, do your research tool

that's totally BS

do a search online and read for yourself, it had NOTHING to do w/ Pearl Jam wanting a larger cut of ticket sales, jesus that's the biggest BS thign i've heard