Slashdot Mirror
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.
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...
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.
then you can take a look at each others walkman collection ;)
Privacy is terrorism.
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.
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?
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)
...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.
Nothing. However, then they would know that there was an attempt at access. To them, clipping the wires is the same as breaking the case to get to the CD. Think about it. If Sony gets the Walkman back with any kind of damage, then they have a good idea where to look when the CD shows up online before it is released.
--Mike
I'm sorry, your post is in violation of the DMCA. Please turn yourself in to the authorities immediately.
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?
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
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
... 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."
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
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
So is hitting the walkman with a hammer an offence under the DMCA...?
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
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.
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.
"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 $17.99."
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
The record company most probably demands that the players are returned to them intact after the review period. If one has been tampered with, broken or had the earphones cut off, they will know never to send a review copy to that reviewer again.
But not entirely. The main point of my post was that this is a Brittle system. When it fails, it fails miserably.
Having a CD that will work in ANY player being glued shut seems to be like having treasure in a treasure chest. When everyone knows where the treasure chest is, it's only a matter of time before it's picked open.
That's why I think it'd be better having it kept on some kind of memory medium. When you crack open the device, how many of the journalists are going to pop the CD directly into a CDrom and start ripping. On the other hand, how many of them are going to try to hardwire the memory to another device to try and digitally extract it :).
As funny as the thought of Music Journalists going to all those guys who rip ROMS might seem, the chances are pretty low.
Yes, yes, yes, blah blah *cough* wire cutters, etc.
Umm, umm, you could always make headphones with a chip on each earpiece that somehow modulate the receiving signal and feed it back to the player. Without the modulated feedback signal, it stops playing.
Yeah, yeah, it's killing a fly with an atom bomb. But if you're going to attempt to solve a problem, do it RIGHT.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
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)
Bad engineering; since cutting the headphone cord will tell Sony that the device has been tampered with, then breaking the walkman open and extracting the CD will give you a much better quality rip with an equal violation of the NDA.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
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.
What's to prevent someone from buying a bottle of acetone and unsealing the thing, then gluing it back together when they are done?
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
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.
A deep feeling of sympathy for the battered and bruised music industry?
::cough::
No one's gonna mess with the "little guy" who's just protecting what meager possession he has, right?
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
what is the world coming to?
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.
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.
What next? "This CD will self-destruct in 70 Minutes".
if the CD player had a digital optical output.
... they obviously misunderstood.
Of course, I haven't shopped at Radio Shack in years. Odds are, someone has declared them to be terrorist tools or something...
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
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.
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!
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.
I agree...to a certain point. Certainly, in both software, music, and other products, there is no right to simply take someone elses creation without compensation. If they want no compensation, fine, but I agree with your sentiment - you can't force people to agree with your license, they have the right to distribute their art any way they see fit.
I also notice how most slashdotters, instead of talking about how stupid it is to restrict the ability to listen to music, jump in with suggestions on how to circumvent the copy protection.
For me the problem is that we are being asked to pay more and more to buy products that restrict what we can do with them. Like you said, it's their perogative to release music that way. And it's my perogative not to buy it. Perhaps there are more people with this mindset than you think. Personally, I haven't bought a CD in a couple of years (and no, it's not due to downloading). It's not rocket science to figure out there's more to declining sales than online swapping.
On the other hand (and I've already mentioned this elsewhere so won't go into detail), do you really have a problem with me buying a crippled CD and circumventing the copy protection to make my own mp3s or a copy of the CD for my car or something?
Stupid sexy Flanders.
It's the labels vying for the attention of the reviewers, not the reviewers vying for the favour of the labels.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
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!
Most music reviewers asked for such an agreement would tell the label to just fuck off. The goal is to be one of the few albums making it into the limited space for reviews; it's a reviewer's market.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
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.
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."
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.
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.
You can actually get the full telephone test/wiretap kits from Home Depot in the Electrical section. Don't know how well it would work on this system as I imagine it has lower voltages.
I'll have to get some alligator clips and try it out on a standard pair of headphones some weekend when I'm bored.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
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
YES. Because you could be using your teeth to transmit the sound to somebody's MP3 phone ... thus, violation the DMCA. Run villain, run!
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.
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
I'd like to help her make a copy...*rowwl!*
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!
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)
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
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
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
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.
WTF are you talking about? Tori Amos doesn't shreik. Listen to "A man with a gun".
Besides, anyone that Maynard will duet with is alright in my book.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
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
Not that it is terribly important, but Jack Valenti is with the MPAA, not the RIAA.
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
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.
a pair of pins(possibly fine sewing needles, but the diameter of those may be too big for this application) could probably be used to discreetly touch the conductors through the wire jacket, with nothing more than a couple tiny pinholes as proof of anything, which could probably be covered up relatively easily. Doing it either at the top, where the headphone meets the wire, or at the bottom, where the holes could be covered by the plugs jacket, could make the holes nearly invisible to detection, except by a more than summary inspection(ie. something more expensive than it's worth). With a little strategically placed insulation, you could even cut it down to one hole, but it would be somewhat more visible than the two smaller ones.
This would only get you one channel of stereo, but with one more hole(and somewhat more risk), you could get fairly good quality stereo, ripe for the ripping.
It's been a long time.
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
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
Yea, this seems incredibly stupid and expensive. Why not go to each city, get the reviewers in a room, make sure they don't have any recording devices, and play the music for them? While they are at it, give them a lot of free food and liquor. It's got to be less expensive and is guaranteed to prevent piracy.
That looks good on paper, but a headphone output will be amplified in order to drive the headphone speakers and an amplified signal is not going to be the best thing for recording. OTOH, it doesn't take too much to power headphones.
/*drunk.. fix later*/
Gotta love the NYT Random Login Generator
Zodiac Survey
Listen to "A man with a gun".
Obligatory nitpick: "Me and a Gun", from her first album Little Earthquakes.
...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
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.
By describing a method for bypassing a copyright protection mechanism, you are in violation of the DMCA. Hillary Rosen will be leading an angry horde of superintelligent police chimps to smash in your door immediately. If you know what's good for you, you will not try to leave your house.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
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
Getting rid of physical media takes away one of the greatest advantages of actually paying for music (I mean, other then doing the right thing).
People want a physical disc. Personally, I used to buy CDs all the time, despite the fact that I often downloaded music online, because I wanted something I could hold on to, take in the car, leave on my shelf, etc. I don't buy them any more because I just can't support that industry, and have plenty of CDs to keep my busy.
If the RIAA wants to get CD sales back up, their best bet would be to stop treating all of their potential customers like criminals.
The Internet is generally stupid
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
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?
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
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.
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
Please place your hands inside the yellow circles.
Clear, Dark Skies
If you use the utility knife to cut off your eyelids, you get great circumvision capabilities./p
Clear, Dark Skies