Slashdot Mirror
Copy Protection On CDs Is 'Worthless'
zotler writes "NewScientist.com has an article about how copy protection on audio CDs is worthless. I thought this was funny since I just read this earlier Slashdot article 'BMG copy protecting all CDs'." The article also neatly sums up the technology behind current fair-use-inhibition stratagems.
With sound cards having gone completely digital, you wouldn't even HAVE to rip the CD to get a damn decent copy. Just port the digital-out on the cd-rom to the digital-in on a sound card (as most do, now) and then record. Slow, yes, but high-quality and could probably be made faster. As the previous poster put it...if it can be played, it can be copied. Duh.
take a look at this Tom's Hardware Guide article on CD-RW drives and what copy protection they could get by out of the box by using blindread/blindwrite:o m/storage/02q2/020617/i ndex.html
http://www6.tomshardware.c
Three out of four were successfully copied (two versions of safedisc, cactus data shield, and the one they couldn't get by: TAGES, which is used in games).
What's stopping people doing this?
In theory degraded quality, although given that people used to swap tape to tape dubs at school in the '80s that's hardly a reason to stop...
The obvious response is to keep the data digital and encrypted all the way to the speakers - that would only stop you if you had a mic, and then the step after that would be to require that only licensed operators are allowed to purchase microphones.
You might laugh, but everything the record industry has done to date has indicated this would be their ideal scenario - they want an audience of passive consumers, with the law on their side to keep control of production technology.
The sad thing is that the software industry tried this, and rejected it, in the 80s/early 90s. Evenutally everyone realised that copy protection is fundamentally pointless, and you get better results by putting your energy into creating something that people actually want to purchase (insert comment about those who don't know history being doomed to repeat it via Palladium here).
Nae bother
Dudes, it's easy, and yes you can do it with a lot of the new crop of "copy protected" CDs. The secret is *shh! don't tell anyone!* Old crappy hardware. Some of the new tricks to protect against copying assumes your equipment, like your CD drive, is relatively new. Pick up an old 4x CD ROM drive. You'd be surprised how well all of a sudden things like the supposedly protected Shakira album just play... and as we all know, if it plays, it can be copied.... ;)
The copy protection schemes are created to force consumers to *buy* legit copies of the CDs, as opposed to stealing the MP3 versions. So Mr. Honest Consumer with lots of discretionary income:
1) Goes to the store and buys a new copy of some Top-40 Fluff band of the minute.
2) Tries to play it in his new "Super Fancy 500 feature Play-Any-Format CD player", but it can't play the new CD because the CD thinks his player is a PC player.
3)Tries it in his similar car CD player, with similar results.
4) Says "screw this", D/Ls his favorite songs for free, burns them to CD, and lives happily ever after, perfectingly *WILLING* to pay for new CDs, but he can't, because they won't work with any of his "Advanced" stereo eqpt.
Hats off to the file sharing companies for coming up with this brilliant scheme to deprive record companies of their most secure source of income, the Honest Customer! Wait, they ARE the ones who came up with this copy protection scheme, aren't they? No? Hmmm.....
Right. No, your other right. No, the other other right.
best buy, and circuit city generally have great deals on CD's - they use them as "loss leaders" to get you into the store, selling the CD's often belown price.
... hi bingo
Amen, brother
I only buy used CDs. When the Music Industry starts treating their customes with respect again, then I'll start buying new CDs.
Another day closer to redwood heaven
I also saw the new Tori Amos CD come out with the CD being an access key to a good amount of online content including more music and video. The unfortunate part was the interface was tricky to get the CD recognized. I applaud the fact that there is now a reason to get a CD over the normal ones... until someone pirates the online content.
Well kinda.
If they turn out ot be copy protected, back they go.
mmm...Sale of Goods act (UK)
This issue has spread through several DJ-related email lists since many DJ's with large collections like to reduce the number of CD's they have to carry by burning just the tracks they want to CD-R. Again, what is the likelihood of a "copy-protected CD" getting airplay?
Third, many DJ's record their shows in advance on a PC and burn them to CD-R. Once again what is the likelihood of a "copy-protected CD" getting airplay?
(quoting Tom Lehrer) "Now let's not see all the same hands!"
DMCA - Chilling free speech since 1998.
I mean seriously, if they got to the point that it was possible to totally secure music so that it couldn't be copied (even with a mic to a speaker), what's to prevent an ameteur band from re-singing the song and recording their version of it?
Royalties. (I hope this is the correct word in English. Forgive me, I'm German.)
If you perform someone else's work in public, if you record it on a media and give away copies, if you broadcast that recording to the public, you have to pay royalties to the author(s) of a song. You also have to pay royalties as well when you play music to the public, e.g. a large public party or the music you play as a cafe owner to keep your customers happy. (That's why royalty-free music is a niche market, btw.)
There are royalty collection organizations in most states, the GEMA is the one here in Germany. I once had the dumb luck of writing a small tune that was then performed by my band on German national TV. As a result, we instantly got a little royalty check through GEMA, since these TV stations paid royalties to GEMA for broadcasting music.
(This, btw., is another reason why some celebrity musicians perform for free on globally broadcast charity events. It's a royalty bonanza.)
------------------
You may like my a cappella music
"what's to prevent an ameteur band from re-singing the song and recording their version of it? "
Copyright law... ASCAP.... etc... You can play it, but if it becomes a recorded performance... you can be sued and thrown in jail. (assuming you did not have proper permission. Trust me, you don't.)
The author's real point is that CD Drives will continue to be upgraded, and that the newer firmware will defeat these copy-protection schemes. Hogwash.
Most SA2 discs are copyable, if you can find older firmware for your CD-Burner. My Panasonic works fine with firmware rev 1.05 or lower, not with newer firmware. Also, older firmware is not available from the manufacturer.
I think we have been and will continue to see the manufacturers "playing ball" with the entertainment cartels. As the author states, there is very very little that would need to be done to make PC CDRW drives read the TOC like every other disc, but where are the burners that support this??
RIAA brand music is already obsolete. Kids don't listen to Britney for the music, they want to belong to the herd. Go ahead and re-record OOPS!, and then get a cute girl and an expensive plastic surgeon. You'd need to sell those CD's for $20 a pop too.
~Hammy
Why use phone plug? I'd just have to put the disc in
my stationary DVD-player, use the optical output to
my receiver's optical input and from there optical
output to my SoundBlaster Live optical input.
Voilá, un-protected sound in perfect shape easy to
record with winamp or whatnot. No quality loss...
I purchased Monsters Inc. on DVD. It was the 2 disc special addition with hours of extra content. The movie comes in 2 forms on one disc, Wide screen or Pan and Scan. Pixar re-rendered the whole movie so that the Pan and Scan would still fit on the TV format. So it was almost like animating the whole movie again. It was just $16.99 (USD).
Just for fun I looked up the cost of the Sound track to Monsters Inc. at the same store. It cost $15.99. One dollar less. 6 hours of video content or one hour of music. Same price, your choice.
The Wizard Tim
However, cdparanoia (and thus grip) seems to be able to extract the audio without any difference to a normal audio CD. Grip can also play tracks by clicking them.
One difference seems to be that a CD player (I tried KDE CD player) can not play it, the CD drive starts scanning the disk wildly and I had to turn the computer off to stop it. This was an Dell Inspiron 8000 laptop with CD-RW drive, running Mandrake 9.0.
As long as you can extract the audio tracks, you can also make a new "normal" audio CD from them...
Check out the RIAA's official line on CD costs. There's a lot of overhead, much of it advertising. Like many other products, the consumer pays for a lot in products that don't at all improve the product, but make it popular (which ironically makes it cheaper).
The costs of producing the music are nearly beside the point, as are the media costs. The other stuff sets the price.
Emphatically, I think a more efficient model can be created, but as with books the transition to the internet has been slow. But eventually I am certain will be plenty of $1 songs, and that the artists will be better off -- esp. the small-market ones not blessed by the marketing focus of a major label. In fact, it may be the big names that produce mediocre music who suffer.
You also still have to pay royalties if the live convert that your ban plays at is free.
Wrong. Covers are royalty free when played live, even at a paid concert. Once that performance is recorded, THEN royalties come into play. If my combo decides to play 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner' at a local club, we don't owe ASCAP dick (we would, however, probably owe Iron Maiden an apology). If that performance were recorded and then sold or distributed, we would then have to pony up some copyright ducats - based upon the number of copies produced.
IANAL. IAAM.
-72
-Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music.
So what? You may not get an exact digital copy of the original CD, but you thanks to digital technology your copy is still not subject to the same kind of quality degradation as it were in the analog ages even if you record through Line-In. The difference is not where you record from, the difference is really whether you have available digital technology or not.
Making an analog copy of some music degrades quality a little. Nobody is going to notice that little degradation for a first generation copy if resonably good equipment is used to make it. Now in the analog ages, making a copy of the copy again degraded quality a little. So if one wanted a high quality copy, one had to draw it right from the original as each generation added some loss of quality. This is no longer true in the digital ages, regardless of how you make your initial copy. When recording through Line-In one can record to digital media, then copy digitally again. That way all copies suffer from a little degradation in quality from the first copying step, but they still expose the same characteristics as other digital media for all further copying steps.
http://erichsieht.wordpress.com/category/english/
72beetle replied "Wrong. Covers are royalty free when played live, even at a paid concert."
Actually, you are probably both correctly describing the situation in your country. Hanno identified his country as Germany. 72beetle is probably from the USA, one of the few countries where live performances don't require royalty payments. In most other nations, what Hanno said would be correct.
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
Wrong. Covers are royalty free when played live, even at a paid concert.
:)
That, actually, is incorrect. Or at least partially. If the ticket price is above a certain threshold (in Canada it's $7, in the US it's $8,) and the artist is performing songs live and wishes to gain performance royalties from the concert, they can submit their setlist to the performance rights organization (BMI / ASCAP / SOCAN / GEMA / Etc.) and in a few weeks: $$. All of this has to be verified with the live venue (someone from the venu has to sign something verifying that this setlist actually was performed and that the door price was indeed the $7 / $8, etc.)
This has worked out wonderfully for some artists who have their works performed live by other artists. Lou Reed claimed in 1993 that he made more money from live performances of "Take A Walk On The Wild Side" than from actual record sales, and he barely performed live at all that year. As it happens: U2 performed a rendition of that song during their ZooTV tour. Therefore: Lou Reed could make money at home doing nothing.
Many artists have filed their setlists to performing rights organizations and for some artists who have horrible record contracts it's a huge way to get compensation, since record labels get no cut of that money. This is a large part of why some lesser-known artists ask for a higher cover fee at the door.
There ya go
ad (ex music industry non-big-wig.)
Because I can! [Brainrub.com]