Sony Adds New Copyright Method to CDs in 2003

Natoi writes "Sony is leaving Mac and **nix users out in the cold with their new copyright method called Label Gate CD copyright system. You'd have to be running Windows and use a Sony developed proprietary software to listen to CD's published by Sony starting next year." This seems a little extreme to me, since sitting at the computer just to listen to music is stupid. What about car stereos and high-fidelity CD players?

Comments

whatever.

[jeffehobbs]

Dear Sony,

We're just going to hack it.

Sincerely,

The Mac and *nix Community

Re:whatever.

[Blkdeath]

Don't you slashdotters understand yet? The music indsutry is trying to obsolete CDs as quickly as possible so that a more "protectable" format can be produced.

While I agree that seems to be their motivation; are they really going to be able to slip that by consumers? 8-tracks and audio casettes went out the window because they were bulky, had poor(by comparison) sound, and their playing quality diminished over time. Audio CDs, however, do not posess any of these technical flaws.

Moreover, at this point consumers have access to so many CD players, not to mention extraordinarily large CD collections (one friend of mine has approximately 900 CDs and growing), that it would be a huge transition. If not an all-at-once thing, surely it'll take them a decade or so.

Even if they DO create a format that, magically, won't allow itself to be digitally reproduced - what's to stop audiophiles from recording and encoding the output stream?

This whole undertaking just sparks of an abortive effort. They attack Napster, a hundred other P2P networks spring up in its place. They create encrypted CDs that can only be played in "{company} approved" devices, and by the release date over 100k people already have the entire contents of the CD. They create DRM on their CDs, people buy a $5.00 cable from their local Radio Shack and circumvent it.

I wonder just how long the record labels are going to survive before they figure out that they, not just their technology, are obsolete.

So what?

[nutznboltz]

This just means the tracks will be ripped via the headphone jack.

Correction:

[vreeker]

"Sony ... will add a new function to music CDs early next year "

Uh... Shouldn't that read "Sony will be removing functions from music CDs?"

What you are seeing

[lexcyber]

Is the recordcompanies last breath before the whole industry dies. They are scared shitless and they dont know what they are going to do. But I dont feel hurt about it. Since record companies can continue their work. But they have to accept that the golden days are over, where they dictate the prices and have multi-thusand percent profitmargins. Record companies, its time to face the real world. With real competition etc.

It's time to get the power of the music back to the artists and the listeners, from profitering bastards!

Revolution!

Another Excuse

[ELCarlsson]

I can see it now. And then when the sales of Sony's CD's starts to drop off more they'll use it as another excuse to go after P2P and file sharing. It's beginning to seem like a lose/lose situation with these people.

I Give Up

[aiabx]

I can't remember whose CD's are playable on my equipment and which manufacturers use which copy protection, so I'm not going to buy anything. It just isn't worth the trouble.
-aiabx

What about Playstation?

[iiioxx]

I wonder if the new Sony CD's will be playable in Sony's PS or PS2? Being a CD and DVD player in addition to being a game station has always been a draw of the PS2 (at least, to budget-conscious consumers, like college students). If not, they just removed one of the PS2's selling points. Seems kind of cannibalistic.

NOT a new copyright method, a new copy PROTECTION

[Jafafa Hots]

A new copy PROTECTION method. The only way there can be a new COPYRIGHT method is via legislation.

not so fast to dismiss the law

[MacAndrew]

Do they trust stupid laws like the DMCA to enforce their silly DRM systems?

Yes.

Remember the DeCCS and Dmitry Sklyarov debacles? Although "someone will hack it," good luck disseminating it and staying out of jail.

The industry does not view these laws as symbolic, and has the lobbying power to see them enforced. There will always be an underground, but it will be economically insignificant, far smaller anyway than the currently easy piracy any high schooler can pull off.

What about ripping from the audio stream, is that illegal too?

It would still be legal under "fair use." But a copyright violation, such as selling the music, would still be a copyright violation, as it damn well should be IMHO (not all artists are rich). Enforcement is not impossible -- for example, Napster; P2P is just farther underground -- but very difficult, like it is now. I doubt it will be long before P2P software is attacked, if it has not already (I don't know).

*

I don't think stealing will work. Stealing is not civil disobedience, anyway, it's just taking what you want because you want it. Piracy is no noble protest. Surely there are better ways, more open ways of protest.

The best that occurs to me, aside from lobbying Congress (ha!), is to boycott the companies, declaring we want fair use back. It's the oldest rule of capitalism: Vote with your feet. If imposing copy protection schemes results in making less money, the industry realize its error a heck of a lot faster than any amount of criticism or lawbreaking. (They'd rather be rich if unpopular.)

Re:not so fast to dismiss the law

[MacAndrew]

I see, I didn't realize your emphasis was on "silly DRM" rather than "enforce." Agreed.

Yes, it does seem dumb, something recognized by public-key encryption: if you rely on a discoverable key for security, you're vulnerable, and passing a law saying "don't look at my key" is pretty futile.

The copy protection is irritating, and so bad business. MP3 recorders are big business, and a lot of people won't realize their new CD's are "defective" until they get home, and they'll be pissed. So I tend to think these schemes will die as economically suicidal. Or I hope so. I find it as offensive as that fscking FBI copy warning I'm forced to watch at the beginning of a DVD -- who thinks that makes a difference to a pirate? Well, the industry does I guess.

I also don't like the precedent of these enforcement mechanisms -- heavy-handed is an understatement.

Re:not so fast to dismiss the law

[Eskarel]

The problem with that theory is that "voting with your feet" doesn't work with the music industry, people have been "voting with their feet" for at least a year now as music sales continue to go down due to lack of decent music and overpriced cd's. If you don't believe this, just think about how many cd's you've bought in the last year as oppposed to years previous and ask yourself why.

This hasn't worked because the industry just blames the loss on people stealing their music and goes on to get more and more mind boggling legislation and implement more crummy copy protection schemes, which like all copy protection schemes inconvenience legitimate users more than they prevent the theft of copyrighted materials.

In my opinion, companies which produce digital media of any kind, cd's dvd's, software, etc have really only a few choices left to them, they can invest in copy protection methods, they can lower the cost and increase the quality and variety of the product they sell, or they can as some software companies seem to do and as the dvd standard certainly did, increase the size of files to a point which effectively limits anything but personal exchanges of burned media.

The first option, which is the one which most companies are likely to pursue is, quite admitedly, a poor option in the long term, not only does it trample on fair use(which they don't like anyway), but it alienates consumers and isn't sustainable in the long run without legislation so draconian it makes the DMCA look like a fluff law. It is however the option which is easiest and cheapest "now", and many the digital media industries may think that in the future they can either create a truly uncopiable media, or that they can get the legislation they need.

The second option, is of course the option which most everyone would prefer, but it is the most difficult to achieve. Lowering costs would involve cutting into profits, and investing in ideas which weren't just derivatives of previously successful groups, or just flashy with no real substance is a risky investment. Personally I strongly believe, as has been posited by other groups, that if digital media, particularly software which is much more expensive and much harder to determine if you actually like it in advance, would sell much better, and get a lot more people willing to take risks on untried products if it were sold at a lower price. This method, which is pretty much the only sustainable option, is very difficult "now", and as such will probably never be implemented by the digital media industries.

The third option which I firmly believe people are actually doing, is just too ludicrous to sustain, and so I won't comment further on it.

The great Slashdot Alarmists

[David Wong]

Guys, corporations do a perfectly good job of screwing us without all your weird-assed exaggerations.

They're putting restrictions on their product, we find it inconvenient. 1) don't go flying off the handle and claiming we can't play their CD's on anything but our PC's, and 2) don't act like some fundamental God-given right has been raped away from you.

It's a product inconvenience, making the product less desirable. The free market always solves these problems in the end. If loss of sales due to these features offsets the sales they're allegedly losing due to P2P, they'll drop it. That's all.

Calm down. You don't have some basic humanitarian right to listen to popular music.

for once, this actually sounds REASONABLE

[CrudPuppy]

prior attempts by th music industry have left people who primarily listen on PC's and high-end cd players out in the cold, because they have relied on garbage parity data to stop copying (which stops playing also)

now this allows the cd to be played in normal dumb cd "players" as well as on a PC while still accomplishing their goal of making it tougher than a normal cd to rip to mp3 and trade.

so, except for the fact that most people actually like trading music for free, it sounds like a pretty good plan.

as an addendum, I will add that I wrote a couple really nasty letters about prior anti-pirating technology because of the 6 players I own, only 1 was capable of playing those protected disks because all others are either in my PC's or are $500+ head units in cars!

It'll backfire on them...

[Kjella]

...as more and more people grow tired of problems, lack of choice in players and incompatibilities. It'll go something like this:

1. Shell out $$$ for protected CD, run into trouble.
2. Store refuses to take it back, claims it's not broken
3. Find mp3 (or ogg or whatever, let's not get int that) on internet, burn a 100% plain vanilla RedBook-compliant Audio CD.
4. Enjoy music.
5. Lesson learned: Next time, skip steps 1 and 2.
6. Record companies complain about increased piracy.
7. Even more protected CDs come out
8. Goto 1 (Basic anyone?)

And, unlike CSS, this isn't really a copy protection. This is just a crude hack to use different ways of interpretating a CD to make life difficult. Sometimes I wish CD-manufacturers would just give us the raw output of the CD, complete with lead-ins, lead-outs, only providing the error data but doing no error calculation of its own. With all the data, and a software ripper that could fix whatever tricks they pull, maybe they would realize just how pointless this is.

Kjella

Put down your mouse, pick up your guitar!!!

[alfredo]

Fuck them, make your own music.

You may even score with a real woman, not some digital recreation.

What about computer obsolescence?

[mobilityguy]

I read the article. Like all the DRM schemes I've seen to date, it still doesn't deal with my biggest question: What happens when my computer gets old?

A computer, over its useful life, can accumulate thousands of dollars worth of digital rights. Bought at $1 or even $20 apiece they don't seem like much, but it all adds up. When my computer gets old (or eats its hard drive), and I buy a new one, how do I transfer those rights which are specifically designed to be non-transferable? Am I violating the DMCA by even trying?

Do DRM keys survive a backup/restore? How about a disk-to-disk sector copy?

Think of it in today's terms: You go out tomorrow and buy a new computer. Before you can boot it for the first time, you must call the RIAA. They send a truck around that picks up your entire CD collection and takes it away to be crushed.

And if the stuff you like isn't popular enough, and the record companies haven't decided to keep it in print, forget about ever getting your hands on it again. Oh well, you'll always have your memories.

DRM is new now, but we should be discussing what happens when it matures. Until someone invents a key ring technology for digital rights, I'm buying nothing with copy protection.

Immature

[Dogtanian]

DRM is new now, but we should be discussing what happens when it matures.

Depends on what you mean by matures; attitudes towards DRM don't seem particularly "mature" to me. Short of turning every western country into a draconian state with no freedom to do anything `unapproved' with a computer (including all those embedded ones) - a lot of hard work if you ask me - the music and film industries will *never* be able to change things back to how they were before.
'Mature' DRM would exploit new media, not attempt to suffocate it (current DRM technology just reflects these attitudes). But I think there are too many vested interests in the old way of doing things...

Until someone invents a key ring technology for digital rights, I'm buying nothing with copy protection.

I'm not doing that either. I'll just wait until someone cracks the protection and get a copy of that instead. More useful for me, but no money in that for Mr.Sony (*sob*! Just picture the faces of his ickle kiddies when there's no food on the table- remember, MP3 KILLS CHILDREN. JUST SAY NO.)

Sony can go to hell until they stop trying to charge me 10 times to listen to 1 CD where *they* want me to listen to it.

Re:This sure makes me want to be a Sony consumer

[Gumshoe]

Am I stealing? Yes, yes I am

No, no you're not. However, you areviolating copyright law. Big, big difference.

Copyright != Copy Protection

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

I'm suprised this mistake was not caught. The article has nothing to do with a new copyright system, which is a legal fiction. The article is about a new copy protection/restriction system.

This appears to actually be part of the copyright cartel's plan. First they twist the meaning of Pirate to include bootlegging, now copy protection becomes copyright, giving it a whole new outlook.