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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?
No, dude, they are _not_ CDs.
If you read the article, you might see your questions answered.
Dear Sony,
We're just going to hack it.
Sincerely,
The Mac and *nix Community
This just means the tracks will be ripped via the headphone jack.
LinuxGate.Sourceforge.net!
"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?"
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!
- To understand recursion, we must first understand recursion -
You guys did it to yourselves, by downloading all those mp3s from Napster/Kazaa/Gnutella, etc., you've given Sony the impression that you only listen to music in front of your computer.
You got what you wanted, sorry.
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 use my computer to create .ogg files of the CD's I have here. When I start my computer, XMMS starts playing, and I like having constant music.
Another thing I do, is create backups from my CD's (after a tip from another Slashdot reader). That way, I don't have to be afraid of scratches, since I always have my original CD.
These are examples of fair use - if a company limits our rights to fair use, can we sue them then? IANAL, bue maybe one of you is (poor you, of course...)
Teenagers these days don't have as much sex as they want each other to think they do.
What about low fidelity CD players? And all of those middle-range ones? Cheapskates have a right to music, too!
(I'm being an idiot, please move along)
SME's new Label Gate CD consists of two kinds of music data -- one is data for audio devices to replay and the other is encoded compressed data for PCs to replay.
Of course, since some car CD players work on the same principle as PC CD players, they would be unusable.
I normally play my CDs in the car. I have more or less stopped buying CDs altogether. Go Figure.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
http://ukcdr.org/
This is an active campaign to try to stop this kind of evil action by corporations who insist they are the injured party when charging ripoff pricing for their goods and using graft to stop anything at all ever falling out of copyright and into the public domain where all works finally belong.
Take a look at their site at least, consider joining the mailing list.
screw this.
bring back the 8-track.
-
By removing the ability to play CD's on normal CD players they are just giving people incentive to abandon buying them altogether. Stoooopid.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
I can't believe they would be this clueless...don't they realize that if Linux could play DVD's there wouldn't be as much of an argument (or need) for decss? If they just took our fair use rights into account (play it under linux, play it on the computer, on my mp3 player, on my car stereo and so on) nobody would ever need to break their damn encryption.
If you argue that it makes it too easy to copy their work, well, then what they have is an unworkable business model. It's like sheet music. For the really big orchestras who are playing the works of composers who are under copyright protection, they have to buy expensive scores. High-visibility = doing it the right way. This would be equivalent to using music in movies and games and such. On the other hand, if you're going for private lessons, and you need a copy of the blue bells of scotland, the prices of the real thing are going to be cheap enough to make it not worth the trouble of copying it from someone else. This is equivalent to consumers and cd's.
Believe me, I'm all for protection of intellectual property. However, when protection just isn't possible without harassing researchers, threatening consumers, and forcing us to get our songs in a crippled format, it's time for our government to say: "Good luck with that whole music industry thing, you're on your own."
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
SME plans to charge about A5200 (US$1.64) per song for the second time onwards ... so in other words, they are charging for you to be able to store your song on your computer. You have to pay $20 per CD. Nobody is going to use this service, I hope they realize. With that effort, they might as well just take a CD player and put it next to their computer. Voila, free music!
Oh, and this will be hacked within a week of its' release. The data can probably be intercepted somewhere in the soundcard on the way to the speaker...
I'm sure they (I mean Sony et al, not just Sony) are working on a system where the consumer has to pay for every time (s)he listens to a CD (s)he purchased, even if it's played in a regular CD-player.
-- Cheers!
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
Just this guy, you know?
MemoryGate...
;-)
MagicGate...
LabelGate...
If they start doing per-use billing, will they have a brand "BillGate" and will those "BillGates" then cause a huge lawsuit to be launched by our favourite WA resident?
-psy
Wow, I sure do want to buy some Sony discs now.
I can't wait for the music industry to implode. An abusive power (whether in goverment (old school) or coporate (new school)) must be subverted. Funny thing. I just went to the library yesterday from which I had ordered eight discs I've been wanting. Spent an hour or so last night ripping copies of them to give to myself as a holiday present.
Am I stealing? Yes, yes I am.
Do I feel badly about it? No, no I don't.
How come? Because the media companies have so far overstepped the boundaries of decency, that I have lost the ability to feel their pain.
Isn't there one executive at one of these companies who has the slightest idea or vision of how this is going to work out?
Finally, I agree with the poster who said simply that this will be hacked. It will indeed be hacked and it's likely that it will be hacked before the discs are widely available. Then the music will be on p2p and the system will continue to dissolve and fade away.
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
If we had not become so used to being walked all over little by little by the record companies, this would be strongly and outrageously objected to by the affected communities. Imagine if we had not been introduced to the so far lame and piecemeal anti-copying/playing tech that exists at the moment, and Sony comes up with an announcement like this - there would be wide real-world public outrage!
To ostracise computing communities in this way is nothing short of disgusting - and it should be corporate responsibility to bring all under the same umbrella. Will this be a good thing or a bad thing for Sony? I do't know, but what I do know is that from the moment this technology is used Sony will have lost one CD-purchasing consumer (me) simply becasue of my choice of computing platform (Macintosh). Does this affect me? Well, slightly yes it does, but I am sure that if I want a song bad enough there will be a way for me to get it, but on the whole I'm hoping it affects Sony more than anyone else.
Mac users (and possible Linux users?) are a very media-based group of people, there are so many Mac-based graphic designers, film editors, 3d artists, animators etc. These creative people love music! The two go hand in hand! So what are these people going to do in the CD-store? Are they going to change their computing platform so they can listen to music on their machines, or simply not buy the (Sony) CD?
I simply don't get how this could be a *benefit* to Sony.
We should speak out about restrictive technologies such as these - is there a consolidated action group for such things? If so, where can I join?
-Nex
This sig has been deprecated.
What happens to Sony brand CD-Players? I have one that cannot be firmware upgraded.... dear sony - please send me a new CD Player.
===> An eye for an eye makes everyone blind - MG
How is this +2, Informative? The article clearly states that the standard music tracks are also protected by DRM and are unplayable in computers, which also has been shown to mean that they don't work in any decent CD player. The point of this format is that Sony is "graciously" "allowing" people with computers to listed to their music on both their boombox AND their computer (for only an additional $1.64).
I can crack it in 7 notes....
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
This is pretty indicative of what the entertainment industry really wants. They have now realised how people like to use their computers as a means of getting entertainment and decided to cash in, but it's got to be on THEIR terms... they don't want you to have a general purpose computer. They see your computer as just another content-delivery device. They want to control it - you use your computer for what Sony/Microsoft/AOL etc say you can, no more, no less. Want to run Linux, back your CDs up? You're a thief! Or possibly a communist! Or both!
:(
The sad thing is, too many people will just shrug and go "OK then", and sit there and be fed third-rate entertainment, have ads forced down their throats, and not notice or care while all their rights are taken away one by one
Didn't anyone even read the posting or article that it referred to before putting thisstuff up on slashdot???
1. This is not a copyright system, it's a copy protection system.
2. It doesn't prevent people from playing CD's in analog players altogether. The music available in two forms on the CD, one inteneded for traditional CD players in a copy protected format, and one for PC's, also copy protected.
3. This only applies to 12 cm CD singles produced in Japan.
RTFA. "All 12-centimeter CD singles by Japanese artists rolling out from SME's group record companies are expected to be Label Gate CDs from Jan. 22." NOT All Sony CDs, just some Japanese ones.
Cowboy Neal: "What about car stereos and high- fidelity CD players?"
RTFA: "SME's new Label Gate CD consists of two kinds of music data -- one is data for audio devices to replay and the other is encoded compressed data for PCs to replay."
Maybe the audio data won't play on car and hifi CD players, but if not it's not by design.
This is flatout lying. They are not REMOVING the audiotracks that are currently there. They are adding a SECOND set of tracks with DRM.
Next you're going to publish an article that says "Hollywood removes films, only sells extra stuff" because there's a 4CD set of LOTR.
I may not agree with Sony's copyright protection methodology, but after all, they are THEIR copyrights and they can do any stupid thing with them they want. And I wouldn't post an article here flat out LYING about what their doing, just because i think they are stupid.
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.
It's not a copyright system. Copyright is a matter of law, not technology.
This is a copy protection system.
This days i trust the printed (legal) cd's better than the copies. They are usually better material quality and they play everywhere.
But with all this crap they are pushing into the printed cd's, it is going to be a good policy to just avoid them and trust the copies.
If you come across a copy of a music cd, you know that the person who copied it made the effort to remove the restrictions placed on it.
Therefore in the future, there will be less trouble with copies than with original discs!
Also, an album downloaded from the internet will have more value that a original one because it will play everywhere once you burn it!
I think this is gonna backfire on them.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
A new copy PROTECTION method. The only way there can be a new COPYRIGHT method is via legislation.
This space available.
So from what I can tell, if each of the Big 5 use a similar scheme that means that if I want to play an album from each of them I would need _5_ players, since they aren't going to use an open standard or at least a closed shared one. I think this, more than anything, will turn people off. I do not use anything other than winamp to listen to my mp3's and I don't want to have to install 5 applications and also switch between those 5 to listen to my music.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
Oh no! I can't listen to crappy mass-marketed mainstream boy bands on my computer anymore! I guess I'll just have to stick with quality deep house on vinyl and listen to them on my Technics SL-1200M3D's ;)
(let's see them try to DRM that. muahhaha)
Chaos, Mayhem, and Destruction: Not
Too bad that's not what the article says in any way, shape, or form.
Too bad that you don't understand CD player technology in any way, shape, or form.
Many high-end audio CD players use CD-ROM drive mechanisms which will be confused by the new formats such that they won't read the audio tracks. The same is true of many in-dash card CD players, which are often based on laptop CD-ROM mechanisms. Consider the JVC that I have in my car. It plays audio CDs, MP3 CD-ROMs, and will read CD-R and R/W discs. It will, almost certainly, not be able to play the new copy protected discs that Sony is releasing.
...the Windows users are the majority of the people who use file-sharing systems to share music anyway...
Alcohol and Calculus don't mix. Don't drink and derive.
I'm not surprised at all that it only supports windows. Sony is a Japanese company, and it looks like they are rolling out this protection scheme on a lot of their Japanese cd's. Despite recent reports of Japanese ministries looking into open-source, the vast majority of personal computer owners in Japan have windows. And at least in the Japanese market, I don't think that Sony will see as much backlash, as the piracy rates are much lower, and most people I know in Japan who make copies of a cd copy it to MD so that they can play it in their car or give it to a friend.
Let's make sure that Sony feels the pain in other markets.
Quote from this article: They [M$ researchers] also conclude that the gradual spread of CD and DVD burners will help thwart any attempts to control what the public can do with the music they buy.
you joke, but it pretty much isnt the same sony. A corporation of this size has so many divisions that each has no clue what the others are doing.
A computer without a Microsoft operating system is like a dog without bricks tied to its head
Dream on. If every Unix and Mac user in the world never bought another Sony CD, I doubt Sony would notice. What would they lose? A few percentage points of the market? The Windows market is the only market they care about.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
...I guess I'm gonna have to stock up on black permanent markers. ;)
as typical, I don't get the info I want to know.
So this thing is really multisession CD, 1 audio session and one (encrypted) data session. How does this prevent me from listening to it on linux? Even if it's multisession, I should be able to rip to audio tracks digitally.
Is this a ploy for Sony to create the APPEARANCE of proprietary music, trying to get consumers to buy useless software from Sony so Sony can 0wn them?
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
The ability to circumvent this "new" form of copy protection is already present in most PCs. A typical CD-ROM has a four-wire analog audio connector in the back next to the IDE cable. Connect that up to the Audio In port on a soundcard. Instead of ripping tracks via CDDA, you can rip tracks by hitting the often-ignored Play button on the front of your CD-ROM and running something simple like sndrec32 in Windows to record the results
Thats how we used to do it back in ye olden days before direct CDDA ripping was popular.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
What we need are utterly stupid CD data drives. The board on the drive will do nothing more than spin the cd, move the heads, and read and write data at the lowest possible level. Absolutely all functions of the drive should be implemented in software. If cdparanoia can control the every tiny thing that goes on in the drive then this sort of scheme is done. It will only take a few days for a new driver to be written every time another one of these schemes comes out. I wouldn't be surprised if EE students don't start hacking existing drives to behave in just this way. Saaaay, that's even better. Hack in an "utterly stupid" mode for direct ripper control.
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.)
It's time to get the power of the music back to the artists and the listeners, from profitering bastards!
I'm sure I'm missing something here, but how does exactly taking whatever an artist produces for free without their permission give power back to the artist? In this Brave New World where we all get our entertainment for nothing, who pays the artists to produce the music in the first place? I guess Britney could pay her production costs out of her pocket money, but it's going to be hard to produce films with no budget...
Virtually serving coffee
Actually your more of a communist than they are. They are capitalist pigs wanting to milk every cent out of the consumer as possible. You on the other hand want to them to do something that would make it easier for their goods to be shared equally among the masses. I'm not calling you a communist, or even saying that your line of thinking is wrong, just that you have a strange definition of communism. I agree whole hearedly that people will just go ahead and record from the output of a stereo. It's kind of stupid to have all this fancy protection in DVD and CDs when anybody can just go to the store and by a "decoder ring" for the thing. The output from a CD and DVD player will always be grabbable data near as I can tell. Quality would suffer much less if you didn't use a mic on the PC though. Why wouldn't you just run the stereo out to the audio in jack on your PC via a cable?
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.
Phallic Symbols in LOTR
If this doesn't play in Sony's own Playstation and/or Playstation 2
"Hey slashdirt, or whatever you is, we'd like you to, ah, share all the information you have on this Jeff guy. He says we want trouble, we'll show him trouble. We'll make him an offer he can't refuse."
-- da recording industry*
*translate into legalese
are clearly, and historically, test beds to gauge the possibility of universal application.
You can bet your favorite pair of Wellies that if the public swallows this without a hiccup the technique will spread throughout the Sony line.
I mean, you don't really think that an entire copy protection scheme was developed and implimented *just* to protect a Charlie Pride disc, do you?
Of course that disc didn't do so well. My guess is that much to Sony's chagrin the public, even in Japan, are going to gag and puke on this one.
KFG
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!
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
I used to buy CDs. I'd download a song from Napster, like it, and buy the CD. Honestly.
Now I'm afraid to buy CDs. Will it work in my computer? Will it damage my computer? And on top of that, I'm upset by their foolish antics. Yes, Gnutella/Kazaa/etc. are driving their profits into the ground. But it was the RIAA themselves that caused it. I'd have a lot more CDs on my desk (and even more on my Christmas 'list') right now if I wasn't so worried about buying CDs. I wish they would look more closely at what they're doing -- they're essentially driving themselves out of business, and then passing legislation to try to cure their bad business moves, which only drives them further into the ground...
________________________________________________
suwain_2
As for "leaving out in the cold", I don't see why you shouldn't be able to get at the CD audio tracks with a computer CD player--upcoming players will almost certainly let you get at the multiple disk directories that companies like Sony are using for "copy prevention".
In any case, even if Sony has a strong copy prevention method, hat's just more incentive to copy the music through an analog channel once. After that, you never have to deal with Sony's hare-brained copy prevention schemes again.
Or maybe Sony's protection exploits the hardware standards of today's CD-ROM drives (ATAPI?)
Glad I still have that old CD-Fiche with the custom interface and the Mitsumi drive with special interface. Maybe old hardware could be used to preserve our rights under fair use.
Guess we'll find out...
Guess I wont be buying any Sony mis-labeled CDs in the future.
True *I* may have one in realty, but I don't in my car.. or while I'm in the park.. I do have friends with out any PC at all..
Yes I could pirate a copy and install windows ( see I don't own a copy.. nor do I use it ) then find a way to rip them onto cdR, but screw them if they want to make things nearly impossible to **legally** use..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
- Ally McBeal (Television Soundtrack)
- Michael Bolton
- Mariah Carey
- Bing Crosby
- Europe
- Footloose (15th Anniversary Collectors' Edition) (Various)
- Engelbert Humperdinck
And That's just up to the H's. I'm sorry, but they can pry my Bing out of my cold dead hands.PS - "Zinglebert Bambledack!"
"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face, it's just a goddamned piece of paper!" - George W. Bush Nov. 2005
Here's yet another example. (I submitted this various forms to the /. editor gods 3 times in the last two days, but they don't seem to think it worthy of your attention) :
According to this article , Universal Vivendi will be making 43,000 tracks available for sale, at $0.99/track, on 28 different web sites (that will get commissions for the sales). In what can best be described as a monumental example of still not getting it, UMG will be selling the tracks in the proprietary DRM hobbled Liquid Audio format . A quote in the article from a UMG unit president demonstrates that years of listening to the kind of stuff big labels sell does indeed damage the hearing (and possibly the corporate brain) when he said (please try not to laugh too hard, folks) "We have listened to the public, and we are offering the music that people want at a reasonable price that fairly compensates the artists, songwriters and [other] individuals who make their living in the music industry". Apparently UMG thinks that a restricted format is what the public wants. As to "fairly compensating artists (and) songwriters", I have yet to hear any UMG artists announce that their contracts have been ripped up. Just to double check that last point, I looked outside - there is still only one moon in the sky.
Finally, for the 3 of you that don't also peruse the Register, here's an interesting item that the music industry should pay attention to: File swap nets will win, DRM and lawyers lose, say MS researchers
It seems that the harder the music industry tries to resist, the more likely it is that they're writing their own epitaphs.
Sigs are bad for your health.
You've seen Embedded Windows in cash registers, phones, and other hand-held devices. This is going to become more wide-spread as the masses that use Windows on their desktop think it cool to pick up a Microsoft Windows XP Powered audio system for their car. That will enable you to play these in other systems.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
They are the ones that truly get screwed in this whole DRM/p2p/etc mess.
We get around protection..
We buy less to protest. But they still profit grossly on the ones that are still bought.
Labels will push the reduced sales as being caused by *perceived piracy* as an excuse to pay even less in royalties then they do now and its obscene what they do the artists already.
Plus they use the incorrect 'facts' to help get more restrictive legislation passed and attack their customers even more.
Any other industry that had war declared on their consumers would collapse in an instant.. Why should the RIAA/MPAA be any different?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I know the original saying is "Extraordinary Claims Requires Extraordinary Evidendence", but in your case, you're leaving the rest of us scratching our heads. You're assuming we know too much, so I've listed some questions to help you elaborate.
1. Are you partly saying because Sony manufactures hardware and the copy protection, it will be picked up and implemented?
2. Which SPECIFIC horizontal markets are you talking about, and WHY are they the way to go?
3. If Microsoft supports everything off of Windows sales, are you saying Sony will support everything off thier CD sales???
4. What does your Conglomo link mean? It looks like a fan website. HOW does this tie into Sony?
5. A Record label offers them more? What's them?
6. What's the blank before "Profit. Massively."?
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
...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
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Fuck them, make your own music.
You may even score with a real woman, not some digital recreation.
photosMy Photostream
This new program essentially removes one of MiniDisc's largest selling points. I wonder if they plan to phase out the format? If so, it really screws consumers for portable music choices, as all these copy-protection schemes circumvent mp3 players as well. This will definitely hurt new CD sales worse than any P2P method, especially in urban markets, where most consumers want to listen to the stuff on headphones. Worse still, it might reinvigorate the market for blank cassette tapes, which MiniDisc was originally designed to replace. Go figure.
Maybe that's the grand plan-to force us all back into the analog age. Oh joy.
THE GOOD HUMOR MAN CAN ONLY BE PUSHED SO FAR
Bart Simpson on chalkboard in episode 2F18
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.
I know the original saying is "Extraordinary Claims Requires Extraordinary Evidendence", but in your case, you're leaving the rest of us scratching our heads. You're assuming we know too much, so I've listed some questions to help you elaborate.
:) Ah well. It's a big company in a kid's cartoon. In fact, it's the only company in the kid's cartoon and it makes and sells everything. Name from conglomeration.
1. Are you partly saying because Sony manufactures hardware and the copy protection, it will be picked up and implemented?
No, the other way round. I'm saying that hardware sells anyway, and Sony, due to their presence in both the music media and music device industries can use influence in one to help out the other.
2. Which SPECIFIC horizontal markets are you talking about, and WHY are they the way to go?
Music. From distribution, through music hardware to normal pc hardware to copy protection software.
3. If Microsoft supports everything off of Windows sales, are you saying Sony will support everything off thier CD sales???
No, the other way round. CD sales are the endangered market at the moment, with sales dropping off. Artists are going to start losing money, and they don't want that at all. So if Sony can offer then better royalties by signing the to record on Sony copy-protected media, they will be happy. And to listen to the music we will have to buy the Sony hardware, making Sony a profic on both sides of the fence, and helping to keep the CD sales afloat.
4. What does your Conglomo link mean? It looks like a fan website. HOW does this tie into Sony?
Never saw Rocko's Modern Life then?
5. A Record label offers them more? What's them?
artists. more money.
6. What's the blank before "Profit. Massively."?
I included spoilers in the original post... that bit with the '*' on it..?
Basically, I am trying to point out how Sony is aligning itself to play the music market, both in terms of media and electronics, by the prodution of this closed copy protection mechanism, and how throwaway comments like 'the recording industry is scared shitless' are shortsighted and naive. Large companies have clever people in them that devote all day every day to planning a successful future for their company, and people shouldn't throw out their 5-minute's-worth-of-thought opinion like it's God's Own Truth.
Does that help?
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Their remaining innovation seems mostly directed at dumping crippled products on their customers. They push proprietary "standards" like SDMI and invent new ways to lock up the tripe they press on CDs. And, just like Microsoft, if there's an industry standard, it's a good bet Sony is pushing a competing technology.
Sony still lets the engineers out once in a while, to create products like the Aibo. It has little commercial significance, but it keeps their image polished. In their profit-making lines, they're coasting on their reputation. They still command premium prices, but the value behind the logo is gone. Substance and performance have been replaced with frills and flash.
Like most companies, some Sony products are very good, some are junk, most are so-so. Unfortunately, even the decent stuff may have proprietary bells and whistles that increase costs or limit compatibility. The Sony brand used to top shoppers' buying lists. Now, unless you know a product well, the Sony brand is best avoided.
IMHO, YMMV, etc.
SME's new Label Gate CD consists of two kinds of music data -- one is data for audio devices to replay and the other is encoded compressed data for PCs to replay.
So it will play in regular CD players. This is probably just the same crap you can use a pen to remove with a special sony brand name like "iLink" for firewire.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Then I can play all grandfather's Don Ho albums!
He had an 8-track player in his car that he inherited, I remember it 30+ years later. What a remarkable piece of, uh, technology.
Heck of nice guy though! RIP (no, not in the MP3 sense).
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Hey, you're talking about millions of users. Millions of users mean millions of dollars. Ask Apple with their well-received iPod (now available for the PC) whether Mac users (1) have money and (2) listen to music.
... dollars. The US kind that are worth more than other dollars (at the moment anyhow). Really.
I wish Sony all the worst and am glad my CD collection was "completed" when I got pissed off at the ridiculous prices several years ago.
But hey guys, clean up your act and I'll rush out and spends
Looks like starting next year, Sony music will be left out in the cold by my wallet.
I'm not going to buy anything that won't play in the player and manner of my choice.
Corporatism != Free Market
Label Gate sounds an awful lot like the word Watergate.... hmmmm conspiracy between Sony and Microsoft? You decide....
This seems a little extreme to me, since sitting at the computer just to listen to music is stupid.
I guess that shows you've never had a real job in an office. They don't take too kindly to people blaring their stereo throughout the day.
Don't use Style Sheets - it makes web pages unreadable in Microsoft Internet Explorer.
First of all it should say "they make" not "it makes" and second of all, wtf are you talking about?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
If I cannot listen to the CD I buy, I'll just stop buying them and start downloading them on the Net in a format my computer *can* read (mp3, ogg). And don't tell me they won't be available online, just type "Muse hullabaloo" in your favorite P2P client and enjoy. This album was supposed to be copy protected.
I hope major vendors will wake up someday and stop acting like stupid. This type of action is just what we are waiting for to justify (well, not legally, but morally) music trading.
theefer
All of these cd copy protections could be defeated using a virtual audio cable. That's good for me because I like to fit 10-12 albums (that I ALREADY OWN) onto 1 cd for my rio volt player in my car.
'When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.' -HST
I am a Mac user and the great thing about the free market is that if Sony produces a CD that I can't listen to on my latop when traveling, then I am not going to buy it. In fact the the last 2 albums I bought were George Carlin's Nalpam and Silly Putty and the Episode II soundtrack. Why? Becuase the price doesn't warrent me paying for most CD's. Although Apple's iPod has the best DRM system yet, a little sticker that says, "Don't steal Music".
Remember when Tapes were about USD 10 and CD's were USD 12? It made sense, CD's were new, and in theory should last forever, plus their quality and portablity was far better. But then CD's were 13.99, then 14.99, then 15.99, then 16.99, and now an average CD not on sale is about what, 18 Dollars? Cd's have gone up in price faster than inflation, at least that was what one of my fellow students discovered and reported in his honors Econ Project last year. So what do I do to price gauging corperations? Don't buy their products. Now if a system ever comes online that promotes a fair price to download music, I would use it. Say USD 1 or even 1.50 a song. Hell I know people that pay 1.5 pounds for a ringtone on their cell phone. So that's not asking much. The biggest mistake the RIAA made was going after Napster instead of working with them to produce a viable solution for music on demand.
I maybe buy 1 CD a year. Although some times I buy CD's from organizations that use the money, like the Madison Scouts Drum Corps because I am wierd and like that type of music and from personal Drum Corps expirance I know they provide a good community service. So I get some music I like AND help the community, score +2.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
... Play the mp3 in the car. Does the trend reverse?
It would be more like Sony will shoot themselfes in the foot since there would be more motivation to rip the music from their CDs since that will be the only option if you want to listen to your music on the road or where you don't have a computer.
It's not going to carry the Compact Disc Logo. This is all dandy if you actually look for the logo while your CD shopping but it raises an interesting question:
Are these DRM enabled "discs" going to be sold and displayed with regular run-of-the-mill CD's with no DRM on them?
*walks into a CD store and picks up a cd* Now, am i supposed to know weither or not this particular disc i picked up is a "standard" disc or not?
The average six-pack joe isn't going to be looking for any logos or identifiers when purchasing a CD. Their looking for Artist and Album title, they want to find that disc they want, and be on their way.
If the boneheads at various CD retailers mix the DRM and the non-DRM discs together, it's only going to create a massive headache for Joe (or Jane!) when they go home, plop the disc in the high-end audio player or computer.
What they *should* do is seperate the DRM enabled discs from the CDs and put them in their own racks with clear labels. You wouldn't mix DVDs in the racks of CDs now would you? It's the same concept.
Though, of course they aren't going to do this. Why you ask? Because they don't want the average Joe or Jane walking in a store and seeing that clearly labeled rack of DRM music discs sticking out like a sore thumb. No sir. Every geek on the planet would see that DRM rack as a hotbed for cracking the labels' oh so precious "discs".
Not only that, but who in the right mind would WANT TO BUY A CRIPPLED DISC WHEN YOU CAN BUY NON-CRIPPED "CDs"IN THE SAME STORE?? If that happened, Brittney Spears and J-Lo disc sales would pummel and the execs over at the fearsome 5 would be pulling their fingers out of their asses just long enough to point at P2P for all their woes.
Being innovative isn't always easy, but it can be done from time to time. (Some *cough* companies use that word, Innovate like they invented it) And If the labels *really* put their heads together, they could find a balance between consumer happiness and profit margins.
But no, the labels aren't individual music companies, they are a *cartel*, which makes it easy to take the stupid route over the fair one.
And take a look at that pricing! From what it reads it costs $1.64 to obtain a key for *each* track on the disc. Since the average CD holds around 10 songs, that equates to $16.40! when you just nearly plopped that much down for the disc itself, just to be able to transfer from the CD to the hard drive or mobile player. (i'm pretty sure this is how it reads, correct me if necessary)
I'll say this in the labels' defense: They should be allowed to make money too, and not have their goods ripped off. That concept i'm familar with. Some would say: "Well DRM wouldn't be here if people like you wouldn't steal songs via p2p, tough luck" And then some others would say: "I only want to privately copy my CDs as a backup or to transfer them to my portable player. Its *NOT* fair, considering how much i pay for the music."
There's a fine line between those two concepts.
Granted, the RIAA's profit margins are dropping, and with it, comsumers' rights to fair use of what they purchased.
But what does Dell do when their profits get eaten by Gateway? What does the RIAA do when their profits lag and free songs can be found on p2p at the cost of only the time to download them?
Lower the price and add more value to your item. Offer incentives, extras to lure the consumer, not to bite their heads off and rob them. If a company did that, they wouldn't survive long. (unless they held a monopoly or catel *sighs*)
People said this before, (I know i did) but I and you know that ain't gonna happen. So what happens now? Pretty much what has been happing. Hackers are gonna keep at hacking the DRM, and people are gonna use p2p, just like they have been.
At some point something's going to break. Someone will blink, which will be the defining moment and bring this topic to a head. Either the RIAA wises up to it's consumers' wants or p2p users will be hunted down and tossed in jail one by one until no one's left to steal music. (Side note: there won't be anyone left to by CDs either heh)
And what about the innocient people cought in the crossfire who don't necessarly agree p2p music sharing but want to still retain the right to privately back up their CDs and play them whenever they want? They're the ones getting screwed over the most. The RIAA already taxes CD-Rs, they gonna tax my next shiny PC because it may not have a DRM-enabled MS palladium OS?
I wish this would have been settled by now. I guess with any revolution, it takes a good while for any headway to be made, for which ever side you may be rooting for.
Wait and see.
A Penny for my thoughts? Here's my two cents. I got ripped off!
Wait... this combination has consistently been a failure for them... this wont last long.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Ahrrr matey!!
No copy protection in the world works because of the impossibility to code analog signals. Lets say i have bought a Super Ultra MeGa Sony Copy Protected Unbreakable disc from my local shop. It wont play in my car or portable. I try and i find no way of breaking it.
What do i do then?
I take out my best soundcard and plug the device playing the friggin disc into it. Since most A/D cnverters today is of pretty good quality i can rip and crunch the disc into whatever format i like and not many will be able to tell the difference between the original and my digital copy. I have to do a lot of hassle to use the disc legally and the pirates wont even notice the so called copy protection. They just buy a nice little studio soundcard with S/N ratio of about 106 Db. No sane person will ever hear the difference of an mp3 made from analog source compared from one made from digital source.
Score.
Me (the pirate) 0
Sony (the idiots) 0
Pirates (the aRRRRR) 1
To me i can only see that Sonys customers get screwed and the pirates, well they wont notice. As stated many times before (Sony, get this into your thick skulls) PIRATING is a SOCIAL problem!
Something is wrong between you and your customers, fix it damnit.
HTTP/1.1 400
First let me state I bought it for the girlfriend :)
Anyway, like the acticle description of Sony's technique, the CD plays in a normal CD player, or a DVD player, however when put into a PC it autoruns and starts a little, quite good looking player, and plays the CD using this player.
Now if I use Media Player, or Real to play the CD, it still works, but if I try to rip the CD, each track errors about 5 seconds in.
By the looks of things, the CD based player software has digital versions of the songs embedded in it. According to the player the tracks are encoded at 47kps.
It's clearly labelled as "Copy Controlled" on the front and back of the CD. It is not described anywhere on the media as a "CD", nor does the Phillip's logo appear. Minimum listed specs are Windows 95, Pentium II, 4Mb RAM. But as you can still play it using your normal computer, I guess those specs are for their little specific player.
The point of all this? None really, it does stop you ripping the music, but it's still playable from everywhere else, your CD player, your DVD, or your own player software. Almost seems reasonable when you think about it.
I understand the concerns of wanting to copy protect CDs. The thing that this industry doesn't understand is, the ability to copy CDs doesn't make their records sell less. In fact, I've bought more CDs because of mp3s, oggs, and copied CDs that people have given me, than from any other introduction method ever. However, this is getting rediculous. It's gone away from copy-protection, and turned into a serious violation of fair use. I haven't bought a CD from a national distributor in over a year out of protest of the RIAA. And I plan on keeping it that way. The music industry can suck it. Unless they relax their copy protection, and lower their prices, they can kiss my ass. I urge the rest of you to boycott as well.
Instant Karma's gonna get you...
More restrictions on cd's. ...etc
Less people buy.
Record companies cry thier profits are down.
More restrictions on cd's.
With the proper low-level drivers, you can read raw data off the CD. We've already seen third-party Windows drivers to allow you to rip Cacrus CDs. These sound just like Cactus CDs with ISO 9660 tracks added. Reading the raw device under *nix might evn work for many cd drives. This sounds like a simple and non-clever "solution" with many simple and non-clever counter-solutions.
Copyright Violation:"theft, piracy"::Anti-Trust Violation:"thermonuclear price terrorism"<-Overly dramatic language.
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.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Acknowlege it and move on.
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
The first download of the electronic key that goes with a CD is free. SME plans to charge about A5200 (US$1.64) per song for the second time onwards, Ide said. Users cannot opt to just decode one song from a CD, but have to purchase the key for the entire CD, he said.
Why are they even trying? Off the top of my head I can get at this data by using...
Oh, what's that? The player is Windows only? That's OK, use WINE to translate the Windows API calls into easy-to-tinker with UNIX calls. Same steps above apply under WINE you know (and why stop there? Think about Counter-Strike cheats)
Hmm, it doesn't run under WINE? No problem, VMWare to the rescue!
Oh, you're not a programmer you say? That's alright. Just hook your sound card output to a recorder instead.
Or put a tape recorder up to your speakers for that retro teenage 80s style pirate action.
Basically, it has been cracked before it has even been released. It is hopeless and will just inconvenience casual users at best. If anything, casual users will now start seeking ways to rip the content, causing them to become better acquainted with how to break copy control.
If I'm understanding you correctly, you're just plain wrong. I have had a Clie for over a year, the one with the mp3 player, a 710 converted to a 760.
If you have a white memory stick, it will play only the ATRAC format. These memory sticks are rare, and I have never seen one sold in the US. Occasionally, they'll pop up on ebay. I'm free to convert my mp3's to ATRAC on my pc with the included software (obviously, not ideal but it works) and I can rip my CD's straight to ATRAC. Also, you are able to copy tracks from the memory stick to a PC, just stick it in any MS reader, including a CLIE setup as a drive on your PC.
If you have a purple memory stick, you can play mp3's or ATRAC on the Clie. Every memory stick I've seen sold in the US is purple.
So as far as DRM on the CLIE, its virtually nonexistant unless you go out of your way to find a white memory stick.
Can be found here: http://www.digitalforbruger.dk.
It's a product inconvenience, making the product less desirable. The free market always solves these problems in the end.
What free market?
You seem to be under the illusion that music is an undifferentiated market where all the products are interchangeable like wheat or crude oil. This is known in economics as perfect competition. Sadly, it doesn't happen in most real-world products people buy. The market for music is an imperfect competition, and it's hardly an open market right now.
Instead there is an oligopoly controlling music currently. All it takes is for the major members of the RIAA to band up together to introduce a scheme like this (which they are all in the process of doing) and 99% of the music you hear on the radio will only be accessible via this format.
Then what? Where does your average consumer get their Christina Aguilera, their Faith Hill, their Enimem, etc.? What competing publisher publishes the particular artists and even whole genres that they like? No one does. There isn't a wide variety of sources from which to get an artist's song that you like. Oh, if you're "indy," you can go underground to the local artist from your city, but 90%+ of the population likes what they hear on the radio, and what they hear on the radio is what the RIAA pays independent promoters to have them play.
So what if people buy less CDs because the TCO is higher? As long as they pay the same total amount of money, the RIAA is doing well. Heck, it even saves them money because they don't have to promote nearly as many artists if fewer CDs will make them more money through pay-for-play arrangements. The masses will continue to "vote with their dollars" to pay for these schemes when they're the only source of music that they like. The "free market" will decide this one for us because that market isn't truly free.
You're right on one point. It's not a basic humanitarian right to listen to popular music. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't be upset about being forced to pay more for goods while their utility decreases. It may not be "some fundamental God-given right," but it's certainly not fair and just treatment. It's someone making like a tinge less enjoyable for millions of people to greatly profit a few. It's like spam that way. The level of inconvenience that one person suffers is inconsequential, but the level of inconvenience that the total mass of affected people suffers is inexcusable -- especially when it's all done just to pump money out of people with providing them any benefit.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
10 Years From Now...
...In other news, the Transmeta purchase of Microsoft has been approved by...
Talking head: Sony has finally opened it's aural decoder implant clinics across the U.S. The long awaited clinics are expected to be very popular among audiophiles who have been deprived of all music for the last 7 years due to confusing incompatabilities in technology.
The new implant chips allow an encoded stream of music data to remain encoded until it actually enters the human brain, where the chip turns the data into high fidelity music. One music industry spokesperson states, "These implants will be a great benefit to society. We can essentially save the public from itself by preventing people from becoming thieves. "Sharing" music with a friend hurts society because the government makes less money on tax revenues that would be realized from an actual purchase of music."
The implants work by being uniquely coded for each individual. If a person wishes to hear music from a particular artist, they register their ID to buy the album, and their own personally encoded copy will be made available for purchase via download or through UPS. Of course, because of the wide range of music available, the customer must have the appropriate implants installed. Implants that enable a person to hear music of the current decade are expected to be the most expensive, and to be less expensive for older decades. For example, implants that enable the listening of music from the 1970's are expected to cost around $320 USD.
The current issue facing the music industry is the public outcry about the secondary ability of the implants to automatically accept advertising broadcasts from wireless networks.
Oh well, you'll always have your memories.
Are you remembering music you previously listened to?
You pirate! Report to the nearest RIAA office to have your memory erased immediately.
Sony should start releasing all new music coded in binary on a grain of rice. It is so perfect, no one would be able to reproduce the format. No more evil "file sharing". It leaves us all out in the cold when it comes to listening hardware, I can't think of a more fair and equitable solution.
Concerts could be held in sound proof windowless rooms, to prevent any type of recording of the artist by the audience.
I bet this would protect their profits.
Karma: Censored (mostly affected by decency laws)
It always amazes me when I read the responses to any type of DRM project on any form of media.
Group #1 - Don't Buy it, They're all evil, we don't need this. You're all fools and posers because you bought on DVD!
Groupe #2 - They're just like Group #1, except the instant something great comes out in that format, the run like lemmings. (AOTC release, Harry Potter, Whatever)
Group #3 - They DRTFA and post all sorts of juxtapositions from just reading the main blurb on slashdot and start ranting and raving about how evil the media companies are.
Group #4 - Screams and yells about this is a final sign the 'evil media industry' or 'insert four letter abbreviation related to music or video' is dying and has no clue, and that file sharing rules.
Group #5 - The ever productive group, they immediately announce it will be hacked and on this weeks version of Napster with in seconds of release.
Group #6 is the group that never posts. These are the people that buy CDs of bands they like, buy DVDs of movies they like, and use them like they're intended too. They rip MP3s for their lates MP3 gadget and listen to them in class, on the road, travelling, at work, whatever while the original copy is in a CD Changer at home not being used (as the fair use law once upon a time were intended). This same group have TiVos or ReplayTV's and they watch their shows, skipping over the commercials. They don't hack their TiVo to get the shows off and post them on the internet. They heard of Napster, looked around, saw some songs that prompted them to go find the CD and purchase it. They think DIVX encoding sucks because the quality is so low and it reminds them too much of Circuit City's Pay as you go attempt.
Unfortunately, since Group #6 is so quiet, nothing correct ever gets done. The blather from groups 1 - 5 drowns out the real consumer, making it so that when DRM is out next year, it'll destroy the want or need for portable digital players, CD drives in the computer, and any other advanced feature. Driving the computer industry into yet another tailspin because consumers won't want to upgrade their computer because it won't play CDs or DVDs anymore without charging them a fortune.
Not to mention us Mac & Linux users who will have been left out in the cold alltogether now. Those of us that are legitimate fair use users that is.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
For as I was scrolling up the front page, I could have swore I saw "CowboyNeal" in this article's headline, where copyright should have been.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
Actually if you look at the redbook specification, there is nothing preventing people from mixing data and music tracks on the same CD.
What Sony is going to do is include one data track that has compressed and encrypted versions of the music that is also on the CD. The compression will most likely be Sony's proprietary ATRAK scheme, which does support DRM by default.
In most cases Windows machines will only be able to access the data track on the CD, and will end up being forced to use the ATRAK player and manager to copy the files to Mini Disk, and Sony Memory Stick media.
Real Player can read ATRAK files, but I do not know if the Macintosh edition will handle the DRM system involved, and as a result may not be able to play the files on the Data track. However it is possible that the Mac will be able to directly access the music tracks on the CD, I do not know.
Unless Sony does something "screwey" with the TOC on the cd and breaks redbook compatibility, (and I wouldn't put it past them) Linux, BSD, BeOS and other platforms that can read the CD directly should be able to play the music, or even rip it to OGG, AAC or MP3 as they desire, without any support from Sony.
The only "loss" for alternate OS users would be if Sony includes restricted content in the data track that does not appear elsewhere on the CD. Additional music, images, artist information, etc.
Since a standard CD has 640 meg of data or up to 72 min of music, I would suspect that Sony will make their CDs effectively 60 min of music, about 60 meg of data in the form of compressed music, with between 10 and 40 meg of additional content. Not really a lot to work with.
Then again I could be wrong.
-Rusty
You never know...
"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?"
XP Media Center? Hello? It's not like they put the words MEDIA CENTER in the name of the operating system or anything. Car stereos and high-fidelity cd players will eventually all run microsoft--if microsoft has their way. And it looks good to sony too, if microsoft can squeeze pc users with their iron grip of copyright protection and digital rights management.
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
BR
"dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope"
What if Rio, Nomad, etc.. included some code in the firmware that refused to play any music distrubuted by Sony?
Think they'd get the hint?
----
The difficulty of a system is only comparable to the ignorance of the end-user.
#SickNotWeak
Well if everybody is really concerned about making a copy of a CD.. I know its a damn pain.. but how about a little thing called ANALOG OUT and ANALOG IN on most sound cards... I mean there really is no way that the CD can tell that your analog out is not going to a set of speakers... Thus you just port it into another record.. record the songs through analog and some good sound cables and save it as a wav file.. then make your own CD.. all this technology is readily available... I know it sucks to do it this way .. and it sucks even more that stupid music companies think ill thought ideas like this will solve their piracy problems. But really people.. it sounds like a lot of people think these schemes really bring an end to the copying of their CD's of making of MP3's onto their computers from the CD's they buy..
Who makes you Sig?
So, one big company who happens to own copyrights usurped from artists in exchange for basically nothing with the means to production is trying to protect those rights, still...
Reality check: Sony doesn't have creative product and thus has nothing to sell. Eventually, artists will start to make money directly from their fans because the industry has made it so damn prohibitive to buy consumer-directed "art" that the consumer just gets fed up with all the controls over their media playback devices and media. Quit buying that shit!
There is so much more quality stuff with so fewer strings attached avaiable by independents that wasting time in Sam Goody's is just that: a waste of time. Give your money to the artist and buy directly from them or via CD Baby or MP3.com. Quit buying Sony, BMG, Virgin CDs and guess what: CD prices will drop to about $5 for 15 tracks and people will quit stealing it. Worse case scenario is you get to hear something original and the artist gets to eat...
www.dedserius.com
VB != VisualBasic
Almost, except for the Fair Use clause of US Copyright law. I'm legally entitled to make a backup copy of any software I buy. So, is it not a violation of Copyright law on Sony's part to act to prevent this activity?
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
I remember reading an article on CNN about a week ago (the link is no longer on their page) about "high quality, but unfriendly" CD's....which basically goes along with this topic. They mentioned a few of the DRM techniques that different companies are using, bla, bla, bla... but here's the funny thing. One of the CD's pictured to have a new form of content protection was Linkin Park's "Reanimation", a remix of their first CD. I went out and bought that CD about 3 months ago, came home, popped it in my computer, kicked up CDex, and burned the tracks to mp3 at 320 kbps. took me about 4 minutes. then i shelved the CD. (i was packing for college, and i prefer not to have my CD collection subject to the perils of a dorm :) ) How is that copy protection, again? or does CDex just have l33t skillz?
filter: +3. Hey, look! all the trolls went away!
Anyone else remember this? Oh yeah, and there's that pesky audio in jack, but i assume that the RIAA will soon be coming door to door and filing those with putty, rendering the use of chisels, paper-clips and anythign else that could dig out the putty a felony under the DMCA.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Looks like I won't be buying anymore sony cd's. If they are going to be that inconvenient to listen to, I might as well just download some mp3's and deal with the artifacts from the encoding process.
Like it matters anyway, someone will just hack it, and their big multimillion dollar expenditure will be completely useless. Why do they even bother?
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
I hope sony labels these discs as CDs and gets their asses sued for doing so.
If it doesnt follow the book standard, its not a CD, and they are not legally allowed to call it such.
At this point it is a disc the same size and shape as a CD with similar data on it, but it is NOT a CD.
They need to be forced to not steal the label 'CD' or 'Compact Disc' for these whatever-they-are things.
I hope phillips sues them for it too.
I have a rather nice collection of music tracks (on MP3) and music videos (in MPEG) that I've collected over the past couple of years.
I have all the latest top-10 tracks (that interest me) and lots of other less mainstream stuff as well.
And guess what -- I haven't bought a music CD for years.
Nor have I ever used a P2P network for getting this stuff.
Nor have burned copies of someone else's CDs
Just how did I accumulate this wonderful collection of music and videos?
I recorded them from free-to-air broadcasts, that's how.
Given the fidelity limitations of MP3, an FM stereo or stereo TV broadcast is more than the equal of most CD rips.
Now, if the recording industry want to sell public performance rights to broadcasters, and if the likes of Sony want to sell me the gear I need to record from these radio and TV broadcasts -- how on earth can they complain later that I don't buy their CDs?
Just throw a TV/radio tuner card in your PC and you too can quickly accumulate a great music collection at no cost -- and without the hassles of circumventing CD copy-protection or getting caught file-swapping over the Net.
So what's the recording industry going to do about it? Make recording radio/TV transmissions illegal?
I don't think so.
Let's face it -- people have been recording music (and movies) from FTA broadcasts for years. Maybe they're just starting to realise that any business model which relies on selling something people are already getting for free might be fatally flawed.
If you use a product such a vmware, it's a simple matter to start up windows in a virtual machine with a virtual sound card i.e. vsound.
Recent versions of Windows Media running on Windows ME and Windows XP will not play copy-restricted audio over unsigned drivers. The driver for VMware audio is not signed.
"So apply to get the driver signed." Microsoft won't sign a driver unless it turns off all cleartext digital outputs when playing copy-restricted audio, which means that the virtualizer would have to open a Secure Audio Path on the host operating system.
"Then just use an older Windows OS." And risk newer versions of WiMP not installing.
"Then just use an older WiMP." And lose support for new proprietary codecs such as Sony's, which is (knowing Sony) probably based on MiniDisc ATRAC3.
"Then try something else." And risk doing several years of hard time in prison the next time you step into the UK or the USA, both of which have banned circumvention of access restrictions.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Can't you see the requirements sticker on CDs now? Requires at least: Microsoft WindowsXP 256 Mb of RAM 750 MHz Processor Or something along those lines? Disgusting.
All circuits busy.
Sony is not leaving *NIX and Mac users out in the cold, because they know that their copy-protection scheme WILL be broken by *NIX/Mac geeks who are already used to taking the road less traveled.
What this scheme will do is make it harder for computer-illiterate young girls (Teenage guys can figure out anything on a computer, so I stick this on the girls.) to rip the latest top 40 hits and share them on P2P networks with all of the other file swappers. This will leave the music being shared on the systems of clueful users, making obvious supernodes that the record companies will be able to hack once they are given vigilante privileges by the US government.
Solution: Cut the wires to the cone
You had to open the case to do this. And now that oxygen has entered the case, the device will detect that you have tampered with it and will refuse to play copy-restricted media.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Only in later years after mass market acceptance did they start calling it "high fidelity"
However, mass market acceptance wasn't the only factor in calling 16-bit 44.1 kHz stereo "high fidelity". The field of psychoacoustics advanced greatly at that time, and it became apparent that DC-22 kHz frequency response with 110 dB dynamic range and 90 dB signal-to-noise ratio (the difference is due to noise-shaped dithering, which was also developed around that time) was enough to fool the best of human ears.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Why do people think Sony Music can offset losses by selling more electronics?
Because you have not proven the following assertion to the satisfaction of most Slashdot readers:
[Sony Music and Sony Electronics] don't share revenue.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The more these studios create these STUPID copy protections schemes, the less people are going to buy their garbage..
They only going to end up "shooting themselves in the foot".
This seems like an extraordinarily extravagent measure just to digitize data on an LP. As most stereos that can play LPs have an audio out jack, you could just connect that to the 'line in' of your computer and hey presto, you have the ability to rip the audio stream.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
After reviewing your letter, something dawned on me. You can keep your media, your $25.95, and your humble $95 billion company. I want no part of it. I will immediately cease purchasing any products from Sony or any of its affiliates or subsidiaries. You see, I figure that there is at least one enlightened competitor in the marketplace that can offer a reasonably-priced product with a reasonably fair licensing policy, and it is this competitor that will gain my loyalty as a consumer. While it's obvious that you see customers as a right, and not a valued resource, hopefully my actions will serve as a reminder that this reasoning is seriously flawed. Your competitor may offer a more limited selection, but I value my freedom far more than I value your product.
Sincerely,
John Q. Consumer
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.
The attempt to "slip it under the door."
For a comparison, look at say, a VideoDisc (them big old record-like things). There's no way you'd ever confuse it with a VHS casette, and as such, not really expect it to work similarly. This, it looks like a CD, is marketed similarly to a CD, fills a similar niche to a CD, yet strangely isn't a CD.
If you want to do a DRM format, make it very different. How about the size and shape of a British two-pound coin? This benefits you in several ways:
1. Completely new and potentially propriatery player base, no need to worry about some old equipment designed in a way that can look through your attempts to maintain compatibility and DRM in one disc. I can easily see them giving away free DRM-disc players, perhaps with the purchase of some number of discs, to buy market share.
2. No problems with people returning "broken" discs because they thought they were CDs that work properly.
Consumers also win because they can make intelligent purchasing decisions, and not have to guess if a disc will work or not; it also allows them to see the true effect for them of DRM (because market penetration will probably never be 1000%, you'll probably see both CD and DRM-D releases together, and be able to compare sound quality and price.
It's just like a fascist dictatorship, without the punctual rail service!
That's it. 30. Imagine that not only is there only bubblegum/R+B/chick/pop/girl-boy band/white rap hybrid muzak sludge but you have to pay to listen to it. You have to pay to not listen to it. You have to pay to complain about it.
They future's so bright I need a welding mask.
For all those of you out there with a Mac check your system profiler and I am pretty confidant that your CD/CDRW will be a Sony manufactured drive. Apple should go to them today, and threaten to find a new supplier. Sony will have to choose between faking the loss of money from copyright infringment or losing money for real by losing customers.
Oh and Apple if you don't want to do this e-mail me and we can set up a time to replace this faulty drive that won't play my music.
You mean you don't buy a different CD for your car, cd player, home and office?!!
Can I make(or get) an
If this is the case I'd love to buy the new format. I don't mind copy protection, but I and _NOT_ the record companies should decide when and where I listen to the music I bought.
I play Hattrick
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
Tokyo, October 17, 2005:
Great Internet Media Plumbing Supply spokeperson Bob Haldeman announced that today, the 33 1/3rd anniversary of the Watergate breakin, that Sony's Label Gate media format could easily be cracked with a small shell script, or by typing Control-Alt-Meta-Cokebottle twice into the Sony Windows tool.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Didn't you see the article about the guy who figured out how to extract audio info off a scan of a high-res image of a vinyl LP?
Tech Public Policy stuff
They're up against one very simple fact.
No music industry business model that's based on an unending stream of platinum records from somebody or other either can survive or deserves to, regardless of the DRM technology or how many legislators they can bribe to support it.
The declining economy in general and the fragmentation of the music market (metal alone has broken up into at least a dozen sub-genres) dwarfs anything that either law or technology can do about it. The days when everybody listened to American Bandstand, MTV, and even FM radio and bought everything they heard are in the past and aren't coming back. The idea that they can keep us buying only the products of our record labels via payola-based FM radio and by unplugging Napster and Internet Radio has run into what for them, is ugly reality. The idea that people will pay more for audio CDs than movies was a stupid one to begin with.
So they're trying to plug the holes in the dike with law and technology, not admitting to themselves that the real problem is that the tide is coming in over it, they're going to be next to that dike when the water comes in, and no human agency can save their "right" to do "business as usual" at the expense of the public and the artists they allegedly serve.
What they need is a business model that takes advantage of the Internet, new technology, and genre fragmentation, not tries to use law and technology to hide from it.
They need to figure out how to profit from the work of thousands of new artists at a time selling a few thousand records a year, not pray that a few of the latest batch of albums from their estabilished artists who suddenly can't automatically deliver platinum, or they can hype a 'just discovered' Britney Spears clone into platinum so they can break even in time for the next 10Q report or at least reduce their losses enough to enable them to keep their jobs.
They should work out of what they claim their strength is, finding new artists we will actually want to listen to and finding lots of them that are worth listening to in every subgenre category with even a few thousand listeners. They also need to make all their backlists available in a minimal cost way so they can realize income on it. A record master on a shelf produces no income.
They need to reduce the cost of signing on new artists drastically and drastically reduce the financial risk to signing any individual artist. This also means they're going to have to reduce the amount of advance money paid per artist and give the artist technical and marketing support of the sort they allegedly can't get anywhere but from 'the experts' but make the artists do more of their own work, to sink or swim in the marketplace according to their real skill, ability, and willingness to work.
Do they really have the expertise they claim in music or marketing, or are they a hollow shell filled with hot air only kept alive by monopoly control over mass media and brick and mortar distribution? If they really believe they do, why are they trying to shut out competition?
They need to develop a new technology to make CD distribution to allow electronic distribution of CD content to record stores to drastically reduce the risk in expanding their musician base. (yes, it's possible) They need to reduce their marketing costs per artist drastically, and they can only do this via effective Internet marketing and by putting an permanent end to payola. Effective Internet marketing means they need to encourage and leverage as many Internet Radio and P2P as possible, not just the ones they control, admit that the real product is the CD and that MP3s and streaming audio are simply marketing giveaways just like the songs of comparable audio quality they've been bribing radio stations to play for generations.
The COMDEX speech is a celebration of their victory over the political power of US high technology companies and the high tech community, and like the Microsoft antitrust victory, means they think the officials they bought have granted them the eternal right to keep on doing monopoly business as usual. In other words, the recording industry has drunk the antifreeze, not the Kool-Aid.
So what they'll really do is to continue to use DRM and public insults to drive customers away, reduce the number of artists they actively support so they can concentrate more marketing dollars on each, and in general, find entertaining ways to bleed out in a flood of red ink so that some smart investors will be able to buy their catalogues and artist contracts up at fire sale prices when their parent corporations say "ENOUGH!", followed by adopting new business policies designed to give customers and artists what they want, i.e. doing business like non-monopolies do. I'd be equally surprised to see this take less than 2 years or more than 5.
Tech Public Policy stuff
"one is data for audio devices to replay and the other is encoded compressed data for PCs to replay."
Grandparent asked if the data reduction was lossy or not. How do you know that the LabelGate format isn't based on some encrypted form of FLAC files, which provide completely lossless reproduction of audio data once decrypted?
Will I retire or break 10K?
First, that another big stupid music publisher is doing something similar is no evidence that this is reasonable. All big stupid music publishers are working towards making sure no one else can publish music and this is bad. Specifically, that every music publisher makes it's own crappy player that only runs on Windoze is really bad. What makes you think that one won't break the others in DLL hell?
Second, how is the diminised functionality reasonable? What exactly is reasonable about them making it imposible for normal people to make a copy of their CDs? Don't you think it's a terrible pain to have to buy a key for every PC you want to listen to your music on? You ARE going to pay the same price or more for this Music Disk as you used to pay for a normal CD. Who else is going to foot the bill for the "research" that's required to make this work and keep it working while M$ extorts money from them to not break it with a "smart update"? Oh yeah, it also has to be a Windoze PC. That's really specific, have you paid your Windoze tax lately? What makes you think this will still play in your normal CD player? One of the reasons they are removing the CD mark is because this is NOT a CD anymore and won't work like you expect it. Pay more, get less. Sounds reasonable if you work for Sony.
Do you think this will reasonably accomplish the stated goal? I don't. People can and will exploit the analog hole if all else fails and then put the result up for everyone else.
So what is the goal here? One good guess is that big stupid music publishers want to kill the CD format. Sony, by it's own admission, is no longer going to sell CDs. End of format. You can imgine that they will stop making CD players soon, if they have not already. A company like Sony thinks they will win twice when everyone has to purchase their music collection again in a new pay per play media format such as DVD. If you consider having to buy things you own again and again reasonable ... well the other thing in your bio is "/win2k (seriously)".
I could be reading your bio wrong, but what the big fat music publishers are tying to do is most unreasonable.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Ripping the CD is FAIR USE! I do this all the time because I want to shuffle play my collection without expensive hardware.
My PC does this nicely. This is one of the reasons people might actually want to own a computer! They are expensive enough, people expect to be able to get some return on that investment. Redefining a PC into a pay per play media player is not the way to go. Maybe if they gave me the machine, I might use it that way, then again, I might not.
They hide behind piracy because it is an easy argument, not because it is the truth.
They are leveraging the perception of piracy problems in order to build a pay per play model. Nobody wants this, nobody needs it.
I would go for pay per play, if and only if, it is pay once per title, then I own it same as I do now with media. Access to a large catalog is worth this.
We are supposed to pay for technology and education and other things that fill the coffers of these large corporations. In return our lives are supposed to get better and more productive.
I can't see how giving up our current rights will further either of those causes.
That's what is wrong with it.
Blogging because I can...
Of course they will not figure out things on the computer --they will ask their boyfriend, brother or father to do it for them!
I agree with the rest of your post, but as the parent of two teenagers, I could not resist!
Blogging because I can...
Play it on your PC. Now take it on a road trip and play it on your laptop. Guess what, you now have to pay per use for a disc of music you already own (not rent). I don't consider that reasonable.
What part of "I'm not calling you a communist" didn't you understand? I agree that they should trust their customers. But unfortunately every single person I know besides me and two others uses Kazaa to pirate music. I'm willing to bet you know quite a few too. Those people are defintely of a more communist mindset than Sony is. Sony is trying to stop them people, they are going about it the wrong way, and I won't be buying any copyprotected CDS, but they are still capitalist pigs trying to stop communist behavior. How is a big company who wants to make money by disallowing sharing a communist? They aren't, they are the opposite of a communist, they are aa capitalist pig. Seems like you and I and just plain ole' capitalists (without the pig).