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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?
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.
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.
-
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 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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
Besides geeks and Phillips, who cares? These things are circular and work in (most) CD-Players, therefore for most people they qualify as CDs. Only geeks care about rights and freedoms. Ordinary people will only care if a gun is pointed to their heads.
OLPC Australia
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
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.
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"
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.)
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
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.
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.
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
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?
If you can't see this, click here to enable sigs.
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.
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
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.
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).
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.
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").
BR
"dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope"
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?
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."
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?
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.
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?
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.