Digital Rights Management on CD's This Christmas?

McDrewbie asks: "Has anyone discovered that the new CD's found under the tree or in their stocking don't play on their brand new CD player? My father got a Brookstone Wafer-thin CD system and several new CD's. Most play fine, however several ones from Sony (with CDextra software on them) and from Columbia, either don't play or play with some crackling and popping, yet play fine on our older CD player. Did these companies decide to quietly unleash DRM on the public this holiday season? Or is this just a problem with the new player (separate from it not being DRM capable)? What are other Slashdot readers experiencing today?"

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[Anonymous Coward]

The Corrupted Audio CDs category at the ODP has several background stories, many from /.

Also post them to the complete list of corrupt CDs

[linuxbaby]

The world's most complete list of music CDs that can't be copied or played on computers and many other electronics equipment, is at Fat Chuck's Corrupt CDs list.

Please also post any new corrupt or DRM CDs you find on that complete list, there.

(While you're at it, boycott the RIAA by buying independent CDs, instead!)

CD EXTRA defined

[prisen]

From Sony's website: CD EXTRA combines the worlds of Music and Multimedia. A traditional audio CD when placed in an audio CD player, CD EXTRA offers a free interactive multimedia experience when played in a computer's CD-ROM drive *. CD EXTRA offers the music fan a closer look at their favorite artists, with many CD EXTRAs containing exclusive content. Other CD EXTRAs contain Internet Service Provider Software which allows you to connect to the Internet.

It's not DRM, AFAIK. I've got several Sony CD EXTRA CD's that are nothing more than multisession CD's that some audio CD players simply cannot handle. However, I don't think you can get the same CD offered in both CD EXTRA and non-CD EXTRA formats, so you may be out of luck when trying to play those particular discs in those particular audio CD players; in fact, some older CD-ROM drives can't even handle 'em.

Re:which cd's?

[linuxbaby]

They're all listed at Fat Chuck's List of Corrupt CDs.

multisession in copy protected CDs

[Jucius Maximus]

Some audio copy protection methods use an extra session on the disc to confuse computer-based CD players. This is based on the fact that computer CD players will read the LAST session first, while audio only CD players (except certain car players that are actually CD Rom drives) will play the FIRST session first.

Corrupt data is added to that extra session so computers will go boink when reading it. This is why that magic marker work-around worked -- it prevented the computer from reading the extra session.

Now a good way to make proper back-ups of your Audio CDs is to remove this extra session. This can be done quite easily if you are using a plextor CD-Rw because the DiscDupe software that comes with it will, when presented with an audio CD, do a bit for bit copy of the first session only. This means that the resulting backup will have the protection removed so you can excercise your home use rights and easily make more copies for the car, ogg encoding, etc.

Re:Also post them to the complete list of corrupt

[G-funk]

It doesn't matter a whit what looks wrong to you, it's "CDs". "CD's, CEO's, UFO's" are all 100% wrong. There's no case to be made, no arguments to have, it's just plain old incorrect.

Re:Also post them to the complete list of corrupt

[slipgun]

Ah. A member of the 'because I say so' school of grammatical thought. I can respect that.

Presumably you said that to your english teacher when he told you to put a capital letter after a full stop.

There are no two ways about it, "CD's" means "of the CD" or "belonging to the CD". "CDs" is the plural of "CD".

You got your formats wrong.

[Fross]

i dont know what crack they smoke where you work, but...

Track widths do not vary with CDs so you can stuff more on. Hence there is no such "narrow track width" problem with CD. however, this *does* apply to vinyl, and is one of the main culprits of poor vinyl quality over the last 15 years.
I've not heard of any "thin allyplate" problems with CDs, however using thin, low quality material has been a problem for sound quality for vinyl. some believe this was intentional on the labels' part to get people to switch formats.

also, having worked in the music business myself, i'm happy to say that i've never encountered an instance where the producers don't get a test pressing.

methinks your record exec may not be the only cokehead. ;)

fross

Re:DRM for a present

[macdaddy357]

Funny you should ask about taking it to court.

If you bought any of the "copy protected" discs that won't play in your computer, Follow this link to the Milberg Weiss Law firm, and join Dickey V. Universal Music Group et. al, a class action suit against the manufacturers of these defective discs that frequently use the Compact Disc digital audio logo improperly.

That comes off the links page of a consumer group boycotting the recording industry, for DRM, price gouging, and harassment of file traders. Dontbuycds.org A previous poster gave the link to that organization, but not to the class action suit, so , pay attantion mods, this post is not redundant!

Click here to sue

[Animats]

Click here to sue. Milberg Weiss, the well-known class-action law firm, is sueing the record companies over defective CDs. They sue big companies all the time and win, which makes them tons of money. Mostly they do shareholder lawsuits; they're the lead plaintiff in Enron litigation. But they do other class action work as well.

Here's how they put it in their court filing.

• Defendants conspired and agreed among themselves to sell defective audio discs which were rendered unreproducible or unstable for use in many personal computers, Macintosh computers, compact disc players, digital video disc players, car stereos and digital video game consoles. Defendants have affirmatively concealed the fact that their defective audio discs interfere with their customers' legal right to play or transfer music to other playback mediums. Additionally, Defendants have collectively misrepresented these defective audio discs as being standard Compact Discs (``CDs''), which they are not. Defendants undertook the acts alleged herein pursuant to, and in furtherance of, this conspiracy and agreement. Defendants manufactured, disseminated, advertised or sold these defective audio discs in such a way as to collectively conceal from plaintiffs, Class members and the general public the fact that these defective audio discs were of inferior quality and deprived customers of their legal right to backup and transfer their own music to other playback mediums. Such concealment resulted in plaintiffs, Class members and the general public paying more for these defective audio discs in expectation that, inter alia, the music would be playable on all playback devices and would be of equal quality to CDs, which they are not.

That's clear enough.

They ask that if you've found a defective CD, report it to them by clicking here.