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?"

Comments

Re:I wonder...

[NanoGator]

"I wonder if the RIAA realizes that they're pushing me towards MP3's when they pull shit like this."

I think Slashdot should start an event called "Music Return Day". Here's how it works: Get as many people to buy a known copy-restricted CD as possible. Then, locate a national store that'll accept returns on 'defective CDs' (Best Buy or Walmart maybe?) then, on a particular date, have everybody return that CD.

Heh imagine slashdotting Equifax.

Re:I wonder...

[Aggrazel]

[i]"I think Slashdot should start an event called "Music Return Day". Here's how it works: Get as many people to buy a known copy-restricted CD as possible. Then, locate a national store that'll accept returns on 'defective CDs' (Best Buy or Walmart maybe?) then, on a particular date, have everybody return that CD.[/i]

Actually, my wife works at Target. She told me that there are several CDs with "known" issues that they'll take back and exchange for another CD with no questions asked, even though the normal exchange policy is for the same title only if opened. They are returned frequently for not working in people's players.

I don't have a list of the titles, but from what I gather its becoming more and more common. To the point that it will probably annoy the corporate buyers enough that this stuff will stop before it gets too common, IMO.

Re:Crappy drive mechanisim?

[ackthpt]

I've found that a lot of the stuff you can buy from the sharper image, brookstone, etc. is kind of cheesy.

I've felt the same way about their stuff the past couple years. It looks pretty cool in the catalogs, but there is a Sharper Image store down the road and much of the stuff, up close, looks like maybe a good idea manufactured cheaply. In some cases, a stupid idea, altogether. Catalogs can sell stuff you wouldn't normally buy, because some little deception (usually a hot babe holding/using it) used to redirect your attention from it's faults.

That said... With all the crap the music industry has been doing lately, I'm less inclined to buy their products. Are they going to dismiss my few hundred $ a year, no longer spent, on music piracy? I don't even download MP3's (I haven't even had a system I could do anything with them until recently.) I'm more likely to visit the local used CD store and pick up old, pre-DRM music (which might become a hot collector's item if the current trend continues.)

Some day on eBay:

3034898724 Beatles Sgt Pepper Non DRM Current bid: $57.61

Re:which cd's?

[drDugan]

"the country of freedom and liberty"

not anymore: [[ from an AC slashdot post today
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=49046&cid=4962 648 ]]

"""

here is a snapshot on how these fucks think:

"If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, you probably aren't doing your job," said one official who has supervised the capture and transfer of accused terrorists. "I don't think we want to be promoting a view of zero tolerance on this. That was the whole problem for a long time with the CIA."

found this in a quick search in TODAY's news. if you are not paranoid about our government, you're not listening.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A379 43-2002Dec25.html

"""

DRM = Customer screwing..

[Anonvmous Coward]

This is slightly - OT, but at least it's a real life story as to how DRM is harmful to legitimate customers.

I moved a couple of months ago. My GTA 3 disk was damaged in the move through my own carelessness. I contacted the producer of the game to find out how much a simple media exchange would cost. Want to know how much it'll cost? $18 + S&H. That's just for the disk. They can't throw a copy on the burner for me and do it for $5?

I should have backed it up. I'm not sure if I could have or not. I didn't try with this particular game, but I've had to go to rather extreme measures to back up other games I have. You'd think I'd have the right to protect my $50 investment, but obviously I don't.

I find this infurating. It's either a copyright issue or it isn't. Either I'm holding an $18 lump of plastic, or I'm holding an $.05 key to content I have licensed. They can't have it both ways.

I can't believe that these industries are legally allowed to get away with customer gouging.

I don't believe this

[CaptainSuperBoy]

Yeah, I'm going to have to call shenanigans on this. I have never heard of pressed CD's with a lower track width causing a higher rate of errors. And that's all it would be if this happened, a higher error rate causing the CD player to interpolate more samples. These errors would show up on a good ripping program such as EAC, reading in secure mode. It doesn't seem likely that the pressing process could produce a lower quality CD given a bunch of bytes.. it's not like the pressing machine secretly switches bits on and off. So maybe a longer CD has a higher chance of unreadable frames, although I've never heard of this. But to say that the pressing process creates a CD where the bytes of data on the CD do not equal the bytes on the master, is ridiculous.

Lucius, if it's true you're in recording you're in a unique position to prove/disprove this theory. Just take the master of a track, at 44/16/stereo. Then get a pristine, pressed CD containing that track. Rip it with a good program and a good CD drive, then do a comparison on the files. Except for the very beginning and end of the tracks, they should be identical. Audiophiles will tell you ridiculous things, it doesn't surprise me that someone out there thinks a CD is 'more than just bytes.' I mean, you'll meet people who say that the quality of your DIGITAL audio cable matters - as if a cheap 3 ft piece of fiber will somehow lose bytes, but an expensive 3 ft piece of fiber will get all those bytes there intact. These are the same jokers who buy the CDs that are pressed with gold.

sue

[zogger]

--sue. Sue them, and here's how to do it. Take the LOCAL store manager to court, charge "fraud". Simple fraud is a crime. It's *illegal* to sell something that ain't that something. They offer to sell you a "cd" when it's not-it LOOKS like a cd but it isn't. It's fraud. Buncoism, it's against the law, just so widely done now it appears "lawful". You stick a crippled disk in front of 12 people on a jury and ask them what it is they'll say it's a cd, and cd's should play in cd players PERIOD. It's that simple a concept. Don't try changing the big guys all by yourself it ain't happening, don't try suing sony or walmart, take whomever took YOUR money and sold you something that wasn't as advertised to local small claims court or other appropriate venue for your situation and locality. Use this technique as a force multiplier. Don't even let them skate with a refund or a return, KEEP the crippled disk, that's your evidence of fraud, get some people who are "just following orders" to realise there ARE consequences for their actions. This is a basic problem our society has, "just following orders", it's never anyone's fault, nothing "bad" ever has any named human being attached to it just some vague "corporation" that's a bear to deal with, which is nuts, this goes for politics to economics, people just TAKE IT all the time when you don't have to. Don't let them plead ignorance or pass the buck or just rip off the next guy and the next guy and the next guy. If "anyone you" think this is an important enough issue, prove it! Once you get some judgements against these people, it will force THEM to bump it up, because THEY will in turn sue their bosses for being ordered to perpetuate and expand this scam congame. Work exactly at the level the crime occurred, you and your wallet and someone taking your money at a your local store.

If you went into the store to buy shampoo and dumped it on your head and it was shoe polish, would you take it or sue the ^&^*(tards? If they kept selling shoe polish labeled as shampoo? Over and over and over again? If you went into the store and bought a can of corn and opened it up and it had rat parts in it instead of corn, would you sue, or just take YOUR time and go back and get a 'real' can of corn, knowing that half the cans on the shelf labeled corn that looked like cans of corn were in reality canned rat?

The deal is these stores, and their corporate/cartel/monopolist bosses, want cowed sheepish brainwashed consumers, they want you to only grumble, maybe a few people exchange the defective products, they don't want to make the hard decisions that follow ethics, they want to skate the cheapest way they can. Suing some humongous corporation is HARD, suing a place local and a named individual for an exact specific crime is a lot easier and cheaper, and if thousands of people did it this crap would stop tomorrow.

Sam with spammers, in the states where spam is now illegal-WHY aren't there thousands of lawsuits? I'll tell ya why, it's because 99% of people are sheep, easily cowed, don't want to "rock the boat", scared, think their single efforts won't matter, just content to bitch about things but nothing else-whatever, all excuses really for not taking personal indignation and getting shafted right back to the shafter and getting your day in court. If your cause is righteous, you at least have a chance, never even trying means you'll keep getting shafted, which just further emboldens the badguys to keep ripping people off and pulling more and more scams.

If it was me with this particular issue, I'd tell that store manager (get their full name and job title) ONE TIME to stop selling crippled "counterfeit cd look-a-likes" that aren't "cds", that unless they are removed or labeled and displayed and stocked completely separately from REAL cd's PROMINENTLY six ways to sunday with BIG SIGNS that they AREN'T cd's and WON'T play in most normal cd players that you intend to sue HIM in local court personally,that you will file an official police report, then follow through if they keep ripping people off. Getting ripped off the first time is his fault, twice is "your" fault because "anyone you" puts up with it, generally and non specifically speaking.