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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?"
I think that DRM for a present is worse then coal.
Get a refund & then d/l them to burn on CD-R...
:)
If the music companies want to mess around, play them at their own game!
Anyone care to offer some insight as to which cd titles are doing this? ... so I can save the trouble of buying them and skip right ahead to downloading the mp3's :)
"Or is this just a problem with the new player (separate from it not being DRM capable)? " .. I'd recommend getting a broadband connection and an iPod. That'll solve all your problems with defective media(intentionally or otherwise).
"Derp de derp."
Playing the "protected" cds in a CDROM drive would quickly reveal if they are truly copy protected.
I've found that a lot of the stuff you can buy from the sharper image, brookstone, etc. is kind of cheesy. Maybe it's just a crappy drive mechanisim.
The Corrupted Audio CDs category at the ODP has several background stories, many from /.
"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?"
I wonder if the RIAA realizes that they're pushing me towards MP3's when they pull shit like this. I mean seriously, they'll have no trouble blaming P2P music trading for their downfall if the MP3 is higher quality!
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!)
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.
First, if it has DRM is it really a "CD"?
Second - COMPLAIN!
Regardless of it being DRM or a faulty player, you should be compensated. You bought a product (be it the CDs or the player) that does not work. Try complaining about the CD player first (and try the CDs in a few other machines too). Get your player and/or CDs replaced or get refunds.
If it is DRM, they should have labelled it, and they deserve to take some shit for fucking over their customers.
Down with Saudi Arabia!!!
Is it me or does the DRM sound a lot like the last desperate act of an industry on the ropes? How long before they realize that the average consumer does not care whether they make a profit or not? As I see it, technology is ripping into those profits like a hungry coyote into a bucket of KFC. And the middlemen do not like sharing. With anyone. Ever.
Downloaded the manual from Diamond/Sonic-blue.
I was quite gratified to see that while the Volt supports WMA format, it does not support copy protected WMA files. In fact, the manual walks the user through disabling copy protection in Media Player.
Now if only the Volt supported Ogg Vorbis...
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
1. Dad's new CD player doesn't play some of our Sony CD's that have CD-Extra on them.
2. These CD's play fine on our other CD players.
Conclusion: DRM!!1!! OMFG!!!1! D00d, that Sux0r!!1!
In other news, my new Dell with Windows XP had trouble recieving Groupwise email the other day. Clearly M$ has decided to secretly break all other mail programs besides Outlook.
The only people they are keeping honest with this bull$hit are honest people. The only people they are annoying with this $hit are honest AOL users. Anybody with a /. account will say 'big deal, if I can hear it I can rip it, a hack will be out within hours, no problem etc.' I am not worried about this $hit for my sake, I am worried about this for the non-technical people, whom are 99% of the people I meet.
DRM won't stop the 'criminals', it will merely annoy those who are honest.
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)?
Some people just choose to have things dictated to them and then wonder why it wasnt done exactly right. Boo-Hoo, I bought an overpriced metal box and some shiny disks and I cant even do what I want with them...
Sooner or later you'll figure it out and stop asking obvious questions.
Also, for a list of UK Cd's, There is the UK campaign for digital rights, with their list of cd's at the Campaign for digital rights
My sister got the grandparents a CD with "The Best of Elvis." It doesn't play on the home CD player... it spins up, and then the player skips to the next disc. I haven't verified it on another player, but I'd imagine that it may be DRM?
Half of these comments are saying that it's no problem, since you can just download the music as mp3s (cough, vorbis!!, cough). While I would personally never (ever) buy a cd with copy protection, I think this mentality is sort of stupid. I actually believe that you should support the artists which you like. Yes, perhaps artists don't get very much when you buy a cd, but listen. You're not punishing the record labels buy not buying their stuff! Ok, perhaps they get less money, but it's not like it makes a difference (consumer power to hell). What would be nice to do is:
1. Buy the disc, rip it (as ogg vorbis, not fscking mp3). I've yet to encounter a copy protected disc which can't be copied...
2. Turn the disc back to the store, claiming it's useless. (it is, sort of)
3. Send a check to the artists, and say that you like them, but hate their record label, and explain what you did.
4. Send a letter to the record label, say that you hate them, and tell them what you did about it.
I'll admit I've never actually done this myself (because none of the music I like has been copy protected so far). But, hey, doesn't it sound like something?
I'm just a part time nerd. My line of work is making records. Most of the time my blood, sweat and tears (it comes to that much of the time) gets mangled by bad pressing. CDs are virually worthless. On a long pressing run (on E. John or yet another Bleatles greatest hits) the unit cost is negligible. It has often been felt that long playing-time CDs (greatest-blah-album-ever type things) sound poor but the wisdom is that digits-is-digits. Until Studio Sound actually tested this assertion. Bugger me if it wasn't true. Something to do with narrow track widths, thin allyplate and jitter. Time was that we, the producers, used to get a test pressing, to make sure that the inevitable transition to consumer formats hadn't sucked all the life from our babies. After all, as Producers it's our job to give the company a saleable product. Not anymore.They just press 'em, ship 'em and stack 'em. I've heard such abortions (of recordings I bust my guts over) coming from pressing plants that any cack you hear is possibly just bad pressing. Then again, The Enemy (the bastard cokehead record execs) may just be trying a technological stay of their inevitable execution. Chop away. We who actually make the records can't wait for the day when all OUR profits aren't snorted. Happy New Year to all fellow techs (and good luck getting that cabbie job to record company executives.)
Hands up everyone who refuses to obey orders.
"Those sirry Americans think they'll sell more products if they make them defective!"
It's probably the size of the CD itself. I believe that the Elvis CD is actually an 80 minute CD and older players have problems with that.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
>> No grip, we told her. Just us camera guys, the producer, and Ray Ray the director. "Then Ray Ray," she'd scream. "Let me fuck a man named Ray Ray."
This is off-topic, but why are the best comments -- the funniest -- oftentimes posted by Anonymous Cowards? This comment -- the whole thing about the grip and the bottled sweat -- is bizarre and disturbing. Isn't there some sort of "off-topic but interesting" mod option?
On-topic, my question: now that DRM is more ubiquitous, how do figure out whether or not the CD is at fault or the player? I mean, how do you know whether or not the Brookstone player you mention is actually bad?
I'm finding, actually, that while CDs are being mucked and fussed with, the quality of new CD players is actually going down. Components I bought years ago seem more rugged -- and able to play more CDs -- than recent stuff.
Wishing I had more time off from work. Was a welcome break.
2. Turn the disc back to the store, claiming it's useless. (it is, sort of)
Unfortunately, many stores, such as HMV have stopped accepting returns on opened CD's, claiming that there is the possibility that they have been copied. At least we know that the CD stores are smart enough to know that any copy protection can and will be broken.
RIAA will dork around with DRM just enough to drive people to P2P in retaliation.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
The CDs in question are copy-protected. They are designed to play properly in a standard, dumb CD player, but not a "smart" CD player like the ones you find in your computer. Manufacturers are now starting to put CD ROM drives into CD players, which sounds like your problem.
There are numerous copy protection schemes out there, but it sounds like Sony is using the one that has bad error correction info, which makes the disc sound like crap if the CD player pays attention to it. Dumb ones don't, and tend to play normally (until you get scratches on your CD!).
Of course, anyone willing to spend about 10 minutes researching the issue can find the appropriate software/hardware to rip copy protected discs just fine. Copy protection will only stop the least sophisticated users from ripping the music. Just shows how stupid the record labels are.
Thank you for pluralizing the word "CD" correctly.
Let's not all suck at the same time please
Hrm. I was not advocating the ogg framework specifically (what's with all thes idiots who think .ogg means ogg is a audio format? Ever heard of the avi codec?).
If you did not notice, we (at least I) don't give a shit what's "teh standard", we use what we believe is the best. And that sure as hell is not MP3 (several reasons: quality, patents, licensing).
If I were to use the "standard", I'd be killing myself on WinXP, MS Word, MSN Messenger and fscking MP3s! I'd rather eat my own arm, thank you very much!
If you don't like DRM CD's, then don't buy any CD's from any label which produces them. They'll get the message.
If you disagree with the RIAA's politics or technological positions and you give their member labels money, you are a hypocrite. Take that money you were going to give to Sony and give it to a label which isn't a corrupt cabal of mobsters. One that will actually give the artists a fair cut of the money and not bootleg CD's under their nose. Or give it to the EFF.
Don't be a hypocrite. Put your money where your mouth is. If you don't like DRM CD's, then boycott the labels that sell them.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
An audio cd should be compatible with any and all hardware and software that it is designed to play them.
If it does not, IT SHOULD NOT BE RELEASED.
I've also encountered this, and it's unfortunate. However, returning a disc because it is unplayable MUST be permitted, even by law or something. In any case, you can be sure to have a tough ride trying it :)
But these "New DRM-CD" (Digital Restricted Media - Compact Disc) really sucks for people like me that have a MP3 capable cd-player (a Sony...) in their car.
I bought it so I could convert my CDs to MP3 and burn them to a CD-R (or -RW) saving me from having to carry 10+ CDs. Now most of the new CDs wont play on my computer. Not only that but now my original are bound to get scratched, a car is the worst nightmare for a CD.
What do I do? I ask the guy at the store if I can have them in MP3, if not then I buy something else. Hint: the list is growing smaller and smaller day by day.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
... to force record labels to change the term 'copy protection' to 'copy restriction'? (Note: Im not claiming to invent that term, somebody else on Slashdot coined the phrase and I have no idea who it is)
There's got to be a legal justification for doing so. If they advertise it as 'protection', it sounds like they're made a superior product that'll play in anything. That sounds like false advertising to me. If they use the term 'restriction', then it's clear there may be playback issues.
I can respect taking a John Hancock approach, but if you put a return address on that letter, they might send their thugs to throw you 8ss in jail...
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
DRM ruined two gifts I gave this XMas:
I gave my boyfriend a Sony MiniDisc Recorder complete with USB link to his computer so that he can record his first "Live Bagpipe Marching Band CD" while he's performing.
We got it connected to his computer and discovered that their damn software will only allow to transfer songs to your computer that you and only you put on the MiniDisc. There's a petition here to get Sony to enable this ability as many journalist would benefit from this feature. It's not made clear on the packaging that you cannot transfer songs to your computer that you record with a microphone.
Lesson learned: do your homework before buying any electronics from MPAA or RIAA members. :( And especially avoid electronics manufactures that are also content distributors (read: Sony)
Solid. It looks like, at least for now, that really nothing worth listening to is on that list. Ah well, I'll buy my cd or two a month and download my fifty or so a month from Etree's Free Network.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
you can still microwave DRM enabled CDs.
Far more entertainment value than any music that may be on them.
I bought my girlfriend a Rio S50 mp3 player for Christmas to use while she works out. I was trying to show her how to rip her cd's, when my trust Cd-n-Go software couldn't access freedb. No good ripping mp3's named 'Track 01', so...
I fired up Windows Media Player and went directly to the options. I turned off DRM, ripped the cd, and transferred the songs to the player. The 'song' was 3.5 minutes of nothing. I listened to the mp3 in WinAmp - 3.5 minutes of silence. Windows Media Player will not allow you to make an mp3 is you turn off DRM.
I was forced to install Real Player to rip the cd. Better than Media Player, but what an obtrusive piece of software. I hate it.
I'm angry that my old standby, Cd-n-Go, can't access the cd database. It was a great program. Now I have to use Media Player or Real One? No thanks. I took it back.
Huge flaw in this logic.
Before I get started, let me clarify that I definitely hate DRM. I pretty much despise large record labels. So I'm not supporting them or anything, but simply sending a check to the artist is crazy.
First, where the hell are you going to send a check? Their fanclub? Do you know Timberlake's address? How about Snoop Dogg's address? How about Creed's address? Tim MCGraw? Whoever it is you listen to, you probably don't have any idea how to actually get money to them, unless they are local to you. And that's an altogether different story.
Secondly, there are TONS of people other than the artist who should be compensated. I mean, just because the CD says "Metallica", it doesnt mean that you are hearing Lars playing the drums on every track. It is very common for artists to hire studio musicians for recording sessions. Especially if they need to meet deadlines while the bassist is in rehab, or jail, or whatever. It happens, a lot, and the session players deserve a cut as well.
Aside from the actual music, there are the studio people. There's as much talent involved with skillful recording as there is with skillful playing. The cover art came from somewhere, and that person should be compensated. There are lots of people who attempt to make honest livings from the production of music and rely on CD sales for a income.
What the RIAA would have you believe is that their job is making sure the revenue gets spread out to all of these people fairly. And we all know this is a bunch of BS.
Really, the best thing to do is to support independant labels when you can. And when you can't, go MP3, Vorbis, whatever. This will (hopefully, if enough people do it) draw the talent away from the RIAA music nazis and empower the independant labels. Everyone benefits.
>> Everyone had all sorts of questions. First, where was the beer? Where did it go? And then (of course) how did she manage to pop off the bottlecaps since they weren't screwoffs?
Are you for real? Is this real? Or just fake?
Still, this gets my vote as the thread-of-the-month.
Nothing to do with DRM and DRM protected CDs, but it does seem a shame that most folks won't read this because it's mod'd at 0 and will probably soon be at -1.
I had one really odd experience that I can't explain. I use Exact audio Copy to rip CDs. Usually, I rip an image of the entire disc, so I can make a backup that is as close as possible to the original. For two particular CD (Front Line Assembly and Queens of the Stone Age), EAC was completely unable to rip the entire disc. This has never happened with any other CD I've tried. Faulty disc? No, I was able to rip the CDs track by track, just not the entire image. I don't think it was DRM (because I was able to rip individual tracks), but an odd experience anyway.
CD is an abbreviation. Therefore good usage can be to include an apostrophe for the plural. I've seen the issue go both ways. Personally, I think something like CEOs looks wrong. Recall that an apostrophe is used to indicate letters that are missing as well as the possessive. In fact, that usage trumps the possessive usage (itsit's).
I believe step 4 involves buying legislation that specifically identifies anyone using a form of non-DRM media as a terrorist, or something to that effect.
track7.org has all kinds of interesting stuff!
(its--it's). Goddamn hypertext. I tried to put brackets around the dash to make little arrows.
You forgot "Collect all of the underpants"
Im from Oz, and was just reading an from a newspaper down here. http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/04/17/10190
20660614.html
Excerpt :
"The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has also warned local record companies that they must include warning stickers when copy protection is introduced."
Good.
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.
Sounds ok, except:
Telling the RIAA you hate them and what you did about it? You mean how you circumvented the copy protection and made an illegal copy of a disk you brought from them and later returned? Im sure thatll go down well... with Bubba your future cellmate.
Writing no less than two letters, and arguing with the returns department, plus messing around trying to get around the DRM... It may be for the greater good, but I certainly understand why people may not be bothered with this proceedure and just prefer to type a track name into their favourite P2P app and press download...
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.
Remember when you could just go buy a cd and if it would fit in the player it would work. Now a persons gonna have to actually think about what cd their buying to make sure they can even listen to it, to me thats gonna hurt sales cause impulse buyers like me are going to not be so spontanious...
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.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
My brother got an offspring CD for xmas, It refuses to work on his MS windows box, But my Linux reads it fine.
I haven't bothered to much to look into why, but I noted it had this extra track out on its lonesome towards the edge of the disk.
Although I agree with you on the usage of apostrophes with regards to the abbreviations, I wouldn't say that your its/it's example is a good one. "it's" doesnt 'trump' "its" in usage, it has a completely different meaning.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Secondly, there are TONS of people other than the artist who should be compensated.
That's very true, but then you list a bunch of people who don't get compensated by album sales anyway. Joe Studio Drummer could care less if the albums he's on sell one or a million copies - he won't see any extra cash, other than being able to charge higher prices next album because of his reputation.
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
I think this is wrong. First of all, most of the people in that whole set either worked on salary (the engineer, the producer, probably the session player) and they have already been compensated by the record company for that, regardless of the album's sales. Then there is the album cover-art designer. I don't mind them getting a cut of my cash assuming I actually get my copy of the cover art, but if you are fine with a burned cd then you don't have the cover art anyways, so let the starving artist starve.
I personally use Exact Audio Copy, and have had no issues except when the cd has a big gouge in it. http://www.exactaudiocopy.de
Good tutorial for EAC: http://moocow.arakion.com/stuff/gffstandards.htm
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".
SpamNet - a spam blocker that really works
Yes, but I thought you were citing that as an example of how the 'missing letters' usage of the apostrophe was more common than the 'possesive' meaning. I don't think that's particularly true with its and it's.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Legally, you can still rip the cd into any format you want as long as you have the CD. If you return it you must destory the back up
go on, have fun suing the record company, artist, record store and anyone else included in the supply chain for selling crippled cds, because they ARE breaking the fair use laws, and betting on you not suing, so, what will it be? silence and nothing done? or lawyers and a cuouple million in compensation for you?
Id like to see my favourite artist testifying on court about this! 8)
Actually, it's gypped, pronounced `jipped'; without the second `p' the `i' would be a long sound, so it would say `jaiypped'. The dictionary doesn't mention the Gypsies, but they are actually a race, called Romnies. This didn't stop them from `adopting' a lot of non-Romny fellow-travellers, and with a relatively small population this would actually be necessary to prevent problems with inbreeding.
While we're at it, `buy' == purchase, `by' == via, with or past, and (not in these posts, but it is common) `lose' == not win, `loose' == rattling around, not fastened down.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
consider this. someone has an older analog style (not cdrom based) reader. their player works just fine on some protected cd - TODAY.
then tomorrow their cd player breaks and they buy a new one. all of a sudden, that new player (and all other new players) refuse to play a disk that SEEMED ok before.
I find this very unnerving. if you noticed it didn't play immediately (or in 30 days) you could return it. but suppose you had it for years and then the new player didn't play it? what do you do then?
this whole thing sucks.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
You are correct.
But then again, in a historical sense, the possessive "'s" does indicate missing letters. I do know that Chaucer didn't spell the possessive that way. I'd be interested in seeing the etymology.
draw the talent away from the RIAA music nazis and empower the independant labels
I've seen this comment so often, and one thing strikes me. What were the 'big' record labels before they formed organisations such as the RIAA? They were independent. If we support independent labels and even if the talent DOES move to them, there's a very good chance that they will merely form the next RIAA, and the whole damn process starts again, with them using newer technology and us cracking it all over again...
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Use < and >
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I beleive you are entitled to comedy gold post of the day!
:)
Damn good stuff
Got the new Sum 41 cd and it plays everywhere but my car cd player (blaupunkt). Got the cd yesterday and it works on my home machine (where I can and will rip it now), works in my son's car stereo and when I drove into work and tried to listen to it, the stereo says "cd error" and goes back to the radio. So, since it works on my machine at home, I'll go home tonight, burn a new one, save the image for future use and start listening to my burned cd tomorrow. Something I wouldn't have had to do if they had left well enough alone. Yeah, whatever they did to the cd sure showed me! Jack and the boys seem intent to force us into copying even at bayonet point! How many more of these victories can they take before they fold? ;)
You must be the change you wish to see in the world - Ghandi
I got Robyn's latest album, "Don't Stop The Music". Great disc. BMG records have their own little copy protection mechanism it seems, the disc plays fine on ordinary CD players, but upon putting it into my CD-ROM, it autoruns and automatically installs a player which apparently uses Windows Media technology to play the (compressed) tracks from a data track on the CD. I was later able to uninstall this player, it left an uninstaller (UNWISE.EXE) and an install log in my C:\.
Winamp and Windows Media Player both lock up trying to play the CD as an ordinary audio CD. When I opened exact Exact Audio Copy, it couldn't make out the tracks on the CD. When I put the disc into my CD burner (HP CD-Writer 9310i Plus) the tracks were properly recognized, though marked "Copy Protected", and I could play the CD as a normal audio CD from within EAC (WA and WMP still hung). This allowed me to rip the disc to MP3 by playing it in EAC, while simultaneously recording in SoundForge. So the ripping was a bit more troublesome than usual, but no sweat. The quality of the rip was excellent, despite the slightly weird ripping method.
Quality, performance, value; you get only two, and you don't always get to pick.
I bought "It Isn't The Fall" by The Lesser Birds of Paradise (Loose Thread Recordings) for my mother, and "High Society" by Enon (Touch and Go) for my brother.
I know I sound like a broken record (ha ha ha), but these smaller labels actually want people to listen to their music. They have enough trouble promoting the stuff; they're certainly not going to put up any obstacles, or do things that would tick off the few customers/loyal radio stations they have.
"But I don't know how to find that stuff / indie music sucks!"
No, it doesn't suck. "High Society" certainly beats the hell out of Queens of the Stone Age. The new Apples In Stereo is great too.
As for finding the music, the College Music Journal (cmj.com) is a great starting point. I'd point you to WMBC's own music database, which is (barely) searchable, but it's still a little shaky; I'm hoping to straighten out the code this winter and release it publically (it also does the tracking the RIAA requires for Internet broadcasting).
[On a nice note, I also got "Big Swing Face" by Bruce Hornsby (RCA) for my father, and it wasn't crippled either.]
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Very good. I imagine that you didn't get C's in school, but rather As. The various Ph.D.'s--excuse me, Ph.D.s, I was reading the Chicago Manual of style for a moment there--at your college taught you rather well.
Some things are a matter of style.
It looks like other companies are worried and are staring to push out DRMed music as well. I noticed that while it use to be rare, now more cds from Japan are starting to use "copy-protection."
The article submiter is right, I think a lot of these companies are getting really scared after having nothing happen in their favor for quite some time, and are thinking that they must do something about it now and fast. I would not be surprised if most companies feel that this their last year if they don't do something about it.
Like everyone has said all forms of DRM will always be bypassed and only affect those who know very little. The RIAA is punishing their true customers while having no affect on those who download said materials for free. I knew once they got rid of Napster that this would happen. You take a service like Napster that had centrally based servers, put them out of business, and replace them with non-centralized servers in a true P2P environment and what would you expect to happen? All the RIAA did is make their worst nightmare expand exponentially. Personally I think it's hilarious and they are their own worst enemy. The RIAA is so busy fucking true consumers and pissing them off as well that they fail to see that they are only polishing the brass on the titanic. Their business model from back in the day is all but sunk and they refuse to accept or evolve into what would truely save them. How can a business as a whole that is so money hungry refuse to do what it takes to get back on track instead of turning themselves into the music gestapo? They only have themselves to blame for becoming so demonized. The RIAA have become the equivalent of a computer illiterate user trying to rewrite a program in C+ all the while telling us they know what they are doing and how well it will work. They don't know shit period. I for one would *maybe* buy cds if they were priced right, (way under $10), or if I could use a service that didn't try to fuck me at every opportunity. Greed is a fact of life but I don't have to be a pawn in the game. If the RIAA was actually able to stop all forms of P2P trading, etc. then I'll just go back to ftp and usenet but we all know it's not going to stop so let the RIAA keep spending their profits and hopefully they'll put themselves out of business. Maybe then artists will get the bigger share from their work and we can all be a little happier. Either way fuck the RIAA:)
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
No, you can't microwave DRM enabled CD's. It would destroy the part(s) of the disc responsible for preventing you from legitimately accessing your data. Thereby, microwaving a DRM enabled CD in order to destroy the copy protection is in clear violation of the DMCA. Furthermore, by making this idea public knowledge, you have also violated the terms of the DMCA by publishing a method of circumventing DRM. As such, you can expect a team of lawyers and moving men to confiscate your Microwave and CD collection. They will also steal your food, and reformat your hard drive with a sledgehammer. Please stop piracy before it starts. To rat out your friends and family, call our toll-free number at 1-888-666-DMCA
Expect DRM-enabled microwaves to be appearing on countertops by mid-2004. They are, after all, just big imprecise CD burners in the end, aren't they?
I dunno if this has any thing to do with the issue but im going to post it anyways. i got a few CD's this christmas, be they lame ones at that, but, on the front cover there was a sicker saying "This CD has copy protection software installed, please see back for details" it goes on to say that "This CD is intended Hi-Fi CD players only, and will not work on any other device, especialy PC-CDROM drives...". so just out of curiousity i put it in my computer and woh-and-behold the thing worked, and not only that, i used the winamp3 CD-ripper plug-in and ripped the hole damm thing to me hard drive.
Now is it just me or does the DRM software on the CD seem a little pointless, I may not be able to play the disk as a CD but i can ripp-it and distrobute the content on the internet?
No. CD's is prefectly correct in some situations.
:)
"That CD's case is on top of the player."
"This CD's TOC is all messed up."
Bob will set you right..
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
DRM == Digital Reach for your Money You == Troll
Always look on the briight side of life! (whistle, whistle)
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.
What the suits don't realize is that if a person can hear something, they can rip it. The only way they can turely stop piracy is to totally silence music, period. And that just won't happen. If someone wants to circumvent copy protection, they will. It doesn't take that much effort. DRM is a lost cause when it comes to music.
There's nothing to stop someone from hearing a song on the radio and copying it onto a tape or in digital form short of shutting down radio. There's nothing they can do about someone plugging their TV into their computer and copying stuff from DMX or a similar service. Short of sending a "copyright babysitter" into each and every home to monitor every aspect of listening, they can't stop it.
They can install all sorts of DRM equipment into new computers and such, but that still doesn't put a stopgap into older equipment. Technology has given us control of how we get our media intake. And that scares the piss out of the suits. And if they try to curb technology, we'll only go a step backward to fix that problem.
To the RIAA/MPAA: Give it up. You're fighting a hopeless battle. Try lowering the price of a CD and maybe we'll stop pirating. We all know how much it takes to make a CD, there's no pulling the wool over our eyes anymore. Do yourselves a favor and treat your customers the way you should.
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
If you really aren't sure if the problem is the CD or the player, try playing older CDs that you have lying around. Sony's players seem to be having the most trouble from the reading I've been doing.
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
Wish i had some mod points right now.
All my CD's ripped to OGG quality 10.
Revolutions are never about freedom or justice. They're about who's going to be top dog. -- Kilgore Trout
I'll tell you what; if it means that I never see "a bunch of box's" or "2 pizza's" again, then let's just say you can never use an apostrophe to pluralize and "CD's" is plain wrong.
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.
Under Windoze, this CD launches a program that wants to connect to somewhere via the internet. No f*ing way. I just want to play the CD on my computer because the stereo is in the other room and is not convenient.
I haven't tried under Linux because I broke the sound driver and haven't gotten around to fixing it, yet.
-- Will program for bandwidth
This is probably because the later tracks are closer to the edge of the CD. Normal wear and tear from handling the CD may beat up the tracks closer to the outside. I don't take any original CDs in my car, it's too easy for them to get beaten up.
He could not care less, or he couldn't care less, not he could care less. It's not a difficult concept.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Yes, right up there. "Many CD's bought this Christmas will come with little stickers that say they contain copy protection technology designed to defeat music pirates". And so on. Evil music pirates, starving artists, copy protection rather than rights removal. No hint that it's snake oil, no suggestion that all it does it piss people off and actively drive them to P2P. A rather ambiguous assertion at the end that "But some people who have got used to getting music for free might not buy it at all." What the hell that's meant to signify, I don't know, other than that the BBC employs way too many inbred RADA rejects in their features department.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
What are other Slashdot readers experiencing today? ./ editors, please use a spell checker at least on your titles...
I am experiencing a nauseating feeling when I see that you do not know how to write 'CDs'.
Hey
The thrill of copying the disc with EasyAudioCopy and giving it to a friend and therby screwing yet another $5 out of the tight-fisted RIAA is all the satisfaction I need.
Examples given include CPUs, CEOs, and Ph.D.s. (NB: the use of the serial comma, as well).
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
Very good. I imagine that you didn't get C's in school, but rather As
:-)
Depends which subject you're talking about
Some things are a matter of style.
Yes, some things are, and I really can't be bothered to argue about it - we'll (or well if you prefer) have to agree to disagree. What is the Chicago Manual of Style, by the way?
SpamNet - a spam blocker that really works
It has CD Extra on it and includes a video which would make it seem PC friendly. I put it in my PC under windoze and the machine locked up. Ejected it and put it in my cd burner and it was able to start CD Extra and i could play the video. Could not listen to the CD however even by trying to play it under the CD Extra program. Tried it on the Mac and it works fine. I can play it and rip it under iTunes. Tried it on the same PC under linux and was able to play it fine. Some thing is definitely going on with the disk but not working under windoze is the norm as far as i'm concerned.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
The DRM mess has collided with another well-known mess - horribly bad software.
This Christmas, amongst other things, my daughter got an iPod and my son got one of the new, USB-driven, Sony NetMD minidisc players, and the Shakira album on "CD".
Well, 'tis the Night After Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature is stirring except.... me. Now, after a few false starts, the Shakira album is going to .WAV files thanks to a well-placed sticker rather than a sharpie. For the iPod, I installed the recommended MusicMatch Jukebox, which is simply the worst piece of commercial software I have ever seen. So I deleted that and have since installed and happily used ephpod.
Sadly, for the minidisc player I am stuck with another dire piece of software, Sony's OpenMG. Incredibly cluttered UI, bizarre colours, incomprehensible DRM-inspired nomenclature ("check in", "check out").
I'm not cruel enough to leave my son to try to figure out how to transfer his brand new (Sony-sourced) Shakira album to his brand-new (Sony-sourced) minidisc player. Hence I'm staying up late to do it all myself.
I'm a geek dad. I moved RAMTOP on my Sinclair as a kid. I remember the syntax to PIP. I have known the obscure pleasure of deeply nested emulation. My kids used to mock me by chanting "SCSI BIOS! SPOOLER! SCSI BIOS! SPOOLER!" at the tops of their voices. If I'm finding it tiresome and laborious, then quite a lot of unhappy customers out there are finding it impossible.
One can only hope you're trolling.
Possessive pronouns don't have apostrophes: its, hers, theirs, yours, his, mine, ours, etc. Word length has no bearing on the matter.
The way to end DRM is simple: find someone more powerful than the RIAA.
And the only one more powerful than the RIAA in this country... is Wal-Mart.
Get a few thousand geeks to buy copy protected CDs, and then demand a return at the same time because they are defective. If you get Wal-Mart annoyed enough, they'll throw their weight around and make changes.
Ever wonder why many DVDs at Wal-Mart are fullscreen instead of widescreen? Because enough rednecks returned their DVDs and whined "'cos they didn't fill up mah dam screen!"
Actually, you can't. The data has more error correction information, so you are able to store less. A 650MB data CD will actually store over 700MB of audio.
Does these CDs have the CDDA logo on it? If it does Sony/Columbia must find a way to make it play in your ye old CD player.
If it doesn't, you should have paid attention and bought only CDs compatible to your equipment.
In both cases I think that you should sue them! Just fight within the same rules!
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
> Some would say only God would allow a transcendental number raise to another transcendental number, raise to an imaginary number to come out so nice as just -1!
Would that be the same God who designed the relative sizes of penises and anuses?
Your method of "reasoning" could lead to some very alarming conclusions if you applied it the same to every observation.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I'll briefly mention Windows NT SP 6, which broke Lotus Notes. I don't remember the specifics, but SP6 broke Notes' TCP/IP stack, while Outlook was unaffected. Microsoft replaced it a week or so later with SP6a, and IIRC never really mentioned why the 6a - they just pulled 6, and unless you were affected you'd never know. We got bit.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
Everything2 has the best comments on the matter that I've come across:
Amazon has some reviews.
It's the same kind of book as the MLA handbook.
A fair question. Answer: http://www.fairtunes.com/
Aside from the actual music, there are the studio people.
Bands pay for their studio time to produce the album. And they pay a lot for it. The "studio people" got their money already.
The cover art came from somewhere, and that person should be compensated.
If I download the MP3 for a song, why exactly should I pay for cover art?
I got the CD "Now that's what I call Christmas" and it won't play in any of my PC drives or my wife's iMac.
However, Nero reported it was copy protected, so I checked the box to override it and the copy works fine.
There is NO warning on the CD about DRM.
My wife and I used to buy each other lots of CDs for the holidays, but that has since changed. She bought me one this year (Audioslave) and thankfully it works fine. Given all the publicity these DRM-crippled pseudo-CDs have received, we've decided it's best to avoid that particular gift. We listen to a lot of music on our computer, and who wants to unwrap a gift to discover that it can't be ripped to your player of choice? "Merry Christmas, dear... and yes, I have the receipt so we can take this back." Lame. The RIAA's paranoia and lack of insight are rapidly putting itself out of business.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
Everything2 has the best comments on the matter that I've come across:
Someone quoting Everything2 as authoritative is the best evidence of the apocalypse that I've come across.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
That's a possessive, not a plural (the latter is the subject at hand).
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Get your facts straight. That's Euler's identity, not Gauss'.
-5 points for getting that wrong.
-10 points for being an idiot.
when salmon are outlawed, only outlaws will have salmon
... unless they're by an indy. Fuck the Big Five... fuck 'em where they breathe. I'll not buy anymore of their crap, ever. May they die out early, and often.
-oZ
Hehehe...True. But I didn't include the comments for any sort of authority value.
Here's how they put it in their court filing.
That's clear enough.
They ask that if you've found a defective CD, report it to them by clicking here.
It's a way of writing papers. Along with the MLA, APA, and a whole bunch of others. Here is a link to the FAQ for it.
Here's the link...
f aq/
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/cmos
Well, your example sucks. If you were running ethernet in 3 foot lengths it really wouldn't matter what you used for a cable. Barb wire would work fine actually, if you had 2 pairs.
So back to what I'm saying, audiophiles love patting themselves on the back about this shit, and you've bought it hook line and sinker. It's a piece of plastic, a damn tube that blinks bits. Although I'm not convinced, I'll give you the jitter - who knows, maybe a golden ears listener can detect it. I can't, and you probably can't either. Fine, let's talk about coax then. You'll hear audiophiles whinging about true 75 ohm cables, how RCA connectors are bad - we're talking about a two wire digital connector. Have these people heard that a $5 USB cable has more bandwidth than their precious cables? And yes, they'll actually tell you that coax has jitter too. Am I supposed to believe that the sub-nanosecond time it takes for that signal to reach my decoder, actually degrades the audio? Come on. Most audiophile stuff is pure snake oil, bought into by gullible saps who want to pretend they can 'hear the difference.'
You would find it on Mag stands and supermarket checkouts.
The MP3's of his songs were everywhere - he made them and posted on Napster.
He is not Elthon John, but considering how most musicians survive, he is doing all right.
He made a lot more money than a record label would pay him. Does any artist get a clean U$1,00 from a CD?
It costed a lot less than any CD on the nearest Bestbuy, and you got a magazine ( may be good or not )
Your target audience goes to the supermarket, right? Some live on donuts and Burgers, i know...
Record labels are not the only way to hit the market.
sig sig sputnik.
Jose T Oliveira Jr.
For MP3 downloads, you can avoid OpenMG by using RealOne Player; a plugin for Sony devices (including NetMD) is available through its online update facility. Like Simple Burner, RealOne shows absolutely no trace of OpenMG's idiotic DRM, and unlike OpenMG it doesn't re-encode all your music when you import it into the media library. (It does have to convert to ATRAC3 as it downloads, of course, but it doesn't waste space keeping the converted tracks around unless you ask it to.) One minor disadvantage of RealOne's NetMD support is that it has no support for grouping tracks.
There are also some independent utilities starting to appear; more information on some of them can be found in the minidisc.org NetMD FAQ.
Another MP3->MD option is to use Simple Burner along with a CD imager such as Nero ImageDrive, Daemon Tools, CloneCD etc. RealOne is still more convenient, but this method allows the use of whatever audio-related features your burning software has (filters, inserting track marks using a .cue file, etc).
Unfortunately there is still no way to upload directly from a MD. You can at least automate the process of analog uploading, and with a high quality sound card the result should at least sound good even though it will take a long time.
Columbia belongs to Sony. So, in effect, only Sony is guilty in this particular instance, although Vivendi Universal and Bertelsmann are both deep in DRM.
Remember the "Real California Cheese" campaign or the "Got Milk" campaign. An ad campaign telling consumers to "look for the CD Audio label" (i.e., Red book compliance) would properly hurt DRM title sales significantly. Of course,, who knows where the money for a national campaign would come from. However, regular ads in Rolling Stone, Wired, and some other carefully targetted publications could probably accomplish quite a bit.
I've heard a several people complain about this CD being uncopyable, but my copy ripped just fine. My copy has a bonus Quicktime video of a song that escapes me from "The Donnas Turn 21" which they were nice enough to include with a high quality stereo soundtrack that I ripped as well.
Given what I've read about copy protection techniques generally resulting in a CD that's totally unusable on computers, it seems odd to me that they would release a "normal" CD with bonus material (there's also a screen saver and some other Flash BS) that *requires* a computer as well as a broken, DRM'd version. My version isn't any special edition or anything (that I can see).
But then I also think there's probably a lot of discs getting labled as DRM'd that somebody was too clueless to RIP or was just a bad pressing as another poster mentioned.
On my last trip through bestbuy I was suprised at the quantity and cheapness of DVD players and the paucity of plain CD players. I wonder how long it will be before some material is released as an audio-only DVD -- maybe some still material or something for video -- but only playable as a DVD on a DVD player.
Yes, I know it's not *good* DRM, but better than what they have now. And that way they won't get dinged for releasing a "broken" CD, since its not a CD at all...
From now on, I'm just going to download all my music off of the Internet. If i listen to more than just the first 15 seconds of the song before deciding that it's crap, I'm going to mail $5 to the band. That's probably 10x more than what they would have gotten had I bought the CD. Screw the record label. The band can distribute the money as they see fit.
Of course, I am aware that there are some problems with this plan.. It is still illegal, and there is no way to make sure that the record companies don't usurp the money from the band..
i, myself, i've only bought one cd from a *aa based system since napster. no let me rephrase this. since naspster *CAME DOWN*. i bought well over 10 CDs(not much for someone making less than minnimum wage, i might add), while i was on napster. the only CD i made an excuse for was still(possibly one of the best cds in my collection...i'd reccomend this to even the most antiriaa pf people)... but yea. kudos to you people who could start sometihng like this, but i'm hoping that the *more* significant portion are those who *don't buy CDs AT ALL* - the riaa can burn in it's own profitless spiral into the void. Burn anything you can burn off of Gnutella(or whatever your source is)...and then find local talent to fill the rest of your music needs. but i guess not everyone can do this - good luck to those who start this day event then!
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
well here's the thing... a friend of mine has a system that is completely phenom in every way.. he has a pair of home made folded horns that make anything out there you can buy sound like crap (no they don't have the typical folded horn resonance sound they each have about 350 pounds of dry sand in and around each of them. in the outer shell.... BTW he works as an acoustical engineer in a very high end speaker manufacturer R&D labs... he wont let me tell who... but they used to be based in Battle creek michigan)
.... " Now do you understand why I don't listen to that crap? It's not the content but the horrible wrapper they put it in!"
He has 4 discreet B&O amps 2 driving the high end (tweet and midrange) and 2 driving the low end (midbass/bass.. no subwoofer... he said that subwoofers are for pussies)
I cant remember the japanese brand name on the tube preamp and CD player he has... it's not Nackamitchi..
The Cd's I mentioned sound absolutely fantastic on his system... espically when you sit in the sweet spot. and when you put in a regular CD from today (we used the Crime of the century gold refrence CD I had and we purchased a current crime of the century CD from a local CD shop for this test.. The difference was unbelieveable.. the regular CD might as well be on AM radio... and when listening to other CD's from today (nickleback is HORRIBLE.. the cymbols and highs sound like they are a poorly compressed 96Kbps mp3!) The only album that sounded better than the rest was actually disc one of Smashing Pumpkins mellon Collie and the Infinate sadness box set. but returning to the gold refrence of Pink floyd's Dark side of the moon everything again sounded like complete and utter crap in comparasion.
anything hip-hop'ish we had to crank the lows way way down as it is horribly obvious that they artifically in post production and mastering crank up all the low end to sound better on crappy stereos..
My friend NEVER listens to anything but classical music.. and after out 2 hour listening session he said
I have been finding that it is impossible to find any good CD's anymore... SACD is in the same state that CD's were in 1986... they need to impress everyone to get them to buy into it... but I am betting that SACD's will become as crappy as today's CD's within 5 years of it becoming popular.
Note: he does have some "crappy" classical cd's.. he pointed out that every one that was crap came from the States and specifically a BMI studio.
something to think about...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
This seems like the most logical idea I have seen so far. The one and only problem I see with it is that in some towns the only place to buy a cd is to hit the old wal-mart, hastings, or other chain. Now hastings, you may be able to make that happen. Wal-Mart, well, if the corporation gets involved you probably won't get anywhere. But, if you got really lucky. Maybe they'd offer you one of those nice settlements big corporations are so fond of using to make legal woes disappear.
It's an interesting fact that music pirates don't really respect copyright, but they do respect registered trademarks. After all, what pirate would disrespect something marked with an ARRRR symbol?
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
me live canada. me have plenty rights, and soon me have legalized marijuana to boot.
me see huge rise in snack food and tie-dye industries. MMM me like cheetos.
I hate spyware and spies
While im not going to argue with you, how about If I give you some alternatives for those of us who take a creative interpertation of english.
CDen like ox->oxen
or maybe CDi like octopus->octopi
or lastly just plain CD, like sheep->sheep.
What signature defines me as a person?
Not to flame, but you're all idiots. :) The purpose of language is to communicate effectively; whichever method is easier to understand (using apostrophes to pluralize acronyms/abbreviations, or not, e.g. CDs vs. CD's) should be the one that's used. As language is entirely arbitrary (but, for the sake of simplicity, often systematic), there is no absolute right or wrong -- but if everyone expects "CDs" and you type "CD's", that may make things harder to read, so you should probably use "CDs". And vice-versa, of course.
Come on, guys. Anyone with enough education to argue about the finer points of disparate style manuals should understand this concept.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Although I do have to figure out what to broadcast with my new webcam :)
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Damnit. Popped in my new John Cage album today. Low and behold...4 minutes and 33 seconds of pure silence.
I agree totally. I would agree with the anal people if this was a published work, or perhaps even if these comments were meant to be part of some reference work.
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
2. Turn the disc back to the store, claiming it's useless. (it is, sort of)
3. Send a check to the artists, and say that you like them, but hate their record label, and explain what you did.
4. Send a letter to the record label, say that you hate them, and tell them what you did about it.
I've got a better idea, because it's MUCH mroe convenient. If you really want to perform the first step as stated, do it. Otherwise, do these:
1. Exercise your fair use rights and download songs from your favorite P2P network.
2. If you like the music, go to the show. Artist's get fucked over by the labels and don't make any money from the CD, in fact they need the revenue from the live performances to PAY the labels.
3. Send a letter to the record label, and show them how you paid for the music you listen to by going to the show, but you did not pay for their coke habit.
There IS a better way to support artists than buying CDs. There is, however, the additional issues introduced of TicketMaster also being a Lord of Evil. Let's solve one problem at a time, ok?
Like what I said? You might like my music
I was browsing the troubleshooting section and came across this gem:
I really don't know what mechanism they are employing here, I would suspect that it's looking for Macrovision signals and blocking playback of Macrovision-encoded video on consumer-recordable media.
My Sony Digital-8 recorder also has a Macrovision detector in it.
You'd think I'd learn by now...
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
It's called "Revolution", but this country's still not ready for it (IMHO). Just get ready to hanker down when the police state finally comes. It'll take popular support to ultimately win, and it's gonna take a whole lot of patience and determination to do so. It may not happen in our generation, it may not even be our kids that get to do it, but it will happen.
Again, IMHO, the time when citizens could have made a difference came and went before I was born (ref: the protests to the Vietnam war, also did nothing). It's time to prepare (or join, although I don't know of any such groups) an organization that will act when the time is most suitable for taking back our country.
Like what I said? You might like my music
I'd rather see an idiot checker.
First you demonstrate that "CD's" is a correctly spelled possessive. Then you show us the correct way of pluralizing CD. Then you think a spellchecker would fix the problem?
Like what I said? You might like my music
what, you don't think the copy protection actualy works do you?
A two second download will have you playing and burning the CD from your computer. But you can't download software to a high-end player, thus those copy-protected disks only stop people from playing the disks, not copying them.
You can also just plug an audio cable into a computer and record them.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
It's not like a record where the needle physicaly touches the disk. A CD is only looked at, looking at the center wouldn't cause it to fail more then the outside.
The problems are probably being caused by your fingers and other objects comming in contact with the disk, and more likely to touch the outside, especialy if you're a swap-junky
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I personally have not had this problem but I do know that (Ph)ony have released there own "CD" which has a hidden area of the CD which corrupts the data flow when used in a PC or Mac and since a lot of modern CD players use Computer components this track disrupts playing on them. The worst thing I have found out is that we have no real come back on this except to return the product to them. In the UK (where I am) this has caused much annoyance especially since people who buy CD's like myself and play them in their PC's can't without using legacy hardware, or using some nifty wee tricks with markers and the like. On a personal note I think these big companies should re-think their strategy on CD and protection, cheaper would obviously be better in my eyes or the ability to create "personal" CD's made from tracks on databases or something! Anyway, that's my experience not that says much ;-)
How can you say that civilisation's do not advance... in every war we invent new ways to kill you.
The CDs that didn't work were Sony, moron. Last I checked, Sony was a Japanese company.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Do you have any more info on this? I have a memeory stick walkman that I wouldn't mind using cheaper media on.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
In that case you're suggesting he could care less about anything other than his album sales. This suggests he makes his album sales his highest priority.
For example, saying the above would suggest that he could care less about someone painting his drum set pink (in other words it is possible for him to not worry about it), but that he could not care less about someone causing decreased sales of an album. In other words, his album sales are so important it is impossible for him not to care any less than he does about them, or in other words he would be unable to worry any less about them, lest he violate some sort of personal principles he has about worrying.
It is actually a difficult concept, since it depends on wether you assume that he could care less because he has no principles on the matter, or that he could not care less because he would feel poorer should he care less.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Well, if it plays in your PC but not your car, then there is a very good chance that your car sterio is just a peice of shit.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Is it the CD that is faulty or the CD player. All the store needs to do is to take another CD player to court and play the CD. The CD works, but not in your "faulty" player.
I got the best of U2 1990-2000 for Xmas.
I think they're starting to twig to what they have to do.
It had no DRM, it came with 2 Audio CDs, an interactive VCD, a very thick insert with plenty of fan pictures and it was the same price as normal CDs here (about 19 Euros).
I still think its expensive, but I don't think it was a complete and utter rip off as before, so it seems like better value to me.
All the track ripped in MP3 format no problem, and the disks play on all devices, and the VCD worked in my VCD player aswell as my computer.
It was on Island records (Universal).
Thanks for the info. *heads off to download*
I don't buy cd's anymore anyway, more than I'm willing to pay, but I can probably count on one hand the number of those cds I'd ever want to even listen to.. the less players a lot of that plays in, the better in my opinion :P
Macrovision is (I believe) part of the DVD spec. Unless your player is modified to disable this 'feature', there is a macrovision encoding chip that can be software enabled to 'protect' the video output. I'm not certain about the terms, but I think if a DVD publisher wants Macrovision on their title, they pay a licensing fee to the Macrovision folks and the 'Macrovision' bit is flipped on the disk. This is why one doesn't usually connect their DVD player to the VCR, thence to the TV, but instead connects directly to the TV.
If they don't know what they're doing, they may be liable for replacing the defective product, but it would be hard to prove that they did anything intentionally.
This is why one doesn't usually connect their DVD player to the VCR, thence to the TV, but instead connects directly to the TV.
Most of the time I've seen things connected through the VCR, the VCR was being used as an RF modulator for a video game console or camcorder with no RF output connected to a television set with no A/V input. How does the owner of a television set without A/V inputs connect a DVD player to his television set? Do DVD players have coax out on RF channel 3/4?
Will I retire or break 10K?
They WILL exchange an open title (audio, video or CD-ROM) for a sealed version of the SAME title.
Several years, I asked a Toys "R" Us employee about the store's return policy. She replied that whenever a customer returns a copyrighted item (e.g. a VHS video or a PC or console video game), the store exchanges it and opens the package before giving it to the customer.
Will I retire or break 10K?
and find a different store. When you have exhausted all of your stores, then maybe you should consider making your own music?
If I do make and publish my own music, how can I be assured that the songs that I write will be completely original and not unconsciously misappropriated from some popular song? Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music established that even unconscious plagiarism is actionable as copyright infringement.
Will I retire or break 10K?
do they bother to list between, say 'scratched', 'broken', 'production fault', etc. or just return the ones they got back as 'defective'?
The designation "production fault" is appropriate here. If a CD as produced won't play in a stock Apple iMac computer, whose optical drive and audio data path adhere to the Red Book standard, then the CD as produced is faulty.
Will I retire or break 10K?
if you have a base model TV with no other inputs besides RF (Like I do), you have to get an RF modulator from radio shack ($30) or something similar.
Do the RadioShack RF modulators distort the picture in response to Macrovision signals? Or are they illegal to manufacture under the DMCA? Or if neither, why not?
Will I retire or break 10K?
When you charge someone with a crime, you DON'T "sue" them. You hie yourself to your local district attorney or police station or what have you in your state or local criminal justice system, and you swear out a complaint. After that, it's up to the cops as to whether the "fraud" is worth pursuing, tho you'll probably have to testify in court.
I don't know which action would be best for exposing these not-quite-CDs, but if you're thinking about acting against it, at least get a clue what the differences are between criminal and civil cases.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
But most production personnel and studio musicians are paid for X-many hours of work just like any other contracted worker -- not by royalties from sales of the finished product. Barring unusual contract terms, the studio end has already been paid everything they had coming, long before the album ever hits the shelves.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Maybe, but that's why you reward them when they're small and operating in a fashion that agrees with your ethical code, and you stop rewarding them when they become large and greedy and join the RIAA. Maybe if people started a trend like this, some record labels might just resign from the RIAA and go back to being independent.
Uh oh, the grammar Nazis are having a field day today! ;-)
I suppose in the strictest sense you're correct. In practical terms, DRM is generally used with regard to schemes that allow you to access media if you have the right to. In the case of copy protected CDs, the intent is to keep you from accessing the media on computers, and there is generally no provision made to ever allow you to do so.
It used to be called Fairtunes, It's now called MusicLink.Com
I've got a pile of them in the cupboard (the shelf went, I got so many) so I'm not sure I can find the article.
I thought it was bullshit too. But when I heard things off album CDs that went onto long-play-time CDs they sounded "gritty" on the long-play pressings. I usually try to attend the cut, and it usually sounds fine at this time. It's only when the grim time of the boxes of pressed disks being delivered that you get a shock. When I read the SS article it seemed to provide an explanation.
By the way the end product is at 96KHz at 24 bit depth, dithered/shaped down to consumer quality with an Apogee UV22, and as it's sometimes on Exabyte cart, I can't guarrantee I have a reader at home :-)
Yes, I am in recording - since I was 16, a depressing 21 years in April. I was really venting my spleen at the parasites in the business (the RIAA).
My formatting was wonky coz I typed it up in KWrite and didn't check the formatting. D'oh.
Yes, audiophiles talk bollocks. All hifi is bollocks. When you've heard real analogue tape multitrack masters through real speakers in a room designed for neutral listening conditions, hifi is an abortion.
Having said that, capacitance problems in long cable runs have been known to cause problems. They make XLR balanced boosters for some apps. Also, bout the only digital standards we can count on are MIDI and SPDIF!
Hands up everyone who refuses to obey orders.
...even if the rest of your life so obviously and anonymously sucks... (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Nowadays stuff sent to some training-scheme monkey with a "Finaliser" box (there are many makes -tc Electronic made the first, now Drawmer, DBX etc make similar boxes) which add multiband compression and "brickwall" limiting to make up for what was often a bad master tape. With the proliferation of home studios, VST and "producers" who have never worked in proper studios and don't know what to listen for. The Finaliser box does keep all the frequencies in line, but of course at a price. The sound.
Nowadays I do all the mastering I can in the studio and present the plant with a press-ready CDR. If I play this CDR and then the pressed version, the pressed version sounds odd. Even the musicians can tell, and they have cloth ears.
As for ABBA, don't be embarassed. They were great songwriters, and their studio (Polar) was equipped with a Neve desk, I believe. Lovely EQ (tone controls). Now people use SSLs, compression on each channel, subgroup busses and output bus. They sound NASTY - too much compression. Horrible EQ too. They are ergonomic, though.
I'm amazed at how vitriolic people have been about this post. I may be a drunkard, but not a cokehead. My spleen was being vented at the record companies, who have no interest in the output.
My point WAS that it _shouldn't_ be true that pressed CDs sound different, but I was reporting that they _do_ and reporting an article that purported to explain this. Those comparing ripped discs with the originals are missing the F____NG point. The pressing plants Do vary from the standard inter-pit-train widths. They shouldn't but they do. I wish they didn't.
If anyone was any more questions, mail me at phasedistort(at)NOSPAMyahoo.co.uk
If anyone just wants to shout, then Happy New Year to you.
Hands up everyone who refuses to obey orders.