Slashdot Mirror
Copy-Protected CDs Going Mainstream
bmarklein writes "According to this CNET article, Arista is going to start shipping copy-protected CDs in volume. Looks like the discs will include DRM'd Windows Media files in the second session. No mention of which titles will be affected, but Arista is the home of Santana, Whitney Houston, Pink, TLC and Kenny G."
i am glad they are copy-protecting his stuff. that means less of it taking up bandwidth
Good thing they picked sucky bands to copy-protect. :)
Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so. --Ford Prefect
Therefore I will not buy ANY of those titles.
Since I cannot back them up.
When no one buys their copy-protected law-breaking titles, they'll stop issuing them that way.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
BOYCOTT EVERYTHING but most of all the lameness filter
simple as that. I don't care how friggin' much I might want the music, I simply refuse to bankroll these jerks and their broken business models.
and I'm patient. this will all be sorted out in 10 years and I'll re-stock my collection.
And thus we have proof: not all DRM is used for evil purposes. Sometimes it's used for the common good ;)
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
first it was hasslehof, but now i have proof kenny G is a nazi, muhahahahhaahha, see not only does he ruin perfectly good dentists offices, but also the entire music industry huh who knew
"Arista is the home of Santana, Whitney Houston, Pink, TLC and Kenny G."
That's just too easy.
Oh dear... the recording industry simply never learns do they?
If they force copy-protection on us then I think they're quickly going to find:
1. lots of people bitching and returning disks because they won't play in there car player or on their DVD.
2. unskilled people being *forced* to download their MP3 rips from the Net rather than buying a CD and ripping tracks themselves for use on their MP3 players and computers.
3. *no* change in the rate of serious piracy because serious pirates just laugh at the stupid copy protection schemes being used (audio patch cord and decent soundcard anyone?)
And how stupid will the recording industry look if their CD sales figures don't immediately soar to new heights as a result of this copy protection?
If sales levels remain basically unchanged then they're going to have to admit that either:
a) people weren't pirating much anyway
or
b) their copyprotection doesn't work.
But you've got to feel sorry for an industry that has already shot off both its feet but keeps reloading and blasting away in vain, right?
Arista is the home of Santana, Whitney Houston, Pink, TLC and Kenny G Phew, I was scared there for a minute
You want to copy their music? Play it in CD-ROM on computer (or in portable CD player), plug into output sound, tell recorder to directly record digital output. Encode. Share.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Is there anyone onilne keeping a listing of which CD's are being released with DRM protection? I sure as hell don't want to go support an artist and then find out I can't even play the CD on my machine....
Before:
Step 1: Want MP3
Step 2: Buy CD
Step 3: Have MP3
After:
Step 1: Want MP3
Step 2: ???
Step 3: No profit!
Way to go RIAA...
(Not to mention that I don't even want the music on landfill-type media. Sell me MP3s online and I'll pay, goddamnit!)
My Sig: SEGV
There're a lot of Linux users that keep a Windows box for games. In the future some Windows users could want a Linux box (maybe a barebones) for media.
is that he is CURRENTLY taking up bandwidth?!?
I'm ohh soo sure someone is going to find a work around within weeks of it being released, remember the epside with the sharpie around the edge? Worst case scenerio, we use digital in and use a voice/sound recorder, not worth the hassle to me, but whatever
Sounds like a great basis for another "Big Brother" reality show.
I know when time comes to download mp3s, I'm lookin for the Kenny G first!
I mean, honestly, if they're going to copy protect cds... doesnt it make sense to protect the ones people are actually going to, I dont know, COPY?
No problem.
I now forsee lots of people being outraged at these companies trying to protect their product from being copied all in the name of "We can't back up our music or listen to it on an MP3 device!"
.00000023%
In other news:
The total percentage of albums last year that were copied for legitimate purposes:
Well, dispite the fact that this seems to largely not directly affect me (with the exception of, maybe, santana), I am stipp pretty annoyed by the precident it sets for other labels.
One other question, maybe somebody could elaborate for me: It will contain DRM windows media files on the second session.. I'm assuming i don't need a Microsoft Windows Media Discman to listen to these discs when I'm on my way out, so whats stopping us from simply using the music on the first session.
Obviously these discs are not damaged in the way most DRM cds are nowadays since the point, assumingly, would be to allow use of them in a windows-based computer. So, while an awful precident, and terribly annoying, (and voiding any future purchases I may have ever made from them), how will this really change anything?
-- Seq
What do you get when you alienate your customer base, potential future customer base and anyone with an interest in music? A further drop in sales, that's what.
Copy-protected CDs have been shown not to be effective at stopping people "pirating" them. Even if an ideal copy protection did exist, there's still that blasted analogue hole. If they want to copy protect their content, they'll have to use a different medium since older CD players don't like copy-protected CDs.
As I've said before, this is just an attempt to slow the "piracy" problem in order to give them time to think up of a new strategy.
"Smoking helps you lose weight - one lung at a time" -- A. E. Neumann
good thing i don't listen to those artists, but either we all stand together or all hang seperately.
IMAGE VERIFICATION IS EVIL!
If theyre putting the same tracks in for computer with drm that logically means the extra space needed has to come from somewhere.... lower quality cd audio tracks??
Slashdot - The one stop shop for procrastination
Here in Japan, Massive Attack's latest release was DRMed. I don't know if it was in the states.
:-p
The funny thing is, in Japan, your can rent music. In fact Tsutaya, the Blockbuster video of Japan, rents music (CD) at all their stores and even crazier, they sell black CDs and MDs at the counter!
Here's one:
http://fatchucks.com/index.html
I'll post more lists if I find any.
And this is a bad thing, how?
I mean, really: suppose an errant Tomahawk cruise missile took out any one of these "artists". My first thought would be "Why couldn't they have killed Bon Jovi, too?".
Now if they started using this copy protection scheme on the works of Zamfir, Master of the Pan Pipe, then I'd be pissed, and rightly so. Can't be mackin' tha ladiez without Masta Z, tha OG.
Word.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
The standards define what's a CD. These - things - whatever they are, wherever they came for, whatever they're trying to do here - are _not_ CDs.
If there is no name for them, they cannot be feared, and despised, and resisted. There is no way to think about them, or talk about them - which is exactly what they want.
You must speak the true name of your enemy.
as far as I'm concerned, there is no use buying CDs at all unless I can clearly tell if it is crippled. I prefer vinyl anyway.
I get to practice my typing skills...
/j #mp3passion
eg.
Fire up an irc client
Join an irc server
@find $lt;song title>
!SomeNick <song title>
*dum dee dum*
DCC get complete...
Ahh, the sound of music at near CD quality... And no bloody saxophone or whatever instrument that gayish Kenny G thinks he can play next.
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
I used to care about DRM in CDs of the mainstream music industry, but then I realized I never did buy from mainstream bands or artists. Go listen to some indie music which is a hell of a lot better than Pink or Kenny G will ever aspire to be.
A good example is now, I'm listening to a lot of Red Martian on the punk side and John McCutcheon on the folk side. Both of which provide MP3s online of their stuff and actively support the promotion of online music. Not only that, but Red martian sells their albums anywhere from $2.50 to $6.00, you will never find that in any record company, with good music to boot. I've also listened to my local scene enough with Side Project for their funk sound or Lithium for their Punk and Ska offerings.
My point is, it shouldn't really matter if DRM goes mainstream, because chances are, your local scene or offerings that you must actively find produce a better sound than the publicity machine. Forget about buying from Arista and similar big names, then start listening to new music. It benefits your ears and hurts the large record companies who use the DRM at the same time.
This so-called second session, containing files that can be used by computer music aficionados but not widely distributed, has come to be a key goal for the labels.
based on these lines, it looks as if they're going to have two versions of every song? that no doubt means that there will be fewer songs on some CD's... or perhapes will have really low bitrate versions for the computer, to save space... except that these versions will also sound crappy, due to their low bitrate.
and i guess people without constant internet connections are going to be a little screwed, since, afaik, all microsoft's drm techiniques involve some sort of online interaction with a remote server. that kinda alienates half the population right there...
How legal would it be to encourage folks to go deliberately buy a bunch of Arista's broken CD's and then returning them, because they are broken?
Sort of the consumers expressing their will through Economic sabatoge.
Maybe Microsoft has fooled them to think this DRM stuff really works.
listing of corrupt & "protected" CD's here
The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
I almost bought a Paradise Lost CD (I dont remember what label they are on, nothing mainstream), and while I was waiting in the checkout line I saw some fine print on the back bottom of the cd reading something like "this cd will only play in computers with the supplied software." Since I 1) Dont want to install any extra software to play an audio cd and 2) Dont run windows, I went and put the cd back. I really hope people refuse to buy this crap.
---
Always standing, I am a tree awaiting the lightning. -Samael, Crown
It should be interesting to guage the impact on sales, of these DRM'd CDs. There are two schools of thought on this. First, if the sales are dramatically reduced, the record label won't have impacted a large percentage of their revenue, even if sales for these artists disappear off the bonnom of the charts. For this reason it's rather wise to use these artists as test cases.
On the other side of the argument, opponants of current DRM strategies can argue that demographics of the respective fan bases of these artists are those more likely to buy sucg crippled products without understanding the reduced value of the products on which they're spending their hard earned cash.
Either way, I look forward to seeing how crippling these products will impact their sales.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Sorry, but I am no longer going to buy Arista albums. Cince the only way I can get the music is from Online sources then that's the only route I am going to take.
Screw em, I'm done playing their silly games. I am reccomending to everyone I know to NOT buy arista albums.
we all should do this, but I know that the slashdot community has no balls let alone any ability other than to sit there like a bunch of turds that complain.
Hey Arista! you just made me condone and reccomend to everyone to STEAL your music and to GIVE it away with the intent of putting you out of business. Corperations today are ran by the absolute stupidest people on this planet.
It only takes one Windows system to make it work for the rest. Warez community can afford it :-)
1.) This is going to be an excuse to jack up the already obnoxious price of CDs
2.) If it can be encrypted it can be decrypted...what makes them think that this time crackers will just roll over and not break this copyright protection? I dont think a small band of corporate code jockies will forever outsmart a determined community.
3.) There are always alternatives, they can spend years locking, bricking up, chaining, securing the main door and not accomplish anything with the back door, side doors, and windows left wide open.
4.) Alternatives will provide new rips anyway and what have they then accomplished except...see point 1.
Anybody know where I can get some toilet paper with DMCA on it?
-1 Overrated (Too many big words for me to comprehend)
Is the music industry really so dumb as to think that hardware and software solutions will really ever work?
Think of it this way, software companies have been trying for years to copy protect their software. They've gone rapidly through overburned CDs, hardware dongles, encrypted CD verification. Sony even masked Playstation discs so that they could leave sections of the CDs blank as a sort of key. None of it has worked yet. What makes record labels think that they're immune?
Of course, don't get me wrong. The more time they spend on pointless hardware and software solutions the more time they divert from their likely more effective political attempts.
Who moderates the meta-moderators?
Can't mplayer read windows media files? And if it can, can't you then just convert them into your favorite format (mp3, ogg, etc.) with mplayer? I know that you can do this with other sound files and media like Qicktime, RealMedia, DVDs, etc. If that's the case, the DRM might not work as well as planned... :) (hopefully)
>>... (home of) Santana, Whitney Houston, Pink, TLC and Kenny G.
well..no love lost there!
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
I can't stop my wife from buying them, but I'll never pay for a new CD ever again, and I'll never ask for a CD for a present.
It's really too bad the RIAA isn't capable of treating its customers like civilised people.
it amazes me all the people who claim to buy the cd so they can rip the songs for their mp3 players and such. while i dont doubt this happens, these people are in the minority and i think its high time people quit bitching because the recording industries are trying to prevent theft. it may not be perfect, but they are trying. and all the comments about needing to make a backup copy? you dont get to make a backup copy of your car when you buy it. this is no different. sometimes you can. most times you cant. get over it.
It seems ironic to me that two stories down from the post about the new copy protection schemes is an article about perpetual motion.
Wasnt it Philips that first came out with CDs and as such hold the rights to the name Compact Disc? I remember when this whole copy protection thing first came about, they had said about suing any company protecting their CDs as it was not part of the "standard" and if they did want to use protection they could not use the name compact disc. Wish I had a link to the article I read about this however long ago it was. Anyone else remember this or know what ever happened?
This is truthfully very sad to see, particularly the amount of control that Microsoft's own product is exercising over music. I mean, they already control so much of the software market and entertainment market, it is sad to see that this only expands their control. In my opinion, this DRM (if it is necessary at all) should be based on widely accepted standards and protocols created by some public ruling body, NOT the RIAA which is a group of privately controlled companies or some company like Microsoft solely wanting to make a profit.
:(
I mean, whatever happened to just being able to stick a CD in a CD player and have it play without having to connect to the Internet to verify its authenticity? Why should Microsoft benefit from some artist's musical expertise?
-6d
I hold in my hand a 'CD' by Fischerspooner (an odd but entertaining band). Like most wide rlease cds, the back of the jewel case has many logos. Things to note:
The 'Compact Disc' logo we've come to expect is missing.
A 'enhanced CD' logo is present.
Reading the fine print, this Capitol Records release (released on march the 6th) says:
"Enhanced CD" is a certification mark of the RIAA
Need I mention that this CD cannot be burned in any of my machines? Ripping to mp3s is only possible via the line-in jack, and has horrible quality (compared with ripping from my cd-rom, that is).
This is not a santanna album, its from a much smaller, newer act. The RIAA has made more headway with promoting thier agenda then this article seems to imply: These CDs are already on the market, and have been since the begining of the month, at the least.
Please note: The RIAA site has the definition of the 'enchanced CD" 'standard' available here. The standard does not require any form of watermarking of copyright protection. However, as a copy-protected cd is technically NOT compliant with the original philips specifications, I find it very suspect that the RIAA made thier own standard. Especially since this standard serves no purpose other than to replace the ageing 'Compact Disc' logo.
man is machine
Aren't you erm.... exagerating a little bit? :-)
Is this the super-duper high-tech CD protection that can be easily foiled by a magic marker? Or is this the liquid paper version? ~ The Devil
Arista is the home of Santana, Whitney Houston, Pink, TLC and Kenny G
Phew! So we don't have anything to worry about then. I was really getting worried for a minute there!
I sure am glad I don't buy CD's. =)
-------
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
At least it's still nothing important/listenable to yet
Sell me MP3s online and I'll pay
Does $15 per month sound like a bargain?
Will I retire or break 10K?
How do you record the AUX IN port?
I assume that like 90+% of the population, you're using Microsoft Windows, so I'll give instructions that apply to Windows 98 and Windows 2000.
Step 1: Open the mixer. If there is a little speaker icon in your tray (the tray is the part of the taskbar next to the clock), double-click it. Otherwise, go to Start > Programs > Accessories > Entertainment > Volume Control.
Step 2: Show the mixer's recording panel. Options > Properties and then Adjust playback for > Recording. Click OK.
Step 3: Choose the line input. Normally, the check box under "Mic Volume" is selected. Select the check box under "Line In". (Microsoft made a user interface design faux pas here by drawing the input selections as square checkboxes, which normally represent individual on/off settings, rather than as round radio buttons, which represent choose one of many.)
Step 4: Set levels. Open your recording program, record a relatively loud segment of the analog source, and tweak the levels so that the peaks don't make a harsh digital clipping noise on playback.
Step 5: Record. For this, you should use a program that records to disk such as Cool Edit or Sound Forge. Read the fine manual.
Step 6: Cleanup. Here, you are remastering the audio back into a digital format. Apply noise reduction and equalization filters until the audio in your computer sounds just as good as or better than the CD does.
Step 7: Compress. For MP3, use lame --alt-preset standard. For Ogg Vorbis, put the quality setting at 5 or 6.
Will I retire or break 10K?
...is how long I figure it will take before there are methods in place to circumvent the copy protection :)
what the hell!? i was going to buy that cd on Monday, but they can kiss my white ass. I'll download it off of SoulSeek. See, RIAA, you just lost one CD sale there, and it wont be the last cd i boycott.
1. Insert CD into portable CD player
2. plug player into "microphone" input port on soundcard
3. set musicmatch jukebox to record mp3 from said port
There you have it..no more difficult than the old way of recording mp3s. Now, remind me again what this technology was supposed to accomplish, other than breaking CD drives, and voiding the warranty on Apple computers?
I made a PHP/MySQL library that prevents SQL injection & makes coding easier!
I read on it that they want to put copy protected mp3s on it, I not sure this can be done, BUT (this is a big but here) If a normal mp3 play can play them (and in this I mean that if the ones already on the market can play them, and all OS can read and play them) then I don't see the problem, they are giving us what we want, we will have the mp3s for our players and our computers. And the small artists can still put their music out on the net for people to try out. I for one say this is a win-win, also I will not have to spend the time ripping all the tracks, I can just copy the pre-encoded mp3s. I say it is win-win because the RIAA gets the protection they want, and we get our mp3s.
If theyre putting the same tracks in for computer with drm that logically means the extra space needed has to come from somewhere.... lower quality cd audio tracks??
No. It merely means that the CD can't fill 80 minutes. It'd be easy to fit 60 minutes of audio in both slightly nonconforming Red Book format and WMA format.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Arista is the home of Santana, Whitney Houston, Pink, TLC and Kenny G.
Well, that makes one good artist (Santana) falling victim to Capitalism gone totally wrong. The others, I wouldn't spend 17 cents on, let alone 17 dollars.
Question on everyone's mind: Will Arista have the decency to warn it's customers which CDs are disabled, or will they sneak it in?
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
i guess people without constant internet connections are going to be a little screwed, since, afaik, all microsoft's drm techiniques involve some sort of online interaction with a remote server. that kinda alienates half the population right there...
Most computers come with dial-up modems. Microsoft could use playing crippled files as an excuse to sell the Butterfly to listeners.
Will I retire or break 10K?
on copy protected discs ive seen they arnt putting the Compact disc digital audio logo on the inside of cd cases anymore :-(
so theyre not claiming to be compact discs
Slashdot - The one stop shop for procrastination
This is another good reason to listen to old country music. Nobody worries about DRM on Jerry Reed records.
This space for rent.
If I can hear it, I can rip and copy it.
'Nuff Said.
So if I'm gonna boycott a product I wouldn't buy anyway, is that a double negative, and does it mean I have to buy the album in protest?
I think the real issue here is that the record labels are trying to stop us from format-shifting.
A lot of slashdotters might be too young to remember the mystical 80s when digital audio was new and we had re-issues of old stuff onto the new format with much fanfare and rejoicing ("The Beatles come to CD! Huzzah, hurray!"). The record companies were able to jerk all of us whose music collections existed on vinyl into replacing them with CDs.
?Fast forward fifteen years and MP3 comes along - except that we can do the format shift ourselves . This is the record companies' worst nightmare - they're not worried about the piracy per se.
People taping songs from the radio and assorted other cheapskate stuff have been around for a long time - only people with no disposable income are willing to go through the hassle. Guess what, they weren't buying records anyway.
My multi gigabyte MP3 collection is similar to what I expect most people's is, all my favourite CDs converted to the new format plus a few (say 10% of the total) songs that I don't own, but have been listening to on the radio for the past thirty years. If I wasn't moved to buy an LP / CD / Cassette of Guess Who just to get "American Woman", guess what, I'm never going to...
With protected CDs is the same, if I can't tell watching it that it will not work for whatever way I plan to use it, I simply will stop buying CDs, being protected or not. As long this CDs comes conveniently labeled with warnings on the risks on no use that one could find, that protection will be ok, but if not, this kind of protection will only push people to not buy music anymore.
what about when one of those indie bands gets picked up and you can no longer listen to there music on the computer you own?
Almost all musicians start local, somewhere.
or do you feel your favorite indie band would magically start to be no good as soon as they start making money?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
First they came for Santana, and I didn't say a word. Then they came for Whitney Houston, and nobody stood up. Then they took and copyprotected Pink, and still no one spoke up. Then they locked up TLC and only silence reigned. Then they took Kenny G and i stood up, and cheered. Ok,,,, so maybe we should work on the education angle.
On your CD Player...your computer.
Returns rip the heart out of Music profits...
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
....I'm listening to tracker mods (MikMod.) I'm also downloading some at the same time. I'm also working on a few of my own.
Granted, they aren't from a "major label", but I think you might get the idea.
The "recording industry" isn't going to get what they want. They don't deserve it...not by a long shot.
--------------Rev. C.C.Chips---------------- For the real truth, visit
> No mention of which titles will be affected, but
> Arista is the home of Santana, Whitney Houston,
> Pink, TLC and Kenny G."
Gee, all those pirates that have based their business plans on copying & distributing Whitney and Kenny G music will be pissed.
See, if all CDs become copy protected, Puff Daddy will no longer be able to sample entire songs.
the selection of artists seems to me intentionally selected to appeal to the exact type of person who:
owns a windows machine and doesn't suspect there are alternatives
is the least likely to hack/reverse engineer the drm in the copy protection
couldn't care less about drm or fair use rights, and doesn't bother using kazaa...
i mean come on, folks. the average kenny g listener (sorry, dad) probably doesn't give a rat's ass about any of this baloney, which is exactly why it will be successful and touted as the solution to piracy after n number of albums have been released with all this copy protection and nobody complains.
think they don't have a profile of what your average linux using ogg vorbis encoding windows bashing music fan listens to? of course they do. are you surprised that none of those bands are on this list?
The rental CDs are actually distributed as rental cds, and presumably cost the store more. I would guess that these could be tracked and royalties paid for each rental.
CDs in Japan typically cost US $25.
Not only can you rent the rental CD, but the stores have MD case inserts for some of the more popular releases.
Even cheap CD players have optical out, and with CD text, and an MD with optical in (i.e most of them), you can make a pure digital copy easily.
But this is disappearing, Japan has many DRM cds these days.
Write it yourself, you lazy fuck ;)
Radio shack has already released a patch for these cds.
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
DRM = NO SALE.
This coming from someone with over 700 CDs and 600 DVDs.
If it won't play in my Powerbook, or damages my Powerbook, I will find a way to make them buy me a new one. Best Buy or whomever I get my CDs from will be getting them returned to.
They better have a BIG sticker on them saying 'THIS WILL TOAST YOUR COMPUTER' and such.
Pink's the only one on that list I can think of that I'd actually want the next CD of though.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
Do not dis Santana, or I'll have to black-magic-woman your ass. Kids these days. Sheesh!
As an act of civil disobedience, I shall only download music from now on.
If they want my money, they can set up a pay-per-download service.
As I understand it, the term "compact disc" belongs exclusively to Philips. They think this copy protection, in its current iteration at least, is a crock, and they refuse to let anyone making "enhanced" discs used the CD term or logo. So look for the logo when you make your next purchase. If it ain't there, you'll know the disc is locked down. This gives you the opportunity to vote with your wallet (or with your internet connection, depending on where you stand on piracy).
...a lot of their albums, anyway. I wonder what John Perry Barlow (EFF cofounder) thinks of this -- he also wrote nearly half of the Dead's songs. The Grateful Dead are also one of the most pro-fair-use bands around, officially allowing their fans to tape live performances since 1984 (and de-facto allowing taping for much longer than that).
plenty of shareware and freeware on the net for simple recording. In fact, Hit squad shareware music machine is a wealth of shareware/freeware/crippled demoware to get you started.
wait! I almost forgot! PRO TOOLS FREE! Yep, what the professionals use, just with slightly less bells and whistles. Get your head around this, and you've got jobs waiting for you in recording studios.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
actually, the sad truth is many bands start to degrade in quality after a record exec forces them to make a certain amount of albums within 2 or 3 years just to keep fueling on their name for the short time it lasts, I;ve seen it over and over again. Also, it really helps if the bands you listen to also share the same disgust for the system.
I think that as Kazaa-using teens get older, and eventually have kids, this whole deal will be irrelevant. More and more people will stop giving a fuck about paying for music, and will be increasingly aware of how to circumvent these types of things.
Time will tell.
-Craig
I don't listen to any of that shite anyway.
When impulse or bluenote put their stuff on copyprotected cds I'll give two shits.
-
Buy CD
Rip CD (someone'll find a way, i'm sure)
Return CD as non-playable on PC
Better quality than most downloaded MP3s, albeit with more work and still free.
am not going spend money one something that I can use where I want. I am going to support those artists who do not support drm (many jambands release their live music online for free to fans. Phish, Dead etc.) Screw Microsoft and the RIAA.
Here is the real trick - there will be less total music, so CD's will be an even WORSE value. True, most CD's rarely fill the disc, so this won't really affect pop music, but a lot of classical music goes to the limit. If 1/10 of the disc is used for WMA files, that means less space for CD audio.
Of course, since the price will (obviously) remain the same or go higher, you are paying more for less, even before exploring the fact that you can't play these new CD's in anything other than a discman or boombox.
Imagine that a new kind of gas was being slowly adopted that could foul up your car. If there is not a clear indication and explanation of the incompatabilities then you cannot then legally get off by saying that the customer "was careless." Ambiguous lawyer speak is NOT a valid explanation either, otherwise street signs would not be color/shape coded and would basically "STOP" would be replaced with a 4000 word EULA for that particular intersection.
Remember that it is lawyers that first came up with and "augmented" the tax code into what it is today... an unorganized and self contradicting piece of crap.
I've bought very few CD's in the last couple of years (note: I'm a 56k'er so I don't use file sharing). I have however ripped my 300+ CD collection to mp3's.
2 weeks ago I bought Norah Jones as an impulse purchase, after listening to it once I proceeded to rip it and found that it was "Copy Controlled(tm)". The cover had a logo indicating this but I didn't see it when I was in the store. By using a different CDROM drive in another PC I was able to rip it no problems. That however, is not the point.
After spending $30AUD I've got better things to do with my time than fsck around with DRM.
In the same purchase I also bought the new (un-copy controlled) Aimee Mann album, guess who's going to be getting my money in the future and who won't?
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FreeRip 2.2
* Smash forehead on keyboard to continue... *
The question is, do enough consumers care enough about this issue to voice their opinion? In my guesstimate, not even close. There will be occasional hiccups of complaint, but within a year or two this will become quite standard. I'm not saying I like it, but then again I haven't bought a CD in a couple years anyway...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
I second the motion but then again making CD copy-protected is useless since the anti-copying schemes really are ineffective. Just look at the example of macrovision, applications for ripping DVDs can already remove macrovision effortlessly. Just my 2 cents.
Checking out my form of escapism.
Like who gives a crap??
All the "artists" listed suck anyway.
And besides, never, ever tell a Linux dude "you CAN'T do that"
He'll show you you're wrong.
Hey, who stole my sharpie!! Damn!
My understanding of this stuff is that it works by superseding the table of contents with a deliberately corrupted one in a way that is only interpreted by computers. That is, (legacy) consumer equipment will ignore the pointer (for want of a better description) to the new table and read the old one. CD-ROM drives will follow the pointer to the junk data and get confused. Now, this functionality is apparently useful for multi session CDs but if that's all I were to lose, I'd happily update the firmware in a similar fashion to how I update the firmware to allow playing of imported DVDs (eg for content not available here). In fact if modified firmware were available for a reasonably common drive I'd dedicate one to ripping in a flash... CD-ROM drives ~= the price of CDs nowdays anyway! And of course it only takes one person with this modified equipment to rip the CD and publish it. That said I'm *very* picky about the quality of rips (usually using ogg with q=6, considering moving to flac and forgetting about it) so I don't download anything. Gotta run...
Now that the war's going on - I'm sure the copyright lords are going to take every advantage of the public focusing on other priorities to ream us hard and fast. I hope freenet's ready for the big-league, it's basicly the point of no return now. Either all information is going to be controlled, or none of it.
Any creation sufficiently worthwhile will emerge one way or another. Is DRM strong enough to prevent Beatles-quality art from getting through? I hope not. The RIAA may want to impede the march of human culture for their greedy purposes, but they will fail.
This latest thing is aimed at preventing kids in treehouses from cracking the latest Avril Lavine single, but it will probably not even be a footnote in history.
Note to the RIAA apologists: try being an artist for a few years, then get back to me.
"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face, it's just a goddamned piece of paper!" - George W. Bush Nov. 2005
Dude, when I am SEVENTY, it will still be Aerosmith, Aerosmith and more Aerosmith. Got it?
You can't even play them as a normal CD audio, because there are corrupt data tracks that cause your CD-ROM to think it's reading a CD-ROM and not a cd-audio disc.
In other news, felt-tipped marker sales sky-rocket.
Centralization breaks the internet.
hell I wish they would encrypt Kenny G and Whitney and lose the key.
please mod this comment up!!
This is what I don't understand.
They don't want people downloading mp3s--so they're going to actually RESTRICT their CDs even more?
They're simply giving me even more of an incentive to download a cracked (and these are always "cracked" in some way) version so I can burn my own, fully-functioning CD.
Revel in the logic!
Whitney Houston and Kenny G. CDs need copy protection!
Save your bucks. Use the free CD ripper CDeX. You probably already have it. After recording, it'll even compress it to your desired format for you. It does a great job recording. Look under Tools, Record. I discovered this when I thought I had a junk soundcard after using MS sound recorder. (much worse than a very cheap tape recorder) Suprise, the sound card was actualy able to record some decent sound. I've been using it to transfer my old stuff (LP's and pre recorded tapes). I wished I had this earlier to backup this stuff before it degraded as much as it has.
The truth shall set you free!
As an employee that handles returns at a Large MegaCorporation that sells about 50 CDs/day, I can personally say that this is wrong and will not harm the music corporations.
This is wrong for 2 reasons:
1)It is trivial to return a copy-protected CD (or any CD). Defective CDs or DVDs are marked defective and generally (depending on the manufacturer) discarded. They simply send us a replacement on their next shipment to us.
2)No one returns them anyway. Despite the fact that we sell "enchanced CDs," no one has ever came in and returned one for not working in a certain player. They make up the proportional amount of CD returns that we have as a whole. This is true even despite the fact that for "enhanced CD" returns customers aren't required to get the same CD.
since they're including the wma files on the disc, i would think that the actual goal is to let the user copy it onto 1 (one) computer (which makes it very easy for the average end user out there) instead of ripping the (non-copy-protected) mp3, where it would be easily shareable.
I think the average end user would actually use this feature-sucks for the geeks and the future, though.
bcp
I have enough music that I don't have to buy those stupid copy-protected CDs for a good listen.
Get Walmart's attention.
....and it doesn't work.
First we go to Walmart en masse & buy music CDs we know are screwed up.
Then we return the CDs, en masse. Make sure you point out to the "returns" people that you tried playing this on your Mac, & the linux computer YOU BOUGHT FROM WALMART
take some printed articles showing growing use of linux or how macs are THE system for audio. Leave the articles with them....it might be useful to hand scribble on the front of these in red ink, "walmart sells CDs that refuse to play on their own systems" or "walmart sells CDs that refuse to play on Macs."
it will only take several hundred before this goes up the pipe. Managers and higher will start to talk about this.
Walmart just may react favorably.
ALl the crap that arista puts out should be PLAY protected. I don't want to hear it, even by accident.
i have lots of the cd's on fatchuck's list and they all rip fine with no problems at all and without any special software to do it.
your mileage may vary but i'm gonna rip away as per usual.
later.
I don't understand the logic of copy-protecting CD's.
If I purchase a copy-protected cd, I cannot play it under certain circumstances; the dvd player(?), a linux box, etc. These are items that are supposed to be able to play audio cd's with no fuss. So if the dvd player won't play the cd, I'm out 20 bucks?
If I download the same music from a p2p network and burn the music to a cd, I can play it in any device that reads the cd-r, and if the device recognizes mp3's, I can burn the music onto a data cd. In this circumstance, I can get the music for free after a minor hassle, keeping the 20 bucks in my pocket.
Where's my motivation to purchase the cd?
Is it because the audio format has been upgraded, akin to how movies were upgraded from vhs to dvd, and the new audio quality is going to utterly dazzle me? No. It's the same old quality. So to be a legitimate cd purchaser, I must risk that my audio devices won't play the disks? And for this risk, I get no extra value?
Where's my motivation to purchase the cd? I have none.
I don't understand why a music artist/music company want to undermine their legitimate customers just so they can have a go at the p2p crowd.
I'd buy them...if they were sold for a buck. Since thats about what they are worth with the copy protection sh*t. Otherwise fu*k them.
There is nothing to worry about. All the GOOD Santana stuff (the 70s) is on Columbia, not Arista.
Deep down in the back of my mind, I'm afraid of the pandora's box we've all to eagerly opened. It's amazing how most of us will bitch about media rights while happily ignoring the over 6,000,000 GBs of files being traded across networks like Kazaa as if it somehow didn't have any bearing on the current situation.
I agree, we should have the right to do whatever the heck we want to with the media we own, however, the labels and artists have an equal right to make money off their work. And I don't care what rational you use, 6,000,000 GBs is a fucking gaping ass wound for a record company to simply ignore for our right to copy files however we want. And then I had to reflect on who opened this freakin pissing contest... We did, as a community of computer users (not you specifically) by letting this behavior spiral out of control. I used to be able to take CDs back if I didn't like them. Then the copying started. Napster. Kazaa. Ain't no way in hell that's happening anymore.
Fact is, the record companies, regardless of how greedy you think they are, have a right to make money. And right now, they have a 6,000,000 GB hole in their side. That's not even the volume in transfers across the internet, which is undoubtably a substantially larger number. As much as I would like to bitch about all the DRM shit happening lately, I have to honestly admit that we have done a piss poor job of regulating our own actions as responsible users. We happily cheat and steal, then have the gall to bitch about DRM and "The Man".
In short we deserve all the shit being piled down upon upon us by the labels as they scramble to stem flow of blood from their persons. Perhapse they are getting their just deserts for being overly greedy, but ladies and gentlemen, we have become a generation of parasites, and parasites eventially get plucked off and thrown to the fire.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
There are so many great indy artsts that will likely never use these copy protection and/or DRM schemes that I see little need for the major labels in my life anymore. 90% of my new CD purchases are already from such artists, so I this new DRM trend simply ensures the major labels will totally loose me as a customer, permanently.
Honestly, it looks like they're specifically copy protecting stuff that people wouldn't want to pay money for anyway.
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
It's all too easy for people to ask themselves: "why buy a CD when it's so easy to grab it from P2P?".
By crippling CDs, the RIAA has given people yet one more reason to turn to P2P. This is clearly self-destructive marketing.
The RIAA must deal with P2P traffic that more than doubles in volume every year; and a culture that has grown to adore P2P downloading.
The RIAA's biggest enemy is the culture itself. Winning hearts and minds is now all-important for the RIAA. In comparison, the legal and technical issues are very pale in importance.
A major german computer magazine decided to call them Un-CDs.
Maybe Non-CD works better for the english language.
It's both short enough to be snappy, and makes clear what these
things are (not).
Most of these "protection" schemes just involve writting invalid TOCs on the disc so a computer can't read them properly. Give me five minutes with a few CD recovery utilities and I'll burn a proper CD-R from it...
Or hell, at that point, just extract WAV straight from the recovery image.
Three little letters: O G G.
:) Anything less would be uncivilized!
Have you ever tried to find good oggs of anything non-pop, much less, movie tracks/old bands/one-hit-wonders?
I buy em so I can rip em to 200kbps oggs
This is the last nail in the coffin, I am certain. The way CD shops are closing up around here (San Diego). I mean, a Sam Goody's in a major mall was cleared out right after Christmas and a 99cent store is there now.
I personally haven't bought a CD since 2000. I felt badly burned when I bought Moby's disc (in Mass they charge $19.99. Opening it up, I remarked on the thick booklet (the ONLY DIFFERENCE between downloaded music and discs as far as I care).
However, instead of lyrics he elected to vent on everything from homelessness to PETA to meat. I could give a shit about what he thinks and it pissed me off there was not one god-damned lyric. I wiped my ass with that booklet and haven't bought one since. I ripped the disc thru the soundport and let everybody download it, even leechers. I still feel Moby got too much money from me.
This is nothing to worry about. These "CDs" either
A) A multi-session CD, one Audio and one Data (from what the article said, I beleive this is what they're doing)
Or
B) A "CD" that is encrypted (etc) that uses software to un-encrypt it on a computer.
If it's B, most of their market will be alienated. They *MAY* stop illegal trading (doubtful, probably would get cracked) but anyone not wanting to listen to their CDs on anything other than a computer would be screwed (thus resulting in almost no sales)
If it's A, there are two solutions: Connecting your stereo to your computer, and ripping it that way, OR simply write a program that ignores the 2nd session, and plays/rips the cd that way. Record companies are wasting their money on copy-protection, because in order to maintain compatibility with old hardware (I still have a 10 year old CD-player) actually protecting the content is IMPOSSIBLE (because computers and other similiar devices can emulate plain cd-players) until we get DRM integrated into our computers, hard drives, CD drives, etc. Once that becomes a reality, thats when we have to start worrying.
1 hour after copy protected cd hits the shelves, its found on kazza.
Well, I never wanted to buy their CDs in the first place... so thanks to DRM, i now have double the incentive not to buy their CDs... thanks!
it seems that this might have some useful application, if i understand the copy protection scheme right.
of course, i haven't tried adding digital output to my discman, and i pretty much prefer vinyl over cds in most cases anyway.
p.
In the US, it was clean Red Book. In Australia, it was "Copy Controlled (tm)". So I arranged with a US penpal to swap it for a CD of an Australian band who are hard to find in the US.
:-)
We should be thankful that Americans are more likely to sue if someone fscks with their rights.
We had the same problem here in Australia.
A co-worker bought the CD but neglected to look for copy-protection logos.
He was unable to use the CD on his main listening platform (Our work being the cheapskates they are, we don't have sound cards, so play CDs in the drive, with the speakers plugged into the headphone outlet.)
So he took it back.
We downloaded 192Kb/s versions of the songs off KaZaa, burnt our own CD, and booked tickets for their concert which just happened to be on next month.
Outcome:
record company = 0
artist = + 2 concert tickets.
Thanks! One more reason not to waste my "hard earned" money on CDs!
HDCD is a system in which CD players have extra filters/audio enhancement circuitry, which is controlled by a signal steganographically encoded into the LSB of the audio. (The signal is encrypted in such a way that it statistically looks like noise, probably so that freak conditions don't cause audible noise in normal players.)
HDCD was developed by a small company, who were bought out a few years ago by Microsoft. No idea what MSFT want with the HDCD patents (unless it's to keep Real or Apple from implementing it or something).
EMI have already started putting DRM on all their new CDs in some territories (Australia and apparently Japan), and apparently plan to make this global.
Exactly. Never underestimate the self-destructiveness of business people.
Record people: Eat a toad in the morning. That way, nothing worse will happen all day.
is through the use of a viable micropayments system that can handle 20-Cent MP3 and OGG purchase transactions: www.pico-pay.com
Put up a monument to this day -- someone proposed a Slashdot boycott that might *happen*!
May we never see th
If any CDs I purchase can't be ripped to WMAs/MP3s, I'm going to be super extra major pissed. I listen to ALL of my CDs via my Nomad Jukebox 3 40gb player.
1) Buy CD
2) Rip CD to player
3) Transfer songs to NJB3
4) Listen to songs in car and at work
I never, ever, ever listen to music off of the CD. Too damn inconvenient.
Honestly, this is getting damned ridiculous. I never ever use the P2P networks, why am I being punished????????
Creative Labs and other MP3 companies need to sue the living f*** out of the RIAA for starting to destroy a legitimate business. Honestly, who is going to want a useless MP3 player after all this is all said and done????????? Creative Labs and Apple (iPod) ought to unite and sue their az off!
Some people believe that distributing needles to drug addicts reduces problems.
Maybe it isn't the copying that is the problem, much as the use of needles isn't the problem.
Needles are harmless. Drug addicts spread disease and crime. Copying is harmless, It's what you do afterward that may or may not be harmful.
And don't even go there...
Jack Valenti (MPAA) saith:
Why would you buy something you can acquire for free?
I saith:
Why would you give away what you payed for? And since you are now paying, why would you not simply get it from the source, or are artists incapable of publishing songs on the net?
Better yet offer a $1 million dollar prize to the best seller of your product only require a $1/month fee to enter the contest. Prizes handed out yearly.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
please TELL ME MY MUSIC isn't that BAD!!660
On a train!!!
In a station!!!!
Ahem.
How to pirate music in the future - GeniusIdea.com
I buy lots of CDs every month (no, geeks are not thieves, at least not all of them :) and I get pissed of more and more of not being able to convert them to MP3 to play them on my Zaurus, damn shite I paid for the bloody CD, why can't they let me listen to it ?
This comment is probably the most correct, insightful comment I have ever seen on slashdot. Thank you for this oasis in the wasteland of utter tripe that is slashdot.
So like this is actually a GOOD thing for the music industry as a whole! The less exposure we give these primates the better. Protect it so much we can't even listen to it, I say. :)
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
Correction; Parasites either get plucked off (as the labels are so desperately attempting to do) or the parasite kills the host. Normally I wouldn't shead any tears, but I see no reason why this behavior won't continue just because our music comes from another source; Online or from wherever. The P2P culture has less to do with "screwing The Man" and more to do with "Internet free stuff".
There is quite literally only one way out of this debacle for the labels and it isn't DRM, nor is it some pay per download scheme. the only real way out now is to make their music worth something-- The value added scheme. Something they can't get or copy off the net. Tickets, trinkets, whatever. Something to make it worthwhile to buy their physical media again...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
I see this as useless copy protection, much the same way someone was once able to copy a write protected Ebook by xeroxing it as it displayed on screen (Or rather, captured it via printscreen, usw.)
Anyone with access to decent quality recording equipment, a few cables and some extra time, will still be able to copy these tracks. Not that hard (Hell, I've done it with tapes to make CDs, so i don't see a problem).
Although, one must wonder if anyone will take the time to rip Kenny G...
blah
How long will it take for someone to discover how to beat the new attempt at copy-protection?
Last time it was beaten with a pen.
I'm calling the Vegas Sports Books for the Odds.
Dolemite
__________________
Save the World! Use a Quote!
In the UK, all the popular "Top 40" albums (Hits 54 etc.) have no copy prevention system at all. So even if some Top 40 artist brings out a broken album, the singles will probably end up on one of these discs.
This type of album is going to be copied a lot, some kid will get it for Christmas and all their friends will want copies.
How do these copy prevention systems affect the discs with a zero length gap between tracks (mainly dance compilations and live recordings)? The CD player must accurately locate the start of tracks for these to work otherwise there could be gaps in the music.
Santana, Whitney Houston, Pink, TLC and Kenny G
so this means, if want old fart rock, old cracked-out drug abuse rock, terrible pseudo-tomboy-genderbend-rock/R&B, deceased R&B, and one of the worst sonic abortions ever greated, i have to buy into this scheme.
this is supposed to be a difficult decision?
I bought a "copy-protected" CD recently, well aware of the fact that is had protection, not just because I wanted the music but because I had to check out how this stuff worked.
The CD had two sessions, the first contained audio tracks, the second data withcrappy 48kbit WMA-encoded tracks. It was easy to rip the tracks though.
This method only works in Windows though. If there is a way to dump raw data from a CD in Linux, or even better, select which session you should see, there shouldn't be any problems extracting the tracks.
I plan on using the (copper) digital-out on my CD player to connect to the digital-in of my audigy soundcard.
Such a simple solution!
Sigged!
In a worst case scenerio:
I can use Alcohol 120% to make an image to the hard drive of the disk.
Then I search for a utility like ISO BUSTER to yank the CDA tracks directly from the CD.
I create a new ISO from the raw CDA tracks and mount that to a virtual drive.
I then rip as normal.
Did I just violate the DMCA?
Seriously though, this is just my best guess at how to get around truly evil copy protection. I haven't tried it yet and it probably needs some serious refinement at some point.
Play it in CD-ROM on computer (or in portable CD player), plug into output sound, tell recorder to directly record digital output. Encode. Share.
No
It may as well be a bug, but I'll tell you a story. I recently bought Massive Attack's latest album, as well as Air's recent City Reading. Both are "copy-protected". Fine.
I boot under Windows (98), put the CD in, and the D: shows somes files (no audio tracks!), including a player.exe. I execute it : it's an ugly CD-player that plays the audio tracks of the CD. No way to play those with winamp AFAIK. Ok the point is, the sound degraded ! No kidding, not my speakers, no. They volontarily degraded the sound of the CD when playing with that player on windows. Hell. This is why you cannot record the line from your computer.
Now let's try that on linux. Boot, plug the cd in, start xmms, play the cd. The sound is normal, no degradation, no problem. Ok let's go, I abcde the CD, and I have my oggs I can listen to on my Zaurus and everything. Sounds like linux people don't have to worry, yet.
I'm just wondering when they will volontarily bitch the sound on my HiFi (because as you said, you can link it directly through a digital link to your computer).
Now, don't tell me to buy more CDs from people who have such low interest in providing music to people, whatever they use to listen to it.
theefer
If you pay $20 for a CD, usually only about 60 cents of that will actually make it into the hands of the artist. So my $150 in Weird Al related purchases might have only earned him $5, though I suspect about $10-$15 because he's been around a while. That still isn't a lot.
I'd really like to see most of those record labels go bankrupt. Customers hate their fixed prices, and the artists see very little of that money, but they have no other choice if they want their music to appear on store shelves.
I don't see copy protection as a solution problem. One day there may be a law requiring all new cd players to disallow playing unsigned content, or signed content that where the public key hasn't also been signed by a trusted authority. This will only serve to create a monopoly, and hurt the people who actually create the content by limiting their abilities to choose alternate means of distribution. But hey, it sure would reduce casual piracy, at least after all the old cd players exceed their warranties and spontaneously catch fire.
At least now I know I am protected against ever being tricked into playing a santana cd ;)
Chris "Ng" Jones
cmsj@tenshu.net
www.tenshu.net
"Step 5: Record. For this, you should use a program that records to disk such as Cool Edit or Sound Forge."
Or, if you don't have any third party recording recording software, you can use Windows Sound Recorder which comes with all versions of Windows. Look for sndrec32.exe, in your Windows (for 9x) or Windows/System32 (for XP) directory.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Cards on the table: I agree music sharing is illegal. :)) this "sampling" was completely based on the stuff that the radio stations played or MTv or probably by word of mouth (na na naa. na. Remember that one? :-)) . Maybe music trading on P2P should be allowed but in a controlled manner - say the quality of the tracks is not as good as the CD stuff, or say each person who downloads the song can listen to it only say 10 times before the user must buy the CD, or maybe a really flexible payment option where the user pays a few cents every time the song is played. I think the chief reason why the P2P way is so darn addictive is cos' you have full control over the medium unlike radio or television.
However...
I have been exposed to so many more bands and music because of P2P. And I think that is the general opinion of most P2P users. I think P2P is a really great music "sampling" medium. I suppose in the pre-P2P era (seems so long back!
Hmmmm, hey all those artists uhhhh... ummm ... suck.
I think the software indistry can learn a lot from this.
Let's get back to distributing software on copyprotected floppy disks. Why not start with
sequencer software, mixer software, samplers and so on...
Require that the software must be executed from the floppy without any possibility to installation to harddrive.
If the floppy is damaged, tough luck, buy a new one.
You don't like switching floppies? We'll we got to do have it this way to protect our income. Yo are only a customer, buy our software, but don't expect us to listen to your complains.
You think 1.4MB is to little? Not our fault that
floppies are that small. It took us a long time to create the contents of the floppy. 1.4MB ought to be enough for everyone.
CD player output -> sound card input -> mp3 encoder -> Kaaza
Except for Santana, they can copy-protect their mothers for all I care.
I thought the Music industry already had the best copy Protection available...
Make crappy music so nobody wants to copy it...
Clearly, Arista is a leader on that field. Further protection is redundant...
music can be played means music can be recorded. No protection will ever work on this.
True. LOL.
Your username is my new favorite.
I briefly investigated CD copy protection a year ago and I made the following observations:
1. My Koss portable player does not mute the DACs when it encounters a data track (as identified by the bits in the Q channel). Oops - a non-conformance right there.
2. Many CD-ROM drives will refuse to read the data track (again, as defined by the Q channel) if the track is labelled as audio in the TOC. (The reverse situation is the principle behind many copy protection systems today: the drives will not rip audio if the track is labelled as data using a buggered multi-session TOC.)
So already we have two non-conformances taken from the massive installed base of optical disc readers. Way to go RIAA!
As mentioned earlier
"Stop failing the Turing test!" -- Dilbert
No mention of which titles will be affected, but Arista is the home of Santana, Whitney Houston, Pink, TLC and Kenny G."
Goody, so it won't affect me at all.
According to an article in current edition of the c't magazin seven cds in the german album top10 are copy-protected, most of them using "Cactus". Another two albums just aren't copy-protected because they are so-called "enhanced" cds, they contain a data session with videos etc, which makes current copy protection schemes not applicable (because they need a data session exclusively for themselves). That means only one album of the current album top10 is not copy-protected by intent.
Btw, this edition of c't magazin contains another excellent article about how current copy protection schemes are working in detail (german only)
I have a huge collection of cd's and i have ripped them all to my HD for comfort. It so easy to use the computer for listening. I'm now used to not having the hassle with cd's. If cd's become copy protected and i cant rip them i will be forced to break the DCMA to rip them. Well, if i am breaking the law then why not stop buying cd's?
They fail to understand that this mesure will give 180 degree opposite effect. People like me will buy LESS records.
Chalk another pirate up, you just manufactured one more who wont buy any more cd's Arista!
HTTP/1.1 400
but it is still a pain for us who like live music.
Perhaps etree is more your style.
Will I retire or break 10K?
trying to sell stuff which you can find from p2p already.
Does p2p have consistent high-quality encodes free of pops, clicks, or accidental deletions? Fast servers? Ability to go through even the most restrictive firewall?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Would that new stuff play on older players?
I noticed that out of the ones listed on that one website listed above, that I have two that's listed on the "very bad" part of it and I do remember trying to rip one of them and when I listened to it on my Rio, that the files had this overwhelming flutter noise. It was "White Lillies Island" by Natalie Imbruglia... (I'm glad I didn't find Def Leppard yet)
PRO TOOLS FREE!
No PC that can run Pro Tools Free is sold new in 2003 because Pro Tools Free does not run on Windows 2000 or Windows XP. It's for Windows 98 and Windows ME only.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Or, if you don't have any third party recording recording software, you can use Windows Sound Recorder which comes with all versions of Windows.
Last time I checked, sndrec32 recorded to RAM and had a limit of 60 seconds. That's not good for recording a 60-minute album. Has it changed since then?
Besides, how are you going to do step 6 without third-party proprietary software? Free software such as Audacity just doesn't come with enough filters.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Hey its not 100% digital, but better then tape.. so its good enough for me.
These sort of actions ( and how they screw the artist ) by the record labels is why i stopped buying music and simply send a few bucks DIRECT to the artists... with a thank you note.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
hmmm and how many of those nice record companies are going to set it as "unlimited reproduction allowed all free of charge" a wimper from the back row
i think not
Slashdot - The one stop shop for procrastination
Consumer groups:
1. Only buying music. 100% legal already.
2. Downloading mp3s, then buying cds
3. Only downloading mp3s
You'll annoy #1 if they want to make e.g. an mp3 jukebox, or portable mp3 players, or any of the "convergence" devices.
As I don't believe it'll actually reduce the amount of mp3s at "average" quality, #2 can just go on as before. If anything they will be annoyed when they finally buy a cd and find that it is "crippled". Most likely you'll lose them to #3.
The last group is not likely to notice much either. I have no doubt that as long as the CDs have the plain vanilla CD tracks to use in "dumb" players, it'll be possible to extract them somehow.
Oh and for those quoting return statistics, I think most people will just suck it up and *not* go buy the CD next time. Maybe they don't even realize it's crippled until they try to play it on a different device than they normally use either, long after the purchase.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
There's hardly a monopoly of talent at the major labels. There's just funding to finance studio recording, promote and distribute product.
Cheap computers and sound gear have made studio recording obsolete (give me a grand to rent some large diaphram microphones for a month - I can do everything else on my pc). Word of mouth over the net will soon be the most important form of promotion. It's free as in lunch. P2P is already on its way to becoming the major channel of distribution. It's also free as in lunch.
The only services left for labels to provide is funding for music videos (which is also becoming affordable thanks to computers) and reputation.
It doesn't take much for tastes to change in art and music. A couple years ago DJing on enything other than vinyl was hopelessly uncool. Hmmm.
If kids decide that indie music distributed through the net is hip (and stuff like Anticon is proof that that can happen) than it will cripple the major labels like a bad flu.
If I worked for Arista I would abandon this protection crap and start strengthening my ties with live music ticketing, concert promotion etc. Pretty soon an artist's major label status isn't going to have any currency. The distribution, magazine reviews, etc etc will all have moved online.
I'm looking for a bit of company, you can move in straight way if you like. You will have to make me frequent cups of tea but otherwise I will only charge a reasonable rent. Can I have some references from you first though ?
I'll start worrying if Century Media cripples the next Iced Earth album, or Spinefarm Records decides to bork the next Nightwish epic.
People still buy cd's? Have you heard the crap on the radio, PLEASE COPY PROTECT ALL OF IT... I DONT WANT TO SEE IT ON MY SERVER.... NO J/K. dont buy it, support your local artists instead.. small venue forever.
If the "CD"s are going to contain Windows Media Files in the second session, does this mean that each CD now will contain less music? I mean - an audio CD will only contain up to a set amount of music.
There arises from a bad and unapt formation of words a wonderful obstruction to the mind. (Francis Bacon)
And I mean it. Two considerations, nothing more.
$0.01 #1
- I don't care what kind of copy protection they use, all I want is to buy a
- CDDA compatible disc and play it in any of my CDDA compatible players (including the one in my computer and notebook).
$0.01 #2It sounds weird to me, if they are so worried about money, why don't they worry about finding a effective to comercialize their product?
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
All of this talk about MAC, Linux, PC, Windows. What about us poor people who are forced to use a sun running solaris to do?
Aren't minidisc's just great ? (even using analog based recording techniques)
Computes are digital beasts. Think about the data flow of a computer for Audio:
- With DRM, a piece of software will be extracting the data, applying rights (mis)management
- It then send it to the audio-mapper on the computer.
- The audio mapper then sends it to a device driver (not the hardware)
- The driver now sends it to the audio hardware
- Your soundcard has a DAC (Digital-Audio-Converter), and makes sound.
- It then amplifies this some and sends it to your speakers.
The weak point in all this is the fact that the computer is "digital". IE, once you can intercept that digital stream, you have a pure copy of the data (not music, although coverting 16-bit chunks, 44k times a second makes music we can hear).To circumvent DRM, all one would need to do is create a device driver, which is a disk-based sound card. The destination could be a custom-audio file format which records the output information (16-bit/44k/stereo), along with the data. By making a GUI which allows you to select different "chunks" of data (ie, new track, new file segment), then you could convert that data back to an MP3 file very easilly. It could even output MP3 files in real-time. Modern computers are fast enough to do this.
If you look at DVD-Audio players, they almost all output Analog out ONLY. Why? Well, they could downmix into Dolby Digital and send it across your fiber optic (or other digital form), but, that would allow a near perfect version of the the sound. 99.9% of the people would accept it for the same thing since our speakers and amp-chips aren't good enough to amp. 192k @ 64-bit (or is it higher than that?). The main reason is that there is loss in the DAC-ADC-DAC conversion, which would represent a substandard copy. People who want DVD-Audio, don't want sub-standard. Therefor, by preventing them from copying it, they can protect the information for a much longer amount of time (and not be subject to a PC's device driven environment).
While Video DRM is a bit harder, do mainly to compression techniques, it is possible to do the same thing. A DirectX video driver which records each block being written to the display could in theory write out a raw video dump (It'd by huge the end), analyze it, and recompress/create the MPG data (since any large update would be your MPG keyframes, and small blocks would represent your updates (MPG-U blocks?)).
Until the day that the computer is locked up from a developer, and everything must be licenses (ala, "Sony Playstation" copy protection of CD's), the personal computer remains just that. Personal. A system for interpreting 1's and 0's and turning them into information which our brains can interpret.
"Arista is the home of Santana, Whitney Houston, Pink, TLC and Kenny G."
So, aside from brilliant fluke of luck Santana, they have no other worthwhile artists? Wow. I didn't know they'd fallen so far. Ennyhoo, I suppose groups with such small followings are the best place to start trials...
Lets copyprotect the round-mound-of-sounds thus protecting consumers as thousands of Apples,IBM's SGI's stop being able to play CD's.
And these people wonder why their sales are hurting....The need not wonder why.
These things that look like audio CDs just have a playback protection, but no real copyright protection. A copyright protection would a) prevent copying and b) not affect playback.
In countries where you are still allowed to make personal copies of your own CDs, you can use tools to make playback enabled copies of these CDs that work on your car stereo or portable CD player.
These tools, e.g. Plextor's PlexTools, come with the burner and are a legal way to make any CD playable everywhere.
Standard CDs hold 650MB or about 72 minutes of CDDA music. Since most albums are only 45 minutes long or so, there's plenty of room left on the disc for .wma files.
0 1 - just my two bits
The consumer is only interested in getting the product they want (music that can be played wherever they want) at a reasonable price and convenience. Once this becomes too inconvenient, too costly or not what the consumer wants, then the consumer goes elsewhere for it. Copy protecting CDs will only increase the popularity of the file-sharing networks. When people feel that they are being treated unfairly (consider everyone at work who listens to a CD on their computer or MP3 device while they work who are now out of luck), they will feel less guilty for "bending the law". The RIAA is fucking itself over quite nicely.
Well, actually it's the opposite.
My portable MP3player fails to play them.
Playing in computer will work in windows only.
MP3 quality is nowhere close to acceptable. (31kpbs on an unCD I came across.)
This means that my DVD player (Digitrex GK-1600) won't play them
it reads a data cd as an MP3 cd , and won't play the audio tracks.
and since it's either linux + cd-rom or DVD player.
I guess I've baught my last CD, I'll just have to download MP3s instead.
Type unto others as you would have them type unto you.
Whenever I try to copy a DVD to my Mac's disk and then open the VIDEO_TS folder on the disk I just get garbled, mostly black video and broken sound unless the DVD is also in the drive. I figure it's some sort of protection....
How hard would it be to write a utility to simply play the audio on a cd that was intended for cd players, instead of the second session tracks? Seems like it should be easy in either Windows or Linux given the format is known and not encrypted.
Vote for Pedro
OK, that is a good point. If they do not work then I would be agains it, if they could make it work I would be for it.
it makes a perfect recording, why should i screw around with a patch cable.
Creative's What-U-Hear feature also turns itself off when you play a DRM'd file through the Secure Audio Path in Windows Media Player. It has to; otherwise the driver wouldn't get signed by Microsoft and wouldn't be allowed to play music through the Secure Audio Path.
Will I retire or break 10K?
"The total percentage of albums last year that were copied for legitimate purposes: .00000023%"
Even before that, hey, it's not 0%.
I don't care what RIAA is doing to protect THEIR rights, I'm fine with that UNLESS they don't bother the cd buyers.
I'm using my iMac as a jukebox, and I have more than 100 cds. Don't tell me I have to change cds every few minuts or so, or have to carry bunch of cds whenever I go to listen to my music I BOUGHT. THAT IS MY FAIR RIGHT.
Well, I just got some cds from japan that are protected with the same copy protection every one is talking about. The disk mounts with 2 volumes, one the aiff files and the other a windows player.
Well, I'm on a mac and I wanted to transfer the songs to my ipod. no dice. it doesn't work. the encodes stop after 9 seconds into the song.
how did i get the songs in? Quicktime Pro Export!
i'm rockin with no DRM! Wheeee!
Overpriced, lousy songs, and now a brand new reason to not bother buying CD's. Crippled media files, wow, just when I was certain that the mega corp's couldn't do anything more to convince me not to buy their CD's they come up with one more. To whom it may concern, thanks for the reminder.
Wow, I was shitting bricks until I remembered that I don't listen to terrible music.
Dear Ben,
I have bought every one of your CD's. Every one. Ive even got the live CD that was only released in Japan.
Ive seen you in concert in 3 continents, ive tracked down every live recording of your ever.
I have not, however bought you latest CD, diamonds on the inside. A friend of mine bought it into work, and i wanted to listen to it at lunch on my computer, but i wouldnt play. I don't have a cd player. I rip my CD's on to my machine at home, then load the tracks i like onto my ipod. But your new cd wont let me do this.
So i didnt buy it.
Regards
Ben Harper Fan.
Official GOD FAQ.
...just so I can refuse to buy their CDs. I mean I can't protest right now can I as I already don't buy their CDs due to the godawful artists they have signed. So I'm going to force myself to like that stuff.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Note to self:
click ANALOGUE copy and pay for nicer signal to noise quality with a better soundcard.
A blog I run for the wealth
I've yet to encounter a copy-protected CD that wouldn' t rip in my mac. Only snafu is that it seems to silence the second track on the CD. Which have been fine by me for the few I've ripped so far.
It should be noted that these are not CDs that I've bought myself, just brought by colleagues to be played on my office mac, which have loudspeakers.
"I tend to think of OS X as Linux with QA and Taste", James Gosling, creator of Java
mr garcia the most (audio) recorded human in history just whispered to me... he said .......
psssssssst.... hey man......... even if its brd->dat->audio->cdr->shn you can't tell a difference you silly bastards... just hold a mic up to the speaker, and they will come
And there I was thinking I couldent possibly dislike the record industry moore.
Anyway, its not all bad... Restricting the ability to copy certain artists, can be a good thing. I suggest we lobby the record companys to "Protect" the following artists (asides from the already listed).
- Any boyband !
- Any band consisting of +3 persons, whop dances in "sync" in their videos.
- Any Country & Western production (encrypt to if possible)
- Anybody who ever did a pro Republican gig !
- feel free to add on...?
Oh and. lets give Whitney a break, the bitch needs all the cash she can get her hands on !
(her dealers have mouths to feed too you know ??)
I've *never* bought a CD, or paid for music I could get otherwise. Why? Because I'm poor. My father taught me the value of a buck a long time ago. He also taught me what slime the record industry as a whole was. He was a District level manager for Musicland for twenty years, before BestBuy bought them and sold the assest to the highest bidder.
May the RIAA's databases rot in byte-hell.
"When I am king, you will be first against the wall..."
Will Microsoft copy protect the Windows cd's? Because that would really be a bad thing for people like me (that is...no license payers. Anyway not to Microsoft).
Okay then. I have a disc that doesn't use the "Compact Disc Digital Audio" logo. It's still a "compact disc". It's still compact, and it's still a disc.
I have not seen one post out here from someone who puts food on the table by publishing/distributing copyrighted material. So now you get to hear from one such person.
Filesharing is not illegal in general. Sharing files that are unauthorised copies of copyrighted works or sharing files in a manner which by violation of the agreement between the publisher and oneself invalidates any single user's fair use rights to their copy of a copyrighted work is fully illegal. Tired of you dolts muddying that issue. Quit that debate. I've ended it for you.
Now onto morals vs. morass -- the BMCs (read: Big Media Conglomerates) are dinosaurs and we (the consumer conglomerate) wish they would die already. True enough. Does that mean it is morally OK to lift the works of the artist who is stupid/unfortunate enough to be tied into the BMCs way of doing things? Absolutely not. If you like the artist enough and you want to see them off the corporate teat, I suggest contacting them and telling them why you didn't buy their merchandise. Maybe even GO TO A SHOW! (I know the geeks here don't get out much, but, if you like it that much, maybe you owe them that much.)
In a truly ideal situation, the artists don't owe the BMCs for producing their CDs and they can give the recorded material away, provided the fans SUPPORT THE SCENE! What everybody fails to realize is that concert tours, for all the pomp and all the hand-over-fist $$$ shelled out, make OTT (on-the-teat) artists nothing. The BMCs pay for them and operate them (you'll never believe this one, I sure don't) at a loss, so they say. But if you're an honest, hardworking band not OTT, then you play modest gigs at a modest venue and make an honest buck. You probably sell shirts and CDs and all manner of items off a table in the back, and you get by.
But some groups have expanded this enterprise (the Dead and Phish come to mind along with WSP, DMB, JID, others) enough to where they don't have to have a record deal to be successful. They may have a label back them from time to time, but it is because the label *begged* them and gave them such a sweetheart deal, it was hard to say no. More and more, a record deal does not mean success, it means failure and debt. Failure to attract a loyal crowd and sustain attendance at shows. Failure to organize efforts to market your merchandise. Failure to get traded in the word-of-mouth market to regional or national success. While hating the BMCs, you have to feel sorry for and respect the small returns of guys who are OTT (that is if you like their music), but convince them to wean themselves!
Can I bum a sig? I left mine at the office.
Same goes for me with my PC and Plextor drive. All CDs I've tried so far play rip fine.
However, I remember reading in Slashdot a couple of months ago that certain protected CDs were not only impossible ot rip in Macs, but actually made the normal software eject stop working. And since Macs don't have mechanical eject, you had to do some gymnastics to get your drive working again... let me see if I can find it... here it is. Looks like you haven't come across any CD using this kind of protection...