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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."
Here's one:
http://fatchucks.com/index.html
I'll post more lists if I find any.
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.
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
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?
Sorry but that won't happen.
Most people, the average Joe user simply dont care. They dont give a shit as long as they can play their cds on the cdplayer. For their sake the RIAA companies could start putting programs that invade their privacy and monitor their behavior. RIAA-companies could start filling their CD's with annoying pop-up ads or force them to use a dubious DRM-scheme.
And 95% of the cd-buying population would ignore it and still continue buying cd's.
The thing most people care about is price and availability.
A friend of mine who work part-time in a large record store (city with 300k population) told me that after they started sellinng cd's with copy-protection last summer the total number of returned CD's was totaling.......*silence waiting for the numbers*...... "somewhere between 25 and 50".
And they are selling something like 1000-1500 cs's a day (open 7 days a week). Go figure.
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
Massive Attacks latest release was 'copy-protected' here in the states too. Which means it rips slower. It's super dumb since the mp3s were floating around for a couple of months before the album came out anyways.
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
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.
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.
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!
Indeed, but it is easy to circumvent. EAC has a -nomultisession option, and also those protections based on artificial C2 errors are no problem. For example see this thread.
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.
there is... just use Exact Audio Copy and have it create its own TOC from the disc layout.
The fact is, as long as the bits are on the discs to be read, there is no way they will ever devise an unbreakable cd copy protection format. This is really why they are trying to trojan us with this DVD-A and SACD crap.
Jeremy
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
Boycotts do work. Greedy robber barons don't get our money when we don't buy their products. Don't buy CDs. Let them gather dust on store shelves.
How ya like dat?