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When Copy Protection Fails
StArSkY writes "The Age in Australia has an article today explaining the experiences of a Melbourne guy who purchased the Norah Jones CD tht is 'copy protected.' Unfortunately the only way he could listen to the CD on Apple computers or Intel computers running XP was to copy the CD. This sort of defeats the purpose of the copy protection in the first place. Serious yet amusing at the same time."
When does he get out of jail?
If all the machines he tried the CD on did not recognize, load or play it how did he manage to make a copy?
Return the defective CD under his country's consumer rights law. If enough people do this, then the companies might rethink the whole idea. Many people use DVD players as a CD for their stereo systems. Why should a CD not work in them?
I had to do a double-take on reading the name of that organisation. Needless to say I was greatly disappointed when I reread it. That h just looks so similiar to an r.
I had my credit card out to join and everything.
cheap web site hosting from 3 rocks a month.
Those music disks are not 'copy protected', they are 'playback crippled'.
The best (or worst, depending of if you are an exec of a user) the record companies can do is to make their products a little bit more inconvenient to make copies of. They do this by making it more difficult (but never ever impossible) or time consuming to make copies. That is all.
To call it 'protection' is like wrapping your wiener in toilet paper and calling it a condom. It's stupid, it doesn't get yhe job done and it's only uncomfy. (I think, haven't tried it.)
...um...like...a sig...
My Warcraft III EULA (and I'm sure others -- that was just a random selection from my game collection) explicitly states that I have the right to make one backup copy.
Well, guess what -- that disc is copy protected. So, in order to excercise my authorized right under the EULA, I have to defeat the copy protection...
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
How is this "news"? The protected CDs are designed not to work in computer CD drives.
Eventually they'll resort to shipping blank CDs to thwart copying, and expect you to just stare at the pretty CD jacket while pretending you're listening to it...
Bought a copy protected CD, which was from EMI. Couldn't listen to it so I made a copy for myself. Then I mailed the original CD back to EMI with note saying what I had to do just to listen the CD and here's the original back, I won't need it, my 20 euros for fighting piracy.
Just wait until DRM gets widely established. Nothing new will work in old hardware.
You'll have to buy everything all over again.
Is if he couldn't get any computer to recognize the disk then how did he manage to copy it?
O> ( \ X 8===D
I suppose he put it into a computer that wasn't an apple, nor was it an Intel PC running XP. Maybe a computer running Win2k? Or Win98? Or something? Just maybe?
The CD(s) concerned are protected by EMI's favourite copy protection system "Copy Control". You can tell by the little C.D.A.T.A logo on the data-side inside rim. We've been getting these CDs regularly at the radio atation I work for, and for computer previewing they're a real pain.
The way the protection works is by adding tracks (containing corrupt CD-R data) after Track 1 (containing the audio data). This is fine for AudioCD players because they only read Track 1. Standard CD-ROM drives also have no problem, because they ignore the data they can't understand (I think it's a form of corrupt extra session data).
CD-R/CD-RW/Combo drives however attempt to find these extra sessions/writeable areas and when they fail, assume the CD is corrupted and eject it.
What a fantastic copy control scheme, huh? Can't read the disk with a burner, but you can certainly copy it by doing a CD-ROM -> CD-RW copy. And then you can play the burnt copy. Ingenious.
I also wrote to EMI and to News Limited (in response to an earlier story they ran) about my troubles, but neither cared (possibly because I hadn't purchased the CDs in question, they were radio use only).
...I was waiting for that CD to come back in at work before I could buy it again. But since I lsiten to all of my music on my Mac, I guess I won't be buying it. Or, worst case, I'll just download the tracks off of iTunes Music Store and make my own CD.
Yay, copy-protection technology; costing you more business than it will "save" you.
Jay
..but then we'd have to sue ourselves.
- Your friendly neighborhood RIAA rep.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
I'm also in Australia, and I bought the Norah Jones CD. It wouldn't play on my Windows2000 box at work, nor my Mandrake9.1 machine at home. I tried to copy the CD, but I couldn't get the data off it digitally without getting a whole bunch of clicks and pops. Luckily a friend of mine had a US copy of it, so I copied that, and all is well. I vowed never to buy another CD from EMI ever again.
The next day my girlfriend went out and bought Ben Harper's "Diamonds on the Inside", which was released by EMI and featured a big copy protection symbol on the front. Strangely, this one was recognised immediately by every machine I put it in, no problems. I used grip to make copies I can carry around on my Zaurus, and it worked first time, no problems, no clicks or pops. Same company, same copy protection mechanism, what gives?
(Not that I'm complaining!)
That is strange because in Europe the Norah Jones CD is one of the few titles that is not copy protected.
I wouldn't have bought it otherwise. I will not have my money be used to fund consumer crippling technology.
Of course, we should boycott artists and record companies that use copy protection (playback protection?). But we should do it in a way that causes the most inconvenience for the stores and record companies:
The store is obliged to pay the refund when the product doesn't work. A "copy protected" disc is not a CD, even if it's (misleadingly) sold as one.
I heard that the latest, copy protected, Robin Williams album was sold in more than 100.000 copies in my country. No more than 10 discs were returned. Let's make that number higher!
Just stop buying CDs. It's only made me happier and richer. Until refusing to buy their music becomes a violation of the DMCA, I think I'm safe.
By reading this comment, you immediately waive any and all rights regarding it.
Incorrect.
Our copyright law is rather anal. Contrary to popular belieft you can't copy something for personal use at all. No exceptions.
For you to copy ANY music requires permission from the songwriter, the musicians and the distributor as they each hold a copyright for a seperate part of the article (music, lyrics and the sound recording itself).
That being said, if someone infringes someone's copyright it's a civil action rather than a criminal action (except when its a for-profit). We also have something similar to the DMCA except it only enables civil suits (ie, if I remove DeCSS from a DVD the DVD company come sue me if they feel I'm doing anything nasty).
For more information see the Copyright Council's web page and also their fact sheet on music and copyright.
A friend just bought the latest Massive Attack CD. When he got back from the store I asked if I could have a listen to it on my PC at work (NT4 *shudder*)... when I did it did not load my default Winamp, but instead automatically, with no prompting, installed its own player which proceded to crash... leaving me with no way of listening to the CD.
I've also come across this with some other CDs I own (Although not Norah Jones funnily enough).
Every time I buy a CD I rip it and store the CD away. This is so I can listen to the music I PAYED FOR while I'm at work without having to lug all my CDs around.
Also, I make copies of my CDs for use in the car. This is after having a company car broken into twice, where approx 100 CDs were stolen (My wife had the original CDs in those slip-case things in the glovebox)... so now we have a pile of original CD cases with no CDs in them.
I copy CDs so that I can listen to them without having the original that I paid for stolen or broken. Software that tries to stop me doing that... just kinda... PISSES ME OFF!
Right... I'm going home.
"When Copy Protection Works"?
I mean, come on... it only worked if he copied it! Hello?
-- james
And this it why:
Copy protection only works in systems that have been designed from the ground up to be copy protected.
Any video or audio that is decodeable on a PC can be hijacked from that same PC.
The only way to protect your data is to control the hardware. The only reason DVDs are hard to copy is because you can't get a DVD-r that has the same capacity.
the MPIAA is in a much better situation compared to the RIAA considering cd audio is already good enough, that consumers don't really feel the need to switch to a higher quality version of the CD. Where on the other hand, DVDs are much better than VHS tapes, and have the added benefit of being harder to copy.
He who knows not and knows he knows not is a wise man. He who knows not and knows not he knows not is a fool.
they can't yet put copy "protection" on an analog signal; which everything that makes sound must eventually send to an output. then we have a beautiful little thing called an analog input that makes ALL copy protection pointless.
if the primary purpose for the copy "speedbump" is to keep the MP3's off file sharing networks i.e. Kazaa, then it's not going to work. there is someone out there patient enough to encode in real time while listening to the cd.
the problem thw RIAA and Co. face is: the file sharing networks - not the consumer that wants to listen to his/her new cd on the computer or make a backup copy because the originals always get all scratched up on the floorboard of the car.
And it's even less funny when you consider that Australian police just instigated the world's first criminal proceedings against 3 students charged with music piracy.
Not civil proceedings; this is federal pound-me-in-the-arse prison we're talking about.
"Einstein argued that [...] God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer." ~ Brooks
I listen to most of my music at work using my PC and my headphones. So my wife recently got me the new Phil Collins CD ... for me to find out that I can't listen to it on a PC.
All that this achieves is that I'm being pushed towards downloading the tracks so that I can listen to them. At that point, what stops me from not being the CD since it won't work for me? The record companies will end up shooting their own foot off ...
I have nothing against buying reasonably priced CD's. However, I do not think that 20 euros is reasonable (although Switzerland is fortunately quite a bit cheaper than that).
Maybe I should write to Phil himself .. what do artists think about it?
Cheers.
are they (record companies) so scared? No one wants to rip them off. Most people are going to buy their albums, regardless of format. Sure, some people will steal their stuff, and I have grabed some albums from friends that I never bought, but that;s how it works. I buy most of my music, but I have bought bad music and I can't get a refund.
I guess my point is, they should really stop alienating their customers. I have never seen a business model that treats their customers so badly. People are still going to buy your albums! We made copies of cassette tapes, we're going to make copies of CD's and were giong to make copies of MP3's. Get over it, it's how it works. You're still going to make so much money! Get over it, ok?
They're probably spending more money fighting this stupid war on whatever than they are going to save. All they are doing is making people resent them and want to steal from to the point where smart people are going to keep cracking their stuff and become passionate about distributing it all. Another day, another enemy for the RIAA. Because of their actions, I would wadger that they have made many people angry to the point where they don't want to buy their albums, where they want to steal their albums and frankly, it's a war they will not win. You cannot go to war with your consumers. They are your friends!
Think about it, what other business would do this? If you walked into a store and they started accusing you of stealing and would only sell you things in such a way where you were oblivious to most of what it contained and treated you like shit all around, who would come back? I'm getting to the point where I'm going to want to steal all their music, just to spite them.
In short, they need to settle down and just accept the market as it is. They choose a digital format because it is VERY cheap to make, thus increasing profits one billion fold and yet cannot cope with the fact that this cheap medium will also allow people to send a "free" album out to someone from time to time.
And lets face it, I would bet most albums people download etc are albums they probably would not buy in the first place. How many play lists of people have you seen that have tons of songs you know they would never buy anyways?
Anyways, the main point is that the customer just BOUGHT the album, WTF are you doing? They B-O-U-G-H-T it!
AHHHH!!
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
I bought the Norah Jones disc (is it a redbook CD or just a disc?) here in Australia, and it worked fine for me.
My machine is a Mac G4 (Aug'99) with a new-ish LG CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive I put in recently.
Not only did the disc play from iTunes (without fault), it ripped to mp3 with no problems at all. The disc even includes a little stand-alone app to play it in Windows, Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X. That worked too (from OS X).
Same with the Ben Harper disc.
It seems as though this copy protection is patchy at best. Not the sort of thing the industry should stake their reputation on.
See why I do not buy music?
;)
Hell, I just bought three Blind Guardian CDs, a band that 99 percent of stupid Americans have probably never heard of, and I feel like a traitor.
I then uploaded the mp3s I ripped to my share folder to repent for my sins, to help people on k-lite find this admittedly hard-to-find band.
I had a dream last night where I killed Hilary Rosen. When I played SOF II today, I wondered to myself, "does Jack Valenti live in a mansion like this?" as I shot off the limbs of drug dealers and cartel members. Meanwhile, Kazaa was running in the BG, downloading Spider Man
The RIAA and MPAA have nobody but themselves to blame for their fucking image. They made themselves out to be the evil empire, and nobody likes an evil empire.
See also
http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pete/copycontrol.html
How I patched cdparanoia to copy Avril Lavigne in order to play it under linux.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
As long as it's possible to hold a mic up to a speaker. Or to hook up a 2 x audio - 3.5 stereo lead between a standalone player and a PC sound card {but notice how line-in jacks seem to be an endangered species these days..... coincidence?}
.....
Of course that way you won't get bit-perfect digital copies, but there'll be a hard core of audiophiles {Note to News of the World readers: an audiophile is a hi-fi bore, not some kind of pervert} who will be fastidious about the quality of the copies they're making, and these copies will be copiable digitally, so the whole exercise will have been futile from the point of view of the record companies.
Incidentally, I copied a copy of the Norah Jones disc, using the usual method of cdparanoia -B; for i in *wav; do lame -h $i && rm $i; done and it worked. Don't know how the original was protected, but the owner of the disc is a serious hacker. Jennifer Lopez's "J to tha L-O" [Sony/EPIC] didn't copy on that same {read-only} drive - in fact, it actually crashed the drive's firmware requiring a plug-pull {but the kernel and even the X-server survived unscathed}. On a Windoze box, Winamp started but no sound. I remember similar issues with Shakira's "Laundry Service" [Sony/EPIC; same protection], but I've got a drive {Sony, would you adam and eve!} on one of my machines that read it OK with cdparanoia. In the process, though, I learned more than anyone ever needs to know about IDE-SCSI emulation
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Shite man! Who actually SELLS their product? They should be giving you more respect than that. Play Local Indie stuff for a week and see how long it takes them to return your calls! :-D
You just infringed on the copyright council's copyright byt posting that.
Generally, infringements of copyright which involve commercial dealings are criminal offences (with trading as is the case you point to counting as commercial dealing).
Copying for your own use would almost certainly be a civil case and as such the amount you can get stuffed for would be related to the damages incurred by the wronged party. Those damages would be demonstrably zero and you wouldn't have much to worry about.
Of course, IANAL.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
If the public has their food and drinks and gladiator games, they are easily controlled.
Analogically speaking, EMI just messed up the gladiator games.
Unrest will ensue.
(Gee, I wish I knew the EXACT quote and which Roman Emperor said it....)
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
For those of you who have not disabled your java support in your browsers, be forewarned that the provided link will result in that idiotic 'Red Sheriff' spyware crap being started on your machine.
Then again, if you keep java enabled while browsing arbitrary sites, you get what you ask for...
The recording industry claims that CD sales have plummeted in recent times...
Of course they have -- but it's not because people are pirating CDs.
It's because the recording industry no longer makes CDs -- only these "enhanced" disks which no longer qualify for the name CD nor the Compact Disk logo.
So you see -- they're not lying, just being very deceptive!
--
News: Computer crash traps politician in BMW.
the MPIAA is in a much better situation compared to the RIAA considering cd audio is already good enough, that consumers don't really feel the need to switch to a higher quality version of the CD. Where on the other hand, DVDs are much better than VHS tapes, and have the added benefit of being harder to copy.
OTOH, most people seem to think MPEG4/DivX is just fine quality, just as they do with MP3. However, the problem is that there is not any mainstream DivX-capable players on the market, though I know Kiss has two (DP-450 & 500) and others are working on it. I know of people that download SVCDs instead of DivX, simply because it plays on their DVD player. And for the same size (700mb), the loss in quality is obvious. However, 700mb is an "acceptable" size for people with cable/dsl, while downloading full DVDs is out of the question for the time being.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Probably said already, but I don't have time to read all the comments:
Get with it guys, dust off the old record player and buy your new stuff on vinyl! Works for me, except I need a clean-room to store my music collection. Oh yeah, and it weighs about a ton.
Smokey, this is not 'Nam, this is bowling. There are rules.
...will take all the bad music away. :)
It's specifically mentioned in our (AU) copyright law.
It's actually quite interesting if you read it. The law makes exemptions for "fair dealing" and then goes on to specifically mention some things that are included in "fair dealing". However the wording (to me at least) doesn't indicate that the list is an exclusive.
I think you'd have every chance to stand up in court and argue that making a backup copy of a CD you own is "fair dealing".
The reason that hasn't happened is because in the real world the record companies have no interest in stopping you doing that anyway. There is no money to be gained and they don't want to cause a weakening of the copyright law by creating a precedent that expands "fair dealing".
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Dead serious... not impressed.
I purchase the CD and try to play it at work on Windows 2000 and it just isn't recognised... WinAmp insisting that no audio CD was in the drive.
So to listen to the album on my PC I just downloaded the bloody thing from alt.binaries.sound.mp3.complete_cd
Not illegal in any way since I now own the original... but bloody stupid and makes me realise that the only way I may now enjoy EMI releases at work will be to download a copy... which really defeats everything their system is trying to stop.
'Tis a mad, mad world.
I know of people that download SVCDs instead of DivX, simply because it plays on their DVD player. And for the same size (700mb), the loss in quality is obvious. However, 700mb is an "acceptable" size for people with cable/dsl, while downloading full DVDs is out of the question for the time being.
..not that I'd know anything about movie piracy.
Few little nitpicks:
in VCD or SVCD, its 700mb per CD, two per movie usually. Exceptions being 3cd movies like Lord Of The Rings. So its about 1.2 to 1.4 gigs per movie, Really not that bad for anyone with access to VCD/SVCD's. Also, For some downloading full DVDs arnt out of the question- Theyre called DVD-R rips. Sometimes the videoquality is downsampled to make it fit on a dvd-r, but usually its entirely intact - menus and extras and all.
"However, the problem is that there is not any mainstream DivX-capable players on the market, "
I'll give that to you, Though those really interested can use a dreamcast, xbox, or a computer with tvout.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
I'm really going to have to move to linux aren't I?
> Just wait until DRM gets widely established.
> Nothing new will work in old hardware.
> You'll have to buy everything all over again.
I really don't think this will ever happen. There are enough H/W manufacturers with no finger in the content pie to ensure a perpetual supply "old fashioned" compliant players.
Hell, Sony can't even stop itself selling DRM defeating equipment!
Personally I think that any attempt to go mainstream with DRM technology will backfire bigtime. Joe User out on the street, who just wants CDs that work, will stop buying and/or just get illegal copies from geek friends that play on anything.
The whole scheme will lose the music industry billions and the world will be a better place as a result.
What is "always"?
Damn right! How dare they stop you from being a CD??? Insensitive clods! But they need never find out - all you need to do is kinda curl up into a circle and sandwich yourself in plastic ... all in the privacy of your own home ...
... or did you mean "buying"?? ;)
I wonder whether this "CD" bore the Compact Disc logo we all know and love. If it did then perhaps he should email Philips and let them know - Philips don't (or at least didn't) take too kindly copy-proctected cd's using the compact disc logo. This is because by baring the logo it claims to be a proper "Red Book" cd, but isn't because it has copy protection.
Does anyone actually know who (if anyone) in Philips to bother about this? As I've just discovered that a supposed "cd" (it bears the logo) that I own is copy protected and I'm in a record label bashing mood.
What can be made, can be unmade. =(very matrix sort of line)
If they create CD protection.. someone will find a way around it.. they should stop wasting their time and money and try a solution that fits our requirements as customers and fills their requirements as suppliers..
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
.. if I thought that they're doing this, in part at least, to increase their revenue from CD-R levies? :)
* Just kidding
I just bought 'Massive Attack - 100th Window' not even thinking it would have this 'copy protection' stuff. I own > 500 CDs and I'm used to just seeing a title I want and buying it. I don't read the 'fine print'.
It's the first time I've encountered this 'copy protection' and I must say, I'm kinda pissed off. I think non-CDs like this should be displayed seperately - otherwise it's deceiving the customer.
Yes I could figure out a way to play it on my Linux box, but I shouldn't have to fuck around in order to play the music I just bought.
Oh well. Off I go to return it.
Yeah, unreadable CDs suck.
:)
I've HAD to copy CDs with multimedia content and/or copy protection to listen to them.
That leaves me a copy (or two) that i can actually listen to in ANY player - PC, workstation or my not-so-thrusty old CD player....
Fortunately this is perfectly LEGAL in Denmark - I can even borrow a CD from at friend and copy it. Only one rule; NEVER copy a copy.
I can do that
-B
Before being allowed to purchase a CD you will have to have your house RIAA DRM certified. RIAA operatives will removed from your house any equipment that could possibly be used to infringe upon their artists copyrights. Illegal items include, CD duplicators, PCs, Tape recorders, Video Recorders, wax disks, loudspeakers (you NOT your neighbours have bought the right to enjoy our music). Music shall be listened to through a single (approved) mono-earpiece (some listeners with stereo ear-pieces have abused the priviliedge and let others 'sample' the music using the spare ear bud).
After your music purchase an RIAA representative (probably a student trying to pay off $97 trillion) will sit with you at all times to ensure your compliance with our terms and conditions.
"We hope you enjoy your music purchase and continue to support your record industry"
p.s. Squeal little piggy!
I did the same thing... just backwards...
I downloaded the whole album from bittorrent a few weeks ago, and enjoyed it so much I actually *gasp* bought the CD...
Almost my entire music collection has been assembled in this manner... It's very similar to borrowing a CD first to see if it's worth listening to. The RIAA's problem is that not much music is worth buying anymore...
I ran into the same problem with Archon published by Electronic Arts. The copy protection was incompatible with the Epson Equity I BIOS. Electronic Arts "support" suggested getting another computer to play the game (which wasn't realistic for me at the time). Instead, I found a cracked version of the game where the copy protection was skipped and the game played fine on my existing computer.
More recently, I have found that I need to crack any games that use SafeDisc v1 to play them on my DVD-ROM drive. For whatever reason, it treats using the original CD as if it's a copy but the crack version will use the DVD-ROM drive for playing just fine. Neither Macrovision or the game publishers provide any useful help in getting these older games working with DVD-ROM drives.
The question becomes, if the long term solution is to get a cracked version then why pay for the original version in the first place?
I recon we are all criminals to some point. Yesterday I "rolled" through a stop sign. Sunday I thought naughty things in church. Yet, neither of thoes instances invoked the wrath of the police department nor God. True, the vast majority of people will not be affected by such copyright protection. But thoes with the means, but not the intentions are being treated unjustly, and therefore, it's the preminition by the artist or distributor that people are going to steal their music.
The Register has an article on how to listen to such tracks.
This is circumventing copyprotection, but if you are not going to copy the cd, then is it wrong?
"This is you left and that's your left. This is your right and that's your right. You're gonna die!
A friend said he bought the Norah Jones CD and went to make a copy at work, then realised halfway through the burning process that it was copy-protected. Not a peep from the burner, Windows or anything. The copy worked just fine, too...
But far, far worse than any of those crimes....
I'm a girl too! See naked chicks in my journal!
I bought a cd at the store,
paid for it walked out the door.
I went to listen to it at my jobby,
don't know why it didn't copy.
This is EXACTLY the reason why I have a Racoon mp3 collection instead of the CD's; I won't buy any CD's that are copy protected (and "Here we go, Stereo" even has it advertised on its cover -- I first thought it was a joke, given the name of the record), even though friends have reported having no problem copying the thing.
:-)
It's a real shame, especially since Racoon doesn't make the numbers off that particular record (IIRC) that Sony was expecting them to do, but with or without Sony, I wouldn't really mind sponsoring the better local bands.
That is, if they had normal albums for sale
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
And if you're from a USA radio station and had an "independent promoter" collect money to get the thing added, complain to him that EMI is shipping crap to your station that can't be played back on the air... and that he should keep the money EMI paid him, since it was their fault that they sent crap CDs.
Alternately, give them the "add" they paid for, at 3 AM... in the form of a voice track with the name of the track and artist and an announcement that you can't play back the music and if any listener gives a fuck, he should call:name and phone number at the label.
I wonder how long the owners of the major labels are going to accept "PIRACY!!!" as an excuse for bad sales with incompetent promotion of the sort you're describing going on.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Serious yet amusing at the same time
No, not serious, just amusing. F***ing hilarious actually.
Could there be something wrong in the system?
Apparently, the Slashdot crowd. Notice all the posts here of people who bought CDs only to find them copy-protected? Most Slashdotters are well aware of the RIAA's business tactics, but they can't help pulling out their wallets and paying the RIAA to continue their sleezy business practices.
The same is true of just about any other business. People get ripped off. They complain about it. They see a shiney new advertisement and forget all their past experiences. Suddently it's spend, spend, spend! That's why corporate America cares nothing about consumers.
It pisses me off to no end to go to business sites and have them force this on me. God knows how many business sites I hit on and after waiting God only knows how long, I get a blank page, yet my indicators show I downloaded several hundred KB. I view "document source" and find out its a bunch of java laden crap, with no idea what some of the executables would do if I launched them.
It seems the business sites are thumbing their noses at me as if to tell me that they are so big and powerful. They have hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend on executive salaries, webmasters that use the very latest technologies, and the budget for stuff I do not have and take risks I do not want to take. Like they are telling me that they are big business, and I have to kowtow to them and be compatible with them and their latest standards if I want to do business with them. Maybe I don't have the millions of dollars a year to support a technical staff to keep the virii out of my system, so I use a firewall to block all executables. A lot of big businesses have made it clear to me that they could care less if others can hear what they say. If I don't run my system in such a way as to leave myself open to all sorts of net vermin, they figure I am beneath them.
I have no idea how to communicate to these behemoths. They insist on running all this "entertainment" shit on their end when all I wanted was to look up a product. I tried a major book vendor, could not connect. Same with a major lead-acid battery manufacturer - could not get past their front page. Even the company in England who made my digitizers force this on me. They used to leave the subdirectories accessible so I could go directly to where I had to go to get the updates to my digitizers, but they got clever and closed it off so now I have to go through their java redirection shit to get there. I had to go to an insecure system with a throwaway OS ( ghosted WIN95 ) to access their site, knowing I may have to reload the OS image if the site downloaded anything nasty to my end. With the new "state of the art" OS being so cantankerous on reloading and moving around from machine to machine and techniques such as ghosting, time is running out for these options and these companies will be almost impossible to reach on a secure system.
HTML ( like the CD's ) was designed to be adherent to standards. When people take it on themselves to generate their own deviants, then only those compatible with their deviant can view the content, and often incompatibility with even a minor deviant renders the entire site inacessable.
I guess the executives in these companies just weigh off how many customers will not be able to view the site versus how much they can dazzle the CEO with their new snazzy website on a compatible system, and keep the CEO unaware of how much customer frustration thats resulting from this. I know I can rant here, and the CEO will never see it, as he would probably prefer to get his feedback from someone well paid to do so so the feedback presents his leadership in a positive light. If I were a CEO, I would definitely be reading sites like slashdot to get unfiltered rants over what direction things were headed. I wonder if the CEO of that battery company even cared if people were having trouble accessing the corporate site, even though he had the money and technical expertise to afford his corporate terminal linked directly into his server? What is it going to take to get them to hire people who know what they are doing and make web pages that work. Amazon makes pages that work. So does Google. I expect porn sites to give a lot of shit because by their nature they wanna probe your machine for marketing info. But this kinda shit is highly resented when found on corporate sites.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Some copy protected CDs don't work on my standalone DVD/CD player. However ripping audio under Linux works fine.
Lower the price of CD's!
Ok, it costs a lot to make a CD. You need to spend a time in the studio. (expensive) You need to make sure it souds right. (not so expensive, I guess) And you need to promote it (expensive).
Then why in the name of all holy cows does the anniversary Dark Side of the Moon cost the same as the newest girl/boy band CD?
You don't need to record it, you don't need to promote it. (Have you seen much Pink Floyd on MTV lately?) You just remix it and press it. Voila! You have a great CD that people will buy, even though they have at least 2 versions already of that album!
I don't give a rat ass anymore about RIAA...
Any video or audio that is decodeable on a PC can be hijacked from that same PC
You sure about that? Because that seems to be exactly what Safedisc does. Somehow a key is pressed onto the CD in the mastering process, and although that key can be verified by the software, it can't actually be burned onto another CD by a standard CD burner.
I don't know how it works, and it seems like it ought to be impossible, but the proof is on every CD that EA has pressed in the last year or so. For more information, visit their web site.
* No one wants to rip them off*... probably, very few people primarily want to rip them off, but a lot of people their music for free, and are *willing* to rip them off.
* I have never seen a business model that treats their customers do badly *. How about Stalin's business model, or Lenin's? How about the IRS? Or for non-governmental groups, how about universities? Airlines? Drug lords? Africa's AIDS-infected prostitutes? The Russian mafia's "Work in America" program for young East European and Russian women? Casinos? Believe me, there are plenty of business models that treat their customers badly.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Copy protection licencing is sufficiently expensive and a hassle to the producers that's it's only used on 'popular' artists. So take that as a hint and listen to 'unpopular' ones.
Spend your CD money on world, jazz, classical, flamenco, folk, blues, celtic, indie or anything else outside the mainstream - but just stay away from the popular artists. There's a vast world of great music out there to be discovered - help out the artists, broaden your horizons, and give the big music companies a kick in the pants. Furthermore if they see their cd sales drop, but cd sales in general rise they're not stupid enough that they won't draw conclusions.
So to listen to the album on my PC I just downloaded the bloody thing from alt.binaries.sound.mp3.complete_cd
Not illegal in any way since I now own the original
If you look at copyright law, it gives you the right to do that with your own copy *only*. Hypothetical situation: You own a CD, but you forgot to make mp3s of it to put on your Ipod before you went to visit your cousin. However, your cousin also owns the CD, and you make mp3s from his CD. That would be illegal. Why? Because it is not your CD. It doesn't matter if the source (CD) and result (MP3) would be exactly the same if you had done it at home, or that you own it at all. Of course, you're more likely to win the lottery every week for the rest of your life than to get in trouble over it, but it's still the law. Stupid as it might be.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I had exactly the same problem as a friend of mine bought that same Norah Jones album. It wouldn't play on my newer Macs, but I have discovered a wonderful thing... A few years ago, Apple released optical drives that supported DVD's and CD's. These drives didn't have any burning capability, but they can do one really cool feature. They are completely blind to EMI's copy protection. I put the CD in, iTunes recognised it and I ripped the CD to AIFF.
I was then able to burn those raw uncompressed files to a new uncontaminated red-book audio CD. I was going to sell that Cube, but now I think I will keep it just for playing crippled CD's.
One issue that people don't see with these discs is that even if they work on whatever hardware you have now that doesn't mean it will work in what you buy later.
With a CD you know it will work in anything with a CD logo on it. With these things you could find in five years time that you don't have any hardware that will play it.
When my bog standard CD player dies I'm unlikely to replace it. I already have two PCs, an xBox and a DVD player that should be perfectly capable of playing my music but won't these discs don't work (or at least the one disc I tried).
If particular versions of copy protection are only employed for a short period time then future hardware manufacters aren't going to worry too much about compatibility with every single different type.
That's why I took 100th Window back and why I haven't bought one of these discs since. And I used to buy 3-4 CDs a month.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
The thing that seems to be missed most in these discussions is loosing and regaining your purchased material. When I buy my music I buy a LICENSE to listen to that music. Lets face it, the cd cost a couple of bucks, where does the rest of the money go. The pysical media cost next to nothing.
I was unlucky enough to have almost my entire cd collection stolen (yeah no insurance but there u go) and I'll put it straight: There is no way in hell that im going to fork out the hundreds of dollars to get them back again. I have already paid for my license to listen to the material I purchased a long time earlier. I am merely regaining the physical media to execute that license.
But that makes me a criminal? Well, bring it on!
Thanks for the tip off. I was considering buying that album, now I'll not bother. At the very least I could always try some cdparanoia ripping tricks and return the CD as unplayable..
That's why I took 100th Window back and why I haven't bought one of these discs since. And I used to buy 3-4 CDs a month.
Just D/L it like everybody else.
Isn't that what Kazaa is for? ;)
I don't read your sig, why do you read mine?
..and got the money back from my disc shop, after! :-DDD
that "copy protection" seems to protect you from listenin to the cd, indeed.
I copied it almost for joke, just before returning the CD, and it worked. yes yes yes.
you cannot use the cd, but you can copy it!!
Christ. Get the mp3s. If there are no mp3s og oggs, borrow the CD from someone and make mp3s and oggs and publish them. If we can make sure rapid dispertion of high-quality copies of copy-protected works - plus we don't buy the crippled hardware they offer us, then the effect of crippling the discs will be negative. All it takes is a high quality cd/dvd-player with digital output paired with a pc that accepts digital input. Then, you'll have a pretty good quality copy of any crippled cd even if they made it _impossible_ to play back on a computer.
Or, buy the disc, make a copy as described, and return it claiming it didn't work on your computer at work and that you primarily listen to music at work.
Maybe I should try that approach with the new Ed Harcourt CD? I used to convince myself that a simple boycott is enough. However, a bit of piracy of the supposedly "safe" format will make the business case for "copy protection" even worse..
Stop the brainwash
There are two groups of people that buy a CD. Those that can copy it and those that can't.
The copy protection is obviously supposed to stop group 1 from copying the disks but this is the group that probably knows how to get round the protection anyway.
All that is happening is the record company is inconveniencing group 1 and annoying group 2. Its a lose/lose situation.
If its possible to listen to a cd then its possible to copy it, so why are the record companies determined to p1ss off 100% of their customers with these half-baked schemes.
I've got a simple solution to this sort of thing..
BUY VINYL.
It's pretty tricky to get copy protection pressed into a record.
Records preserve my freedom and ensure my fair use rights. The CD-Rs I can produce from a legally purchased LP generally sound as good, or better than the new CD. (Yes, I know this shocks all you young grasshoppers, but the fact is, records sound far better than CDs when you've got good equipment).
CD's on the other hand, are the TOOL OF THE MAN as is well evidenced by this story.
Now I know alot of you are probably thinking "hmm. records.. what an idiot... they don't make those anymore." Wrong! You'd be surprised at how many records are still pressed. Further, If it isn't released on vinyl, it isn't worth listening to anyway.
Not only do CD's make you a slave, they are completely lame. Guys, girls dig records. Don't be fools.
Depends if you want to view it under copyright law or from the perspective that buying the disc is infact a license to listen. Music Industry seems to be aiming for the latter, so in some ways, that works out ok.
How if you want to have fun when entering Australian customs, if they ask if you are a convicted felon, asnwer "Oh, is that still a requirement?". But be ready for no sense of humor and a quick return flight.
Remember, it's an ollllld joke.
Infuriate left and right
The real problem here is that The MPA is worried people might actually read the lyrics, figure out that most of the new music is really bad, because all the lyrics are centrallized around maybe 5 main themes, and stop buying the music, once they figure out how unoriginal it is.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Kazaa is for spying on you, ripping off personal details about you and your system and stealing your computer cycles and Internet bandwidth.
Do some reasearch on the web and get the hell off of Kazaa!
This has happened to me as well. I purchased the new rock band album, Trapt, and it has the copyprotection on it. I could not play it in on my home PC, without ripping it to Mp3 first.
It's really sad that it has to come to this, but it's our fault in the first place I guess.
I'm a Warcraft III fanatic, have been playing is ever since it came out, without any issues at all... until patch 1.05.
Among other things, this patch contains an "upgrade" to the copy-protection software the game uses, and after installing it every single time I try to play the game it shows a message asking me to insert the CD. I have to hit retry 5-10 times before the game runs. If I don't install the patch everything runs fine, but then I'm not allowed to connect to Battle.net and play online.
Blizzard's support was pretty much useless on this issue, but I found a solution: I made an image of the CD in my HD and now am running the game using Alcohol 120%'s CD emulator. :)
Badaro
My sig became obsolete, and I lack the imagination to create a new one.
The way CD copy protection works is by introducing errors, BUT:
All errors are designed so that "normal" CD players can correct them. This includes software designed to perform EC as well as a "normal" CD player, such as cdparanoia.
Just make sure the disc is clean and scratchless, since at least Cactus Data Shield reduces the amount of real errors the EC system can correct for by introducing intentional ones.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Support the online music community that releases music for free.
This copy-protection bullshit has to end.
There is PLENTY of free music available. Just check out mp3.com to find some excellent artists. Or listen to music from non-RIAA record labels, which release CD's without copy-protection. (since they can't afford it)
Shoutcast.com is especially good for some high-quality audio streams, which, if you really want, could just rip the whole stream from them. (eg. using StreamRipper - divides it nicely into little mp3 tracks, which are labeled)
Plus, if you wish to donate some funds, most of these online bands/streams accept PayPal donations. (too bad I hate PayPal)
Enough is enough! Fuck the RIAA.
I wonder what Norah Jones has to say about this.
the longer the music industry does this (especially with high penetration artists like placebo and ben harper) the more of the general population will be effected by "cd's that dont work"
customer backlash is inevitable, hell EMI cd's wont play on my stero (and its old) .. the more cd's they put out that are crippled, the more people they are going to piss off, the more pissed off the populace gets , the more backlash there will be. people dont like paying 30$au for something that wont work when they want it too
your customers are your market, fuck with your customers, and your market evaporates. but hey, it hasnt seemed to stop any other global conglomerates has it.
dms0
-= world leaders choose world leaders not us, not a democracy, not a revolution! =-
Nope, I'm just through buying CDs for the time being. But I can only listen to Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods so many times.
DT
Is this thing on? Hello?
Avril and DB certainly not the best out there, but they're far better than a lot of what the RIAA likes to peddle. (Spears and Timberlake... Need I say more?)
:)
And some of DB's more recent works are a lot less "drivel-ish" than his debut of "Gotta Get Through This". Interestingly enough, I heard somewhere that most of the work on that track (and possibly the initial recording of it) was done in his bedroom... I'm sure that it was later rerecorded in a proper studio.
And Avril is the anti-Britney... Or at least used to be. At least some of her music has some sort of meaning, rather than "oops I did it again".
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I used Grip (cdparanoia and oggencode) and everything worked just fine. Either the Norah Jones CD I have is not copy protected or the scheme they are using is too good.
I can't believe that the recording industry believes that locking down CDs, making them less versitile, and restricting where you can play them is going to make them a more attactive product than a free MP3. Please, at least give me some reason to feel guilty. I suppose the dinosaurs trapped in the La Brea tar pits thrashed around a bit before they went under as well.....
from the report:
:
.. could someone explain to EMI how hard it is to use an embedded player on the CD itself when your computer system cant even see the CD ?
"Once there, he tried to listen to his new acquisition, using his Titanium laptop which runs version 10.2 of Apple's operating system. There was no response, with the disc not being recognised.
One can't blame Marovitch for not trying - he tried to listen to the disc on a workstation which runs Windows 2000 and then on one which runs Windows XP.
In both cases, he got no joy. The disc was not picked up by the system. "
from EMI
"As the technology was created to be played through its own embedded player on the CD itself and not any other player that is currently available to the PC/Apple, it will cause anomalies if played in any other manner."
Now
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
I had to do this with a CD last year because of some old CD players we have at home. I e-mailed Sen. Hatch about it and explained in detail what I had to do and why I had to do it. I then pointed out that the music industry was 'forcing' me to make copies of their CDs in order to be able to use what I had paid for.
I also told him that I copy every single computer CD that I get and only use the copies so that my originals won't get ruined. I would do the same with DVDs if I could. I don't steal software, but I copy everything I have. Luckily, I pointed out, I am knowledgeable enough to get around all of these copy protection schemes; but most people aren't and it is illegal for me to help them.
Everyone should write their congresscritters and legislators about their experiences like this so that they will be more aware of the problem. Be a squeaky wheel.
Those who open their minds too far often let their brains fall out.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
I took it home, and...you guessed it. It wouldn't play with WMP 8, Real, or WinDVD in any of 4 drives I tried on two machines. I did find some old shareware player that would play it, but it was a crap player, and I couldn't stand the jumpiness, digital blocking, and other fine artifacts whilst I watched.
So, I trotted it's little shiny ass right back to Walmart, stood in line for 20 minutes, and, after reading the "no refunds on opened CDs, DVDs or Software" about 412 times, I got to the front of the line. I handed the 17 year old girl my DVD, which she inspected closely.
"Yeah, it's been opened," I said. "It's ok. I just need a refund." "Uhhhh, sir? We don't really...ummm...do refunds...on...ummm...opened...uhhh...stuff like this."
I grinned, and said, "That's ok. Just need my money back, thanks. It doesn't work." I was thinking to myself, how do I explain DVD copy protection to this girl without making her head explode or having her gnaw her arm off to escape?
"Well, I can't really...ummm...give a refund on this. Would you like to exchange it for another one?" "Nope," I said with a smile. "Just my money back. Thanks."
She pointed to the tiny sign about no refunds on DVDs and said "Well, we have a policy..." I interrupted her with my best Fargo-esque Minnesota accent, "Hey, you betcha. Y'know...Yeah, I see your big sign right there...yeah, that one. Hey, that's great. 'Satisfaction Guaranteed' Wow. That sign's gotta be 12 feet tall, huh? Dontcha figure that sorta makes this little one here not really all that important?" She stared at me blankly (We're in Portland, not Minnesota, and I don't think she got it.)
"Yeah, ummm...I'm gonna have to call my manager." "Not a problem," says I, with a chorus of groans from the people in line behind me...So, the manager shows up, and she's gotta be at LEAST 19, with a cool ring of keys around her wrist. GOTTA be important stuff, huh? The clerk hands her the DVD with a conspiratorial look at me..."it's been opened..." she whispers quietly to the manager.
So, after a 5 minute diatribe about the horrors of this copy protection crap, she just shook her head, "We can't return this." At which point I pulled out my cell phone (which was off), punched 911 so she could see me, and said, "Are you suure? I've got nothing else to do tonight."
So, I got my money back.
Return your DEFECTIVE DVDs and CDs. If we don't, all we're doing is encouraging them!
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
Hmm... iTunes ripped my copy of 100th Window without a hiccup. Is it just certain regions that got the copy protected version? (I'm USA)
The long-time stance of the Slashdot crowd has been that if digital music distribution were made available to bands, they'd see more of the revenue from music sales. I was listening to the radio last night and heard the band "Cold" talking about MP3s. Their stance seemed to be that the money earned from CD sales is owed to the record labels for the work they do promoting the music, pushing the concerts (something that apparently generates a lot of revenue for the band), and making sure their songs get played on the radio.
This seemed completely backwards to me. Cold has basically bought into the line that they need the RIAA for promotion, and they're willing to give up their revenue from CD sales in exchange. It was the first time I'd heard a band actually come out and say this.
I think the digital music battle has a long way to go if artists fail to understand that what digital distribution offers is a way to break free from the record labels. I can't believe that so many artists are willing to give up their CD revenue in exchange for promotion and production costs as long as they still get their take of the concert sales.
EMI went through all the pain of implementing their new "Copy Control", pissing off all their customers for nothing. They claim to have a player on the cd which will work on any windows 95/233 mhz computer but of the dozen EMI copy protected CD's I have only had it come up once. One the other hand, I have yet to find a CD distributed by them that I haven't been able to copy in 15 minutes or less. The bonus - the copied copy loses the copy control. I won't give specific instructions so EMI doesn't come after me, but to make a copy you can play on any computer you simply need to "dummy down" the burner, removing the error checking in the read process, or simply pull out one of our old 4x burners.
True, and I have heard that many DVD players actually use PC drives to read the DVD. I'm sure my Toshiba DVD player and the Toshiba DVD drive in my PC were not seperately developed. That would be stupid. They probably based one off the other and I would suppose the differences are minor (speed being the biggest). The DVD player is even capable of reading regular disks with MP3s stored on them, and it does, even though the playback sucks. If these disks are designed so that CDROM drives (and, most likely, combo DVD/CDROM drives) cannot read them, they will seem broken in DVD players as well.
Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.
Tried Real Jukebox that came with my Yamaha CD-F1, wouldn't recognize the disc in the drive. "Hmm..."
Look at the back of the CD case and in 4 pt font there is something about "Made with Macromedia." Now I'm mad.
First I used Clone CD to make a virtual CD image on the hard disk. This program is great, for making backup copies of CDs or allowing you to play a game with "Please insert original CD in drive D:". It is $40 well spent.(I'm in no way affiliated with elby.)
Now I had a readable image. Next I used CDEx to remove the copy protection from the image and create a Redbook compliant CD. CDEx is free from SourceForge. Hat's off to an impressive program.
Ahhh... Now I can listen to my new CD while I work. I wasn't copying to CD to copy it (it would have been more cost effective to buy another, as this process took an hour and I get paid more than $15/hr...) I space-shifted the CD so I could listen to it in the device of my choice.
I've never downloaded an MP3 from P2P, and have no intention to do so. It is very frustrating not to be able to sit down and listen to a CD that I just bought. (Actually, it was a gift from my sister.) Also, I typically make one copy to use in my car and keep the original in my home CD changer. Car CD's tend to get damaged easily.
I first read this as "creative director of the Richard Simmons group". Oh my.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
I don't have a laptop, unfortunately, or I'd try this... Go to a big music store with your laptop (some time when you've got a lot of free time). Bring along a printout of the Redbook standard (the one that they have to comply with if they want to put that little Phillips 'Compact Disc' logo on the disc).
Buy a Phil Collins CD that you know is copy protected. Bring it over to the service desk. Open the CD in front of them, stick it in your laptop, have it fail to play, and insist that it's broken and you want another one.
Go get another one, open it, and do the same thing.
Repeat until you've opened the shrinkwrap on every copy of the CD, forcing the store to either re-wrap them or (more likely) send them back to the manufacturer as defective (at the manfacturer's cost).
Then go on to Norah Jones. ;)
-T
Not that my computer has any programs ending with .exe, but still...
Don't bother making the CD.
We have a distrobution network already setup. P2P and server based like apple's itunes. Rather then selling the media, sell the license to use it. A jewel case, CD label, and perhaps a bumpersticker saying *I bought this music*. Typicaly CD-Rs don't come with jewel cases, and jewel cases *ARE* a product that consumers are willing to buy.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
In this case, however, laziness plays the exact opposite role. While pirates are going to step up to the plate and see this as a challenge (perhaps even a welcome one), your average consumer simply won't buy a product that doesn't work in the way they believe it should (in this case, CDs that, well, actually play). It might take a while since public knowledge of this scheme is still very low, but all it's going to take for your average person is one such incident as cited in the article, and you can bet they'll stop buying cd's with those new-fangled operating instructions on the artwork.
In a couple years these ridiculous, half-assed protection schemes are going to be chalked up as a lesson in business failure in some MBA textbook, and beyond that will only be history. In Soviet Russia, the KGB makes unauthorized copies of you.
on why DRM is wrong...
Copy Protection is a Crime
Entertainment industry cracks down on free advertisement. Film at 11!
---
School: first you do your best to get in, then you do your best to get out.
-- Inglorion
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I have the same problem when I try to listen to music at work. My CDs won't play on the newer machines with this wonderful copy protection enabled. Consequently, I've been forced to go through and rip my ENTIRE collection so that I can actually listen to it. My music collection used to be on audio CDs, and if not for the copy protection I would never have bothered to convert it to mp3. IS IT POSSIBLE THAT THE MUSIC INDUSTRY WANTS ME TO SWITCH TO MP3?
I don't know if any of you are old enough to remember the "look for the Union label" jingle. However, what you need to do as far as CDs go is "look for the CD-DA logo."
From what I understand, Royal Dutch Philips is actively looking for CDs labeled as proper Red Book compliant, non-broken CD-DA CDs but which are copy-limited, and therefore broken. If that Phil Collins and/or Norah Jones CD has the logo, but does not conform to the Red Book standard, Philips needs to be let know so they can SUE. And they have specifically said they WILL sue if cases like that are brought to their attention.
If the CD DOES NOT bear the CD-DA logo, you can't do this. But if it does...you can put a world of hurt on the music industry strictly by bringing this to their attention.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Actually the data you get back from a cd drive in audio extract mode is NOT the same as that on the disk.
If you CRC the data you get back and compare with the same rip you get from another brand of drive or ripper it will probably be different.
One of the main reasons is that audio CDs have no positioning information on them. In a data CD part of each data block is an index that allows the drive to know EXACTLY where on the disk it is reading, on an audio CD the whole data block is used to encode the music data. The TOC tells the CD drive where to find the start of the track, and the head starts reading from there. The differences are small enough you don't hear them normally - but in DAE you need to get the head exactly positioned and different drives and rippers combinations will have different accurracies and offsets will achieve this to varying degrees of success.
Buy a CD player.
They're still blaming piracy for the current drop in sales- even though other groups have fingered what is actually wrong.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
By copying a CD for personal use and making no financial gain you're hardly committing a crime that is as serious as GBH, major fraud or using a firearm illegally. Yet it seems the RIAA and others seem to see it as a comparable crime, probably because their penthouse suite, swimming pool, Lexus and "happy-meal ass" lifestyle is under threat.
Somehow, the Nirvana compilation CD that came out a few months ago works perfectly in my computer CD player, but doesn't work in my portable Sanyo CD player. I had to burn a copy of the CD in order to have it work in my portable CD player. And I'm not talking about fancy settings here : I just popped the Nirvana CD in my DVD drive, put a blank CD in the burner, started Nero, choose "Copy a CD" from the CD Burning Wizard, and 8 minutes after I had a "exact" copy which now worked in my Sanyo portable CD player.
Now that's odd
I'll give this 'future where the corperations win' story a respectable 7 out of 10. Tune in next /. story involving corperations of any sort, when doubtless we'll see another one of these.
I'm the guy with the unpopular opinion
Doesn't it seem stupid to provide *COPY PROTECTION* on a CD when I can still rip the tracks with *NO* effort whatsoever.
Doesn't it also seem stupid that all I have to do is *ISO* the CD and viola... a backup of the *COPY PROTECTED* CD.
And I just remembered that I'm out of CD's so I'm going to head to Wal-Mart because my legitimately purchased INCUBUS CD won't work in my car anymore... good thing I archived it to my computer.
That's another thing... does the *COPY PROTECTION* really protect anything as I can *ARCHIVE* the *COPY PROTECTED* CD anyway?
1. bought R$ 35 (U$ 12) disc to wife as a gift; :-)
2. wife mostly listens to her music in the car;
3. (copy protected) disc did not play in the car;
4. went downtown; bought R$ 1,50 (U$ 0,30) pirate copy of the cd;
5. wife.setMood(Mood::HAPPY);
6. Profit!!!
I'm actually listening to that album on my computer right now!? Did only some of the copies of this album get copy protection ? Non-US maybe ?
2) The music industry has no clue what they're doing. How can you create something and then not test it, find the qwirks, and fix them? That is just a bad product. Too bad the bad product is preventing people from using the product that they thought they were purchasing.
3) If Apple PCs aren't supported, then obvious every CD player isn't supported either.
Nora Who? I know there are probably millions of people out there chomping at the bit to copy a half-jazzy artist's cd... Not only can you not Listen to these CD's (celine dion cd comes to mind here too, a post from a long time ago) but it actually crashes the iMacs if you try to even put it in the drive. I know a guy who was so upset that his iMac was hobbled by a damned celine dion cd that he took it back to the store, and bought an Intel. (I'm not a celine dion fan, but to each his own... Interestingly enough, you can fix the problem (and circumvent the protection) by drawing a nice black ring around the outside of the disk (the unwritten part) with a Sharpie. Cheers kids.
Speak for yourself.
.. make sure you bring along someone who does!
In my case, it's my wife. If you get her pissed at you, look out! She is a customer service agent's worst nightmare. She will only get MORE indignant and demanding if she gets the runaround, usually to a bunch of people who "can't authorize that". She is completely unafraid of creating a scene and making sure everyone in earshot knows that the company she's dealing with is screwing her over.
In some ways, I hate it. The looks I get as the "poor husband" (or, perhaps, "asshole husband of the bitch") are quite humorous when looked at in hindsight, but very uncomfortable at the time.
But in other ways, its great. Our cable connection was down for maintenance for a couple of hours one day, and she couldn't bid on an auction she had been watching for days. You wouldn't think that a couple of hours of downtime would be worth a month's free high-speed access, but apparently she convinced them that it was, and took up a couple of hours techie and admin peoples' time to boot.
I don't even want to think about what she'd do if she were to (shudder) put a Celine Dion "CD" into an iMac, and watch the machine lock up.
The key seems to be the ability to be utterly uninterested in giving the poor schmuck who you are addressing a break. I can't really do that. Yes, I want the company to get its just desserts, but I feel for the kid I'd have to deal with (whose job depends on making my task difficult). My wife, on the other hand, really couldn't care less if she's ruined the day of someone earning minimum wage. "If some store shits on me, I'm shitting right back on whoever they send out to talk to me."
In other words, I'll just make sure that if I come across a defective CD or DVD, I'll be making sure that my wife get riled up about too. The media industry won't know what hit them!
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
This story just shows up RIAA and their Nazi friends SO BEAUTIFULLY. After 10 minutes, I am still trying to scrape myself off the floor and stop bursting out in giggles.
More and more people (like me?) just DON'T have any CD players at all!
I have a DVD player in my living room, which I doubt will be able to play those disks (heck it can't do CDRs/CDRWs).
I usually play my CD's on my computer and then redirect the audio to my home theater system.
Will I have to become a pirate to listen to my future CDs?
I guess this also raises the question whether or not you own the media or the songs on the media? What do you pay for? The right to listen to the songs (if so, can other people around you listen too?) or the right to listen to *that* media only? (then you can't make MP3s for your walkman/car player?)
It seems like the fact that you can't play that CD on some hardware is some sort of discrimination. You can't fully enjoy your CD. Will record companies refund you a part of the price since you can't play it on all your players? If you own the right to listen to the song, would making a copy be legal in that case?
-- Leeeter than leet
I sent it to sales@emigroup.com, but I got an error. So if anyone knows of a working e-mail at EMI, let me know.
This is a personal account, don't draw any conclusions from it.
My favourite artist (a Finnish one) published a new record. I knew the album was copy-protected, but I bought it anyway. Not being able to make ogg.'s of it, I haven't really listened to the CD after the initial first days, since the procedure (with the accompanied player), is just that much unwieldy.
As a non-direct result my fandom for her has cooled off, which is something I don't like. I'm now less inclined to buy her next album or attend her concerts. This isn't right. 8-(
So how many poor unpaid interns do you think the RIAA has monitoring /. every day, logging all the various complaints and attacks?
I'm surprised they haven't sued /. yet. Of course, they would have no grounds, but that hasn't stopped them in any of their other pursuits.
Poor bastards.....
"The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it." -- Ayn Rand
You must remember that, up until VERY recently, all CDROM drives have a little "play" button on them that will blindly seek to track 1 and start playing redbook audio through it's analog and/or digital output ports (you know, the little thin cable that you can never find when you're trying to hook up your CDROM drive to "AUX" on your sound card). You don't even need to have an OS booted -- just supply power to the CDROM drive and press the little button and it will play.
While the above is sarcastic, I'm actually somewhat serious -- what EMI said was perfectly and technicaly valid. Incredibly insulting to the computer user community, but valid.
no text
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
thats whats allready happenned... and no they havnt noticed
destroy the riaa
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Actually, I had no problem ripping my copy of 100th Window here in Australia. It seems for some reason that one of the ways to circumvent the Cactus Shield stuff is to use your PCs DVD-ROM drive and it reads it perfectly. Not sure why (and not sure why it seems to be broken on some stereo component DVD players), but it worked for me. I guess YMMV though.
Okay, okay...
The record companies (claim they) are loosing billions of dollars to piracy/sharing. They attempt to solve this problem by copy protecting the CDs and forcing you (ineffectually) to use embedded players when the CD is played in a computer
Am I the only one that sees the next step: advertisements on the CD. Most audio CDs only fill 80% of a standard 640MB CD, never mind the extra storage you can get on a 700MB CD. I don't think they'll do video, but I certainly see audio only, or Flash based animation type ads.
Your listening to your new CD lawfully through the embeded player on your PC, a track ends. Your are trated to a 30 second "radio" spot for some detergent, new running shoe, or a car. This happens three or four times during the length of the CD.
The record company is happy now because even if your pirate the CD, they will have made money from selling the advertising time to some big sponsor.
Of course, the embeded player will not allow you to skip the ad, or fast forward past it.
Damn I'm happy I can already use the iTMS.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
For Norah Jones it has only one entry: Come Away With Me. I'm not sure if that's the album the guy from the article tried to play.
Translation help:WARNING: Condition is always true in function slashdot.readStory(64137);
Which made me happy as it's a kick ass album but I'm not buying something I can't use. So for a few extra bucks I got one with a nice red cover and a t-shirt. And I can actually listen to it too.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
IANAL, so I won't offer legal advice. However in many states it is illegal for stores to refuse refunds for defective merchendise. They don't want to take DVDs and CDs back, but legally they have to. Thus they will try to say they can't.
I suspect record companies require the fuss, but I'm not sure.
Remember though, you need to check your local laws.
Aren't you copying the copy the Cd store gave you? Or you mean you can't personally make a copy of your copy, so you have to get your friend to come around and make it for you?
Please Reconsider.
a nd scroll to the bottom. And we are talking better quality live recordings encoded at 160 kbps.
First off, It's a good album. A little over hyped, but good.
Second, I still haven't seen a copy protected version. It must be an Australian thing.
And most importantly, Norah Jones is cool. She released a lot of live songs as MP3. You can download the right off of her web site.
http://www.norahjones.com/av/default.htm
Just don't punish Norah Jones for her record company's mistakes.
Well that's what he deserves for buying a Norah Jones CD.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
There is a proposal on the table (in the U.S.) to mandate that rights-restricted products such as these cd's be labelled. This will make is possible for consumers to choose whether or nor they take rights-restrictions or not. You can register your support over at the EFF
The last cd I bought was Mezzanine; I wanted to get 100th window but absolutely, positively and most definitely refrain from buying overcharged, corrupted consumer goods (Mezzanine is not (yet) copy protected).
Yeah, great shit! The music industry just lost another paying customer. Don't worry: I won't go and rip of your shit from the net. There's anyway no more that much to rip off nowadays and I'm quite happy with the back catalog, my own cd collection and with the ones you force me to borrow from friends.
You management type geezers of the major entertainment companies, you who couldn't care less if you push Pepsi, hawk razorblades or deal in cigarettes, but accidentally wound up at a record company should be aware of that. Quite possibly your dwindling sales are not primarily related to kiddies downloading Britneys crap, but to people like my mate Chuck or myself who absolutely refrain from being extorted in exchange for a corrupted product and who are sick and tired of being treated as crooks by you. Y'know it's people like us who ultimately sign your paychecks. But you'd proabably have to first get your heads out of your asses in order to understand that. In the meantime; and in good old Metallica fashion my I suggest that you:
GO BANGE YER HEADS...
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Of course, you could just do it the hard way, and record the vinyl to CD like I did when I discovered that the CD release I imported had protection on.
Its a gorgeous triple-gatefold as well, which is nice.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"