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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."
In Canada you can copy a CD legally for "personal use". Australia has a similar legal system, based on British common law. Their copyright law is likely similar in this regard too.
I'd be interested in hearing from an Aussie on this though.
Why slashdot? Why not?
When does he get out of jail?
That's not as funny as you think in the light of this. Copying CD's without the copyright holder's permission is illegal in Australia.
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'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!)
Other than that the copyright owner can license their intellectual property however they want (which will ordinarily prevent a copy being made).
That is - the guy who did this has likely committed a civil offence (but not a criminal offence).
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.
The Oz Copyright Council says otherwise. When it comes to fair use, we are teh suck.
choice quotes:
and:
(emphasis mine)
FAQ
Is it legal to copy albums onto CD if you own the albums?
Owning an album is not the same as owning copyright in the music, lyrics and sound recordings that are embedded in the album. If you are not the owner of copyright you will need permission to copy music from an album to CD even if you have bought the album you want to copy.
Am I allowed to make a copy or compilation of music on a CD for private use?
There is no special exception which allows copying of CDs or cassettes for private use. In most cases you will need permission from the owners of copyright in the music & lyrics (usually the music publisher) and the owners of copyright in the sound recording (usually the record company).
Can I download music from the Internet and copy it onto CD?
The fact that material is made available on the Internet (for example, as an MP3 file) does not mean that it may be used freely. Material on the Internet may still be protected by copyright. If this is the case, and the copyright owners have not given permission to download and record their work, you will infringe copyright by reproducing the music, lyrics and sound recording onto CD. Sometimes, copyright owners grant express permission to use their work. You should look for such permissions on the site from which you are downloading.
Can I make backup copies of my music CDs?
Making a backup copy of a CD will involve making a reproduction of the music, lyrics and sound recordings on that CD. The right to reproduce the work is one of the exclusive rights of the owners of copyright in those items. You may not legally make a back up copy of a CD when the CD contains material that is protected by copyright unless you have permission from the owner of copyright or a special exception applies to your use.
"Einstein argued that [...] God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer." ~ Brooks
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)
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
"Panem et circenses" is the term you're looking for I think.. literally, "bread and circuses".
"
// is two bytes, /* */ is four.
:-)
You didn't realise that cdparanoia takes a parameter telling it which tracks to rip (e.g. "cdparanoia 2-" for track 2 to last track). This is explained in the first few lines of the manual. So you rummaged around the raw source code of cdparanoia and changed it before you looked at its manual.
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No, track 1 is marked as a data track but contains audio - if you rip cdparanoia 2- you will miss off the first track, and cdparanoia 1- fails because it refuses to rip a data track. I've read the cdparanoia manual reasonably thoroughly although I really wanted a --force option.
"
You used diff without the -U option, and didn't even tell us which file you commented out the exit() in. Which file is it? What's the context?
"
fair point - fixed
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You used a C++/C99 comment delimiter in what is a C89 source code. Hope you have have a lax compiler that defaults to C99 or ignores standards, because it'll choke on that.
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I know, I was aiming for the shortest patch I could.
[alternate reply - it's a my fork and I'll use it how I like]
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You made a web-page about it and posted it on Slashdot, no doubt causing much wailing and gnashing of teeth from people even less experienced at editing source code than you, when all they needed to do was run the cdparanoia command differently.
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Er - this is a rehash of point 1 but more insulting isn't it?
"
You bought an Avril Lavigne CD! Dude, how could you?
"
Guess I shouldn't mention the Britney collection then
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
which the recording industry here is trying to get revoked. Given the Australian Federal Government's record for rolling over to industry demands, I'm not taking bets as to how long this right will last.
Not even close to reality.
In the first place, the high-frequency tone on Sgt Pepper was ONLY put in the runout groove that takes the playback stylus into the locked concentric groove. Nobody records that part, and if they did it would not affect the rest of the recording. It wasn't even included in US pressings.
In the second place, Apple Records did not yet exist. Sgt Pepper came out in 1967; Apple's first release was "The Beatles" (The White Album) in 1968.
In the third place, copying a record at home in 1967 was cumbersome because it meant using a reel-to-reel machine. Philips had JUST introduced the cassette as a dictation medium of low fidelity - nobody had made a cassette or cassette machine capable of coming even remotely close to the sound of the original LP.
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 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.
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.