Slashdot Mirror
More Incompatible DVDs and CDs Coming Your Way
wwwssabbsdotcom writes " More DRM is coming to DVD and CD shelves in the future. Looks like more incompatible discs for players around the world. Rip-proof and self-destructing seems to be the latest DRM craze."
"Why does the submitter make such a big deal out of these discs being "incompatible"?"
Because you can't take the DVD back once you open the package? We're not talking about improvements to the DVD spec here. We're talking about intentionally making it not work. That's the difference.
Progress means things get better, not worse.
"Derp de derp."
Careful there, backing up to magnetic media is nowhere near as safe as non-magnetic media like a CD or DVD. Tapes and drives lose their charges over a relatively short time. Burn it to a DVD, stick it in a safe-deposit box, and you're good for at least 50 years. A WORM drive (do they still sell those?) would work too. I realize backing up 4G at a time is a pain compared to 160G at a time but you don't do it every day either.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
- No. We download, we don't buy. It's not worth it.
You don't think it's worth buying the CD of the artist that made the music, because their publisher is getting money? It is this mentality that these companies point at when they need an example of someone who is "stealing" from the "artist" [and the company].
If you like the music, buy the CD. If it is too much money in the store, find it online. But the "just download it because its free" is the wrong mentality.
DrPascal: Not the language, the mathematician.
The main difference between this and DIVX is that you don't have to buy a new DVD player to watch these discs. DIVX tanked because 1) you had to buy a new DIVX player to watch DIVX discs , and 2) it didn't have any advantages over renting (besides no late fees, but that pissed off the rental places because they make bank off late fees).
With these new ones, it's still a DVD-compatible disc, so you don't have to swap out your DVD player. The disc just self-destructs after a couple of days. This removes one of the two main reasons people hated it. They're hoping to overcome the other with marketing, I'm sure.
I write and have recently taken up painting. My wife is a graphic designer.
If you make it then you are the copyright holder. If you make it for someone else you are still the copyright holder but the person who contracted you can use your work as the contract states. If you are employed then your work belongs to your employer.
I would imagine that most musical artists hold the copyright to their own music. If they wrote the music then they own it twice.
That said, the companies are big and know how to steamroll.
Cuiusvis hominis est errare; nullius nisi insipientis in errore perseverare.
"Hell, chances are the license I had to agree to won't allow me to sell it."
There's one mistake you made. You assumed you acquired a license and not a physical good. There are legitimate software licenses involving B2B transactions and actual paper documents to sign. But you bought a physical good in a retail transaction.
It has been long established that you are free to resell the original copy that you purchased. Book publishers tried to prevent reselling over a century ago with so-called restrictions printed on inside covers, but SCOTUS disagreed.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
just a heads up, the new radiohead album has copy protection built in. It requires that you install software (that comes on the cd) to listen to the cd and is only supported in windows and mac os 9/x (also claims to be compatable with legacy cd players, but I don't own one so i couldn't test)
well all my machines run linux so I wasn't able to play the cd (although the thought did cross my mind to use wine, but I just returned the cd)
i've never really bought cds in the past (for various reasons, money, i could store more on my computer, etc) and now that i'm becoming more interested in certain artists I find purchasing cds allows you to feel with alot more clarity what the artist wanted you to feel, that and downloading is a hassle. Needless to say, i'm going back to downloading, not being able to play/rip to mp3 my own cds is really making me rethink buying cds.
I was dissapointed to discover that my copies of Radiohead's "Hail to the Theif" and Blur's "Think Tank" were copy controlled. Fortunately, I discovered that you can circumvent it easily enough with the proper software.
That link has the entire story, and my response to Copy Control mechanisms. I too have an objection with them calling them CDs, seeing as they are not "Compact Discs" within the RedBook IEC 908 Specification.
-RW
This removes one of the two main reasons people hated it. They're hoping to overcome the other with marketing, I'm sure.
I think you forgot the whole 'throwing plastic discs into the landfills at an alarming rate' part that pissed so many people off.
Also, the simple reality is that some DVD players aren't going to play self-destructing discs. There've been 3 revisions to the DVD standard and there are already problems with old DVD players not being able to play some discs that have no deviation from the standard (just that they hit the 3rd revision standard rather than the original standard).
As an added bonus, the number of DVD and CD players (set-top/stereo component boxes) that are using computer-style CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drives has been increasing over the last couple of years (especially the case with DVD players where MP3, MPEG, and other formats are often supported), and in many cases these discs are being made not to run in those types of drives.
As for the DVD Audio format, whether or not it's supported by your DVD player simply depends on what DVD player you own. The older it is, the more likely it is that it's not supported. In those cases where it's not supported you're just as well off buying a player for the new CD format as for the DVD Audio format, and at least the CD format is playable in the majority of CD and DVD players, and the CD-quality tracks on the disc can be ripped to MP3.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
One simple solution to your problem would be to only buy DVDs from stores that accept returns.
That's why I don't buy software at Best Buy.
...logic would say you are right, with the exception that recording artists contracted with labels are considered 'Work for Hire' status [part of the Consumer Home Recording Act, or something of that ilk]. The company owns copyright to what the artist produces, but the artist only gets paid if/when it sells [less advances, etc., which come off the top of anything that sells]. There are more particulars, and I'm sure I'm missing some parts, but that's the gist.
The problem is that there are only a few big conglomerates that a promising artist can sign with to even have a chance to make a good living, and everybody has the same terms. An oligarchy.
Only the biggest artists can negotiate something different. Courtney Love likened it to sharecropping [I can't find the link to the speech, but it's out there], and it's a pretty good analogy, IMO.
Who put this thing together? Me, that's who.
With software programs like:
DVD Decrypter - DVD Decrypter is a CSS decryption tool that has most, if not all, of the features of current ripper/ripper GUIs like CladDVD, Smart-Ripper or VOBDec GUI, including CSS authentication/detection, multi-angle processing, Macrovision and Region removal. Also includes option to use either VOBDec or DeCSS Plus to decrypt the DVD. ;-) encoder.
NanDUB DiVX 3.11
VirtualDubMod - VirtualDubMod is based on the famous video editing software VirtualDub by Avery Lee. Used for DiVX 5.x and XViD encoding
DVD2AVI - Takes a DVD and turns it into an AVI or AVI FrameServer for other programs like NanDub and VirtualDuB to encode with.
BeSweet - an audio transcoding tool. it lets you convert audio files from one format to another. supported formats : MP3,AC3,WAV,MP2,AVI,Aiff,VOB,Ogg Vorbis.
TMpegEnc - video encoding software. mainly used for the creation of MPEG's encoded for either VCD or SVCD
DVD2SVCD - Software Suite for converting a DVD into an SVCD (MPEG-2 encoded Video CD).
Gordian Knot - Gordian Knot started out as a simple bitrate calculator for DivX encoding but has evolved to become an integrated package or tool for the entire process of DivX encoding. It now has the ability to calculate the bitrates for XViD
And sites like
Doom9 - The definitive resource for DVD backup
DVDR Help - This site will help you to make your own VideoCDs, SVCDs or DVDs that can be played on your standalone DVD Player from video sources like DVD, Video, TV, Cam or downloaded movie clips like DivX, MOV, RM, WMV and ASF
DiVX Digest - a DiVX news and reviews site.
And many more like the ones above make it easy for encryption and DRM schemes to be broken or bypassed, but the process is far from trivial. These programs aren't exactly user friendly. The formats that come out of these programs while not very noticable do make a degredated (?sp) copy that is compressed more than the original. The files may look rather nice, but they are definantelly not as perfect as a standard DVD player.
People want to be able to plug their DVD's into their DVD players. I don't really know how many people rely on their computer solely for DVD playback, but I'm assuming not many.
Here's the kicker I know that I use my computer to watch videos that I own, but if I'm going to be traveling I will rip that DVD into a one disc XViD. So if I break it, who cares I'll just burn another one. And well someone isn't as apt to steal a blank CD-Rom as they would be for say, a DVD with a case and title on the disc.
It's plain to see just from visiting the links I posted above though that you are correct in saying that there will always be a time that someone comes around and completely bypasses or disables DRM. I know for a fact that my APEX DVD player has MacroVision and other BS taken off of it and it is also RCE (regionless) which means I can put any DVD I like into the player and it will play.
It's these sorts of things that make me wonder why all the effort for DRM is made, someone will truly crack it eventually. I still remember when DVD's were said to be uncrackable, and had some s
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
The non-US version is DRM protected and labeled as such on the back. Your's probably isn't. C1 errors affect everyone, even stand-alone players. Faulty error correction information means that the disc will never be able to recover from scratches. They do this to make CDROMs think it's data not audio. This is easy to circumvent but man did they fuck up the disc.
Jeremy
yeah, yeah, don't feed the copyright monster
Have you signed the Eldred Act petition?
but wives and kids do their own thing
I don't give Disney more money than an occasional rental. Why don't you introduce them to Don Bluth movies, DreamWorks movies, and the like?
Will I retire or break 10K?
maybe the cd's might be a little more troublesome to rip, but what's to stop someone looping line-out to line in and recording that?
sure with dvd it's a little trickier, since you'd be compressing a compressed copy - bound to be some issues there... but CDs aren't compressed data, it's a raw signal going out to the speakers and well-known form, so i don't see how this is going to stop any audio ripping.
at some point 'copy protection' is nothing more than a hassle for the consumer. and when it's a hassle - it dies. (see: DIVX )
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Let it be known, I will gladly sign on to a class action lawsuit tackling this form of DRM.
I don't know enough about video, but speaking just in terms of audio isn't protecting a digital copy completely from reproduction. For example, at some point the digital information must be converted by hardware to analog. Once you have the analog signal to be output to the speakers isn't it just a mater of sampling the analog signal back to digital to make a copy. If anyone could comment on this that would be great.
Not really. I think Ahead software in Germany (makers of Nero) make a program that can gear your drive down to 1x.
No, it's not a miserable failure. I've got upwards of 50 DIVX movies on a hard disk in one of my computers.
On the off chance that you are not joking, you may have 50 DiVX movies on your hard drive. But he is talking about DIVX. Same letters, but a whole different meaning.
Have a look at this.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Well duh. The bank technically is only giving you an "advance" on that home loan you applied for too. Of course you still have to pay it back. The point is that if you could come up with the money to buy a house yourself you wouldn't have needed their help. Likewise, these artists need money to get nationwide exposure and they're willing to take the label's advances in the hopes that it will launch their career to the point where they're making their own living off it. Repeat after me: the labels are not just going to "give" artists money, they will LOAN it to them.
The post I replied to implied that the labels foot the bills on that. The only time a label foots a bill on anything is if they can't sell your albums, and you'd better bet they don't let you out of their contract even if the fact they can't sell your albums is simply because they didn't promote or even make enough copies of your album. Other than that, if I take a loan out to buy a house, at least I own the house when I'm done with it. If I take a loan from a record label they get to own however many albums I sign for, plus full repayment of every dollar they spend plus interest. I get royalties, which may or may not actually come to me depending on how good my lawyer is (never mind that most artists end up with label-appointed lawyers because they don't realise they need one before it's too late).
Didn't or couldn't? If CC doesn't want to play them, how is the label supposed to "make" them do it?
How did Michael Jackson's videos get on MTV when they refused to play the videos of any black artist in the early/mid 80s? Oh yeah, the label put pressure on MTV by threatening to revoke all of their artists. Pearl Jam may not have been as successful as Michael Jackson with their first two albums, but then Michael Jackson was not as successful as he was without MTV, either.
Yeah, and I imagine these fights are over "I'm not getting AS many millions as I want." Aerosmith, Kiss, Metallica, Eminem, NSync, etc. are millionaires many times over (and I doubt they would have found themselves in that position without the help of a record label, ahem). Forgive me for not caring if they "only" get a few percent of the album sales when those albums are merely ADS for more lucrative ventures. The label takes the risk for fronting money on an album, they deserve to reap the rewards. The artists will either hit it big or return to being unemployed singers. They can only do good signing with a label.
Metallica only got signed because they had already built up a name for themselves, and released 2 albums with a small label. Those 2 albums were included in the number of albums they had to release with the label under their first major label contract, and they retained all of the rights to their music. The biggest 'fight' they ever had with their label was releasing a 3-CD boxed set to fulfill the contract so they could renegotiate after releasing the best selling album they've ever recorded. They weren't exactly worried about money, but they knew they had what it took to get a favourable deal. Who really cares now? They're not even close to the types of problems I was discussing. Try looking for people that filed for bankruptcy after selling millions of records. Some of them were just stupid with their money, but others never made the money in the first place.
As for the albums being ads for more lucrative ventures, that's only the case if you see the industry the way it sees itself. Kiss looked at it that way, Metallica does not. Most bands don't go into music looking to sell T-shirts.
Okay, you're still missing the point. Let's say you're a "talented artist" who's put up a website selling songs at a "Slashdotter-approved" price of two cents per song. How am I going to find your music? I don't hear you on the radio, I don't see you on TV, I don't see articles about you in the newspaper, etc. You have no exposure. Chances are you're still going to be making less money than you would with a major l
-PainKilleR-[CE]
There is a such thing as this "pseudo sound output device" that you're talking about -- in fact, your sound card probably supports it. Go into the sound recording properties and look for a device called "wave" or "what-you-hear." Then, by opening your sound recorder, you can make a perfect digital copy of the sound output.
However, you are right about Paladium - in fact, this is already happening too!! When Media Player is playing protected content, output to any "unsigned" driver is ALREADY DISABLED! The only sound drivers that will work when the DRM features are activated are the ones written by Microsoft -- and these drivers disable any way of making a digital copy. So, even if there was a 3rd party driver that wrote to disk, it wouldn't work because of the DRM!