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."

Comments

Yeah.

[spirality]

So quit grousing and don't buy em.

Re:Yeah.

[cshark]

Uhm, I don't mean to rain on anyone's parade, but this has been tried already. It was called DIVX. It was miserable failure. People hated it. It's still ridiculed today by the few of us that remember it.

Re:Yeah.

[0123456]

I won't. Personally I'm looking forward to the day when I can put all my (legally purchased) movie and music collection on my hard drive and throw away those DVDs, CDs and VHS tapes that take up so much space. If that means I never upgrade any of those DVDs to a DRM-ed HD-DVD format, then so be it.

I note, BTW, that the article says: "The media barons insist that if consumers are going to listen to music and view movie clips and news headlines on any gadget with a screen, then the rights holders must be paid."

So no mention of _the authors_ being paid, only the rights holders (i.e. the worthless middle-men who'd be eliminated if copyright didn't create a monopoly market).

Re:Yeah.

[drwtsn32]

Do you also throw away the software CD after you install it? Throwing away the original, unadulterated, digital media is really a bad idea, IMO.

I have ripped all the CDs I own but I'm not about to throw away those CDs.

Re:Yeah.

[zedmelon]

HAHAHAHAHAH! DIVX! Sorry this is a bit offtopic, but...

When I first talked about getting a DVD player, my dumbass step-dad (who LOVES to show off all the "wicked cash" he makes as an accountant) told me that DIVX would be the latest and greatest.

I hadn't heard about DIVX at that point, but he assured me that it would become the unquestioned standard, just as soon as there were enough people aware of its wonderful benefits.

I just chalk it up to the long list of reasons I'm convinced my Mom "traded down," along with the plastic fence, the way he totally assed my rewire of their phone system, and the vinyl siding on his modular home.

DIVX RULES!!!!

Re:Yeah.

[0123456]

It's not viable quite yet, but why keep it if you can back it up on a second hard drive and stick it in a safe somewhere, and/or encrypt it and stick it on a data haven machine? My DVD and CD collections take up a sizable amount of space in my bedroom, and before long I could put all that on a 2.5" drive in a laptop and carry it everywhere with me... why put up with idiots who want to restrict me to sticking some physical object in my computer just to access digital data?

Re:Yeah.

[molarmass192]

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.

Re:Yeah.

[MartinG]

The artists sign so they can be supported by the massive long-established marketing machine that is the music industry. If they didn't sign, they would be competing against that marketing machine which is almost impossible given its size.

That doesn't mean they want the industry the way it is. They would get paid much more fairly (ie, more based on merit) if those greedy middle men didn't exist.

It's almost like a protection racket:
"You come and work with us and we will look after you. It will cost you a huge chunk of your work, but if you don't come to us we will obliterate you with our marketing power"

Re:Yeah.

[Rip!ey]

Personally I'm looking forward to the day when I can put all my (legally purchased) movie and music collection on my hard drive and throw away those DVDs, CDs and VHS tapes that take up so much space.

Well I hope you have kept all of your receipts, otherwise you are throwing away all proof that you have a legitimate right to have the said movies and music on your hard drive in the first place.

Re:Yeah.

[rkz]

paint the top of your opaque DVD with some reflectve paint?

Re:Yeah.

[mbbac]

Presumably the authors of the works are getting paid somehow, otherwise they wouldn't want to sign with a company.

You need to do a bit of fact checking.

Re:Yeah.

[Greyfox]

I don't know about the music or movie industry, but in the publishing industry it's not uncommon for an unknown author to have to pay to get their works published. I've typically seen this in the form of a contract from the pusblisher that says "We won't give you anything and you have to buy X number of the book from us."

Some of those authors might go on to be discovered, but most of them will spend their lives working as strippers or grocery store clerks or, even worse, journalists. They will die alone, unloved and unknown in a run-down apartment with 47 cats, to the end clinging to the pathetic hope that they can write the Great American Novel if only someone will pay attention to them.

Re:Yeah.

[BitchHead]

Some people do, some people don't. My wife is a music geek, and sometimes buys a CD just because of the cover art. She's got a cabinet full of records (we don't have a record player) because she likes the art on the albums. There's bunch of those mid 80s - early 90s long CD boxes that she's kept around. For her it's having the visual aspect of the recording that is important. I'm the opposite way: I ripped all my CDs to mp3s, backed 'em up on some CDs and my entertainment server, and sold the originals. Couldn't care about the art or the liner notes or the lyrics sheets. I have my music, I'm happy.

Re:Yeah.

[Lord Kano]

I worked at Circuit City when DIVX was launched. I remember going through my orientation and one of the managers was really enthused about the DIVX launch and I remember telling him "That's going to fail." He didn't understand why I explained to him "People would rather pay $20 and watch a movie whenever they want to than pay $4.00 for the disk, and $1.99 for each time after. People aren't going to like that studios can stop them from watching the disks that they have bought because of a theatrical re-release."

He assured me that because Circuit City had spent over 80 million dollars on research that they could make it happen.

When I was on the sales floor, my manager (a different one) informed me that all employees were to ask customers if they knew anything about DIVX and to offer them a demonstration. I responded "Please don't make me do that, I will if I have to, but I will not lie to the people if they ask me any questions. Including questions about my personal opinion of DIVX." I told him all of the same things that I told the first manager about DIVX. He didn't force me to offer the demonstrations. I think the fact that I was only working part time (still taking college classes) but was the second highest money maker in the store didn't hurt.

LK

Re:Yeah.

[karlandtanya]

Hmmm... IANAL, so this is the layperson's understanding of fair use: If I buy a CD/DVD/Album/Tape/whatever then I can pretty much listen to it/watch it on whatever I want to.

It seems to me that the media companies are going for a power grab in the "confusion" caused by actual violations of copyright.

Not a bad idea for them. "Hey, guys--we want to intrusively regulate our Customer's behaviour. Some of them are breaking the law. Let's confuse fair use with lawbreaking. Then we can cry "foul" when fair use is exercised and get congress to take it away from the consumers."

Excuse me for a moment; I have to send my credit card number to American Standard. In case I need to take a pee while I'm at work.

Re:Yeah.

[renehollan]

Personally I'm looking forward to the day when I can put all my (legally purchased) movie and music collection on my hard drive and throw away those DVDs, CDs and VHS tapes that take up so much space. If that means I never upgrade any of those DVDs to a DRM-ed HD-DVD format, then so be it.

Oh, I feel your pain.

As owner of several hundred CDs (for which I had a custom solid oak and granite cabinet custom-made to hold them and sport the playback equipment back in the day...), and a growing collection of DVDs, not to mention all the kids' videos (does anyone else hate Disney cases (yeah, yeah, don't feed the copyright monster, but wives and kids do their own thing)), I feel the storage blues as well.

I've archived almost all the CD audio to hard disk (losslessly), and plan to do the same with the DVDs. The video tapes are a bit of a toss up, though, as a movie mecomes dated, I'd probably be willing to pay the rights-holder a modest amount to provide a copy to me on more "modern" media, if I surrender the original (fat chance that will happen, when they can sell the DVD for more than the VHS cassette -- except I'm not likely to buy the former if I already have the latter, unless the price is commensurate with a "convenience factor" rather than a "license fee").

You know, I don't really have a problem with the concept of DRM, but rather with the most-likely uses and implementations. If DRM provided for (a) traditional fair uses and (b) was required to be field-upgradable to permit newly recognized fair-uses, I could live with it.

As it stands, I use DeCSS for the legitimate traditional fair use of serving a working copy of movies from a hard disk to a remote display device. I'd be happy to keep the video stream encrypted on my LAN and only decrypted by the end device, as long as I get to have any display device I own be capable of displaying the video I've licensed from and storage medium I own on any server I own over any network I own. In other words, protect yourself from unfair uses of your content, yes, but stay the fuck out of MY hardware except to the extent necessary -- at the end of the stream, however many such ends I may have.

Re:Yeah.

[crazyphilman]

It's not like we don't have alternatives. If you like music, listen to the radio. In the car, you have the stereo, and Z-100 (in New York, anyway). At work, and at home, you have WinAmp, or XMMS for the Linux crowd. You don't have to own ANY music. Just listen to whatever's on.

'Course... This may save you from Baby Boomer Disease (that's the sickness some of the older guys in my office have, where they fanatically assert that no good music has been produced since the early eighties). The poor bastards have been holed up, Unabomber style, with their LP collection for twenty years now. Pity the poor Baby Boomer; he swore he wouldn't turn into his father in the sixties, and in '03, he's turned into his GRANDFATHER ("You kids today!!! When I was a kid, we had REAL music...").

If I hear ONE MORE OLD FART telling me that the Beatles are "real music" and Techno is "bubblegum" I'm going to start throwing Molitov Cocktails.

Re:Yeah.

[TheMostBob]

"Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to write to DVD is insignificant next to the power of Time."

There is NO such thing as an "Electronic Archive". Constant data migration is the only way to ensure fidelity.

Re:Yeah.

[PainKilleR-CE]

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.

Re:Yeah.

[JonTurner]

"...most of them will spend their lives working as strippers or grocery store clerks or, even worse, journalists. They will die alone, unloved and unknown in a run-down apartment with 47 cats, to the end clinging to the pathetic hope that they can write the Great American Novel if only someone will pay attention to them."

I must admit that it sounds tempting. What are the disadvantages?

Re:Yeah.

[sebmol]

What are you talking about? Read his post again:

I'm the opposite way: I ripped all my CDs to mp3s, backed 'em up on some CDs and my entertainment server, and sold the originals. Couldn't care about the art or the liner notes or the lyrics sheets. I have my music, I'm happy.

He paid for the CD's he ripped, kept the music and sold it again on the second-hand market. At what part does he become a thief? It's not like those buying in the second-hand market would buy new CD's at Best Buy anyway. After all, the reason they buy there is because they can't afford the $15 a CD that retail asks of them.

Re:Yeah.

[PainKilleR-CE]

Why do you think it's an artist's dream to get a major label deal?

In some cases it is, but in most cases the artist's dream is simply to make a living creating and performing their art. There are many cases where artists have gained a name on independent labels and then had the clout to get major label contracts that worked for them, instead of making them work for the label. In a few cases, those artists were even able to leave the major labels with their work when the labels refused to release and support their work as they intended it to be heard.

Because the label will pay for promotion, advertising, product positioning, radio time, etc.

The label only pays advances for these things. Every bit of it gets charged to the artist, regardless of whether or not the artist approved the methods used (ie paying for radio time, which is illegal if done directly, some artists have had enough clout to force the label to pay for this directly, but it's very rare, and the labels do get billed for every song played every time it's played anyway). Labels will not promote or position artists that they don't want to promote. Regardless of Pearl Jam's musical direction, for instance, they were still getting airplay until they spoke out against Ticketmaster and Clear Channel. Once they did that, Clear Channel shut down their radio play, and the label didn't do anything about it.

These are all things which help you SELL MORE UNITS. If you sell millions, YOU WILL GET PAID. Just ask any artist who has sold millions of records... they'll tell you two things: 1, that they're happy they signed with a major label; 2, that they couldn't have accomplished it by themselves.

For #1: see any number of current and past artists who have had fights with the labels over the amount of money they've made off their multi-platinum albums. Look at the whole thing with Prince (though I'm sure most people could care less about him these days, he was doing very well before he started his fight with Sony), or even the more recent battles with some of the current top-selling acts.

As for #2, the main reason they can't accomplish it by themselves is because of the industry. Radio airplay only goes to the songs that the labels will pay for. Clear Channel (and the one or two other radio promoters in the US) will not put up with stations playing music for which they can't bill a label. Most retail chains won't carry independent music, and few will even carry small labels (and WalMart, the biggest music retailer in the country, has many more rules regarding what they will and will not carry). Viacom owns the majority of all video airplay on television in the US (Viacom owns MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, etc; ever wonder why Nick. started the 'Kids choice awards' and other music promotionals?).

Digital music and video are means by which video and audio recording, production, and distribution can be made easily affordable and accessable to every single person that wants to pursue a career. The labels want to do whatever they can to hold on to their position as the only route through which to gain access to these things, before it becomes easy for my next door neighbor to figure out how to make it without them.

Re:Yeah.

[HamNRye]

What are you talking about???? If you sell millions, you might get paid when you re-up your contract, if they haven't found someone else with a bad contract they can promote. Why do you think that the longevity of these acts has gone down the toilet?? For the musician, the benefit is bigger concerts with more draw. That's where they make their money.

XTC sold millions upon millions of records for Virgin, and at the end of their contract were told they owed the record company money. Ask Andy Partrige and Colin Moulding 1 and 2, and they'll probably tell you off...

Re:Yeah.

[Mikeytsi]

It's a violation of copyright law, and one that I agree with. You can't make copies of a product and sell it without permission of the copyright holder.

I just would prefer the copyright holder to be the person that CREATED it, instead of some corporation, but these kind of statements are the justification that the RIAA uses to try to force these stupid laws through.

Re:Yeah.

[Jonavin]

I've started backing up my owning digital photos onto two different brands of CDRs. I plan to repeat this process with my whole collection every 5 years.

Just call me paranoid, but at least with two simultaneous CD writers going at the same time it only takes me about 3 minutes to fill both discs.

It just pisses me off that I have to pay the 21 cents tax per disc in Canada. Almost makes me want to download all the pirated stuff I can find to "get back" my tax.

Re:Yeah.

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

I prefer "Continue grousing AND don't buy them."

By all means don't buy them, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't discourage others from buying them as well. After all, if the format is successful, you might find yourself with no other (legal) choice, if you want that content.

Just as DIVX was thwarted by making people aware of the severe deficiencies in the format, both technically in and usage restrictions, the same can happen here.

If I were to "stop grousing and not buy them" without a complaint, I could find myself in a "Pay Per View" world, where I could not EVER buy a permanent copy of content that I wanted. I don't like that option at all...

Re:Yeah.

[neuroticia]

Hm. Offer rental credits for returning the expired DVDs for recycling. The convenience factor would still be there--no one would HAVE to bring the DVDs back, or bring them back within a certain timeframe. And Blockbuster could quickly rack up more rentals which would pay off any recycling fees involved. Plus they would get the reputation of being green/good for the environment rather than being bad, because "look, we're recycling! We encourage people to recycle!".

-Sara

Re:Yeah.

[Artifex]

"...most of them will spend their lives working as strippers or grocery store clerks or, even worse, journalists. They will die alone, unloved and unknown in a run-down apartment with 47 cats, to the end clinging to the pathetic hope that they can write the Great American Novel if only someone will pay attention to them."

I must admit that it sounds tempting. What are the disadvantages?

Changing the litter boxes, for one... but if you move to a neighborhood with lots of kids with sandboxes, for some reason it's not as big of a deal, if they're outdoor cats.

Re:Yeah.

[Lt Razak]

Well technically, when he sold the originals on the 2nd market, he lost the fair-use rights to those mp3's. He needs to delete them.

Don't get me wrong, I'm just like him, except for the buying the original cd part :)

Re:Yeah.

[Pig Hogger]

It was called DIVX. It was miserable failure.

No, it's not a miserable failure. I've got upwards of 50 DIVX movies on a hard disk in one of my computers.

Re:Yeah.

[ckaminski]

What, do you think that just because you make amazing music|software that if you stick it up on a website (or better yet, put it on Kazaa) you'll be making millions in sales?

Worked for Linus Torvalds...

It's not sales, it's exposure. If some band, for example Whiskey Chapel (Blatant whore), managed to get 10 million downloads of their tunes, played on internet radio stations galore, some concert outfit is going to want to put them on a stage to make millions with. Period. Promoters will promote successful acts. Acts which have a following, traditional or not, can get promoted.

It's just a matter of time before more internet only acts start opening up with big names like Metallica and Ozzy.

And once that happens, it's just a matter of time before headliners start coming from internet radio playlists.

Re:Yeah.

[Lord Kano]

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

Re:Yeah.

[AKnightCowboy]

People aren't going to like that studios can stop them from watching the disks that they have bought because of a theatrical re-release."

Look at it this way. What's to stop Disney from deciding one day "All those copies of Snow White on DIVX are going BACK IN THE VAULT for another 20 years. You will no longer be able to activate your disks for additional viewings." They seem to do stupid shit like that by no longer selling popular movies to artificially cause a rush of purchases on existing stock. Hey, better buy that copy of Cinderella now or you'll never get it again in your lifetime! Muahahahahahaha!

Re:Yeah.

[dadragon]

If I hear ONE MORE OLD FART telling me that the Beatles are "real music" and Techno is "bubblegum" I'm going to start throwing Molitov Cocktails.

I'm 20. The Beatles are real music, techno is bubblegum, pop is shit. There, I said it. There is good music produced today, it's just not jammed down your throats like the crap.

Re:Yeah.

[PainKilleR-CE]

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

Re:Yeah.

[Brett Johnson]

Burn it to a DVD, stick it in a safe-deposit box, and you're good for at least 50 years.

I hope you lock up a complete A/V system in the safe-deposit box as well, because in 50 years there isn't likely to be anything that will be able to read that DVD.

I recently found a box of 5 1/4" floppies full of software I wrote 15 years ago. I made multiple backups in case a floppy or two went bad. That doesn't really matter. I havn't had a device capable of reading 5 1/4" msdos format disks for more than a decade.

In the same box, I found 4 CP/M format 8" floppy disks, 6 NeXT format 256MB Magneto-Optical disks, and several rolls of punched paper tape.

Re:Yeah.

[Jouster]

You're cute.

But your web server is misconfigured... check the HTTP specs.

:),
Jouster

Does it matter?

[Keri Immos]

I'd rather have cheap products that sometimes don't work on 10 year old players (and protects rights for a creator of art) than expensive ones that can be pirated but work on all players.

Re:Does it matter?

[Pflipp]

Yeah? And what if you can have even cheaper software-based music that work on all PC's? :-)

Re:Does it matter?

[trikberg]

(Un)fortunatelly that is impossible; if you can listen to it you can copy it.

I wish the industry could get that into their heads and stop throwing away money on DRM schemes and concentrate on making products actually worth buying.

Re:Does it matter?

[ryanr]

Why would they be cheap? Why would it protect the rights of the creator of art?

Adding (ultimately futile) attempts at copy protection ADDS to costs. Who pays for that? The consumers and artists.

Re:Does it matter?

[notque]

And I'd rather pirate, to each their own.

Re:Does it matter?

[Telastyn]

Except that every DRM solution does not protect the creator of the art any more than 'normal' media. If you can hear/see it you can copy it.

Re:Does it matter?

[swb]

I wish the industry could get that into their heads and stop throwing away money on DRM schemes and concentrate on making products actually worth buying.

This is the major problem with many American industries; a significant obsession with protecting existing markets with monopolies and vendor lock-in through incompatibilities and standards deviation, among other techniques.

There's too little effort paid to R&D and innovative product development as means to market expansion and customer loyalty, especially since those things don't have payoffs in less than 4 quarters.

Re:Does it matter?

[TopShelf]

Problem is, there isn't any mechanism to ensure that "cheap" would become any part of the equation. Within a pretty broad range, items like DVD's aren't really price sensitive. It's not like you're going to go to the store to buy Harry Potter and instead change your mind to buy The Dark Crystal because it's a buck cheaper. This initiative, and the others like it, are merely about protecting top-line sales.

Re:Does it matter?

[Qzukk]

I'd rather have cheap products that sometimes don't work on 10 year old players (and protects rights for a creator of art) than expensive ones that can be pirated but work on all players.

So you consider it piracy if you buy a CD and rip it for the purpose of playing it on your iPod? Did they make you sign a contract indicating that you would only listen to the music using the original CD?

As for "sometimes don't work on a 10 year old player", you do realize that the goal of copy protection is to not work on a computer cdrom drive of any generation? This is why we have discs with garbled TOC tracks, this is a scheme targeted directly at computer drives which read the TOC to determine if the drive is audio or data.

I consider it piracy when a publisher takes my money and gives me a round shiny disc which fails to meet my expectation of being useful (that is, playing in my player which is fully capable of playing other round shiny discs). Companies who wish to break this expectation must either 1) accept returns for defective products which fail to meet consumer expectations or 2) clearly indicate that the round shiny disc is not a standard round shiny disc. Simple absense of a "CD" trademark is not clear indication.

People keep posting "Why whine? Just don't buy it!" but which products am I to not buy? I have to wait until someone else buys a cd and determines that it is copyprotected and posts that information to a tracking board somewhere. Even in cases where the CD trademark is missing, which copyprotection scheme was used? Perhaps it is one which is still compatible with my player and my expectation for the music. Not only that, but I have noticed that several of my non-copyprotected round shiny discs do not bear the CD trademark. Is this an intentional attempt by companies to confuse the issue? If no round shiny discs bear the CD trademark, how do I tell the protected and the playable discs apart?

Imagine the outrage that would happen if one in 10 hamburgers served by mcdonalds was actually made from horsemeat, and was served as a beef hamburger with nothing to tell it apart from the rest of the hamburgers. Now imagine everyone knew this, and nobody did anything about it because mcdonalds made money this way. This is what the publishing companies and their guardian the RIAA is doing to us all, only the ratio of horseburgers is going to increase without you being notified.

Re:Does it matter?

[Qzukk]

What revenue were they losing when Johnny rips his CD to play on his mp3 player? Until recently, the publishing companies haven't even recognized portable non-cd-based music devices as a market.

Clearly illegal trading is costing publishers money, but copying alone isn't. Why don't the publishers jump on kazaa and grab a batch of IP addresses of people hosting mp3s and use the DMCA? Oh wait, that would be a legit application of the DMCA, and its apparently illegal to actually use it for its intended use instead of using it to bully people around for making competing products like remote controls and dvd playing software for unsupported platforms.

That, or the publishers don't think enough money is being lost to make it worth their time for them to actually do any work.

Re:Does it matter?

[SN74S181]

Except you don't get to have any more. Cuz' they're gonna copy protect it.

Granted, the analog hole will always exist, and if you're going to degrade the content with compression anyway, what's wrong with running it through an analog cable partway through the process?

Re:Does it matter?

[schmink182]

Adding (ultimately futile) attempts at copy protection ADDS to costs.

Considering the cost of CDs is mostly artificial, there is no reason why the RIAA can't lower the price on defective ones to make them more appealing.

Re:Does it matter?

[Zathrus]

Heh. The irony is, these new protection schemes don't break old players.

They break new ones.

Newer DVD/CD players are built off computer CD-ROM transports and optics -- they're more prevalent, cheaper, and do a better job than the old audio CD-only ones.

Of course, these copyright scheme are designed to specifically not work with CD-ROMs. So, odds are, your brand new CD is less likely to work with your brand new CD player than it is to work with your 10 or 20 year old CD player.

And you've completely ignored that you can't do things you're legally allowed to - like copy it to a medium that's more suitable for your listening such as an MP3 (I have ripped all of my legally owned CDs to MP3 for use on my TiVo).

Oh, and guess what -- rights of the creator of the art? What rights. They have none. They don't own the copyright - the studios do. And while they do get paid, it's essentially indentured servitude for all but the most successful bands. And they still don't own the art they created.

Re:Does it matter?

[zero_offset]

This is the major problem with many American industries

You mean American industries like the recording industry, where Sony is a major player? Yeah, thought so.

Re:Does it matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

A consortium of extremely wealthy media moguls.....or You?

The average slashdotter knows a lot more about technology than all the moguls in the RIAA combined.

an army of professional researchers and analyists to ponder this subject for the last 10 years

People like jobs, if you pay an employee enough they'll tell you exactly what you want to hear.

There is a reason that these people are in charge of vast media empires and you are not.

That is irrelevant. We're looking at the technology perspective, not how to run a business.

Re:Does it matter?

[calethix]

"You didn't buy the music, you bought the disc. "

Presuming I own the disc, shouldn't I be allowed to do whatever I want with it?

"I had to replace all of my cassettes with CD's 15 years ago."

Now that's just silly, quality aside, do you really think you should have to buy all of your music again when a new media standard comes out? I guess you have a copy of all of your favorite songs on record, 8 track, casette and CD. Maybe back in the day when software companies used to ship their games with 5.25" and 3.5" disks, they shouldn't have. Instead they should have made you pay full price when you got your first 3.5" drive.

I really hope you're just a troll and don't belive what you're saying.

Re:Does it matter?

[udoschuermann]

One way to combat this strategy is to use one industry to fight another: Purchase the disc using a major credit card (NOT a debit card!!) and if it doesn't play properly you return it to the store because it is defective.

If the store only gives a store refund, you just keep doing this again and again, until they get sick and tired of handling dozens, perhaps even hundreds of defective discs. They may have to send the discs back to the factory, after all.

If the store refuses to give you back your money you call up your credit card (from your cell phone right there in the store) and open a dispute on the charge. You will be issued an immediate credit for the disputed charge. The credit card company will then require the store to return the money to the credit company (or the credit company will not pay the store in the first place). What many people may not know is that the merchant ends up getting stuck with the bill; the consumer is very well protected.

Lather, rinse, repeat. If thousands do this, eventually the industry will get the message that they ought to serve the consumers, not themselves. The stores will eventually wise-up and not carry those types of discs anymore.

Have I tried this? Admittedly, no. But why would it not work?

Re:Does it matter?

[Qzukk]

They never intended for people to play them on their multi-function brown box of mass entertainment that makes things like MP3 trading possible.

Too bad that everything else from steros to dvd players now use similar hardware to the ones used in the multi-function brown box of mass entertainment. Many DVD players use either a standard IDE dvd drive, or an ide dvd drive with a different connector. High end steros with cd-text support and extra features like mp3 playback also use "smarter" drives than the standard issue discman.

You didn't buy the music, you bought the disc.

If I bought the disc, why can I not return the disc except to exchange for an identical disc?

DRM for the U.S.

[Anonymous Coward]

Edible DVDs

Re:DRM for the U.S.

[ShortSpecialBus]

I am suing you for copyright infringement, as that could be confused with Edible BVDs, which already make millions each year

or something...

Re:DRM for the U.S.

[mal3]

You laugh, but a friend of mine works at Best Buy. He had a guy come in and ask him for "one 'o dem BVD players"

Hurray!

[-SWL--AcdReign-]

More plastic to add to the AOL CD landfills...

They keep on trying

[letxa2000]

They keep on trying but when will they realize that as long as a human being can see or hear it that it can be recoded in a more friendly format and put online where others will be able to obtain it so that they don't have to go through the same hassle at getting the content in a user-friendly format.

These guys are going to kill their own business. Their copy-protection techniques will only increase the motivation to seek the content through obscure channels. When the "legitimate" version is less functional and more expensive than the "black market version", guess who's going to lose?

Re:They keep on trying

[CaseyB]

They still seem to be highly focused on stopping pure digital copies.

It seems they haven't seen the state of a typical Divx "screener" movie on the net. They're absolutely *awful* quality wise, but are still hot commodities on the net. The slight quality loss in a single first generation digital->analog->digital copy might scare off the audio/videophiles (who buy their media anyway), but it's *not* going to matter to those that are downloading.

Re:They keep on trying

[SuperDuG]

I completely disagree with the stance you've taken here. What is more friendly than popping a disc into a player pushing play and getting a perfect digital picture and sound? The hassle is not going to be for the players themselves (IE: even WinDVD broadcasts out MacroVision to TV-OUT) but for those who try to infact "rip and burn".

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.
NanDUB DiVX 3.11 ;-) encoder.
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

Re:They keep on trying

[uradu]

Damn, you got me stuck in an endless loop with that recursive footnote there, until my cube neighbor rebooted me. Careful with those asterisks, cowboy.

DRM for good?

[nacs]

Last year, record label Sony Music came under fire when new European CD releases by artists Celine Dion and Shakira wouldn't play....

Is this really a bad thing? I mean Shakira may be semi-decent but Celine Dion not playing? Who's going to miss that? Chrysler?

Re:DRM for good?

[NanoGator]

"Last year, record label Sony Music came under fire when new European CD releases by artists Celine Dion and Shakira wouldn't play...."

Millions of boyfriends everywhere simultaneously sigh with relief.

Re:DRM for good?

[tomhudson]

rest of the quote: ... wouldn't play on a PC or Apple's Macintosh computer.

Sony probably came under fire because Celine would still play on regular CD players, thus pissing off car owners.

Re:DRM for good?

[grub]

Millions of boyfriends everywhere simultaneously sigh with relief.

Two of them are even slashdot readers!

Re:DRM for good?

[jmv]

The funny thing about the Celine Dion CD (for which I couldn't convince my mom to take it back to the store) is that it wouldn't *play* in a PC player, but on the same PC, cdparanoia made a perfect rip. Conclusion: the "copy protection" forces you to copy the CD if you want to listen to it!

Re:DRM for good?

[vidnet]

Two of them are even slashdot readers! Only problem is they're dating each other!

in the begining I was free....

[oliverthered]

In the beginning I was free.

then I became a pleb, and my master controlled me.

then I because a citizen and the government controlled me.

Now I'm a consumer, and all my rights are under control.

Re:in the begining I was free....

[Xerithane]

then I because a citizen and the government controlled me.

Point.

Now I'm a consumer, and all my rights are under control.

Excercise the right not to buy. Didn't that thought ever occur to anybody?

Making rip-proof media is fine, if they can figure out how to do it. You are agreeing to a contract in regards to the content on whatever media you are purchasing. Self-destructing is destroying my property, unless I can re-use the media it came on.

If I don't like what a company is doing, I will not buy their goods. I still don't buy Colgate products because of them bullying ajax.org.

Stop pretending like you don't have rights. You have rights, you chose not to use them. You are a consumer, and you will buy everything they tell you to buy. Then you bitch when they take you all for suckers.

If you don't like it, don't buy it. If you do buy it, don't bitch.

Hmm.

[grub]

So if I buy the "Mission Impossible" DVD, I better heed the warning that says "This message will self destruct in 5 seconds" ?

Idiots

[ryanr]

If they make self-destructing DVDs, then I will be *certain* to rip it first thing. I listen to my music almost exclusively on my computer. I've got any number of CDs that I've never "played", I just ran it through CDex, and listen to the mp3s. I will consider any attempts to make "rip-proof" formats as special challenge.

I suspect that anyone who lacks the skills to do the above themselves would then be that much more likely to download a copy that someone else ripped.

Re:Idiots

[SpaceCadetTrav]

The amount of consumers with the same attitude as you is statisticaly insignificant in the reality of the media world. But if it makes you feel better, sit in your home and shake your fist defiantly at your TV. The fact that you buy the content in the first place only makes them laugh harder.

Re:Idiots

[Silverfish]

This is exactly how the RIAA/MPAA are shooting themselves in the foot.

It won't take long before people want to watch a movie a second time and get denied and grow sick of it. Eventually they will just decide to start copying them instead of viewing them.

With each ratcheting up of digital restrictions, the RIAA and MPAA are placing successively larger groups of people in the camp against them. Eventually, it will be RIAA/MPAA against everyone, and that will spell big trouble unless they ease back DRM.

To paraphrase Princess Leia: "The more you tighten your grip, MPAA, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."

Re:Idiots

[ryanr]

The amount of consumers with the same attitude as you is statisticaly insignificant in the reality of the media world.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF -8&q=million+americans+download+music&btnG=Google+ Search

The estimates range from 13 million to 113 million people downloading music. Some portion of those people must like listening to music on their computers.

Re:Idiots

[ryanr]

I'm not going to give up music or movies. Problem is, these guys have a near monopoly. Boycots are good, but they often don't work as well against monopolies. Well.. not boycotts based on ideals, anyway. The bulk of the consumers will vote with their dollars based on functionality, not fairness.

Fortunately, it sometimes works out the same (Divx). The self-destruct scheme is quite similar in result, so I'm hoping it gets the same treatement.

In favor of the self-destruct... if they are significantly cheaper (again, like Divx... say $5 for a 3-day disk, instead of $20 for a "permanent" disk) then I'll happily buy them and rip them...

Divx would never survive today because too many people know how to rip DVDs. Divx would have been cracked long ago.

Re:Idiots

[ryanr]

Tools would be released so that anyone with a DVD drive in their Windows box will be able to do so. There would be $200 devices with 2 DVD drives, one read, one write. Word would get out that you could do down down up up A B on the remote to disable checking of the DRM bit. Then there are lots of people with friends like me who they come to with technical questions.

That's not the point, though... the point is that consumer would WANT to have copies, even if they had no means to do so. It's the desire to have things a particular way that drives their decisions.

Who needs self-destruction?

[msobkow]

DVD's like the extended edition of "Fellowship of the Ring" already won't play on legal set-top hardware like the XBox because it doesn't get recognized as a DVD (while playing just fine in 3 other set-top units.)

As far as I'm concerned, the industry is already shipping pre-destructed material. Shoddy plotlines. Crappy acting, B-stories with A-budgets. "Adaptations" of classics. Bah.

You'll Just Have To Trust Us...

[vudujava]

The next generation of DRM:
"You'll just have to trust us. Even though you can't play the movie, it was really, really, really good." - MPAA

And then there's this:

[Dark Paladin]

If technology firms like Sony and Microsoft have their way, songs and movies will expire after a single play -- unless you pay the copyright holder their due.

I did - when I bought the friggin' CD!

I know - after all, everybody who uses MP3's and their iPod stole the music, right? Everybody who clicks the little "Rip" button on their computer to store their music CD collection so they can listen to any song, when they want, only got it from some Gnutella site, correct? Any movie in DiVX format isn't there so you can have a media player storing backups of your movies onto your computer so you can watch them when you want and keep your DVD's shiny and new for all time - no, you must be planning on letting the rest of the world download the movies illegally.

OK. I'm calm. My personal response has been simple: don't buy things in this format. Tell others about the format and what to watch out for (like "Does it have the official CD logo on it?"). When I talk to government officials, telling them "You know, if somebody wants to make a self-destructing DVD/unrippable CD - more power to them, that's they're right. But they damn well better be putting a logo on their product that says so in advance so I can choose to reward or punish them with my own buying power."

Yeah, I use the iTunes store - sure, it has DRM, but doesn't go outrageously overboard, because at least it gets the idea that I buy the music, I own it - so if I want to burn it to CD or transfer it to 2 different iPods so my wife and I can listen to our music in the car, that's my right to do so.

But did "rental" music services ever get my dime? Nope - and see what's happening to them. I predict they'll be gone in another 5 years (except for the last holdouts sponsored by major corporations who won't see the light of day - like how the Minidisk finally exited stage left for 99% of the music consumers, the 3DO vanished, and like the original DIVX standard did).

If technology firms like Sony and Microsoft have their way, songs and movies will expire after a single play -- unless you pay the copyright holder their due.

Yeah - spin another one, folks. Try, try again until you buy the clue.

Re:And then there's this:

[MadCow42]

>>If technology firms like Sony and Microsoft have their way, songs and movies will expire after a single play -- unless you pay the copyright holder their due.

Sure... IF they're charging $1/view I'll gladly pay each time I watch a movie. However, if they think they can still charge the $26.99/DVD they're charging now (or more), then no fucking way.

When I "buy" a VHS movie, I keep it for a lifetime, and will definately watch it multiple times (depending on movie, of course). 30 views over a lifetime is not unexpected. So, 1/30th the price is reasonable for a 1-time view, right?

MadCow.

Question about the technology.

[ticklemeozmo]

>> AOL Time Warner, released the new Steely Dan album "Everything Must Go" on CD and DVD Audio, the latter being an encrypted, "rip-proof" format.

Now, I hope someone can help me out on this. Is the purpose of DVD Audio for 5.1+ surround sound? Or do they mostly have extra content? Can OOG or WMA [or any thing else] handle these extra channels?

This is not going to stop piracy

[coolmacdude]

All it will do is result in more boycotts of DRM crippled discs and consumer anger directed at the media companies. I really don't know how long its going to take before they realize this. Killing fair use is not the answer.

yet another reason...

[kotj.mf]

This is why I generally stick to independant music. When I was a teenager, it was a political decision: stick to the punkest of the punk, fuck the corporations, etc. As I aged, I kept buying indie for a different reason: the music was simply better. Now I've got another one: the indy labels aren't actively trying to fuck me over.

Oh well. All the good shit still gets released on vinyl, anyway.

Re:"incompatible"

[NanoGator]

"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.

What a great way to encourage piracy!

[beee]

You know, I considered myself a pretty moral person -- sure, I've got a few mp3s, but I try my best to purchase albums of artists I've enjoyed. I have never downloaded a full-length movie.

If this is where the future is going, that just might change. I usually play DVDs on my PC, and if I bring one home from Blockbuster and it won't play because the MPAA assumes I'm a pirate, I will feel 100% justified in seeking out a rip of that movie in XViD or SVCD (or DVDR) and watching it.

They're digging their own grave, but then again, maybe that's what they want to do. More invasive media -> More piracy -> More lobbying power to create strict DMCA-like laws.

Either way, you're going to be seeing a lot of people downloading movies who normally didn't. And it's just going to give all the people who do download movies all the more reason.

Thanks for assuming I'm a pirate, MPAA. You might just've made me one.

Re:What a great way to encourage piracy!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't really understand this argument.

That's because you're stupid. Don't panic, you're not alone.

Are you saying crime-prevention measures give people a right to commit the crime?

No, that's not what he's saying. He's saying technological measures that obstruct his perfectly legal activities will not be tolerated, and if breaking a repugnant law is the only way to carry out said activities, then that law will be broken.

From the article...

[rnturn]

``Celine won't sing''

Heck... I might pay for that!

mostly content-free

[kryzx]

This article is fairly content-free. It doesn't really match with the title blurb, and I don't think it really falls in the "news" category. The only part that seemed to be about something actually happening was this:

"Sun Microsystems said this week it plans to roll out new software to protect copyrighted content stored on mobile phones and smart cards. "

That was a bit vauge. And didn't have anything to do with CDs or DVDs. The rest was pretty much fluff. And the winner for most amusing paragraph was this:

"Ravaged by piracy, movie studios and recording labels have been fitting new CD and DVD releases with layers of computer code with the aim of preventing or limiting users' ability to copy, or "rip," them onto a blank disc and trade online."

OOoo! Layers of computer code! Sounds so mysterious! And someone was Ravaged!!

Summary: Unfortunately I read the whole article, but maybe I can save you the trouble.

Vote with your dollars!!

[chunkwhite86]

I personally despise the recent trend towards DRM protected media. How the hell am I supposed to make a backup of my CD or DVD? We all know that they designed the damn things to be so scratched up, that within a year they become unusuable ;-)

Seriously tho, I vote with my dollars and urge you to do the same. The solution is simple - Don't buy it!. I refuse the purchase a CD or DVD that I am not able to make a backup copy of.

Re:Vote with your dollars!!

[garcia]

ok so you don't buy it and then you don't watch the movies either... Sorry but once all DVDs are re-released under DRM no classics will be able to be used.

Excuse me but I would prefer not to live in a world without entertainment.

Crawl back into your hole.

Re:Vote with your dollars!!

[pmz]

Excuse me but I would prefer not to live in a world without entertainment.

A world without entertainment is not possible.

For example, I find watching a trail of ants to be much much more entertaining than shit like "Real TV" or "CNN Headline News". Ants are really amazing (I'm serious).

Here are other things that can be entertaining:

1) Talking to a spouse. If the marriage is right, then talking to a spouse is like talking to a best friend. Talking to children is a good thing to do, also. Kids might even be more amazing than ants!

2) Climb to the top of a small mountain (1000 ft. should do it). Now, look.

3) Go to a museum. Train museums are very nice, because they usually have a big train set in the basement. Good family fun.

4) Good authors write good books. Perhaps there is a book out there whose plot hasn't been done 50 times over and ruined by a made-for-TV studio.

5) Taking a small boat or canoe out on to a lake is fun, good excersize, and can be a confidence builder for people who are otherwise shut-in.

6) Lots of people go bowling or square dancing, etc.

7) It's been a long time since I've seen a really good set of stars, due to light pollution. The last time I was really out in the boonies, a friend pointed out some really neat stuff (some satellites are visible with the naked eye, for example).

Yet another incentive

[dubbayu_d_40]

to download pirated copy. The fools are leaving customer satisfaction out of the equation...

It ain't the medium, it's the *content*

[mousse-man]

I'm buying fewer and fewer DVDs and CDs. It ain't because they're copy-protected (usually, you can rip that, or if that's impossible, your friendly neighbor has a sound studio and you can rip them easily.

It's because the content sucks. Profusely. I haven't been in the cinema for now something like 6 months. I buy relatively few CDs, most of the Heavy Metal and Death Metal bands started producing lousy music. There's little left to buy. Metallica? Became "Selloutica". The latest Sepultura stuff sucks as well.

Now if I can't play a DVD in my laptop, I simply won't buy it. The test is thanks to the fact that my machine is luggable, doable at my preferred store and quickly accepted as final judgement.

Maybe in Winter, we'll have some better stuff to buy, but before, revenues won't go up in the media industry.

Re:It ain't the medium, it's the *content*

[Anonymous Coward]

"most of the Heavy Metal and Death Metal bands started producing lousy music"

Do you mean there was a time they produced non-lousy music?

We're talking standards, something you missed...

[Viewsonic]

DVD format is a standard, and to stay compatable, it must conform to those standards. If everyone starts doing their own thing and ignoring the standards, then they deserve to be ignored, not bought, made fun of, and dumped into the garbage.

Comparing Windows and Linux is not a good analogy. They're two totally different things. If Linux apps were SUPPOSED to run on Windows or the other way around out of the box (Please dont talk about Wine...), sure..

Self Destructing DVDs will simply not be bought unless the pricing ratio is well worth it. If rental places can offer then for $1 a rental that lasts 2 days, sure, thats something most people can afford. But if the price is static, then people wont bother. Everyone is used to buying DVDs for $15-20 that they can keep forever. Change that, and people wont bother buying. People just wont "give in" unless you give back, and with the DVD industry, the only way they can possibly give more is by lowering the price. Added features? Already got em.

Non-Destructing DVD and Audio has been mainstream too long for anything to sway it. If they dont work in certain players, people will avoid buying them, or will just find a pirated version that they are certain 100% will work on their system. People take the path of least resistance. This is one the companies will have to learn about.

Lessons not learned

[reimero]

Have they already forgotten the lessons of the old Divx players? No one wanted an inferior, crippled product. The market already spoke. I have a hard time imagining they'll get it "right" this time.

Digital piracy will always exist. For every mousetrap, someone will build a better mouse. So why should we law-abiding citizens have to pay the price? If I want a DVD or CD, I'm going to buy it. Period.

Re:"incompatible"

[GnuPengwyn]

I think your missing the point. If you go to the "cd" section of a store, and buy a "cd", it should play in a "cdplayer." If you decide you want to go to the "dvd" section of a store, and buy a "dvd" it should play in a "dvdplayer." But when you buy cd's or dvd's that don't play in their respective cdplayer and dvdplayer then you no longer are selling a "cd" or a "dvd", but you are selling something new. And can NOT be defined as either a cd or a dvd. Folks don't want "something new." They want what they paid for. You wouldn't go buy beta tapes to play in your vhs because they won't fit in the vhs player, and they won't work.

But...

[mgcsinc]

I thought âoerip-proofâ was pretty much done when some genius figured out it could be superceded with a marker? And whatâ(TM)s to prevent me from just ripping a self-destructing media (that concept I still find amusing) once, and keeping the digital content for an extended period? IMHO, these companies should be spending more of their money on trying to produce better music than this feeble attempt to protect what they're turning out.

Do what I did..

[MP*Birdman]

I wrote a letter to the record label after I ran into the first CD (Radiohead's Hail to the Thief) that wouldn't play in the player I wanted, and have now stopped buying any CDs from that label (EMI). In fact, only 1 of the computers I tried it in even could read the data files that allowed you to install the audio player. Since said players are only available for windows and some versions of Apple operating systems, and only installable if you have admin on your computer (making it less than ideal in an office environment) I am allowed under Canadian "fair dealing" rights (http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/C-42/38266.html#rid- 38379) to copy from audio CD to "a recording medium, regardless of its material form, onto which a sound recording may be reproduced and that is ordinarily used by individual consumers for that purpose..". Ie, a computer hard drive, or another CD. This is similar to the fair use rights in the United States.

Unless everyone writes a letter at the least, then it's only a matter of time before every CD will work only in stereos and on machines which have specific versions of software like Windows.

I should add that the CD in question would play on Windows only if you installed "upgrades" to windows media player... I cancelled that, and am ripping it with a line in feed tonight.

Re:Do what I did..

[Chuck Chunder]

Despite rumours, I can also report that this CD works as normal in both my cars' CD changers (Ford and Audi), and in all 5 of the the "regular" CD players in the house.

Which is all well and good. But what about your next car or the next media center you buy? An often unconsidered problem with these things is the future. As a consumer I can be safe in the knowledge that barring physical damage every CD I buy will be playable in any device bearing a Compact Disc logo. With these "copy controlled" discs I have no such garauntee.

If you have one of these things and didn't buy it knowingly send it back and complain to you consumer advocates about innapropriate labeling.

Re:Office 2003

[ItWasThem]

And just wait for the first time some idiot CFO accidentally locks himself out of his own files...

Heck, the CFO could just circumvent the copy protection on those files. What's a DMCA violation on the criminal record of a CFO these days anyways? It wouldn't even show up until the 8th or 9th page.

You are still free to use alternative solutions...

[PseudoThink]

Don't want the government to control you? Leave society and become a hermit...but you lose lots of practical benefits, like convenience stores, electricity, the internet, public sanitation systems, health insurance, etc.

However, when there are few or no lost benefits, people won't hesitate to use alternatives. Same thing applies to DRM...the more they clamp down, the more consumers squeeze through their fingers and start using consumer-friendly alternatives like ogg and mp3.

It's a funny cycle...raw CD audio isn't portable enough, so they create MP3s, leading to rampant file sharing and eventually Napster, leading to RIAA's unholy crusade for DRM, leading more people to use MP3...it will only end when consumers have no control over data. A bit late for that...

Decay of entire entertainment industry, society...

[Nick Driver]

As far as I'm concerned, the industry is already shipping pre-destructed material. Shoddy plotlines. Crappy acting, B-stories with A-budgets. "Adaptations" of classics. Bah.

Good.

Maybe more and more people will slowly wake up and realize that the whole "entertainment industry" is rotting and dying, and instead of numbing their minds sitting in front of the boob tube, wasting their lives away filling their brains with knowledge-pollution, they need to instead spend their idle time pursuing worthwhile hobbies, projects, sports, adventures, etc and actually doing something bigger, better and more important with their lives...

Fat chance that is likely to happen any time soon though :-(

Sigh

[azav]

This is one more reason why I am a geek.

I have 5 macs at my house and one pc.
I have two turntables, a mixer and loud speakers. : ]
I'm glad I can listen to ProtonRadio, check the playlists of the mixes I like, find and buy the buy vinyl, record it to my mac and put it on my internal server.
I'm glad because more of the money MUST go to the artist AND I can buy and remix the songs I actually like!

I don't have to worry about incompatable dvds and cds.

Screw RIAA. Spend a little more money to create your own purchase, playback/recording system. You'll be glad you did and you can still support the artists.

Norah Jones

[Azahar]

I am a Sonyphile from the 1970s and Sony have never let me down until just recently.

I wanted to buy a Norah Jones CD but was told that it was recorded on one of the CDs that weren't recorded to the CD format and that killed Macs if played on them. My wife uses Mac so I checked and had it confirmed.

Now no Sony product enters our house be it camera, CD or movie. They are good products but they are no longer trustworthy the way that they were.

Fair use

[Alizarin Erythrosin]

Consumer electronics companies such as Sony and Nokia have stepped into the mix too, installing DRM systems into new hi-fi systems and hand-held devices to ensure copyrighted materials aren't reproduced and transferred from gadget to gadget without consumers paying for it.

What ever happened to a little thing called "fair use"? If I want to make a copy of a cd for use in my car, why shouldn't I be able to? If I want to rip a cd to mp3s to play on my HTPC, why shouldn't I be able to?

Oh, sorry... I forgot that mp3s automatically lead to piracy, as does cd copying. Yeah, I guess that all the times I've scratched up a copy of a cd that I own using it in my car cd changer makes me a pirate.

Maybe someone can explain this to me....

[tx_kanuck]

Lets say I buy a DVD. Said DVD does not work on my computer (which is where I watch most of my movies b/c my computer screen is bigger then my TV). I can't return it to the store b/c they will only exchange it for another copy of the same DVD. I can't return it to the distributor b/c they say take it back to the store.

Where does that leave me? I've just spent $25 on a movie that I can't watch. I can't return it. Hell, chances are the license I had to agree to won't allow me to sell it. So here's the problem....

The movie was advertised as being a DVD. My player was advertised as a DVD player. DVD is (from what I understand) a fairly open standard. By advertising something as being standards compliant that really isn't, would that not constitant fraud, or at the least deceptive advertising?

If I remember correctly, didn't the owner of the CD trademark/patent threaten to label DRM'd CD's as not being CD's b/c they didnt' conform to the standards? Should that not happen with DVD's?

Vote with you dollars and your voices. If you buy a DVD that is not compatible, either don't buy it, or take it back and bitch loudly. Make sure other customers can hear you. Basically, make an ass of yourself so that the manager has to give you your money back to shut you up.

Yes, I know I'm rambling.

Re:Maybe someone can explain this to me....

[Rude Turnip]

"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.

Re:Maybe someone can explain this to me....

[lobsterGun]

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.

Re:Maybe someone can explain this to me....

[gmhowell]

Three words: small claims court.

Like others said, you purchased a physical item. The store you bought it in presumably did not indicate that it was anything other than a CD/DVD. They have an implied warrant of merchantibility. What this means is that they are claiming this is a CD, fit for use and sale. However, it isn't. It is crippled, and probably doesn't pay heed to the red book standard. Therefore, they have defrauded you. Now, it's probably not really their fault, as the distributor defrauded them. That's fine. But it doesn't change the fact that they sold the good. So, you sue them for cost of CD plus court filing fee. You give back broken goods. They pay you money. Then, they can sue their distributor.

If they didn't tell you that this was not a CD/DVD in the normal sense, they are full of shit. It probably won't get to this. Sooner or later, most managers will cave. You probably won't get your money back, but you'll get store credit. If this isn't acceptable to you, sue. Even better, if you used a credit card, block the charge.

OK, enough with the FUD, people!

[goldspider]

OK, there are 2 identified CD's that won't play on certain systems, big deal. Nothing's perfect.

As far as the wild speculation about self-destructing DVDs and CDs, you either didn't read the article, or you are sensationalizing (as was done in the headline). Nowhere in the article were self-destructing DVDs or CDs mentioned, EVER! They were talking about downloadable music files that could only be played a few times before rendering themselves useless.

The RIAA still hasn't come out with anything worth trying yet, but stop distorting the facts just for the sake of making the RIAA look more Evil(tm).

Re:Ok....

[DrPascal]

- 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.

Re:Yes, it matters.

[Kpt Kill]

i still love how in many places the audio casettes (for those who still carry them) are cheaper than the cd despite costing more to produce

Re:it bites

[JebusIsLord]

My new radiohead disc has 1300 intentional C1 errors on it, rendering it extremely prone to scratches and (ironically) making a backup copy pretty much a necessity.

Took over 8 hours to rip using EAC though... owch.

Basically I could have stolen it from Kazaa and saved a lot of trouble, but because I am actually a paying customer I was charged $12, 8 hours of labour and was rewarded with an intentionally damaged CD. What a bunch of fuckers.

As return punishment, I have made the CD available for all my friends to download, and I am encouraging them to use my error-free, DRM-disabled MP3s instead of that horrid disc.

Support your local "pirate"

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why you need to support your friendly neighborhood "pirate" disk merchant. Imagine if you don't support him? He could go out of business and then you'd have no choice but to buy incompatible disks and upgrade your player whenever they thought it was time to plump up their bottom line.

Even if you don't buy every disk from the local "pirate," you should try to buy a few now and then.

Remember "piracy" is the only guarantee you have of:

1. Always being able to get a copy of a disk you want. Say the powers that be decide to suppress some disk for some reason? Copyright allows them to censor something no matter whether it is important poltical speech or not.

2. Being able to get unedited copies of disks. This is similar to the above. Just because Hollywood decided Eyes Wide Shut was to risque without censorship for Americans doesn't mean you have to live with that.

3. Being able to get copies of disks that won't self destruct and will work in the broadest variety players.

The only ethical thing to do is to support organized crime in their effort to provide you with disks that you actually own and don't still belong to the companies you've purchased them from after you purchased them.

Re:Decay of entire entertainment industry, society

[Anonymous Coward]

It's about time people stop wasting time watching TV, it really cuts into the amount of time you can waste each day reading slashdot.

Re:Decay of entire entertainment industry, society

[Alric]

Worthwhile hobbies? Adventures?

You mean, like, posting on /.?

I have a solution

[NigelJohnstone]

Don't allow copyright to be used when DRM protection is used. Its as simple as that.

There are parallels to patents and trade secrets.

If I choose to make my idea a trade secret then its protected forever unless someone breaks it, but if I want to use patent protection, then I have to disclose it publicly.
Public disclosure, in exchange for legal protection.

The same should be applied to DRM & Copyright. if I choose to DRM my protect, fine, good, but then its not in the public domain, so it can't be protected by copyright.

You want copyright protection, then you have to give *your* side of the bargain too, and put it in an unprotected format, so that it is available when the copyright expires. How can I know if you will be around next year, let alone in 120 years when your copyright expires? I can't, so if you won't put it into public domain, then you can't get copyright protection.

Thats the solution.

Who Cares?

[stuckinmaine]

The way I see it DRM solutions are going to be self-policing. The ones that are incompatible with most of the hardware are going to have users returning the items or refusing to buy more items with the same DRM solution. The ones that do work just give crackers something new to work on. This is a rare point in history where companies are trying to make their product less user friendly. I predict that companies who adopt strict DRM solutions are going to have a harder time competing with the smaller organizations that do not. Once someone supplies artists with a method of getting reimbursed for their efforts that cuts out the overhead that is evident in the motion picture and recording industries the point will be moot. The only thing that can change this outcome is a combination of a monopoly and the "Super DMCA" or similar legislation that is being pushed in some states.

This will drive people to iTunes

[BeowulfSchaeffer]

When you can download an album or a song for .99cents a track and burn them without issue, and without going to the store, what benifit do you have going down to Sam Goody if the CD's they sell you there are DRM? No, this will drive people to use iTunes even more.

Re:Next up...

[tanguyr]

welllll... i just had to steal the following from Lessig's latest book, The Future of Ideas - hope he (well, his publisher) won't mind:

In the 1970's RCA was experimenting with a new technology for distributing film on magnetic tape â" what we would come to call video. Researchers were keen not only to find a technology that could reproduce film with high fidelity; they were also keen to find a way to control the use of the technology. Their aim was a technology that could control the use of film distributed on video, so that the owner of the film could maximize the return from the distribution.

The technology eventually chosen was relatively simple. A video would play once, and when finished, the film would lock into place. If a renter of the video wanted to play the video again, he or she would have to return the video to the store and have the tape unlocked. In this way, the owner of the film could assure it was being compensated for every use of the copyrighted material.

RCA presented this technology to the Disney Corporation in the early 1970s. In a room with just five of the senior executives from Disney, a young RCA executive, Pat Feely, demonstrated RCA's device. The executives were horrified. They would "never", Feely reports their saying, permit their content to be distributed in this form. For the content, however clever the self-locking tape player was, was still insufficiently controlled. "How could they know," a Disney executive asked Feely, "how many people are going to be sitting there watching" a film? "What's to stop someone else coming in and watching it for free?"

The thing to realize is that DRM is something that people like the **AA have wanted for years... and we the geeks are the people who gave it to them... Odds are the eggheads behind the implementation of this latest version are people not that different from us... /t

rights and copyright

[Azahar]

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.

Re:Decay of entire entertainment industry, society

[Metropolitan]

Actually, the creative aspects of that 'industry' are doing just fine, but are hampered by a multi-gazillion-dollar corporation-controlled financing and distribution network. People with money don't want to lose that money, they think people are sheep, they keep funding Nightmare on Elm St. XXVII and the like.

If we as their audience stop attending movies and buying recordings they release, then something will happen. Until that point, when the huge numbers of people stop thinking that Top 40 Radio is all there is, when they stop heading in to see Dumb and Dumberer and the latest Rocky franchise, then they will continue reaping huge profits and controlling what we see and hear.

If it really bothers you, do a couple of things:
- Go see local bands, and support them directly.
- Watch movies at your local art-movie house, made by someone other than Sony, Fox, etc.
- Write to your elected representatives with your concerns about copyright and ownership. Be clear, intelligent, and specific.

Karl Schroeder has some interesting ideas on something called the Rights Economy in Permanence. Amazon carries it.

If we cannot step our little feet out of the basket, then we will just have to enjoy things as the trip gets warmer and warmer.

Price vs Cost

[uberdave]

Never, never, never confuse price and cost. The two are independant. The price of a product is what the consumer will pay for a product. The cost is the amount of money it took to produce the product. Right now, the consumer is willing to pay more for music on CD than on tape. That is why the price for CDs is higher. The fact that it costs less to produce a CD is irrelevant. The consumer is willing to pay the higher price.

Dear RIAA/MPAA

[Anonymous Coward]

Having followed the progression of DRM from non-existent to testing to production, and assuming the next step of ubiquity, I say thank you for your draconian measures. What you assert is protecting your business model has alientated this consumer from the equation and the results are quite enjoyable.

I used to see movies all the time in theatres, three to four a week. I enjoyed the bad stories as well as the amazing effects; the cinema was a hobby I did not mind spending a couple hundred dollars a month on. Simultaneously, the captains of your industry made two fatal errors: a bad, original story is more seductive than a formulaic reprise of a plot done over and over already. Secondly, the noise over DRM, the jostlings of Tivo, and lobbying governmental bodies has resulted in me willing to sacrifice my entertainment values for a cause.

I used to buy CDs all the time, up to ten a month. Napster catalyzed me to buy more CDs as I'd often get a few tracks, often with compression hiccups and that would entice me to learn more about new artists and explore their catalogs. I spent a few thousand a year on new music and I would often rip the CD to my laptop and, when traveling, would play these new artists and catalyze others to explore their catalog. The captains of your industry have made the same fatal error as those in the movie business: all the artists sound the same and your draconian mindset and treating customers as the enemy have catalyzed a cause against you.

There is much conjecture regarding the moral code governing your businesses, respectively. You think stealing is wrong and have a responsibility to protect your investments and the consumers see sharing as a step forward in the artistic movement and find your profit margins to be obscene and your attitude ungrateful.

You do have the right to seek substantial return on your investment, the artist have a right to spend less money making their products (I've known a few bands and filmmakers that got signed and they partied up on the advance like it was free money), and the consumer has a right to purchase the media unencumbered. Everyone is so busy seeing what's wrong, few are approriating solutions.

What does it mean when Apple, a computer hardware company with no experience, can eclipse your, two entire industries with probably two hundred years combined experience in the field, "best" efforts into online distribution?

But I digress. Thank you for saving me money and waking me up. I was a good consumer until there was a reason to fight my handlers and now, frankly, I am enjoying the fight.

In the vaccuum of your corporate-backed media in my life, I have taken to finding new avenues of entertainment. With the several thousand dollars a year I am saving, I have been able to buy more books to read, go to more local bars and see live performances of some suprisingly good artists who would never appear on your radar, I've seen cool films in basements, and even used a little of my extra money to invest in a small budget film.

I enjoy the community of intellectuals this scuff has given rise to. We may not be a cadre of lawyers, but we are learnign the law and how it affects us daily as we are fascinated by the game you are playing. For us it is an exercise and for you it is life or death. There's a lot less pressure on us and many more of us, and we control the money you so desire, so I think we're pretty much assured victory in the long run, but thanks for coming out to the skirimish.

I've seen more plays and art exhibits, I've spent more time with my friends and family in social settings instead of anti-social movie theatres, I exercise to muscians whose only identification is Jonathan Wong Set 1 (Jon has no contract, he's a bedroom DJ putting mixes out there for the love).

And it's great! I feel so free and uncumbered. You tried to tell me what to think and that challenge freed my mind in many ways.

So I say thank you, MPAA and RIAA, please continue your legal rabb

Re:We're talking standards, something you missed..

[Suidae]

Self Destructing DVDs will simply not be bought unless the pricing ratio is well worth it.

I expect that they will be pretty popular actually. Its just like a rental, at the same price point, except there are no late fees, and you never have to remember to return it. This lets all regular retail places in on the rental market, because they don't have to maintain customer databases or return procedures. Instead of going to blockbuster, you can just drive down to the 24 hour convienance mart and get any movie you want.

Hell, I wouldn't be suprised to see a system where they have a kiosk with a DVD burner that will put whatever movie you want onto a special chemically limited DVD-R so that stores won't even have to maintain a stock of disks. It would be like an ATM machine, just put it in the store and some guy comes around and services it every couple of weeks, loads up new blank disks and new releases. Put it on a web page, order up your movie before you leave the house, and it will be ready to pick up when you get there.

I'd buy that. Specially when someone comes out with a specially treated wetwipe that prevents/reverses the chemical process that disables the disks after exposure to oxygen.

People take the path of least resistance.

Thats precisely what these companies are counting on. 99+% of the DVD watching population wouldn't know what to do with a DVD rip if it came with instructions. Nor will they care; if a DVD won't play in their consumer player, they'll assume its a bad disk and go get another or get their money back.

See the rest of the post.

[Andy Dodd]

Like the "safe deposit box" part.

Yeah, CDs will fall apart or die faster in non-optimal environments. But a safe deposit box is not one of those.

Rip Proof and Self Destructioning? Purchaseproof!

[AC5398]

Lemme get this straight? I go out and buy ArtistX's latest cd/dvd. Costs me $20 bucks. What do I get for this? The DVD player refuses to play the cd. The Imac freezes solid. Getting it unfrozen means I gotto trek down to the pc store and fork out an extra $120 for the service fee. I gotta reboot the pc. And Zonealarm goes freaking crazy because program X keeps trying to dial out. Don't call me paranoid here -- it'll happen, it's just a matter of time. To play the godforsaken audio cd, I gotta put the cd into the portable cd player, feed it into the computer and record an mp3, and use that mp3 to create an audio cd that plays on the dvd player, the imac, and the pc. All this for 20 bucks. Whatta deal! OR, I could use the 10 minutes it takes to get the freaking saran wrap off of the audio cd and download the cd from Kazaa. For free. ORRRRRRRRR, I could really stick it to the music company and the f'ing band who signed off with said music company and NOT BUY THE DAMN CD AND NOT DOWNLOAD IT! When the music industry sees all interest in music cd's die utterly, both on Kazaa and in cd sales, they'll be falling over themselves to stop the DRM nonsense.

The real issue is the lost value

[ShatteredDream]

Nobody I know likes being reminded everytime about the FBI. Nobody I know likes being forced to watch previews. Nobody I know likes being told what to do with their DVD when they use it for their own purposes unless they take it upon themselves to give copies away to everyone.

It's about the content dammit! People don't buy DVDs for previews, for fancy menus or the damn FBI warning. Most people want the movie, not the 2 hours of celebrity mutual masturbation that is the typical "bonus" disk. I have a better idea for them, find a way to reduce the cost to such a point that you can buy **just** the movie for $10 after sales tax. If they want to make it sooo easy for customers to get the movies they want and make them happy they'd make it so that producing a "lite" DVD is so cheap that they could sell them so inexpensively that a $20 bill would buy you 2 movies.

Of course that would require an entrepeneurial spirit, something they have not known for almost a century. That would require them to take a calculated risk, something that they don't understand the need for. The market won't hold back forever. Americans have technological blinders, but we're not blind. When we see nations like South Korea, Taiwan and Japan that have no analogs to the DMCA sticking their tongues out at us when their gadgets are a good 5-10 years ahead of ours because of the DMCA, et al, Americans will be mad. Why? It won't be just silly gadgets, it'll be a lot of things. First it will be the divisions that make the gadgets like the DVD-VCRs, then it will be the rest of the company that goes overseas. More jobs lost because "artists" were being "ripped off."

I'm more musically inclined than Britney Spears and company. I say fuck the "artists" if we have to choose between their copyrights and a functioning free market. It's more important that 5,000 musicians not get paid for their songs downloaded illegally than 2,500 more manufacturing jobs or any other jobs go everseas because the companies found our copyright laws too stifling.

Everybody has ignored the most obvious factor of musical growth: the advancement of science. The most scientifically advanced societies on Earth also have the most musically diverse cultures as a general rule. The more science has made our lives better, even in peripheral ways, the more musicians have benefited. In 100 years science took us from having a society with only a few major types of music (in no small part because so many modern musical tools hadn't been invented like electric equipment) to having dozens. It made it possible for tens of thousands of musicians to at least effectively supplement their income with their skills. Excuse the hell out of me, but science has done more for copyright holders than copyright law. It was not economically feasible for so many musicians to make a living off of their music 100 years ago, but now thanks to the explosion of technological growth it's definitely possible if you're good.

I have one final proposal for the closet socialists and fascists of the **AA: lobby against budget deficits, pork barrel spending and the peacetime income tax if you want more money. All of the yuppies get the other 30-50% of their income back. What do they do with it? Invest it all or give little johny or suzie more allowance? A lot of the former and probably a lot of the latter as well. What is little johny or suzie going to do, buy blue chip stock shares? Hell no! They're going to go down to Sam Goody, buy an extra $100 worth Nelly, Jay Z, Britney Spears and Metallica.

Re:The real issue is the lost value

[haxor.dk]

'm more musically inclined than Britney Spears and company. I say fuck the "artists"...

Oooh yes, please =)

Re:The real issue is the lost value

[gad_zuki!]

>not the 2 hours of celebrity mutual masturbation

Err, what DVD are you referring to? I'd like to know for, umm, academic purposes.

DRM isn't bad when applied is fine

[sporty]

Nothing is wrong with self destructing dvd's. Just saves you a trip of going back to the rental place. It's also stock that a rental store doesn't need to track. :P

Netflix can really use this.

Re:DRM isn't bad when applied is fine

[tomcio.s]

Ehm.. Don't we have enough landfill as it is. Well, especially with all those AOL cd's in there?

Serioulsy, for renting it _might_ be convinient, but how enviromentally friendly is it?

Disney Movies?

[Titusdot Groan]

If technology firms like Sony and Microsoft have their way, songs and movies will expire after a single play -- unless you pay the copyright holder their due.

Wow, my kids watched Disney's Robin Hood about 50 times (the still get it out now and then). So they want $750 (50*14.99) from me for this movie? That's their due?

They are really nuts -- people buy movies with the expectation of watching them a couple of times and maybe swapping with their friends. As soon as you want this kind of money they'll just go back to watching TV ...

Results you can count on

[MattW]

A lot of the early bugs have been dealt with, and record companies say they will continue to roll out new copy-protected discs and offer online downloads that expire after a few listens based on the latest DRM systems.

And consumers will continue to buy less and less music. You have to love the recording industry; they're probably the only group that constantly FUDs itself.

That article is pretty vague

[gmurnock]

If technology firms like Sony and Microsoft have their way, songs and movies will expire after a single play...

Have either Sony or Microsoft actually said anything to that effect? I've heard talk of restricting use to the original owner, preventing copying, etc etc, but one PLAY??

I tried..

[Genjurosan]

I tried to read the article, but it melted away before I could read it. It only allowed 5 minutes to read it. I suppose I shouldn't have gone to get a drink.

How to Circumvent Copy Controlled CDs

[robinw]

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

Cost/benefit

[smcv]

someone who's going to pirate music is going to do it and then find a reason to justify it

Some people who copy music illegally feel guilty that they're doing something wrong, but carry on anyway. (Oh, and don't call it piracy, please, it has nothing to do with robbing ships.)

The point the grandparent post is making is that, for some people, DRM-crippled media will be enough to tip the balance towards illegal copying.

Standard CDs will play on any CD player, and there's a readily available specification for making compatible CD players. The cost of legal CDs is the price of the CD; the cost of illegal copies is the feeling of guilt and the potential penalty if you get caught. Many people feel guilty enough about illegal copying that the cost of legal CDs is less than the "cost" of illegal copies, so they buy legal CDs.

DRM-crippled optical music media happen to play on most consumer CD players, because the makers of those CD players cut corners and don't follow the specification rigorously. The cost of illegal copies is the same as for standard CDs, plus a bit of time investment in breaking the DRM; the cost of legal non-CDs is the price, plus the inconvenience of not being able to play them in some CD players, or on a computer, or rip them for use in an iPod or similar, or use them in a PC-based MP3 jukebox without finding the actual physical CD, and so on. Depending on the relative "cost" the customer places on guilt and on this inconvenience, the inconvenience might well end up as a higher cost, so they go for the illegal copies.

I'm not saying it's right, but if you think in terms of relative costs, you can see why the extra burden of DRM restrictions makes illegal copies look more attractive.

WORK FOR HIRE

[UncleGizmo]

...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.

Self Destructing leading to more piratation

[Floydian123]

It seems to me that if there are self destructing discs made, it would encourage, indirectly, pirating the cd/dvd for longer term use.

Going against legality of course, but people use all those p2p programs illegally with seemingly little guilt as well.

Just a thought.

Re:This WILL ALWAYS work

[Cid Highwind]

write a program that takes the digital audio data just prior to it going to the DAC. This will require someone reverse engineering a part of the audio driver in the OS du jour.

There are dummy sound drivers available that do this now. The problem is MS driver signing. Windows 2000 checked for digital signatures on drivers. WinXP spews dire-sounding warnings if you try to install unsigned drivers. Who wants to bet that windows media player n+1 will refuse to play DRMed content through unsigned video and sound drivers? The infrastructure is there now, all it takes is a few lines of code in WMP.

Sure, it'll still work on open platforms like Linux, but what's the point if nobody even releases DRM-enabled media players for it.

Re:it bites

[JebusIsLord]

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.

not just major labels

[pneuma_66]

It is not just major labels that are using copy protection, but some indie labels are resorting to this user hostile tactic.

I bought a cd by the synthpop group de/vision last summer, and when I got it home, I found out it was copy protected. I then quickly returned it to the store. I also took the liberty of writing the band and the label to see why they were resorting to this tactic.

I politely told them, that the cd i purchased would not work in my pioneer cdj-100's, which is a pro dj cd player. I also asked why they would want to alienate the same people that essentially advertise their music. Well, after a few emails, they ended it with this:
[sic]thank you
enjoy your coutry , enjoy your law
and support the dying of bands
good bye

You can read the entire conversation at copyproofcds.org , which is a site i made to rant about copy protection.

disney

[yerricde]

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?

The "State of the Industry"

[ciphertext]

The RIAA, MPAA, entertainment industry giants, and other lobby groups throw great amounts of money, thought, and manpower at creating a "sustainable" market outlet in the digital world (for entertainment media). They claim their biggest threat to the entertainment market is piracy. If we examine the past actions of these groups, we will see that they have:

• negotiated with product providers (phillips, sony, etc...) to create hardware that limits the consumers ability to use the media (think DVD encoding, non-skippable previews, etc...)
• when negotiation wasn't possible, they threatened lawsuits (think SonicBlue, RCA, etc...) to force capitulation
• now they want to propose industry standards. The consumer will not have a voice in this process as the members of the various standard's bodies have been lobbied, negotiated with, or sued by the "entertainment" industry.

Why are DVD players/media and CD players/media not treated in the same fashion as a VCR or Copier device (such as a Xerox)? To my knowledge manufacturers of copy machines and (during their time) VCRs made decent profits. I could skip commercial recordings and previews on my VCR, but I cannot skip the previews on my DVD player. How is that fair use?

Ultimately, I see the courts will need to intervene to set a precedent (similar to the cases involving the VCR and Copy machine). The "entertainment industry" and the standards bodies will establish DRM standards that aren't too unacceptable to the consumer (arguably they won't know the reason for a loss of capability) at first. As the standards go through the review process over the years, you will see devices that have little to no consumer protection (rights and information) inherent in their design. As it is easier to implement a standard and get acceptance by starting with the most acceptable format, and then slowly repealing/adding features over time.

The consumers could stop this nonsense right now by doing three simple things:

• cancel your cable (if you subscribe)
• do not "go to movies" or buy CD/DVD/Computer Software merchandise that is DRM enabled (whenever possible)
• do not buy consumer electronics or computer systems that have native support for DRM

A final action could be to support your Open Source projects, as they currently don't have an issue with piracy.

And in other news....

[rongage]

Today, thousands of Radio Shack and other electronics stores were all raided by the US Marshalls service for selling and/or manufacturing "anti-circumvention" devices as prohibited by 17-USC-1201 - the DMCA.

Early reports indicate that the items that are causing these retail outlets such grief are commonly known as patch-cables.

According to Harvey Buttnut, well known computer geek, these patch cables can be used to pipe the analog audio from a CD player into the audio input of a computer - allowing the computer to make a recording of the CD with minimal quality loss and no more copy protection.

Lawyers for Sony Corp. at the law firm of Dewey, Cheatham and Howe confirmed that it was their investigation that led to the raids on these stores. Apparently, the lawyers' son had accidentily purchased a DRM protected CD from a music store and wanted to play the content on a portable MP3 player.

Teach a man...

[sharlskdy]

"Teach a man to buy a CD, and he's a customer.
Allow a man to rip a CD, and he's a thief forever."

- Ancient RIAA proverb.

rip proof? it still hits the line out jack right?

[*weasel]

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 )

Infringing on my rights

[oaf357]

Rip proof CDs are an infringment on my fair use rights.

Let it be known, I will gladly sign on to a class action lawsuit tackling this form of DRM.

'Ravaged'?!

[siliconminded]

You have to love this kind of quality journalism, folks: "Ravaged by piracy, movie studios and recording labels have...", the media has been describing the issue of file-sharing like this since Napster blew up, but this is the strongest adjective I've yet seen.

All sarcasm aside...

[MsGeek]

Upon further examination, you're completely right! Artists get absolutely no money and the label keeps everything! How foolish of me to overlook this universal truth! I had no idea that artists were signing with major labels simply because they have no desire to get any money out of the deal. Thank you sir, I have learned much from you.

...this is actually the way it really works out on a lot of recording contracts.

Read the article I have linked to very, very carefully. Record company "advances" are considered loans against future royalties. You have to "repay" a laundry list of expenditures made on your behalf before you make a dime of royalty off of your music.

In other businesses, those kind of expenses are considered part of doing business. In the recording industry, they are considered the employee's problem. Imagine the uproar that would happen if all the copier paper, copy toner, pens, pencils, internet bandwidth and other "cost centers" of a business' budget were charged to their employees and, as a condition of getting paid, the employee would have to pay their boss back for all of it. You would have general strikes, you would have rioting in the streets, it would not be pretty.

Because of the high-glamour nature of the recording industry, however, and the strength of the recording industry lobby in governments around the world, they have had the unique, special right to charge off almost all their expenses to the recording artists.

And the big record companies are not the only ones who use this kind of chicanery. After SST Records lost their major distributor, Jem/Greenworld, all of a sudden bands who had been in the black on royalties found themselves on the hook to SST for promotional expenses. Bands like Saccharine Trust, Paper Bag, Zoogz Rift and others basically were screwed out of being paid for their record sales by a switch to a more "industry standard" set of billing practices. I was there to see this all happen...my husband was in Zoogz Rift's band and I was very good friends with Paper Bag.

This way of doing business has been standard operating procedure with major record companies since the 1930s. It is only now, with the record companies going after their customer base for "piracy" and adding hideously restrictive measures to safeguard their ill gotten gains that the word is getting out.

Sure, some people get ahead with their record company. That's why you hear Metallica and Elton John and Madonna and all these other mega-millionaire recording stars whining about people "ripping us off". But the vast majority of recording artists, including some, like Prince and TLC and Don Henley, whom you would think would be in this Millionaires' Club, have been basically given a deal that is exactly as you describe. Yes indeed, artists get absolutely no money and the label keeps everything. That "advance" money is not really theirs...it is a loan from the biggest, nastiest loan sharks the world has ever known.

why bother

[bk4u]

i for one dont know why they are making the CD's and DVD's that are harder to rip to a hard drive because the way i see it, there are plenty of audio and video recorders and if the the media actually plays there will be a way to capture it and put it on a hard drive

When will they get it? Simplicity=Profit

[potuncle]

I don't know who wants to buy a song and only get to listen to it a few times before it expires. Apple's got the right idea...99 cents buys me the song and I can listen to it as much as I want, and even burn it to CD's over and over again. It is a simple and fair system that allows everyone to profit (Apple, label, and artist).

Re:Why not this??

[^_^x]

Not really. I think Ahead software in Germany (makers of Nero) make a program that can gear your drive down to 1x.

Re:Maybe this is -1 reduntant....

[Alcemenes]

I remember signing a petition regarding just that and about a year later divx discs disappeared. This is nothing new here just a new spin on an old trick. The best way to fight this is with your pocketbook. If the greedy movie and music studios release crippled product and the public refuses to purchase it they will be out a heap of what they love most and react accordingly. There will always be people who try to cheat just like there will always be people that will follow the rules. I believe most folks fall into the honest category yet the honest folks are usually the first to suffer at the hands of these new, draconian technologies.

Self distruct for the Industry

[Ananee]

This is just another reason why I will not be running to the local music store any time soon. If they actually want to make money and support their 'artists' they need to realize that this is not the way to do it. The 'artists' only see a very small piece of the profit if they see any at all.

Self distructing CDs are not what I or most of the people I know want to spend our hard earned money on, give me something lasting. That's why I want to go to indie shows and buy albums from the bands themselves.

The entertainment world is changing, and, in my opinion, it should become more about the art produced than the money made.

Better example.

[GoofyBoy]

A closer example is if you got into your car and a block down the street you get pulled over and a cop gives you a ticket for "potential speeding". You weren't but the cop assumes that you could.

Cop now leaves and you are now looking down a long strech of highway. Why wouldn't you speed? You've done the "time", why not do the "crime"?

Just a speedbump....

[jemenake]

The idea of a rip-proof CD amuses me.

Back when the web first started, there were a lot of web-page creators scrambling for ways to make their page viewable, but not able to be saved, printed... whatever. The end conclusion was always the same: "If it can be viewed, it can be printed".

The same goes for "rip-proof" CD's. At some point, it has to be listenable to a human. When that happens, the song is vulnerable to being copied.

The obvious way to do this is just to route your "Line Out" into your "Line In" on your PC and then just have a sound recorder going while your CD plays. Of course, this carries the problem of converting from digital, to analog, and then to digital again.

What's only a little less obvious and a little less difficult (so much so that I can hardly believe I haven't seen it available yet) would be to have a pseudo sound output device. Assuming that the CD would be playable (but not rippable) on a normal PC CD-ROM drive, you could tell your CD player app to use this pseudo sound device as the output. To the app, it would look like a regular sound card (kinda like how Adobe Acrobat appears to be a printer), but it would actually just write the digital data to a file (again, like Acrobat does).

The nice thing here is that, the CD could even be restricted to only being played on a DRM-enabled player. At some point, that player has to send the audio off to what it thinks are speakers. If you have a pseudo device that intercepts the audio, then there you go.

Of course, I wouldn't be surprised if Paladium had components to prevent this... but that's a different story. The point here is that, if you had a pseudo sound card, you could still rip AND keep it all digital. Granted, the rip would happen at 1x... but that's why I have a second PC in my office with lots of games on it. :)

Re:Just a speedbump....

[Jmstuckman]

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!

Rip proof = Play Proof

[Felinoid]

If I can't rip it I can't play it.
If I can't play it I can't view it.

If I need a new DVD player.....

I have a screw driver, a sodering iron, and etchant. What I don't have is unlimited supplys of cash to buy a new player every time some jerk get's a fuzzy up his butt.

Bruce seems to like it...

[Sajma]

fyi, Bruce Schnier discusses self-destructing DVDs briefly in his latest Crypto-Gram newsletter:

Disney is launching a pilot DVD-rental program that uses self-destructing DVDs. The idea is that the DVD has a coating that oxidizes after a few days, rendering the DVD unreadable.

I think this is a very clever security countermeasure. The threat is regular consumers. Disney wants to be able to rent DVDs to them at a price-point lower than their sale price. By making a DVD that only lasts a few days after being taken out of the package, Disney has solved the problem of needing an infrastructure to process DVD returns.

Of course this doesn't solve the problem of making illegal copies of the DVD, but that's not the problem that Disney is trying to solve. Self-destructing DVDs are a clever solution for a specific security problem, and if it works well it's likely to be a cheap and effective one. (Compare this to Circuit City's superficially similar DIVX format, which also had expiring DVDs, but required a phone line and special player.)

Re:"rip-proof" Steely Dan?

[BrokenHalo]

And from the article: "songs and movies will expire after a single play"

So all we have to do is make that single play a ripping session :-)