Australian Commission Rejects Crippled-CD Complaints

rooinlondon writes "The Age newspaper reports that a recent complaint to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission regarding copy-protected audio CDs has been rejected. Has anyone else complained to local authorities regarding this issue ? Has anyone had any more luck with their action ?"

Comments

Once again the government screws the consumer

[wallet72]

I sent a few emails to the state government department in charge of consumer protection. Their answer was simple - "record labels must be able to protect their products, and if a few consumers have issues with that, it's unfortunate but there is nothing to be done about it.'
I asked what a person was supposed to do after they'd spent money on a CD and it wouldn't play, and they said 'that's unfortunate, maybe you should test the CD before paying for it'
I then pointed out I wouldn't be carrying my entertainment system into a shop to buy the CD, and was told that if I chose not to test the CD first then it was my problem.
As for the copy protected CDs not being standard, yet still displaying a standard marker, I was told 'well they play on some things so they can't be non standard'

So what's next? What can be done?

Re:Once again the government screws the consumer

[slittle]

The ACCC aren't the be-all end-all of consumer protection.

Quoth the Office of Fair Trading:

When do you have a right to a refund?

Simply, a refund would be in order if the goods:

* have a fault that you could not have known about when you purchased them
* do not do the job that you were led to believe they would do
* do not match a sample you were shown
* are not as they were described.

They may not be able to stop the sale of the products like the ACCC can, but they allow you to return the product if it doesn't do what a reasonable person would have expected.

And another thing:

Don't believe everything you read

"No refunds" signs are illegal. If you buy a faulty product and you weren't aware of the fault at the time of the sale, you can usually return it to the store and expect either:

* a repair
* a replacement or
* a refund.

Of course, if you deliberately go out to buy crippled CDs so you can return them as a protest, you're fucked if they call you on it.

phillips and protection

[doug]

Didn't Phillips say that the various protection extensions were different from "real" CDs and thus were not allowed to use the CD logo? If so, check to see if that icon is on your disk and/or case. If it is there then the manufacturer is guilty of false advertising. If not, well, I guess your just outta luck unless you feel like being a long term pain in someone's backside.

- doug

Re:phillips and protection

[eric76]

I got an argument like that once when buying a CD drive.

At the time, CD's in computers were really just starting to gain ground. We were starting to see computers that even came with CD drives installed!

So I went to Best Buy to buy a CD drive and picked out one made by Sony. I was talking to a manager and told him that since I didn't see the OS I was using listed on the box, I'd bring it back if it didn't work. He said that if it worked on any computer with any operating system, it was not broken and I couldn't return it.

I hadn't been back to Best Buy since then.

I drove over to another store, bought the exact same model, took it home, and it worked fine for the next six years or so.

Re:I got screwed by EMI

[PurpleFloyd]

I hate to say this, but the only solution is to take the CDs back. The problem is that the "CD"s have deliberate inconsistiences in the data and the error correction: the theory is that audio-only CD players will just throw away the error correction data, while CD-ROM drives will read it, attempt to correct it, and fail. Unfortunately, since your CD player is also designed to read ISO-9660 CDs (standard CD-ROM format) for MP3 playback, it probably checks the error correction data no matter what. Thus, since you have an MP3 device and are probably an evil pirate (after all, who but evil pirates use MP3s?), you are basically screwed.

As for the software player, it's reading off a second session of the CD, which contains valid error correction data (it's designed to be read by a computer). This contains the player installation files and some heavily compressed, DRM-laden audio files. It's probably impossible to get the audio into a format your CD player can read reliably without breaking the DMCA (at least if you're in the US; still, breaking the encryption on the files may be a rather daunting task).

Perhaps you should write a letter to the artist; tell them that you tried to buy one of their CDs but, due to EMI's copy protection, you could not play it. I would imagine the artist would be rather troubled after recieving a few of these letters; that is, if the record company lets them see the letters. As it is, you're stuck with a CD that basically comes from the factory with defects equivalent to a nasty spiral scratch along the entire length of the CD (one side effect of the copy protection technology is that CDs become very vulnerable to scratches; there's no error-correcting data that can be used to recover from bad data).

When you take the CD back, make sure to bring in your portable and play the CD for the store manager. If they offer you a replacement, be sure to play it before you leave the store. If they try to tell you your player is defective, tell them that Windows Media Player clicks and you don't want to install their player. Good luck; it's a tough battle, but one you should be able to win.