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Australian Commission Rejects Crippled-CD Complaints

Posted by timothy on from the lotsa-luck dept.

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 ?"

14 of 43 comments (clear)

  1. Once again the government screws the consumer by wallet72 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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?

    1. Re:Once again the government screws the consumer by slittle · · Score: 5, Informative
      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.
      --
      Opportunity knocks. Karma hunts you down.
  2. There's only one thing you can really do by Xenkar · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Don't buy CDs.

    A business must sell goods or services to survive. After they sue every file sharer on the internet, they'll give in and start selling non-crippled media. I don't really understand why anyone would really want to listen to a music disc with one or two decent songs and ten to fifteen filler songs.

    1. Re:There's only one thing you can really do by squiggleslash · · Score: 2, Insightful
      I will buy CDs.

      What I will not do is buy flat, shiny, discs that look like CDs and that can be read by some CD players, that are not CDs.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  3. How about a different law? by narratorDan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Skip the laws covering what is on the CD, how about laws covering basic product usability. If you bought a TV in AU that used NTSC (Used in USA) rather than the PAL standard that is used in AU, could you return it as defective?

    True, it works, but not in AU!


    NarratorDan
    --
    "If you're not confused by quantum mechanics, you really don't understand it." - Niels Bohr
  4. phillips and protection by doug · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

    1. Re:phillips and protection by wallet72 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Tried that argument, myself and got a friend who is a music retailer to ring them about it. Their very glib answer was simple... 'it's an audio CD because it plays on some equipment, therefore it must be standard. If it doesn't play on other equipment then maybe you need to look at that equipment.' When told that non protected CDs played fine, it was only the 'protected' CDs, their response... 'that may be the case, but I've already answered that issue.' (these are direct quotes by the way)

    2. Re:phillips and protection by eric76 · · Score: 2, Informative

      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.

  5. A long time ago... by mikiN · · Score: 5, Interesting
    in a galaxy far away two companies called Philips and Sony wrote the Red Book on CD-DA (Compact Disc-Digital Audio) and that was that. All CD players in existence could happily play CD's mastered to that standard. To prevent copying there existed the CP (Copy Prohibit) flag hidden away in the subcodes. To allow people to make a personal backup copy there was added an SCMS (Serial Copy Management System) control bit to count the number of copies made, up to 1, obviously.

    The fact that CD-ROM/CD-R manufacturers later ignored SCMS completely by allowing any audio-CD to be copied regardless of CP/SCMS bit values doesn't mean that the recording industry should level their wrath on us poor consumers by bombarding us with unplayable CD's.

    It's the drive manufacturers who chose to circumvent the SCMS policy in the first place. In a way, it can even be said that they are assisting in circumventing a copy protection scheme and as such are violating the DMCA

    Anyway, these so-called 'copy-protected' CD's do not conform to the standard so should not be sold pretending that they do.

    --
    The Hacker's Guide To The Kernel: Don't panic()!
    1. Re:A long time ago... by ASkGNet · · Score: 3, Interesting

      And today copy protected cd's do a bit more than set a hidden subchannel code flag. Today, there are cases of a particular copy protection killing macintosh cd drives (jamming them), so they can only be opened by a service technician, a copy protection (which supposedly never saw the light) that would crash the OS/hard drive of the PC that its CDROM drive was used to playback the CD, now we have copy protections that simply destroy the media (DVD in this case) after a set period of time.

      Sometimes greed tops every other emotion and feeling. Recording companies have this syndrome for a long time already.

  6. I guess you could.. by jotaeleemeese · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ... if you were not warned in advence.

    And warned does not mean small text in a lose paper inside the box in which the TV is packaged. Warned should be a big label in red letters with "WARNING" in capital letters in the top of the box and the legal responsibitlity of the seller explaining this.

    --
    IANAL but write like a drunk one.
  7. I got screwed by EMI by EricKoh · · Score: 2, Interesting

    A little off topic, but I feel the need to warn consumers of the potential pitfalls of buying these crippled CDs. I just bought 2 CDs today using EMIs 'Copy Protection CD' technology. Both CDs wouldnt play properly on my portable cd player (iRiver IMP550). Each track would start skipping after a few seconds of play. I suspect it has something to do the electronic shock protection present on the player. (Unfortunately I cannot turn it the ESP feature off) The CDs would play on the PC (windows media player etc), but there would be clicks every now and then. The clicks are not present and the CD plays properly on windows if I install their software player. Any solutions to this problem?

    1. Re:I got screwed by EMI by PurpleFloyd · · Score: 4, Informative
      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.

      --

      That's it. I'm no longer part of Team Sanity.
  8. The answer is simple by Mr_Tulip · · Score: 2, Funny
    Do exactly what a good citizen should do...

    Throw away all your DRM-unaware HiFi equipment and replace it with shiny, new non-copyright-infringing gear.

    Or download the songs in mp3 format from some anonymous ftp, and listen to it on your PC.

    It's your call.