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

A long time ago...

[mikiN]

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.