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New Anti-Swap CDs Hit Shelves
floppy ears writes "Watch out for the new Anthony Hamilton CD, Coming From Where I'm From. The CD has two sets of tracks: one set of "encrypted" songs that can be handled by CD players but cannot be ripped, and a duplicate set of tracks in WMA format. In CD players, the disc plays normally (in theory). When put into a computer, the disc installs software to keep the music secure, but allows you to copy some or all of the Windows Media tracks to your hard drive. What a shame that I'm running Linux and my portable MP3 player doesn't support WMA."
Information wants to be free. As in speech.
Discuss.
Get your own free personal location tracker
The last time someone made an copy protection scheme for "CDs", didn't it only affect the first track on Linux? And even that could be gotten around? It's really simple - just rip everything but track 1 using CDParanoia.
Don't buy it.
I do not like the idea of a cd installing software such as this.
So how many hours do you think it takes for this to be cracked 2-3 hours?
Where there's a will, there's a way!
And a couple patch cables later... what restrictions?
Just boycott them early,
boycott them HARD!
BOYCOTT THEM NOW!
..autorun on CDs is bad, mmkay!
First the RIAA sues downloaders, but it doesn't stop there. What bitrate is the WMA encoded at?
Oh wait..
i l) -2003-WCR
Anthony_Hamilton-Comin_From_Where_Im_From_(Reta
hit the net about 11 days ago.. damn.
I stopped buying cds from these fuckers 4 years ago. ANyone who continused to buy their crap deserves whatever they get.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
..who the frig is Anthony Hamilton, and is this an artist we should be getting all upset about 'losing' (for lack of a better slashdot-oriented term) in the first place?
Anyone wanna take bets on how long before someone cracks this new 'feature'?
A CD doesn't seem like a "smart" device. How does it know it's in a CD player instead of a CDROM on a computer?
Proverbs 21:19
If it was easier to buy mp3's than rip them off (searching p2p's or whatever) and if you could get all the benefits of pirate mp3's - listen anywhere, have a copy at home and on my portable player etc. then people would give them money.
Instead - the music industry makes expensive stuff thats increasingly inconvienient and wonders why people are going elsewhere for their music. Oh and they don't pay the artists properly either - just in case we weren't pissed at them enough.
the mind boggles....
Yet another way to get WMA spread across our computers. Can't they classify this automatic installation of software as a worm? What if we don't want to compromise our computers with this? Then we could claim they are discriminating against us against infecting our own computers.
thank dog that stuff doesn't just automaticly install itself into linux.
I hate this term. This music is not secure. It is restricted.
I'll have to install Wine just to get my CD to not work.
What usually happens when people say something can't be hacked or cracked? Hmmm...
whats the point of all this copy protection. its gonna be broken anyway. tell Anthony to work on making his tracks better instead of worrying about piracy
I heard a story about this on the radio this morning. A representative for the RIAA stated that "If a hacker is really determined, he's obviously going to figure it out". It's good, I suppose that they are at least bright enough to realize this. But my question is if they do aleady realize this, why are they even bothering? Are there any "determined hackers" out there who may be reading this? How long's it gonna take...probably not much longer than it will for me to finish this sente...
Quod scripsi, scripsi.
How exactly can you encrypt something, and have it decrypted on a device which has no CPU or way of running a decryption algorithm?
Its just a shame that all this technology will be beaten by simply swapping the sessions. Just have your multi session drive read the session with the audio tracks instead of the one with the wma. If their "encryptions" prevents use of ripping digitally, it can still be ripped analog style, which means it can still be turned into mp3 and ogg/vorbis very easily. Why don't they just stop. With all the money invested in trying to build a better lock, they could have changed buisness models numerous times.
Don't waste time... procrastinate now!
What a shame that I'm running Linux and my portable MP3 player doesn't support WMA.
Don't be a baby. You can play WMA files with MPlayer.
But these "secure digital" tracks cannot be played on another computer should they be uploaded to the Net. "The whole concept was to create a legally licensed structure" for computer use of recorded music, says William Whitmore of SunnComm, which designed the anti-copy technology.
.02
FREE USE! I buy a music CD. I want to listen to it in multiple computers... One of these computer does not have a CDROM drive, only a network connection (floppy would be out of the question).
I say, cool, WMAs (if I am a Windows person), I will just copy them over the network to the other computer (via Internet if I am at work) and listen to them. Whoops, can't do that, because someone thinks that free-use is a bunch of bullshit while piracy is JUST WRONG!
I will continue to ONLY SUPPORT those bands that allow the freedom of recording, distributing, and listening of their songs, until the rest of them figure out that fair-use is fair.
My worthless
Wasn't there the ability to have Win Media playable on linux? I thought it was rather cheaply licensed.
Roll your own.
What bitrate are the WMA files? Dont tell me they are 64bit. I give hackers 2 weeks before a vounerability is found in the WMA encoder/Decoder that will allow a worm to propogate the net installing a song saying "RIAA Sucks"
...on how long it will be before this new copy proof cd has been cracked. I give it until Monday.
Ok, seriously, as fancy as the disc sounds, the recording industry doesn't have the best track record of producing strong piracy controls. IIRC, the last scheme they tried was defeated with a magic marker.
Children in the backseats don't cause accidents. Accidents in the back seats cause children.
Is how the media is going on and on about how now users can transfer the songs to their computer or portable media device... just like you can do with any earlier CD! It's not a new feature. In fact, the limitations they place on it make a de-feature.
I guess a felt tip marker will not circumvent this scheme.
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
Hey, at least it will play on the majority of people's computers. My windows box IS my stereo, and not being able to play such CDs I own as the new Radiohead album is a tough pill to swallow. I much prefer this method of copy protection to the old "computer are bad" approach.
EVAR
They're trying out an egregious new tactic with someone who won't lose them a lot of sales if it backfires. "Always mount a scratch monkey."
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
According to my calculations, a story about some hackers who managed to crack this scheme should be hitting /. right. about. now...
By reading this sig, you agree to the terms of my sig license.
If I wasn't so against encouraging the bastards with my money I would go buy the damn thing, and rip it just to prove it can be done, and that its not even hard. Hell, maybe I'll just take it home and rip it then return it to the store :) Watch for it on Kazaa tonite, baby....
...anti-swap by virtue of it's content (with or without copy-protection)?
Tim
Raido shack has a patch for this however.
It really makes me wonder why recording studios spend millions of dollars researching these things when all it takes is one person to post this to kazaa and defeat the whole purpose of the encryption.
I guess this is why I am a CS major and not a business one.
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
"What a shame that I'm running Linux"
/. don't like Linux either
Yeah, you're among friends here. Most people who read
and my portable MP3 player doesn't support WMA
Bummer...somehow, I also thought MP3s and WMA files were the exact same thing. You mean they are different formats and your MP3 player won't play WMAs?!
Bastards!
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
Okay, So the first step was to crush napster, the second step was to sue people that share files and now the third step sell unusable CDs.
Smart.
How about this:
I will not buy Music under the RIAA's control period. I will wait for them to go out of business before I ever spend a dollar again.
yeah.. sounds like a plan.
We have caught the sniper like a duck in a noose. We understand that hearing us say this is important to you...
I'm assuming under the loose definitions of the DMCA, that this is considered a copyright protection device. Ok. So what happens if any system, i.e.: Mac's built-in CD ripper, can still rip the CD? Will the RIAA use the DMCA to get rid of any software that can rip a CD?
I know it's far-fetched, but then who could've predicted that the RIAA would have the stupidity to sue a 12 year-old?
_______
2B1ASK1
What a shame it is that I've decided the RIAA isn't getting any more money from me.
They can take their copy protected crap and stick it right here.
If you buy this and the place you buy it from specifies or implies that it is a CD, return it. They are required by law (at least in Canada and in the U.S.) to accept it for a full refund.
My brother just bought David Usher's latest album. It played in the car but not in his laptop and that's where he spends most of his time listening to music. Note that his laptop met all the requirements listed on the back cover, it just wouldn't play... no CD audio, no WMA, nothing. And of course, it would prevent him from transferring the music to an iPod if it would play only WMA. He took the thing back to Music World. We wrote complaints to EMI Music, Music World, and David Usher's management company saying he didn't appreciate being assumed to be a music pirate, he didn't appreciate misleading notifications on the album cover (stating that it would work in his computer), and that he did not appreciate having his Fair Use rights curtailed.
There was no response, of course, despite claims by at least one company that they would respond within x business days.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
The neophyte PC user might get stymied by this, sure. But anyone with a reasonable grasp of their PC will get around this easily.
1) Don't allow CDs to automatically read or execute anything, ever.
2) How can data on a CD possibly be hidden without be completely incompatible with old CD players? Even if the CD isn't formatted for PC reading it will still contain the song data in audio CD format.
3) Is this even a new issue? I've seen CDs like this as long ago as 1999.
what about SPDIF output from CD players? Would it still work? If so, there will be thousands people who have SPDIF compatible sound cards and they would be able to rip-off. OTOH, if SPDIF output is not possible, then there may be lots of return plus possibility of class asction lawsuit in america for deliberately selling defective CD.
High-end CD players and car CD players likely will not be able to handle it. Car CD players use a shock buffer which requires a true "random access" for reading ahead fast. The "encryption" usually consists of faulty bits on the CD, which results in read errors. Car CD players and high-end players try to correct for this, which does not work because there is no "true" faulty bit (which may be readable in some of the passes), but the CD is intentionally made as a faulty product!
The best thing you can do is to return the CD unopened. This way, the recall figures in the sales will go up, and even 60-year-old executives with business plans from the fifties will learn.
Who the hell is Anthony Hamilton? Only once somebody like Madonna or Coldplay does this will it make an impact.
still sucks, tho.
-n-
from the article:
"Another link allows you to send e-mail to friends so they can download a copy of the song playable for 10 days..."
So they're actually setting up file sharing software on your PC (or do they mean the song is attached in the email? AND the software for playing it?). That's pretty sweet.
You know they'll be burned on this, there is simply no way a cd can play in a cd player and not be ripped. But at least, what, 3 or 4 years after napster, they're finally starting to get it.
Does anyone have more details on the software that's being installed or the file sharing properties?
closed minded is as closed minded does
Record companies can proceed, thinking they have secure music, and developers can write software that will extract the songs from the audio part.
Everybody wins!I'm gonna guess that (if I actually wanted Windows Media on my macs) this also means that I couldn't transfer these files to/from my home tower to/from my laptop. Yipee.
Furthermore, I wonder if the songs are so tied to patricular computer, that people with WM portable players will have problems getting them (the files) to run on them (the player).
You know what?
Who gives a fuck about this stupid encryption crap! Take the fuckin CD play it and dub the fuckin audio stream. ( ooo look at this app called WavStudio.. )
More painful, but still and will always work.
one set of "encrypted" songs that can be handled by CD players but cannot be ripped
I don't see how this is possible given current CD player technology. If the CD player can read the stream of bits off the CD, and turn it seamlessly into music, then my computer (which is much more sophisticated than my CD player) should also be able to do so.
Bits is bits. "dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/home/rip-cd" will transfer those bits. My choice of friendly utility that translates CD-format music bits into mp3, or ogg, or whatever should then work on those bits.
Am I missing something?
This may be a silly question but would Anthony Hamilton's album (or individual songs) be different than any other album from the iTunes Music Store or is it just the CD sold in stores? I would assume it's the latter.
As with the sun's light
My mom was magnificent
Unquestionable
This must be a new record company PR ploy. Release little known artist's CD with DRM so that news outlets, which would have ignored it otherwise, talk about it.
Or maybe I'm just an unhip curmudgeon?
Doesn't it still have to comply with ISO/IEC 60908 to have the CD Digital Audio logo on it? Shouldn't any CD player - hardware or software - on a non-drm-loving OS that plays media of this standard still be able to play/rip it?
i probably don't know enough about the standard or software cd players (that actually buffer the audio)
= ripped music = try again hated oligarchs
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
CD is a Philips trademark/list of patents which is supported by a very huge specification format that those "flawed optical disks" aren't compliant.
Has anyone considered the fact that if you can play it on a PC there is almost no way to keep it secure. It is the infamous "analog hole" - ust hook a PC's audio in port to an audio out on another PC. Play the song through your sound card and capture the sound on the other PC - heck it could even be accomplished with one PC. You might lose some clarity, but this is Snoop D-O Double-G MP3s we're talking about, not a Symphony at Carnegie hall...
-Coach
"Never upset a goalie, getting hit with a blocker is an unpleasent experience - facemask or not." -Me
I have never understood why companies want their CDs to only play on CD players and not on PCs. If all CDs couldn't be played on PC, but could be played on CD players, people would just rip them the old fasion way... 1x analog/optical ripping. So, if we can copy the music no matter what they do, why do they do it?
You talk better than you fool!
1) Buy it
2) Test it
3) Return it
4) Repeat
I'd be fun to bring a laptop to the music store and just hang out outside for an afternoon until you blow through all their copies.
Stupid record companies, you'd think they'd actually want to make MONEY or something!
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Do we have to wait for Windows Media Player 9 for Mac (with added Microsoft DRM goodness) or what?
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
So the files are in .wma format and it installs software. Could this software be Microsoft's DRM attempt. If that's the case there should be a crack soon. I'll give a day or so.
This is an easy one. I simply will not purchase any CD that has platform proprietary requirements built into the CD or that cannot be ripped for fair use.
A much better solution format to encrypting CD's is here.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
for the most part, at least. I don't have to worry about this stuff...
Hmm, so I suppose running the speaker out back through to the line-in of the sound card and pressing 'record' in any sound recording program would be... too... tough... >_>
*looks around in a frenzy* _
If you have a Linux system (or even a Mac, for that matter,) then the software will not install that 'secures' the music. Therefore, your computer will happily see (and rip,) the audio CD tracks. If you are not using a Windows system, you may safely ignore the WMA files.
And, if you turn off autorun on your Windows system, you should still be able to avoid installing the 'securing' software, and rip the audio CD tracks...
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
-jls
Techno-pagan
Ok, first off, yes It sucks that that they are using wma and not mp3 or ogg or something, and yes it there could be problems playing it in some cd players, and yes to a bunch of other quite valid complaints.
Why then is this a good thing? because at least they are making an (albeit half-assed) attempt at letting people listen to the music that they paid for.
If it's this or having a virus on the fscking cd to prevent me from playing a song on my computer, then this is definitly a good thing.
The biggest question I have is if the wma tracks are made to only play within this software or can someone just rip them and listen to them in mplayer without the software?
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
By definition, if a track is encrypted, and must be decrypted in order to be played. The question is, how can it be encrypted if the CD players already on the market can play it, considering that they don't have any decryption functionality...
#define DRM chmod 000
mark do you think you'll have to make with a Sharpie this time?
"And this is my boy, Sherman. Speak, Sherman." "Hello." "Good boy."
do the cd's still hold 74/80 minutes of the uncompressed music?
Ah, so that may explain why I haven't heard of him before. I was wondering, are they going to use this as a test - look, we released this CD (from a relative unknown) and nobody's sharing his music! And no complaints! Use it for everyone!
Could be a problem. Can they enforce some sort of labelling? Probably not if it does indeed comply with red book, haven't read that in years to see if it allows for extra data tracks or not.
Wonder if it asks permission first?
You know, they'll take a lot of flak for this, but it honestly does seem like they're at least trying to provide fair-use copies, preview opportunities, et cetera. Not bad, actually. Of course, we'll see what the reality is, but they should get some points for effort here.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
I still have no idea how a trac can be compatible with regular CD players, but somehow invisible to a computer.
Ah well, looks like it's time to shut off Autoplay. Well, if I was planning on buying this disk, anyway. And I was running Windows.
Thomas Galvin
hehe, i can see it now my wma capable discman bursts into flames trying to figure out which to play the audio or the data(wma)... i'm sure it would just play the audio but it just seemed like a comical dilema
BAD GRAMMER F00L
' = possessive not plural
it should be "CDs".
Anthony Hamilton is a really bright artist who's taken a while to come out. I wonder if this is going to hurt his sales and growth.
"... songs that can be handled by CD players but cannot be ripped... "
If it can be played through speakers on a computer the audio can be ripped somehow, and this will always be the case. This is regardless of whether one is ripping the track directly from the cd or ripping the audio as the sound card plays it.
- - Just because I don't care, doesn't mean I don't understand. - -
It may use the compact disc format, but it's not a Digital Audio Compact Disc.
If they are going to sell a crippled disc it had better be marked as such. If I am lead to believe I am buying a disc recorded using the Red Book standard, that's damned well what I'd better get.
You can't sell a Honda Civic as a Porsche 911.
If the distinction is clearly marked on the disc, and that this disc does not conform to the Red Book standard and thus may not be 100% compatible with Red Book readers, then fine. I can make my decision to purchase or not to purchase.
NOT labling the CD as crippled/containing copy protection/etc and selling it along side Red Book discs is misrepresentation. Fraud, pure and simple.
(well, it my books anyway. Obviously the RIAA may feel differently).
Blockwars: new features including accounts, still multiplayer & free.
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
"my portable MP3 player doesn't support WMA."
And you are incapable of recording the WMA, or even the regular CD-Audio, output to mp3.. how ?
Just because you have the right to make a duplicate of the music for your own listening purposes doesn't mean they have to present it to you on a silver platter in the format that you want.
From the article:
When put into a Macintosh or Windows PC, the disc installs software to keep the music secure, and an interactive menu pops up with several links, including one to copy some or all of the Windows Media tracks to your hard drive.
An audio CD that installs software on my computer automatically? NO THANKS!
If a tree fell on a florist, and nobody was around to hear it, would he make a noise?
Press SHIFT when you insert a CD into the CD-ROM drive - Prevent CD from automatically playing.
Search "CD Autoplay" - No Topics Found
Search "Autoplay" - No Topics Found
They don't really want you to stop it, do they? And from the way it's worded I have no idea if it stops code execution, or just music CDs from playing.
{Disclaimer - 2000 Server; XP may be more/less helpful.}
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
If it doesn't meet the Philips spec for a CD, then it can't be called a CD. Has anyone actually seen this disc yet? I sincerely hope it doesn't carry the CD logo, since that would be a breach of the license
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
Everyone is well familiar with the points and counterpoints of the "It's easier to download MP3's than to go and buy a CD" argument.
What I'd like to point out here is that it is becoming increasingly difficult for end-users to buy/play CDs.
Dont' the industry techies realize that most of the rips (especially pre-release ones) are inside jobs? The experts will always crack an encryption scheme and put the music available on the Internet. The question, then, is "Can the industry afford to make life more difficult on those who actually buy CDs?" Why are they making music harder to copy for the average end-user??!! That is the least of their problems!
Capture the output (digital preferablly) from the soundcard and encode it to whatever format that is desired. This should be workable with digital outs on current soundcards, right? If not, then it has to be sent out in analog (sound) form eventually to get to the ears, so record it that way.
C:\>
I don't know who this Anthony Hamilton is, but I certainly won't be buying his CD. Oh wait, I wasn't buying any CDs anyway.
Oh, and I am not going to download his music either. I can do without music produced by those corporations, thank you.
one set of "encrypted" songs that can be handled by CD players but cannot be ripped
/dev/dsp -> lame
CD -> CD player -> sound card ->
No track is unrippable. Provided your audio chain is somewhat decent, the quality loss will be inaudible (much less than from the MP3 encoding anyway).
In CD players, the disc plays normally (in theory)
Yes, "in theory" is the keyword. In practice, it is quite different. Anyhow, if enough of those silly copy-protected CDs come out, some CDROM manufacturers will start selling units that can read them at a higher price. Who's the loser in all cases? the consumer/listener.
When put into a computer, the disc installs software to keep the music secure
Does it work under Wine?
portable MP3 player doesn't support WMA.
Get a Rio Volt. Or even better, play the MP3s generated with the method above.
I hope more and more of these CDs come out, so more and more lawsuits against the idiots who make them happen, and eventually the entire music industry gets its reputation even more tarnished than it already is, hastening its long-overdue demise.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
blar@nath blar $ mount
blar@nath blar $ cp
blar@nath blar $ mplayer blah.wma -ao pcm -aofile blah.wav
blar@nath blar $ lame -h blah.wav blah.mp3
blar@nath blar $ rm *.wma
You loose a little quality, but who cares? At least it's not WMA!
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
Got 'Hail to the Thief' today
It's the first 'Copy Controlled' disc I've ever got, and it's quite interesting how they've worked it.
The disc, ISO Buster tells me, is written in two sessions. Session 1, has the tracks, Session 2 has the software.
When I put it in the CD-RW drive, and open it's contents, all that shows up is the software "Player.exe" and it's associated files.
Windows Media Player refuses to recognise that the disc has any music tracks. As does Quick Time.
Winamp (2) when instructed to play the disc in my CD Drive, plays it, without problem. The Creative 'Play Center' that came with my soundcard is able to play it also.
The 'Player.exe' on the disc, insists on "modifying files" on my computer. It also then plays crippled versions of the songs, at only 96Kbps. Winamp and Play Center, play the tracks at full quality.
My CD Ripping software (and Creative's Play Center software) have no problem ripping the tracks to WAV, MP3, or whatever.
When I tried the disc in my DVD-Rom drive, it made grinding sounds, crashed my PC, and I had to reboot.
So, it's called a 'Copy Controlled' disc, but what it really is, is a 'Windows Media Player Blinding, DVD-Rom Drive Fscking, Otherwise Rip It And Share-Away As Normal' Disc.
What a complete waste of time for them.
Still, on the bright side, the record company is paying good money (or it's ill-gotten gains, depending on how you look at it) to license the "copy protection," er... system, and it's associated software. Which means less money for them, and the RIAA! Hurrah!
Silly tossers.
libDeCDss
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
The days of the slashdot kiddies pirating are numbered!
I'd love to hear how tracks which my CD player can play can't be ripped. I turn off autorun on my CD, don't let the RIAA's virus program onto my computer, and rip the CD Audio just like normal. Am I missing something?
Of course, I'm not about to buy this CD just to see if I'm right.....
Well, seeing as their "copy protection" software only works on Windows and Mac, any non-windows/mac OS is a copyright circumvention tool. Funfunfun.
"New Anti-Swap CD's Hit Shelves"
and thats where they will probably stay....
I give this 2 months tops before it gets cracked.
If they're going to release copy protected CDs then they won't mind forfiting money they get on every purchase of blank media and CD recorders.
The fact that you can share the tracks with your friends for 10 days is an interesting approach, although who's actually going to use it? It must be easy enough to just rip and encode the actual stream and make your own mp3s than to use shitty crippled WMAs. Here's a question: how will car CD/MP3 players view these discs? If the deck reads the files destined for a PC instead of the ones for personal CD players, will that mean it can't be played in car decks?
Regardless, I personally will never buy any of these crippled CDs. The day my favorite bands turn to this kind of bullshit is the day I stop buying their products. The only postivie thing about the primarily small and indy bands I listen to is that they still care about their fans enough to listen to why fans won't buy thier goods.
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for SEGA. ..."
Kinda makes you wonder eh?
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
What a shame that I'm running Linux and my portable MP3 player doesn't support WMA.
I guess you'll have to get it from Kazaa like the rest. I'm quite sure it'll be there quite soon...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
This will just be more "proof" that copying music hurts CD sales. Fewer people will buy the CD, and a hack will be announced which allows a high-quality rip of the CD. This will be held up as proof positive that people stealing music is the only reason CD sales are declining.
I've already voted with my wallet and I listen to FM radio a lot more than I used to. We can only hope the RIAA itself dies sooner rather than later, but I forsee CD prices actually increasing and artist compensation dropping, to cover the legal costs of suing everyone and buying congressmen. It will get worse before it gets better.
one set of "encrypted" songs that can be handled by CD players but cannot be ripped on computers
Don't most computer's have CD player's ?
From the promo copy: This one is a trip back to the good old days, when music actually meant something and artists carried with them a lil' thing called soul.
The good old days I remember was when music meant something -- you'd "stay over at his house for days making tapes of his records and sleeping on the carpet" -- and listeners carried with them a lil' thing called the right to format shift.
Guess I won't be listening to him on my iPod. But, I will continue to listen to local artists.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Ironic that this effort to ensure people do not steal the music may actually encourage MP3 downloads. I have the CD and I want to legally listen to my music from non-WMA devices...hmmmm, what do I do?
So, the article specifically mentions putting this thing in a Mac, yet we all know the state of WMA on the Mac is pretty sucktacular right now. Will this thing be rippable on a Mac or not?
I'm merely curious, mind you; I don't muck around with WMA anyway, and I'd never even heard of this artist before (and the fact I'm learning of him only because of coverage of the fact his new CD is copy-protected hardly makes me want to run out and listen to his work), and of course I'd already decided to boycott the RIAA labels anyway, so I'm not about to get this album; I would like to know, though, what it means in general with regards to ripping future music releases on the Mac (I'm sure many will wonder the same thing about Linux and other platforms, though unfortunately I'm sure the outlook is presumably even dimmer than one might surmise it to be for the Mac)...
If it plays in a normal CD player, the same method ought to work just fine. I can't imagine what the "encryption" might be, but any sane CD-ROM drive should be able to work around it.
"When put into a Macintosh (news - web sites) or Windows PC, the disc installs software to keep the music secure, and an interactive menu pops up with several links, including one to copy some or all of the Windows Media tracks to your hard drive."
So, I supposedly have free reign to play this disc in any "standard" CD player at no risk to life or limb, though I'd like to know who decides what a standard player is (is my 8-year-old stereo system standard? what about my portable CD player that also reads & plays MP3s? brand new Sony UltraCost 3000? off-brand POS that some kid just bought for $10?) and would love to see the reports in a week or two that substantiate these claims. I'd be willing to bet that the disc will "regrettably not function in some audio equipment that does not meet industry standards" (that's shamelessly plagarized, or at least paraphrased from a press release that the suits haven't yet written, mark my words). But, I digress...
The disc installs software on your machine, forces you to use Windows Media for your computerized listening pleasure, and automatically loads menus that I can promise you little Billy trying to listen to the only worthwhile track on the disc doesn't want to mess with. If more of these things are going to be released, will it be one installation per CD, one standard installation that will cover any disc you'll ever buy forever and ever, or (more likely, I think) one proprietary installed load of crudware per recording company? Don't get me wrong, I've never heard of this guy and BMG has just about guaranteed that I'll never get around to hearing any of his music, so the disc in and of itself doesn't get my shorts in a twist. If it "succeeds", though, and spawns more like it, my only recourse is to hope and pray that such CDs are limited to RIAA-produced stuff since my purchases for the longest time haven't included any of their packaged poo.
"Linux doesn't exist. Everyone knows Linux is an unlicensed version of Unix"- Kieren O'Shaughnessy
EMI has been releasing high profile discs from artists like Radiohead, Jane's Addiction and Blur in Canada for a while now. The problem is that these high profile discs do not play in many conventional players, such as my 1-year old Sony Discman.
I wrote a nasty email to EMI about it, and they replaced my Radiohead disc free of charge with a non-crippled version, including delivery. I suggest that everyone who's against this technology actually buy the CD, write a letter to them and have them send a second disc at their expense.
Here's an open letter I wrote to EMI and the RIAA
and here's an entry about a technology I found to circumvent it. It can be done with software:
How to Rip these tracks
My biggest objection with this technology is that they call them CDs, when they don't conform to the CD standard. If you look for the official Compact Disc Constortium logo, it's missing. Putting these crippled discs alongside regular CDs in a store is misleading. They should be in a seperate section of the store, in very clear packaging (a small sticker or bullet on the back of the CD isn't obvious enough)
I also don't think the artists know what's happening to their work. People who play these CDs in computers receive a far lower quality version of the song than they'd even get by downloading them online. They can't say that they're "all about the art" and release crap like this which sounds hissy and loses the bass-line.
The WMA files are ripped at very low bitrates, something like 96kpbs, presumably to prevent people from just extracting them off the data layer and using file sharing. I personally never rip anything less than 192kpbs.
-RW
"Many Net swappers "think it is their God-given right to steal music," Whitmore says. "They don't know any better. We have to teach them."
The Recording Industry and their lackeys think it is their God-given right to shaft the artists who create the music and to illegally fix their prices. They apparently don't know any better. We have to teach them. If they don't figure it out before they go entirely out of business, Great.
I'll be making sure that this album is shared widely...
Does this 'security' software simply disallow regular ripping or monitor the use of the wma files.. if its not the latter then someone can simply convert to a different format... also, i wonder if while playing the disc in a PC, is there an EULA that must be agreed to before the software is installed??? if not, there are a multitude of work arounds to the software (legally), not to mention how quickly this software will be reverse and compromised anyway. I do agree though, to a small degree, that this is at least a step in a better direction than has previously been persued.
So what happens when this software screws up someone's system badly? It's going to happen sooner or later. How much arse-covering are they going to put into the EULA to try to protect themselves, and do they seriously think that'll work?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
This didn't keep me from ripping it in iTunes into AAC. The software that installs itself only works under Winblows, of course, since that's 95% of the market right there.
As for WMA not working in your MP3 player, they don't work in my iPod either. I convert my WMAs into WAV and then back into AAC. Sounds perfect.
What is even worse is that WMA seems to be coming near the bottom of most listening tests. Restrictions or not, it's a bad format. Why couldn't they have used AAC? It can be restricted just as easily!
I have a Mac, and since WMA files won't play on a Mac, they're selling faulty merchandise.
Yeah, I know all the arguments about buying a vinyl record and expecting it to work in a tape player, but dammit, if it doesn't play in my computer, it's not a CD, and shouldn't be advertised as such.
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
Right. Encrypted redbook audio. I don't recall my cd player(s) having a Clipper chip folks! Hardly even much of a CPU. More like a PIC controller, I think.
...from installing some what... new CD ROM-drive drivers? How exactly does this stop you from reading the audio tracks?
... sorry, I mean, "use the media I purchased in any way I wish for my personal use"? (What makes you think I'm an Amerikan, folks? Different rules here, thanks.)
So the reality of this is...
It's a CD that can only hold maybe 3/4 the amount of music CD's were designed to hold, and anything you want to snatch from the SPDIF jack on the back of your CD player can happily be recorded to... oh, say another CD (digitally, with all the original bits intact save for jitter), or Minidisc, or MP3 player, or whatever.
And when you play it on your PC, you can hold down the Shift key as you close the CD drawer to prevent Windows' Autoplay feature... Oh, wait, that is *if* you use Windows,
Now, more importantly. Labelling. Am I being *told* that I'm buying a CD that breaks my "God given right to steal music?"
Right.... Another half-assed attempt. If the music industry wanted to put some *real* effort in this, they'd simply work encryption (better than CSS!) into SACD's, and Sony would flood the market with cheap SACD players and re-release their whole catalogue on SACD, then stop pressing CDs.
Or, of course, they could price CDs reasonably so we'd go out and buy shitloads more, regardless of the fact that there's only one track half-worth listening to amongst all the made-for-radio/lowest-common-denominator garbage.
mindslip.
Discs don't install software, people do. With autoplay turned off, nothing will get installed without the user's authorization.
Remember, if our music isn't secure then the terrorists have already won.
will they ever learn.
Many Net swappers "think it is their God-given right to steal music," Whitmore says. "They don't know any better. We have to teach them."
What the public doesn't need to be taught is that the RIAA has been handing out raw deal record contracts for decades now. Sure it harms the artist when I don't buy a CD, but it harms the RIAA's interests about 15 times more. To me, that makes it worth it. Lesser of two evils and all that.
I show my support for the artists by dropping a dollar in the tip jar down at the bar. They're a lot more appreciative of my passion for music than the RIAA has been. Hey it's a buyer's market!
Your kingdom eh? no wonder you need to ask someone to mod for you ..
What if I play from my CD player to the back of my optical in on my sound card?
Digital copy, no copy protection; or is the copy protection integrated into the music?
?
I say, who the hell is Anthony Hamilton?
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
Who's that guy? Here in .de land i could just return the cd if there was no indication that it's copy protected.
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
With all of the encoder on the net just copy the wma to you hrd drive and convert them to mp3. Walla Copy protection defeted.
Unless they can encrypt the audio up to the point that it enters the ears, it can be ripped with a soudn capture card or d/a io. Any of these schemes just causes a speed bump for creating mp3s and hurts the music industry by causing incompatible media.
Just make MP3s easier to buy. I'm more than happy supporting the artists!
Rich
But who really cares, this is a publicity stunt to see bolster a sagging artist.
In other news, an unidentified computer enthusiast was reported as responding. Many RIAA flunkies "Think its possible to copy preotect a CD. They apparently learned nothing from the Magic Marker incident. We will once again have to teach them."
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
Before, pirating music was always a huge ethical issue with me. Now, the issue has been simpliefied for me. I can't purchase a CD and rip it for use on my iPod, so I'll just find it on Kazaa, and save the cost of the "backup media".
Enjoying new music has never been cheaper, thanks RIAA.
(Disclaimer: This post is satire. I don't really buy any CDs anymore.)
...they will do this to a CD with music I'm actually interested in hearing.
Actually, on second thought, they probably won't.
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
During our summer vacation this year, my wife and I amused ourselves by
taking leisurely drives in Ohio and photographing every diamond-shaped
highway sign that we saw along the roadsides. (Well, not every sign; only
the distinct ones.) For provenance, I also stood at the base of each sign
and measured its GPS coordinates.
This turned out to be even more fun than a scavenger hunt, so we filled in
some gaps when we returned to California, thereby proving my theorem of protinf Windows Media Player 9 to GNU/Linux using Python and Expect, which can be found in LaTeX format on my website.
Sincerely,
Donald E. Knuth, Esq.
Donald E. Knuth, Professor Emeritus of The Art of Computer Programming at Stanford University
Radiohead's latest album is also 'Content Protected' (a.k.a unplayable) such that you have to use some naff Java applet to listen to the music on a PC.
Of course on my Mac, it ripped perfectly in iTunes, no problem...
And the album is called.... Hail to the Thief. Ironic, no?
Mark
PS The first copy I bought wouldn't play, wouldn't rip, would barely mount - I figured it was the copy protection, but swiftly realised it was the inch-wide star-shaped crack on the back
Liked this comment? Why not buy me something nice
because encryption is always really hard to break, especially when it comes from the RIAA
Can any anti-theft protection ever truly prevent real audio equipment from simply piping the decrypted music to a recording device?
I'm speaking from ignorance, but if it can get to the speakers at all, surely it can be intercepted along the way for recording purposes?
"A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself."
Why can't they just stop trying so hard to piss people off. If they'd stop trying to teach people, perhaps fewer prospective customers, like myself, would run, crying bloody murder.
I don't care to steal music-I've got the music I want (or if I want something new, I buy it/download it from iTMS). However, once I own it, I want to be able to listen to it on my terms. Why would I purchase music if I'm not getting anything better/more convenient and have to buy new equipment to listen to the music besides.
I'm going to start writing letters to the artists: "I bought your CD, but couldn't play it because of some crazyass copy protection scheme, so I had to return it. I bought a copy of Yanni instead."
I'm hoping they'll eventually throw a hissy fit and complain to their managers/producers/labels/etc. This probably won't make a difference, but maybe it will, and at the very least someone at the record labels will have to deal with the annoyance, which makes me happy.
I went in to Future Shop the other day to pick up a copy of Nickleback's latest. I saw a Copy Protected sticker on it, and walked out without the CD.
Went home, got the tracks in a few minutes off networks.
I'd have been quite happy to buy it, if I wasn't getting a lot more utility from stealing it.
PS: It's an interesting collection of songs. Jury's still out, but I think I'm going to like it.
Many Net swappers "think it is their God-given right to steal music," Whitmore says. "They don't know any better. We have to teach them."
Sharing is not stealing.
Copy protection is meaningless, all CDs are "rippable": : CD player output --> Soundcard input
Do you really want your *data* installing software on your PC? Rooted "CDs" anyone? Not to mention that you can email them to a friend, songs that'll disappear after 10 days... that has also got to be executables. I see these files banned as executable attachments immidiately. Thanks, but no thanks. Not exactly a fan of that artist, but if I was, I'd get it on Kazaa and not in a store...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Just record the output and convert it to mp3.
Instant crack of any protection system.
Been doing it since casette tapes.
I just don't get it... I have a Mac here at home and with multi-session CD's it mounts both sessions as different CD's on the desktop... when I bring the same CD to work and try to play it on my Windows 2000 box it asks if I want to install all kinds of junk to play the CD. I can't listen to the CD with WinAmp at all like I can with any other normal CD...
So I have to download it (usually via IRC) and store a copy on my computer at work just so I can conveniently listen to a CD I bought... I wonder how much this brings up the RIAA's numbers of illegally downloaded songs... for instance if I didn't know all that much about computers and I was downloading songs I legitimately should be able to make MP3's out of and now Kazaa downloads them into a shared folder... well now the RIAA has 10-15 tracks more that they can claim are being widespread because I just wanted to listen to music I had given them money for.
All of the users I support can not install software. Admittedly spyware tends to get around this (and I'm sure there are other similarities to spyware)
My users are going to be a bit upset if they are found in volation of internal IP policy (installing unauthorized software) for just inserting a music cd they bought to listen at work.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
Drop the CD in your OS X machine, and rip the "Audio CD" mounted image... Just ignore the other one.... Tested and confirmed.
so if a cd is now copy protected, does that mean we can return it if we dont like it, and that way the record companies wont have to worry about people copying them and returning them?
Poor sod.
I went in to Future Shop (Future Shop???) the other day to pick up a copy of Nickleback's latest. I then realized I don't listen to shitty, cookie-cutter mook rock, and walked out without the CD.
If it doesn't meet the Red Book/Blue Book standards, it is not a CD, and Phillips should sue them if the use the Compact Disc Audio logo anywhere on the product. Also, CD retailers should refuse to carry them, as they WILL be returned much more often as purchasers discover they simply don't work with their hardware. We can also help out by buying, opening, then immediately returning one every time we get a chance! What are the chances of these working properly with Sony's car MP3 players?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
We have open source software.. So why not make open source music? (I know it has been covered before, like opsound.com) Have an artist create their own CD, upload it to a website, make 80% of their music available for download/shareable then the other 20% can be designated for a CD or downloadable CD. Any CD that sells online every artist gets a desginated and equal portion of the proceeds the other goes for cost. Once you get a lot of CD's you can make a nice CD Set and be able to say have 700MB of mp3's rather than 13 tracks, THUS giving you more value. The stuff you buy in CD's or download will not be restricted by copyright in terms of sharing/copying, thus giving what the consumer wants.
;)
The idea here, is the community will of course be non-profit and consist primarily of voluenteers. Artists (which will be independant) will get more compensation per sell of each CD, than what the record companies are paying. In addition, the artist will be contributing something for the betterment of everyone, and not be controlled by these greedy companies whose business model is so 70's.
This will also take the RIAA out of the picture, yeah sure, they will bitch and complain if it becomes big and probably try to lawsuit us somehow, however, this is a digital age, where the people have more power than ever before, and the RIAA will be squashed in the end.
musicforge.net?
The owner of the trademark is Philips, not Pioneer. They get to decide who can use the CD logo, and who can call something a "Compact Disc."
Philips has already threatened to sue companies that release such discs and label them as CDs. Philips is rightly worried that such incompatible discs (which often refuse to play correctly on some high-end and some consumer level players) will dilute the Compact Disc trademark, or worse, harm it substantially. Philips' position, which I support, is that a CD must conform to the Red Book standard for audio Compact Discs. Anything else isn't a CD.
I don't have the exact instructions handy, but from what I recall when I disabled auto-play on both CD and DVD drives, it involved editing the registry. Note, each drive "type" (CD-ROM, DVD, etc) has different entries - be sure to update the correct registry entries...it's *not* simple on XP...at least it wasn't for me.
.idx files and similar that Windows XP uses to track one's computer usage.
...or worse, a copy protected CD being unknowingly infected by a virus during manufacture...Kazaa and similar for some folks may actually be a "safer" place to obtain music.
:)
So in short, it's clear Microsoft has purposedly made turning auto-play very difficult, much like how they have made it damn near impossible, unless one is a computer guru, to remove all the various
Ok, my post has become a tirade, but anyways when one runs Windows one shouldn't be surprised if programs auto-install, applications break, reboots, blue screens, etc...it's the nature of the beast.
Anyways, getting back to the issue at hand, I don't see how CD copy protection is going to help sales...if anything it could adversely affect sales once reports start coming out about customer's computers being damaged...
Stealth "auto-installing" programs on music CDs is trouble waiting to happen for both users and the RIAA and related entities - class-action lawsuit territory...
I personally haven't bought a music CD in several years...I find the all-music channels on Comcast digitial cable to be more than adequate for my needs...no need for me to ever buy music CDs again; no need to worry about "auto-play" either
Ron
...it's an anti-piracy circumvention device!
Seriously. According to the DMCA, couldn't use of that cable to rip one of these copy protected CDs be construed as such?
Just goes to show how convoluted and idiotic the logic behind these new laws has become.
-----
---- "Excuse me. Where's the children's gun section?"
If it can supposedly be played normally on any CD player, why not just plug the CD player's line-out into the sound card's line-in and re-record it? Hell my CD player has optical thingies, so theoretically there would be no signal loss. My sound card doesn't have optical input, but there are probably cards out there that do. Yet another reason not to buy CDs anymore. I wish I could find a list of RIAA artist's addresses so I could write them and let them know I'm not purchasing their music any longer.
I only RIP music so that my PC can quietly stream it to my Tivo... the Tive also only plays MP3s. This is one album that I won't be able to buy or play. Even though I have $20k of home entertainment hardware I don't own a CD player, everything is software driven and somewhere along the line involves a PC. I guess I'm out.
Yeah, well who cares about linux. You all do nothing but complain about shit all day anyways. Plus, since you already do things like steal code, they shouldn't let you steal music too.
Remind me to put the latest anti-piracy methods when I release a CD. Not only do you get free publicity, but you get people buying the CD just to try to crack it, regardless of the music.
--
Are you a Chipotle Fan?
Seems to me the music industry is doing all it can manage to put people off buying their products. I don't know of many other industries that rely on such a small number of products and deliberatley break them so their customers don't have to go through the trouble of using them. It's pretty surreal really. -- Matthew An Empty List is a Sorted List
I don't use auto run and I'm certainly not going to install software to listen to my music. I'll just mount it in linux, copy the files, the boot to windows, convert the files to mp3, then boot to linux and listen to my heart content. And if a song or two accidentally ends up back on a cd for my friends to borrow...
Anywho, I don't see this as being a major deterant to copyright infringment.
-Tim Louden
Anthony Hamilton is apparently (more likely his producer is) not very knowledgable about all his record and distribution deals. He is featured on the iTunes Music store, where his MP3's can be downloaded burned and shared, obviously giving a chance for thoose of you wiht iPods, because the iTunes store is supposed to come out with a windows port soon. The true irony in this is that his "Anti-Swap" CD is selling on amazon.com for $10.99, while the entire cd can be bought on iTunes for $9.99
What's another word for Thesaurus?
-Steve Wright
1. Doesn't play in my PC , CD Player S/W keeps trying and destroys another Sony CD-ROM , better RA it back to SONY again (3 or 4 times a year).
2. Try it in DVD player , DVD player sees a Data CD and fails to play WMP as it is not an mp3.
yay no music.
Type unto others as you would have them type unto you.
Is this the same copy right protection that was on the Massive Attacks 100th Window CD?
Popped into my PC, whirred arround like crazy, jammed up my CD player, had to reboot the PC to open it again. Popped it in again and ripped perfectly using CDex.
I should've demanded my money back, because it the "copy protect" feature doesn't work as advertised
I heard that optical-out ports exist and can be used, is this true? Christ. If you can listen to it, you can copy it. Why is it so hard for them to understand this?
Security through promiscuity is no better than security through obscurity.
It is a good idea, as it protects the artists rights (not every idiot can rip it), but without the disadvantages that other crippled CD's have (can't play them at work) as it will still work in a PC's CD-ROM drive.
I guess it was predictable that this attempt to make copy protection less restrictive for the buyer would misunderstood as a personal attack by the Mac^H^H^Hslashdot crowd...
Just rip the individual tracks to WAV as per usual (as it usually works in 'nix wherein certain mechanisms in winblows attempt to thwart this) then either convert to mp3 or ogg... less quality lost than using a lossy WMA file (which was probably DRM'ed=unreadable anyhow)
in xp pro and 2K run gpedit.msc, computer config, admin templates, system, the setting is in there..policy is called either disable autoplay or turn autoplay off...
just enable the policy to shut off the annoying autoplay
Kicking unrepentant companies in the wallet is one thing, but further humiliating them by publicly putting them lower on the totem pole than companies who repent from Restricted CD's, is even more effective.
You've actually done us a public service by pointing out these reformed souls.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Is is just a matter of time anyways until the first CD-ROM players / burners that can read it is released.
The perfect irony would be some of the CD-R(W) maker to release one burner capable of burning such a CD.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
IANAL, and have the following question: I assume from how this sounds that it will exploit the autorun 'feature' of windows to go ahead and install a program. This would be pretty pointless if they asked me if I wanted it, so I assume they will just go ahead and do it.
Now, I know that there aren't many laws describing what software can and can't do, but taking an action like installing something (that may even come with a license that is accepted by installing said software), but dang it, I don't think anybody has the right to install anything on my computer without my expressed consent, and inserting a CD to listen to music definitely does not qualify in my mind.
So my question is "Is this legally sound? Can they do that?" I personally could think of various scenarious where an action like that could cause me financial harm at least in the form of lost time. (Imagine my hard drive being nearly full and a program trying to install [for non-windows users, you will see the most freakish behaviour including reboot loops etc when this happens] or even if there was a bug in their program and it crashed my computer.)
Also, once someone installs a program like that, I'd bet it would phone home whenever it felt like it. Worse even, if I manually try to uninstall whatever software they put on my computer (or, for that matter "circumvent" the installation), am I not in a way violating the DMCA?
This is scary stuff and it irritates me to no end that they get away with it. If this is not illegal yet, I really think it should be. What do you think?
Reinard
sorry if this has already been mentioned (redundant) but if there's an autorun .exe on the disc that installs shackleware on the computer which prevents you from ripping or whatever... just turn off that wonderful 'feature' so the autorun never gets a chance to do its thing. Note: disabling autoinsert notification may be a DMCA violation as of today.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
Grammar. Interestingly (to me), while plural CDs is correct, plural Ph.D.'s is also correct. When an acronym contains punctuation, an apostrophe should be used in plural form.
"That'll stop 'em!" Sure. All they have to do now to make the CDs totally undecipherable is put the lyrics on the sleeve in pig-latin.
Surely, we don't need instructions on shampoo bottles, do we?.
No no, you forgot "Libertarianism is anarchy".
That sounds great. Unfortunately, the only setting for DVD-ROM drives is the region code.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
I have a single entry called "Shortcut keys on the desktop" in the windows 98se helpfile that says this. Only reference.
Fuck it. Those bastards. Not getting any of my moneyl Fucking bastards. Fuck 'em all.
I realize that ripping this CD on a computer (were I interested) is probably trivial, but I've got a question anyway.
My DVD player has digital outputs. Is there anything stopping me from popping this CD in my DVD player and then capturing the digital output with my SB Audigy? Or is there some sort of (as yet unhacked) encryption going on at the digital level? Or would my DVD player just crap itself upon trying to read this "broken" CD?
Arista knows a whole bunch of hackers will buy the CD just to use it to find a way around the "encryption." That's a few sales in the pocket!
One copy protected Compact Disk, no CDDA spec $14.95
One Forgiving CD player or resonable quality $105.99
One Stero RCA to mini stero patch cord $2.95
Not haveing to listen to shitty 128kbps WMA rips priceless.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Its just a shame that all this technology will be beaten by simply swapping the sessions
I've posted this before, and no doubt I'll post it again...
Rip your CDs to an ISO with CDRWin or BlindRead, with C2 error correction disabled (but leave jitter correction turned on). Then mount the disk image via Daemon Tools or the like, and use any normal CD audio ripper (in its fastest mode, since no errors or jitter can occur this way) such as CDex to extract the audio tracks from the virtual drive.
Works on every "defective" CD on the market, gives a perfect rip every time (for which reason I even use this method to rip non-defective CDs), and in many cases, it even takes less total time than using the CD audio ripper (assuming a non-defective CD) directly on the physical CD.
You'll only have a problem if your drive doesn't support turning off C2 correction, in which case, spring the fifty bucks to get a cheap older Plextor drive from Blindwrite's "supported drives" list.
Disclaimer - I have never even heard of the artist mentioned in the FP, and haven't tried this method on that particular CD. As I said, though, I have yet to fail to rip a CD this way, and have little doubt it would work in this case as well (sounds like just another cheesy multi-session standards violation hack, with the added "bonus" of running a trojan on your machine if you have unwisely left autorun turned on).
I give it 5 minutes. Has the RIAA realized that the more they promote stuff like this the more eager people are to break it. They need to learn that nothing is secure.
What happens when I disable auto-play on the drive or hold shift down when I pop that cd in? I don't like the idea of anti-user software installing itself with out my say so.
--
hecubas
Hecubas
Ooh, good idea. Everyone should do this.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
maybe only certain versions of HTTT have the copy protection.
mine doesnt.
(I have the "special edition" with the big case/book)
the history of the world
So has anyone actually checked the P2P networks yet to see if this has made it on to them? If a reasonable rip is on there in the first couple of days then this protection system has likely failed.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Audio tracks don't have a direct tack in Linux anyays, /dev/cdrom usually points to a device that gives the data track(s).
If I wasn't boycottining the RIAA, and if I had a clue who this artist is, I'd just rip it. It sounds like they are relying on the autorun feature to prevent ripping.
Failing that, I have a tower of seven Sun external SCSI cdrom drives that should be old enough to act like a "dumb" hardware cd player for ripping purposes. Worst case, and audio patch cable piped into oggenc.
The majority of those that are posting music on p2p networks are technically knowledgable enough to plug a damn cable into their microphone jack to start ripping.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Even if they're 1/10 of the size of the raw tracks, it means the CD can hold 9% less music.
I've recently purchased a De-Phazz CD with the Cactus Data Shield "copy-protection". It wouldn't play in most of my players and I couldn't convert it to MP3 for my portable player.
I have written to the producer -- they were sorry for the problems and said they are helpless: basically it's Universal that dictates this copy protection.
I have made a vow not to buy a copy-protected CD ever again. I feel sorry for the band, but unless we stick to this policy, the problem will not go away. If enough people stop buying and let the bands know (this is important), they will stop doing this.
For what it's worth, I have gotten myself a Plextor CDRW drive. Plextors are known for reading damaged CDs very well, and indeed my new drive didn't have any problems reading the defective CD that I bought.
I guess the upshot is: 1) don't buy copy-protected crippled CDs, ever, no matter what, and 2) write to the authors of the music and let them know what you think, also write on public forums, write a review at amazon -- let people know!
That should stop the 6 people that actually listen to his music.
Which OS versions does it recognize -- can I play it in X? 9.2? 8.6? 7.6? 7.0.1 (yeah, they're all around here somewhere).
For that matter, will Win95 recognize the WMA tracks (since I don't have any Windows media players installed, having viciously ripped them out long since)?
Or I can bring up the Linux box...
Not like I'd ever buy this CD, trust me!
> My comment can be quoted whenever, wherever, so long as you bloody well provide attribution! >
I got a photo cd from my mother years ago. It installed Wal-Mart software that caused a system crash. The photo envelope had a small EULA that I did not read. It pays to hide in a small hole in your yard.
And it rendered on, until the end of its days.
I'd rather spend 5 bucks, download/burn the cd I wish. 1/10th of that money goes to my ISP the rest goes to the artist(s).
The artist have the money, populartiy, and name. Radio/MTV exposure would likely be cut off. But if enough did jump ship/didn't renew they could easily capitalize on the negative PR the RIAA has generated for itself. The choke point for illegal trading has always been the ISP, the choke point for M$ upcoming music service is the ISP. Big companies are doing everything they can to avoid an ISP tax (they'd have to pass it to the consumer).
I hope they have to label these CD's, I won't buy any.
Copy protection will be a non-issue, having been proven for the umpteenth time to generate more ill-will among legitimate buyers than deter piracy among hackers.
And, because all existing copies of his albums are protected by encryption schemes and software for machines that haven't been made in years, nobody even knows who the fuck "Anthony Hamilton" IS.
I over it when the industry (of which I am a member) calls these technologies encryption. Non are. They are meant to fool CD-ROM drives usually by having CD-Enhanced content override the CD play and some kind of fake error data that trips up the more sophisticated error checking on CD-ROMS, letting the dumb CD audio players pass the data.
They are trying to add on capabilities that were never envisioned when the Red Book specification was made in the late 70s. Really encrypt the data and the CD player will not know what to do!
All they will do is piss off end users with this.
The only applicable use it has is to make give people with a console fettish an easier time typing in filenames.
:p
Actually I'd disagree with you on that one. I use the console quite a bit and find it much easier to type "\ " (backslash space) than it is to type "_" (shift-minus).
There's no excuse for underscores in a file name.
Imagine how cool you will look during break if you have a Linux box.
But does that make Linux and/or VMWARE a tool for circumventing copy protection? And thus illegal under DMCA? Reminds me of the time when Microsoft was insinuating that selling a PC without a copy of Windows amounted to piracy.
The thing that bothers me is, from reading the article, I didn't dee any reference to the program asking the user if they want to install it. Now, one would assume that the record companies are not stupid enough to simply install software without asking the user, but they might be. And if they do that, isn't that exactly like a virus? After all, I'm sure we all remember the attempts of the RIAA et al. and Senator Fritz Hollings (D-Disney), to pass laws that would have legalized the RIAA smoking your computer if they thought you might have been involved in copyright infringment. Anyone bought this CD yet and checked this out?
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
Anthony Hamilton knows who you are
But wait, the RIAA is doing this with a more obscure artist first before they do it to all your favorites
Thank God many of my Punk Rock favorites have their own issues with the RIAA so as I don't have to worry about this
See the Pictures of the Flood of '08
good thing it's only artists I don't like that are doing this, so far... They should be sued for discriminating against the "minority," e.g. Linux, BSD, and portable MP3 users. Since when is it law that a PC is required to use Windows?
I'm sorry... the new whose CD?
When are people going to realize that this protection of music isn't going to be successful. Anyone with a full duplex sound card could connect audio in to audio out and record/encode mp3, regardless of any of these technologies they develop to prevent it. Companies are wasting their time and need to come to grips with the situation they have. Record companies have been ripping off their artists and the people buying CDs for a decade, its an inevitable revolution that they got the ball rolling on to begin with. If the product was worth $17, people would pay it continually, when in fact its not. A cd buy a great talent and a cd buy a market created one-hit wonder cost the same. People buy the cd by the great talent if they find it for a good deal and download/delete the one-hit wonders song. I think if the industry had less cookie cutter, less marketing, less bull shit, less bloat in the price and product, they'd have fewer problems with people ripping them off in return.
"These guys make rednecks look like models of common sense" -- Blaede (on Slashdot) referring to "l337 hackers"
Have you tried playing it in mplayer? I know it can play .wma files, though not sure about secure ones. If it does, then converting it into the MP3 file format is trivial.
What an interesting industry CD copy-protection is. I never thought it would be possible to base an entire busness model on selling bull-shit! Im not talking Microsoft our-software-is-secure-and-stable bull-shit, im talking about selling absolute total crap! You've got to give this group of stupid marketing people and scab sell-out engineers credit, they have managed to convince some mighty large companies that their products are worth paying millions for - either that or the RIAA is so desparate they will buy anything in the remote chance that it will fool some politicians into thinking that the RIAA is a poor little victim thats trying its best to lock the back door.
/. cliche)
For a start wasnt wma itself cracked months ago!? thats not even the point, the cds can be ripped by anyone who knows how to use the shift key/disable autoplay or runs a non win/mac os! (mentioning analog audio patch cables has become
Some people say that selling air in a can or water in a bottle is stupid, but thats nothing compared with selling a card-board box as a safe!
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
We've had this sort of copy protection on a lot of new release cds, here in New Zealand, for a few months now. Which has meant I have dramatically cut down my CD purchasing - I can't play them properly in my 7 year old Micromega Stage 1 CD player. The first few seconds of every track has about a 1 second dropout, which gets really annoying.
Break out the permanent markers, boys. Time to do some "cracking."
Did you see this? Did you notice it?... EWE!
The soulful singer's Arista debut, which arrives in stores today, may look like a traditional CD. But it's the first of an expected wave of CDs intended to keep listeners from swapping songs on the Net.Basically the RIAA is sacrificing this poor artist.
Not to mention they are again selling CD's that don't meet CD standards.
What happens when this Doesn't actually play in my CD player and I want my money back?. What will the little counter bunny at the record store say? What will Rhonda the return girl at Wal-Mart say? Will they all think of me as an outcast geek looking for a means to voice a political vendetta?
How can I scream outloud how much the RIAA is ruining everything without getting blank stares or evil flames and such. The RIAA has to go NOW.
See the Pictures of the Flood of '08
hahaha! I was going to say exactly the same thing!
no, you dumb fucker!
Anthony_Hamilton-Comin_From_Where_Im_From_(Retail) -2003-WCR
these kind of comments "in win98 use XXX", "in Win XP edit the registry", "in win95 bang the drum and start tbe chant" always make me want to say ...
:)"
"... or get a Mac
What drives me completely mad is, the promise of the compact disc was high resiliance against dust and scratches, thanks to special coding mechanisms that utilize rendundant information in the CD blocks.
Well, these bastards now are using this area of the CD to make it un-rippable. And at the same time, they make it much less resiliant. In other words, they are selling CRAP which will have to be thrown away much sooner. The saddest thing is, 99% of the people will just go on and buy more CDs because of this. Yeah, maybe some of them will comment that "I htought CDs lasted longer, in the past", and will be promptly ridiculed by some smartass with "sure, and LPs were even better than that, riiight...".
And once again, the ignorant and meek consumer is lead like sheep to the slaughter.
Sigged!
While I don't care about Anthony Hamilton's music, I do care about some other artists whose albums are getting a similar treatment. A Perfect Circle just released Thirteenth Step this week, and the album is mangled/copy protected in some regions. It seems that the United States and Canada are getting the unmolested version of the album (which I confirmed on my G4 Cube by ripping a single track in iTunes for testing purposes), but Europe and other parts of the world are getting the jacked up version.
This isn't right. It creates divisions between fans where there shouldn't be any. Many Europeans are writing on the message boards for A Perfect Circle about their negative experiences with the new album -- apparently, it won't play correctly in certain models of Sony's Discman. I'm having trouble tracking down the specific messages, as these boards get a lot of traffic -- it's possible the negative reports of CDs that won't play on certain players were yanked from the web site. However, it was confirmed on the official fan site (in a news update on September 15th) that this is a very real problem for European users.
Those who think that this problem will go away and can be ignored "because it's only happening to albums/bands/artists that I don't listen to," think again. Eventually, something you care about will be affected.
I'm told that Mike Oldfield re-released Tubular Bells recently, and the initial re-release had some brain damaged copy protection on it. Oldfield didn't understand why legitimate fans would care about this, and actually laughed at one fan who dared to ask why (and told this person that only people who want to pirate music could possibly want a version of the album without copy protection). Nevertheless, consumer pressure forced the label to release an unmolested version of the remastered album.
Based on this information, it's pretty clear to me that the record labels are engaged in a stealth campaign to test which copy protection schemes cause the least uproar among consumers, before they start using these techniques on a wider scale. We can't give an inch. Caving in now means destroying the future market for portable digital music players and possibly destroying the market for esoteric HiFi audio equipment (which often fails to play these mangled discs).
I would assume that these disks are NOT redbook compliant. I make it a point NEVER to buy an encripted CD or any CD that's not redbook compliant. Like it was said in another post they best not have the phillips CD logo on the disks.
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
Also, in the original article, it says that you'll be able to download all or some of the music from the CD to your computer, but they won't play on other people's computer, so you won't be able to share the files with other computers. You'd have to give the physical disk to the user you want to share the music with and that user would have to download the music from the CD.
I'm not too familiar with the actual technical specs on the CD format, but a quick read-through of the Sunncomm stuff doesn't make much sense to me in that it would seem easy to get around.
I'm sure that one of my CD players (at least 12 years old, and yes it still works) won't be able to "decrypt" anything.
Oh, well, when I've tried to burn the audio CD with my friends songs (from the audio tape) that DVD/CD didn't recognize it as well.
Normal audio CDs are playing well n that DVD (as CD of course).
Corrupted and home-brew audio CDs are playing well on low-end CD players.
Go figure.
Less is more !
>What a shame that I'm running Linux and my portable >MP3 player doesn't support WMA
No, the real shame is that you are interested and/or curious about an Anthony Hamilton CD.
it could just be they put the data flag at the beginning of the audio tracks so that it looks like data, not audio and the audio is sitting there is perfect form.
Subject line says it all, really.
That's pretty effective copy protection. It seems to have managed to distribute the tracks via P2P prior to the CD's actual release date.
I wonder if they paid the developers extra for that.
Some enterprising soul could make software that periodically scans the CD drive of anybody who wants to share a disk with the world. Whenever a CD (or a bunch of CDs if you have a jukebox) is available, it sends the play list to a central location. Anybody who wanted a 10 day copy would send a request to the central location which would send a request to the central site which would forward the requester's email address to the sharing software. The sharing software would then email a copy of the requested song.
The beauty of this is that it would all be done with the permission of the publisher, since they have already given tacit permission to share the song by implementing this feature.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
Why do they thing anything is going to keep a cd from being ripped? The only way to do that is to leave it blank in the first place.
I wondered they stopped putting "play" buttons on the front of most drives a few years back. You can still get ones with them on, but they used to be on every single CD drive.
Buy them and return them because they don't work properly. (Find out ahead of time if you can do this at your store.) Then the record company actually loses money instead of pontential money. Stores like Best Buy wouldn't want their mp3 player sales to slip in exchange for a decline in their CD sales AND extra returns hassles. Record companies would catch some major flack.
I'm having some issues with the installing of the software thing. Can they legally put software on my computer without my approval of it?
you had a Linux box. HAHAHAHAHA!
respond to the eject button. It will depend on your make and model.
This is still true, for the time being.
Unfortunately, Microsoft and the music industry are already taking steps to prevent this from happening in the future.
OK, It may not be a pure digital copy, but most sound card program suites include a record tool to record "what you hear." (program output of the card.) You can use that feature to record whatever is going to your speakers.
In case anyone is interested...
:L/Disk-Validator, which contained the virus code. Other than this exploit, there is no way a disk can force the Amiga to load and run something just through disk insertion.
:L/Disk-Validator file containing the virus on any write-enabled floppy disk that was inserted, and would deliberately invalidate the bitmap again after every disk write operation finished. There were numerous clones of this virus.
If you inserted a disk where the "disk blocks in use" bitmap was corrupt (it had a checksum), Workbench would usefully repair it by scanning all existing files on disk and writing a new block usage map, before allowing you to write files to the disk. To use a UNIX analogy, the Amiga would fsck floppys before mounting them.
However, the 256Kb Kickstart ROM did not have room for this disk repair code. So, the disk repair code was loaded from disk. Unfortunately, the first place Workbench tried was on the corrupt disk itself, the executable code ":L/Disk-Validator".
The SADDAM virus (it was released during Gulf War 1) used this as an initial infection vector. It was initially spread on a damaged disk. Upon inserting the disk, Workbench 1.3 would automatically load and run
The SADDAM infection code would create a
It became completely obsolete in Workbench 2.0 (released in 1990, available as standard in low-budget Amigas in 1991/1992), as the 512Kb Kickstart ROMs had plenty of space for the Disk Validator code, so it was no longer loaded from disk.
"a small internet start-up claims they have a new technology to block access to html code and images on a site. The new technology called HyperMegaRightClickSecuriTech Technology uses a special java script to stop users from right-clicking with their mouse to view or save parts of a website. The company - HyperGlobalCompuMegaNet has already started licensing this technology to many major sites, some users claim that they have been able to crack this technology but are under fear that they could be targeted for copy-right circumnavigation. Meanwhile linux advocates are concerned that their software will be targeted under the same law. Mac users remain confused as usual."
The RIAA is beyond a joke now
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
seems simple to me ... don't buy the CD. who is anthony hamilton, anyway? buy indie. if you don't buy RIAA-peddled crap, then there's no problem.
"Don't buy Anthony Hamilton CD. And don't try to find out who he is, either."
whats next? a music CD installing adware on my computer? and for $18 im supposed to take it in the ass?
-- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.
In communist russia(a.k.a. RIAA) the cd cracks you!
I'm sure at least a dozen people have written something like the above statement, but I wonder if anyone has actually tried this? I copied a cassette tape using similar technology and this is what I found:
1. It took 120 minutes to record the actual music, plus a decent amount of extra editing time. Ripping a CD takes a fraction of the play time of the album.
2. Some software can't record for that long continuously.
3. I had to edit a >1gig file to carve it up into the individual songs.
4. I wasn't able to use Gracenote to automatically name the artist, album and track.
5. I had to manually place the finished files in my MP3 archive.
6. The quality was poorer than a direct rip. I have a decent soundcard but the fidelity and noise floor of consumer sound cards is no where near that of commercial CDs.
You could record each track individually, which means you would need to sit around and do something every few minutes when each track finishes.
This was such a pain in the ass I never did it again. I don't think this is a viable solution for cracking DRM because of the required effort. Ripping a CD is a few clicks of the mouse for me now; I am not willing to go back to more painful methods.
No sig, sorry.
A good quality cable from your CD player, and a good sound card will give you the same results as ripping it, even after conversion to MP3 when you lose quality you won't even hear the difference
Copy the wmas, play it and loop it through your sound card with any decent piece of software to create an mp3.
Hakuna Matata!
I've been reading the comments posted so far, and have found that a large majority are quite negative. But mostly, it's negative in regards to the following:
1) Modifying the way the CD works will make it unplayable in certain players
2) Some people don't use WMA, either because they can't, or because they refuse.
3) The general "RIAA" sucks comments.
4) Other issues I didn't notice, cuz I'm too slow and lazy to list them all.
However, I didn't see anything come up that really pointed to whether this idea was sound in general. i.e. They're trying SOMETHING other than just suing the crap out of their customers, it appears that they're trying to both appease the consumer AND keep their margins up. After all, they ARE allowing personal copying and use, including sending a free copy to your friends for ten days. I'm sure the intention was NOT to make it not work on certain players or regions.
In my humble opinion, this seems like a step in the right direction. Now, that doesn't mean they should not continue to take further baby steps, and try harder to really get at what their consumers want, which is very low cost single track downloadable and convertable music in an easy to find manner.
Anyone else feel the same way? I'm not looking for flames here, and if what I said was inflammatory to you, I'm sorry, I'm just trying to point out my differing opinion from the majority of slashdot readers.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d Capitalization really works: i helped my uncle jack off a horse
OK seriously, everyone repeat after me.
If it doesn't follow RedBook standards,
It's not a CD.
It's not a CD.
It's not a CD.
It's not a CD.
It's not a CD.
If we call it a CD or we let others get away with calling it a CD, then the battle is already lost. The confusion created will make it possible for marketers to destroy the (REAL) difference between them, and win the sales war. "It's a CD that doesn't play in your CD player, so you need both the CD _AND_ a new CD player."
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
actually they removed from it from
:o(
.exe with a nice virus.
win2000 and winXp.
You cannot do it on a "modern" windows without
messing with the registry (and you must know
where to change it, explain it to your mom!)
It a standard complain,
and that's why there is 3rd party
tool to do it.
Sad
BTW: I friend of mine wiped it's partition
table by inserting a "music" CD from someone else.
The second session had a
Moral: never ever keep this stupid autorun
*mis*feature.
my 2 cent
Ever sent or been sent and email with the path of a file on the network? //computername/directory/name of file.ext //computername/directory/name_of_file.ext
Only the second one is going to produce a useful clickable link in most mail clients (eg Outlook).
Paul
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
but can you explain how someone who uses a real operating system can achieve the same thing?
Ever sent or been sent and email with the path of a file on the network?
\\computername\directory\name of file.ext
\\computername\directory\name_of_file.ext
Only the second one is going to produce a useful clickable link in most mail clients (eg Outlook).
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
So just output them through an analog source and captur. A bit more work, but it's as much a matter of principle now as it is of practicality. Why is the intellectual property we buy suddenly not our own to do with as we wish?
Why the hell would I do that? Who the hell *is* he?
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
Er, I bought the new Radiohead CD (last CD i'll be buying for a long time) and was quite shocked to find it was "Copy Controlled". The shock soon faded when i found out that a "Copy Controlled" CD was simply one of those Enhanced CDs that have be out for years. All I had to do was download the file-writer plugin(http://home.hccnet.nl/th.v.d.gronde/dev/fil ewrite/) for Winamp and play the CD through it. I succesfully ripped the Radiohead CD without crashing my computer as the popular myth seems to be.
Maybe this is the same case? I'm not sure how you could do this on Linux though, So I guess that guy in the article's SOL :)
It seems odd that this form of software protection would be considered legal. You are getting stuff installed and executed on your computer by listening to a CD. This seems very similar to computer viruses. I really don't see a legal distinction between the two. Is it just me?
"Leaving you where you Are.."
If your going to boycott anything, I would think this mispackaged garbage would be it.
Any thoughts as to setting up a repository or list of non CD products masquerading as CDs?
Grell
...when it gets down to fundamentals, do what you have to do and shed no tears. Dr. Matson in Tunnel in the Sky
... that they will probably sell more CD's to people who want to figure out how to break the protection than to people who actually want to buy the CD for the music.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
I do, I really do >_
they run GNUTELLA or Opennap.
Quack, quack.
Time to whip out the ol' magic marker!
Not noteable, IMO a rubbish article.
if you want "No More Hiroshimas" then I say "You First. No More Pearl Harbors."
(This bit added to avoid lameness filters. Move along, nothing to see here.)
OK, break out those optical cables.
I hear you brother.
I had the same problem till a saint on slashdot mentioned EasyTag. Now it usually takes 3 clicks to rename each cd into the format of your choice. A little longer if moron rippers forget the ID3 tags.
(it supports ogg vorbis to)
What is the music industry thinking? They seem to think people want a perfect copy of their CD. Logically, that would assume that MP3 swappers are audiophiles. BUT all anyone really seems to want is sound quality roughly on par with FM radio play. To get that you don't even have to pump CD 'line out' to your PC. You can mike it from your stereo in to your PC thus circumventing any encryption scheme that doesn't actually deny you the ability to play it on your CD player. So just what exactly is the copy protection against? (I once thought it was to protect from the big pirating cartels in the Far East. But they are rich enough to hire full time encryption crackers or, more likely, steal master recordings.) Oh well, someone is making a buck selling these encryption schemes and the impact on the file swappers is neglible so carry on with life.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
These "Copy Controlled" CD's will play in some CD-ROM drives, and not in others... For instance, they'll crash my iMac (can't remember the drive's brand, sorry), but will play / rip (using the standard iTunes "import" button) on my G4 (Superdrive Pioneer DVR-103)... I ripped (legally acquired, in order to feed my iPod) lots of them: placebo, Massive Attack, etc etc...
:)
Strange what technology can do for you
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
Run a cable to the line-in on your sound card from your stereo reciever.
Is is just me or have people forgotten about the old means of Analog copying? Most sound cards are capable of it. Sure, maybe you can't *easily* RIP, but you can do it. Let's face it - we've been copying tapes and LP's using the ol' Analog method for years. I don't think you can't encrypt an analog audio signal easily, and I doubt anyone is going to try it. Gregster The Domino Effect
Parmasean Cheese. It's what's for dinner.
I thought I'd do something more then my usual support independent (or independently minded) artist. There are a ton of artists out there not caught up in the whole piracy debate (since the rise of the net WAY more then most people imagine). CD's at the mall are no longer safe. The industry/distribution giants that have been hand feeding us are no longer (where they ever?) interested in fair practices.
But this isn't really that big a deal, because you can just type your way down to:
mp3.com
or
emusic.com
or
umbrellamusic.com
or
listen.com
or
mp3it.com
or
iuma.com
or
grageband.com
or
besonic.com
or
zebox.com
And it just keeps getting bigger and better out there. Really the only thing that needs to happen is we need to get comfortable with buying online artists. Maybe Rolling Stone will do an online section? *shrug*
Quack, quack.
I hope this doesn't have the "Digital Audio" logo on it, which would incorrectly imply that this is in fact an Audio CD. Such discs violate Philips' RedBook (Audio CD) format
If you buy a CD and discover some sort of idiotic copy protection on it, return it to your vendor as DEFECTIVE. If the product claims to be an Audio CD and has copy protection in the form of encryption, unreadable tracks, etc. it is violating the specification and is defective.
Either that, or false advertising. Either way it's grounds for making a complaint and getting your money back (I have done this at Future Shop, had to see the Manager).
when will the RIAA complain to slashdot about those posts that teach how to crack/hack?
RIAA Who are the Pirates?
It seems to me that every few days there is yet another article on the web about the recording companies attempts to bring rampant pirates to justice. I think the RIAA's idea of justice might be a little one sided and a double standard. Fact is, the recording companies have been flying the Jolly Roger since day one. They have been perpetrating an injustice on all consumers of their products for decades and I see no indication they are going to correct it.
There is a scene in the original movie "Men in Black" where Tommy Lee Jones and Will smith are at the alien receiving center, in the alien technologies room. Tommy Lee Jones is showing Will Smith these new technologies and he picks up what looks like a one inch in diameter CDROM for playing music and says "I guess I'll have to buy the Beatles White Album again".
Using this example, why is Tommy Lee Jones saying "I guess I'll have to buy the Beatles White Album again" ? He obviously already owns it, the word "again" indicates that. What he is really saying is "I already have a full license to listen to and enjoy the music that is on the Beatles White Album that I now have on CD. But things being what they are with the greedy, pirate recording companies, in order to get the Beatles White Album on this new one inch disk medium, I'll have to buy another license as well. Come to think of it, being as old as I am, I paid for a full licence for the original 12" vinyl LP, the Eight Track Tape, the cassette and the CD. No, wait ! I just remembered. I bought the eight track twice and the cassette three times. Those old tape players ate a lot of good music." In this scenario you might expect Will Smith to ask:
1) Isn't there a way to return the CDROM and pay for just upgrading to the new one inch medium ?
A)The record companies have at no time in the past nor are they likely in the future to (without buyers boycotting) implement any form of new media format exchange program.
2) What happens if the cd cracks or gets scratched,(which is hard to avoid) can you get it replaced or do you have to buy a full license every time?
A)You are out of luck, you have to buy a full license every time.
3) Is there any way to make a backup? That way you can store the original in a safe place and replace the backup when it becomes unplayable.
A)Currently (amid much pig squeeling in the background) you can make backups with your computer but the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) using the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copright Act) are working furiously to plug that hole with DRM (Digital Rights Management) which if implemented, will cripple your computer so that you can't. Already Windows XP users computers are crippled to some degree. (Microsoft is leading the charge trying to establish themselves as the de-facto DRM "Copy Cops" ).
4) What happened to all of those old legally licensed copies you bought.
A)The dollar value of legal, legitimate, licensed music on unusable media that has ended up in dumps and landfills over the years is undoubtedly huge and probably staggering. I don't have a figure but ask yourself how many times you have had to replace a tape or a disk because it became unusable. If your young, Ask your folks how many trash cans they could fill up with LP's, 45's, 8tracks, cassettes,dvd's, VHS, betamax and cdrom's that became unusable over the years. The generally universal answer would be " ALOT"! Now multiply that times millions of homes in the US alone. Yup," ALOT" fits quite well !
Conclusion:
We have to get out of the mind set that we are buying disks or tapes. We are purchasing licenses. The physical media that it is on is just a way of conveying it to you the purchaser. When you purchase dowloadable music online, you never see a cdrom because it is conveyed to you the purchaser by electronic media. Even Microsoft doesn't make you buy a new license for windows because of unusable media. They are only interested in COA's and Product Keys. Th
... for putting half as much music on a disc.
There are no tiger attacks in my area and it's all because this rock I'm holding keeps the tigers away.
As soon as these fuckwits who buy CD's actually STOP completely and let the industry know that their practices, not free downloads are the real reason, things might change.
CD's are copyable. I haven't bought one in three years.
DVD's are copyable. I buy about 6 a month.
It's all about value. Current music is over-produced, cookie-cutter, over-priced dreck.
If you love music, go to E-music. http://www.emusic.com
Karma means nothing to me, so suck it...
all EMI recordings here have their "copy control" protection, with software to read the WinMedia files for computers
but the mac player they provide doesnt even work
the cd wont play in my dvd player
and EMI keeps on replying to my requests saying they will look for the cd's from a different territory
copy control licks my sweaty balls
still waiting for a real cd, since this one isnt even a real copy of the music, it has digital noise all through it, that gets "corrected"
Xactly! Don't buy that shit! End of story (and probably of company, too---good riddance).
BTW: I don't want to get my hope high, but... aren't these pirates getting desperate already? (pirate == corporatist that live off both musicians and their public.) How long until we can have a sensible system for rewarding creation without feeding corporatist vampires?
``L'imagination au povoir.''
No more disabling the autorun, lest Microsoft be in violation of the DMCA!
And the show will be closing on open source. TCPA is coming, which can be used to effectively shut down linux on the desktop without open (meaning propitary/and opensource) standards agreements in media.
I've got alot of interest stuff which could be consider intellectual property. I'm willing to free up most of it if a more closed licencing favouring open source and preferably shutting out Microsoft. I'm interested in Linux hold at least 40% of the desktop market share within the first year (or earlier).
Current focus has been on advertising of a more ethical nature. Bring an end to 3 minute breaks every 15 minutes and 12 minutes on the hour. Using a more local approach but not discriminating against national advertisers. My view point Microsoft is currently in a better position for these ads but I'm unwilling to let them use it right now.
More???? (I'd prefer a more private setting)
for this to be broken... I think I will start counting at, oh, lets say 5...
What does the RIAA have against virtual memory!??!?
You like your new Mac more than you like me, don't you, Dave? Dave? I asked...She said Yes.
How does this stop cd ripping? The industry should have learned from DeCSS and such that this is pointless. But I guess they figure *most* people won't figure it out and that'll be worthwhile. Anyhoo, if they eventually go to this totally, maybe i'll just go to iTunes on my 15" PB or listen.com and get around it anyways... not that I give them to anyone, just that I, like many, hate having to whip out CD cases every time I wanna hear a song. It's much easier just to double click the entry in winamp.
The way I see it, and the FAQ attempts to cover some of this: flamebait would be something like "You moron. How could you suggest Windows over Linux." A troll is more like "Linux sucks. Windows rules."
In other words, an attack against someone personally would be considered flamebait, while an attack on an ideal or product would be a troll. At least that's how I moderate them.
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
. . . for the new Anthony Hamilton CD is because he's goddamn horrible.
"The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw."
I started buying more music when I was exposed to it through Napster and when they decided to shut it down I stopped buying music off the shelf almost entirely. Go to concerts, buy direct from artists, but stop funding the industry's terror campaign.
I've never heard of this guy plus I'm not into this genre but this might actually sell some cd's for him if just to break the "security". After reading all of the comments on how to beat it I looked on Kazaa and saw all of his songs from the cd readily available for download.
This is seriously funny and it's poetic justice in a sense simply because it proves that the methods or ideaology on the RIAA side is the equivalent of plugging a hole in a dike.
They still don't get it and if they ever do it'll be too late by then.
To borrow from a great quote...
Weak ass security is the mother of easy hacks
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
The best copy protection in existence is to create an atmosphere of mutual respect.
Nonsense. Many people will pirate merely because they easily can do so. I recall seeing this happen with textbooks. A chemistry text and a commercial molecular modeling and visualization app were bundled together. Both were required for class. The book came with a coupon that let the student get the app for $15. The books sold, the apps didn't, yet everyone was able to turn in homework projects. The app's publisher tried to be nice, or as you might say "respect" the student, and not copy protect the disk. The following semester the app was copy protected and app sales were about the same as book sales. The copy protection could be defeated, but Joe Chem Major seems to buy unless piracy is trivial. I'd wager there is a correlation between this behavior and the general population.
This doesn't work. At least not in WinXP using a Lite-On DVD drive. At our LAN center, it was essential that autorun not initiate, so our virtual drive system would function properly. We found three different ways to disable it (including the one you mentioned) that didn't work for every disc. After enough disc switching, all the autorun features were back on anyways. We eventually pulled a minor reg hack that shut down the autorun for good, but none of "checkboxes" and menu's actually disable autorun, as far as we could see.
This is where I get my recommended daily allowance of "Foot in Mouth."
I don't think that we can jump to the conclusion that because the software is written for Windows, Linux will be unaffected.
Probably Linux won't be able to play the CD at all. The music is probably uses some form of DRM.
The best thing that consumers can do is simply not give there hard earned cash for this crap.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
people will buy this cd simply because it wants to be cracked. Immagin such a scam - our cd comes with the latest anti-ripping technology! this would increase the purchase of any cd by bad artists because all the crackers want a piece of the so called "state-of-the-art" technologies!
You are confusing me with someone who cares.
Open Windows Sound Recorder.
Set record source to "CD Player."
Play CD on computer.
Record CD in Sound Recorder.
Convert to compressed audio of choice.
What a misnomer, i would call them "Anti-Buy".
Free as in mason.
We are the MPAA. You violated our copyright. Two units are indeed on their way. You will suffer for your violations of basic corporate rights, pirate!
Free as in mason.
I found it from at least 5 different sources on Limewire. Maybe the title track was released separately, but it seems that they've already been defeated. Like that's a big surprise.
If you start CloneCD before inserting the CD, it will lock the drive, which takes care of autorun. Then use the protect audio cd mode, which only reads the first valid session. Then u can make images and/or copy all you like.
Moderation Totals: Flamebait=2, Troll=1, Redundant=1, Insightful=6, Overrated=1, Underrated=1, Total=12. (not mine)
This is the first generation that allows the kind of personal use that we have deemed appropriate Excuse me? Who gave the record labels authority to decide what is the appropriate personal use of the music I or anybody else buys? Don't we have a legal system anymore or did I go to sleep and wake up in a world we've given up and handed complete control to big corporations?
What a shame that I'm running Linux and my portable MP3 player doesn't support WMA.
Uhhm, I think you got that wrong. It's not a shame that you're running Linux or that your player doesn't support WMA. It is a shame that they chose WMA of all formats to put on their CDs.
Troll is a provocative posting, designed to start a flame. Attack on ideal is not a troll per se. I can argue that open source is inherently flawed model and it would be ok. But if I carefully craft my post to elicit a predictable aggressive reaction from other users, it is a troll. The difference is in purpose. For example, see this clever troll. If it didn't have that ending and just was a bit more balanced, it would be a normal post. But the author wanted to start a flaming discussion, so he intentionally provoked with his post. Be careful in your moderations, if you are not sure, don't moderate that particular post.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
All it takes is just *one* person with good digital to analog equipment and the whole thing is a bust. Their efforts are so in vain its not even funny.
Add a new read mode to "complex" CD-ROMs - just read every single fucking byte on the disk and record them just as you read them. That has a side benefit of creating a RAW sound file (almost) for audio disks that can probably be opened by any sound editor.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
The protection system as described sounds somewhat similar to the protection on the UK version of the The Darkness' album - there's a plain audio session on the disc along with an ISO 9660 session containing software and copies of the tracks in WMA format. Windows automatically mounts the ISO session when the disc is in the drive, so you don't get to see the audio tracks. On Linux I was able to just unmount the CD's ISO filesystem and then rip the tracks from the audio session as normal. For my own personal use only, naturally...
Get a decent sound card with an SPDIF input (a CMI8738 card is available for like 40$, and even less on Ebay), plus an optical cable, and use your CD player's SPDIF output. The only down side is that you have to cut the tracks manually. Duh. What the heck is this discussion about at all?
;-)
My 14 year old Sony CD player has an optical SPDIF out already. It's time CD players with SPDIF outputs are banned as circumvention devices. Or DVD players with 5.1 optical outputs. Oh - wait a minute... then you've got to ban your customers' brains as well.
So much for "effective" protection methods. No I don't advertise pirating music. But I don't let the music industry control what I do with CDs that I buy for real money, and if I want to rip them to MP3 or Ogg Vorbis for my personal use, then I do that. Full stop.
The whole point is that the RIAA attempts to protect sales channels from the last century. They don't understand that this is futile, and that they've got to think about something new. We usually don't use horse carts now, do we? And did the horse cart industry manage to ban cars?
open (SIG, "</dev/zero"); $sig = <SIG>; close SIG;
boy: Do not try and play the CD. That's impossible. Instead only try to realize the truth.
neo: What truth?
boy: That's not a CD.
use me... abuse me...
Presto. Unencrypted tunes. I might have to buy a better sound card, though :)
we see things not as as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin
...who would really WANT to rip his "music"????
How many people go through the hassle of really cooking for themselves ?
It's MUCH EASIER if the industry delivers the content (the food) in the right form (convenience food)
What I want to say is: if it's cheap enough to get the real thing in a package of your chosing who'll want to do the work of ripping ?
How about someone rip the MP3s off the CD then anonymously send (via snail mail) them a CDR with the ripped MP3s on it?
Are you a Candy Addict?
Ummm, yes! I would love a crack at Britney Spears. I mean with a name like Spears she must be a good target. *blink* Oh, wait, we were discussing her CDs.. nevermind then. Blood coming out my ears is not what I would call a lovely evening. ;-)
Dream as if you'll live forever.
Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
~Anonymous~
As long as any copy protected CD can be played on any player, you'll be able to copy it via good ol' analog loopback. It's that simple, and it's totally unpreventable--if you can hear the music, so can the line-in on your sound card or stereo recorder.
So, we have yet another non-standard plastic-encased metallic-oxide disc being mis-labelled as a "CD"?
Why is it that I'm not allowed to make a legitimate backup of music or software that I purchase, yet the same company that denies me that right by employing copy-protection won't refund my purchase price, or replace my damaged media free of charge?
They can't have it both ways! Either we are buying the music, in which case we have the right to do whatever we want with it (provided it doesn't violate copyright laws), or we "lease the right to use it", in which case we should be able to demand free replacements, and free delivery media upgrades as formats change over the years. Those two options don't work together, and the RIAA needs to choose. If they can't, we will... and that way won't make them any money.
When will the RIAA and MPAA learn there is no way to stop copying and duplication of movies and music and just lower their prices. If they'd lower their prices, people wouldn't look for alternative means of aquiring these things.
--- Nothing is secure.
somebody writes a 500 bytes perl script to decrypt the tracks? ala DeCSS
Last time I got a CD who demands to install its own player, I founded that my common CDex 1.50 could play the tracks, and if it can play them... they can be converted to mp3. Anyway a double 3.5 jack wire can do the ditry job in the old fashion way, the point here is that if the music is worth to do the workaround or not. There are a lot of music piracy in my country, but the "solution" is wrost that the trouble: Most people prefer to buy a $2 pirate mp3 CD rather to guess if the $20 original CD will play in their stuff.
- Anonymous Coward? Nahhh Anonymous LAZY-TO-LOGIN.
For one thing, what business do they have installing ANYTHING on my computer without my consent or knowledge. You know, if I install something on your computer without your knowledge, that is illegal. But it is completely ok for the record companies to do it? Because I am sure that they are NOT clearly labeling the disc with information that they are going to install crap on your computer (and who is to say that their programmers are worth a crap and can write stuff that will not screw up legit software or screw up your RAID because of how they implement the anti-copy crap)
And WMA? What the hell? Why choose such a worthless format. Go with Ogg, at least it is free.
(pardon me if I have repeated anything already posted, I didn't have the stamina to read through 780 posts)
Wait for the day making a copy of your car key is a violation of the DMCA because Chevy did not give you permission.
I'd like to thank the two hours of sleep I got last night...
Why oh why didn't I take the purple pill?
easy way. Autoplay is only enable for drive letters d:\ and e:\ in win2k. Just right click on mycomputer, click manage, click disk manager, right click your cd drive, click change drive letter, change to anything other than previously mentioned letters and be done with it. I dont know about xp, but I think this might work as well
Stop signs are only Suggestions
This is an interesting development because it seems to represent a step toward the music business accommodating a concept of "fair use". These CDs contain tracks that can be copied to your PC and from which you can make copies for someone else that expire in 10 days. It seems to be a limited effort to let people do what they want to do with the music.
On the other hand, Whitmore still talks teaching the public that "stealing music" is wrong. The industry is not going to let go of the concept that copyright equals ownership, which simply isn't true. If anybody has "stolen" anything it's the Recording Industry, in their century of take-it-or-leave-it dealings with musicians.
On the other other hand, when I read this post my initial reaction was outrage that a music CD would install DRM software on my PC. But in the article itself I couldn't see any mention of software being installed. Maybe that information came from a more technical article somewhere else, or did the poster simply go off half cocked?
VMware 4 Workstation. Share the physical CD drive, non-exclusive. No network card in the VM. Have an XP install in there. Have another on standby if you're in Linux, and turn off autoplay on the second one (or the host OS if in Windows natively). Take a snapshot. Insert CD. Let autoplay open crappy custom WMA player. Press stop, but do not close the player application, leave it open in the VM. Now go into the other VM (or the host) and rip the disc to the UberStandard 3.0 (using Exact Audio Copy 0.9beta4, Secure Mode with NO C2, accurate stream, disable cache, and so on). Then, post to Usenet/Shareaza/Freenet/etc.
This DMCA violation was brought to you by the letter U.
We disable Autorun (using TweakUI) as standard practice on every machine here.
Absurdity: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion. -- Ambrose Bierce
reading these CD's with AmigaOs is fine. direct CDDA reads thanks very much.
I think the BeOS folks are just as happy
Me again.
I'm not a huge fan of Nickleback, anyway, because they seem to have only three chords and two beats... but for $12 Canadian, I was willing to give them another chance.
And why Future Shop? Well, see price above!
use some type of digital output like many soundcards have (spdif out), then use some digital input, say, spdif in on the same sound card, and record the data? Wouldn't this be a lossless digital copy? What about the "what you here" record option on the creative sblive cards (feasible if digital)? I don't think they are ever going to make a 'rip proof' cd.
Hey everybody, You dont need file sharing programs like Kazaa or Morpheus to be happy. Just grab your favorite CD, a cdplayer, a male to male 1/8" minijack cable, and your favorite piece of software that can record from the line in on your sound card. Presto, you have your self a copy of that song, and as long as these new Copyright protected CDs can play in Standard CD players...guess what you can make copies without degradation in sound quality.
I'll just wait for someone else to do it and download songs from Kazaa. :)
boky
For 9x & Me.
Find the setting to turn off Autorun in the Device manager -> Cd-Rom -> (Relevant Device) -> Properties -> Device Settings (Tabbed Pane). Deselect the Auto Insert Notification Checkbox. Well Hidden? (Smirk). Else use SHIFT when inserting a cd.
In Xp just disable it the first time you insert a cd by selecting the checkbox.
2000. I dunno never used it. Probably about the same. Just look around.