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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."
Don't buy it.
I hate this term. This music is not secure. It is restricted.
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!
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.
"... 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. - -
Yes. The interesting thing here is, how those "regular" CD tracks are "protected". Cactus-style redbook errors? Unclosed sessions, like on key2audio discs? Nobody is really interested of the WMA-content, people only want to find a way around the "protection", so that they can rip the CDA tracks off and create a new, noncrippled disc of them.
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus
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.
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.
You do realize that the industry is under no obligation whatsoever to package the music in the format you want, nor to make ripping mp3s easy.
You are correct, but in the same vein, I am under no obligation to give money to the music industry unless they give me a good quality recording both technically (sound quality) and artisticly (more than 1 or 2 good tracks per CD) in the format I want/need at a price I deem resonable and worthwhile. Otherwise, I keep my money and spend it on other forms of entertainment.
-Ab
Nothing fails quite like prayer.
I would agree with this statement if the same content was available via alternative delivery mechanisms. It's one thing to impose a copy protection scheme on a particular method of content delivery, but it's quite another to do so when that's the only method of content delivery that's available.
Some on this thread have advocated just not buying the CD, but if I happen to really like the artist I have no alternative avenue for purchasing the content.
For me, the conflict is that the companies that have the interest in the content are the same as the ones doing the distribution. I'm all for record companies and artists making money, but I don't think they should be involved in the actual distribution of their product. When was the last time you walked up to a corner convenience store that was owned by the Coca Cola Company? Never. The content and the delivery are two distinct things, and it gets very messy and much more expensive for a single company to do both.
I think all the flap over copyright we've seen over the past few years would be solved if the record companies focused on the talent side of things -- acquiring, producing and recording artists and songs.
Once they have a finished product (albums and singles), they license the content to distribution companies who are free to distribute the albums and singles as they see fit. Some may choose to put the content on a CD and impose a copy protection scheme, and some may choose to make it available via digital download (perhaps with a different copy protection scheme in place).
The difference here is that the record companies have gone out of the distrubution business. Can you imagine going into your favorite record store and seeing the same CD but distributed from three or four different companies?
It's all about competition. The record companies don't care because they are earning a cut each time the song is distributed, no matter what form that distribution takes. The distribution companies want the markup on the actual sales of the disk, so they'll compete with each other to drive the price down so they can earn a piece of the sales.
I think this is a win-win situation for everyone involved, and perhaps on-balance will be about the same revenue stream for the record companies. Sure, they're giving up the sales of the CDs, but their content will be available in more venues.
The bottom line question: Is the content good enough to stand on its own, or is the real money where the sales are? Either way, let's turn the RIAA lawyers loose on coming up with a pen-and-paper content distribution model that allows the free market to operate. It'd be the first time this was done on pure content and not on actual physical products, but I think the model would hold quite well.
-anacron