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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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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)
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!
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
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!
"In CD players, the disc plays normally."
I wonder what these beautiful coasters would do when put up against CDFS? For those who aren't aware CDFS lets you mount audio cds, and listen to them as wav files. It also lets you mount cds as ISOs making copying them easier. Lord knows I've used it more times than I can count for mirroring linux releases.
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.
Drop the CD in your OS X machine, and rip the "Audio CD" mounted image... Just ignore the other one.... Tested and confirmed.
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 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.
Actually a business graduate would be shot (well, downgraded) if this were a case study and he were to suggest the current RIAA behaviour regarding file sharing as a solution to the problem in a decent business school with good teachers. For a number of reasons:
Not an innovative solution to a disrupting problem set. Student was probably asleep during lecture on Christensen and Disruptive Technologies.
Micro- and macroeconomic theory and issues (like economic downturn, deflationary tendencies in some important markets, simple demand and supply behaviour) as possibly playing a part in this situation are completely disregarded.
Prolonged ignorance towards customers' demand.
They are not adding value, rather subtracting, therefore ignoring a simple marketing rule: Don't piss off your customers.
Because of excessive greed and ignorance towards their competitive environment they should eventually fail......hmmmm, well see.
I feel so sig.
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.
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
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
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.
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.