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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."

648 of 853 comments (clear)

  1. Hmph... by bhtooefr · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Hmph... by mschoolbus · · Score: 1

      I believe you had to use the marker attack.

    2. Re:Hmph... by faldore · · Score: 5, Interesting

      No doubt the software on the CD is written for Windows, so Linux will be unaffected - to Linux the CD will look like a mixed mode CD and it will be simple to rip the audio tracks. The only thing stopping Windows users from doing it is the little .exe that is started by the autorun "feature".

    3. Re:Hmph... by sterno · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Or an even better way to work around it is to not buy the CD, and just download a copy somebody else went through the hassle to rip.

      Not that I'm condoning this behavior, but that's exactly what the record industry is encouraging. I don't listen to CD's, I listen to MP3's, and if I can't rip them from the CD, then I have to ask myself why I bothered to buy it. It would probably be better for the musician if I didn't buy the CD, downloaded the MP3's and then bought a bunch of swag from them.

      --
      This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
    4. Re:Hmph... by Petrol · · Score: 4, Informative

      Ummm... My crack?
      CD player'Line Out' to PC 'Line In'. Where's the flaw in that?

      --
      ...and that's the end of our show. Donk!
    5. Re:Hmph... by stratjakt · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

      This sense of entitlement confuses me. If you dont like the product, you dont buy it, but it doesnt give you the right to steal it (yeah its copyrite infringement not theft blah blah).

      RIAA music is not a necessity.

      --
      I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
    6. Re:Hmph... by Drantin · · Score: 1

      They're protecting against digital copying, that's analog...

      --
      Actio personalis moritur cum persona. (Dead men don't sue)
    7. Re:Hmph... by frodo+from+middle+ea · · Score: 1
      Going by what the article says
      The Audio Tracks are encrypted, and only normal CD players would be able to play them.

      I don't know how exactly are they encrypted, but if they are indeed, then to linux the whole CD will look like a Data CD. NO ?

      --
      for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
    8. Re:Hmph... by kasperd · · Score: 4, Informative

      the little .exe that is started by the autorun "feature".

      Autorun is and always was a security hole. Microsoft should have known already when they implemented it, that it was a security hole. A similar but more subtle hole was fixed in AmigaOS five years earlier. That hole was used by multiple viruses, and caused the computer to get affected as soon as an infected floppy was inserted in the drive.

      It is possible to disable autorun in Windows 9x, the setting is very well hidden, and you need to use regedit to change it. Find the setting named: "HKEY_CURRENT_USER / Software / Microsoft / Windows / CurrentVersion / Policies / Explorer / NoDriveAutoRun" and change the value to 0x03ffffff

      --

      Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
    9. Re:Hmph... by Idimmu+Xul · · Score: 1

      Who the fuck is Anthony Hamilton anyway? I've never heard of him.

      Oh well, if this works I'll never hear any of his MP3s anyway, so no loss really.. well for me atleast!

      --
      The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
    10. Re:Hmph... by MKalus · · Score: 1

      Can't really be encrypted. Last time I checked none of my CD players came with a chip to "decrypt" anything.

      If anything it is "Security through obscurity"

      --
      If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
    11. Re:Hmph... by Bonker · · Score: 1

      They are under obligation, however, not to market items that are copy protected as 'CDs'. They are laser-readable discs containing music, but 'CD' is a trademark. I beleive it belongs to Pioneer, IIRC.

      This is a legal grey area. Legislation's in U.S. congressional committee right now that requires CD makers to place a prominent 'This CD is copy protected' label on all CDs that contain anti-sharing mechanisms.

      --
      The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
    12. Re:Hmph... by Eight+01 · · Score: 1

      I agree with you, except for one thing. A CD isn't just a piece of plastic sold in stores, there is a technical specification that must be conformed to (Red Book). These CDs aren't conforming to that spec. So they may be plastic disks with music on them, but they aren't "CD"s. Selling them as "CD"s is therefore wrong.

      I have a feeling that these releases are just technical exercises by the RIAA - they know they won't get any results from them. People who buy and rip their own CDs will be hurt, but these are the people who actually buy CDs. The pirate types will download from their usual sources - and it only takes one person in the world to rip the CD to satisfy those people.

    13. Re:Hmph... by NineNine · · Score: 1

      But they DO have to disclose what they're selling, otherwise, that's fraud. When I buy a music CD, unless it says otherwise in very large letters, I expect a CD with songs in CD audio format that can be read by virtually any device. That'd be equivalent to a company selling a "television" that only works with, say, Time-Warner cable. In my and the general public's experience, that's not a "television", and the company needs to sell it as such.

    14. Re:Hmph... by Saucepan · · Score: 4, Informative

      Or just download Tweak UI (for Win NT,95,98,2k, or for Win XP), which lets you turn off autorun and lots of other retarded misfeatures as well.

    15. Re:Hmph... by Trepalium · · Score: 5, Informative

      :%s/encrypted/corrupted/g
      Seriously, they might call it encryption or some shit like it, but it's just really well-placed (or poorly-placed, depending on whose side you're on) corruption. If they were encrypted, normal CD players wouldn't read the disc (and I'll bet some won't anyway because of the corruption). They're trying to rely in the fact that some audio CD players will be more tolerant than CD-ROM devices. However, that's not certain. Either don't buy this kind of garbage, or make sure you return it after buying it to prove a point (it is defective).

      --
      I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
    16. Re:Hmph... by j-turkey · · Score: 2, Informative
      Going by what the article says The Audio Tracks are encrypted, and only normal CD players would be able to play them.

      Well...there's "encrypted" and encrypted. I can wager a guess as to which one this one is. If your audio CD player had no hardware/software to decrypt the music (and all of my audio CD players are old) how can it possibly be encrypted?

      Also, it looks like the music on the media can be easily shared anyway:

      ...and a duplicate set of tracks in the Windows Media format. These can be downloaded from the CD to a computer and then transferred to portable devices or recorded to home CDs.
      If I can burn the music onto a CD, it would serve to reason that I could just rip from there...or can you only burn the WMV files to a CD?
      --turkey
      --

      -Turkey

    17. Re:Hmph... by molarmass192 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Sounds like that Macrovision TOC trick they tried a while back, otherwise I don't see how the physical tracks can be encrypted and still work on legacy CD players. If it's the Macrovision TOC thing, there are plenty of workarounds out there.

      --

      Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
    18. Re:Hmph... by Zack · · Score: 1

      Right, because people who listen to 128kbps MP3s are really concerned over a slight loss is quality. Ummm... no. If people are fine with using low quality (128) MP3s, a single instance of digital->analog->digital isn't going to bother them either.

    19. Re:Hmph... by tmhsiao · · Score: 5, Informative

      Or just hold down Shift when you pop the CD into the drive...

      --
      "My God...It's full of ads!" -Fry, about the Internet, Futurama
    20. Re:Hmph... by WD_40 · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's a lot easier than that really. Just right click on your CD-ROM device in device manager, go to properites, and uncheck the "Auto Insert Notification" checkbox.

      As an alternative, if you want to leave autorun on, but temporarily disable it, just hold down SHIFT while you're inserting the CD.

      --

      "With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine." -- RFC 1925

    21. Re:Hmph... by rutledjw · · Score: 1, Interesting
      I get tired of these comments.

      I would agree with the no stealing thing except for a few small details:

      • RIAA and the major labels have 3xercised monopolistic powers by fixing prices and gouging the consumer for years
      • They have virutally no plans to offer a worthwhile alternative (Apple is the only one I see)
      • Their tactics are beyond abominable. They bully, threaten, and use bubious legal tactics against old women and children - and that's just this week.
      • They are the WORST threat to our privacy and security. They have tried multiple times to pass laws allowing them to destroy or attack a computer owned by someone who they think has traded music. Typically thses laws have provisions where the attacker is immune from any liability or even identification. Nice...
      So before you get to self-righteous about stealing, I think they have crossed the line and in my mind, all's fair. And yes, I realize you're not pro-RIAA.

      BTW, it is due to those damn music-sharing theives that the music industry is even looking at products like Apple's IPod or other online services. Until they found they could never stop sharing entirely, it wasn't even an option.

      --

      Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
    22. Re:Hmph... by The_K4 · · Score: 1

      My DVD player plays CDs, it's got digital optical audio out, my Sound Blaster5.1 w/ LiveDrive has digital Optical Audio In......it's not analog any more........:)

    23. Re:Hmph... by Trepalium · · Score: 1

      Doesn't have to be. There are CD players that have digital outs, and cards that have digital ins.

      --
      I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
    24. Re:Hmph... by Abm0raz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.
    25. Re:Hmph... by leery · · Score: 1

      you can also disable "Auto Insert Notification" in Control Panel/System/Device manager/CDROM/Properties/Settings (is that really any easier?), though that also disables autoplay of audio CD's.

      --
      "This is not a sig." -- R.
    26. Re:Hmph... by b!arg · · Score: 1

      My thoughts exactly...less access to an obscure artist...what a brilliant career move...

      Although it probably wasn't much of his decision but is in his deal with the devil^H^H^H^H^Hrecord company.

      --

      Everybody dies frustrated and sad and that is beautiful
    27. Re:Hmph... by TheTimoo · · Score: 1

      It is possible to disable autorun in Windows 9x,the setting is very well hidden,

      I'm pretty sure you just open the hardware properties dialog for the drie in question and disable it in there somewhere. Can't remember the exact name of the checkbox, but I'd take any bet.

      --
      "Be careful or be roadkill" - Calvin
    28. Re:Hmph... by stilwebm · · Score: 1

      Better yet, CD Player PCM digital out to PC PCM digital in. If it plays in audio CD players, this shouldn't be a problem as long as your soundcard or motherboard has digital input and the CD player digital out.

    29. Re:Hmph... by Threni · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Well, the headline says its a "CD" but if it doesn't play in a regular CD player it's not CD as far as the Red Book standard is concerned. Last I heard, Philips were pretty pissed about their standard being abused without clear warnings on the box. The article doesn't make this clear (no surprise, really).

      So...is this a CD?

    30. Re:Hmph... by kasperd · · Score: 4, Informative

      Just right click on your CD-ROM device in device manager, go to properites, and uncheck the "Auto Insert Notification" checkbox.

      Wrong. That disables detection of disc changes. What you want is disabling just the autorun feature without breaking something else. I really don't know why they make such a broken option so easilly available, while hiding the setting people should be changing instead.

      --

      Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
    31. Re:Hmph... by DickBreath · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You do realize that the industry is under no obligation whatsoever to package the music in the format you want

      Of course they are not. Since when should business do what customer's want?

      What will happen, as I've said many times, is that the more abusive the RIAA members become, the less and less people will respect copyright. I even extend this to all IP. The more IP is abused (can you say US Patent and Trademark Office?) the less people will respect IP in general. Maybe someday it will be like so many outdated unenforced laws on the books -- in Boston it is illegal to bathe without the authorization of a physician. (Wonder if Taco knows that?) In lots of places it is illegal to play with yourself. (Wonder if Taco knows that?)

      Trademarks similarly could lose respect as people attempt to trademark every word used to write this post.

      --

      I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
    32. Re:Hmph... by djaj · · Score: 1

      I don't know about this particular CD, but on at least some of the non-US "copy controlled" CDs I've gotten, they appear to have set the SCMS bit on the digital audio out, so they can't be copied that way either.

      --

      Your mileage may vary, but mine is constant.

    33. Re:Hmph... by djdavetrouble · · Score: 1

      Anthony Hamilton was ripped and had been traded heavily by the 'scene' 2 weeks ago, by the release group WCR. Just as every cd gets ripped well before the street date, so was this one.

      Anthony_Hamilton-Comin_From_Where_Im_From_(Retai l) -2003-WCR

      so much for the encryption.

      Besides, why would you want to stop someone who legitimately bought a cd from ripping it for their ipod or other mp3 player?

      The music industry has had at least 6 years to sort this out, it is all so very lame.

      --
      music lover since 1969
    34. Re:Hmph... by cpt+kangarooski · · Score: 1

      Maybe we should start requiring it. It would be not dissimilar to the best edition requirement for deposit, or the best mode requirement for patent disclosures.

      --
      -- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
    35. Re:Hmph... by GMFTatsujin · · Score: 3, Informative

      Or click Start > Settings > Control Panel > Device Manager, get the properties on the CD drive, and uncheck the "autorun enabled" option...

      At least, I recall being able to do that in Win98. WinXP is a different story.

    36. Re:Hmph... by NanoGator · · Score: 1

      "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."

      Perhaps not. However, the RIAA has the equivalent of a monopoly. They don't have competition that'll distinguish themselves by not doing that as consumer demand dictates.

      I personally don't care about playing fair until they do.

      --
      "Derp de derp."
    37. Re:Hmph... by Cecil · · Score: 1

      This is simply more evidence that the RIAA has no problems with kicking the shit out of the artists for the RIAA's own benefit.

      If you can convince them that you're sexy/charismatic enough to make them millions then poof, they pull out their insta-superstar marketing machine and you're a "made man" (well, in the same sort of way that mafia henchmen are "made men", you still owe eternal servitude) and you get to satiate us all with crappy pop music.

      Otherwise, you are perhaps useful for career-destroying experiments like this one so they don't have to worry about destroying the career of someone they care about (read: have invested significant sums of money into).

      I'm just surprised that it's taking so long for viable alternatives to the RIAA to really take flight. There are a few, but they're still picking up speed. It's really hard to get out of the post-RIAA catch-22 situation of no money, so no artists, so no customers, so no money, repeat.

    38. Re:Hmph... by Bingo+Foo · · Score: 4, Insightful
      It's probably called that for legal reasons:
      • Circumventing encrypted data is illegal,
      • circumventing corrupted data is not.
      --
      taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
    39. Re:Hmph... by no_opinion · · Score: 2, Interesting

      To represent the views of someone who makes a living from music, while I'm not in favor of copy protected CDs your comments demonstrate that you've swallowed the slashdot coolaid.

      Copyright law gives them control over distribution and price BY DEFINITION. No one is forcing you to buy their over priced product. At the same time, a high price does not give you the right to pirate.

      Read the news: the labels are scrambling to offer legitimate alternatives. Another two services are about to launch with more coming next year. Remember they have to rely on web companies for this since they can't sell direct (no one wants to shop from just one label).

      They have never tried to pass a law allowing them to attack computers. Do not confuse them with misguided legistlators. I personally know someone from a major who was in a meeting with the congressman who introduced that stupid bill, and they met with the express purpose to explain to him why it was such a bad idea.

      As for their legal tactics, I don't see why age or sex should matter when pursuing someone who has violated copyright law - breaking the law is breaking the law. Obviously they have no right to go after people who did nothing wrong, but don't confuse the two issues.

      Anyway, none of the things you list justify pirating someone's content. If you don't agree with what they're doing, the moral thing to do is boycott, not pirate. Remember that there is a whole chain of people who make money from music sales and pirating affects more than just the majors.

    40. Re:Hmph... by Anonym1ty · · Score: 1
      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.

      They are however under obligation however to honer trademarks and copyrights and patents that say what exactly a CD is and is not and should not sell disc that do not meet the STANDARDS of what a CD is while falsely labling it as a CD.

      This sense of entitlement confuses me. If you dont like the product, you dont buy it, but it doesnt give you the right to steal it

      What I don't understand is how YOU buy a bushel of apples and are satisfied when you find out they are oranges.

    41. Re:Hmph... by u-235-sentinel · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Not to mention I would be VERY curious if the wma.dll's avaialble on the web would still be able to play these. Only one way to find out :D

      --
      Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
    42. Re:Hmph... by errxn · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The person who's potentially getting hurt the worst is Anthony Hamilton. This guy and his career are being used as a guinea pig (read: sacrificial lamb) by the RIAA for their "technical exercises", as you put it.

      Suppose the CD does malfunction in a lot of standard CD players - how much effort do you really think that the RIAA would go to in order to correct the situation? Probably not much. After all, it's not like it's [Britney | j-lo | insert other crappy mega-star of your choice] or anything, so who cares?

      Meanwhile, this guy's career is in the tank before it even got started. Thanks a bunch, RIAA!

      --
      In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
    43. Re:Hmph... by nelsonal · · Score: 1

      Perhaps it was stealth marketing, the guy knows no one has heard of him and now maybe a million more have. If you believe the axiom, "there is no such thing as bad publicity", he just got a ton today, for a pretty small cost (whatever the license fee is for the protection).

      --
      Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
    44. Re:Hmph... by NanoGator · · Score: 1

      "Gee, my mommy taught me that two wrongs don't make a right back in oh, I don't know, kindergarten. Was yours to busy downing the sauce to teach you that one?"

      Your mommy's philosophy is not an absolute. I personally don't feel like bending over and taking what the music industry throws at me.

      --
      "Derp de derp."
    45. Re:Hmph... by Metasquares · · Score: 1, Redundant

      Or just hold down shift when the CD-ROM drive closes. That'll disable autorun for that particular instance.

    46. Re:Hmph... by hajejan · · Score: 4, Interesting

      And regardless of everything, you could always play the music on a high-quality CD player, optically record it on MD and encode it from the MD, or even copy it straight to another CD in audio-mode, and rip the CD. I guess we'll just have to wait untill the music industry realises this, and gives it up.

      --
      The Mini Repository - more links
    47. Re:Hmph... by Dr.+Blue · · Score: 2, Informative

      Not true. The DMCA makes circumventing any access control technique illegal. It doesn't matter if the technique is encryption, corruption, or some other technique.

    48. Re:Hmph... by rgmoore · · Score: 1

      I believe that the quote you're looking for is:

      The more you tighten your grip, RIAA, the more customers will slip through your fingers.

      OK, I made a slight substitution in the above, but you know which one I mean.

      --

      There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.

    49. Re:Hmph... by kevinank · · Score: 4, Informative
      Actually the DMCA applies to circumventing 'effective security devices' where effective should be interpreted in the legal sense, of something which has some effect (not in the engineering sense of something that works well.) In this sense, data that is encrypted, corrupted, and protected by any other mechanism which can be said to have the effect of preventing users from copying music is illegal to circumvent, even if the element that protects the data was not originally designed as a security device.

      This is why the word 'effective' was added in the first place. The DMCA isn't talking about security devices per se, but about anything which has the effect of a security device, whether it was intended to do security or not.

      --
      LibBT: BitTorrent for C - small - fast - clean (Now Versio
    50. Re:Hmph... by Brendan+Byrd · · Score: 1

      Speaking of which, what was the result of that Red Book lawsuit?

    51. Re:Hmph... by AvitarX · · Score: 1

      The RIAA was Bitch Slapped for price fixing. They were not only charging too much,.

      Using an umbrella orginization to act as a monopoly is not fair or part of doing business.

      You are of course correct on all other topics.

      --
      Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
    52. Re:Hmph... by moodyblue · · Score: 3, Insightful

      encoding != encryption

    53. Re:Hmph... by Drakonite · · Score: 1
      ...and a duplicate set of tracks in the Windows Media format. These can be downloaded from the CD to a computer and then transferred to portable devices or recorded to home CDs.

      Portable device? Goodie. I can easily copy things from my portable back to a PC.

      This is assuming the music is worth copying in the first place, and judgeing from the quality of music lately that's highly unlikely.

      --
      Shoot Pixels, Not People!
    54. Re:Hmph... by BigDish · · Score: 1

      This I can't understand-it has to be a flaw in your setup, as it's my understanding that the CD format pre-dates SCMS

    55. Re:Hmph... by twofidyKidd · · Score: 2, Informative

      You're right. They aren't under any obligations, other than to their shareholders, to make money, and wouldn't it make sense to offer a product to consumers that would afford them that option? That's one of the aspects of this whole thing I don't understand.

      If a guy buys an album on record, and then records it to tape so he can listen to it in his car over and over without ruining the record, where is the harm in that? Similarly, if I listen primarily to mp3s because of how easy it is to sit at my machine and dump them into a playlist and let them roll, where's the harm in that?

      So its in a digital, sharable format now. Big deal. I can still record it to tape and toss it over the wall to my neighbor, who can listen to it until he's sick of it for absolutely nothing.

      Do you see where were getting at? It's really silly of an industry whose primary goal is to make money with the sale of their product, limit that product of it's intended usage. That's like shooting yourself in the foot.

      So that kind of copy protection might stop a few people. I guarantee that the kind of people they don't want it to work for will still find a way. Hell, I can take that CD, toss it in my CD drive, open up Sound Forge, and press record. Boom. Done. And I just realized that I could be nabbed under the DMCA for having written a scheme for circumventing copyright protection. A precedent set by the RIAA.

      Senseless...

      --


      Hades, PoD: Official Advocate
    56. Re:Hmph... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I can't believe this fucking shit is getting modded up as insighful.

      Here's another one: Fill your lungs with air and you won't die.

      Tomorrow comes after today.

      Cmdr Taco loves underaged gay niggers.

      Water is wet and the sky is blue.

    57. Re:Hmph... by orkysoft · · Score: 1

      Apparently, that is what they call "usability"...

      --

      I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
    58. Re:Hmph... by kfg · · Score: 1

      And you'll have to click on the "Paranoia" tab to find the checkbox for this.

      Calling disabling Autorun "paranoia" is like calling making sure all of the chambers in a revolver are empty before pointing it at your head and pulling the trigger "paranoia."

      Oh yeah, be "paranoid" and check the chamber too, just in case, you paranoid bastard you.

      KFG

    59. Re:Hmph... by ShawnD · · Score: 2, Insightful
      it's got digital optical audio out, my Sound Blaster5.1 w/ LiveDrive has digital Optical Audio In......it's not analog any more

      I may be talking out my ass, but I seem to recall that the SB Live series always uses 48kHz sampling rate from the digital inputs and there is a little bit of degradation resampling from the 44.1kHz rate the CD uses. Recording from the digital input at 44.1kHz would actually do 44.1kHz -> 48kHz -> 44.1kHz.

      Definitly better than the analog input. I get -70dB of noise with the Line input selected and muted. The digital noise floor should be at -90dB so there is 20dB of analog noise there. This is on a Live Value 5.1 which unfortunatly has no on-board digital inputs (There is a spot for a CD-ROM SPDIF connector, but it is missing. Of course the TAD connector for a voice modem answering machine is installed :-().

    60. Re:Hmph... by Unregistered · · Score: 3, Funny

      Or install linux

    61. Re:Hmph... by jazman_777 · · Score: 5, Funny
      Speaking of which, what was the result of that Red Book lawsuit?

      The judge determined that Philips' trying to read a non-CD with a CD unit was a violation of the DMCA.

      --
      Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
    62. Re:Hmph... by K8Fan · · Score: 1
      The person who's potentially getting hurt the worst is Anthony Hamilton. This guy and his career are being used as a guinea pig (read: sacrificial lamb) by the RIAA for their "technical exercises", as you put it.

      Exactly. I remember the first movie the MPAA released in theaters and to Pay-Per-View at the same time - "Pirates of Penzance". The theater owners reacted by refusing to advertise the film and showed it in the fewest theaters they could for the least amount of time.

      --
      "How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
    63. Re:Hmph... by gfody · · Score: 1

      Or don't listen to anthony hamilton

      --

      bite my glorious golden ass.
    64. Re:Hmph... by jdclucidly · · Score: 1, Informative

      Way, WAY off topic, but it's worth mentioning that maturbation is now legal in all fifty due to the Supreme Court's sodomy ruling. Good news for geeks everywhere!

    65. Re:Hmph... by rabidcow · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Autorun is and always was a security hole. Microsoft should have known already when they implemented it, that it was a security hole. A similar but more subtle hole was fixed in AmigaOS five years earlier. That hole was used by multiple viruses, and caused the computer to get affected as soon as an infected floppy was inserted in the drive.

      It's about as much of a security hole as allowing binaries to be installed on the machine at all.

      The difference between autorun on a floppy and on a CD is that floppies are RW, while CDs are either read-only or read/erase/write. For a virus to spread via CDs, it would have to detect a CD burning operation and infect the CD image before it was written. This is an extremely complex task, and it would still only allow infection during a regular burn operation.

      Combine that with the fact that people don't tend to use CDs to trade data as much as people used to use floppies and the infection rate is MUCH lower. A lower infection rate means more time for a virus to be detected and stopped, so the virus writer would have to go to a lot more effort to get a much less effective virus.

      So yes, it is a security hole. It's not really a security hole worth worrying about though, since an attacker would almost have to have physical access to the machine in the first place.

      It is, however, extremely annoying.

    66. Re:Hmph... by texaport · · Score: 1
      I can't even order CD drives on computers anymore.
      The last two SUVs I rode in at lunch have DVD players, not CD.
      It's been 20 years since Springsteen produced "Born in the USA" as the first CD pressed in the United States for commercial release.

      The industry doesn't even know their distribution format is dead.

    67. Re:Hmph... by hampton · · Score: 2, Funny

      I guess that makes holding down the Shift key when inserting the CD to prevent it from Autoplaying a DMCA violation now.

    68. Re:Hmph... by gad_zuki! · · Score: 1

      >They're trying to rely in the fact that some audio CD players will be more tolerant than CD-ROM devices.

      I think they're trying to get the rippers to choke on all the errors. Which isn't exactly the same thing but close enough I guess.

      I think you could make a CD where the CD-ROM will do a decent job of outputting the CD audio to the soundcard while fighting all this corruption but when accessed as a disk full of errors the rippers and encoders will be thoroughly confused.

    69. Re:Hmph... by rampant+mac · · Score: 1

      Or don't even run fucking Windows. Problem solved. :)

      --
      I like big butts and I cannot lie.
    70. Re:Hmph... by sterno · · Score: 1

      Music is a necessity. RIAA music is not.

      They are under no obligation, that is correct, and they will learn, though their tactics that, by not giving people what they want, they will lose money.

      Making it difficult to rip mp3's may actually violate two legal principles. The first is that my right to make backup copies of the disc are protected under fair use. They are preventing that capability.

      The second is that a tax is added to blank digital media that is to offset the potential piracy. If they can prevet the piracy byu making unduplicatable disks, why should they still get that money.

      Personally, I only buy CD's I can turn into MP3. If a band I like makes the mistake of doing otherwise, then they are the ones who suffer for it, not me. I'll just find somebody else who's willing to offer me what I want.

      --
      This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
    71. Re:Hmph... by grolschie · · Score: 1

      Good point. They should stop refering to them as cd's. If they don't have the proper logo-thingamee-mabob on them, then they are not cds.

    72. Re:Hmph... by metamatic · · Score: 1
      Copyright law gives them control over distribution and price BY DEFINITION. No one is forcing you to buy their over priced product. At the same time, a high price does not give you the right to pirate.

      It's not a matter of price. I only wish to buy music on CD. If the record company won't sell it on CD, or in some format I can burn to a regular audio CD, then I won't buy it--I'll copy it instead and make my own CD.

      I have no moral problem with making something that a company won't sell me. If they change their mind and start selling it, I get rid of my copy and buy a legit one.

      (Yes, really. I had a bootleg copy of "Warp" by New Musik. Finally, Sony Japan released it on CD, so I ordered an import copy.)

      --
      GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
    73. Re:Hmph... by DickBreath · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That is great news for me. But back on topic, do you think these laws were ever *respected*, at least in recent times? This is where I predict that IP laws will end up.

      --

      I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
    74. Re:Hmph... by sterno · · Score: 3, Insightful

      See what really frustrates the hell out of me is that I want artists to succeed. I don't want them to be slaves to the RIAA, and I don't want them getting screwed over by pirates. The problem is that in the RIAA's efforts to protect their profits (they don't give a hoot about artists), they are making it much harder for me to listen to music the way most people want to.

      But anyhow, a couple comments:

      Read the news: the labels are scrambling to offer legitimate alternatives.

      And all of the alternatives I've seen so far, put substantial limitations on what I can do with the music compared to now. Itunes is probably the most lenient, but when I downloaded an album, I was less than pleased to realize that I couldn't play it on my linux desktop. I paid the same price as I'd pay for a physical CD and got an inferior product.

      As for their legal tactics, I don't see why age or sex should matter when pursuing someone who has violated copyright law - breaking the law is breaking the law.

      The age is important because in our legal system, minors are not considered to be wholly responsible for their actions. Leighway is granted because children don't entirely understand consequences, etc.

      They have never tried to pass a law allowing them to attack computers. Do not confuse them with misguided legistlators.

      This is a technicality. The RIAA isn't in the legislature, therefore, they cannot pass laws. I guarantee you that the RIAA was happy with that law, and that the people who sponsored it were getting money from various media companies.

      --
      This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
    75. Re:Hmph... by rutledjw · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Hold on, wait a sec, a bill allowing Copyright Holders to destroy and attack music traders wasn't driven by RIAA? I don't believe it. Multiple legislators who blindly support the media companies thought this on their own and did it. Yeah, I don't think so. RIAA itself investigated their ability to do this a couple years ago BEFORE the bill_S_ were introduced. They backed off as it was asserted that they had no legal right. (back in the Napster days)

      Read the news: the labels are scrambling to offer legitimate alternatives

      Read them indeed, the only "legit" one in Apple's. Even Fortune magazine came out blasting the labels a couple months ago for having no "internet strategy".

      while I'm not in favor of copy protected CDs your comments demonstrate that you've swallowed the slashdot coolaid.

      I beg your pardon, but I think you've swallowed a different kind of Kool-Aid.

      Anyway, none of the things you list justify pirating someone's content.

      I disagree. While you may not agree with my points, _IF_ they are valid (which I think they are), then we are dealing with organizations which have demonstrated contempt for the law and their consumer base. Two wrongs don't make a right, but it's the second "wrong" (copyright violation) which is driving the labels to have SOME online "product / service" (I use the term loosely) and more likely rally behind Apple's.

      That being said, I don't like the idea of hurting others, but I'm not going to pay $16 / CD for 1 song. For small artists and those who have multiple songs, I will. Is that any better? I don't know - I don't care, until there's something different I still won't pay outrageous prices for 1-hit CDs...

      --

      Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
    76. Re:Hmph... by Bingo+Foo · · Score: 3, Funny

      How is it that a user named "DickBreath," responding to a troll post about masturbation, posts one of the more insightful comments in this thread?

      --
      taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
    77. Re:Hmph... by X-Mustang · · Score: 1

      It is exactly these copy-protected mixed mode discs that confuses the ROM drives and Windoz machines. Standard audio CD players will play these discs without a hitch because the player firmware ignores the second session of the CD and only processes the Table of Contents (TOC). The TOC is a simple listing of the individual tracks and the start location. Mess with that and no CD player will play it.
      Drive manufacturers could incorporate a switch on the front of CD/DVD-ROM drives that 'dumbs-down' the drive firmware so it will report the protected disc as a regular audio disc to the PC.
      ===========

      --
      Death is a pause between lives
    78. Re:Hmph... by JudgeFurious · · Score: 1

      Ok, while I think the poster here is a bit over the top "immoral and unethical? Please!) he is correct about the original poster not being "Insightful". If anything it was the often described but rarely understood "Blinding flash of the obvious".

      And for the record I copy music regularly and don't find it either immoral or unethical. It could simply be that I'm ammoral though. I dunno.

      --
      Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
    79. Re:Hmph... by paultt · · Score: 1

      talk about it: even new iron maiden's CD is copy protected. it didn't play in my linux box. until i copied it with cdrdao on another CD. then it's ok (the copied thing) i returned the original CD and bought tne vynil, anyway... do you too. boycott those f[@#ng things, please... time ago, a friend of mine "crashed" its car cd player with one of those copy protected CD's and it had to change the player. i am not joking.

    80. Re:Hmph... by Simonetta · · Score: 1

      With all respect to your arguments, if you really were someone who makes a living through music, then I would have expected to see a link to your website (where we could download MP3 samples of your work) in the signature of your message.

      A link in your signature on SlashDot is a free piece of advertising to your musical product that is seen by many thousands of people daily.

      (that's possibly thousands of more people than have ever heard the music by which you claim to make your living???)

    81. Re:Hmph... by Dwedit · · Score: 1

      *cough* nimda on korean visual studio.net *cough*

    82. Re:Hmph... by nolife · · Score: 1
      W2K, NT:
      [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servi ces\CDRom ] "Autorun"="0"
      XP Pro and Home:
      [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Policies\Explorer]
      "NoDriveTypeAutoRun "=hex:b5,00,00,00
      If you can't figure out what those above examples mean or how to convert these into a mergeable reg file then you probably don't need or want autorun disabled anyway. Does disabling autorun really help anyway? I've seen mixed mode disks that I could not see the audio tracks directly with explorer.exe. I remember an older version of Nero came with a session switcher for Win98 that allowed you to change sessions and access the audio tracks. Not sure how to do that with W2K or XP directly, Nero itself will still allow you to view and extract the tracks though. Just ignore track one as it is data.
      --
      Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
    83. Re:Hmph... by S.Lemmon · · Score: 1

      If it's no more than that it sould be trivial to get around. Doesn't most burning software come with a utility that lets you select an earlier session? I know EZCD Creator used to. There's also stuff like ISO buster that can pull stuff off earlier sessions.

    84. Re:Hmph... by S.Lemmon · · Score: 1

      Do you realize the public is under no obligation to buy their broken CDs either? At one time in the distant past corporations actually worked to give the customer what they wanted. It's so much easier now that you can just buy any laws necessary to insure your profits.

    85. Re:Hmph... by Lumpy · · Score: 1

      it doesnt matter.

      It wont play in my car CD player, my expensive CD changer at home or in my boom box.

      It's not a CD and they will be refunding my money for an opened CD.

      They can cripple the crap all they want as long as they put a warning label on them.

      What am I saying... I havent bought a new label owned artist cd for over 2 years now.

      I have bought 47 indie CD's and many more USED cd's though...

      Nevermind...

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    86. Re:Hmph... by Shadow99_1 · · Score: 1

      Not to mention that most fools sign contracts that cover 5 disks before ending and have no way out even if these sorts of things kill their career for technical reasons...

      Wouldn't it suck as a muscian to not be able to create (or perform) songs for the rest of your life, because you sold your soul to the Big record labels and they sold your career to test a new 'Disk Security Concept'? This guy should be hiring a lawyer ASAP...

      --
      we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
    87. Re:Hmph... by rnturn · · Score: 1
      ``Otherwise, you are perhaps useful for career-destroying experiments like this one so they don't have to worry about destroying the career of someone they care about (read: have invested significant sums of money into).''

      I pity this poor guy. Geez, to have your debut release handcuffed like this. I sure hope he enjoys touring his butt off. That's the only way he's going to make a living in the music business if he relies on some RIAA member sell his music. He'd be better off find some small CD pressing house and making his own CDs and selling them at concerts. (But he probably got snookered into signing a contract that prohibits him from doing anything like that until the record company finally gets tired of shafting him.)

      --
      CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
    88. Re:Hmph... by Shadow99_1 · · Score: 1

      As a person capable of playing music myself (though since I don't actively sell my services at playing music so I don't call myself a muscian), I have to disagree with some of what you are saying...

      First you state that you favor copy-protection (bad move unless your owned by the RIAA already as most likely you'd make more money allowing people to share and experience your music than not) and that you favor total control as you claim is defined by copyright... And while you are right to some degree pricing is not guarenteed in copyright (aka you can't just say you have to pay X amount and expect it to sell at said price, as that is affected by the market). Music as a whole isn't copyrighted which would give them the right to set pricing as they please across the board... Instead they have been convicted of price fixing among themselves because they couldn't control price via copyright and instead resorted to forming a cartel and abusing their place in the market...

      Then you claim the labels are tryign to offer alternatives... Alternatives that are frankly laughable from a tech standpoint... Like files you pay for that can't then be moved from a single PC or stored elsewhere without having to repurchase. Or at least that was their first plan... The followups haven't been offered by the industry, they've been offered by outsiders like Apple and MS...

      You also claim they didn't try to get their puppets to pass laws allowign them rights over your PC... To which I can only say "Wake Up!!", since you can't seriously believe that... I don't care who you know, but they would love such powers... Heck they've tried for ages to gather support to tighten their grip on how we use music... Not to mention who can create and distribute popular music... I'm starting to think you are some gullible fool that is truly snookered by the big labels to believe their filth...

      Someone who can't pay would simply be sold into eternal debt instead... Like if they decided to sue me... I could never hope to pay them off and I cna't afford that many lawyers... I would be forced to go to court laywerless and figuring I couldn't adiquately defend myself against hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of lawyers I could be forced by a jugde to sell all my possessions to pay them what I could and then pay from anything I'd be able to make the rest of my life to pay them off... People should not be forced to do that... Especially since copyright law was not meant to make individuals obey copyright (the idea is that no one else can profit off of the work of others, not to criple the average person), it was meant to attack rival bussinesses and keep them from infringing on the rights to make a living off of somethign that can be copyrighted...

      I may not support piracy, but I don't reallys believe it's piracy... I know anything I download (or have downloaded), is done either to find works I can't buy (I don't have the resources to visit each DJ and record their performances with permission and finding their CD's can be nigh impossible locally or online) or because they let me download them so I can try out their music! This worked well in the old days of MP3.com before the record labels bought them, I own lots of D.A.M. CD's because I enjoyed the songs I could hear and wanted a more perminent copy. I also don't go aroudn selling any songs in my possession or playing them (via some osrt of audio system) to peopel who pay for the experience of hearing them... Let me make that clear: I don't make money off of the music in my possession! Pirates (the software type) acquire music, movies, software, etc for the explicit purpose of redistributing it and making a profit... That's not what I do or I figure most other P2P people do...

      And frankly to hell with you and the RIAA if you can't understand that...

      --
      we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
    89. Re:Hmph... by NanoGator · · Score: 1

      "You don't have to take anything they have. Just ignore them. Don't infringe on copyright, don't buy their stuff. And if everyone did that, their would be no RIAA to worry about it."

      And that will cause the RIAA to change their ways... how? Don't you think that'd be the common solution to the problem if it was ideal? Man I hate these stupid oversimplified answers that leave out so much detail.

      Money alone does not guide the RIAA into doing what they should. If they make less money due to people boycotting protected goods, they'll just claim it's because people are inherently thieves. But when people are ripping CDs for example, then it illustrates demand. "well let's see, people want music in a digital format... maybe we should make tiny portable MP3 players."

      Passive resistance isn't going to work here.

      --
      "Derp de derp."
    90. Re:Hmph... by drsmithy · · Score: 1
      To represent the views of someone who makes a living from music, while I'm not in favor of copy protected CDs your comments demonstrate that you've swallowed the slashdot coolaid.

      I have a genuine question. Would you consider someone who memorises one of your songs to be committing copyright infringement ?

      If not, why not ?

      If yes, how do you propose a system for listening to music without facilitating copyright infringement be designed ?

    91. Re:Hmph... by pHDNgell · · Score: 1

      It's really simple - just rip everything but track 1 using CDParanoia.

      Well, what if that's the one worth hearing?

      --
      -- The world is watching America, and America is watching TV.
    92. Re:Hmph... by 1u3hr · · Score: 1
      It's not really a security hole worth worrying about though, since an attacker would almost have to have physical access to the machine in the first place.

      When you buy bootleg software you really don't want to have autorun before you check it out with a virus scan. Though in dozens of such so far I've never had a virus detected, despite the BSA and others' blather about warez being a massive virus vector. Generally though I don't want the installer to start up till I've browsed the disk just to check it out (and opened the serial.txt file, of course).

    93. Re:Hmph... by jamshedji · · Score: 1

      In other words, according to you, stealing is ok.

    94. Re:Hmph... by glesga_kiss · · Score: 1
      Or an even better way to work around it is to not buy the CD, and just download a copy somebody else went through the hassle to rip.

      Because of this, it actually becomes easier to download. Let me explain:

      It's inevitable that a few people will be able to rip it to mp3 or whatever through some hack or obscure hardware combo. There is nothing anyone can do to stop this, no system is 100% secure. Those versions that do get ripped will make it on to p2p. As the album is hard to rip, there will be less varients of the files out there, which in the p2p world actually makes the files much easier to get. This is because the few versions out there will be far more widespread. More sources, more availability.

      And, as you are legally entitled to make additional copies for your own use in many countries, downloading via Kazza might be your only legal option! Ironic, the one thing they are trying to stop is helped by it.

      Combined with pissing off more consumers (I doubt this disk would work in my car cd/mp3 player for example), it's just another shot in the foot. Watching the music industry evolve (or disolve) is history in the making, enjoy it people!!

    95. Re:Hmph... by zorander · · Score: 1

      You forget so soon that in this economy, the song is copyrighted by the record company. Why should the artist get anything? It's the record company that deserves royalties for the use of their copyrighted materials.

      Brian

    96. Re:Hmph... by pod · · Score: 2, Informative

      I the case of broken CDs, it's not quite that black and white.

      These CDs have a data track, which has an autorun file on it. The autorun starts a silent installer that quietly installs some shitty DRM music player on your computer to play the WMA files. At least the CD that I put in on my work machine did that. At home, of course, I disable autorun on all the drives.

      --
      "Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
    97. Re:Hmph... by pod · · Score: 1

      I always wondered about that... what happens when you do that? Is there some sort of feedback to tell you this trick worked, or do you have to guess when it's safe to let go the shift key?

      --
      "Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
    98. Re:Hmph... by anethema · · Score: 1

      Like a faster internet connection for mp3s bahaha!

      --


      It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
    99. Re:Hmph... by pod · · Score: 1
      Hmm, ok, so it's a matter of format? Same difference. It still doesn't give you the right to get it for free. If you don't like the format Kellogs is using to package and sell their corn flakes, you don't cut the box in half and walk out with it without paying.

      I have no moral problem with making something that a company won't sell me.

      So take your own advice and MAKE it. You're not making it yourself, you're taking somebody else's for free. Again, a company is not obligated by law to make a service or product available to you, available for a price you agree on, and in a manner and format you find acceptable. You don't like what and how they're selling, you don't buy it.

      --
      "Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
    100. Re:Hmph... by rabidcow · · Score: 1

      Well, ok, you're right... I expect that people would not want trojans to be traced back to them (because that's STUPID), but apparently I trust people to care about their reputation too much. :/

    101. Re:Hmph... by Trepalium · · Score: 1

      As I understood it, some of these "copy protection" technologies relied on incorrect ECC/EDC data on the disc, and computer systems would apply the 'correction', and corrupt the data, or simply return an error while ripping. Most consumer CD equipment, on the other hand, would ignore the invalid correction data, and just play the raw data. Then again, there was also invalid TOC entry tricks by other manufacturers, trying to confuse the computer/CD player into thinking there were no audio tracks on the disc, only data.

      --
      I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
    102. Re:Hmph... by krappie · · Score: 1

      Hmm, this is a good point. You people ALMOST understand. I dont understand their logic in "encrypting" these tracks.

      Obviously, if i can listen to it, I can copy it. So how can they stop me? You say they're stopping me from "digitally copying" my songs?

      This begs the question:
      Are they providing me with a high quality digital copy of a song?

      Nope.

      What are my options after buying their cd? Play it in a shitty old analog cd player? Do I have the option of playing a high quality digital copy like I did with my old cds? nope.

      Are they preventing me from copying ANYTHING?
      nope.

      They simply arent distributing high quality digital copies and lessening our quality of listening. THATS IT. This has absolutely ZERO effect on copy protection. NONE. They are just giving out shitty copies that are corrupted and since they make sure of a cd's error detection, they damage easier. So instead of anyone having good copies, everyone will have shitty copies, even the people who buy it. Woohoo. Another win for the recording industry!

      Now this new cd copies over wma files if you're in windows? I'd have to look at that copy protection and also the quality of the wma files. It obviously wont have the quality of normal cds. Why purchase cds if you dont get the quality?

      So to summarize:
      Does this protect copying? no
      Does this corrupt the quality of a song before distributing it to people? yes

    103. Re:Hmph... by Reziac · · Score: 1

      Holding down Shift doesn't always work.

      Oddly enough, neither does autorun. Some machines ignore it for some install CDs. The same CD may autorun normally on another machine.

      Have seen both happen on various hardware and WinVersions, from 95 thru XP. The shift thing may be keyboard or BIOS specific? since some machines don't recognise holding down shift during boot to get a clean DOS boot, either. As to when autorun fails by itself, maybe a CDROM timing issue??

      All that aside.. I now have yet more reasons not to buy encumbered audio CDs: you wanna REALLY piss me off? Install anything without asking. ESPECIALLY something that touches the OS. (Have I ranted about TurboTax and IE5.5 lately? I can do so, if you wish. :)

      --
      ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
    104. Re:Hmph... by Zazzalicious · · Score: 1

      Or, (on wondows) fire up 'Accessories/Entertainment/Volume Control', hit 'Options/Properties', select 'Recording' and select 'Wave/MP3' or 'What you Hear' etc.. The just record the CD into cooledit or any sound recorder. Or plug some type of recorder into Line Out.. you may in theory lose some quality, but far less than you do converting to MP3... IS it just me or are the CD producers on a complete loser here?

    105. Re:Hmph... by hamster+foo · · Score: 1

      Where exactly is the DMCA applicable? For instance, if I buy a used CD at a record store, does that CD also fall under the rules of the DMCA? If what you said is accurate, then that would make repairing scratches on that CD that prevented it from playing illegal under the DMCA. That sounds crazy, not that I would put it past our government.

      --
      - b
    106. Re:Hmph... by Hooded+One · · Score: 2, Informative

      The Auto Insert Notification isn't the same as Autorun. Autorun isn't even entirely dependent on Insert Notification. Insert Notification essentially means Windows mounts the CD drive as soon as you insert a disc and close the drive. Autorun means that specified commands are run upon mounting of the CD.

    107. Re:Hmph... by stoborrobots · · Score: 1

      That depends on your point of view... oftentimes, the intended recipient is not a human but a machine...

      In that case, this is encrypting such that only the intended device (a CD player) can read it...

      I still hate the stuff, but they can make a case for calling it encryption...

    108. Re:Hmph... by danila · · Score: 1

      WIndows is a sorry mess of an OS, right. I have Win2k with autorun disabled. After messing a bit with virtual CD drives and other crap, I found out that the CD-drive does not refresh the contents when I insert a new disk. That's right. I can insert another disk, but the OS will think it's still the old one. Even refreshing by pressing F5 does not help. The only way to update it is to remove the disk, refresh the drive contents to see that there is nothing there, then insert the new disk...

      --
      Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
    109. Re:Hmph... by danila · · Score: 1

      They're trying to rely in the fact that some audio CD players will be more tolerant than CD-ROM devices.
      What we need is a situation when CD-ROMs (or CD-RWs/DVD-ROMs/DVD-Rs) become more tolerant than audio CD players (customizable) so that they are able to read/play any content as long as there are at least some bytes on the drive. :) Just like browser will render any HTML, even if it's completely fucked up as far as the W3 standard goes.

      --
      Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
    110. Re:Hmph... by drunkenbatman · · Score: 1

      Yeah, MacOS had to go through this learning phase too. Search for the "early bird" worm. It really f'd up prepress shops.

    111. Re:Hmph... by mikeswi · · Score: 1

      To quote (ie, rip off) another slashdotter whose handle I forget...

      I'm reminded of one of the only TV commercials ever published by 3dfx. An engineer introduces his new chipset, capable of billions of calculations per second. With pride and courage in his voice, he speaks of how this chip will allow them to revolutionize medicine and scientific research, saving billions of lives. An interruption over the intercom says, "Excuse me people, we changed our minds; we're going to use it to play video games."

      We have remarkable technology at hand, capable of verifying the source and integrity of data transmissions, communications, financial records, all manner of irreplacable information. We're going to use it to keep people from listening to music. Irrespective of copyright and how poor and hungry Metallica and Dr Dre are right now... that's a totally different issue. We're going to use it to keep people from listening to music. I hope somebody's proud.

      I couldn't say it any better myself, so I won't try.

    112. Re:Hmph... by ajs318 · · Score: 1
      Just like browser will render any HTML, even if it's completely fucked up as far as the W3 standard goes.
      Any HTML except
      </HTML>
      <FORM>
      <INPUT TYPE CRASH>
      </FORM>
      </HTML>
      you mean ;-)
      --
      Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
    113. Re:Hmph... by danila · · Score: 1

      Have you read "Godel, Escher, Bach. The Eternal Golden Braid" by Douglas Hofshtader? The part where the Turtle devises records to destroy Achilles' gramophones. :) May be like that, for every computer program there always exists some input that would crash it. :)))))

      --
      Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
    114. Re:Hmph... by Zigg · · Score: 1

      Right, because Dems are Good and Pure and would never act against Citizens.

    115. Re:Hmph... by hplasm · · Score: 1

      So it's doofus if you do, and doofus if you don't..

      --
      ...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
    116. Re:Hmph... by j-turkey · · Score: 1
      encoding != encryption

      Agreed. However, neither the article nor the comment that I responded to used the word encoding. They specifically used the word encryption.

      --Turkey
      --

      -Turkey

    117. Re:Hmph... by sionnach · · Score: 1

      Does that include, perchance, the CD case itself?

    118. Re:Hmph... by pmz · · Score: 1

      Your tin foil hat is too tight, I think.

      Nope. Do you like the perverse array of special allowances, exclusions, preferences, credits, exemptions, and loopholes in the current tax code, nearly all of which are politically-motivated band-aids or favors for all sorts of people who don't really need or deserve them? If you do, I bet you can't wait for the splendor of federal-government-managed health care. It'll be great.

      Also, you can look forward to the federal government having unfettered access to your personal medial history for whatever purpose they deem fit.

      There are fundamental problems in arguments for nationalized health care that don't require the tin hat, however. One is scale. While Dean may have done wonders in his state of a few million people, just wait until he has to scale it up by two orders of magnitude while fighting the congresspeople of fifty mostly-independent states.

      There are very good reasons why our government is distributed in nature (cities/counties/states/nation). Ironically (from the Democrats' point of view), one of those reasons is freedom. Once the federal government declares something for everyone universally, any individual or communitiy has lost their ability to choose for themselves. If a state here or there wants to implement socialistic health care, fine, but don't require other states to do that. At least, it'll allow people to move about to find a state they can tolerate (with federalized systems, people have to leave the country to find change, or fight tooth and nail for new national legislation).

      Simply, the USA is too big and too diverse for a monolithic national health care system to work.

    119. Re:Hmph... by Becquerel · · Score: 1

      I'm sure all this shit is just going to make people use mp3s more. Even if i wanted to by the album to support the artist, i'm not going to bother now cos i'll be giving money to the RIAA and i can't rip it to play on my Archos even if i do.

      Kazaa, Direct Connect, IRC, etc ... here i come.

      --
      My spelling isn't bad, I'm evolving the language
    120. Re:Hmph... by ajs318 · · Score: 1

      Got a link for it?

      Back in The Days, you had a reasonable chance of typing a book title into a search engine and finding an online copy of the text. Well, mostly you didn't find anything ITTBT. Nowadays, you type a book title into a search engine and find lots of cached search records ultimately pointing to online bookstores offering to sell you the book. And lots of "ERROR The requested URL could not be retrieved" where my Squid proxy blocked an advert ;-)

      --
      Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
    121. Re:Hmph... by hesiod · · Score: 1

      > Is there some sort of feedback to tell you this trick worked

      Not really. It only takes a few seconds, though. You can tell it has worked when the CD light stops flashing or sometimes your cursor will switch (very quickly) to an hourglass and back. Depending on the speed of your CD-ROM, you might hear it spin up, wait a second or two & spin down again. If you're unsure, just hold it for 15 seconds after inserting the CD -- that should be long enough.

    122. Re:Hmph... by leifm · · Score: 1

      And while you're at it download cmdhere.exe, which makes navigating windows retarded directory names much smoother.

      --

      "Windows Me offers tremendous reliability and stability improvements..." -- Paul Thurott
    123. Re:Hmph... by hesiod · · Score: 1

      > The jury decided that your mother was a filthy fucking whore

      I bet it was unanimous as well.

    124. Re:Hmph... by kevinank · · Score: 1
      Where exactly is the DMCA applicable? For instance, if I buy a used CD at a record store, does that CD also fall under the rules of the DMCA? If what you said is accurate, then that would make repairing scratches on that CD that prevented it from playing illegal under the DMCA. That sounds crazy, not that I would put it past our government.

      This is from memory, but the part of the DMCA I was quoting applies to manufacturers and dealers, and makes it illegal to manufacture or traffic in devices whose primary use is to circumvent an effective security device, and which have no substantial secondary use which would be permissible.

      I don't follow your logic with respect to scratches... are you supposing that the recording industry might start scratching the CD surface to keep a section of the CD from being read? Why wouldn't they just remove that section of the CD instead of scratching it?

      A more interesting case was when people started pointing to their Sharpie pens as DMCA anti-circumvention devices when people realized that one of the security mechanisms being put onto new CD's was to create a badly formatted multi-session CD. The Audio CD players would ignore the second session since they aren't multi-session compatible anyway, but computer CD drives would fail in the CD-ROM firmware as the CD continually failed to read the second session's allocation table.

      Of course Sharpie pens have substantial non-infringing uses, so it wouldn't really be possible to go after Sharpie for producing a device which the DMCA says is illegal. Likewise, if scratches were somehow used to implement a security mechanism for preventing copying of audio CD's, I assume that the non-infringing uses of scratch removers would be considered substantial enough in their primary use of repairing damaged CD's, that they wouldn't qualify for DMCA designation as an anti-circumvention device.

      --
      LibBT: BitTorrent for C - small - fast - clean (Now Versio
    125. Re:Hmph... by esswedl · · Score: 1

      I don't think the poster was suggesting the recording industry might start scratching CD surfaces as method of copy protection. I believe the question involved the legal sense of the wording of "effective security devices" in the DMCA. If that phrase is used to include things that aren't strictly security encryption (such as bad TOCs and corrupted data) as protected by the DMCA, how do we define "effective"? Does it have to be intended? A scratch in a used CD may have the effect of preventing ripping--is that an "effective security device" (and thus subject to litigation under the DMCA) because it has that effect though not intended? Clearly that definition would be found non-sensical, but the situation does nicely raise the question of the broadly inclusive language of the DMCA.

    126. Re:Hmph... by The_K4 · · Score: 1

      Good thing to know. Thanks for the info. I've never used the Optical In, I pretty much use the Optical Out on both the DVD and Computer to go TO the reciever and then to the speakers. I'm not a audiophile, but to me it sounds really good. :)

    127. Re:Hmph... by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      SCMS is used to prevent serial digital copies - hence the name (serial copy managment system). Even if the sound card respected the SCMS setting it should allow you to make a copy provided the CD in the player is an original.

      The SCMS setting is a result of the American Home Recording Act. There are three settings:

      1. Not protected - allow copy, and the copy should have setting #1 also.

      2. Protected, but original - allow copy, but the copy should have setting #3.

      3. Protected, copy - do not allow copy.

      If using SCMS-respecting hardware to duplicate CDs, it should allow first-generation digital copies of even protected works. The system will not allow second-gen copies since the copy will get flag #3.

      Note that the act has penalties for any music distributor who distributes original media with flag #3 set (which blocks ALL copies - even first-gen). The law is supposed to be a tradeoff - the music industry allows 1st-gen copies in exchange for getting hardware protection against later copies.

      Most computer hardware ignores the SCMS setting anyway...

    128. Re:Hmph... by Cecil · · Score: 1

      But he probably got snookered into signing a contract that prohibits him from doing anything like that until the record company finally gets tired of shafting him.

      Prevents him from ever doing that, you mean. It's extremely rare that a musician gets any rights to their music back, ever. Usually the copyright is reassigned to the label, and that's the end of the story. The label owns the music, and all recordings of your performance of it. Basically the only thing you *can* do if you grow disillusioned with your contract is tour and sell merchandise (not CDs). Most of the time there isn't even any benefit to creating new songs, as long as the contract is in effect those don't belong to you either.

      It's a brutal business. I don't know why anyone would sign with the RIAA if they really thought it completely and realistically through, but I'm sure they make it seem like a fantastic opportunity to the struggling musician, and apparently that works.

    129. Re:Hmph... by jonadab · · Score: 1

      Except, computer programs are smarter than grammophones, and can be
      designed with logic that recognises such invalid or troublesome input
      and responds in some fashion (e.g., spits an error message at you).
      That way, the troublesome input doesn't destroy the record player.
      (It still can't be played, of course...)

      Why does this thread remind me of the current poll on Perlmonks?

      --
      Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
    130. Re:Hmph... by Zigg · · Score: 1

      Attitudes like yours are a good part of the reason we're dealing with legal and technical measures that get in the way of me using media I legitimately purchase in any way I see fit.

      It's really all about free music for people like you, otherwise you'd all be writing Congress and they'd be bending over backwards to take care of the problem lest they get voted out next term.

    131. Re:Hmph... by JimFromJersey · · Score: 1

      > Despite your "two DVD players" the rest of the world still enjoys and uses DVD players

      I believe you meant to say: Despite your "two DVD players" the rest of the world still enjoys and uses CD players

      --
      between the greater and lesser infinities sleep the dreams undreamt
    132. Re:Hmph... by NanoGator · · Score: 1

      "Attitudes like yours are a good part of the reason we're dealing with legal and technical measures that get in the way of me using media I legitimately purchase in any way I see fit."

      Costumers express demand, RIAA fights demand instead of supplying it, and the customers are at fault for it? I don't think so.

      "It's really all about free music for people like you..."

      No dude. If that were really true, people 'like me' wouldn't be spending $400 for an iPod. The money is there ready to be spent. Now if only they were supplying the services to earn that money...

      --
      "Derp de derp."
    133. Re:Hmph... by hamster+foo · · Score: 1

      esswedl's reply covers my answer to your question. Which boils down to, under the DMCA could scratches on a cd that is being resold be considered an "effective security device"?

      --
      - b
    134. Re:Hmph... by zangdesign · · Score: 1

      My question is: why are you even supporting the record companies by purchasing CD's with encrypted tracks?

      Even if there is a way around the encryption - purchasing a CD of that ilk puts money in the pockets of people it shouldn't be in. Sure, it's great to have a method to bypass their encryption, but think about the long term effects of the purchase.

      If consumers stop buying CDs because they're encrypted, eventually the record companies will stop producing encrypted CDs.

      If you purchase it based on the idea that "someone would have bought this, ripped it and released it anyway so why not me?", then you're still putting some money in the pockets of RIAA, the record company, and artists who support their actions.

      --
      To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
    135. Re:Hmph... by Reziac · · Score: 1

      You didn't disable autoinsert notification too, did you? Cuz that would cause the "I dunno what disk I'm supposed to see, WAH!" problem.

      And I don't think it's exactly Windows at fault, but rather inherited from a lower level: plain old DOS has the same problem: failure to recognise a new CD unless you've first either logged down to the CD's root, OR logged to a different drive first (or sometimes both). Saw similar behaviour at times with Mandrake, only even more cranky -- sometimes the only way to clear and get control over the CDROM drive again was to power-cycle the machine! (Not merely reboot -- that didn't fix it.)

      Tho I suppose it's possible that you've hit yet another flipped flag bug (where it claims to have a setting one way, but behaves like it's the opposite) -- tho these are WAY more prevalent in XP, and not common in previous WinVersions.

      I like Windows, but these flipped flag type bugs are frequently impossible to avoid tripping over, so it's beyond me why they don't get fixed. Tho one suspects management-imposed deadlines may have much to do with it.

      --
      ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
    136. Re:Hmph... by kevinank · · Score: 1
      ...under the DMCA could scratches on a cd that is being resold be considered an "effective security device"?

      If you are using the scratches to protect your copyrights then it might be possible to have them considered an effective security device. Unfortunately that wouldn't help you much -- next you'd have to go to the people who manufacture devices for removing scratches and sue them for trafficking in circumvention devices, but they would (as with the Sharpie pen) argue that the non-infringing uses of their devices are substantial.

      If you aren't using the scratches to protect your copyright (such as if they have no effect on copying, or you don't have any copyrightable interest) then you wouldn't be able to apply the DMCA to your case. If you are reselling a CD then you have no copyrightable interest to protect, so in the case you pose, you would be unable to bring an effective suit.

      --
      LibBT: BitTorrent for C - small - fast - clean (Now Versio
    137. Re:Hmph... by hamster+foo · · Score: 1

      I guess maybe I'm reading too much into this part of your original post:

      "even if the element that protects the data was not originally designed as a security device"

      The way I read that particular part would mean that while probably not realistic, a record company could sue someone for repairing a scratched CD because those scratches had inadvertently become an "effective security device", assuming they were preventing the play of said CD in the first place. Given that the record industry hasn't always been real positive towards the sale of used CDs, I was thinking that the broadness of including unintended security devices could extend to something like scratches and allow them an avenue to at least constrain some used CD sales.

      --
      - b
    138. Re:Hmph... by metamatic · · Score: 1

      I'm not taking anything. Everyone who had the music before has the music afterwards.

      --
      GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
    139. Re:Hmph... by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 1

      "It's really all about free music..."

      That's not really true. All I have to do is point to iTunes to prove that.

      People are okay with spending money. If they weren't, then who'd go to Starbucks and pay $3 for a latte? They could make one for considerably cheaper.

      Assuming that people download music simply because its free is like assuming that people drink Diet Coke just to lose weight. It sounds plausible, but it just isn't true.

    140. Re:Hmph... by danila · · Score: 1

      Achilles thought the same. In the book he devised smart grammophones that had cameras instead of physical contact with the record. AFAIR the result was exactly what you suggest - he couldn't play the records.

      --
      Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
    141. Re:Hmph... by danila · · Score: 1

      I can't find where I can enable or disable this in Win2k... I can change AutoRun settings, but insert notification is different and it might really be off. I don't know... Does anyone know where to change it in WIn2k?

      --
      Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
    142. Re:Hmph... by Reziac · · Score: 1

      [goes off, roots thru google]
      http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO -8859-1&q =%22auto+insert+notification%22+%2B%22windows+2000 %22+%2Bchange (beware slashdot-spaces)

      Try here:
      http://www.base40.com/cdtTipAutoRun.htm

      Apparently in Win2K, you have to use either TweakUI or Regedit to get at the settings. :(

      Presmably if you change the registry value to "1" it should turn it on, since "0" disables it. Anyway, that's how they usually work. I'd try TweakUI first. I can't remember if it comes with Win2K or not (I have Win95/98/ME/XP boxes, but by sheer happenstance, nothing with Win2K even tho it's probably the best of the lot! Probably should add it as a dual boot on the Win98 box. But first, another hard disk!)

      --
      ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
    143. Re:Hmph... by danila · · Score: 1

      Thanks, but that's not exactly it. I have TweakUI and also X-Setup (another tweaker), but I can only enable autorun there, not the insert notification. The page you reference also doesn't help, because in the Device Manager the CD-drive doesn't have the checkbox. The advice about Refreshing disk content also doesn't help. Right now I have Tron 2.0 CD in the drive. And yet, when I open it in Explorer, I see the contents of the AverTV Studio 2003 (tv-tuner) CD, which currently lies on my desk. ;) I can browse the disk, open catalogues (only one level deep), see file icons, I can even right click on the files and see their properties (creation dates, sizes, attributes, etc.). I can press F5 (or select Refresh from the menu) all the way I want and nothing changes. If I remove the disk, refresh in My Computer and put the disk back, it changes.

      Complete nonsense. I would love to fix it, but don't know how... :(

      --
      Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
    144. Re:Hmph... by Reziac · · Score: 1

      Well, maybe there is something else that will work among the 680 or so results on Google, that I didn't have time to sift thru more of :)

      If you hit one that definitely works on Win2K, I'd be interested in hearing about it!

      --
      ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
    145. Re:Hmph... by danila · · Score: 1

      I don't have a link, unfortunately. I've read the Russian translation, done by a babysitter employed by Hofstader - the story of this translation is amazing enough by itself. :) A great work and I was more than happy to buy the printed copy. In fact, I bought another one as a birthday gift. :) If you have access to scanner or a good digital camera, I suggest you buy the printed copy (you can buy used one cheaply or get it in the library), scan it, OCR it and upload to eDonkey and KaZaA. :)

      --
      Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
    146. Re:Hmph... by plover · · Score: 1
      I doubt it's hurting him. This is publicity. Good, bad, or indifferent, doesn't matter.

      I never even heard of him before this /. story. At least now I know he exists.

      Not that I'm going to rush out and buy his SPD (Shiny Plastic Disc), but they got his name out there.

      --
      John
    147. Re:Hmph... by ajs318 · · Score: 1

      Good idea, but the only P2P filesharing service I'm likely ever to upload anything to is /usr/sbin/httpd :-) Or maybe proftpd.

      --
      Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
  2. Simple solution.. by rpozz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Don't buy it.

    1. Re:Simple solution.. by faldore · · Score: 5, Funny

      Crack it.

    2. Re:Simple solution.. by buttahead · · Score: 1

      then smoke it.

    3. Re:Simple solution.. by Serious+Simon · · Score: 2, Funny

      Anthony Hamilton? Who?

    4. Re:Simple solution.. by homebrewmike · · Score: 1

      > Don't buy it.
      Well, one person has to buy it...

    5. Re:Simple solution.. by xalres · · Score: 1

      Seriously, all it takes is one geek with enough free time. It'll be on the net within hours of release.

      --
      If whales learn how to use weapons we're all screwed!
    6. Re:Simple solution.. by DeadTOm · · Score: 1

      Worst case scenario: It is encrypted, Linux won't read it. So I pop the CD into my home system, pipe the output into the aux. input on my sound card, record that to a wave file, then convert to mp3. Might take a little longer but it'll work.

    7. Re:Simple solution.. by Eric_Cartman_South_P · · Score: 3, Funny
      Profit!

    8. Re:Simple solution.. by The_K4 · · Score: 1

      If history holds, you will be able to download it BEOFRE it's released! :)

    9. Re:Simple solution.. by Evil+Adrian · · Score: 1

      Why? It lets you download the songs to your hard disk, and it lets you play it in a CD player. What the hell else do you need?

      --
      evil adrian
    10. Re:Simple solution.. by bluefoot · · Score: 1

      Download it.

    11. Re:Simple solution.. by DigitalNinja7 · · Score: 1

      Disable autorun.

      --
      Show your love for the Hacker community
      HackerLogo.com
    12. Re:Simple solution.. by DeadTOm · · Score: 1

      I don't use Windows at home, can't play WMA files. So downloading them to my harddrive is useless. I also don't remember reading anything about whether or not Linux will be able to decrypt the other half either. And let's say, hypothetically, that I don't own the CD. I'm borrowing it from a friend.

    13. Re:Simple solution.. by NanoGator · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "Don't buy it."

      Yeah, that way they can claim P2P is eating into their sales. Simple, yet unhelpful solution.

      --
      "Derp de derp."
    14. Re:Simple solution.. by djdavetrouble · · Score: 1

      Just because you think you know about music and haven't heard of an artist doesn't mean that they are nobody. Anthony Hamilton has been singing backup and writing songs for other artists for years, not to mention having a project shelved by a major label. It happens all the time. He may be somebody or may be nobody, but just because he doesn't fit into your alt.worldview doesn't mean that he isn't an important artist. He made the frontpage of /. and you Many r&b fans worldwide will buy this release, therefore it is relevant. So next time you say xxxx who? about a new artist consider that you just don't know everything about everything, and the question makes you look like an idiot that likes to crack wise.

      Fact is that he has been in the biz for 10 years and this is his second album. Don't feel bad, I don't know those groups that you listen too.

      full Antony Hamilton Bio on his page, linked from original post. Try reading the hyperlinks instead of showing your ignorance of (black) music.

      http://www.arista.com/Page.asp?sn=Arista&pn=Arti st %20Home%20-%20Anthony%20Hamilton

      --
      music lover since 1969
    15. Re:Simple solution.. by Alien+Being · · Score: 2, Funny

      Then, call up the RIAA and tell them you just downloaded the songs from Kazaa and that you want to compliment them on the quality of the recording.

    16. Re:Simple solution.. by Durandal64 · · Score: 1

      Damn ... sounds like a big name. Maybe I'll look into him. Oh wait, maybe I won't. His music comes on a shiny disc that violates Red Book audio standards and is fraudulently marketed as a Compact Disc. Who knows if it'll play in my Mac? Why would I want Windows Media Audio encodes of his stuff? I might as well listen to it through a tin can. Why can't I decide what digital format I want it in? Oh well. Fuck Anthony Hamilton, and fuck the RIAA. Neither will be seeing a dime from me.

    17. Re:Simple solution.. by faldore · · Score: 1

      roflmao, parent is the funniest post I've seen in a long time. Deserves a 5 funny rating!

  3. Hmm.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I do not like the idea of a cd installing software such as this.

    1. Re:Hmm.. by belroth · · Score: 1
      If you purchase a music cd and then try to play it in your computer is there any law relating to the music publisher installing software on my computer without my permission? Consider if they screw up their software and infect my machine with a virus, is there a difference?

      Any bets on a class action lawsuit?
      Not that I think it's a good idea but it may be a useful threat.

      --
      I hereby inform you that I have NOT been required to provide any decryption keys.
    2. Re:Hmm.. by jbottero · · Score: 2, Insightful

      is there any law relating to the music publisher installing software on my computer without my permission?

      I'm sure there is some law that would apply to this. But the music publisher is not requiring you to install this software. You only need to install it IF you want to hear the music... It's almost certainly in the EULA...

    3. Re:Hmm.. by anacron · · Score: 5, Insightful

      ... if you produce a media product, you can use whatever copy protection you want.

      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

    4. Re:Hmm.. by uberdave · · Score: 1

      if you produce a media product, you can use whatever copy protection you want.

      Interesting argument. However, how am I to know that the material is copy protected? How do I know that the copy protection software isn't full of spyware, and adware? Is there a warning label?

      This whole copyright question is getting tiresome. It is becoming more and more apparent that copyrights on digital content are unenforcable. It costs nothing to copy stuff. It costs nothing to send it all over the world. Copy protection? For every copy protection scheme, there will be a cypherpunk who cracks it. Besides, the more copy protection you heap on top of the content, the less legitimate devices will be able to play the content.

    5. Re:Hmm.. by yanestra · · Score: 1
      I do not like the idea of a cd installing software such as this.
      I doubt these pieces of software in different versions made by different manufacturers can co-exist without problems.

      It is a very bad habit in the Windows world that everybody wants to install their own piece of crap somewhere on the user's harddisk.

    6. Re:Hmm.. by jbottero · · Score: 1

      Interesting argument. However, how am I to know that the material is copy protected? How do I know that the copy protection software isn't full of spyware, and adware? Is there a warning label?

      My guess is that it's clearly stated in some type of EULA. Obviously, the whole thing is problimatic if it's done "secretly".

    7. Re:Hmm.. by ps_inkling · · Score: 1
      The publishers are not worrked that the technically literate can work around the restrictions, they're pleased that their software will be running on 90+% of the population's computers that insert the CD in their computer.

      What I want to know is how their software works, does it phone home, and will AdAware and Spybot Search and Destory remove it like the malware it is.

    8. Re:Hmm.. by jbottero · · Score: 1

      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.

      It is not for you or any consumer to demand a company produce their product, which they own (or in the case of the RAII, represent) in any other way than that company wants to. As a consumer you are not obligated to purchase or use the product if it does not meet your needs or desires. But, I suspect you don't listen to Britney Spears or any of those fabulous "boy bands" anyway, so don't worry about it...

      This is not at all like saying if you want to access the Internet or do any other computing, you must use Microsoft to do it (although maybe they would like that), your life does not depend on listening to this artist, you will not be robbed of any financial resources or unable to work or support your family if you don't listen to this artist.

      Suppose I buy the rights to the super secret unpublished novel by, say, Hemmingway, and decide to publish it exclusively in Swahili translated into Pig Latin. So what? I own the damn thing...

    9. Re:Hmm.. by fucksl4shd0t · · Score: 1

      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.

      I read your entire post about your theoretical solution to this problem. Now how about presenting a practical solution that you can begin implementing right now?

      I'm sorry (well, not really), but I just don't buy the whole idea that "if I happen to really like the artist I have no alternative avenue for purchasing the content." I don't like ANY artist enough to fund the RIAA with my hard-earned cash. I like ANY PERSON enough to do that. Change frequently comes with sacrifice. If you're not willing to make sacrifices to bring about a better good, then shut the fuck up.

      --
      Like what I said? You might like my music
    10. Re:Hmm.. by dubious9 · · Score: 1

      The publishers are not worrked that the technically literate can work around the restrictions

      They should be, it only take one copy to put it up onto KaZaa or whatever. There anybody half familiar can download it. What they are doing is preventing fair use for people who like to rip their music and play it on their iPod (like me). I bought it, and as long as I don't give it to anybody else, then god damn it, I'm going to do whatever I feel like with it.

      --
      Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
    11. Re:Hmm.. by orotas · · Score: 1

      I am sorry but you have made a very poor analogy when you compare record company distribution and Coke owning a convenience store, when in fact in the real world the sale of CDs is just like the sale of Coke. The record companies sell CDs to distributors like Vally Music who in turn sell to record stores, just like the local coke distributer sells to the convenience store. Besides which the music industry already works the way you suggests. Only a few of the largest record companies (Sony, Time-Warner, BMG, etc.)have a distribution channel, most labels partner with a large company for distribution. Look on the back of most CDs and you will see several record company logos.

    12. Re:Hmm.. by FireBreathingDog · · Score: 1
      What, music needs a EULA now? How does the EULA get displayed? By executing some program to show it?

      All I can say is, thank God I have a Mac!

    13. Re:Hmm.. by OzPixel · · Score: 1
      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.

      Coca Cola may not own whole stores, but they often own fridges, at least here (Australia). In a small shop with one or two fridges, owned by one company (Coke or Pepsi), you'll only see products from that one company. Even in supermarkets, Coke & Pepsi pay for shelf space.
      The net result to me is that I have much less choice than I'd like - for example, it's just about impossible to find a decent ginger beer (the non-alcoholic kind) in any small shops that operate by this system.

      It's also hard for the smaller brands to compete in supermarkets, e.g. in one supermarket I go to regularly, about 1/4 of the soft drinks aisle has Coke (various flavours and bottle sizes), another 1/4 has other drinks made by Coca Cola, another 1/4 for Pepsi-related drinks, and the final 1/4 shared between the smaller brands (Schweppes, Tarax, supermarket "own brand", etc) and other drinks.

      David.

    14. Re:Hmm.. by LittleBigLui · · Score: 1
      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.


      Just write a letter to the copyright owner (record label) requesting a license for downloading one copy of the cd off a p2p network. Make it a long letter. If you don't get a response within a week, write another such letter. If you don't get a response within two weeks, start calling them. Write another letter to the artist about their label's unwillingness to sell you his music. Continue making a fuzz for at least a year. After that, they'll probably press an unprotected disk just for you.
      --
      Free as in mason.
    15. Re:Hmm.. by ajs318 · · Score: 1
      I think the Misuse of Computers Act 1990 {unauthorised installation of software}, the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 {licence terms incompatible with statutory rights} and maybe the Sale of Goods Act 1979 {music is sold, not licenced}, all as amended, might possibly be called into play. However, I am no lawyer, so proceed with caution.

      If you bought the disc in good faith, then found it interfered with your computer, then you might well have a case; but
      1. it will be a bitch to prove,
      2. any damages awarded might well be less than your costs,
      so you could still wind up out of pocket. If you merely found the disc to be unplayable on your system, you should be able to get your money back -- in real pound notes, not gift vouchers, BTW. SGA '79 again. Might be worth going for another copy of the disc first few times around, then deciding that they must all be faulty.

      If enough people bought these non-regulation "CD"s, then took them back to the store as "unplayable", then the retailers might start to take notice and demand that their suppliers did something about them. On the downside, you might just get barred from your local HMV. From the retailer's point of view, that is just as effective a way of dealing with the problem.
      --
      Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
    16. Re:Hmm.. by ajs318 · · Score: 1

      If nobody but the makers of kettles were allowed to sell tea bags, the price of a cuppa would skyrocket. Capitalists are always banging on about how competition fetches prices down. But show them a bit of healthy competition, and they chuck their toys out of their prams.

      So why not end labels' traditional exclusivity over artists? Suppose for one minute that bands were free to pick and choose which label sold their records. So, you've recorded an album ..... now you have a choice of who sells it for you. Bloggodisc charge you an upfront fee {based on the cost of initial pressing minus value recouped from recycling, subject to "administration charges"} as their insurance against you not being entirely serious, but take a smaller cut out of what they pass on to you. Fat Bum Records don't charge a penny upfront, but take a bigger cut. Some companies would use playback prevention technologies, others would not. There would also be room for specialised / minority labels - perhaps dealing exclusively in LPs, or distributing music directly via the Internet. You, as the artist, would get to choose who distributes your work. The only people with anything to lose under such a regime would be the major labels, who we have already proved that we do not need.

      I will hazard a guess that the situation used to be more like this {with many small, independent record distributors competing for an artist's business} before the formation of cartels such as the BPI and RIAA. Maybe someone can fill me in on the early history of recording.

      Obviously, few - if any - record stores will carry every label's print of a recording. It might be necessary that record labels be barred from owning record stores, and vice versa, to prevent excess of authority. But these issues, along with others I have not thought of here, will only be solved by vigorous debate and serious experimentation.

      --
      Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
    17. Re:Hmm.. by rcharbon · · Score: 1

      That's how magazines are distributed. Looked at a magazine rack lately? Nothing but sports, tits, and TV/movies. I've got nothing against those, but I do have other interests.

  4. Crack by Gudeldar · · Score: 3, Funny

    So how many hours do you think it takes for this to be cracked 2-3 hours?

    1. Re:Crack by phong3d · · Score: 1

      Anywhere from 2 to 3.

    2. Re:Crack by harley_frog · · Score: 5, Funny
      So how many hours do you think it takes for this to be cracked 2-3 hours?

      I can crack any CD in two seconds. Just grab either side with both hands and bend it until it cracks. Works best with Brittney Spears and Backstreet Boys CDs. ;)

      --
      It's all fun and games until someone loses the key to the handcuffs.
    3. Re:Crack by geordie · · Score: 5, Funny

      "I think we can handle one little file swapper. I sent two units, they're bringing her down now"

      "No lieutenant, your CD is already cracked."

    4. Re:Crack by sTalking_Goat · · Score: 2, Funny
      I think this was cracked a few months ago. But no one understand the press release because the CDs weren't available yet.

      Everytime I hear about CD protection I think about a picture I saw one time of a guy standing in front of Microsoft with a burned copy of XP a full month before its release.

      --

      My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...

    5. Re:Crack by buttahead · · Score: 1

      nah... you are both wrong. my guess is 2-3

    6. Re:Crack by phoenix_rizzen · · Score: 1

      Oh, come on. Be a little more specific, eh? It'll take at least 2 hours, but no more than 3.

    7. Re:Crack by Cpt_Kirks · · Score: 2, Funny

      Ha. I've already cracked it.

      You want proof? You can't handle the proof!

    8. Re:Crack by docbrown42 · · Score: 1

      I can crack any CD in two seconds. Just grab either side with both hands and bend it until it cracks. Works best with Brittney Spears and Backstreet Boys CDs.

      Just make sure to wash your hands afterwards. Who knows where they've been...?

      --
      Ed Wedig
      Graphic design services
      docbrown.net
    9. Re:Crack by ax_42 · · Score: 1

      I can crack any CD in two seconds. Just grab either side with both hands and bend it until it cracks.


      Yeah, and then you take 15mins to pick up all the TINY little pieces of shattered plastic from all over the show. Remember kids, CDs do not just cleanly break into 2 pieces......

      and keep your mouth closed while doing this experiment.
    10. Re:Crack by caluml · · Score: 1
      I can imagine that some of those shards could actually hit you in the eyes, but yet nowhere is there a warning of this.
      Should this happen, I expect you could sue them for millions.

      Anyway, I'm just going to try that CD breaking thing I read about on the interweb now.

    11. Re:Crack by b!arg · · Score: 1

      Actually to correct you just a little bit, the CD was out, it's just that no one cared...

      --

      Everybody dies frustrated and sad and that is beautiful
    12. Re:Crack by Dynedain · · Score: 1

      actually i had som MSN CDs that were extremely flexible and just bent and creased instead of cracking

      --
      I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
    13. Re:Crack by darien · · Score: 1

      Remember kids, CDs do not just cleanly break into 2 pieces......

      Actually, they often do. Now CD-RWs, on the other hand, shatter like you wouldn't believe. God, I nearly blinded someone on the other side of the office first time I tried that. I was expecting it to just bend and snap like a normal CD, but nope. That's some brittle shit right there.

    14. Re:Crack by Ice_Balrog · · Score: 1

      I can crack any CD the moment I bring it home.

      1) Get a CD player with a andio-out jack
      2) Connect the andio-out jack to audio-in on your computer
      3) Open up sound recording software
      4) Play the track you want to rip, and begin recording
      5) When track is done playing, stop sound recording software

      You now have a nice DRM free copy of the track you wanted to rip in the format of your choice. Enjoy!

      --
      #include "sig.h"
    15. Re:Crack by vrmlknight · · Score: 1

      ah the trick is to put them in the microwave for 3 seconds first.

      --
      This must be Thursday, I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
    16. Re:Crack by mhesseltine · · Score: 1
      Just make sure to wash your hands afterwards. Who knows where they've been...?

      Your hands or the CDs?

      --
      Overrated / Underrated : Moderation :: Anonymous Coward : Posting
    17. Re:Crack by fucksl4shd0t · · Score: 1

      Yeah, and then you take 15mins to pick up all the TINY little pieces of shattered plastic from all over the show. Remember kids, CDs do not just cleanly break into 2 pieces......

      The last three AOL CD's I cracked broke cleanly into two pieces. I was *so* disappointed.

      --
      Like what I said? You might like my music
    18. Re:Crack by sTalking_Goat · · Score: 1

      Lol! I have to make 30 banner of that pic and unveil it at one of those Longhorn press events.

      --

      My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...

    19. Re:Crack by Dynedain · · Score: 1

      did that...was quite suprised, they didn't even sparkle

      --
      I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
    20. Re:Crack by FireBreathingDog · · Score: 1
      nah... you are both wrong. my guess is 2-3

      What? It'll take -1 hours?

      Cool! It's already been cracked!

    21. Re:Crack by FireBreathingDog · · Score: 1
      Overrated / Underrated : Moderation :: Anonymous Coward : Posting

      You seem to understand these things. I've been here a while and still don't get the distinction between -1, Flamebait and -1, Troll. Isn't it the same thing?

      (This is neither flamebait nor a troll, just a question that I've always been curious about...)

    22. Re:Crack by danila · · Score: 1

      May be it's because of extra (or different) protection layer on normal CDs that also protects the brittle shit from shattering?

      --
      Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
  5. Nothing like a good challenge by nondeterminism · · Score: 5, Funny
    songs that can be handled by CD players but cannot be ripped

    Where there's a will, there's a way!

    1. Re:Nothing like a good challenge by sixteenraisins · · Score: 4, Informative

      Fairly simple but time-consuming: if you play the CD in a standard (audio only) CD player and patch the output from said player directly into the computer's sound card (digital audio would be even better), you can simply record the music digitally. Granted, this takes longer than simply ripping from the CD, but without any particular "hacking" of your system or the disk.

      Remember, only one person needs to do this - from there it can propagate across Kazaa, iMesh, etc.

      William

      --
      When you're not looking, this sig is in Latin.
    2. Re:Nothing like a good challenge by Krondor · · Score: 1

      I thought that was "Where there's a whip there's a way!"

      Some may recognize that from the Warner Brother's Lord of the Rings Cartoon rendition.

    3. Re:Nothing like a good challenge by plj · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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
    4. Re:Nothing like a good challenge by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      "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.

    5. Re:Nothing like a good challenge by linkjunkie · · Score: 1

      Make sure you connect the digital out on your cd player (most have it) to the digital input on your sound card, route that to a wav file and you're done.
      This way it will be "CD Quality"
      This bypasses the problem of substandard quality.

      The best copy protection in existence is to create an atmosphere of mutual respect.
      It's not perfect and many will still copy, but at least the rest of us will begin to give a shit.

    6. Re:Nothing like a good challenge by User8201 · · Score: 1

      Based on what they said, I think that when the CD is popped in people will find they can't so easilly rip it because of copy protection, but WMA files can still be accessed, requiring a codec that doesn't come with your computer. You can install the codec from the CD-ROM, perhaps automatically via autorun, but, that same program will DISABLE ripping of the CD.

      Probably you CAN rip the CD by holding down shift when you pop it in and then running a ripping program in VMWare or better, in bochs where you have total control and can hack it till it works. As long as you don't use a PROGRAM SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED to circumvent copy protection, I believe it's legal and in compliance with the DMCA to do this to store it on your harddisk as "fair use."

      VMWare does not have circumventing copyprotection as its primary purpose and you didn't create a new program to do this, so I think you can do it legally. Mybe. IANAL.

    7. Re:Nothing like a good challenge by spitzak · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yes it will be available immediately. Not only that, if it is difficult enough, they have increased the incentive to download the music illegally, and decreased the incentive to buy the disk. Good work there...

      Of course I suspect all the RIAA moves are designed to in fact increase piracy. The RIAA has much more insidious plans: they want to eventually outlaw all high-quality recording devices, because they will prove that all such devices allow, and are used primarily for, piracy (and that will be true). Outlawing those devices will also make it impossible for any individuals to compete with the RIAA because they will be unable to record their own music, and the RIAA will say "well, that is SUCH a shame, but it was those evil pirates that made competition illegal".

    8. Re:Nothing like a good challenge by placeclicker · · Score: 1

      Indeed, if you can hear the music, you can record and save the music, in one way or another. Next to be outlawed: Microphones.

      --

      Browse at -1, because trolls are often the most creative part of /.
  6. Re:Information. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Shut up.

  7. Simple hardware hacking by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    And a couple patch cables later... what restrictions?

  8. Remember kids... by axolotl_farmer · · Score: 4, Funny

    ..autorun on CDs is bad, mmkay!

    1. Re:Remember kids... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      ..autorun on CDs is bad, mmkay!

      Then disable it.

  9. That'll stop them! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Oh wait..

    Anthony_Hamilton-Comin_From_Where_Im_From_(Retai l) -2003-WCR

    hit the net about 11 days ago.. damn.

    1. Re:That'll stop them! by Karamchand · · Score: 1

      Obviously you're using Windows Explorer as your file manager, right?

      Damn get a efficient file manager instead of the crap you seem to be using now!

    2. Re:That'll stop them! by cens0r · · Score: 1

      I prefer artist name - album name - track number - song name. It's a bit redundant because I sort them in directories \artist name\album name, however I do find it useful.

      --
      Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
    3. Re:That'll stop them! by Kethinov · · Score: 1

      Uh retarded ass underscores is stupid in any file manager with a GUI. The only applicable use it has is to make give people with a console fettish an easier time typing in filenames. But don't think I'm defending you, mister anonymous coward. (Well, I guess I am... but!) Artist - Song Name is not enough! I use nothing less than Artist - Album - Track - Song Name. THEN I order all of my mp3s into an identical directory listing (Music/Artist/Album) to double the redundancy.

      Redundancy is important. Especially if your MP3 hard drive is cross-operating system. Some OSs rely on folder structure more than file names and some rely on file names more than folder structure. Windows Explorer likes the filenames, but Mac OSX likes the folders.

      All of this, of course, is subject to opinion. But the point is, redundancy in filenames/folder structure never hurts. The more information the better. So long as it's well organized and constant throughout your organizational system.

      --
      You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
    4. Re:That'll stop them! by Hatta · · Score: 1

      That's what the tab key is for.

      --
      Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    5. Re:That'll stop them! by lightspawn · · Score: 4, Funny

      Oh wait..
      Anthony_Hamilton-Comin_From_Where_Im_From_ (Retail) -2003-WCR
      hit the net about 11 days ago.. damn.


      The only thing that can stop sharing is only releasing music nobody wants to listen to.

      Oh wait...

    6. Re:That'll stop them! by rampant+mac · · Score: 1
      Or, look for the Windows version:

      Anthon~1.mp3

      --
      I like big butts and I cannot lie.
    7. Re:That'll stop them! by glesga_kiss · · Score: 1
      So? What's wrong with spaces in *nix? Oh, you mean your scripts that are badly written and don't enclose strings in quotes? ;-)

      To me, it's second nature to\ type\ like\ this\ when\ I\ have\ to on the CLI. With autocomplete in your shell, you don't even have to most of the time.

    8. Re:That'll stop them! by glesga_kiss · · Score: 1
      Funny? He's not kidding, it's there under that file name and there are shed-loads of sources for it, I just checked. And, as I pointed out in this post, the protection is working against them.

      Nice to be validated!

    9. Re:That'll stop them! by Fallen_Knight · · Score: 1

      i do artist [album - track] - song name and sort artist/album

      so close enough lol

  10. What do i care? by Unknown+Poltroon · · Score: 1, Insightful

    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.
  11. well, somebody is gonna say it.. by The+Other+White+Boy · · Score: 1, Funny

    ..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?

    1. Re:well, somebody is gonna say it.. by Java+Pimp · · Score: 4, Funny

      We'll never know since we can't download his stuff to sample it. Who cares!

      --
      Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
      Kull: She told me she was 19!
    2. Re:well, somebody is gonna say it.. by RobotRunAmok · · Score: 1

      is this an artist we should be getting all upset about 'losing'

      What do you mean "we," paleface/punk/old-timer/hive-minder ?

      Do you think for a heartbeat that any five people posting to this board have remotely similar musical tastes?

    3. Re:well, somebody is gonna say it.. by Kethinov · · Score: 1
      copied from Arista's site ANTHONY HAMILTON [snip]
      Holy shit dude. Paragraphing is a virtue. I don't think I've ever seen a more ugly blob of text. (although part of the end result effect is my fault, due to the fact that I'm the one who ignorantly clicked the "read the rest of this comment" button.)
      --
      You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
    4. Re:well, somebody is gonna say it.. by swb · · Score: 1

      Some '70s soul re-tread music.

    5. Re:well, somebody is gonna say it.. by kd5ujz · · Score: 1
      In 2000, D'Angelo recruited Hamilton to sing background vocals on his worldwide Voodoo Tour. "I went all over the world--Europe, Brazil--and had the best time of my life," Hamilton recalls. But by the time he returned from globetrotting with D'Angelo, Soulife had also collapsed and the singer-songwriter found himself back at square one. "I became depressed," Hamilton confesses. "I was like, 'Why? Lord, why? All this love I have for the music--what's going on?' Still, I kept praying and working and looking for a better deal." For the next two years, Hamilton kept bust by singing background vocals and appearing on songs by likes of Eve ("Ride Away"), Xzibit ("The Gambler") and 2Pac ("Thugz Mansion").
      I thought 2pac was "murdered" in '96?
      --
      -William
      God is everything science has yet to explain.
  12. Nothing ever lasts. by luc13n · · Score: 1

    Anyone wanna take bets on how long before someone cracks this new 'feature'?

  13. A stupid question. by wcrowe · · Score: 1

    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
    1. Re:A stupid question. by xobes · · Score: 1

      I'm also curious about this. I can see how if it's a windows DRM thing possibly, or the software that allegedly installs itself onto windows machines, but for us running linux, is this really a problem?

      --
      - AZ
    2. Re:A stupid question. by wcrowe · · Score: 1

      Exactly. Do CDROMs operate differently than CD players?

      Seems to me that if I put this CD in my Linux box that it should play just fine.

      --
      Proverbs 21:19
    3. Re:A stupid question. by vs-Tsoonamy · · Score: 1

      The CD doesn't know it. I don't know it exactly, but here in Germany those "copy protected" (or "copy controlled" as the label on them says) CDs exist for some time now, and they seem to have different sessions or tracks for audio and data (WMA files) content. A normal cd-drive in a computer seems unable to read both sessions and therefore displays only the one including the WMA files (or whatever they want you to see on your pc), while a audio cd-player only reads the session with the cdda-tracks.
      Problematic is that some DVD-Players or car-radios with built-in cd-player seem to act like computer-cd-drives and cannot read the CD correctly, because they "find" only the data track. Because of that the CD-Labels have to carry the note that the CD can possibly cause problems on certain devices. This caused quite an uproar among the customers and cd-buyers in the stores, but record-companies actually don't seem to care...
      Luckily for me, my iBook with MacOS X is able to read the data-session as well as the cdda-session, so I can rip and copy all the copy-protected CDs I own to listen to them in my car, too.
      I heard from a friend that there shall also be some software to modify your cd-drive so that it acts like a hifi-cd-player and can read the cd without trouble - but I'm not sure if it works at all, and if, with every cd-drive out there.

      Hope that helps to understand...

      --
      Tend to post comments only when drunk
    4. Re:A stupid question. by Egonis · · Score: 1

      Also, if you can play it on a regular CD Player or CDROM, who can stop you from outputting the Audio to MP3 format? Or using a Wave Recording Program, like CoolEdit??

      Remember tapes? Sounds like the same old-fashioned arguments all over again.

    5. Re:A stupid question. by vrmlknight · · Score: 1

      Becasue you looses a lot of quality doing that and you wont get all the ID3 tags automatically fom CDDB and you'll end up with a 60+ min mp3.

      --
      This must be Thursday, I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
    6. Re:A stupid question. by stfvon007 · · Score: 1

      CD-ROM drives are more sensitive than CD players. They probably just make it so that there are tiny defects that would interfere with CD-ROMs but regular CD players wouldn't detect.

      --
      All misspellings and grammatical errors in the above post are intentional and part of my artistic expression.
    7. Re:A stupid question. by Egonis · · Score: 1

      Well, yes.. if you're lazy, and don't split the tracks after capture...

      I know that it'd be a b**ch to rip without ID3 Tags/etc, but there are obvious methods of music piracy, like the good old days of tape recorders at concerts.

    8. Re:A stupid question. by aaribaud · · Score: 1

      It doesn't. There are two recordings following each other on the CD; that is called "multisession". A home CD player will always read session #1 (real CD-audio, clean session). A computer will, unless coreectly talked into changing habits :), read the last session, here #2 (useless data, and junk code my Linux box can't run).

  14. WHen will they learn by junklight · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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....

    1. Re:WHen will they learn by proub · · Score: 2, Informative

      Yep. If only someone were doing this.

      Oh, wait. They are. EMusic.

      Tons of great stuff. Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, TMBG, Ornette Coleman... No Britney, etc., but then, is that a bad thing?

      Seriously, they don't have quite the catalog breadth of iTunes, etc. but for a flat fee you get all-you-can-eat, actual MP3 downloads.

      No, I don't work for them; and no, that's not an affiliate link. EMusic just never seems to get mentioned when we're busy bashing all the DRM and music-rental strategies.

      -paul

      --
      "Irony is so September 10th"
      Matt Miller, alt.fan.spinnwebe
    2. Re:WHen will they learn by falltime · · Score: 3, Interesting

      What the music industry doesnt get is they dont sell music they sell CONVENIENCE. People dont need an industry for music - before there was an industry people learned to play instruments! Then someone figured out it was easier to get a machine to play consistently then a man - so they invented player pianos (and an industry was born); then Edison invented records because it was easier to lug a record player than a piano (or an ochestra), 45's b/c some people only wanted one song, 8-track b/c records dont play in a car, cassette, b/c 8 track sucked, CD's for all the above reason plus fidelity AND THEN NOTHING... b/c the music industry forgot that we dont need them for music we need them for convienience

    3. Re:WHen will they learn by Zimm · · Score: 1

      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.

      Correction, you would give them money, the rest of us would just get our music for free via p2p. Because anything more then free is to much.

    4. Re:WHen will they learn by nick_drake · · Score: 1
      Phish is doing this with their Live Downloads.

      It is much more convenient to pay for a full concert, already tracked out into mp3's than it is to try to hunt down every track.

      --
      The Dude abides.
    5. Re:WHen will they learn by Hatta · · Score: 1

      It is. emusic.com And they've done you the favor of not listing any of that mainstream manufactured crap.

      --
      Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    6. Re:WHen will they learn by TexVex · · Score: 1

      I actually subscribed to EMusic and partook of this veritable buffet. But, alas, a lot of the stuff I downloaded suffered from low bitrate and poor conversion. In some cases listening to their MP3s was like listening to the CD through stereo cell phones.

      --
      Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
    7. Re:When will they learn by u38cg · · Score: 1
      Hah!

      A record playing car! Behold!

      Nitpickers of the world unite! (and if I hadn't just run out of mod points, +several insightful)

      --
      [FUCK BETA]
  15. Great idea... by aznxk3vi17 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Great idea... by lxs · · Score: 1

      I don't know about the legality, but morally this is the equivalent of Gator and other sneak installs. Maybe Ad-Aware will add it to its software-to-remove list.

  16. the disc installs... by buttahead · · Score: 1

    thank dog that stuff doesn't just automaticly install itself into linux.

    1. Re:the disc installs... by Cpt_Kirks · · Score: 1

      thank dog that stuff doesn't just automaticly install itself into linux.

      Yet. (cue thunder and ominous music)

    2. Re:the disc installs... by fucksl4shd0t · · Score: 1

      thank dog that stuff doesn't just automaticly install itself into linux.

      RedHate 9 will autorun CDs. I was so pissed when it did it to me. In fact, that's the reason I decided not to change from Mandrake to Redhate. :)

      --
      Like what I said? You might like my music
  17. Secure music? by genka · · Score: 5, Insightful


    I hate this term. This music is not secure. It is restricted.

    1. Re:Secure music? by Anil · · Score: 5, Funny

      If the music was insecure would we have to label it as emo?

    2. Re:Secure music? by IthnkImParanoid · · Score: 1

      I think secure would mean it can't be re-distributed.

      Restricted means it's broken somehow, as in I can't really play this the way I want to.

      It's worth noting that "secure," according to my definition, will never ever exist without MASSIVE restricition on everybody's computers. Analog holes are fun!

      --
      It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
    3. Re:Secure music? by Profe55or+Booty · · Score: 1

      i thought it was funny. too bad i have no mod points.

      --
      sig - .
    4. Re:Secure music? by robbyjo · · Score: 1

      Uh... When I heard the term "restricted music", I have the mental image of "Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics" or something like that. Maybe "copyrighted music" is a better term?

      --

      --
      Error 500: Internal sig error
    5. Re:Secure music? by FrostedWheat · · Score: 1

      Well, it is secure. Secure from people listening to it. Which these days is often a good thing!

    6. Re:Secure music? by ChrisS-99 · · Score: 1

      As far as the producers are concerned, it is Secure (unless someone cracks it). We can expect more use of this second party termonology as controls are added to a multitude of things, e.g. DRM.

    7. Re:Secure music? by d3faultus3r · · Score: 1

      No we'd label it as Windows emo. It would be Bill Gates whining about how free software is unamerican.

      --
      read my blog
      musings on politics and technol
    8. Re:Secure music? by caillon · · Score: 1

      > Uh... When I heard the term "restricted music", I have the mental image of "Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics" or something like that. Maybe "copyrighted music" is a better term?

      No, that's redundant. All music is (implicitly) copyrighted by the authors who generally transfer the copyrights to record labels as part of their record deal. I'd suggest "music the record labels don't want you to copy" but that's just as redundant.

    9. Re:Secure music? by Lumpy · · Score: 1

      It's not even restricted... you can already get all the tracks on iMesh right now.

      Funny, just as it hit's the shelves, it 's already out in the wild and cracked....

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  18. Damn by cyber_rigger · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'll have to install Wine just to get my CD to not work.

    1. Re:Damn by ThyTurkeyIsDone · · Score: 2, Funny

      That's OK, because you'll have to install Wine anyway for lots of other things to not work. ;-)

  19. Hmmm... by st0rmshadow · · Score: 1

    What usually happens when people say something can't be hacked or cracked? Hmmm...

    1. Re:Hmmm... by Cpt_Kirks · · Score: 1

      Legions of 12 year olds are already taking time out from getting beaten up...

  20. This won't stop anyone by bluethundr · · Score: 1

    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.
    1. Re:This won't stop anyone by donutz · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Seriously, you don't even need to be a "determined hacker" to get music off a somewhat-CD-compatible disc. Play the thing in your Discman, but instead of using headphones, just plug it into the line-in on your computer. Record it there.

      Hell, you could plug it into your tape deck and record to cassette tapes. Or to your VCR and tape it on VHS. Don't know why you'd want to, but it's plenty easy.

      When given the choice of buying a CD, or screwing over the bastard record companies who pull crap like this...I'm sure there's plenty who would sacrifice a small amount of quality for a "free" MP3 file.

    2. Re:This won't stop anyone by Kindaian · · Score: 1

      Why should a deck and a sound card forbid the "digitizing" of the music?

    3. Re:This won't stop anyone by darien · · Score: 1

      Those who would sacrifice a small amount of quality for a "free" MP3 file deserve neither.

    4. Re:This won't stop anyone by Seraphim_72 · · Score: 1

      Truly Amazing

      Ring! Hello? Hey RIAA! It's the software industry, they have called with a clue about how hard it is to make something "uncopiable". Take a message? OK.

      Morons.

      --
      Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
  21. How? by desau · · Score: 1

    How exactly can you encrypt something, and have it decrypted on a device which has no CPU or way of running a decryption algorithm?

    1. Re:How? by chaidawg · · Score: 1

      If it is similar to some of the other copy protection schemes, the audio is not encrypted. Instead it is corrupted. The correction routines on an audio cd player will bypass the corruption, but a data player will just see corupted files and skip them.

  22. swap sessions by ignipotentis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!
    1. Re:swap sessions by DynamiteNeon · · Score: 2, Informative

      "With all the money invested in trying to build a better lock, they could have changed buisness models numerous times."

      There's a reason for that. Any fair business model that rewarded the artists and didn't control distribution would most likely limit the RIAA's power. Why would the RIAA want that?

      It'll get worse before it gets better.

    2. Re:swap sessions by asavage · · Score: 1

      The worst part is it hurts everyone who buys the CD, while anyone who just downloads it gets more value for no cost.

    3. Re:swap sessions by Escoutaire · · Score: 1

      It's like the old saying. "Every time Man builds a better mouse trap, nature just builds better mice."

      Let's see who gets bored first, shall we?

      Escoutaire

      --
      When a dream dreams the dreamer, the dreams the real.
    4. Re:swap sessions by nhavar · · Score: 1

      It was called macrovision and it's still around. I bought a couple of DVD players not too long ago, one for the living room, one for the kids room. I hook both up to the vcr's and from vcr to tv in the respective rooms. The JVC shows a perfect picture, the Emerson VCR (about 2 years older) shows a macrovision picture fading in and out on brightness.

      I've even seen some of the DVD drives for pc's say that they require specific hardware that adheres to their copy protection methods. Of course I always go for the box without that label but...

      It's all crap. This is to keep honest people honest and does nothing to the real infringers/counterfeiters out there.

      --
      "Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
  23. MPlayer by Danta · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    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.

    1. Re:MPlayer by LilMikey · · Score: 1

      *bah-dump ching*

      --
      LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
    2. Re:MPlayer by NanoGator · · Score: 1

      "What a shame that I'm running Linux and my portable MP3 player doesn't support WMA."

      I remember I was pissed when my record player wouldn't play CDs.

      --
      "Derp de derp."
    3. Re:MPlayer by Bullet-Dodger · · Score: 1
      I remember I was pissed when my record player wouldn't play CDs.

      Ah, yes, record-shaped CDs sold in record packaging. I remember those.

    4. Re:MPlayer by NanoGator · · Score: 1

      "How did the record player not playing CDs cause sufficient alcohol to enter your system as to impair normal functioning? Did you drown your sorrows? If so, what were you drinking? Or did you just miss out the word "off", which would make sense. "

      Are you fucking retarded or something? Why do you guys only take me seriously when I'm trying to make a joke?

      --
      "Derp de derp."
  24. No! by garcia · · Score: 1

    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.

    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 .02

  25. Bitrate? by TheRealGigabyte · · Score: 1

    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"

  26. now taking bets... by NumLk · · Score: 1

    ...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.
  27. A far way... by DrWho520 · · Score: 1

    I guess a felt tip marker will not circumvent this scheme.

    --
    The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
  28. the system is better than before by mayns · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:the system is better than before by AttillaTheNun · · Score: 2
      This is the main reason I didn't buy the new Radiohead album or the latest Blur release.

      Correction - the inflated price is the main reason - but this is yet another incentive to spend my money on something more worthwhile.

      I like both bands, but I will not support this behaviour by their labels.
  29. Clearly, this is realized by Atario · · Score: 1

    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
    1. Re:Clearly, this is realized by artg · · Score: 1

      or indeed, gain a lot of sales to geeks with no interest in the music but a strong desire to find out how the copy protection works. Maybe it isn't protected at all ..

    2. Re:Clearly, this is realized by Hatta · · Score: 1

      Maybe I'm unfamiliar with this phrase, but why are you mounting monkeys in the first place?

      --
      Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    3. Re:Clearly, this is realized by Atario · · Score: 1
      --
      "A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
  30. Where's the crack? by QuackQuack · · Score: 1

    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.
    1. Re:Where's the crack? by Seanasy · · Score: 4, Funny
      Where's the crack?

      The record execs have smoked it all.

  31. It'll be hacked in an hour....Bastards... by steveit_is · · Score: 1

    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....

  32. Isn't a Anthony Hamilton CD... by TimTheFoolMan · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...anti-swap by virtue of it's content (with or without copy-protection)?

    Tim

  33. A Patch exists by secondsun · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:A Patch exists by nucal · · Score: 2, Funny

      Raido shack - roaches check in, but they don't check out ...

    2. Re:A Patch exists by bankman · · Score: 3, Interesting
      I guess this is why I am a CS major and not a business one.

      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.
    3. Re:A Patch exists by DotWarner · · Score: 1

      So that's why it's called a patch cable!

    4. Re:A Patch exists by GlassHeart · · Score: 1
      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.

      You need to understand that the record label's biggest fear from P2P is if everybody does it. They couldn't possibly sue everybody, and everybody can vote to change copyright laws anyway. (Just imagine if the government suddenly decides to take speed limits literally and seriously.)

      What you are seeing is another piece of the puzzle to ensure that only the most dedicated and technically adept individuals are able to rip music. The other piece of the puzzle is to make sure that only the philosophically dedicated will still risk an expensive lawsuit to share music (they spared the 12-year old; will they spare you?). The much smaller number of technically adept and philosophically dedicated sharers are much easier to sue into oblivion, drying up the well for the common music downloaders. Slashdot likes to make fun of various attempts at DRM, sometimes without realizing that each imperfect incarnation of DRM decreases the number of people who casually rip and share music. Until they can be all realistically stopped with lawsuits.

    5. Re:A Patch exists by EvilSporkMan · · Score: 1

      1) Write WASTE. -- check! 2) Write a decent UI for it and finish the damn Linux client. 3) Popularize it, together with the extreme importance of not sending keys over the Internet. 4) ??? 5) Profit!

      --
      -insert a witty something-
  34. What a shame that I'm running Linux by somethingwicked · · Score: 4, Funny

    "What a shame that I'm running Linux"

    Yeah, you're among friends here. Most people who read /. don't like Linux either

    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?'"---

    1. Re:What a shame that I'm running Linux by Bendebecker · · Score: 1

      Aren't there programs avaliable that will convert a wma to an mp3?

      --
      There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
      most of us won't be able to afford it.
      -- Lemmy
    2. Re:What a shame that I'm running Linux by pegr__ · · Score: 1

      Yes. Use Total Recorder (a software "soundcard" that will export sound to a .wav file.) and play the encrypted .wma's. MP3 the resulting .wav. Note that the result may suck, since you've effectively MP3'ed the original .wma, and both compression systems are lossy, but not necessarily ditching the same bits. Better to .wma the .wav, only without encryption/DRM.

      On a related note, did anyone else notice that the DRM support package on MS Update disappeared in the last day or two? Maybe its just a version 1.0 issue!

    3. Re:What a shame that I'm running Linux by solarium_rider · · Score: 1
      I didn't write this script, but it does the job, you will need mplayer and lame:
      #!/bin/bash
      mplayer "$1" -ao pcm -vc null -vo null
      lame --r3mix audiodump.wav "`basename "$1" .wma`.mp3"
      rm audiodump.wav
      Save that code to something say...wma2mp3, then its as easy as:
      for foo in *.wma; do wma2mp3 $foo; done
      to convert all your wma's to mp3's. Then you can perform one final step (if you wish to look respectable):
      rm -f *.wma
      --
      -- How many sigs are as useless as this one?
    4. Re:What a shame that I'm running Linux by muyThaiBxr · · Score: 1

      most mp3 players DO support wma, or if they don't, can be made to via a simple firmware update

  35. Third step.. by freedomchild · · Score: 1

    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...
    1. Re:Third step.. by CaptJay · · Score: 1
      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.

      You should really consider adding an exception to this for dollars spent on food. Otherwise, you may not live to see the RIAA go out of business...

      --
      "I remember Y1K, every abacus had to get another bead"
  36. I wonder... by eyeball · · Score: 1

    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
  37. What a shame indeed. by OsCarJ · · Score: 1

    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.

  38. Not a CD by yamla · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:Not a CD by blibbleblobble · · Score: 1

      So to clarify: if you were odd enough to actually want this music, you could either:

      (a) pay $20 for a non-CD which doesn't work, doesn't play in your computer, and is incompatible with any portable devices you use

      (b) download it off IMesh.

      They must have a rock-solid business plan for this one. "This is my CD, criminal scum. I detest every one of you who listen to my music, and to prove it I'm going to sell you a broken CD, HAHA!"

      Sounds like an ideal recipient for the clue-by-four

    2. Re:Not a CD by cnock · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The same thing happenned to me with Morrissey's recent Under The Influence compilation. I sent a kind email to the folks at the record company (DMC), and within a day, they sent an apology, and a request for my home address. Within two weeks, I had a non-restricted copy of the same cd that actually plays in my PC's cd-rom drive. They also admitted regret to pressing the restricted cds in the first place. An example of a record company understanding the downside of this "technology".

    3. Re:Not a CD by stratjakt · · Score: 1

      They are required by law (at least in Canada and in the U.S.) to accept it for a full refund.

      What law is this, exactly?
      They'll refund/replace because it's just good business, not because of the "appeasing lunix whiners act of 1998"

      --
      I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
    4. Re:Not a CD by MKalus · · Score: 4, Interesting
      There was no response, of course, despite claims by at least one company that they would respond within x business days.


      David Ushers Managment was a lot quicker to reply (to me at least).
      --
      If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
    5. Re:Not a CD by sexylicious · · Score: 1

      It has that little "CD" symbol on it, right?
      My home computer's cd rom drive has the little logo saying that it can read anything with the CD standard.
      So, I think a case can be made for some sort of false advertising on the music company's part by using that logo (implying it abides by the CD standard).
      Don't know about a lawsuit for any other thing associated with this.
      Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. My statement is only a theory on how you could pursue some sort of legal action. =)

    6. Re:Not a CD by yamla · · Score: 1

      Note that my brother's computer runs Windows, not Linux. The CD didn't work in his Windows computer that met all the requirements specified on the back of the album. This issue has nothing to do with Linux.

      If the place you purchase the album from specifies or implies it is a CD, they are falsely advertising their products. Now, I know in Canada you are not allowed even misleading advertising but I believe it may be different in the U.S. You may be allowed misleading advertising there, just no outright lies. Anyway, if a company is misrepresenting a product to you in order to get you to hand them money for this product, that is illegal. If you catch them at it, they must offer you a refund (and, I believe, stop doing this in the future).

      --

      Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
    7. Re:Not a CD by yamla · · Score: 1

      Interesting. I never got a response from his management company but they may have been swamped. This is very sad that he couldn't get EMI to release his latest album as a CD. I wish him luck, I've seen him in concert and, while his music is rather light for my tastes, I enjoy listening to him.

      --

      Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
    8. Re:Not a CD by tigertiger · · Score: 1

      The "compact disk digital audio" logo on the discs is a trademark owned by Philips - if you have a copy-protected disk, it should not even be on it.

      Even then, retailers should not induce the appearance of this disk being a bona-fide CD - in other words, they would have to put a big sign on it saying "This CD may not play in your CD player".

      Or maybe color the CD bright red :-) See how many people would still buy it then.

      Remember, it' apparently not only computers, but also some portable CD players, car stereos, high-end devices, and DVD players.

    9. Re:Not a CD by rmohr02 · · Score: 1

      They'll replace it because they are required to by merchantability, which you will find in case law. Merchantability means if they sell you something that is marketed as a CD, and it isn't a CD, they must accept a return.

    10. Re:Not a CD by rmohr02 · · Score: 1

      Contact your state's Attorney General's office. Then you'll get results (assuming your letter of complaint isn't flaming anyone).

    11. Re:Not a CD by fucksl4shd0t · · Score: 1

      Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.

      Did you hear about the latest invasion? Peen Isle has invaded Uranus.

      --
      Like what I said? You might like my music
    12. Re:Not a CD by bernywork · · Score: 1

      Here is Australia I sent a message over to the ACCC and to the Copyright council about this.

      Basically after talking to them and the Copyright council, the answer I ended up with the answer that it could be returned under the Fair Trade Act, saying the the CD "Was not fit for purchase" in that it did not do what it was intended to do.

      If you intended it to play on a computer and it doesn't you can return it for a refund or credit or otherwise.

      --
      Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
    13. Re:Not a CD by dododge · · Score: 1
      In order to use GPL'd source you have to agree to the GPL's terms.

      Obligatory response: it depends on what you want to do with the source. Typical use, such as running a GPL'd program, does not normally require acceptance of the GPL. From GPLv2 section 5:

      You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License.
    14. Re:Not a CD by MKalus · · Score: 1

      If this issue truly mattered to him, he wouldn't work with EMI.

      You never know what will happen to his next album. This one might have been already been "sold" to EMI before they made the decision.

      He is speaking out against it on his Forum. In doubt I am not that much of a cynic to think he tells me he is against it. I made it clear upfront I won't buy the album in the current state, and if EMI get's the message too then good.

      --
      If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
  39. This "protection" scheme is always defeatable by brundlefly · · Score: 1

    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.

  40. SPDIF by u19925 · · Score: 1

    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.

  41. Not for high-end and car CD players by Telcontar · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Not for high-end and car CD players by Esion+Modnar · · Score: 3, Funny
      even 60-year-old executives with business plans from the fifties will learn.

      Nope. Not going to do it. I'm sticking right here with my martini lunches, golf with the boys at the country club, boardroom culture, oh, and yes, the cute young secretary taking DICKtation on my knee. If my company's business plan was good enough for my grandfather, it's good enough for me.

      (Hey, Bob! Have we sued anyone lately? Well, get to it! Why do you think we have that stable of attorneys on the payroll?!?!)

      --

      They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
    2. Re:Not for high-end and car CD players by f2professa · · Score: 1

      The best thing you can do is to return the CD unopened.

      uhhh.. so how do you know it has a problem before you play it - if the cd is unmarked? head...hurts...now...

      --
      Someone, please shake me from this wide-awake nightmare.
    3. Re:Not for high-end and car CD players by gl4ss · · Score: 1

      unopened? so a) can't try the cd in the first place if it works and b) they can sell it as new? that is how it hurts? or you mean to wait until the cd is 'out' of trend and nobody will buy it? (though it beats me why buy the cd in the first place if you aren't going to even test if it works)

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    4. Re:Not for high-end and car CD players by banzai75 · · Score: 1

      Nah, I say open it and return it. If it's opened the music store is stuck with it and can't return it. Maybe if the music stores start feeling this pain instead of the consumer, they'll push back on the record companies.

    5. Re:Not for high-end and car CD players by hypnagogue · · Score: 1

      Nah, the best thing you can do is open the CD, try it, and return it as defective (which it clearly is) for a replacement.

      Repeat until there is no more defective product in stock.

      --
      Liberty you never use is liberty you lose.
  42. Antho...who? by thung226 · · Score: 1

    Who the hell is Anthony Hamilton? Only once somebody like Madonna or Coldplay does this will it make an impact.

    still sucks, tho.

    --
    -n-
  43. what's novel by H310iSe · · Score: 1

    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
    1. Re:what's novel by X-rated+Ouroboros · · Score: 1

      From the ways it's phrased, it sounds like you're just sending them a link to some central library with an authorization key.

      Which, of course, would mean they're testing an online delivery system. Maybe they're finally starting to TRY to catch on and catch up.

      --
      Simple Machines in Higher Dimensions
  44. This is actually a perfect solution... by dmayle · · Score: 1

    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!
  45. Multi-computer? by switcha · · Score: 1
    But these "secure digital" tracks cannot be played on another computer should they be uploaded to the Net.

    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? ... A little club soda *did* get that out!
  46. Anyone have a technical reference on this? by Yobgod+Ababua · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:Anyone have a technical reference on this? by MrPerfekt · · Score: 4, Informative

      Am I missing something?

      Yes, you are. When this technology first came out years ago /. had the story and umpteen million other related artcles can be found in the older stories..

      Anyway, to save you some trouble, the idea behind the "copy protection" is that they fudge the error correction on the disc's in such a way that a less complex (i.e. your home stereo cd player) will read them just fine and ignore the garbage and your more complex, cd-rom drive in your computer will barf attempting to use the error correction and be unable read the disc.

      --
      I just wasted your mod points! HA!
    2. Re:Anyone have a technical reference on this? by leviramsey · · Score: 1
      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.

      IINM, by "encrypted", they mean, with bogus error-checking code; CD-ROM drives tend to go apeshit when given bad error-checking code; CD players (except for certain car players, I suppose) generally don't. In essence, this is exploiting the sophistication of a CD-ROM drive.

      Of course, a drive firmware hack could get around this...

    3. Re:Anyone have a technical reference on this? by CJ+Hooknose · · Score: 1
      Yobgod Ababua wrote:
      Bits is bits. "dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/home/rip-cd" will transfer those bits. Am I missing something?

      The fact that dd as applied to a raw CD-ROM device only captures the first track, maybe? I Think You Meant "cd ~/rip-cd && cdparanoia -B". This won't work in all cases either because A) the TOC may be bogus B) they may have salted the audio track with tiny blips of bad data which a D-A converter will average out but a digital ripper like cdparanoia will attempt to reread many times, slowing ripping to a crawl and/or producing staticky results.

      The "bad TOC" can be circumvented; I forget exactly how though--probably by specifying a time range instead of letting cdparanoia read the TOC. The bits of bad data might be a little trickier; I didn't see much in the man page other than -Z, but I don't have time to go Googling right now (hint, hint.)

      --
      Give a monkey a brain and he'll swear he's the center of the universe.
    4. Re:Anyone have a technical reference on this? by Yobgod+Ababua · · Score: 1

      My intention was to use the lowest level access possible to just copy whatever bits happen to be sitting on the CD. I'm not sure if any programs currently exist to do that (perhaps cdparanoia -r will suffice, but I get the feeling that cdparanoia tries to do error checking and other 'helpful' things that could get it in trouble with a maliciously constructed CD like we're talking about).

      Hmm... looking around it seems disturbingly non-trivial to merely extract bits from an audio CD. That seems strange to me.

      Perhaps a high-end CD player with digital out would work...

    5. Re:Anyone have a technical reference on this? by CJ+Hooknose · · Score: 1
      Yobgod Ababua wrote:
      My intention was to use the lowest level access possible to just copy whatever bits happen to be sitting on the CD. I'm not sure if any programs currently exist to do that

      Lowest level possible means you don't use the block device layer, which means you don't use dd. "cdrdao copy", or "cdrdao read-cd --read-raw" is probably the lowest level you can get with Linux ATM.

      I get the feeling that cdparanoia tries to do error checking

      Why do you think I mentioned the -Z option to cdparanoia?

      it seems disturbingly non-trivial to merely extract bits from an audio CD. That seems strange to me.

      It's trivial to extract bits from an audio CD. It's decidedly nontrivial to extract the right bits from an audio CD, so the .wav or whatever is an exact-as-possible copy of what's on the CD itself. FIrst, CDDA sectors are 2352 bytes, no error correction, and seeking to a specific point is not guaranteed. That's why cdparanoia is paranoid about reading each sector several times and comparing each read result to account for jitter/errors. One element of the FAQ page on the main cdparanoia website goes into some detail about this.

      --
      Give a monkey a brain and he'll swear he's the center of the universe.
  47. iTMS by EyesWideOpen · · Score: 1

    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
    1. Re:iTMS by pixelbend · · Score: 1

      Nope, it's there.

      --
      Prospective station wagon buyer: "I know what you say is true...but...er...I don't know how to maintain a tank!"
  48. Who? by Seanasy · · Score: 1
    Watch out for the new Anthony Hamilton CD

    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?

  49. ISO/IEC 60908 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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)

  50. mac + audio hijack program by kraksmoka · · Score: 1

    = ripped music = try again hated oligarchs

    --
    "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
  51. Stop calling it CD! by Kindaian · · Score: 1

    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.

  52. Ummm...? by iCoach · · Score: 1

    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
    1. Re:Ummm...? by Zeppelingb · · Score: 1

      But the point is that this will stop the "average" user from ripping tracks. No protection scheme is uncrackable, but now there is an extra hurdle.

    2. Re:Ummm...? by ajs318 · · Score: 1
      That "extra hurdle" falls down flat, though, the instant one person manages to make a recopiable copy of it. From such time on, copies propagate easily.

      CDs would be cheaper if the record companies
      1. Stopped selling cassettes altogether - a walkman cassette costs three times as much as a CD to manufacture, yet they are sold at a lower price.
      2. Abandoned all playback-prevention attempts - see above
      --
      Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
  53. Why do they bother? by OriginalSpaceMan · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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!
  54. Time to start the cycle... by Chordonblue · · Score: 1

    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..."
  55. so, no play on the Mac? by SweetAndSourJesus · · Score: 1

    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"
    1. Re:so, no play on the Mac? by Nermal6693 · · Score: 1

      I've heard of at least one "protected" CD which had its "protection" defeated just by dragging the audio tracks from the CD onto the desktop :)

      I'm not sure what method OS X uses to rip the CD, but it works!

    2. Re:so, no play on the Mac? by ElGanzoLoco · · Score: 1

      ... actually, it seems to depend on your drive... Copy Controlled CD's crash my iMac (CD-DVD drive), but will rip perfectly on my G4 (Superdrive, Pioneer DVR-103). Pop the CD in, launch iTunes, import... The *other* volume that mounts on your desktop contains the wma tracks and a shitty player (play/pause/next/previous... No names on the tracks whatsoever :-/ )

      Bah!

      --
      Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
  56. Microsoft DRM by vwjeff · · Score: 1

    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.

  57. Easy. by BWJones · · Score: 1

    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.
  58. Good thing I don't buy CDs anymore... by __aagmrb7289 · · Score: 1

    for the most part, at least. I don't have to worry about this stuff...

  59. Ohh, it's encrypted! *shivers* by Andypro · · Score: 3, Funny

    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* _

    1. Re:Ohh, it's encrypted! *shivers* by bigjnsa500 · · Score: 1

      SSSSHHHH!!!... That's our ancient Chinese secret!

      --
      This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
    2. Re:Ohh, it's encrypted! *shivers* by fucksl4shd0t · · Score: 1

      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... >_>

      Why does it even have to be that hard? If you just stream the wma to wav will you get the same, better, or worse quality than if you do DAD, as you suggested? Streaming to wav is pretty easy....

      --
      Like what I said? You might like my music
    3. Re:Ohh, it's encrypted! *shivers* by Andypro · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I know. I just always suggest this tactic, because no matter what types of 'anti-ripping' protection they come up with, the simple fact remains: If you can listen to the music, then you can duplicate the music. ;-)

  60. If it installs... it's not 'secure'. by Anonymous+Freak · · Score: 1

    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.
  61. This is a GOOD thing by miyako · · Score: 1

    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"
  62. Must be decrypted... by cgranade · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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

    1. Re:Must be decrypted... by sTalking_Goat · · Score: 1

      its not encrypted at all. Se the above sim million of so post on error checing in CD-rom and car CD player for more info.

      --

      My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...

    2. Re:Must be decrypted... by Cantus · · Score: 1

      Well, data on CDs is recorded scrambled, for error checking purposes, so that's what they mean with 'encrypted'.

    3. Re:Must be decrypted... by fucksl4shd0t · · Score: 1

      its not encrypted at all. Se the above sim million of so post on error checing in CD-rom and car CD player for more info.

      The CD may not be encrypted, but your post sure in the hell was.

      --
      Like what I said? You might like my music
    4. Re:Must be decrypted... by sTalking_Goat · · Score: 1
      Yeah. I'm testing the latest implementation of my new 'Typing-Replies-to-slashdot-in-a-minimized-window- so the-boss-will-think-I'm-actually-working' encryption algorithm.

      Seems to be working just fine.

      --

      My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...

  63. What kind of ... by DogIsMyCoprocessor · · Score: 4, Funny

    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."

    1. Re:What kind of ... by bluGill · · Score: 1

      The hard part is positioning the mark byond the end of the audio data, but over the other data, thus preventing your cd player from reading the data portions, while still accessing the audio.

      Note, I don't think it will work in the real world even if you could overwrite exactly the right areas. Interesting idea though.

  64. Article Thoughts by rjstanford · · Score: 1, Troll
    The soulful singer's Arista debut

    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!

    ...which arrives in stores today, may look like a traditional CD.

    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.

    When put into a Macintosh (news - web sites) or Windows PC, the disc installs software to keep the music secure

    Wonder if it asks permission first?

    Another link allows you to send e-mail to friends so they can download a copy of the song playable for 10 days. "You're sharing music, but you are not giving it away forever," Whitmore says.

    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!
    1. Re:Article Thoughts by asscroft · · Score: 1

      Good point. I thought the same thing. It's too bad that your comment is the only one of it's kind on the page. oh well.

      --
      because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
  65. Hmm by thomas.galvin · · Score: 1

    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.

  66. that's a shame by bill_guts · · Score: 1

    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.

    --


  67. Ability To Hear = Ability To Rip by Professor+North · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "... 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. - -
  68. When Is a CD Not a Music CD? by Myriad · · Score: 2, Insightful
    When it doesn't conform to the IEC 908 standard and/or the Philips-Sony Compact Disc Digital Audio System Description (the RED Book).

    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'
  69. Here we go again... by Animaether · · Score: 1

    "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.

  70. Viral software by Phydoux · · Score: 1

    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?
  71. From MS (Un)Help(Ful) "CDs - Prevent Autoplay" by NaugaHunter · · Score: 1, Redundant

    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.
  72. It's not a CD by Vainglorious+Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    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
  73. Harder to Buy than to Download (Redux) by SUB7IME · · Score: 1

    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!

  74. An idea that would probably work... by setzman · · Score: 1

    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:\>
  75. Interresting by Captain+Rotundo · · Score: 1

    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.

    1. Re:Interresting by Captain+Rotundo · · Score: 1

      Not even mentioning how assinine it is that they expect a user to have t obuy another more expensive product from Apple or Microsoft to play the stupid CD. I have no interrest in doing busingess with either of those companies too. I'll stick with Debian and wait for the record companies to release in Ogg Vorbis. :)

  76. Collection of thoughts by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 2, Interesting

    one set of "encrypted" songs that can be handled by CD players but cannot be ripped

    CD -> CD player -> sound card -> /dev/dsp -> lame

    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
    1. Re:Collection of thoughts by zbuffered · · Score: 1

      Get a Rio Volt.
      Please don't get a Rio Volt. I've gone through 3 already--bought one, bought another one, got #2 replaced under warranty, and #3 recently broke. My next portable MP3 player will be made by a different company. This is both a reflection on the company in general and the quality of their MP3 player products. I went through hell getting the player replaced under warranty.

      --
      Synergy is your friend
  77. Linux version... by T3kno · · Score: 1, Informative


    blar@nath blar $ mount /mnt/cdrom
    blar@nath blar $ cp /mnt/cdrom/*.wma ./
    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) + (&)
    1. Re:Linux version... by nate1138 · · Score: 1

      not loose, lose, lose, LOSE DAMN YOU!

      --
      Where's my lobbyist? Right here.
    2. Re:Linux version... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      uhhh.. i don't think thats gonna work linux dude. The WMA files are encrypted using MS's DRM.

      See: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/drm/ DataSession.aspx

      It's the technology companies like BMG using in thse discs...

    3. Re:Linux version... by Maudib · · Score: 1

      I have a feeling that the software used to keep the music "secure" might include some sort of encryption/drm for which there is no linux software available.

      just a thought.

    4. Re:Linux version... by T3kno · · Score: 1

      Typo...honest...I do know how to spell lose, I also know how to spell loser, which is what you are :)

      --
      (B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
    5. Re:Linux version... by haggar · · Score: 2, Informative

      "You loose a little quality" - understatement of the week. The .wma files are compressed at 96 kbps, and your little procedure will degrade the quality even further.

      This being Slashdot, I guess your post was modded up because it mentions Linux. Otherwise, it's an engineering shame.

      --
      Sigged!
    6. Re:Linux version... by Lumpy · · Score: 1

      Please.... use the lame -q0 setting to make lame use the really complex Phyco-acoustic math and create the absolute best mp3 it can.

      I have some 128bps mp3's encoded with the latest lame with the quality settings all set to best and several friends are still in awe (they were stupid and bought audio-catylist... wow what overpriced junk)

      if you are going to rip to mp3, make all the settings jammed up for best quality for the bitrate you choose.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    7. Re:Linux version... by nate1138 · · Score: 1

      Do you know how to spell "Sense of humor", That's right, I knew you could.

      --
      Where's my lobbyist? Right here.
    8. Re:Linux version... by zbuffered · · Score: 1

      Waah.

      Oh, and if I hear, "well, let's crack on then" one more time, I swear I'm going to lose it. I swear.

      --
      Synergy is your friend
    9. Re:Linux version... by zbuffered · · Score: 1

      Are you sure? WMA supports compression from < 96kbps to mathematically lossless (somewhere around 450-950kbps), I'd think that they'd at least use VBR...
      I have no first-hand knowledge of what bitrate they're using, and the article in question doesn't mention it. Where'd you hear this?

      --
      Synergy is your friend
  78. Radiohead - Hail To The Copy Protection by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
    From Blue Stone's Journal.

    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.

    1. Re:Radiohead - Hail To The Copy Protection by AttillaTheNun · · Score: 1
      >>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!

      And, unfortunately, less money for the unsuspecting artist, who probably has no idea this is being applied to their work.

    2. Re:Radiohead - Hail To The Copy Protection by jofizz · · Score: 1

      I purchased Hail to the Thief when it was released here in New Zealand. I didn't realize until iTunes was half way thru ripping it, that it was indeed a copy protected CD. It didn't make any difference to my good old G4. Go Apple.

      --
      There is no sig.
    3. Re:Radiohead - Hail To The Copy Protection by ruiner13 · · Score: 1

      What country are you in and what OS are you running? I ripped Hail to the Theif to MP3 on my G4 without problem, and I was able to make a direct CD copy using Easy CD Creator on my girlfriend's WinXP Gateway laptop.

      --

      today is spelling optional day.

    4. Re:Radiohead - Hail To The Copy Protection by metamatic · · Score: 1

      My copy was a completely unprotected regular CD. (USA.)

      --
      GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
    5. Re:Radiohead - Hail To The Copy Protection by David+Rolfe · · Score: 1
      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!

      In actuality they will just pass the "savings" on to us. The systems they engineer and licsense all end up on the price tag ... and we the sheep (people) keep on payin'.

      I mean, if they weren't going to pass the cost onto us, why would they do it in the first place?

      --
      Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
  79. One word by fluxrad · · Score: 1

    libDeCDss

    --
    "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
    1. Re:One word by zbuffered · · Score: 1

      Did you mean: libcss

      Your search - libDeCDss - did not match any documents.
      No pages were found containing "libdecdss".

      --
      Synergy is your friend
  80. Linux Violates DMCA by m1a1 · · Score: 1

    Well, seeing as their "copy protection" software only works on Windows and Mac, any non-windows/mac OS is a copyright circumvention tool. Funfunfun.

    1. Re:Linux Violates DMCA by belarm314 · · Score: 1

      unless this would fall under the "compatible software" clause, of course...

      --
      When moderating, assume I have not yet had my coffee.
  81. "New Anti-Swap CD's Hit Shelves" by JeanBaptiste · · Score: 3, Funny

    "New Anti-Swap CD's Hit Shelves"

    and thats where they will probably stay....

  82. Whatever. by EZmagz · · Score: 1
    I'm assuming this is another not-to-CD-spec version of a CD. The fact that when played in a PC, the CD installs software to play the music kind of sucks. I really hope there's some click-through screens instead of the install happening transparently. The last thing any user should do is have software installed without them knowing.

    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. ..."

  83. Why is it by bigjnsa500 · · Score: 1
    Why is it that the encrypted CD stuff only comes out on people or bands that either suck or we've never heard of before? Are the record companies testing us to see which anti-this or that stuff we like?

    Kinda makes you wonder eh?

    --
    This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
  84. Oh, the horror... by Kjella · · Score: 1

    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
  85. proof for RIAA by eagl · · Score: 1

    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.

  86. Encrypted ? by $exyNerdie · · Score: 1


    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 ?

  87. good 'ole days by morcheeba · · Score: 1

    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.

  88. Ironic... by OgreChow · · Score: 1

    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?

  89. So will this work on a Mac or not? by Blondie-Wan · · Score: 1
    From the article:

    In CD players, the disc plays normally. 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, 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)...

  90. Er...no thank you. by Schwartzboy · · Score: 1

    "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
  91. Nothing new in Canada by robinw · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

    1. Re:Nothing new in Canada by coolhelperguy · · Score: 1

      a small sticker or bullet on the back of the CD isn't obvious enough

      Oh, I think a bullet through the CD would be obvious enough and would keep most of the people in the world from crippling their computer with unlicensed patches unless they really want to re-assemble the whole CD from it's 50 million shards.

    2. Re:Nothing new in Canada by Snafoo · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I bought one of these EMI 'Copy-Controlled' discs before as well (yay Canada-as-testing-ground-for-bad-technologies.) Honestly? I didn't even notice that the disc was supposed to be uncopiable until *after* I'd ripped (w/ cdparanoia) and encoded (w/ lame) the tracks onto my Flash MP3 player. I even have the first track. Go figger. BTW, the new 'copy-controlled disc' logo is hilarious -- little triangles and circles inside one another. Looks like the cover of a 70's book on analytic philosophy or psychology (members of the relevant disciplines will know what I'm talking about.)

      --
      - undoware.ca
  92. God-Given Rights?!? by Erik_the_Awful · · Score: 1

    "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...

  93. i wonder... by snatcheroo · · Score: 1

    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.

  94. Lawsuit waiting to happen? by meringuoid · · Score: 1
    So, this disc autoruns. Trojans your system somehow to stop you being able to rip it, and lets you have WMA files instead. Am I right so far?

    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.
  95. Shouldn't matter for us... by joesao · · Score: 1
    ...this isn't news. In Brazil, some CDs have already been released like this [Notably, the Tribalistas CD which was nominated for a Latin Grammy].

    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.

  96. Even worse! by FrostedWheat · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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!

  97. Too bad for them... by PetWolverine · · Score: 1

    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.
  98. Load of marketing BS? by mindslip · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    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, ...from installing some what... new CD ROM-drive drivers? How exactly does this stop you from reading the audio tracks?

    Now, more importantly. Labelling. Am I being *told* that I'm buying a CD that breaks my "God given right to steal music?" ... 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.)

    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.

    1. Re:Load of marketing BS? by Lumpy · · Score: 1

      spend $120.00 on a CD to CD recorder... copy the CD , rip it as normal....

      My buddy has one of the first phillips CD recorders with a player in it. it has yet to even fart on one of these "protected CD's"

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    2. Re:Load of marketing BS? by WWWWolf · · Score: 1
      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.

      Yeah, these new PCs suck. Back in the day, my computer had a 1MHz 6510 and my floppy drive had a 1MHz 6502. Those were the days! But we went up hill both ways in snow and we liked it!

      Any way, I now have erraneously purchased two copy-protected CDs, neither could withstand the old mighty outta-headphone-jack-and-in-the-line-in routine. Though the other CD made my drive skip around a bit, so I went to lmule and downloaded the thing. =)

      (And the only reason I bought these was that I thought both consisted 95% of stuff that was worth the money...)

  99. Department of Home Music Security by Zygote-IC- · · Score: 1

    Remember, if our music isn't secure then the terrorists have already won.

  100. ha ha ha "cannot be ripped by computers" ha ha ha by Qrlx · · Score: 1

    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!

  101. What a shame my CD player has digital optical out by Hamster+Lover · · Score: 1

    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?

    ?

  102. I think I join the majority of Slashdot users when by CommieLib · · Score: 1

    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.
  103. Anthony Who? by soccerisgod · · Score: 1

    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?
    1. Re:Anthony Who? by DerProfi · · Score: 1

      Exactly! I've never even heard of this guy...

      --

      3000+ comments meta-modded. 0 mod points awarded.
      Lesson for other meta-suckers: Don't believe the hype!
  104. audio out - audio in == ripped by CyberSnyder · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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

  105. Already on Kazaa by guidryp · · Score: 1

    But who really cares, this is a publicity stunt to see bolster a sagging artist.

    1. Re:Already on Kazaa by steveit_is · · Score: 1

      If I'd thought before I posted I would have realized that, but in order to even get my responses seen I have to post FAST :) Stupid internet. Its TOO fast. :)

  106. this guy thinks he's Moses... by sTalking_Goat · · Score: 1
    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."

    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...

  107. New scheme viable by greygent · · Score: 1

    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.)

  108. Someday... by IthnkImParanoid · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...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.
    1. Re:Someday... by GregWebb · · Score: 1

      Already have with me. Got the new Deep Purple and Iron Maiden albums, only to discover they were protected.

      I wasn't told before I was sold them (bought them over the web) and I'm fuming. Soon as I've got a few minutes to draft a letter, the shop who sold them to me are getting pointed out that they've violated the trades descriptions act, while the bands get pointed out that I basically can't listen to these by the way I listen to almost all my music. If all music comes this way, I just stop being able to listen to new music and stop buying CDs. Doesn't help them in the least.

      --

      Greg

      (Inside a nuclear plant)
      Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!

    2. Re:Someday... by sacrilicious · · Score: 1

      I'm a little torn... do I download the ripped track to prove I can do it, or completely ignore it because Anthony WhatHisFace is somebody I've never heard of and don't care to listen to?

      --
      - First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
  109. Not New by Mark+Hood · · Score: 1

    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
    1. Re:Not New by Ricin · · Score: 1

      I ripped the songs to wav then ogg encoded them. Extracted cdinfo also and made them ogg comments.

      Never looked at the data track at all.

  110. oh no! not encrypted tracks!!! by Grimlock88 · · Score: 1

    because encryption is always really hard to break, especially when it comes from the RIAA

  111. real equipment by ForsakenRegex · · Score: 1

    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."
  112. Whitmore quote: by jollygreengiantlikes · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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."

    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.
  113. Write to the artist by IvyMike · · Score: 1, Redundant

    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.

  114. Sharing is not stealing by rudy_wayne · · Score: 1

    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

  115. Security risk? by Kjella · · Score: 1

    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
  116. Why... why... why? by BMonger · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Why... why... why? by ezthrust · · Score: 1

      Why don't you just get a CD burner for your mac and make an unncrippled version for work?

    2. Re:Why... why... why? by BMonger · · Score: 1

      Sometimes I do... but why should I have to copy the CD (which they don't want me to do anyhow) in order to make it work?

  117. how exactly does it install? by sckeener · · Score: 1

    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
  118. OS X mounts both images by Dugsmyname · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Drop the CD in your OS X machine, and rip the "Audio CD" mounted image... Just ignore the other one.... Tested and confirmed.

    1. Re:OS X mounts both images by LionMage · · Score: 2, Informative

      Someone mod this man up!

      Not to sound like a pro-Mac weenie (although I am), but this is yet another reason why my primary choice of operating systems for day-to-day use at home is Mac OS X. Then again, I suspect that the primary goal of the "copy protection" on this CD was to lock out the majority of music pirates, who run MS Windows. I doubt that the major labels care that Linux and OS X users can rip the audio tracks by mounting the Red Book session directly.

    2. Re:OS X mounts both images by ncr53c8xx · · Score: 1
      Not to sound like a pro-Mac weenie (although I am), but this is yet another reason why my primary choice of operating systems for day-to-day use at home is Mac OS X. Then again, I suspect that the primary goal of the "copy protection" on this CD was to lock out the majority of music pirates, who run MS Windows. I doubt that the major labels care that Linux and OS X users can rip the audio tracks by mounting the Red Book session directly.

      Well, the one of the first big glitches the music industry faced when it first launched this corrupt disks was locking up iMacs. The CD had to be extracted mechanically.

    3. Re:OS X mounts both images by LionMage · · Score: 1
      Well, the one of the first big glitches the music industry faced when it first launched this corrupt disks was locking up iMacs. The CD had to be extracted mechanically.

      Further underscoring that the record labels really don't care about Mac users. However, consumer backlash did get most of the discs with this particular copy protection scheme yanked from the market. A software and/or firmware update from Apple may help in this case.

      Anyway, I'd rather see Mac users able to mount the Red Book audio session directly and be able to rip music for their own personal use (which they're legally entitled to do) than see Mac users unable to even insert the "protected" discs into their computers' CD/DVD drives because of the potential for wreaking havoc.
    4. Re:OS X mounts both images by ncr53c8xx · · Score: 1
      Anyway, I'd rather see Mac users able to mount the Red Book audio session directly and be able to rip music for their own personal use (which they're legally entitled to do) than see Mac users unable to even insert the "protected" discs into their computers' CD/DVD drives because of the potential for wreaking havoc.

      As you have stated earlier, if the labels don't care about Mac users, how long do you think they will be able to do this? Further, the courts have ruled that they don't have a duty to help to excercise your fair use rights.

  119. And it's his "stunning debut album" too by trailerparkcassanova · · Score: 1

    Poor sod.

  120. It's not a "CD" by El · · Score: 2, Redundant

    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

    1. Re:It's not a "CD" by liposuction · · Score: 1

      Wasn't that patent supposed to run out this year?

      --
      "Thoughts are more powerful than any weapon, and I don't even let my people own guns." --Joseph Stalin
    2. Re:It's not a "CD" by El · · Score: 1

      I beleive the Compact Disc logo is a trademark, not a patent.

      --

      "Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney

    3. Re:It's not a "CD" by radja · · Score: 1

      it is indeed, and Philips is trademarkholder. Philips are attacking 'DRM CDs' on the bases of trademarkviolation.

      --

      No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
      --Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
  121. When a CD isn't a CD by LionMage · · Score: 3, Insightful
    They are under obligation, however, not to market items that are copy protected as 'CDs'. They are laser-readable discs containing music, but 'CD' is a trademark. I beleive it belongs to Pioneer, IIRC.

    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."

    This is a legal grey area. Legislation's in U.S. congressional committee right now that requires CD makers to place a prominent 'This CD is copy protected' label on all CDs that contain anti-sharing mechanisms.

    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.
    1. Re:When a CD isn't a CD by Blue+Stone · · Score: 1

      Regardless of whether it's got the "CD Digital Audio" label on it or not, it's sold as a CD.
      It will be included amongst all the other genuine CDs, when it is a significantly different format, to confuse the public into making an uninformed purchase.

      --
      Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
  122. Re:From MS (Un)Help(Ful) "CDs - Prevent Autoplay" by Ron+Bennett · · Score: 1

    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.

    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 .idx files and similar that Windows XP uses to track one's computer usage.

    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... ...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.

    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

  123. That's no patch.... by Pastey · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ...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.

  124. patch cord by 56ksucks · · Score: 1
    When will they learn, if it's audible you can copy it? Plug your CD player into your soundcard and record your mp3's the old fashion way.

    -----

    --

    ---- "Excuse me. Where's the children's gun section?"

  125. Even on Windows... by Osrin · · Score: 1

    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.

  126. Hmmmm by ParticleMan911 · · Score: 1

    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?
  127. They'll put themselves out of business... by matthewg42 · · Score: 1

    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

  128. Installing software? by TLouden · · Score: 1

    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
  129. Playing both sides? by zelurxunil · · Score: 2, Informative

    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
  130. Effects by spudgun · · Score: 1

    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.
  131. Hmmm, cannot be ripped? by edxwelch · · Score: 1

    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

  132. Oh wait by TACD · · Score: 1

    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.
  133. Why is it bad? by rve · · Score: 1

    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...

    1. Re:Why is it bad? by Hanji · · Score: 1

      Well, I'm sorry if this is too much for you, but I *do* use a Mac as my primary computer, and as far as I'm concerned, if I can't rip the tracks to my iTunes library and transfer them to my iPod, the CD's broken. I. Sure, I could crack it, but that's a waste of time, and like as not it'll end up reducing the quality somewhat due to reencoding somewhere in the process.

      --
      A Minesweeper clone that doesn't suck
    2. Re:Why is it bad? by Frizzle+Fry · · Score: 1
      if I can't rip the tracks to my iTunes library and transfer them to my iPod, the CD's broken

      I don't see why you not being able to use it makes it broken. I can't play XBOX games on my gamecube, should I buy them and get angry about it? If it's in a format you can't use, you shouldn't buy it. If enough people do that, there'll be economic incentive to release them in different formats too. As long as the packaging clearly labels who can and can't use the CD (I understand that it often doesn't, and I agree that that sucks) there's no problem.
      --
      I'd rather be lucky than good.
  134. Or... by phorm · · Score: 4, Informative

    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)

  135. More people need to know about this by Travoltus · · Score: 2, Funny

    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!
  136. Just a matter of time by Pieroxy · · Score: 1

    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.

  137. Executing without permission? by reinard · · Score: 1

    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
  138. disable autorun (autoinsertnotification) "feature" by kaltkalt · · Score: 1

    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.
  139. Curses, foiled again by Gettin'_Fatter · · Score: 1

    "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?.

  140. Re:Autorun is easily turned off by kaltkalt · · Score: 1

    Yes, but as of today doing so would be a DMCA violation. (no smiley face)

    --

    Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
  141. Does parent work for anyone? by NaugaHunter · · Score: 1

    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.
  142. Re:From MS (Un)Help(Ful) "CDs - Prevent Autoplay" by iantri · · Score: 1

    I have a single entry called "Shortcut keys on the desktop" in the windows 98se helpfile that says this. Only reference.

  143. Digital out? by ryanvm · · Score: 1

    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?

    1. Re:Digital out? by stilleon · · Score: 1

      I don't think so. Even if it has SCMS, it should allow a digital copy (SCMS allows one digital copy, but not a copy of a copy on consumer equipment). But once you get the bitstream in the computer, thats it. You can compress it, copy it, etc.

  144. Guaranteed hit CD! This is amazing marketing! by stilleon · · Score: 1

    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!

  145. The commercial by DarkOx · · Score: 2, Funny

    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
  146. Re:Fuck that shit by Disco+Stu · · Score: 1

    Sorry I was at a ball game all afternoon drinking beer.

  147. An even easier solution by pla · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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).

    1. Re:An even easier solution by Quasar1999 · · Score: 1

      Umm... you just violated the DMCA by making public a circumvention method.

      If you are a US resident, then I'd get outta the country quick! I heard Canada's still pretty safe...

      --

      ---
      Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
    2. Re:An even easier solution by alexo · · Score: 1


      > 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.

      I cannot find a "supported drives" list on their site. Can you give a pointer please? Also, are there any DVD drives (which, by definition, can read CDs) that have this feature and are otherwise "rip friendly"? Is there a site with reviews/comparisons of such DVD drives?

      Thanks.

  148. I give it..... by jr87 · · Score: 1

    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.

  149. Dumb question by Hecubas · · Score: 1

    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
  150. Re:Best solution: Wait until someone else cracks i by Hatta · · Score: 1

    Ooh, good idea. Everyone should do this.

    --
    Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
  151. news to me by dmnic · · Score: 1

    maybe only certain versions of HTTT have the copy protection.
    mine doesnt.
    (I have the "special edition" with the big case/book)

    1. Re:news to me by Mark+Hood · · Score: 1

      Maybe it's a UK-only thing.... I have the special edition too, and on the back it says:

      "This disc contains copy control technology"

      --
      Liked this comment? Why not buy me something nice
  152. So Has Anyone Actually Checked P2P by Nom+du+Keyboard · · Score: 1

    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."
  153. conv=noerror by SHEENmaster · · Score: 1

    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.
  154. How compressed are the .WMA files? by lightspawn · · Score: 1

    Even if they're 1/10 of the size of the raw tracks, it means the CD can hold 9% less music.

    1. Re:How compressed are the .WMA files? by yeremein · · Score: 1

      Eh, how often do you find any CDs on the shelves with more than 40 minutes of music anyway?

  155. The producers say they are helpless by jwr · · Score: 1

    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!

  156. Roadblock by GetPFunky · · Score: 4, Funny

    That should stop the 6 people that actually listen to his music.

  157. How old of a Mac? by domsol · · Score: 1
    Well, here's where MacCentrism comes in handy...
    In CD players, the disc plays normally. 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.

    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! >
  158. Turn of auto run! by Sovern · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.
  159. Encryption? On 1979 era technology???? by stilleon · · Score: 1

    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.

  160. Re:Great Opportunity for a small start-up inde by stilleon · · Score: 1

    Without the labels ponying up the money for promotion, how will you get to know who they are? How many indie acts can you name right now? How many label acts? Face it: that money makes these people stars.

  161. Not even for CLI by Enucite · · Score: 1

    The only applicable use it has is to make give people with a console fettish an easier time typing in filenames.

    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. :p

    1. Re:Not even for CLI by ajs318 · · Score: 1

      My preferred scheme is to make a directory for each artist, subdirectories for each album {and maybe for each CD if it's a multi-disc album}, and just have the sorting order and song title in the filename. Something like {mind the gap - that's just Slashdot putting in extra line breaks to avoid page-widening trolls}
      pink_floyd/dark_side_of_the_moon/05_great_gig_in_t he_sky_the
      or compilations/soft_rock_4/19_petty_tom-runnin_down_ a_dream
      Name of artist {surname first} or group {"the" or "a" last}, all lower case, underscores for spaces. Name of album, all lc, underscores. Track number as two digits. Underscore. Name of track, all lc, underscores for spaces. Or, for compilation albums, number_art_ist-ti_tle {note minus sign delimiting artist from title}. No extension required, of course, since there is more than enough metadata to tell the player application what kind of a file it is. Now, that number is important. By putting the track number first, it makes sure that my directory listings show the tracks in the album order {I ripped and lame-d in that order, so sorting alphabetically or datewise yields the same result} and also allows me to get away with the bare minimum of typing thanks to bash's TAB-key filename completion. I figure a machine that can handle stuff like mpeg / ogg playback isn't going to be forced to run ash!

      Console navigation is just something like
      $ mpg321 so[TAB]
      $ mpg321 songs/pi[TAB]
      $ mpg321 songs/pink_floyd/da[TAB]
      $ mpg321 songs/pink_floyd/dark_side_of_the_moon/01[TAB][CR]

      and I'll end up with the first track on DSOTM. Total keystrokes, 20.

      Mind you, you probably already have a scheme that works for you, and there's no point changing to another now. Hell, if it weren't for the fact that you can only get 64K in a BLOB, I'd recommend using a database .....

      --
      Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
    2. Re:Not even for CLI by Enucite · · Score: 1

      My point was simply that an underscore takes the same number of keystrokes as a space. and it's actually easier to type a space in the command line than it is to type an underscore.

      Space = \[space]
      underscore = [shift]-

      "Because it's easier to type" isn't a valid reason...
      However... "Because it's easier to read from the command line" may be a valid one ;)

  162. What about ripping through VMWARE or Wine? by tigertiger · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Has anyone thought about playing a DRM-protected/encrypted WMA file in a VMWARE or Wine session and recording the data stream that VMWARE or Wine sends to the sound card? It should be trivial either to intercept /dev/dsp in user space or have a "virtual soundcard" kernel module. Even easier than going through the soundcard and redigitalizing.

    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.

  163. Re:Information. by Colonel+Blimp · · Score: 1

    Set it free, if it loves you, then it will return...

  164. Installs software? by Sylver+Dragon · · Score: 1

    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.
    1. Re:Installs software? by Sovern · · Score: 1

      I want to check it out, but I refuse to buy this cd.

      --
      And it rendered on, until the end of its days.
  165. I had to by Anonym1ty · · Score: 1
    In Soviet Russia....
    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

  166. whew by CjKing2k · · Score: 1

    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?

  167. Wasted effort Round 2 by coder_ · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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"
  168. mplayer by eean · · Score: 1

    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.

  169. Re:Great Opportunity for a small start-up inde by night_flyer · · Score: 1

    Im sorry, who is Anthony Hamilton?

    --


    Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
    Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
  170. All i can say is WOW good marketing! by t_allardyce · · Score: 1

    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.

    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 /. cliche)

    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.
  171. Won't Play Properly on my audio cd player by daveymog · · Score: 1

    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.

  172. Sharpies by macgyvr64 · · Score: 1

    Break out the permanent markers, boys. Time to do some "cracking."

  173. The FA by Anonym1ty · · Score: 1

    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.

  174. Re:I think I join the majority of Slashdot users w by jamesoutlaw · · Score: 1

    hahaha! I was going to say exactly the same thing!

  175. Screw these crippled "CDs" by haggar · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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!
  176. A disturbing trend that's only getting worse by LionMage · · Score: 1

    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).

  177. Redbook compliant???? by Nonillion · · Score: 1

    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
  178. Some technical specs on the copy protection by rufey · · Score: 1
    If you read the whole article, toward the bottom it mentions a company named Sunncomm. If you visit their website (they have an annoying intro flash), and goto their "Products", and read up on their "License Management Technology", you'll find some of the technical aspects of the copy protection. Apparently they place some sort of markers on the CD. But I don't see how putting such "markers" on a CD will make it work in a standard music CD player but not accessible via a computer.

    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.

    1. Re:Some technical specs on the copy protection by rufey · · Score: 1

      Sunncomm's MediaMax CD-3 (also under the "Products" link on their web site) seems to describe the format of the CD. Its a multi-session with one containing CD-A files and the second session consisting of compressed WMA files.

  179. Re:CD's? by mzs · · Score: 1
    I am not normally a grammar nazi but this is one of my nits ever since someone pointed it out to me. I used to pluralize acromyms and initialisms with apostrophe s because that is how I saw the NYT do it. For example from the NYT article, Vivendi Posts Higher Operating Profit and Smaller Net Loss, published today:
    Universal Music also plans to cut prices for CD's in North America later this year in an effort to stimulate sales, the company said.
    According to the Chicago Manual of Style this is incorrect and these are roughly the rules to pluralizing acronyms.
    • Use an s without an apostrophe in all circumstances unless one of the next points applies.
    • If the acronym uses periods use an apostrophe s. (Most of the time the use of periods in acronyms is discouraged BTW.)
    • If the pluralization would cause confusion because it would become a differnent word without the apostrophe. For example, "I got all A's," is the correct pluralization in this case.
    Notice that there is no rule for acronyms ending in s therefore OSs is the correct pluralization even though that looks very strange to me. Possibly somebody with a copy of the Chicago Manual of Style could reply to this post and let me know if I remember correctly or not.

    The correct way to pluralize dates is without an apostrophe, therefore 1970s is correct.

    Another interesting thing to note is that the plural of Mrs. is Mmes. and the plural of Mr. is Messrs. while the plural of Dr. is simply Drs. all with the period.

    That is what I remember anyway, feel free to flame away.

  180. Nor for DVD/CD players by axxackall · · Score: 1
    My Pioneer DVD/CD home theatre's player doesn't accept this garbage.

    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 !
  181. shame... by drbradfo · · Score: 1

    >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.

  182. Already on Kazaa... by van+der+Rohe · · Score: 1

    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.

  183. Legalized file sharing. by Jaywalk · · Score: 1
    Another link allows you to send e-mail to friends so they can download a copy of the song playable for 10 days.
    Hmm. This could be automated.

    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. =====
  184. If it can be heard it can be copied. by skitz0 · · Score: 1

    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.

  185. Better Solution by bigmattana · · Score: 1

    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.

  186. Whaaaa? by Larry*boy.3 · · Score: 1

    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?

  187. Re:CD's? by fucksl4shd0t · · Score: 1

    BAD GRAMMER F00L

    Bad spelling and grammar, fool. This got moderated "Informative?"

    --
    Like what I said? You might like my music
  188. If you do that the drive may not... by AnEmbodiedMind · · Score: 1

    respond to the eject button. It will depend on your make and model.

  189. Just wait for it by SpiffyMarc · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Just wait for it by GiantHaystacks · · Score: 1

      Unfortunately, Microsoft and the music industry are already taking steps to prevent this from happening in the future. Long live the open source movement!

      --
      No Sig for you!
    2. Re:Just wait for it by Petrol · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I've read many of those articles and the measures RIAA is trying to push both scare me and piss me off. So, like the poster above me said, 'Long live the open source movement'. It is exactly big industries efforts to restrict my freedom, even my freedom to break the law and get sent to jail, that has led me to learning enough about linux that I can manage a home box without locks on my machine.

      I don't trust anything labelled "Trusted".

      --
      ...and that's the end of our show. Donk!
  190. Ripping by 14ghz · · Score: 1

    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.

  191. The Amiga hole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    In case anyone is interested...

    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 :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.

    The SADDAM infection code would create a :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.

    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.

  192. I think this is relevent: by t_allardyce · · Score: 1

    "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.
  193. music CD installs adware on computers by mozkill · · Score: 1

    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.
  194. Cd cracking by ArCaNe50 · · Score: 1

    In communist russia(a.k.a. RIAA) the cd cracks you!

  195. OK, I bite by GunFodder · · Score: 1

    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.

    1. Re:OK, I bite by nolife · · Score: 1

      How old are you ;)
      It takes about the same effort it took people for decades before the cdr became cost effective. I used to copy all of my vinyl onto an Akai (forget model number) reel to reel deck, and to cassette tape on a Nakamachi CR7-A for car and general use as soon as I bought the record home. I only used the vinyl when I wanted to make another copy. It was not considered a pain back then but it is much easier to rip cd's.

      --
      Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
  196. Rejected... by zjbs14 · · Score: 1
    Sorry, the parent post was rejected...
    220 RIAA Snubby Logic Rejector v 1.3 09/24/2003
    500 Post contains excess logic, has been rejected.
    500 Please limit posts to haX0r-speak threats that we can use
    500 in our press releases and legal filings.
    221 RIAA closing connection

    --
    No sig, sorry.
  197. Then just use analog ripping by Veovis · · Score: 1

    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

  198. I believe the basic premise is sound by CrackHappy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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
    1. Re:I believe the basic premise is sound by ncr53c8xx · · Score: 1
      1) Modifying the way the CD works will make it unplayable in certain players

      What you missed is why it won't play in other players--it is because they removed most of the error correction information, and your $20 CD will be a good coaster next time you don't handle it by the edges.

    2. Re:I believe the basic premise is sound by CrackHappy · · Score: 1

      That is a good point, thanks. Other issues also related to because they removed the error correction, it's not actually a CD anymore, because they broke with the Red Book standards as well.

      I'm not saying what they did was correct, I'm just saying that it's a good step forward.

      --
      1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d Capitalization really works: i helped my uncle jack off a horse
    3. Re:I believe the basic premise is sound by ncr53c8xx · · Score: 1
      I'm not saying what they did was correct, I'm just saying that it's a good step forward.

      And why would you support someone who treats you this way? Why are you willing to give $20 to someone who gives you such poor value? What do you gain as a customer? How is it a step forward if it is not correct?

  199. QUIT CALLING THIS A CD, DAMMIT!!! by swordgeek · · Score: 1

    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
  200. They removed it!! by malaba · · Score: 2, Interesting

    actually they removed from it from
    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 :o(

    BTW: I friend of mine wiped it's partition
    table by inserting a "music" CD from someone else.
    The second session had a .exe with a nice virus.

    Moral: never ever keep this stupid autorun
    *mis*feature.

    my 2 cent

  201. Spaces still a pain in windows by Chuck+Chunder · · Score: 1

    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
  202. Properly formatted version by Chuck+Chunder · · Score: 1

    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
  203. OK, so some songs are encrypted... by vudufixit · · Score: 1

    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?

  204. Watch out for wha? by daVinci1980 · · Score: 1
    Watch out for the new Anthony Hamilton (cd)


    Why the hell would I do that? Who the hell *is* he?

    --
    I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
  205. "Copy Controlled" CDs by robotbebop · · Score: 1

    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 :)

  206. And I'll be .... by Grell · · Score: 1

    "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
  207. The sad thing is... by Arcturax · · Score: 3, Funny

    ... 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
  208. They will if.. by msimm · · Score: 1

    they run GNUTELLA or Opennap.

    --
    Quack, quack.
    1. Re:They will if.. by LionMage · · Score: 1

      The only way a record label will care if a Linux or OS X user is ripping content (protected or not)is if they make it widely available, and in large quantities. In case you've been asleep for the last year or so, these lawsuits are primarily targeted at users who share thousands or tens of thousands of songs. Yes, some folks run Gnutella supernodes on Linux boxen, and probably are hosting quite a few files. Those people are clearly targets, and will be caught in the dragnet soon enough. But by and large, most of the offenders are running Windows; ergo, statistically, Linux and OS X users are almost insignificant, so a copy protection scheme doesn't need to target them.

      Also, the most popular file sharing software, the stuff most people are aware of, is Windows-only. IIRC, Kazaa is Windows-only, and many of the lawsuits are targeted specifically at Kazaa users.

    2. Re:They will if.. by msimm · · Score: 1

      My point is that if things (with the recording industry) continue along the current path they will not be happy as long as there are holes in the distribution channels. Whats to stop a OSX rip from being shared on GNUTella from being picked up on Kazaa? The amazing thing about P2P is it only takes one file to start.

      Not that I *really* disagree with you, it really depends on how fanatical they want to get. Nice cat BTW.

      --
      Quack, quack.
  209. Copy-restricted CDs by Rassleholic · · Score: 1

    Time to whip out the ol' magic marker!

    --
    Not noteable, IMO a rubbish article.
  210. And just how long by abolith · · Score: 1
    before someone comes up with a program to convert WMA to MP3?

    --
    if you want "No More Hiroshimas" then I say "You First. No More Pearl Harbors."
  211. Re:that is interesting by pla · · Score: 1

    but can you explain how someone who uses a real operating system can achieve the same thing?

    Someone who uses a "real" OS (by which I will presume you mean Linux or one of the BSDs) doesn't have this problem in the first place. Cheesy Windows-based DRM trojans installed at CD autorun would have little effect on such a machine.

  212. Anthony Hamilton by Kris_J · · Score: 1
    Who?

    (This bit added to avoid lameness filters. Move along, nothing to see here.)

  213. Laughable by BigFootApe · · Score: 1

    OK, break out those optical cables.

  214. Where are their heads? by fygment · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.
  215. Depends on your drive by ElGanzoLoco · · Score: 1

    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!
  216. Simple. by ripewithdecay · · Score: 1

    Run a cable to the line-in on your sound card from your stereo reciever.

  217. Old Fashioned Analog Rip? by meniah · · Score: 1

    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.
  218. Support artists/industry that supports you.. by msimm · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.
  219. Violates spec -- return as defective by bigberk · · Score: 2, Informative

    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).

  220. Now they have an excuse... by clarkcox3 · · Score: 1

    ... 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.
  221. It requires geniality to see the obvious. by gacp · · Score: 1

    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.''
  222. Let the countdown begin.. by 0x41 · · Score: 1

    for this to be broken... I think I will start counting at, oh, lets say 5...

  223. Anti-Swap? by UnixRevolution · · Score: 1

    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.
    1. Re:Anti-Swap? by milesbparty · · Score: 1

      What does the RIAA have against virtual memory!??!?

      Maybe they're afraid of their system thrashing. They get scared when they hear "swapping", they should actually call it "paging".

      --
      eMelody Web Directory add your site today!
  224. What am I missing? by athlon02 · · Score: 1

    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.

  225. Venturing way OT (re: moderation) by mhesseltine · · Score: 1

    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 :: Anonymous Coward : Posting
    1. Re:Venturing way OT (re: moderation) by FireBreathingDog · · Score: 1

      thanks for clarifying. i appreciate it.

  226. Another reason to watch out by _pi-away · · Score: 1

    . . . for the new Anthony Hamilton CD is because he's goddamn horrible.

    --

    "The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw."
  227. Support the artists, not the industry by cbj · · Score: 1

    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.

  228. Who cares? Tracks are already on Kazaa! by felonious · · Score: 1

    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.
    1. Re:Who cares? Tracks are already on Kazaa! by pair-a-noyd · · Score: 1

      "the equivalent of plugging a hole in a dike."

      I tried that once and got slapped..

    2. Re:Who cares? Tracks are already on Kazaa! by AdrocK · · Score: 1

      Offtopic waring:

      I actually laughed out loud when I read that. HA!

      --
      Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.
  229. People pirate because they can by AHumbleOpinion · · Score: 1

    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.

  230. Not so simple by Bobartig · · Score: 1

    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."
  231. I don't think so... by Eric+Damron · · Score: 1, Insightful

    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!
  232. sounds to me like... by infonick · · Score: 2, Funny

    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.
  233. Re:Here's an idea by Olathe · · Score: 1

    Congratulations ! You're the hundredth poster to say that exact same thing ! You get a FREE 24-hour access to the Slashdot website ! Useful for doing such things as reading prior posts, reading prior posts, and (I'm not sure if this was mentioned already, but it's a good idea) reading prior posts.

  234. Anti-Swap? by LittleBigLui · · Score: 1

    What a misnomer, i would call them "Anti-Buy".

    --
    Free as in mason.
  235. We found another one! by LittleBigLui · · Score: 1

    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.
  236. Ripped already? by kolding · · Score: 1

    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.

  237. You can also use clone cd by emkman · · Score: 1

    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)
  238. Who Decides? by Tamor · · Score: 1

    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?

  239. No, you've got it all wrong... by loshwomp · · Score: 1
    From the headline:

    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.

  240. OT (re: moderation) by danila · · Score: 1

    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.
    1. Re:OT (re: moderation) by mhesseltine · · Score: 1

      Ok, if troll is "a provocative posting, designed to start a flame", then what is flamebait? Because, to me, it seems that your given definition for troll is more appropriate as a definition of flamebait.

      It seems that troll and flamebait mean basically the same thing, and therefore we could eliminate one of those options from the moderation.

      --
      Overrated / Underrated : Moderation :: Anonymous Coward : Posting
    2. Re:OT (re: moderation) by danila · · Score: 1

      Good point. But there is already too small a number of negative moderations... I can't be sure about the correct distinction, and without some clarification from /. admins we can never know...

      BTW, I was just moderated Troll (twice) for this comment. So it seems the current /. policy is to moderate absolutely randomly. :)

      --
      Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
    3. Re:OT (re: moderation) by mhesseltine · · Score: 1

      My only guess about your post is that the link isn't anywhere near correct (probably a messed up copy/paste job). It's a situation where, as I've mentioned to other people, each moderation should have an equal and opposite moderation (e.g. +1 Funny, -1 Not Funny; +1 Informative, -1 Not Informative). Then, someone could mod the post down as Not Informative, because the link is wrong, rather than Troll or Flamebait, because, well, who knows.

      --
      Overrated / Underrated : Moderation :: Anonymous Coward : Posting
  241. The [eventually] likely solution by danila · · Score: 1

    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.
  242. Duh - use SPDIF. by haraldm · · Score: 1

    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;
  243. Realize the truth.... by simply · · Score: 1

    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...
  244. Workaround #1... by pointbeing · · Score: 1
    I wonder why I couldn't just grab the audio stream at the line out jack of the PC's sound card and pipe it to whatever recording device I chose?

    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
  245. But the REAL issue is... by Craig3010 · · Score: 1

    ...who would really WANT to rip his "music"????

  246. Rip the MP3s and send it to them! by filenabber · · Score: 1

    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?
  247. Re:Crack - Britney Spears by fallen1 · · Score: 1

    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~

  248. Pointless for them to try by kfx · · Score: 1

    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.

  249. I for one welcome our new RIAA overlords... by Quixadhal · · Score: 1

    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.

  250. As stoopid as disposable DVDs by RAMGarden · · Score: 1

    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.
  251. Just say no by dcavanaugh · · Score: 1
    I will not subsidize crippleware. They can put as many of these on store shelves as they like. With sales of zero, inventory control should be easy.

  252. How long until... by Meenky · · Score: 1

    somebody writes a 500 bytes perl script to decrypt the tracks? ala DeCSS

  253. wouldn't this qualify as almost virus writing? by Casshan-Robot+Hunter · · Score: 1

    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?
  254. Disabling autoplay in win2k and possibly xp the by DaEMoN128 · · Score: 1

    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
  255. Misleading posting by serutan · · Score: 1

    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?

  256. Re:Autorun by timbck2 · · Score: 1

    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
  257. couldn't you just... by nomel · · Score: 1

    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.

  258. Free way around Copy Right Protection by seadoo2006 · · Score: 1

    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.

  259. Don't bother cracking the protection by boky · · Score: 1

    I'll just wait for someone else to do it and download songs from Kazaa. :)

    --
    boky
  260. Re:Great Opportunity for a small start-up inde by stilleon · · Score: 1

    I work in the industry. Most bands get an advance then have to pay it back from sales, but also get an advance to cover expenses in starting up a tour where the real money is made. With the amount of BLOW a few of these bands use, they must get a pretty good amount. Also, EMI is doing more profit sharing, which is the future.

  261. Re:Information. by ncc74656 · · Score: 1
    Set it free, if it loves you, then it will return...

    ...and if it doesn't, hunt it down and kill it!

    --
    20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
  262. Re:Please please people... by Mhtsos · · Score: 1

    You're joking, but if anyone ever uses a copyright protection scheme using the Autorun function, disabling it will be a violation

  263. Well Hidden?? by DeathoRatz · · Score: 1

    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.