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CD Copy Protection Case Goes to Court
grungie writes "From The Register: Belgian consumer watchdog Test-Achats (Test Aankoop), known for its crusade against Nokia's "unsafe batteries", starts the new year with a fresh assault on the music industry. It is taking the music giants EMI, Sony, BMG Music and Universal Music to court for installing anti-piracy systems on their audio CDs. This is excellent news! I was less than happy when I had to use cdparanoia to add The Foo Fighters' latest to my iTunes collection. I used to live in Belgium: Test Achat is serious about the protection of consumer rights. Let's hope other countries follow suit." You can read the stories in French as well as Dutch.
Test-achats's original press release in French, Dutch, and Google's translation to English.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
Test-Ankoop claimed that there was a risk that Nokia's batteries could explode at random. Later, it came out that they actually tested non-brand batteries... So they had to do their test again, and they found out that nothing was wrong with Nokia's original batteries.
By the way, the verdict against DVD-Jon is NOT going to be appealed!
This is a copyright issue, so it is on topic. Here's a link.
I remember there being a public outcry in Norway when certain cd's would not play on computers etc. I was expecting to see this appear in a Norwegian court, but a Belgian one will do!
Other french consumers association already did the same in France ... and win !
(see here, for example).
#include "coucou.h"
I have a feeling that it eventually will appear in a Norwegian court. There is more than enough support for it to happen, and a good PR campaign by EFN and consumer rights groups will bring even more support. I think the "delay" (i.e. why it hasn't been in court already) has been due to the whole DVD-Jon thing. But now that that's over, we can move on to other things.
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
Being belgian, I can attest that Test-aankoop has a valuable function here. Ther can really scare companies, and have more than once forced companies into admitting faults. The fault itself is not necessarely fixed, but the public humiliation in a small country (with only a handfull national TV channels) is enough to scare them.
And being totally independent, they can take some serious badass attitude !
They also have a pretty good website (in dutch & french) that accomagnies their monthly magazine. Each edition has at least a few product comparisions that many many belgians respect. When we bought our childrens car-seats, we followed their advice, even tho their top-pick was 15% more expensive.
They also have a pretty big library of 'target prices' for many products.
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
don't open that last link. particularly naste goatse-multiple-windows-"hey, i'm looking at gay porno!" wav files, etc....
http://www.zdnet.com.au/newstech/security/story/0, 2000048600,20282218,00.htm
Even before the Norway case was filed, however, entertainment industry lobbyists had been pressing lawmakers in that country and elsewhere to enact tougher copyright laws, modeled on controversial U.S. legislation that makes it easier for authorities to win prison terms for people who crack encryption schemes or distribute cracking tools.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Whether or not they ARE in fact losing money due to P2P is irrelevant. All they have to do is 'convince' a congress-monkey that they're right. If fewer and fewer of their songs are present on P2P networks, the less of a case they have.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
u can run it on computer for sure..
Unfortunately, that's not quite true. One of the popular copy protection mechanisms is actually to misformat the CD slightly; a consumer CD player has enough tolerance to still play it, but a high-quality audio CD player, or a player designed for high-speed data is designed to much finer tolerances and can't. If you look carefully at those CD cases, you will see they are missing the usual CD logo, because technically speaking they aren't CDs as they don't conform to the official standard. They are just objects the same dimension as CDs that happen to play in some CD players and not in others - and by coincidence, those others are the ones used in PCs. In other words, it's a hack, or an anti-hack if you prefer.
ts completely pointless.. Only annoys the ppl who bought it
Now that is true.