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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.
Already as early as 2002, EFN (Norway's version of EFF) has launched campaigns against the purchase of certain types of CDs as well as offering assistance in pressing charges against record producers whose CDs damage CD and/or DVD players or computers.
By the way, the verdict against DVD-Jon is NOT going to be appealed!
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
don't buy it.
HOW'S MY POSTING? CALL 1-800-POSTING
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.
Other french consumers association already did the same in France ... and win !
(see here, for example).
#include "coucou.h"
The trouble is, if we rightfully boycott a poor and intentionally crippled product, the record companies will blame their declining sales on P2P networks. The government will then step in to provide them a corporate crutch and start putting people using the future of media distribution in jail.
It's an ugly situation. The best thing we can do is help indy music sales and make sure they report their numbers. We need to make it clear that the sales of the Big Five are declining while others are increasing. Maybe the government will notice the signifigance of that.
Then again, maybe not.
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The UK seems to ban making backup copies of music you've bought, and doesn't permit you to copy your own CDs so you can listen to them on your car cassette player. Allegedly. What's the rest of Europe / the world like? Here's an area where the US has some sensible rules.
Yes - I know you can ignore the law...
Paul "Say no to feeping creaturism"
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 ?
If you buy something from the CD rack of your music shop, and it won't play in your CD playing equipment, you are entitled to a refund.
In fact, buying such a CD, then returning it for just that reason, provides "valuable" feedback to the labels on how acceptable / workable copy-protection isn't. (Maybe we should all go buy the stuff, then return it to send a message?)
Paul "Say no to feeping creaturism"
Look, it's been said before, I'll say it again now, and I'll continue to say it until things change.
Stop purchasing industry CDs!
Your purchase of music released on a label affiliated with the RIAA indirectly supports these efforts which most of you agree is capricious, unfair, predatory and illegal. And yet all I see are a bunch of people who complain about copy protection, the myriad subpoenas being sent by the RIAA standing in line down at the local Best Buy (which is another evil altogether) because they have to have the new friggin' Puddle Of Mudd (or is that Dumm?) CD.
If you really want to send the industry a message, don't buy CDs on labels that are part of the RIAA. Look at places like CD Baby, which are not affiliated with the RIAA, offer 2-minute high-quality preview of many of the songs on each CD, sell non copy-protected CDs, and offer all the rights that you should expect in your CDs. Yes, you can rip the CD and download it to your MP3 player, and no one is going to come and hunt you down like the dog you are merely for exercising your fair use rights.
It really is going to take a big effort on all our parts to get this message out. But while people mindlessly go down to the local box retailer to buy another copy protected CD from some industry teat-sucking band, you're really not helping things.
I noticed it was a Foo Fighters' CD that the story poster bought. How about, 'It's times like these you need to think again...'?
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
don't open that last link. particularly naste goatse-multiple-windows-"hey, i'm looking at gay porno!" wav files, etc....
Didn't some of those "copy-protected" CDs supposedly try to install drivers on Win32-based platforms that prevent you from ripping certain CDs?
Granted, the user shouldn't be running under an admin account (or get infected with all sorts of random crapware), but still. If that's the case I'd like to see them get smacked down for installing software without the user's consent...
Since the iPod was this Christmas's "must have" item, and continues to get massive publicity along with selling as fast as they can make the things, I have to wonder:
How much longer will it be before a 'copy-protection' scheme that effectively stops you making any sales to iPod (or similiar) owners harms sales more than the increased level of copying that supposedly happens with non-protected CDs?
When you factor in that its going to be the people most into music who are prepared to shell out for devices like this, these "copy protections" have to be be at best of dubious value.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
The physical music medium is something owned by someone else
No, I own the physical medium.
I bought it, I did not license it.
If I take it from a store without paying, they claim it is theft, not a license violation.
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
The response from people at ifpi , our local RIAA is that users shouldn't expect that their CDs work in their car stereo (main problem for the average belgian joe) is because car manufacturers use CD-ROMplayers in their cars and no music CDplayers (please don't flame me, it's their words, not mine).
I've searched their site but haven't seen that response listed anywhere, but that's not really strange because their entire piracysection (with subsection for facts, CD-R and internet) are "to be defined" since that section went onto their site months ago.
But on (flemish) TV this is the mantra of the IFPI spokepeople, and with t -my guess is- they're trying to divert the rage of average belgian joe who just bought a CD that doesn't play in his car from the CDproducers to the carmanifacturers (they should have given you a real CDplayer with your car).
Arh, normally I would just say fuck'm , don't buy their crap; but now I'm pissed at their disinformation and want to see them judged for the smegheads the are.
Only way to let the record companies know "enough is enough" is to stop buying any of their CDs. This means copy-protected ones and, if it persists, just stop buying any CD at all.
I mean, it's not the end of the world if you do not have the latest Foo Fighters so speak with the almighty dollar because in the end that is all that will work with these guys. Curbing your spending will lead to a sales dip as they release these copy-protected CDs and, as everyone becomes accustomed, sales will eventually return close or above to their previous levels. The record companies outlined this happening already. They outline all these possible scenarios when releasing new technology that affects the consumer. They're not stupid.
So bite the bullet and stop buying. I did.
I'm personally back on the wagon regarding going to movie theaters. I'm sick of the garbage put out but started going to the Matrix and Lord of the Ring movies. Now that they're finished the theaters will not get a dime of my money for some mediocre crap. I went 2 years without going to a theater last time around and will go longer this time. Opportunistic movie executives will probably blame the dip on P2P.
Since the "copy protection" is generally done by interfering with the error detection features of the CD standard, this product is inherently less suitable for in-car or personal player use (while jogging, say). It's also more vulnerable to scratches... Almost like in the old days with vinyl records?
But your local RIAA folk are still wrong. Consumers should be able to play their music CDs in ANY CD player. That's what the standard is for, after all.
Paul "Say no to feeping creaturism"
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.
You should always use cdparanoia. Otherwise you are left with undetected errors. All other rippers cause errors except in ideal circumstances.
All I can tell you about copy protection is that in my home, for Christmas 2002, a DVD/CD player was received that only played mp3 music if it was recorded at a specific bit rate, with a lot of restrictions. The gift giver was thanked, and asked to return it.
We have put off purchasing a DVD/CD player (and now recorder) for the living room, two portable mp3 players, a DVD-Ram/+R/-R recorder for the computer, an mp3 stereo deck for the car, a kitchen CD/mp3 player radio for mom, and a portable mp3 stereo for outdoor trips all because it is unknown if any of these items will restrict us from playing the music that we own.
I'll be taking a cd with mp3s on it to the local electronics outlet in the next few months to see if there are problems playing mp3s on several car stereo decks in the price range we can afford. We'll gladly give up a bit of sound quality (especially in a car) for the convenience of being able to play over a hundred songs on a single cd rather than shuffling cds while driving, especially being able to eliminate songs we don't like.
DVD recorder for the computer? Was planning on getting a deck that included DVD-Ram thanks to the random access feature, especially suitable for computer files and archiving, but which can also be used for audio and video creation for playback in the living room. That plan appears to be on hold because we're waiting to see if DVD-Ram format survives, and waiting to get more info on the ability to playback music and videos we own, without ridiculous restrictions.
Portable mp3 stereo playback? We'll wait to see what becomes popular. Probably another year. In the meantime, cassettes that we can record at home without restrictions will have to do (which is something we've been doing since cassettes overtook 8-track player/recorders).
Living room DVD player? Forget it. If we need to play back a video, it will be piped from one of the computers on our home lan through a s-video output to the television, as we are already doing. Thanks to broadband, and a relative's dvd player (and his patience), we can watch any dvd we want without paying for a player. Our house is between his house and his job, and he doesn't have to buy any videos, we keep him well supplied.
Without full disclosure on restrictions, we won't waste any money on consumer electronics unless we find out beforehand through someone else's experiences, whether the hardware works with the music and videos we own. We've been burned by incompatible software, and software that doesn't work as advertised, costing hundreds of dollars each, and we aren't going to start the same thing with consumer electronics. I have another relative who has been burned by the Sony mini-discs.
Any consumer electronics we buy in the future MUST be compatible with the music and videos we own, and must be able to play (and record for backup) them in every way currently available and every way that makes sense. Or we won't purchase them. That's the bottom line.
That's not copy protection. The mac just committed suicide after being forced to play Celine Dion :-)
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.