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.

Comments

Go Belgium! (I hope this happens here as well)

[tuxette]

I can see the same thing happening in Norway, as a lot of people are very upset about so-called copy protection disallowing the consumer to play their CDs in any old player or on the computer. Forcing a consumer to play their legally-owned CDs on "approved" players is in violation of Norwegian law. Furthermore, tiny print saying "copy protected" in any other language than Norwegian is also against the law.

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!

Don't like it...

[Sarojin]

don't buy it.

Press releases

[hankwang]

Test-achats's original press release in French, Dutch, and Google's translation to English.

About the Nokia battery test

[Cee]

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.

Link. Not the best, but the first I found.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.macopinion.com/columns/curmudgeon/02/05 /28/

Added to this heady mixture in recent weeks is a new generation of digital copy protection that's been showing up on music CDs distributed by Sony in Europe. Fast becoming known as the case of "Celine Dion Killed My iMac," initial reports indicate that these discs are not only unreadable by computers, but may actually crash them and prevent them from rebooting, necessitating a service call.

Why are you people STILL buying CDs?

[InterruptDescriptorT]

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...'?

response from IFPI (local RIAA)

[laurensv]

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.

Re:Link. Not the best, but the first I found.

[adrianbaugh]

That's not copy protection. The mac just committed suicide after being forced to play Celine Dion :-)