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Copy-protected CD Tops U.S. Charts
Joey Patterson writes "CNET is reporting that Velvet Revolver's new album, 'Contraband', which is protected with SunnComm's anti-copying technology, has topped the U.S. album charts. The SunnComm and BMG execs quoted in the article say that they're pleased with the apparent consumer acceptance of the anti-piracy technology, but they have been hearing questions about how people can get the copy-blocked songs from the CD onto an iPod."
... is that in their attempts to create a CD that fits their aims, the record companies have tried many methods of corrupting the CD format, and then they have tested these by making secret releases into localized markets, sometimes of hundreds of thousands of CDs. Everyday people have then bought these sub-standard CDs, and have been unknowingly testing the record company's new CD protection schemes for them.
For instance, an early release made under Midbar's Cactus format in Germany reportedly had a 4% return rate. These were from people who found that these CDs didn't work on their normal CD players -- let alone in their computers. 4% is a huge return rate when you consider that many people might have found a problem with one CD player but not another, and who might have thought it was the player that was at fault rather than the CD.
Undeterred by these experiences of upsetting their customers, the record companies have continued to develop these formats and test them on an unsuspecting public, either unlabelled or with small or misleading labels. Along the way, problems with these CDs have been found on DVD players, car audio systems, older CD players, PlayStation machines, computers, laptops and several other types of devices.
To add injury to insult, several of these so-called 'copy-protection' formats actually interfere with the error-correction mechanism of the disk. This mechanism is designed to take care of scratches on the disk -- your CD player can fill in over a small number of scratches on the disk because the error correction codes tell it how to. The manufacturers found that by corrupting the error correction codes, they could make a CD that computers would reject, but that normal CD players would still manage to play. The cost of this, of course, is that your CDs are less resistant to scratches (and Philips have confirmed this). This is not too much inconvenience for the manufacturer -- but what about for you?
Considering a few days ago a friend suggest velvet revolver to me, sending me 3-4 songs from their new album to me over DC++, needless to say, I didn't like them very much and propmptly deleted the music files (within 24 hours i assure you!)
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
simple. have a home audio system with a fiber audio out, and have a nice sound card with fiber in, and make MP3s over it. Won't get the static or line noise of the copper, although I'm sure your dog can tell the different between this method and a direct CDA rip....
--
Obviously a lot of people have bought this album, and no doubt a lot of people will want to transfer songs to an iPod or other player and will find out the hard way that they can't. This will get the public's attention on the issue of copy protected CDs. I suspect that most people will not buy another one, having been burned once before. If these prove to be unpopular enough in the long run, they will probably not be sold anymore. Hopefully, there will be a future story about a band's album having very disappointing sales due to copy protection.
I wasn't able to rip it on my OSX box, but it ripped just fine on my linux box. Maybe it's because it's a different drive, but it works just fine.
I should put it up on bittorrent just to spite them, fuckers.
I use a Mac and purchased the album. No problem encoding to AAC with iTunes or transferring to an ipod. Wouldn't have even known it was copy protected without this posting.
The anger will come soon...
Oh, but that's all right! None of the prevalent vendors permit CDs that have been opened to be returned. You could've duplicated it, after all, or extracted the tracks.
Furthermore, if the average eleven-year-old girl (who isn't at all interested in copy protection) fails to purchase the most recent pop CD, she could very well be committing "social suicide."
What is more important to an eleven-year-old girl, DRM or her social status?
Do you like German cars?
Seems to have slowed down the pirates by .06 seconds.
I've not yet found a single CD which has been copy protected that cannot be bypassed easily. I wish they'd just learn that these systems which try trickery on the laser head (so that head bounces around the disc if you try to do a consecutive read) is simple to get past.
The last one I had that required "cracking" (although it hardly warrants the term) was bypassed using the sticky bit of a post-it note (I won't say exactly where it was stuck for fear that I'll have the legal eagles coming down on me, as it were).
I find it more of an inconvenience than a reason not to buy a particular artists CDs (although I've never heard of these chart-toppers).
The CD medium, as it stands now, just cannot support the kind of copy protection they want to put in place, simply because they have to cater for "dumb" machines, such as the typical CD player. It would be more frugal if they just didn't bother.
For a windows system you just need to disable the auto-start for your CD player. I then converted the music files to .WAVs and use that to 'copy' the CD.
I've transferred my entire CD collection to mp3 with Exact Audio Copy. Approximately 200 CDs nearly all of which are collecting dust in my basement, the rest are in my car. I don't even have a CD player connected to my stereo, well actually I do - the CD drive in the computer thats connected to the stereo. Anyhow, this Velvet Revolver CD is one I've been thinking about buying but if I can't turn it into mp3 files then I really doubt I want to bother with it. I'm guessing though that the software I use for that, Exact Audio Copy (and LAME), probably wouldn't have a problem. Does anybody know for sure?
It's therefore a bit premature for record labels to celebrate mainstream "acceptance" of these horrid anti-copying devices, when the mainstream still doesn't give a hoot as they don't know / don't care / know specifically what that entails or how it infringes on their rights.
Mp3's are generally still a college level / nerd / for-the-privalaged medium with expensive doo-hickey devices to play them - Ipod costs $250 - $300 for crying out loud! - you can buy a CD-Player for $10 at Walmart, Target, or Radio Shack.
Copy protection is the kind of thing that will be slaughtered once MP3's become more actual mainstream. Then let's see about such "acceptance". The whole point of MP3s is the flawless and svelte transfer from one medium to another, without the junk of big goofy disks to carry around. The magic word is "transfer". We have the right to transfer and convert the content to any medium we wish. Once people become aware of the possibility of such freedom, they're really going to get as pissy as the rest of us and to hell with "mainstream acceptance".
Okay, I'm completely boggled now . . . what exactly are they're trying to accomplish?
Exactly.
I purchased this album at the store. I asked the girl behind the counter if I could bring the CD back if it didn't play in my car. She said I could.
I bought it, it played in my car, and Grip had no problems archiving it for me. Dunno what the copy protection is, but it works GREAT!!!
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
Is a copyprotected CD still a CD?
I own two copy protected CD's, both Australian acts, and both ( I think ) signed to EMI. The other night, while buying the second one ( The Cat Empire ), I asked the guys behind the counter about the protection scheme. They considerately riffled through all their copies on file to see if they had a non managed printing I could have for the same price, and when they couldn't find one, said I could bring back the CD if it didn't work with any of my equipment.
So, they're not all dickheads. Both CD's ripped fine in iTunes and play fine on my iPod, incidently... So I'm beginning to wonder if there's really any protection on the disks at all. Maybe this is a case of "the emperors new copy protection".
One god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
If RIAA, SunnComm and BMG found out that Macs can easily bypass their "security" feature, they might "try" to make this protection scheme to work on the Mac. Maybe they don't care too much about Macs and Mac users, because there are only a "handfull" of them compared to the Windows-mongers. "Dear Apple, please keep your installed base lower than 5% so RIAA and record companies would leave us alone. Let them chase after Windows users. Thank You."
But I did hold down the shift key when I put the CD in. Then I ripped it, packed away the original, and proceeded to play it from my home entertainment system of choice, my computer.
Do I share it? Hell no. I'm a huge fan of Scott Weiland and would never do that to him. The CD was worth $14 to me and then some, but I did think twice about buying it after reading the notice on the cover. I seriously thought about downloading it out of spite.
If I would have unknowingly had their software installed on my computer that blocked a function, I'd be just as pissed at them as I am at people who write viruses.
This is just another "legal" virus like Gator, Real Player, Comet Cursor...
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison
Actually, the Redbook standard seems like one way we can ensure CDs remain non-DRM'd. As soon as someone makes a CD which is completely encrypted and only works on one or two devices, it becomes non-Redbook, and thus not CD Audio. I would be surprised if people were allowed to use the "CD Audio" logo on such disks.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
I saw 3 different torrents of this album on suprnova.org the other day.
Heard an interview with them on a Vancouver radio station last week, asking them about what they think about people downloading their albums off the Internet (by that time so many people already had copies of their albums and I'm actually quite surprised now just finding out that the CDs were copy-protected) - they said something about having their concert tickets jacked up more to get their revenues.
Apparently their entire US tour got sold out within 10 minutes, so I don't think jacking up concert tix would have that much of an impact...
my blog
There's no legal basis for their refusal. Make a stink, and they'll accept it. Return 500 copies in a week, and they'll give you a refund. They will do anything to not get pulled into court on a class-action lawsuit over not accepting returned CDs...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I have to disagree with you.
People aren't all that accepting of government surveilance, copy protected CDs, DVD-CSS, etc. The biggest problem is that there aren't enough people who understand the high-tech issues, so they don't know they've gotten screwed for a while.
This copy protection scheme sounds benign enough that it might slip under the radar, but I think there will be a reasonable stink about it.
It's just going to take something a bit more obvious to turn people into a rioting mass... Buying a $5,000 Plasma TV, and spending $1,000 on a HD-Tivo that is completely useless, is going to be a big one, once it finally arrives.
No, I don't have as bleak of a view of the public as you do, I just think things take a little longer to get straightened out than I would like.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I bought another "copy controlled" album, Beastie Boys' latest. I didn't notice the copy control sticker in the store as it was clear with white text. The album cover is white.
Backside of the album cover has information that album might not play on a car CD-player.
I was pissed as I felt cheated. The copy control didn't prevent making uncontrolled copy of the album nor did it prevent making mp3's or flac files of the songs.
I don't know if the easyness of copy control circumvention was just because I use linux and not windows or mac, but I seems that this shite is there just to piss off the consumer.
Haven't found a CD yet I couldn't copy with Exact Audio Copy, although secure mode doesn't work with Cactus DataShield version 2, you have to use burst mode.
Jeremy
If you have autorun disabled on your CD drive you probably won't notice a thing.
You know, I have to agree with this. If anyone here is more fluent in the Bible than I am, please quote some passages which I hope suggest what Im saying. In the begin of the end-times I'm pretty sure It speaks of basically censorship and being controlled, i.e we will all wear the mark of the beast, does this not seem like the type of thing that will inevitably lead to what the Bible speaks of? Is that not was the OSS community is basically trying to fight against?.. I think we are seeing the beginnings right here, be-it small amounts. I for one am against this type of thing, but I can also see where they want to protect what they own.. But this is going to lead to something bad.
:)
PS: Sorry if I offended anyone, but I'm entitled to an opinion, please respond.
Instead we're turning into a rabble of peasants and share-croppers slaving for, and kowtowing to, the modern day Lords of Corporatism. And we put on our chains so willingly!
The really sickening part is who owns all those corporations. It's the very same rabble of peasants who's being ground under foot.
The working class has far more total wealth than the upper class just because there's so many more working class people. That money is mostly held as corporate shares, either through CDs at the bank (the bank re-invests that money) or mutual funds.
It is the average person enslaving themselves here.
Jason
ProfQuotes
... is that I can't use them. I have a Marantz dv4200 DVD player, that I also use for playing CDs. This is no problem with ordinary cds, but the copy prot. cd I have from EMI won't play. Ripping the disc was no problem and the copy works fine. My question to the music industry is: What have You accomplished by this?
1. Create a product that can't be used legally by some people
2. These people stop bying Your product
3. Blame low sales on piracy
4. ???
5. Profit!!!
That's a load of shit. Most people don't realize anything is going on with it. I bought the damned CD and still didn't realize until I'd gotten home that it had System Requirements like software does. Then I noticed the sticker discussing the copy protection - the store had put the price tag over it.
A fast Google search later had me removing the malware and copying the CD to my hard drive. And no I have no intention of sharing it with anyone.
Since you're only asking for the price of the CD, they will almost certainly not show up... hiring a lawyer would cost at least ten times more, and they'd be likely to lose anyway. So you'll win by default. And it'll piss them off.
(I'm assuming you're in the US, but most other countries probably have a similar setup for small claims.)
I've ripped The Cat Empire CD in question no troubles, but today someone in the office was having trouble with another EMI CD, the new Beastie Boys album.
I tried to rip it in CDex like I did with the Cat Empire CD, but I couldn't see any audio tracks - just data tracks - even after turning off Autoplay. This has lead me to believe The Cat Empire CD didn't have any protection to begin with.
aus.music.scrapbook
I decided long ago that I would never pay for another album from a major label. I've never even heard of most of today's "chart topping" bands. I listen to indie music and swap CDs with my friends. When I do buy a CD -- which I actually do on occasion -- it involves handing a wad of bills to the artist. I seldom listen to the radio, and when I do it's classic rock. Since I only recognize copyright for 14 years (or 28 if the artist formally requests an extension, which of course none of them do anymore) I can freely download my favorite oldies from gnutella. And if anyone tries to stop me, I'll just shoot 'em in the face. Pretty simple, really...
I believe there is a fair degree of truth to the old maxim "5% of the worlds population owns 95% of the wealth". You and I and the others here are not likely to be in that 5%. Sure, big companies have shareholders, but the vast amount of shares are often privately held by a board of directors who control the company. The other shares are released onto the market to plump up the coffers, but without risking loss of control of the company if this is at all possible. The power belongs to the companies, not the people. Your governments are bankrolled by these companies, and the governments write laws to suit these financial giants. We exist only as a demographic to be sold to.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Both CD's ripped fine in iTunes and play fine on my iPod, incidently... So I'm beginning to wonder if there's really any protection on the disks at all. Maybe this is a case of "the emperors new copy protection".
My Sony CD writer broke down once so it had to be sent back to the factory. After about two months it finally came back with a new firmware and I haven't found a musical CD since then that it couldn't rip as if there were no copy-protection.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Backups are simply not an issue for the mass market.
Backups are not the issue for audio. Making custom mix CDs or transferring the music to a digitial audio player is.
Any CD that goes in my car is a CD-R for several reasons:
- I don't want the originals to be stolen/melted by the sun/scratched/etc.
- I can condense the music off of 50-100 CDs down to 10 or so CD-Rs because I *really* only want to hear maybe 1-2 tracks off of each one when I'm driving, and almost no pre-pressed CD I own is a full 80 minutes in length.
I also rip tons of my CDs to Ogg Vorbis at work for similar reasons - I have something like 100 albums on my hard drive there, so I don't have to keep lugging CDs back and forth and hoping they don't get broken in my bag.
If a record company wants to prevent me from making mix CDs and ripping to Ogg, they won't get any business from me. I think that once more people realize that that's their goal, it will seriously impact their sales figures. Not everyone I know rips music to their hard drive, but everyone makes mix CDs.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
No, Macs (or any OS other than Windows) just can't run the virus that autoloads when you put the CD in a computer. It's that virus that stays on your PC forever once it's loaded and diverts any attempt to play the tracks on the CD to the crippled WMA format files instead.
If you disable autorun (a good idea anyway) or press shift while you load the disk, you can play the real tracks and basically treat the disc like a proper CD.
Someone needs to write a remover for this thing.
I can tell you all this because I am in Australia and the DMCA doesn't apply here until the Free Trade Agreement is ratified.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
This type of DRM doesn't improve initial sales. It improves sustained sales, and that is a fact by BMG's own numbers.
I work for the company and I didn't know if it would work or not.
There is always the mentality 'well one guy is going to rip it and upload and that's all it takes so why bother'.
It really does work though. BMG has saved/made millions (I've seen the numbers) on albums that are DRM'd vs the albums that aren't, even when the DRM is easy to defeat like MediaMAX. For whatever reason, there are stastically more sales of DRM'd albums than non DRM albums.
The CD is 100% compliant with the blue book/ hybrid CD standard.
I'm with you on this. I don't have any copies of CDs and I'm boycotting anything with DRM on it but I'm wondering if there's an easy way to check (without trying to copy the CD) whether or not it's DRM'd? If I don't see the CD Audio logo on the disc then I'm suspicious but I'm not sure I can count on that. Anyone know of an easy way to know for sure?
---
We spoke for about a half an hour. I don't recall a thing we said. - Colorblind James Experience
Umm, I may need to have a much closer look, but the only 'G' word I can find mentioned in the parent post is 'George.'
Most conversations are considered to have hit rock bottom once the 'F' word comes out. We don't normally let it get to 'G.'
Please explain?
Cogito, ergo sig.
I know this post may get lost in the shuffle, but I just checked with a few sources online and low-and-behold there is the entire album in MP3 waiting to be downloaded by anyone and everyone that knows where to find it.
So much for copy-protected CD's. Why do they even waste their time with this non-sense? Instead of trying to figure out how to fool the copiers...why not turn the entire buisness model upside down and encourage downloading the album and then making the money back from live shows?
You know 60 years or so ago artists made their money from live shows or live broadcasts on the radio. They can do this again.
I could go on and on about this. People may argue about how the guy sitting in his bedroom making music and recording and pouring his heart out into making a CD is being ripped-off if people just download it. Well, that guy sitting there probably has a passion for music and would be making music anyway...and giving it to the community afterwards is much like Open Source programming. How many programmers from around the world slave over code to make something that they're not getting a dime from? I feel that music in the future can somehow learn from Open Source. How exactly, I don't know yet.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
People will accept anything as long as they don't have to cast an intelligent vote (or even vote at all). So long as beer is cheap and plentiful and they can choose between the commercials on 250 channels being broadcast at any given moment then they will happily take whatever abuse is sent their way. Young 20-somethings care about copy protection. Geriatrics care about free money and health care. Which group votes in a larger block? Which group receives attention?
Look at all of the people in this country who hate spam. How long did it take congress to take entirely ineffective action (which everybody told them wouldn't work to begin with). Even when most people care about an issue it STILL doesn't get anything done.
Now that the FCC is moving towards a broadcast flag for radio, how long until all radio broadcasts must be digital, forever ending the experimentation with crystal radio sets?
If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
Actually, it costs a lot less than $1.25 to press and package a commercial audio CD, but you are right, the outdated, inefficient, and corrupt marketing schemes used by distributors is to blame for the high price of media.
Although, don't forget that the big five distributors were CONVICTED during the Napster case of price fixing in a federal court. I got my $13 check, did you get yours?
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
All the songs from Velvet Revolvers album Contraband were avaliable in P2P-ville at high quality variable bit rates before it was released to the public. Many CD's find their way onto the P2P networks day's, weeks or a couple of months before they're officialy released to the public.
I saw a copy of [Nievy Ynivtar]'s new album "[Haqre Zl Fxva]" with a big copy-protection warning splattered all over it in H.M.V. a couple of weeks ago, and I just had to buy it for the "hacking challenge" factor.
.toc and .dat pair that burned OK.
..... this was not so much shooting fish in a barrel, as standing by a barrel of fish and waiting for them to jump out.
..... though actually, my DVD recorder is built only to recognise the first session on a multisession CD {to paraphrase the manual: if you want to make an MP3 CD to play on this machine, you must burn all the songs to the disc in one go, otherwise it will only see whatever you recorded up to the point where you first ejected the disc} which sounds like they were anticipating some sort of copy-prevention attempts involving a bogus second session. And the machine even has a digital audio-out which I haven't investigated; I think it's electrical rather than optical. Anyone know of a good sound card with digital-in and full Linux support including open source drivers?
Cdparanoia read the audio without a hitch -- all spaces, not even so much as a single minus sign, and cdrdao made a
I still felt an overwhelming sense of disappointment
Of course I made sure to check I could get a refund "if it wouldn't play on my DVD recorder". The warning said it might not work in anything other than a home audio CD player
Disclaimer: by reading the ROT-13ed text above, you are agreeing not to laugh.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
I had a friend who got around this with a Copy Protected CD. He took it back, said "Hey this won't play correctly in my Car's mp3-cd player" they exchanded if for the same title. Is still wouldn't play (because of the copy protection) so he once again exchanged it. After the 4th exchanges they just gave him store credit for the original product because he kept exchainging it. In his veiw it was "defective" if it would not play in his player and therefor was excersizing his rights under the terms of the sale to exchange it for one that was hopefully not defective. I'm not sure that this tactic would work on the CDs that play fine but just can't be copied (because that's not defective) but it was entertaining to see how many times best buy would give him new copies of that CD, each time passing the cost of the "defective" disk onto the manufacturer.
Well first off your not this has no merrit since your going digital -> analog to listen to the CD. Not to mention the fact that a cd is nothing more then 48KHZ Stereo Signal so what is the point?
;). Or you could just get a program that rips by using analog cables running into the cd drive.
However, if you for some reason do not want to get the cabling or something to do this there is a much easier way. Simply select what you hear as your recording source (this option is only on relativly nice sound cards usualy). Play the CD and Record it at the same time
Simple fact is its impossible to make a cd "not-rippable" that is just silly. Since a cd is nothing but lands an pits recording the output of the music cd there is no way someone could make it where you can not take the audio data and restore it someplace else. Plus wouldn't that be a violation of our rights to make a copy of our music for ourselves. It's everyone that copies music to give to friends or share on the web that make the music industry create ficad's like this so that they think it is not possible to do anymore.
If companies want to trash up their CDs with all sorts of worthless gack, more power to them. Because the DRM trend is the best thing that ever happened to my music collection. When I found out that the artist-screwing, mediocrity-championing, price-fixing cockroaches in the mainstream music biz were now proposing to charge me the same thing for a less useful product I made a simple decision: I would not support them any more. Now I buy legacy content used and new content from indies - true indies, not major label shills. And my music collection has never been more interesting.
There's a genius guitar player who charges me a flat subscription rate. A couple dozen times a year a CD shows up in the mail - hand-decorated, with hand-crafted packaging, frequently a one-off live recording, the only one in the world. I pay less than $5 on average per CD.
The other night I went to Bitpass' Mperia.com and started browsing the downloadable music, some available as low as $.25 per track. A couple of hours and about $14 later I had well over thirty new songs on my hard drive with no restrictions whatsoever.
I buy more things at concerts by local artists. I buy more from CD Baby. I get a fair amount of content totally free and legal off the internet... and often end up supporting an independently produced artist with a CD purchase on the strength of what they gave away freely.
And it all has two things in common. It's less expensive and more interesting than what I'm likely to find on the shelves at Walmart or Sam Goody. I would estimate my music budget dollars are nearly twice as effective with this strategy as they were when I mainly bought new major-label-produced content.
Now, I'm rather a stickler about it, but there's no reason you would have to be; if you wanted to replace 20 or 50 or 90% of your purchases but still buy your favorite artists or whatever - nothing to stop you. The point is - just because some mainstream junk with DRM is topping the charts doesn't mean they're winning. We all oughta know by now that chart-toppers or not, the music industry is not doing well financially. Me, I registered my feelings on DRM with all the major labels years ago. They didn't listen so I took my dollar away. I don't want to stop them doing what they're doing - that's freedom of speech, as messed up of an example as it is - artists has the right to sell out their freedom of speech for a terrible record deal, publisher has the right to hawk their overpriced content purchases gacked up with DRM. Every artist has the right to produce and sell their stuff exactly how they want and I have the right to choose.
So choose!
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
The purpose behind DRM confused me. There is no doubt that Velvet Revolver's music was readily available on the net for free before the CD was even released. Thus, any so-called pirate was able to get it with no problem.
There is also no doubt, as seen above, that the DRM was easily circumvented.
There is also no doubt, that those who legitimately bought the CD and respect the digital millennium copyright act, are screwed. They are unable to convert their newly bought CD to a different format, even though doing so is perfectly legal under the fair use laws of the US.
Considering there is no doubt as to the utter failure of DRM, as shown above, I was perplexed at why it exists. I had trouble finding the answer as I was looking at it logically. The answer to my question is that there is no logical basis for DRM as it is necessarily true that DRM fails stops so-called pirates and screws legitimate buyers.
So what's the answer? I've determined that when confronted by a problem, it is felt by most people that doing something is necessarily better than doing nothing. This is seen as true even when the result of that something is worse than if nothing was done in the first place. Even when that happens, when doing something exacerbates the problem, people will say in defense of their screw up, "Hey, at least I did something!"
This psychological mindset is at play in relation to DRM. The morons in charge of the music industry see so-called piracy as a problem. They can either do something or do nothing. Even though DRM causes more problems, i.e., screwing over legitimate buyers while not putting any dent in so called piracy, they continue doing that something because they feel that doing nothing would somehow be worse. And that's despite all the evidence that clearly shows that DRM is actually worse.
This is why I think DRM will eventually fail. Over time those in power will see the futility of their "something" and do something else to solve any problems associated with so called piracy.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Anyone noticed that almost no notebook has a line-in port these days? (Mic inputs are mono, preamplified and band-limited to fuck.)
I don't know about pre-built desktops {never bought one, never likely to}. Mobo-integrated sound chipsets do have a line in, but it picks up so much static and power hum that it's not worth using. In my experience, they're more for looking at and saying "look, it has these all these ports built in already" than for actually using. Even separate sound cards can be noisy, as none of them have stuff like tin cans and power chokes anymore. And the old ones that did, were all 16-bit cards and new mobos are all 32-bit. Unless someone makes a converter to plug old 8/16 bit cards into a 32-bit expansion slot? No, thought they didn't. Pity really, 'cause the old 16-bit bus made it extraordinarily easy to interface to homebrew hardware. Not that it would have made any sense not to; because up until then, they basically were still trying to encourage people to invent new stuff so as to sell more PCs, whereas now it's not in any established manufacturer's interest to have people inventing new stuff in case it takes away sales.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Without having the cd here to look for my self, i am just guessing at some of what i'm about to say.
Copy protection schemes can serve more then one purpose. Attemping to not allow anything to copy it would be one purpose. Not allowing somethign to be mass copied could be another. Tracking what cd the copy was made from and then distributing the copies in an organized way so that the general location could be pinpointed down is yet another. I'm probably missing a few more reasons here too but the point is they aren't always as obvious as we would think.
Acording to EMI's website, after looking through the trouble shooting sections, it apears the the copy protection is supposed to introduce noise and make the copied product have some hisses, clicks, and pops in them. I would asume this is a way to stop the cd's from being mass re-produced for ileagle sales and gives the user a little less quality if they decide to copy it. People with better systems might experiance better results then those without as good of a sound card/system.
So yes, while it apears to be nothing and mostly usless, it would serve a purpose and may in fact be a somewhat good design were it is bearly noticable by the user and still efective against outright ileagle actions. Of course i'm guessing that it is effective against mass copying but if i bought a cd with some hissing or cracking and poping in it, i would take it back and demand a better version. If i copied it, then i wouldn't care as much and probably run some type of filter and attemp to remove it.
DOnt many say to return it if you dont agree?
It was not technologically possible to implement this until today. Clearly, so long as there is cash, it is not possible to implement. This prophesies a cashless society in addition to prophesying how the control of trade down to the consumer level is necessary to complete the control.
The most significant thing I've seen relating to this in recent years is Chex Systems, where banks blacklist people from obtaining a bank account. Ironically, in the short term, that increases dependence on cash for these people, but also shows just how difficult it is to completely depend on cash. That's where it becomes a demonstration of the power the instituions will have in a digital monetary (or cashless) society.
The scary thing is that no one has been able to challenge Chex Systems despite laws against blacklisting. Who can take on the banks? This looks really bad when you consider the impact systems such as Chex Systems will have when cash is eliminated.
Where this can overlap with DRM, copy protection and other things, is in the dependence on bits of information to implement. Posters have regularly noted that the broadcast flag only becomes a large scale issue when broadcast becomes entirely digital, which is inevitable given our current direction and mandates by our own government.
Contrary to other posts responding to you, this is something the Romans, in their wildest imaginations, could have only dreamed of. This type of control is clearly unprecedented, and we have yet to witness it. But, the digitization of economics is a necessary prelude to the control over people in order for our worst tyrant in human history to complete his mission.
It's also worth noting that the UPC symbol on most products you buy and sell today consists of 15 digits, although only 10 or 12 are numbered at the bottom. You can learn to read it, it is very simple. Out of those 15 digits, 12 are variable, and thus used to identify products. The other 3 are constant. They are 666. They are the first two lines, middle two lines, and last two lines. To see that they are 6s, look for a code with a 6 on the right side. You'll see the pair of lines for it are the same.
To learn to read UPC symbols, it consists of 20 symbols. 10 symbols are the left hand side digits 0 through 9. The other 10 symbols are the right hand digits 0 through 9. Each digit is respresented by two lines. Thus, there are 30 lines total for the 15 digits.
I wouldn't assume that the UPC symbol itself will be the mark. But, it's worth noting just how developed technology is with regards to Revelations 13.