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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?
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 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.
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.
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.
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
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
If you have autorun disabled on your CD drive you probably won't notice a thing.
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?
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We spoke for about a half an hour. I don't recall a thing we said. - Colorblind James Experience
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.