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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."
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.
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?
I worked in a Sam Goody store last summer and I remember a significant number of people buying a CD and then 10 minutes later coming back in complaining it wouldn't work in their car CD player. The manager would usually take the CD in the back and try it on the store CD player which was brand new and the CDs always seemed to work fine. It seemed to always be the same few albums too, at first few we figured it was just a fluke but after it started to become a regular occurrence we looked into the matter and found that those albums had some kind of copy protection and wouldn't work in older CD players. In most cases, if the customer was nice, we'd just take it as a return and give them their money back; I don't even know how many CDs we took back that way .
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.
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...
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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.
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If you have autorun disabled on your CD drive you probably won't notice a thing.