Beastie Boys' New Album Silently Installs DRM Code

nfsilkey writes "After more than five years, the Beastie Boys have released a new album. It seems that the retail disc is bundled with a copy protection autoinstaller which silently silently puts itself onto the listener's computer. Many listeners are up in arms and some are venting their frustrations on the band's website."

Comments

DRM for what?

[Hello Spaceman]

I bought "To The 5 Boroughs" (cause I'm representin' Manhattan), and ripped all the tracks to my iPod with no problems. Just what does the DRM code do?

I'm on a Mac, is this another case where I'm missing out on the DRM fun because of platform neglect? (There IS a Mac partition on the disc, but all it seems to have on it is a Macromedia presentation with a QuickTime movie.)

Re:Illegal?

[teknokracy]

When one goes in-depth into the "end user license agreement" that we all say "I agree" to, it becomes apparent that you actually do warrant them to install such an application. I'd imagine it would be part of the liner notes, interactive software related agreement, or perhaps even just a simple "look on this site to see the license agreement" blurb.

Does the band know or care..?

[lovecult]

To quote from
http://www.boingboing.net/2004/06/11/new_beasties_ disc_ha.html

Update: Ian sez, "Hi, I'm not sure who posted re: Beastie Boys copy protection, but I just spoke with Mike D and their management and they wanted me to pass along that a) This is all territories except the US and UK -- US and UK discs do not have this protection on them; b) All EMI CDs are treated this way, theirs isn't receiving special treatment; c) They would have preferred not to have the copy protection, but weren't allowed to differ from EMI policy."

Re:Illegal?

[DarkMantle]

Two words...

Spy-Ware

That said, if it's a stardard EXE I don't see how it would run on linux. :D And since Linux doesn't have an autorun annoyance... I mean feature, we'd have to consciously install it.

Once again, the solution is... Don't use M$ Windows. (Sorry Mac people, I have had no recent experience with a Mac to make a comment on it.

5 bucks says the shift key circumvents this....

[anakin357]

Two links:

New Audio CD DRM Defeated by Use of ''SHIFT'' Key

Google search that found above link, good read.

Re:Illegal?

[madmancarman]

anyway, who is Ian $ez? Tell Ian that part of the whole point i$ that it doe$n't matter how the arti$t feel$ about copy protection. The label$ have been in the court$ and in front of the pre$$, repeatedly talking about the right$ of the arti$t; how well doe$ that rhetoric $tand up when we learn that the arti$t has no right to avoid $uch protection?

It's probably Ian Rogers, the webmaster for the Beastie Boys' web site for a very long time - starting in 1994. I worked with Ian a bit when I was running the original Foo Fighters site, he's actually a really nice guy (Foo Fighters and Beastie Boys used to share the same management, Gold Mountain Entertainment, now GAS or something like that).

With how the industry works, I'm sure he had absolutely nothing to do with this, but instead it was label decision as has already been pointed out. It's another perfect example of how disconnected the music industry is from its fans (at least those in non-english speaking countries - the software doesn't exist on the US or UK releases).

Re:Heh

[Beek]

I've bought two albums with EMI's copy protection... I couldn't tell the difference from a normal CD. I played normally, and was able to rip all the tracks into iTunes.

If it did install something, it was done in some extremely sneaky fashion. I didn't notice it installing anything, and it would have somehow got around the fact that I was an unprivileged user.

it's a Mac OS 9 vulnerability

[dmoen]

The vulnerability doesn't exist in MacOS X, unless you are running the Classic subsystem. To protect yourself, start up Classic, run the Classic QuickTime control panel, and disable "AutoStart". Now your Mac will not automatically run malware on inserted CDs.

So that's why most MacOS X users will not have their machines infected--they aren't running Classic at the time they insert the CD.

Doug Moen.

Re:it's a Mac OS 9 vulnerability

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. And to clarify, you CAN NOT turn on autorun in Mac OSX at all. It's not even available.