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Copy Protected CD Makers Attempt iPod Support
andrewdski writes "C|Net is reporting that both SunnComm International and Macrovision are courting Apple in an attempt to make their copy-protected CDs compatible with the iPod. This is being portrayed as a significant blow to Microsoft's control over digital rights technology." The iPod concerns were raised in a previous article.
If it's "copy protected", it's not a CD. Using the music industry's term is not the way to get non-geeks to understand the issue.
Let's come up with a name that reflects the true nature of these things, stick to it, and start using it.
This adds another (easier) loophole. Import to iTunes, export to whatever. Or, import to iPod, plug into line-in. The more complexity they add, the more holes there'll be for legitimate (using the term in its pre-DMCA/INDUCE-IICA sense, of course) use.
As much as I'm in favor of any "significant blow to Microsoft control", I won't support any attempt to replace Blue Book audio with any crippled format. I simply will not buy crippled "CDs"; I don't care how many different flavors of DRM are included for my convenience.
When all you have is an axe, everything looks like a grindstone.
... is the biggest single obstacle the music industry has from ramming really nasty DRM down all our throats. The very nature of Apple's terms has stopped WMP dead in its tracks, and it's going to make the labels think twice with future formats like DVD-A and SACD.
I sincerely hope that they get the fact that people will pay for convenience, quality and portability. I think that as soon as they get that, the file sharing apps are going to seriously head south. They've got convenience with the iTunes music store, portability is ok (average at best), but they need a lot of work on quality (I'd like to see a lossless version of the digital master recording made available).
Get all three of those, and I'd pay up to double what they're presently charging.
-- james
--Mike--
Did you know the Pentagon lost $1,000,000,000 in CASH!?!?
Apple will have no qualms arbitrarily altering the current iTunes DRM scheme to suit Macrovision's desires.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Of course it's a blow to MS's control of DRM. They've been pushing everyone to use WMA, which not only would increase their control over DRM, but increase their control over media distribution in general.
Pushing everyone into WMA is a great example of Microsoft using it's near-monopoly to increase its control on other sectors of industry. I, for one, am glad Apple has chosen not to support WMA. Sure, you might argue that choosing to only support their own DRM scheme is anti-competitive on Apple's part, too, but I'd rather see a company limit its player to one DRM scheme than see all music everywhere put into a single DRM scheme, controlled by one company. Besides, I don't believe Apple has the sort of control over any market that Microsoft.
In any event, Apple/iTunes/iPod has brought the annoyance of DRM and it's conflict with fair use more into the forefront, which is what I've been predicting for a while now. (which is good)
What was that NASA budget story doing here on MacSlash? Glad to see we're back on topic.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
If so, something here smells awfully fishy.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
if you don't know how to shut off the 'feature' known as autoplay, in turn making such things pointless. Then you don't deserve to steal music.
all kidding aside now.
Me being a proud owner/fan of an iPod, I think this a good idea for apple to get their product pimped out to even more people. Not that they haven't done so already through their stallar marketing campaign concerning all thins iPod and iTunes.
In an iPod related note, my little cousin showed me the 'ipod' he wanted. It was in fact a Dell Brick Box. Has iPod turned into the new Kleenix? If so Apple should market for the military if it can do THAT kind of brainwashing. HUUZAAHHHH!
"It'll destroy you if you try to make it mean anything to anyone but yourself." - Henry Rollins
You will have to hold down the action button while loading the cd.
Something that no one seems to notice in these articles is that Fairplay as it currently implemented won't work on a CD. Fairplay includes your user id and encrypted atoms in the AAC container based on your user id. A CD will necessarily have to have a static encryption model. As far as I know, Fairplay doesn't do that.
I don't think that Apple will have much interest in changing their DRM to accommodate the CD DRM companies since doing nothing will have the same effect. If users can't use their iPods then I don't think that Suncomm or Macrovision DRM is going to become an industry standard.
Vultures: Dear Apple Computer. As you know we are the market leaders..blah blah..our products are used in..blah blah. We have an exciting proposition for you! We'd like you to make your products DO LESS, COST MORE, and BE MORE COMPLICATED! And in exchange for this awesome upgrade, we'll let you use our hip logo which means nothing to consumers!
The Steve: Let me get this straight. Our music player is #1. Our service is #1. We sold more units (100,000,000) in the past few months than you can conceive in one meeting without calling in your accountant. Customers are happy. Record labels are happy. *We're* happy (it's been 3 months since the financal press called us "beleagured").
We've found the right balance to keep the record companies happy. Record labels small and large are banging on our door. The few holdout artists are looking pretty silly.
After discussing this with the others we have come to the conclusion that you should go fuck yourself. Thanks.
If I can't rip it to FLAC using standard ripping software (without insane amounts of errors) and play it back with my choice of playback application, I'm not interested. Why should I *pay* to get less access to my music than if I just pirate it?
I wish people weren't so willing to put up with low quality rips and silly copy protection; maybe iTunes would look a little more like Magnatune or allofmp3 if people were a little less easy to please.
Both Macrovision and Sunncom seem like their on a fishing expedition -- and C|net is playing along.
Apple declined comment and MSFT only says "we don't know what they're up to".
Apple doesn't want DRM anymore than the rest of us -- the first version of the iPod had none. And I'm sure they could really give a crap about physical media when their whole business model is based on networked media.
-ch
I can think of only three ways these companies can get their technology to work in an "iPod Nation":
+ Convince Apple to make iPods play WMV (fat chance)
+ Convince Apple to make iTunes burn protected AAC files only (no mp3 or unprotected AAC anymore. again, fat chance)
+ Convince Apple to kill off the iPod, hence making it a Windows Media Nation once again (better chance of this happening than the other two).
By complying with these companies, Apple gains nothing but may lose something. In fact, it can be argued that music CDs that do not work with iPods only encourages iTunes sales. I remember reading the customer reviews of Contraband on Amazon. 9 of the the 10 most helpful reviews rate the music as 1-star solely b/c of copy protection. But you can easily go online and buy that CD off of iTunes which, surprise, does work with your iPod.
Audio compression concerns aside, buying a music CD off of iTunes is a whole lot easier than buying it off of Amazon or even your local music store. CD protection schemes only drives iTunes ease of use into the consumer's head further.
Little Bricklets
Hey, what happened to all the customer reviews on Amazon for Contraband. A huge number of them gave it a bad rating because of the copy protection. But now ALL of these reviews have disappeared.
What happened? See for youself over Here
Little Bricklets
Not so sure about that. Remember, Jobs has stated *repeatedly* that iTMS as a revenue source is not doing too well. They just don't make a lot of money. They make all their money off iPods.
Of course, as a student of history (recent, at least), I have to wonder if that statement is to play down the fact that they still want massive marketshare in the online music industry... so that they can begin to make money sometime in the future. In that vein, your comments make sense.
But even in that sense, allowing CPD (copy protected discs) to be imported to iTunes may appeal to Apple, since that may bring as many "converts" to iTunes as it does sales for the CPD providers (not to mention: iTunes/iPod is a *hot* marketing sell for the CPD providers, even if the "compatibility" is lame, the ability to differentiate from other CDs might make them attractive to buyers).
of apple products, of course!
i agree with your point, it's a common mistake, confusing vertical and horizontal monopolies...
I have a simple solution ... make the disks adhere to the Red Book standard, so that can be treated as compact discs. Oops, that makes SunnComm International and Macrovision irrelavent, not that I care. Saves Apple loads of effort, and money, and the listeners a load of grief.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I was recently given a Japanese CD as a gift. The CD label claimed it had copy protection and would not work on a Mac. However, iTunes ripped the music off it just fine. I don't know why kind of protection it uses. In the linked article many people claimed that the copy protection didn't block them from ripping other CDs too.
Is this really an issue?
Fortunately the iPod is at the popularity level where people say "wtf, this CD is broken because it won't work with my iPod!" rather than "damn, this crappy Apple product won't play my music right!"
iTunes for windows helped this along a long ways. Nobody was sympathetic that these CDs might not play on Macs; but because an iPod under windows is considered an MP3 player rather than some kooky bass-ackwards Apple product, people will bitch about the CD and not the player.
Thank god. Sick of people criticizing Apple for things that are the fault of Microsoft's monopoly, rather than legitimate failings of Apple (not that they don't have their own problems).
Just got my 4th gen 40GB ipod today -- woohoo!!!
No DRM for me, thank you very much. I will buy real CDs. If real CDs are not available, I will steal the music or buy it off of iTMS.
Blue Book is the guide from Kelley to used car pricing in the US...
In a completely unrelated development, their website, http://www.kbb.com/, is the only one we've heard of yet that publicly disclosed being infected by the download.ject exploit code. Good for them for coming forwards.
All it takes is one cracked copy to be leaked online for it to be proliferated for downloading. Copy protecting a CD just makes it more difficult for the masses to legitimately get it onto their computers and MP3 players, and it creates a greater demand to download songs illegaly. Not to mention a lot of music that people download are rare music tracks they can't find at the local music store anyway.
Having CD's that don't use copy protection allows users not only have backups of their music, but it also allows them to re-rip their music into newer, improved compression algorithms. Computers are the new stereo systems. If record companies don't sell CD's of uncompressed music for them, then they might as well sell music on 8-tracks.
If record companies had any sense, they would have gotten into the music downloading business early on when it started. I'm sure people wouldn't have a problem subscribing to a service that would allow them to download music that didn't have errors on it at full speed from a dedicated server, rather than having to wade through error-prone, chaotically meta-tagged P2P copies at snail-pace download speeds. People actually pay for some P2P programs anyway. The record companies could have integrated music downloading with a subscription service and players that work like radios. They could delegate percentages of subscription fees to songs according to how often they are played, or let users pay for music that they choose to keep copies of, while disposing of music the user doesn't listen to in order to free hard drive space.
I really don't think users really care about price as much as they care about easy access. It took a while for copy-protected CD's to come about. CD burners and copiers have been around for years, yet people still chose to buy CD's rather than try and find a way to get free burned copies.
I have bought one copy-protected audio CD (Kraftwerk - Tour De France Sountracks) and it is a pain in the ass. It won't play in my iBook, and it won't play in 95% of computers I have put it in.
It comes with a Windows player installer that wants to copy multiple files to the HD, and a buggy Mac player that crashes my iBook in 9.2 and quits as soon as it is launched in Panther.
(It plays just like any other CD in my Sawtooth G4's stock DVD-ROM drive).
Don't these people realize that a lot of people nowadays use a computer instead of a standard CD player to listen to their music?
If I had an iPod and the iTunes Music Store was available in my country (Canada! cmon Apple!) , I would have bought the album online, paid less money, and I'd be able to listen to it anywhere.
Copy protection on audio CD's is far worse than Apple's DRM. If I were Apple I'd let the people doing the copy protection futz around trying to make their product actually work, while the iTMS model continues to gain momentum as a better way to buy music.
They'll head north. To Soviet Russia!