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Sony Japan to Abolish Copy Controlled CDs
Gridle writes "In a complete reversal of their policy and on the heels of Avex's partial cessation of copy protected CDs (translation), Sony Music Entertainment in Japan has announced that it will abolish its Label Gate CCCD format (translation) beginning in November 2004 and move back to normal CD-audio format discs for all future releases. Reasons cited are music users' increased consciousness about copyrights and maintenance of legality (conformity to the CD-audio format specification). In related news, Sony also released a slightly updated HD walkman (translation) due to pressure from the iPod, but because of hardware limitations the device still does not support MP3 playback."
"many music users' consciousness increased to protection of copyrights"
"We really thought we could sneak this by most users, but it turns out they're more informaed than we thought. Damn you, independent media!"
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
Any move toward trusting consumers and an industry standard is worthy of a smile. :)
Or at least, a colon and a close parenthesis.
What happened to their promise that all new portables would do MP3, and they'd have firmware updates for existing ones?
Get off my launchpad!
This is excellent! But remember the capital of piracy is right next door to them(S. Korea and China)
Call me and my voicemail! 914-713-6795. (wow, I have the balls to post my voip number on
Hell has frozen over.
I think that says it all...I guess that Satan will be wearing a coat tonight.
This is a good move by Sony. Discs with the protection are incredibly annoying. Sure, people will pirate stuff and do things with non-protected discs illegally, but this is becoming less frequent, and for people who actually buy their music honestly, it is an incredible annoyance to not be able to do what you want with your own personal music. Thanks Sony.
Set your faces to stun.
"Derp de derp."
See this, Bill Gates? Not ALL of you "biggies" think we're all crooks!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
to face reality. It sounds like the war between its content producing arms and consumer electronics groups has been decided in favor of the electronics group.
It was inevitable- "MP3 players" is the *name* of the categorty and the defining feature of compressed audio devices.
If you cannot rip a CD to mp3 its value to the consumer is lessened considerably and they will be more likely to turn to p2p alternatives. A losing proposition all around for Sony.
It may be too little too late- kind of sad as they could have owned they category if they had only been unhampered by their content divisions (and had some better human interface engineers for their software).
Sounds pretty stupid to me... for many not-particularly-tech-savvy (NPTS) people, mp3 is still the compressed music format of choice, and these people will be most of Sony's market for this device.
NPTS Customer: Hey that looks cool, does it have mp3?
Salesman: No, but it has...
NPTS Customer: Ah we'll leave it - what else you got?/p?
More like... nerdular nerdence!
No more copy-protected CDs?! But why?! I was having so much fun scribbling around the edges with my beloved Sharpees..... I can still do that even if there's no point, right? Right?!?!
I have a feeling half the reason (or the only?) reason Sony is doing this, is because they happen to be involved in the electronics business that requires you to have non-copy-protected CDs as raw material. Basically I think the decision may have that since there's shitloads of profit to be made off the hardware, it may offset greater piracy in their music biz. And somebody doing the math may have realized that this is financially viable. Thus Sony has no issues with this. Maybe the RIAA should stop prosecuting file-sharers, and instead get into some kind of revenue-sharing agreement with the Sonys and Apples of world. (ok, ok, stop scoffing at the words revenue-sharing, it could happen!)
My Favourite Meme
So will the scandalous drop in Sony Japan's music sales forever be known as Labelgategate?
our consumer electronics business is worth more to us than our music business.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
When you buy music and movies you are not allowed to return it to the store unless your buying the same title since you could have copied them. Would they now let you return discs with copyright protective measures for a refund since you are unable to copy them?
YAY!! now we can only hope that the japanese reward sony for this decision thus causing sony to do the same over here ^_^
...but damnit they can learn if you give 'em enough time.
I'm glad to see AVEX cutting back and Sony backing off completely. Hopefully this means I'll actually be able to get some soundtracks and Do As Infinity CDs without worrying about the discs being f*cked and horribly fragile.
Maybe Pony Canyon and a few other labels in Japan will follow their lead and stop shipping this crap on their CDs.
This could be bad though... I'd have no reason to not buy more stuff from them!
In an industry where the corporations are suing their customers, there is PLENTY of room for large companies to take a new stance and embrace the now pissed off consumers. If you get in on that early enough in the game, as Sony appears to be doing, then people start rallying behind you against the companies who AREN'T taking that position.
All in all, its a very smart tactical move for Sony, and reading this has restored a sliver of the faith I once had in them.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Step One: Buy new sony player at full retail.
Step Two: There is no step two.
I disslike Sony for hindering the use of their products with anything besides other Sony products.
Sony's "NW-HD2" music player only accepts their proprietary ATRAC* audio format. What about all my mp3's?
More often than not, in order to achieve a Sony product's "full potential" you must have a Sony Computer or at least a Memory Stick reader for your pc, or a Sony TV with memory stick built in.
While Sony innovates in some categories, digital cameras, televisions etc. Their design team dropped the ball on the PS2. The PS2 is simply two PS1 cpu's in one box. They didn't improve the controller design, nor did they include a hdd or network connection. Those must be purchased separately. And for kickers, they placed they power switch on the back of the system making it difficult to turn on/off in a media center. This awkward switch position placement allows Sony to make a few extra bucks selling an adapter which "moves" the switch to the front of the machine, where it belonged in the first place.
*Takes deep breath* I feel better now.
Free iPods? Sure.
Will copy protected CD become the "New Coke"? By looking at the first reactions here I'd say yes!
Maybe someone high-up over at Sony had a read of The Cluetrain Manifesto? :)
It's a Bagel.
Apparently there isn't an RIAJ to "protect" the "interests" of the artists!
NPTS customer: Huh?
In Japan.
liteon drives are the simplist of all dvdrom drives to unlock. Most of them you just have to set the drive back to rpc-1 mode from rpc-2. And over ride the software.
Annoyly it requires windows to unlock it.
http://digi.rpc1.org/rpc.htm
Point is you might have a liteon in the dell or the compat under a different name.
As a side note to your well put remark - whatever happened to /. crowd's usual dislike of Sony (member RIAA)? To read most comments posted here would make you think Sony is the New Angles Co. (tm).
This is just a simple decision to end a failing practice in the marketplace. Nothing more.
When I lived in Japan, there were quite a few CD rental shops. I made SO MANY flippin tapes from CDs I rented, it wasn't even funny.
They vanished before I moved back to the States in 1994, though..
Now, 1999 rolls around and mp3 is all the rage.
The CDs in the rental shops were plain ol' audio CDs. No DRM, no copy-bit, no need for a Sharpie. None of that crap.
Interesting to at least see part of that past come full circle..
Do we now once again start buying music produced in conjunction with Sony, as a show of good faith in their newly-regained trust of the consumer?
I realize many bought discs despite these issues... but I've actually abstained for the mostpart these past few years.
because of hardware limitations the device still does not support MP3 playback
What kind of hardware are they running it on that isn't capable of decoding a 128kbit MP3 in real time (which is all most people want out of an MP3 player)? An 8MHz 8086?
I mean, seriously, I used to play MP3s on my old Pentium 100MHz, while doing other work with them... their hardware would have to be very limited to not be able to keep up with that.
Wow sweet news.
Now will they release music in beta tape
format?
Since i've still access to what i guess is first
gen betamax video playback gear, it would be rather sweet to purchase some music published in said format, I don't care if it costs me more, than a cd, in fact i'd pay 10x the price of a cd
just to have such goods.
Now for all you fu wanna beeeee-s less'n you learned some fu on betamax gear, ie: to those who
have learned fu exclusivly upon VHS i can substantiate the superior quality of the betamax vs. VHS debate anyday of the week, so you snot nosed brats slacking upon dvds and such when you
when you
can take this betamax tape
from my hand you (maybe) have learned to walk.
Grasshopper Units Tankx
They realized that it was counter productive to sell copy protected CDs and expensive mp3 and mini-disc players.
"Sony also released a slightly updated HD walkman (translation) due to pressure from the iPod"
With businesses, pressure generally comes from companies with comparable marketshare... Ford might feel pressure from GM, Apple might feel pressure from Rio... Sony is so far out of the main music player game, that it is ludicrous to think they are feeling "pressure" from apple... that would be like saying Be was feeling pressure from Microsoft... This is just a result of Sony fatally mis-predicting the market.
...The marketing practically writes itself!
This smells a little bit like victory.
...and while doing so abolish selling CDs in general. From now on your SONY Music will be available solely on MDs in ATRAC format.
I was just being a bit utopic, but that's what they'd really like to do, isn't it?
There are two rules for success:
1. Never tell everything you know.
CBG: But Aquaman, you can't marry a woman without gills, you're from two
different worlds! (sees missile coming right at him) Ohhhh, I've wasted my
life.
Random U.N. Guy: The Soviet Union? We thought you guys broke up.
Evil Commie U.N. Guy: Yes, that's what we wanted you to think!
(Cut to parade floats collapsing to reveal tanks; cut to Lenin's tomb where
his corpse rises)
Lenin: Must....crush.....CAPITALISM!
Pity for the producers.
Not for being profiteering bastards, not for losing profits (What am I a moron?). No but for the fact that mp3 took off and it's NOT an open codec, Sony doesn't want to include it because if they do then it will be THE codec FOREVER.
And those nutbars at Fraunhaufer will be laughing their heads off.
Sony is part of the consortium that owns the patent on DVD ($1 per dvd player and a tiny fraction of each blank disk) which is increadibly lucrative, they also have their fingers in the next gen Blu-Ray pie.
But I still feel sorry when someone has to pay money so that others may share for free, hats off to Sony! May this journey to the dark side of copywrite law leave you enlightened.
The upcoming gaming handheld, PSP supports MP3.
Sony forcing such an action only brings to surface the impnending formalities of music copy righs...etc
Here they have done more to free music rights by making the first wrong move... and that is trying to bring to public's attention the restrictions. A bad move that backfired. Thank God.
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
I bought a netMD minidisc player because it was cheap, and because - get this - it said that it supported mp3. It does in a way - if you can get the (apparently) godawful sonicstage software to install (not on a win98 machine, whatever the box says) then it just takes your mp3 collection and decodes/encodes to ATRAC3 on the fly as you're connecting to your walkman. I never got to try it out (still use win98) but I expect it's not the speediest transfer. It went back the next day and I got an iPod mini, and sync'd it to my wife's ibook - and got what I paid for. It's bizarre, Sony claim pressure from the iPod as a driver for getting a HD walkman out and expect the mainstream consumer to go for their product, that arguably has less market visibility that Apple's, and doesn't support the mainstream file format. And Sony won't officially support a windows installation that hasn't been factory installed - even upgrades of OEM machines aren't supported. Damn them.
Possibly. Try having a look on The Firmware Page and seeing if there is a region-unlocked firmware for the drive in your Dell laptop. Your other alternative is to get hold of a program like DVD Region Free which I believe will strip off the region coding (and other things) before it reaches your DVD player software.
Actually before everybody goes off hailing SONY for being so great and good: From everything I have seen here in japan I honestly don't think Japanese people *DO* any piracy. Sure there are the niche "maniacs" that does that, but in general the population shuns pirated software and music and movies like it's a bad disease.
Some examples:
* I bring back stacks of new movies unreleased in japan (back when LOTR:ROK was not in theatres yet), DVDs bought in china. Everyone is interested until the moment they realize it's pirated. "Oh it must be bad quality," or "ahh it's ok i'll just wait for the theatres." etc
* Japanese in piracy capitals doesn't browse the bootleg shops. At ALL.
(side note to above, they also pay full price for Luis Vuitton crap even when there are immitations for 1/100th of the price and absolutely no discernable difference). There are also no market for said immitation products in Japan.
* us foreigners are downloading movies off bittorrent that we can't get here, and we always get these looks of amazement like "oh you guys are pirating again!"
This is compared to pretty much all of my acquaintences in the US (including everyone who is not even considered "tech savvy") who downloads from kazaa or torrent or whatever. Why do you think the announcement is that they will simply end the copy-protect from Sony Japan, but not globally?
It's a moral problem, boys and girls.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Sony to Abolish Copy Controlled CDs..... in Japan!
Region free, and removes the 2x rip restriction.
All this in an effort to promote their HD walkman? Why didn't Sony notice this before? I mean, they have plenty of portable audio out there. By Sony or otherwise. It took them that long to realise that not everyone who rips cd shares them?
...but apparently it supports betamax
MP3 is defacto standard, and if I would buy a player, MP3, WAV, and OGG support is a must. Any other formats not so important. The market is pretty well covered with all sorts of players. Experience shows you can't count on firmware updates. If you want MP3 support, it has to be in there when you buy it. How many consumers would even consider a player that doesn't support THE audio format?
When I was in Japan last March through April, a friend bought a Janet Jackson CD that was copy protected and the damned thing had problems playing in all of her players... in her car, in her computer (especially) and in her stereo. After looking at the CD's case, I realized it wasn't due to accidental defect but due to intentional defect instead.
I told her what she should do about it.
1) Return the CD
2) Voice her opinion to the record company
3) Tell all of her friends
Maybe I didn't make a HUGE difference but I still like to THINK I played a small part in that.
Well it wouldn't suprise me if Sony are starting to treat their entertainment division as simply providers of "software" (in the form of songs, films etc.) for their electronics division.
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
PC business-application vendors were going to great lengths to "copy protect" their media back in the 80's. By the end of the 80's it was rare to find any doing it, for pretty much the same reasons Sony is going back to friendly CDs. No one has a credible measure of what if anything copy protection saves a company.
But it is easy to measure the customer dis-satisfaction and increased product returns and increased technical support costs.
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
Did you watch the debate last night.
Did you pick up on the fact that Bush is just plain dumb? I mean, I wouldn't hire somebody that inarticulate to run a pet store, much less leader of the free world.
The guy is not only a religious nut, he's just too stupid to be allowed to lead the US.
Sorry, your criticism of Kerry is off-point. Try again.
They just happened to have a stupid exec who made the choice of keeping it closed for so long... but just imagine the MDs were open from day one. I personally don't think there ever would have been an iPod. Or any other decent music player for that matter. And now that they have highMD, they would have been unbeatable.
But alas, no... Same as BetaMax I suppose.
We need to get game companies to do the same thing. The last three PC games I purchased had copy protection on them and the games will not run even with the CD in the drive. I have no copy-protection software of CD emulation or anything like that.
I got a no CD crack for one, and I contacted tech support about the other two. Tech support's reply: You must play the game on a read-only drive! Neither one works on a CDRW! I find that amazing: They are totally willing to abandon everyone who only has a writable drive (which is almost every new computer these days).
Is piracy really that bad that this is worth doing? As far as I know, the pirates can get around it. They probably spent more money answering my tech support than they made off of the game (especially since I am going to give them hell for selling me a product that they know doesn't work, but don't mention it on the box).
Will Sony be re-releasing the titles that were shipped with their non-conforming copy protection scheme?
Chip H.
Record companies and music publishing companies are completely different things.
Record companies produce records, publishing companies protect and promote songwriters copyrights in their compositions, not the copyrights of recorded material.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
All Sony players support MP3. Only Clies natively play MP3. Everything else currently converts MP3 to Atrac3 through Sonic Stage.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
So my guess is that they are planning on making the whole CD format obsolete soon in favour of something with built-in DRM.
Or alternatively, they've come up with CD's that artificially degrade over time and are uplayable within some short time.... Oh wait... they're already doing that by only signing bands like Britney.
Guess that joke flew over the moderator's head. :)
;P
"I must be dreaming, a corporation is giving up DRM. It's going to suck to wake up in the morning."
Oh well.
My reality check bounced.
WALKMAN is a brand. PLAYSTATION is a brand. (So are IPOD and GAME BOY.) People feel comfortable buying products bearing the WALKMAN brand.
Anyway, restricting art (i.e. music) is a oxymoron. Good they made the right decision based on the users. Companies makes mistakes too... (they just don't get pentalized).
Either that or Sony will see its electronics division as simply providers of "consoles" for its entertainment division. Remember that Sony is making the PSP out to be the replacement for the Walkman line so that Sony can start selling copies of movies and music videos on UMD.
What is "Sonic Stage"? My Sony network-walkman came with OpenMG software to convert to atrac and check in and out music.
It sucks.
This is one of the problem with proprietary DRMed formats - I need the software, the software sucks, and it's never been updated. So if this is some new software (I'll check out Sony's site) that works with my old player, I'll have to check it out. Right now my $300 "digital music" player sits unused because of those restrictions (for the record, I didn't pay for it - it was a door prize).
I wonder if they'll let me trade it in on a real mp3 player.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
but because of hardware limitations the device still does not support MP3 playback.
Hardware limitations my ass.
This translates to "Because we don't want to encourage you to play your already-fully-stocked collection of DRM unencumbered MP3s in favour of buying all your recordings yet another time (did I mention we sell recordings?), our hardware does not support MP3."
www.wavefront-av.com
http://www.firmware-flash.com/
You should be able to find region free firmware for just about all DVD drives there.
If you list your set-top player model I'm sure someone will be able to help you. I have an LG DV7711P and hacking it to region free is as easy as pi - literally! You go into a special menu and enter 314159, then restart. Look here for more solutions:
http://www.dvdrhelp.com/
Hope this helps some!
Visceral Psyche Films
I can finally import Ayumi Hamasaki CD's and play them on a PC without having their annoying player come up. This is a good thing.
Sonic Stage is basically an updated version of OpenMG, with a much better interface. It should work with the old players.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Well, to an extent, I listen to more Avex than Sony. But I hate having to lug all my Aikawa Nanase CDs everywhere I go, her last 2 were DRMed, and Avex DRM cds cause all kinds of problems. IE, they don't work in iTunes (& supposedly not on macs). Well, I still have to carry around her last CD though, too bad its her best and I can't make it more portable.
Call me skeptical, but until this actually becomes practiced for a while and spreads to other nations, I'm taking the news with a grain of salt.
There are some very strict rules (in the UK at least) on what you can include with your release to be eligible for chart placement. You can find PDF of the rules here.
We are not shy about kicking manufacturers for unwelcome decisions, so here's praise for one that has rethought and made a better decision.
Sony also released a slightly updated HD walkman due to pressure from the iPod, but because of hardware limitations the device still does not support MP3 playback.
That's bullcrap. If it can play AC3, (which it can), then it has powerful enough processing to play MP3s. My bet is they don't want to pay the MP3 licensing fees. They're retards if they think they can get anything non-mp3 to sell across the pond.
Woah, buddy. This statement is wrong. There is a kernel of truth to it, but by and large you're wrong.
Have you ever tried using libdvdcss on Linux? It's clear you haven't, because even a cursory trial would show you that libdvdcss can play back about 98% of DVD discs on any RPC-2 drive without regard to region coding.
The problem here is that you're confusing two different issues: region coding and CSS encryption. The one does not really have anything to do with the other, even though they are interlinked in actual implementation.
So here's the real story. Region coding and CSS are two independent attributes of a DVD disc. That is, a disc can have region coding alone, CSS encryption alone, both, or neither. Both RPC-1 and RPC-2 drives have firmware to extract CSS decryption keys. The only difference between an RPC-1 drive and an RPC-2 drive is that an RPC-2 drive has firmware which detects region mismatches and in the event of a region mismatch the drive will not provide the CSS decryption keys.
The last sentence sounds like an insurmountable obstacle to DVD playback, but it's not, because CSS has been cracked. The best known attack on CSS today uses a known plaintext vulnerability in the algorithm to recover the key. In order for this attack to work, the plaintext (i.e. unencrypted form) of at least part of the movie must be known. Luckily in most cases the movie begins with a black screen for at least a few frames, so this serves as a plaintext crib that allows libdvdcss to break the CSS encryption easily. Result: libdvdcss can play back most DVDs regardless of the disc region or the RPC status of the drive.
On very rare occasions (the 2% mentioned above), the libdvdcss library fails to carry out the known plaintext attack, in which case it has to fall back to much slower search techniques which can take anywhere from 40 minutes to several days to crack the key.
Here's a tip for anyone using libdvdcss: the CSS keys are cached in the ~/.dvdcss directory, so you only have to crack a DVD disc once in order for libdvdcss to have free access to the disc. If there's a disc that libdvdcss can't crack, just take it to any DVD drive in the world that matches the disc region (whether RPC-1 or otherwise) and run any libdvdcss program. The program will cache the keys in that directory and you can then copy the keys to any computer you want in order to gain unrestricted disc access on that computer.
Fast-forward to today: I get my Color Computers back from my parents house, and I have the grand idea to convert all of my old floppies from my Color Computer days to a current format (CD-R), and build an emulation box PC so I can still have some fun and nostalgia with my old friend. Most of my data converts fine. Some of my disks are coasters (hey, it is to be expected!). But then I get to the game I loved most - Gates of Delerium...
This game was an Ultima-style clone for the Color Computer 2. Two floppies for a whole lotta single-player RPG fun. The problem was, it was copy protected, in a way that made backup of the floppies impossible with the ordinary RS-DOS floppy backup command. You were expected to keep the main game floppy "in a safe place". The player disk you were meant to make backups of, so they were in a normal format (you had to play off of a backup, because the game would modify the data on the floppy as you played). My player disk and all of its backups appeared fine. My game disk - well, it wouldn't load anymore...
I have posted several times about this here on /. - how I own this game, and want to play it again, but the copy protection screwed me, and it appeared that I had an unplayable copy. To make matters worse, it appeared that this was one game that nobody else had EVER heard of, so my chances of ever playing it again were nil. I had contacted the former owner of Diecom, Dave Dies, who at the time told me that he had no problem with me distributing the game, or creating a clone, or anything - if I got it working. But things didn't look so good...
Here was a game I had bought and paid for, that I had a license to use - but because of the copy protection, I couldn't make a backup of it, and over the years it had degraded, and wouldn't work any more on my original hardware, let alone an emulator. I was almost resigned to accept its fate as being lost.
Recently, in the past couple of months, I was contacted by an individual, who had saw my posts here on Slashdot. He had wanted to know if I had any success with restoring it or anything. I had to tell him "no", and that I thought it was beyond reach. We struck up an email conversation, and it turned out he lived in Canada (where Diecom was located), in the same area as Diecom, and apparently Dave Dies as well. It was an interesting coincidence. As we talked, we tried (well, he suggested, I tried - he had owned GofD at one point, but had since misplaced the floppies, but had fond memories about it) various things with the actual floppies. I found that tracks 17-34 (35 track system) were readable as standard tracks, but tracks 0-16 were anything but standard. As we dissected things, he made mention of a conversation he had with another individual who was a contributor to MESS - to the Color Computer emulation port. This guy had apparently done some work with MESS and Diecom copy protection, and knew his way around.
Well, to make a long story (!) short - I got in contact with him, and we all began an exchange of information and such that eventually culminated in the successful restoration of Gates of Delerium. We later got an email from Dave Dies giving us permission to distribute this piece of abandonware (as well as any other Diecom Color Computer software) - if you are reading this, thank you, Dave Dies!!! It turned out that tracks 0-16 were written in a special non-standard format that couldn't be copied with the regular RS-DOS commands. It was possible to alter the ROM (in what is known as "all-ram" mode on the CoCo) to allow us to read these tracks, and transfer them to another f
Reason is the Path to God - Anon