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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."
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
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.
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!
our consumer electronics business is worth more to us than our music business.
Keep your customers happy so you don't alienate them and make them go to the dark illegal copying side, then combat the problem of those that are ripping you off.
Damn straight. The customer should be the number one priority for pretty much any corporate entity, though sometimes they do seem to lose the plot a little.
Now if only it was easier to buy a DVD disc without region encoding, I'd be happy. As a Brit living in Australia, I'm pretty hacked off with the hassle of playing UK bought DVDs in AU and vice versa. And I thought this was if-not-illegal-then-definitely-dodgy restraint of trade?
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
I see this as history repeating itself. Provided the U.S. Congress can restrain itself from passing laws requiring anti-copying technology, then the market will naturally swing just as you said. It happened in the 80s with anti-copying tech on floppy disks. For a while, every disk had an anti-copying scheme on it. But eventually enough customers were irritated that companies just started shipping non-copy-protected disks again. It'll come around. The customer always wins in the end. Not only that, but the formats that Congress does lock down will simply be abandoned. See any DATs anywhere? Nope.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
You are aware you can switch off a PS2 by holding down the power switch on the front for a few seconds?
Yeah, I possibly should go buy one, but :
1. can I get a region free DVD drive for my Dell laptops? no.
2. what about my compaq desktop? maybe.
3. shall I just replace the set-top player I've already bought? considering it.
I watch DVDs on my laptop(s) quite a bit, and it's my laptops I travel with, meaning I'd much rather have region-free there, where there's a more pressing need.
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
A lot like gun safety laws. It only stops the law abiding citizens from purchasing guns. Criminals will get their guns regardless--they don't purchase it through the system.
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.
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 scope for streaming the audio data through a hardware MP3 decoder probably hasn't been designed in, it's unlikely a processor of the type used for this kind of application will be flexible enough to do the job itself. Therefore a redesign would be required to get MP3 playback. This must have been a very concious decision by the marketing droids, one which they now regret...
I read it more as: We suddenly realized that another part of the company sold ATRAC/MP3 players, so whichever way we play it we win, and this way we get to look good as well.
And don't forget DVD-A and SACD. Some of us want high rez music formats without the DRM crud attached. If they can pull it off CDs, they sure as hell can pull it off the struggling formats.
-- james
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?
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).
We are not shy about kicking manufacturers for unwelcome decisions, so here's praise for one that has rethought and made a better decision.