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."

Comments

DRM?

[rts008]

See this, Bill Gates? Not ALL of you "biggies" think we're all crooks!

Re:Roxxor

[irokitt]

Especially when it comes from Sony, who are probably big enough to get away with a copy-protection practice if they really wanted to. Kudos to them.

A possible solution....?

[tarunthegreat2]

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!)

Just a thought

[starprose]

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?

Yes! It's hard to teach a thick headed dino...

[Microlith]

...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!

good move

[Lord_Dweomer]

From a marketing standpoint, this is an awesome position for Sony to take. They've had a reputation of kind of screwing people over with copy protection *cough*minidisc*cough*.

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.

Re:good move

[the_leander]

"From a marketing standpoint, this is an awesome position for Sony to take. They've had a reputation of kind of screwing people over with copy protection *cough*minidisc*cough*."

TBH I've not had that much of an issue with the minidisc drm, my biggest gripe with it was the fact that the software interface for transfering files etc sucked donkey balls and the device itself could not be used within windows as a portable Magneto Optical drive (which it is) for backing up/restoring stuff... But thats just me I guess (Yes you could transfer files to it within the software, but then the whole drm thing kicked in if for instance you changed motherboards or replaced the hard disk).

"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."

Indeed and I couldn't agree more with your take on it or their new customer friendly stance. Its a change that has been much needed imho. I wonder how long the other big players will take to realise just how vunerable their tactics (By proxy using the RIAA) have left them to just this sort of move?

Business

[baba]

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.

Re:Business

[JanneM]

Because it is always worth noting when a company does the right thing, and especially when they usually are deep in the murky end of the ethical pool.

This _may_, hopefully, mean that at some point in the future we may actually see a text reader tablet from them that will allow you to store your own stuff on it - in a standard format such as html - and not just lease content from them. At that point, I'd actually consider buying it.

Hardware limitations...?

[julesh]

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.

Re:Sony has been forced by the market...

[Pieroxy]

I have always wondered why they didn't press hybrid CDs with a CD-ROM part that contains the MP3s for the album, and eventually some bonus material (bitmaps, video clips, interviews, etc...).

Of course it would make piracy a little easier, but they should know that pirates can rip/record any CD (even protected) in the blink of an eye. Only the poor non-technical fellow would truly benefit from that and it would make his life so much easier with is mp3 player.

Of course, this is all utopy as they would all release their compressed tracks in a different format, making is effectively useless.

Oh well...

ATRAC3

[pekoe]

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.

On another note

[lingqi]

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.

Re:On another note

[fifthchild]

Yes. And pirated movies on the racks of Thailand and China's dodgy vendors all have Japanese subtitles? They most certainly don't. This is the sole reason thye this is the case. The preference over quality is no worse than anywhere else. I refuse to watch screeners, but I know plenty of people (Japanese or not) who happily will.