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Labels Trying New CD Copy Prevention Systems
bAdministrator writes "What if a CD copy-protection system was developed, which did not compromise sound quality nor cause compatibility problems, and still allowed for your 'rights' to make a limited amount of personal copies (*.DRM)? UK-based company First 4 Internet (F4i) claims to have pulled this off with their 'eXtended Copy Protection' (XCP) system; 'The disc will present itself as a CD-ROM to PCs, a Mac CD-ROM to Mac computers, a VCD to DVD players and CDDA disc to audio CD players. This multifunctional disc format offers full playability and therefore greater flexibility without lowering protection levels.' and 'By using a range of methodologies, including the construction of multiple protection layers, limiting the player accessibility to the provided player software, and encapsulating the red book audio content, XCP® successfully protects the content from unauthorised copying.'"
On most any computer, you have an audio out jack, and a microphone (or line in jack).
What's to stop someone from playing the CD, only with a cable connecting the out to the in, and pressing record/play...?
What's to stop someone from making an audio "device" that simply writes everything it gets to disk...?
Granted, you'll have a generic "loss of quality", but as long as you're playing from the CD, in theory the loss is no more or less than an encode directly from the CD (if using the device driver method, the audio cable may/may not kill some quality).
I'm just waiting for an automated program that'll do this...it completly removes all forms of DRM, it would remove the iTunes user ID, it would remove everything BUT the audio.
What a concept, huh? A friend of mine, after I told him this (that I've been contemplating for years), said, "but..that's like cheating!"
Who cares? It works.
As long as it can be heard (or seen), it can be re-recoreded at near identical quality.
This is all good and dandy, but if something can be protected, it can be cracked.
They can make all these grand claims and the like, but the simple truth is that what they're claiming is not possible with existing CD standards. They may have made some sort of hack that works most of the time, but there's no guarantee it'll work in all CDROM drives. I'm failing to see how it's any different from existing "solutions."
How many times have we seen these promises, until the technology hits the public domain and its gets it first real world test, we'll never no.
That seems like a *big* showstopper to me. So, they're saying it works on Windows and Mac, but you can't use iTunes on *either*? I don't see how that would be possible if it's following the standard, as they claim, but if it does, I can't imagine many people going for it.
What if a CD copy-protection system was developed, which did not compromise sound quality nor cause compatibility problems, and still allowed for your 'rights' to make a limited amount of personal copies (*.DRM)? UK-based company First 4 Internet (F4i) claims to have pulled this off
That's what they* always claim, and they have not delivered yet.
I still should be able to do what I want with a product I purchased, for personal use. That includes encoding it into the format of my choice, not thiers.
* they being CD copy protection creators
'The disc will present itself as a CD-ROM to PCs, a Mac CD-ROM to Mac computers, a VCD to DVD players and CDDA disc to audio CD players. This multifunctional disc format offers full playability and therefore greater flexibility without lowering protection levels.' and 'By using a range of methodologies, including the construction of multiple protection layers, limiting the player accessibility to the provided player software, and encapsulating the red book audio content, XCP® successfully protects the content from unauthorised copying.'
And yes, the shift key will bypass all your hours and hours of pointless research, overblown 'technologies' and multiple orgasm dual-encrypted protection layers. I can safely assure you XCP® will NOT successfully protect Jack Shit from unauthorised bullshitting, and I can only wish First4Porn good luck in flogging this crap to the record labels before they realise they cant cancel the license... Actually I was wondering if I couldnt just make up a CD DRM system and give it lots of buzzwords about encryption and then sell it and skip the country? Any thoughts?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
While this may stop P2P usage, doesn't it also hurt the person who wants to have a CD for the car, a CD for the stereo, a CD for the office, and an other spare CD?
Making MP3 should be perfectly legal, shairing them, however, isn't.
~ Mooga
...will never work and isn't really a war - it's just greed, plain and simple.
The minute DRM starts to chafe for the average user the technology will fail because users want access to the material they licensed at the checkout stand - and make no mistake, they did license the fair use of whatever the hell is on the disk.
The lie IP hogs want us to believe is that they have rights over and above our right to hear/view/access what we have already paid for.
The real world says no.
But like a drunken man in search of more drink the IP hogs go for more DRM, they always do - like a blow upon a bruise.
"Doctor, it hurts us every time we try to implement DRM."
"Then stop trying to DRM everything."
Who cares? I've got an old 1989 Sony (!) CD player with an optical digital output, and a CMI8738 sound card with a digital input. I cannot imagine this copy protection scheme to violate existing SPDIF standards (mind you, "SPDIF" stands for "Sony/Philips Digital Interface", see also here). So - nobody able of getting an older CD player and a 50$ sound card will be too impressed by any backwards compatible CP scheme. This is ridiculous.
The CP vendor's web site says "It is a robust solution providing the highest levels of protection against casual piracy while ensuring full playability." which says all. This is not (and cannot be) targeted against the professional pirates in Asia who make and sell millions of copies, but against you and me and Joe User.
open (SIG, "</dev/zero"); $sig = <SIG>; close SIG;
From the discription this sounds like nothing more then recording multiple sessions on a cd. This is something that has been done for years by companies that sell mac and windows software, allowing them to put the mac and windows software on one disc for distribution.
Post looks ripped from the website. Website is very low on details.
The section on pressed-cds makes it seem as though the disc can tell what kind of device it trying to read it, and somehow take action to prevent access if the disc was not intended to be accessible on that device.
Huh?
If it's "encapsulated" red-book, then it's not red-book anymore. An audioCD player would need to be built with logic to read and remove the encapsulation.
I don't see how they could implement this without "bastardizing" the intended CD format. There's no logic on a CD, therefore the logic would need to be in the player or drive, etc.
I can't help but thinking this is vapor. There's no way for me to tell, but the post smells like it was entered by a company marketing employee.
USNG: 14TPU4605
Because there is nothing you can do to stop the copying of bits if you don't control the hardware. Nothing. And it just so happens that pirates are always more sophisticated than the average consumer. Absolutely pointless.
Why bother.
I don't think you (and lots of others who mentioned the shift key) understand. If you stop auto-run, you CAN'T PLAY THE MUSIC. Period. It's in some wierd ass format that prevents you form playing it at all. Of course, there are always ways around THAT...
WASTE - The Secure P2P
A technology that makes buying albums online less restrictive than buying a physical CD.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Poking around the XCP Aurora website, there are buried references to "playing through the XCP player," or "using the provided player." Makes me think they require playback through custom software that they include on the disc. There are also references to RealPlayer, MS Media Player, Winamp, etc. It's possible that they're providing a plug-in to those programs that allows decoding of the audio portion while still appearing to be the playback tool of choice. If they're breaking the CD-ROM access by putting bogus CD structure info up front, someone will break out a Sharpie and "fix" it.
My guess is that some MBA looked at the market, and included OS's and playback programs until he got 98% market coverage, and said "that's good enough. The 3% [sic] represented by the remaining folks won't matter - we'll more than make up for that with the increased sales that result from the reduction in bootleg copies." The unfortunate truth is that it won't make a damned difference. They fail to realize that the Internet is what the military folks call a "force multiplier." You only need one determined individual to crack the coding, or to make a decent D-A-D copy (thus stripping off the DRM), and post it on the 'net. Once that happens, you've got a gazillion traders who are more than willing to propagate the copies.
Why? Because it makes the phrase "This disc has NO copy protection measures...please support the artist by purchasing music" a real selling point.
Independent musicians (the kind that make a living off their music) are slowly but surely rejecting the myth that you need a record deal to be successful. (In fact, if you're good you can almost always be more successful without a record deal these days). These groups see the listener as a potential supporter, not a potential pirate.
When labels keep up this DRM crap, it just makes these indie musicians look more and more listener oriented. People aren't stupid, they pick up on this.
So keep it up DRM content producers! It's just one more selling point for your slowly growing competition. By the time you realize how bad you screwed up it will be too late.
Not if people don't know you exist. You see, the only source of streaming music for most people in moving motor vehicles is either FM or XM radio, and Clear Channel owns a big stake in both. Unless you can afford to purchase several 3-minute advertisements on Clear Channel radio, how are you going to create demand for your discs?
First, live performance is still king. If you have a good live show...you will be booked. People will know who you are. It takes time but people do it all the time.
Initiating popularity with radio is largely a non-issue. There's only so much popularity to be gained in that pie, and the cost of entry is way too high to be profitable for the little guy. People know who you are by live shows. Period.
Second, this innerweb thingy is just really starting to get it's legs for bands. Bands are having good results with places like music.download.com, purevolume, myspace, garageband, etc. But it has to be tied to a good live show effort. Remember, live is king.
Third, with regard to radio, IMHO FM and XM will not stand in the long run. As the 'net goes wireless and adopts a good roaming scheme...internet radio stations will clean their clock. There are some really good internet stations out there...good enough to have major listener bases if folks could listen in their car.
In summary, the whole clearchannel thing only exists because of the on-to-many characteristics of radio. If and when 'radio' becomes a many-to-many thing (primarily inside the automobile) that scarcity becomes a non-issue.
Even then...live shows are king and cannot be trumped.
EXACTLY. I just recently purchased a CD player for my car that supports mp3 and wma. I am currently fixing all my scratches and converting everything. Then I just use my originals for archive purposes, meanwhile I can fit my entire Led Zeppelin collection on two discs. The computer based copy is NOT shared, so I am well within legitimat use.
Now... If an albums come out with this copy protection, I am forced to search out a copy off the internet. Since I have to go to the trouble anyway, I sure as HELL won't be buying it. Therefore, the RIAA alienates another paying customer and loses my money. Trust me, with the thousands I have spent on CD's, they SHOULD be concerned.
Send whiskey and fresh horses!
People know who you are by live shows. Period.
Most live music venues in my area do not admit minors because they make their money selling alcoholic beverages. How do you plan to hook the children?