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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.'"
It presents itself as a broken CD.
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.
So, who's gonna post the crack?
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
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
It talks about a "construction of multiple protection layers, limiting the player accessibility to the provided player software". So I have to ask, how the heck does that work? Is my computer's CD-ROM drive really *that* much different from my CD players? What happends if my CD player is a DVD player too, will it be confused by some of the layers? Is this some kind of magic-mojo protection, or am I just missing something here?
WASTE - The Secure P2P
I have a feeling that this will finally be the copy protection scheme that works because this morning the RIAA stopped by my house and removed the shift key from my keyboard.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
The best way to look at these systems is not as an attempt to actually prevent people from ripping CDDA audio from CDs: that's effectively impossible.
Think of them as an elegant method of separating the record labels from millions and millions of dollars of their money, in return for...nothing.
Hm. I'm in the wrong line of work.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
Yet another "protection" we can bypass by pressing shift ;-)
i like that.
Anyway, if it's a multi-session CD, anyone with a cd burning tool on windows or macOs can extract the right session...
On Linux, it would be even easier...
I like to archive my music (I buy a lot of CDs every month, sometimes I can't find something a friend recommends I re-listen to) on my PC, and will not buy any CD that tries to prevent me.
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped. Calvin Coolidge
my journal: scripts for leaching porn baked fresh daily
...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;
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
Logically, then, the market for selling the same product multiple times (ie, using DRM to force you to buy two or more CDs if you want to have one in work/car/etc. and one at home) is vastly more valuable than the illegal recording market, which has been in existance for a long time anyway.
The people behind DRM are not idiots; they know as well as anyone (or better) that sales figures show downloaders buy more music than any other group whether their downloads are iTunes or BitTorrent. They couldn't care less about stopping that - they just want to have the same bonanza that they did with the vinyl->CD repeat buying period, but now they want it every year.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
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.
That may be true on Linux, but not so on Windows. Under Windows, an encrypted audio stream may require that only signed audio output drivers may play the stream, and Microsoft will sign an audio driver only if it turns off cleartext digital outputs (such as the .wav redirection) at the request of the stream. Do you listen to music through a receiver connected to a sound card's S/PDIF output? If so, tough shit.
The purpose of copy protection is to make it harder to copy, not make it impossible. Remember, if a protection/encryption scheme can be made, it can be broken/gotten around. This is like wrist watches that say "Water Proof", then if you read the fine print, its only guaranteed to prevent water from leaking in as long as the pressure is below that found at a certain depth. Same thing, it is 'protected' up until it is presented to someone that cares enough to get around it, then its gotten around quickly (it seems that most CD copy protection scehmes have 'cracks' or work-arounds posted online within days of their application on a massively released disc).
--
If it can be made, it can be broken. No reason for me to bother with locks on my door, anyone that really wants to come in will come in anyway, I'll just put pictures of locks on the door to deter those who aren't serious.
Video Production Support
Under Windows, an encrypted audio stream may require that only signed audio output drivers may play the stream, and Microsoft will sign an audio driver only if it turns off cleartext digital outputs (such as the .wav redirection) at the request of the stream.
Until they get Palladium in (and even then there will inevitably be mod chips) you can modify Windows to quit checking the driver signature pretty easily. I've seen it done with NT 4. Then off you go again.
The sad thing about these Windows-only copy protection schemes is that they don't even work for Windows.
"Limited" only in the sense it can't be uploaded for unlimited distribution over the Internet? Something a lot of people don't particularly care about anyway, and wouldn't miss.
No, limited in the sense that I can't make a new CDDA copy to listen to in my car. Virtually all DRM systems won't allow you to make a direct copy of the Audio only portion of the CD-- if they did, it would make the DRM pointless in the first place. But that is why I personally want to copy them. I don't like keeping original CD's in my car since they are likely to get scratched or stolen. Instead, as soon as I buy a CD, I rip it to MP3 for home & portable listening (the Mp3s are not shared), burn an audio CD for my car, then I put the actual CD in a safe place where it won't get damaged or stolen. My purposes for copying are 100% within fair use, but they would be blocked by this DRM if it works, and even if it doesn't, I'd be made a criminal for bypassing it under the DMCA.
Of course the real irony of these systems is that they do not prevent piracy as others have pointed out. All it takes is one person to bypass the DRM & the CD is in the wild. And clearly, as DVD's demonstrate, DRM doesn't even slow down commercial piracy operations. No, the real reason for DRM on CD's is to stop people like me. The RIAA loves it when CD's get damaged or stolen. That means that there is a good chance that I'll buy a new copy of the same CD. That is the only reason that they are looking for "effective" copy protection. They know that it will never stop anybody who is dedicated, but if it can stop casual copiers like myself, regardless of the fact that I'm not doing anything wrong, that means more money in their pockets.
The young girls who are exposed to civil and criminal penalties because they supply the music you download? That is a little like saying that John should go free while his underage prostitute takes the fall. You tempt a child into crime, you should accept responsibility for the consequences of your actions.
Here you are making no sense at all. Who are you saying is liable? Under current law, the penalties for recieving illegally copied material are much less then those for providing it. The young girl in question ceratinly is guilty of the crime, even though you suggest that she isn't. The question is whether the "john doe" lawsuits the RIAA has been using are effective or even legal. The parent poster was presumably arguing that the means the RIAA are using are misguided and at leats bordering on illegal and I think he's correct.
While the companies producing the DRM will make big bucks in the short term, the recording labels will only shoot themselves in the foot by using DRM. When they are forced to abandon the technology as Sony recently did, the gravy train for DRM producers will be gone, too.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
I think the pragmatic view is DRM doesn't have to be unbreakable. It sure doesn't seem possible unless you encrypt the content and never decrypt it for any reason. Even the theoritcal poster child of working DRM (console games) proves this: with a totally closed system and everything under your control you are still going to be hacked. Like with accounting rules ("it shouldn't cost more to track the thing than the thing is worth") I think this is just a matter of how painful it is. Its like asking if anyone makes a lock for your front door that is unbreakable -- no, but that's not the point.
Hardware dongles are pretty close to 'working' (for some definition of the term). Sure you can hack the app, but they give a reasonable in-between: you can copy the s/w all you like, use it anywhere, etc, as long as you have the physical token that goes with the license. As long as the physical token isn't fragile this is IMO a fair compromise; with USB its even moderately convenient.
I worked as a developer on a couple of products using these and the theory was you could create enough FUD that legitimate users wouldn't use a hacked version: dongles of the mid 90's gave you enough space to put code in the dongle, the suggested use is that you put bits of your application into the dongle and pull them out at runtime. They recommended you put a couple of obvious "this program can't run w/o a dongle" messages in, but then also put more subtle chunks of code that if not run would corrupt or crash the product in subtle and recognizable (to tech support) ways.
From a business/moral/usability point of view h/w dongle based DRM (for pricey s/w) 'works'. This doesn't mean its unbreakable, just that its 'fair' enough it isn't worth the effort (the chief complain of having a single point of failure is to just send two dongles per license and suffer the possibility of it being abused).
None of this helps with music of course, since they have to support normal audio players.
I hope they keep trying crap like this and making it worse and worse, with any luck it will implode on itself and 'no DRM' will be a selling feature. I turned the corner of not buying PC games with HL2's DiVX scheme coming on the scene.
Slashdot.org is hosted in the United States, and what you describe is almost certainly a DMCA violation in the United States. Any site telling you how to modify Windows to open up the Secure Audio Path will get shut down by Microsoft and/or the major record labels.
This may just be a rumour, but I've heard that this Interweb thingy lets you access sites in completely different countries!
Just imagine the possibilities if it's true!
Canada? Not for long.
The standard way around that is to have a second TOC which says the audio tracks don't exist. Audio players only read the first TOC, computer drives read all of them. Of course, this is where my friendly black mar^H^H^Hevil circumvention device comes in handy.
I am trolling
Not only that. Any band that records their concerts to CD to sell after the show has to pay a patent royalty to Clear Channel. Pretty sick, eh?
What?
Mind you, it won't cost as much as the other factors in a CD:
- coke for the music execs
- whores for the music execs (I know, kind of redundant - should be "whores for the whores")
- fast cars and fat wallets for the music execs
- payola from the music execs to radio playlist directors
- fast women and loose crack for the radio playlist directors (or is that "loose women and fast crack")
- studio overhead - later charged back to the performers
Notice there's nothing in this list for the people actually making the music? Just do a google for "courtney love does the math".Choice quote:
And this is using generous-to-the-band figures.Here's a link to the whole article suitable for printing
my journal: scripts for leaching porn baked fresh daily
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?
Set up your recording application. (3 minutes)
Play the cd.
Walk away. Come back when the CD is done playing.
Split the tracks. It's usually obvious where track breaks will be. (5 minutes)
Name the tracks. (6 minutes)
Encode to mp3. (background task if neccesary)
Total work: 14 minutes
Note that these are very liberal estimates, and it could probably be done in half the time if you are experienced. There are plenty of people with quality audio input. I have an M-Audio Audiophile 2496 that would work for the task, and many others have even better interfaces.
However, the most important thing to remember is that only one person needs to do this.
I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
There are several programs out there that will auto-split tracks for you; some of them will also encode to mp3 or other formats as well. RIP Vinyl (available at download.com) is an inexpensive Windows program that will automagically split tracks up based on the silence between them, and you can change a whole bunch of other settings as well. I don't know if there's anything there's anything like that for Linux, but Audio Companion seems like a good bet for Mac OS X, or CD Spin Doctor if you have Toast Titanium 6.
I've wanted to convert my record collection into mp3s for a while now, and after doing a few albums for friends manually using Peak, I would recommed the auto-splitting recording programs. If the industry was really serious about DRM, they'd release all music on vinyl and movies on film since it's so much more difficult to encode analog sources.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
Linux users can use Gramofile, which does this. Unfortunately you have to split the tracks up after the rip, but that's not such a problem.
I've found with Gramofile that I have to go through the whole sound file to check the splits are in the right place anyway (you can manually edit them if it got it wrong). It never really gets them completely right---it always needs another half a second or so to get the fade outs right, and it can have trouble with silent sections in songs. Most similar apps I've seen also have these limitations. Okay for quick and dirty, but it does get a bit annoying when you've got headphones on.
Cogito, ergo sig.
I have a easier solution for you.
Get a friend which has a fairly new mp3 player with a line in, plug it into the cds line out
and start recording. Most new mp3 players can encode up to 320kbps and
split the tracks where the cd are split, so you wont even have to do that by yourself.
So its really just the time that it takes for the cd to finish.
- webbie
Well I've got a couple of reasonable CD players, and two DAT machines. All devices feature analogue, coaxial (SPDIF) and optical outs with the DAT machines additionally having the same connections as inputs.
One of the DAT machines is currently hooked up to my computer which serves as the heart of my home recording studio. The main reason I bought the DAT machines was to record masters for some of the local bands I've played in over the years. They've also seen a hell of a lot of use converting old tape based demos to CD (including some 1/4 and 1/2 inch tape stuff)
In other words ANYTHING that can be input to my DAT machines (including my CD player, radio, cassette deck, video, DVD player, outputs of my mixing desk etc. etc.) can be turned into a WAV file. In the worst case scenario this could be done via microphones placed next to some speakers.
Once the datas in my PC it is then a trivial matter to edit the WAVs and reformat the data into MP3/Ogg Vorbis/FLAC/Format de jour. etc. etc.
Moral of the story ? DRM is a waste of time. A completely lame waste of time. All it will ever do is inconvenience the casual consumer. For anyone in my position (and there are a hell of a lot of us out there) it is utterly trivial to defeat anything they've come up with so far. If I can hear it, I can record it. Once I've recorded it I can format shift it to my hearts content.
And on this note I'd also like to say that I'm not interested in pirating the fucking crap that get's passed of a "music" these days. Every single MP3 I've ever created has been to play in my CD walkman (which plays MP3 CDs) and usually involves a CD I've either bought or have mastered myself. Very very occasionally I've taken away some MP3s on a CD from a friends house and guess what ? Just like when we used to share tapes if I hear something I like I'VE GONE OUT AND BOUGHT SOMETHING BY THE BAND.
The day I can't do that is the day I stop listening to other peoples music (I'll just twang away on my guitar instead)
The idiots who are running the recording industry protection racket are a bunch of clueless fucks. Pissing off your customers will get you nowhere. They are dinosaurs who deserve to die off. Thanks to the internet bands will soon be able to deal direct with their fans and the entire rank of utterly corrupt middle men are no longer required.
So Ladies and Gentlemen, vote with your wallets and just say no. Don;t buy anything with DRM on it (n.b. iPods fanboys this means you)
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !