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.'"

Comments

And on a Linux PC

[Anonymous Coward]

It presents itself as a broken CD.

Re:And on a Linux PC

[Porn Whitelist]

That's because Linux is broken.
It has nothing to do with the CD.

It has EVERYTHING to do with the CD. That's why copy-protected "CDs" can't carry the CD logo - they're broken.

Or have you forgotten this story http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/01/11/181625 8&mode=thread

A way around it all.

[ScytheBlade1]

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.

Re:A way around it all.

[belmolis]

Even better is to get at the digital audio data before it hits the digital-to-analog converter. Vsound is a free, open source program that does this under Linux.

Re:A way around it all.

[badasscat]

The only thing stopping anyone is laziness. It's only going to work at 1x speed, so there's no conveinience there. You can't exactly use the CDDB lookup to get the CD's info automatically entered, you're stuck doing everything by hand. That is far too much work for many people, making this copy-protection scheme work better than many others.

That's not the point. What these idiots fail to realize is that it only takes one person with too much time on their hands to completely destroy the entire rationale for copy protection. It only takes one guy to rip this way, enter everything by hand (this is not a big deal, btw; I've done it on plenty of my own CD's not in the FreeDB), post to a Bittorrent tracker site, share an album on Edonkey, or whatever. Then it's out there, and everybody's got it. And you're back to square one again, with a DRM system that's doing nothing but inconveniencing people that want to exercise their legitimate and legally sanctioned fair use rights.

This is why DRM systems cannot work. Because in the Internet age, it only takes one single person to completely mess everything up and make all that work on the DRM scheme for nought. And we're not talking spending weeks cracking an encryption scheme, either; we're talking taking an hour to record a CD through an analog connection and then split the tracks up and type in a few track titles. This is hardly a large amount of work, nor does it require any technical skills.

Regardless, I'm sure the DRM itself will be cracked within the first day or two of its release. But even if it isn't, it will be worked around. It's just so completely pointless that it makes me angry that any company would waste any amount of money on it. I mean there are so many more useful things that could be done with that money, such as, you know, actually developing good musical acts.

Re:A way around it all.

[Skapare]

Taking away your fair-use copying rights is where the money is. Despite all the piracy, and hype being made about it, those who regularly download music are still a minority. What the hype is doing is shielding them enough to let them use petty DRM like this. Assuming 25% of the market for any given music are pirates (a high figure) and 75% are not, by forcing that 75% to have to buy a 2nd copy at full price for on the road, the corporations will be 50% ahead.

The music industry doesn't really care about the piracy as long as it stays small enough, which their various legal threats and other campaigns can ensure. What they will be doing is using the existance of such piracy to justify their own form of ripping the average consumer to get profit levels hat exceed what they could get with zero piracy and total fair-use. It's not really much different than terrorism being used as an excuse to take away lots of freedoms that wouldn't really impact terrorism.

Must use their software?

[Chris L. Mason]

"...limiting the player accessibility to the provided player software..."

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.

They admit it can be hacked

[Porn Whitelist]

From the article:

"Could it be broken? I'm sure that somebody must be able to do it," said Graham Oakes, the head of Los Angeles-based Ezee Studios, which represents First 4 Internet. "But is there a generally known hack that has been put on the Net, or have any of the record label IT people found a hack yet? No."

So it's only a matter of time ...

The company got its start by offering a tool to identify pornographic images

Like you need a tool to do this? :-)

Re:copy protection that works

[Nighttime]

Ah but, did they remove both Shift keys?

Re:Tell me why I should care?

[Marvelicious]

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.