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Sony's New DRM Technique
skochak writes "Sony has introduced a new DRM scheme. You can burn a CD-R from the original once, but you can't re-burn from that first copy." From the article: "The concept is known as 'sterile burning.' And in the eyes of Sony BMG executives, the initiative is central to the industry's efforts to curb casual CD burning. 'The casual piracy, the school yard piracy, is a huge issue for us...Two-thirds of all piracy comes from ripping and burning CDs, which is why making the CD a secure format is of the utmost importance.'"
This isn't a NEW technique: Philips did use it years ago with their DCC digital compact cassettes
Pumbaa! I don't wonder; I know.
No it couldn't. "tracks ripped and burned from a copy-protected disc are copied to a blank CD in Microsoft's Windows Media Audio format. The DRM embedded on the discs bars the burned CD from being copied." Which I think limits it to media. Please RTFA before posting crap based on the never-reliable summary.
The First4Internet CD copy protection technology destroys the registry keys (driver device names) associated with your CD-ROM devices. Then a monitoring app allows or disallows access to the device.
The monitoring app is buggy. If it stops running or loses your device references, you will have to reinstall windows to make your CD-ROM devices work again.
Also, by messing with the internal driver properties like this, many apps simply hang or crash the system when trying to access the device.
You can forget about using your legitimate buring software after putting one of those CDs in your computer...
-- anon DRM developer
"XCP aims to offer a reasonable level of protection against 'casual piracy' while working to provide the authorised customer with a quality digital music experience together with DRM features for controlled copying on their chosen platform. If data in any format is digitally written to a compact disc or DVD then it can be read from that disc in some way. XCP is designed to give a level of protection that will make it suitably difficult for the general consumer to copy and/or illegally distribute the content of the disc."
http://www.xcp-aurora.com/xcp2.aspx
This is exactly why any CD I burn I make an iso of. I keep my music CD's as well as my install CD's in .iso format so that I don't have to deal with this kind of crap.
How do they know this?...
/rant
Well basically, because the RIAA has been conducting market research surveys through the taylor group ( http://www.thetaylorgroup.com/ ). They do the survey with a couple hundred people every month to see just how their efforts are doing. Unfortunately for the RIAA, the survey is very poorly structured and since it can take over half an hour sometimes, it gets pretty monotonous. Add to that the respondent not getting paid for their time and the data they collect becomes, well, shit. As if that wasn't enough, the age restrictions on this are that the resp. has to be over the age of 10, with no maximum age (10-18 needs parent permission). They get 10 year olds and 90 year olds that have no idea what the hell theyre talking about (more so the latter) and they're asking all of these people about p2p networks, cd burning, drm, etc...
Anyway, thats how they know this.
Philips is serious about maintaining CD compatibility, and has forced the purveyors of incompatiple DRM schemes to clearly label that they are not compatible with the standard.
See, e.g., http://www.spectacle.org/0702/evan.html
--kirby
Fair Use is a legal term. It defines a small number of uses of a copyrighted work that are not considered infringing. Basically Fair Use defines situations where one can use a copyrighted work without requiring the permission of the copyright holder.
Any use that is not covered by the Fair Use provisions of the various copyright acts is infringing. The Fair Use exceptions are quite well defined, although the major copyright holders enjoy trying to shrink them down. I'm fairly certain that any commerical use is considered infringing.
Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair useI have tested the XCP2 copy protection system on a pre release disc. It will play on CD and DVD players. But it won't work on Macs or under Linux.
When you play it on a computer or DVD player you are not listening to the CD content but rather low bitrate DRM files squeezed into a 80 mb partition.
The effect of this is twofold.
1) The sound quality is crappy.
2) There is less space on the rest of the disc for the real music (only about 60 minutes!)
I will *never* buy an XCP2 disc. It installs software automatically when it is inserted into a windows computer. There is no 'OK' or 'I agree' button. It just does it without telling the user, I doubt these discs are legal and I can smell a lawsuit coming if they actually try and sell these trojan ridden discs.
- PS. This is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R where eliminated.
Disable autorun - problem solved!
- PS. This is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R where eliminated.
http://www.gigalaw.com/articles/2001-all/samuels-2 001-04-all.html
What's so different about this other than it prevents burning on a CD-ROM? If you want to burn CD's to your heart's content without fear from the man, just follow the law http://www.virtualrecordings.com/ahra.htm.
Link to previous comments on this issue.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=104952&cid=893 7703
"When it started with Snoop and NWA back in the day..."
Back in the day??!! You're not very old, are you.
As far as I can remember, it all started with Wonder Mike, Master Gee, and Big Bank Hank - three guys known as The Sugarhill Gang, followed up with artists like Kurtis Blow, Grandmaster Flash & The Furious 5, Run DMC...
"People will always pay to see a concert. People won't always pay for shitty CDs."
I have to agree with you there.
Get an audio CD burner that ignores SCMS (an old retarded DRM system that sets a no-copy bit on audio CDs) and can use plain CD-Rs that accepts digital input. They can be pricey, though, as they are marketed as pro equipment (the "consumer model" ones you can find at Circuit City and the like typically honor SCMS and require those "audio" CD-Rs). The one I have is a HHB from several years ago. However, it can blast through any DRM brain damage because if a CD player can play to a digital output the recorder can copy it. The resulting copy will be both SCMS free and free of whatever brain dead DRM scheme was used on the original. This copy can then be ripped normally to MP3 or whatever.
Sure, this can also be done entirely with a PC if you have the correct setup, but as a standalone audio recorder is not a PC no DRM scheme that could cripple a PC can affect it. Also, your copy is better in general since the recorder is designed to be high quality audio equipment.
LVM handles both adding physical volumes and removing physical volumes from a logical volume group. I'm not familiar enough with Windows' logical volume mechanism to say whether or not it can do so.
If you specifically want parity (i.e. RAID level 5), then LVM alone won't solve your problems, since it doesn't do parity generation.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Try dd_rescue, it is designed specifically for reading from media littered with read errors.
A loaf of bread doesn't come with an EULA prohibiting you from making sandwiches with it, even if the baker would rather you buy his sandwiches instead. My car didn't come with a notice stating all my rights to use it would be revoked if I replaced the gear knob with an 8-ball. I can pick up my pen and use it to write a review stating that the pen is a piece of shit and not worth the money, and there's nothing the manufacturer can do to stop me, provided I tell the truth.
So why should music and software producers be able to put in licence terms that I can't see until I've bought the (non-returnable, or at least not-easily-returnable) product telling me that I can't do things with their product, even though those things are perfectly legal, and perfectly acceptable to the average guy in the street?
Screw 'em. Screw 'em right up the arse and back down again.
Never mind Spamassassin. When's Spammerassassin coming out?