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EMI Considers Abandoning DRM on CDs

Posted by Zonk on from the wisdom-comes-with-experience dept.

jOmill writes "EMI Netherlands has announced that it is considering no longer using DRM on CDs, because it isn't worth the cost. According to Reuters the company is still reviewing the decision. From the article: 'Critics have argued that the system has not worked as consumers could be driven to illegal sites to download music to the popular iPod instead. A spokeswoman for EMI said it had not manufactured any new disks with DRM, which restricts consumers from making copies of songs and films they have purchased legally, for the last few months.'"

32 of 166 comments (clear)

  1. Good... by daveschroeder · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...because when any "DRM" is used on audio CDs, they're technically no longer even "audio CDs"...at least, they don't officially conform to the Red Book Audio specification, and can't even use the familiar "Compact Disc Digital Audio" logo. While certainly they're intended to be purchased and used as audio CDs, and everyone would still refer to them as such, they're at most an "audio disc resembling a conventional audio CD," or "audio that is incidentally stored on CD media".

    Intrinsic to a Red Book Audio CD is the ability to extract the audio in its pristine digital form. While content owners may not appreciate that in today's digital marketplace, that's what an audio CD is. If labels want to add DRM or anything else not in the Red Book Audio specification to these discs, they are obligated to make it clear that they're not really audio CDs, and indeed, consumers have found the belated warning that they "may not play in all CD players" only too true, resulting in practical decisions like this one from EMI Netherlands. This is what you get when you screw with established international standards.

    Especially humorous is that, any amount of DRM aside, all of this music will always be widely available on file sharing networks, mostly as lossy MP3s. Who is affected most, then, by not being able to extract audio from discs within one's own physical possession, given that the music is invariably already available any number of file sharing networks many times over? The individual consumer who simply wants to enjoy his purchase on another device, such as a computer or portable music player. While DRM is intended to prevent or reduce casual copyright infringement, it never will stop content from being copied, and DRM on "audio CDs" is just one of those wrongheaded ideas, given that it toys with a standard that has already been established for two and a half decades.

    Until someone figures out how to alter properties of nature in such a way that physical property of audio or video being able to be in an analog state via sound waves or the electromagnetic spectrum can be eliminated, there will always be mechanisms for those who wish to violate copyright to violate it. In the meantime, DRM will mostly affect and inconvenience legitimate, paying consumers of content.

    1. Re:Good... by Mateo_LeFou · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "DRM is intended to prevent or reduce casual copyright infringement"

      I'd like to point out -- though most people here probably know -- that casual copyright infringement very likely improves the bottom line of the music publisher. E.g. my friend casually gives me a mix CD of tunes he thinks I'd like, I'm X% more likely to buy one of those artists' discs later. That X% increase has a monetary value in the aggregate. I'd love a link to a scientific study of that value.

      --
      My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
    2. Re:Good... by Monkelectric · · Score: 4, Funny
      Preventing casual infringement also depends on your definition of infringement. I bought the new David Gray CD. It wouldnt play in my computer for some reason, so I bought another copy. Then I found out it was copy protected. I don't *OWN* a cd player and I couldn't rip it.

      I have two copies of the album and to this day I have only heard it via an mp3 downloaded illegally. In this case they just prevented me from legal fair use and its the last sony album I'll every buy.

      --

      Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley

    3. Re:Good... by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 4, Insightful

      While DRM is intended to prevent or reduce casual copyright infringement...

      I disagree with this. In my opinion DRM is intended to prevent lawful use of copyrighted material and motivate people to buy multiple copies of the same work by intentionally breaking interoperability with other devices. That is to say, content producers would like their customers to buy one copy for their home CD player another copy for the tape player in the car and another copy for their portable player. The industry is used to income from people periodically re-buying their favorite media in the new format or to replace the copy they have broken. They are terrified of the idea that a person could buy one copy and use it forever, handing it down to their children.

      Media companies claim that they are trying to stop illegal copyright infringement, but they also claim accidentally posting a song on a file sharing network costs them hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue, and if not for file sharing networks 90% of the gross national income would be spent on music. Why anyone would believe such obvious liars is beyond my understanding.

    4. Re:Good... by neuro.slug · · Score: 2

      You know, I've found that the reason most CDs don't sound that great is because the recording itself sucks, the mixing sucks, or the CD player sucks. Unless the label is known for producing decent recordings (Telarc, Chesky, Proteus, etc.), then there's a darn good chance that producing hi-fi grade music isn't their highest priority.

      If you're looking for a good "budget" CD player, might I recommend the AH! Njoe Tjoeb, as it's made CDs sound.. so.. much.. better. :)

    5. Re:Good... by porpnorber · · Score: 2, Insightful
      So they got your money twice. Score!

      I have long suspected that the motivation for DRM on 'CDs' was to exploit people in your very situation (even a music exec cannot be so stupid as to imagine that you can prevent copying without preventing playback; even the most conservative recording industry insiders know about concepts like 'cables' and 'tapes'). The cost, to them, of selling coasters in CD boxes is that the third time this happens to you, you stop buying music on silver discs altogether. So why would their market analysts find this acceptable? Because they had been projecting that you, the individual consumer, would only be buying three or four more CDs, ever, anyway. Conclusion: MP3s have not taken off the way the music industry expected. They made the decision several years ago to cash out of the music retail market, and they made it too soon.

      So now we're seeing backpedalling.

      Myself, I used to spend $500/month on music, when CDs were consistently playable. Now? Zero. I don't download it, 'legally' or otherise; I just listen to the radio. I wonder if I'll ever buy music again? I'm a once-bitten-twice-shy type. I haven't bought Apple since they killed the Newton (maybe OS-X will be cancelled overnight, too?), so I doubt it.

    6. Re:Good... by metamatic · · Score: 2, Informative

      In some locations, you can demand your cash back. For example, in the UK, consumer protection law states that if the product is unsuitable for the purpose for which it was sold, you can get a refund. No store credit. In this case, if you're sold something under the pretense that it's a CD, and it turns out it won't play in some CD players because it doesn't meet the CD specifications, I think it would be an open and shut case in small claims court.

      --
      GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
  2. Great Day by Mateo_LeFou · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The second-greatest day will be when they report that sales dropped off not the slightest bit b/c of this change DRM only annoys purchasers. Not "pirates"

    --
    My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
    1. Re:Great Day by VEGETA_GT · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Ok seriously I want to look through there collection of Music and see if they have anything I would like. I would love to send a message to the RIAA that people well support non DRM material.

    2. Re:Great Day by arivanov · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yes I did. 5 months ago. 3 CDs from Virgin records via Amazon.

      The wife wanted to listed to them on the MP3 player in her car and her Mac at work. None could play them. Even the "proper" Sony CD player had problems with 2 out of 3.

      I ended up researching the matter and buying a DVD rewriter model with a known firmware bug (or feature depends how you look at it) which can rip through most current DRM with flying colours. So the "could not rip" lasted for 3 days in total. After that it was ripped and encoded in the suitable formats for usage on the devices used for listening in the house.

      Frankly, Virgin and Macromedia can take their DRM and shovel it where sun does not shine and rotate it at 48x CD speed until they the torque pushes their heads out of their arse. What really pissed me off was the fact that I have purchased it legally, 2 out of 3 had a "CD digital audio" on them and they were unuseable on all devices in the house.

      From the point of view of the average consumer this is perceived as "shitty and unuseable product" so I am not surprised EMI is considering abandoning the practice. It is costing them lost sales and handling returns from pissed of customers who after that go to "illegal" networks or AllOfMP3.

      --
      Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
      http://www.sigsegv.cx/
    3. Re:Great Day by Gr8Apes · · Score: 2, Interesting

      That would require them to have "good" artists.

      The primary reason that people stop buying new CDs is because there are no good CDs being produced. I'd have lots of trouble naming 1 great CD that came out in the last 6 months (even though I've bought a couple).

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    4. Re:Great Day by badasscat · · Score: 2, Informative

      Has anybody actually bought a CD that they could not rip?

      I've never seen one that I couldn't easily rip songs from....

      I think some people are missing the point of your question, which is that CD-based DRM is trivially easy to defeat. So the only people it hurts are those who just want to play the CD and can't, because it doesn't conform to spec.

      I personally only own a couple DRM-laden CD's (I didn't know before I bought them, but I probably would have bought them anyway). Neither gave me any problem whatsoever ripping with EAC; they ripped just like every other CD. Just as an experiment, though, I did put one of them in my computer and let it autoplay (I know about the rootkit stuff; this was different DRM), and it first tried to install some proprietary player and then it told me I was in the wrong region and couldn't play the disc at all (this was a Japanese CD). I tried to rip it in iTunes and got an error message in Japanese.

      So it just depends on what tools you're using. Based on that experience, though, I would probably not even risk playing any CD on my computer anymore; I just rip immediately with EAC.

      btw, the CD in question above is PUFFY's "59" - they've released a full-length CD since then that has no DRM at all, on the same record label (ki/oon / Sony). So obviously, EMI in the Netherlands is not the only company getting the message.

    5. Re:Great Day by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Indeed I have purchased a CD that I could not rip. In fact, it was an EMI published CD, and the last CD I ever purchased.

      Everyone here knows the cat and mouse game that has existed between consumers who want to exercise their fair use rights, and publishers who want to prevent "casual copying." For years, none of this affected me. I purchased CDs on occasion, a couple a year usually. I've even purchased a few "copy protected" CDs with the bullshit data track. These methods were laughable. Despite this "copy protection" I bought these CDs, brought them home, trivially ripped them to MP3s, and loaded them onto my MP3 player.

      Then two years ago I purchased Massive Attack's "Danny the Dog" soundtrack which I believe was published by EMI. It used a different method of copy protection than the bullshit data track that was common at the time. Instead, it contained a corrupted C2-error stream, a violation of the redbook audio standard.

      The purpose of the error stream is to provide the CD player with a means of detecting when it has read erroneous data from the main audio track and allow the CD player to interpolate samples instead of producing an audible skip. The intent of the error stream was to improve the robustness of CD players even when there minor disc damage was present. Great idea, right?

      Well, some folks noticed that CD-ROM drives, by large, acknowledge the C2-error stream as they should. However, most cheaper CD players made in the past few years ignore the error stream entirely, since it's not necessary for playback (although it may improve the playback quality in less than ideal environments) and costs more to support. These folks figured that, if you write an intentionally corrupted C2-error stream, then the CD can't be ripped properly in a CD-ROM drive (it makes clicking noises a few times a second), but would work fine in "most" CD players.

      I wasn't aware of this copy protection until after I bought the disk and tried (unsuccessfully) to rip it. At the time, I thought "that's odd." But, then I tried it in other CD players around the house and discovered it wouldn't work in any CD player I owned. It didn't work in my computer, in my car, in my mid-80s Sony model, anything. Eventually I did find a cheap boombox that it did work in, but what good was that to me?

      I was furious. I already knew copy protection was bullshit, but I didn't care because the techniques practiced at the time were laughable at best. However, to intentionally cripple a product, violating the very standard that it was supposed to adhere to, was a slap in the face to both me as a consumer and as an engineer. I couldn't really have known that it was crippled either, sure it didn't have the Compact Disc logo on the case, but many cases no longer featured the logo on the outside. Furthermore, it didn't say anything on the outside about how "this was a copyprotected disc and may not play right in all CD players" or something to that effect.

      Realizing that I would never again be able to purchase a CD with confidence that it would be useful to me in my terms (allow me to rip it), or even play it, I vowed that day to cease any support of the recording industry. I managed through patience and luck to return the CD to Best Buy (another story in itself), and have not purchased a single CD (or any other form of music) since. EMI's copyprotection backfired on me, all it did was breed resentment, and cost them lost future sales. I doubt my experience was isolated, and I hope that anyone else who was inconvenienced, or rather cheated, to the same degree that I was also decided to stand up to them.

      The irony of this whole story is that I originally downloaded the "Danny the Dog" soundtrack months before it was released. I never saw the movie, which I believe came out a few months after the soundtrack. Instead, my first exposure to the soundtrack was from the pirate scene. I enjoyed it so much that I decided to support the artist and the label by purchasing it upon releas

  3. Yay! by SatanicPuppy · · Score: 2, Funny

    Maybe the rest of the damn CD makers will follow suit, and I can go back to using my Sharpies to scribble on the front of my CDs!

    --
    ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
  4. I know it has been cold outside recently... by symbolic · · Score: 4, Interesting

    But did hell freeze over?

    Finally, they're starting to get a clue. I do not advocate pirating music in any way. However, I think it's equally, if not more insidious, that commercial interests are making it very difficult for consumers to *want* to do the right thing. This is a step in the right direction. *AA....are you listening?

    1. Re:I know it has been cold outside recently... by LWATCDR · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well they got a clue but not the one your thinking of.
      1. DRM costs money.
      2. Current DRM didn't stop the music from showing up on file shareing networks.
      3. Current DRM is a waste of money.
      4. Stop paying for DRM that doesn't work.
      5. More Profit.

      Now if they ever get effective DRM it will be back.

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
  5. Duh by _PimpDaddy7_ · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "EMI Netherlands has announced that it is considering no longer using DRM on CDs, because it isn't worth the cost.

    We could have told you that, but since when did you guys ever listen to your customers?

    From the article: 'Critics have argued that the system has not worked as consumers could be driven to illegal sites to download music to the popular iPod instead. A spokeswoman for EMI said it had not manufactured any new disks with DRM, which restricts consumers from making copies of songs and films they have purchased legally, for the last few months.'"

    Did you ever think we, as consumers, when buying a CD, want to make backups, import the CD to our Ipod or other MP3 player?

    It's amazing how management runs these companies. How can you deliver a product your customer wants when you don't even listen to what they WANT?

    1. Re:Duh by GigsVT · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Salesmen.

      Managment listens to these stupid sales pitches for products like this, and buys into the promises.

      Salesmen (especially software salesmen) are more dangerous to a company than any competitor.

      --
      I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
  6. Let's think of the consequences here... by active1x0 · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...and the poor software pirates who are quickly being putting out of business. How are they going to put food on the table if they don't have anything to crack? Let's do the right thing and think of their needs, people!

  7. In other news... by e4g4 · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...EMI has announced they are discontinuing the release of new albums on standard Audio CDs and will now be selling Audio HD-DVDs complete with fingerprint scanners and GPS transmitters and facial recognition software. Any AHD-DVD found to be played by a user other than it's owner (or within hearing range of a non-owner) will self-destruct, and any AHD-DVD found outside it's allocated region will explode.

    In other, other news, numerous airlines worldwide have banned the usage of all media disks during flight.

    --
    The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
  8. Re:Riiiiiiight, downloads... by DaveCar · · Score: 2, Informative


    I haven't found any CDs that wouldn't happily rip with cdparanoia on Linux. Ergo DRM CDs are pointeless as it only takes on smartarse with a free OS to flood the P2P channels with decent quality rips.

    A colleague had a couple of CDs, one being by the Beatles, which appeared to have a second data session containing compressed versions and some Windows/Mac driver type stuff on it. It wouldn't rip in his Mac, he claimed - I don't know if this was some rootkit type setup. No problem extracting the CDDA which I gave him on a data CD, and also gave him regular CD versions sans the annoying second session.

    Screw you, The Man! Thanks for making it *more desirable* to have a *non-original copy* of a CD because it works *better than the original*. Where's the fricking added value in that?

    Disclaimer: I work for a record label/studio/distributor - we're not all evil.

  9. Perhaps Forced By Globalization? by blueZhift · · Score: 2, Interesting

    In the article, it says that the DRM'd CDs were sold primarily outside of the U.S.. I suspect this was because of the headaches and lawsuits they knew would likely plague them in the United States. But now with the globalization fueled by the internet, I can imagine that more and more U.S. consumers were importing these DRM'd CDs perhaps after discovering a foreign artist via their music downloaded from the internet. If that's even partially true, then it would be more proof in support of the notion that "sharing" music over the internet is actually growing the market. Making music easier to get legitimately will be a win for the music industry in the long run, if they can get over their CD and DRM fixations.

    --
    To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
  10. EMI Artist list by jimstapleton · · Score: 3, Informative

    List by sub label. Taken from http://www.emirecords.co.uk/loader.html

    *NOTE: The site is flash so I can't copy and paste, these are hand copied, sorry for misspellings* ::EMI::
    Auf Der Maur
    Badly Drawn Boy
    Beth Orton
    Captain
    Corinne Bailey Ray
    David Gilmore
    Faith Evans
    Faultline
    FischerSpooner
    Hot Chip
    Iron Maiden
    John Cale
    Kate Bush
    Keren Ann
    Kraftwerk
    Pink Floyd
    Radio 4
    Robbie Williams
    Saosin
    Shawn Emanuel
    Sigur Ros
    Starsailor
    Telepopmusik
    The Aliens
    The Concrete
    Vincent Van and the Villans ::Heavenly Records::
    Dove
    Ed Hardcourt
    The Little Ones
    The Magic Numbers
    The Vines ::DFA Records::
    Black Dice
    Delia Gonzalz & Gavin Russom
    The Juan Maclean ::Positiva:: ::Positiva::
    Deep Dish
    Ferry Corsten
    Paul Van Dyk
    Soul Avengerz
    Soul Seekers
    The Shapeshifters ::Positiva:: ::Additive::
    Remy

    --
    34486853790
    Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
  11. Logical by Jugalator · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So they're making a definity imnprovement of the product availability to their customers, making a definite cost reduction, with only a theoretical risk of noticeably increased piracy? Yeah, that sounds logical here too, and I wonder what took them so long. Pirates aren't those crying out at DRM, they use BitTorrent or other P2P nets. That's the biggest design hole of DRM, IMHO. Maybe the point was to not have a single pirate be able to rip (one is enough) that protection or gain it from other sources where it's not protected (or before it is), but all I can say about that idea is "dream on".

    --
    Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
  12. Foo Fighters: One by One by norminator · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Has anybody actually bought a CD that they could not rip?
    I've never seen one that I couldn't easily rip songs from....

    I had a Foo Fighters CD that I got as a gift which was labeled as an "enhanced" CD. The first time I put it in my PC at home, I forgot to hold down the shift key, and I wasn't able to rip it on that computer (although the software on the CD wanted to "give" me a set of protected files for all of the songs, which I would only be able to listen to with their proprietary player). I ripped the CD under Linux on my laptop, then again on my work PC in Windows. Also with this CD, it was supposed to have some kind of bonus content that would connect to 'somebody' over the Internet to authenticate the CD in order to unlock the bonus content. That never worked on any PC I tried it on, the authentication always failed.

    So there were two disappointments on that disc: 1) If you don't hold down the shift key, you won't be able to rip it (under Windows) and 2) the broken bonus content. I like the music on the CD, though... it's too bad that they have to muck it all up with DRM under the guise of extra features that don't work.

  13. Re:Which is it? by Rogerborg · · Score: 2, Funny

    Look on your CD player. See the buttons marked pause and stop? Figure out the difference.

    --
    If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
  14. I think they pretty much given up a few years ago by TAZ6416 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I posted about this earlier on http://www.groklaw.net/

    Ithink that the last major UK EMI release with DRM was Coldplay's X&Y back in 2005, any other releases I noticed on EMI was on the budget/reissue EMI Gold label, which was usually sold at about £2.99 in the bargain bin's at Sainsburys (a posher version of Walmart for our American chums ;) )

    Why they kept it on the cheap stuff and not the latest releases I don't know, I suspect they were trying to see how many returns as "faulty" they would get on the budget range, maybe it was too high a percentage and they decided the cost of the returns on a big selling CD was too high.

    They used to have a pro-drm site at http://www.emimusic.info/uk/ printed on the DRM'd CD's but they seem to have pulled it.

    Funny to see how cocky the record companies were back in 2002 compared to now - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/11/21/all_cds_wi ll_be_protected/

    Jonathan

  15. Maybe they realised... by beezly · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Maybe they realised it was a waste of time because it doesn't work.

    This may just be my experience, but I haven't come across a single CD (including some which are explicitly marked as having some sort of "Copy Protection" on them) which didn't rip first time in my PC. There's nothing special about my drive (I've used an old Matsushita DVD drive and a Plextor DVD Re-writer). Maybe it's because I am running Linux, but as far as I can tell, CD-Ex on Windows would work equally well as anything I am using under Linux.

  16. because modern CD players are DATA players by apodyopsis · · Score: 5, Informative

    as pointed out before the Red Book specification describes audio CD's.

    but data DVD has sectors and format information in the data on top of the red book specification.

    and the Orange Book specification give details of multisession formats.

    most of the "copy protection" systems used worked by wrapping the session information to impossible combinations that were impossible to read. or degrading the galois based CRC information that was used to recover bad data. neither of these methods were fatal to a Red Book player that only played audio disks as it ignored all other formats happily.

    but these days most CD players can play MP3's also, and hence are data players not audio players - this means they are exactly the systems that the copy protection was designed to disrupt.

    so the CD manufacturers found themselves in a situation where the new hifi's being built were being disrupted by they copy protection and hence unable to play any of the CDs. its a question of the physiscal data path built into the decoder IC on most MP3/Audio CD players.

    in short, I'm not suprised they stopped including it - I'm just suprised they waited so long.

  17. Re:Which will come first? by paeanblack · · Score: 2, Funny

    Which will come first?

    Effective DRM
    or the release of Duke Nukem Forever?

    The current problem with Duke Nukem Forever is the DRM they implemented on the master disc. The actual game has been finished for quite some time now. The reason you can't find it in stores is because the cd manufacturers haven't figured out how copy the master without Duke showing up and putting his boot up their ass. It truly is the world's first kickass DRM.

    DRM...the only way to win is not to play.

  18. Record companies trying to spindoctor the truth... by thrill12 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ...at least in some of the newsreports I saw, in which they stated that "it was not feasible to use a DRM system as the system was hacked every time", rather than (the truth) "the consumer and CD license holders (!) have fully rejected the protection systems we have devised, because they hamper fair use - especially in the area of simply playing out the CD (not even copying it) on normal consumer-grade playback systems and even outright violate consumer rights (sony rootkit)".

    --
    Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
  19. Considering. Hmm. by Ed+Black · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Well talk is cheap - speaking as someone who stopped my 3 CDs a month habit when CD copy protection became widespread, It's going to take more than "considering" to get me near their coasters again. To be honest, the idea of giving money to them at all doesn't sit well with me with the way record companies have behaved over the last few year - it just feels more like paying a ransom to suited mobsters than buying music. Ah well, there's no good way to pay the artists and not the record companies I suppose, so I'll continue to enjoy music through royalties-based channels and magnatunes.