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Felt Tip Marker Defeats Copy-Protected CDs

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wed May 22, 2002 10:23 AM
from the felt-tip-markers-are-now-illegal dept.
News
We posted this story over a week ago but the mainstream media has flooded us with stories about felt tip markers and copy protected CDs so I figured I'd post it again since I'm really sick of deleting hundreds of submissions from people who didn't read Slashdot on May 13 ;) Basically you can mark the rim of some CDs and defeat the copy protection. And we all know what the DMCA says about tools for circumventing copy protection.
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  • Repeat (Score:3, Funny)

    by quantaman (517394) on Wednesday May 22 2002, @10:25AM (#3565594)
    Haha they posted a repeat the editors are such...

    Ummmm nevermind

  • Ah I see (Score:4, Funny)

    by gazbo (517111) on Wednesday May 22 2002, @10:26AM (#3565600)
    All this time I've complained at duplicate articles, now I see it's a 'feature' not a 'bug'.

    Where have I heard that before?

  • To be on the safe side... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Andorion (526481) on Wednesday May 22 2002, @10:27AM (#3565613)
    I threw out all my felt-tip markers when I read about this... I wouldn't want to have any tools for the circumvention of copy protection around my house.

    -Berj

  • Confused editor (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AirLace (86148) on Wednesday May 22 2002, @10:28AM (#3565631)
    And we all know what the DMCA says about tools for circumventing copy protection.

    I thought the DMCA only stipulates laws for devices designed specifically copyright violation? A marker pen clearly doesn't fall into this category. Otherwise they could have outlawed CD burners, photocopiers and who knows what else by now.
    • I thought the DMCA only stipulates laws for devices designed specifically copyright violation? A marker pen clearly doesn't fall into this category. Otherwise they could have outlawed CD burners, photocopiers and who knows what else by now.

      Tell that to Dmitry.
      • Tell that to Dmitry.

        But Dmitry's software was specifically designed to circumvent Adobe's (measly) ebook copy protection. Felt tip pens are not specifically designed to circumvent Sony's CD copy protection...
      • > Tell that to Dmitry.

        You know, I'm not kidding when I say that I accidentally read that line:

        "Tell that to Disney."

        It's really sad when when people have started to subconsciously associate wholesale abuse of the law and the public with the company which brought us Mickey Mouse and DisneyWorld. Wow. I guess the real question becomes--what have they done for us lately, versus what have they taken from us lately?

        Draconian copyright laws designed solely to keep Mickey from becoming public property like he would have years ago, and to keep their artificial-scarcity DVD racket going. The shredding of tons of documentation to prevent the family of Pooh's copyright licensor from proving that they weren't given their contractual percentage of the incredible sales. Some "family" company it's become, eh Walt?

        • Re:Confused editor (Score:5, Insightful)

          by roybadami (515249) on Wednesday May 22 2002, @01:42PM (#3566984)

          His software was designed solely for the purpose of pirating eBooks.

          FUD

          His tool was designed solely to allow copying of e-book data to another format. Not all copying is piracy; some is fair use.

    • Re:Confused editor (Score:5, Interesting)

      by rsidd (6328) on Wednesday May 22 2002, @10:47AM (#3565800)
      I thought the DMCA only stipulates laws for devices designed specifically copyright violation?

      No. Read the DMCA. It outlaws devices which can be used for bypassing digital copy control mechanisms, regardless of possible legitimate uses. CD burners don't pass copy control mechanisms, photocopiers don't deal with digital media (unless it's a barcode or something...). But a felt-tip pen which is used to bypass the manufacturer's CD copy control mechanism -- that's illegal under the DMCA, and I hope somebody sues for outlawing these evil things, that should show 'em...

    • Re:Confused editor (Score:5, Funny)

      by kaimiike1970 (444130) on Wednesday May 22 2002, @11:07AM (#3565940) Homepage
      You are correct. Unfortunatly, the price of sharpies will quadruple to pay for 'piracy potential'.


    • I thought the DMCA only stipulates laws for devices designed specifically copyright violation?

      Have you been paying attention? The DMCA is constantly invoked in legal threats against technologies that have legitimate uses. Poke around Slashdot's stories.


      Otherwise they could have outlawed CD burners, photocopiers and who knows what else by now.

      CD burners and photocopiers do not circumvent copy protection schemes. And that leads in to an interesting point.


      DeCCS was an interesting example of a technology attacked with DMCA claims despite its claims towards the DMCA's own interoperability clause. Yet, to pirate a DVD, one simply needs to make a bit-for-bit copy of the DVD, leaving the CCS "copy protection" scheme in place.

    • No, the DMCA in section 1201(E) stipulates that the devices are banned if they are (a) designed to circumvent, or (b) have limited commercial purpose other than to circumvent, or (c) are marketed as circumventing a "technological measure that effectively controls access to a work".

      The third part is important and reads "No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."

      Cut out the guff not related to marker pens, and we get: "No person shall ...provide ... any ... device ... that is marketed by that person ... for use in circumventing [encrypted content access]." So my guess is, can tell you a marker pen can be used to defeat access controls on non-redbook CDs, but then I am not allowed to give you a marker pen.

      In California I can't keep pet snails, molest butterflies or ride a bicycle in a swimming pool [legal-forms-kit.com] either.

      • So my guess is,[I] can tell you a marker pen can be used to defeat access controls on non-redbook CDs, but then I am not allowed to give you a marker pen

        Not so, you aren't allowed to tell people how to do it. You could say that somehow the marker can be theoretically used to get around the protection, but you can't demonstrate or tell a person how exactly to circumvent it.

      • Re:Confused editor (Score:4, Funny)

        by ThePilgrim (456341) on Wednesday May 22 2002, @10:53AM (#3565846) Homepage
        I'm sorry but thats one button too many.

        It will only have one button; eject.

        The VCR/DVD/CD Player will be allways on and will have to be connected to the phone line in order to work (so that your listning/veiwing habits can be tracked).

        In fact we can probably get away without the eject button, if we make all players one shot devices.

      • Don't you mean power and pay? ;-D

        DennyK

  • Are news sites all in violation of DMCA now? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by baboin (69381) on Wednesday May 22 2002, @10:28AM (#3565636)
    If 2600 couldn't even link to sites offering DeCSS downloads, does the DMCA also prohibit news sites and Slashdot from even mentioning that markers can defeat Sony's CD copy protection mechanism? Whoops, did I just incriminate myself?

  • DMCA markers (Score:4, Funny)

    by dmanny (573844) on Wednesday May 22 2002, @10:29AM (#3565646)
    In a surprise announcement today the justice department attempted to release the details of "Operation Sharpie" in which all felt tip markers are to be confiscated. The press conference ended prematurely when a SWAT team crashed in and siezed the whiteboard and all other presentation materials as evidence.
  • I just love the low tech solution to their high falootin attempt to screw us. There's gotta be a lot of RIAA people pulling their hair out the last couple weeks. :)

  • Remember those dongles you had to put on your parallel port to get AutoCAD to work? Well, I remember getting around that (not actually the AutoCAD one, was for another app) by copying the circuitry inside the dongle... it was really simple, just a couple of wires looping back. Does this mean a soldering iron is illegal? What about the circuit board, or the wire? Or what if I employed someone else to do it? Are they themselves illegal (how does that work!?) since I'm just using them as a tool.

    And, if the copy protection is so lame that it's trivial to break, doesn't that mean that general purpose things can be used to break the protection, and that's just mad. Think of password protected software... is a dictionary illegal since I might try to type in every word in it to gain access so I can copy it.

    Stop the madness!!!

  • Back in my day (Score:5, Funny)

    by unformed (225214) on Wednesday May 22 2002, @10:30AM (#3565655)
    We used felt tip markers to get high. Damn these kids with their fancy gadgets and such.
  • Does a copyright holder have to be the one to use the DMCA to shut someone down, or could someone else sue? For example, could the EFF start sending legal threats to websites like CNN that post the marker trick? Or even better, can they sue the marker company? Or do the suits have to come from the copright holder?

    Seems to me that it would be pretty easy to show how bad the DMCA is by shutting down a mainstream source that many people would consider serious journalism, as opposed to trying to defend 2600, which many people seem to think is published by a bunch of anarchistic communists.
    • ...a bunch of anarchistic communists.

      What is that supposed to mean? Is it like Disorganized Labor? Central Lack of Planning? Freedom Under Totalitarianism? I don't get it....
      • That's sort of the point. People who listen to the mainstream media tend to lump anarchists, communists, liberals, etc. based on mainstream coverage of anti government/globalism protests without even thinking about it, making 2600 a less than ideal test defendant for DMCA issues. I doubt most nontechnical people would have sympathy for regarding 2600 posting text that can help a person watch a DVD, but most people would get pretty pissed if the law stopped CNN from posting text explaining how to listen to a CD.
      • ...a bunch of anarchistic communists.

        What is that supposed to mean?

        Maybe it was a mistype, it should have read "ANACHRONISTIC Communists." Maybe he's a member of the SCA's rival, the Society of Anachronistic Communists, who dress up in costumes and do public speeches by Marx and Stalin, et al.

        (For the few of you who are uninitiated, the Society for Creative Anachronisms (SCA) dress in medievel garb and prance around with a bunch of nerf-esque swords and shields, and annoy the crap out of us ignorant white trash who are TRYING to have a barbeque in that public park, thank you very much!)

  • Deja Vu? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by HerrGlock (141750) on Wednesday May 22 2002, @10:31AM (#3565660) Homepage
    Okay, you posted that last week and admitted it. Sony has proven that there will be a bazillion eyes looking for a way to crack the copy protection of anything they put out and that no method is too arcane or obscure to look for it working.

    I wonder how long it will be for the software copy protection to be broken. This took about 2 months? (3?) to do, writing a program will not take much longer considering how many people don't care about the recording industry and are dying for the chance to break the encoding and get their names in hacker legend.

    DanH

    • Re:Deja Vu? (Score:5, Informative)

      by drinkypoo (153816) <martin.espinoza@gmail.com> on Wednesday May 22 2002, @11:20AM (#3566035) Homepage Journal
      All that fixing this in software requires is a new cdrom driver with a timeout; If it fails to read the CD-Extra data track (I assume that's what they did here) within n seconds then it falls back and treats it as a simple audio CD, preferrably issuing a warning.

      Compared to defeating actual copy protection schemes (as opposed to a simply malformed track) this is a walk in the park.

      • Re:Deja Vu? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by GoRK (10018)
        Either that, or someone gets access to the sourcecode for some CDR/CDROM firmware. Being able to tweak on the firmware (especially for a recordable CDR) would allow people to start breaking the copy protection of just about everything. The copy protection for most playstation CD's would likely be instantly broken since it is so well documented, and the only thing holding back is the inability to make a *true* bit for bit copy of the disc.

        In fact, making a true bit for bit copy of the disc would likely thwart about every copy protection scheme out there, come to think of it, any that use computer software that specifically checks for the ATIP info prewritten onto all CDR media -- but then again your custom firmware could fix that also :)

        ~GoRK
  • Has anyone actually been able to prove that this works? I'm not talking about anecdotal evidence, I mean, has any geek with /.'s general communal respect actually taken a stack of CDs, tried to rip them, gotten errors, marked the CDs up, and then got them to rip with no errors?

    And then documented the crap out of it?

    This all smells too much like the audiophile tricks of the 80's where coloring the outside rim of a CD was supposed to "trap stray laser radiation and improve the [clarity | transparency | imaging | other-nonsense-claptrap] of the music." (see the snopes [snopes2.com] entry on this one).

    I ask because I'm really curious what the scientific explanation for this would be. It was my understanding that they (the infamous "they") did something to the actual track of the CD, with bad physical spacing, introduced errors, or something like that, but did it *throughout* the CD. How on earth would marking the inside of the CD fix that?

    [okay, I just actually *read* the article. :) But I'd swear that an earlier posting talked about marking the inside, not outside, of the CD. Anyway, my question still holds -- any geek-written report on this, or do we only have the mainstream press to trust as to whether this actually works, and for which CDs?]

    • Re:Has anyone actually proven this? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Dimensio (311070) <[darkstar] [at] [iglou.com]> on Wednesday May 22 2002, @10:40AM (#3565747)
      The explanation is simple.

      The "copy protection" is simply a means of preventing the discs from working in a PC. This is done by putting a phony "data" track on the outer rim of the disc. It's visibly seperated from the rest of the information on the disc by small ring between the data and audio sections. An audio CD player will never access this track, but a PC CD-ROM drive will always try to read the data tracks first -- since it can't read the data track it regards the CD as non-working and you won't be able to play it. Using a sharpie on the outer rim (from what I understand you make a diagonal mark along the data track that runs tangent to the seperator for the audio track, but does not actually mark over the audio tracks) you block out the data track, and as such the drive won't read it.

      Reuters picked up the story and said that they tried it with success on the known Celine Dion non-CD.
  • "I wonder what type of copy protection will come next?" one posting on alt.music.prince read. "Maybe they'll ban markers."

    Maybe they'll just ban Prince. I think that would be one use of the DMCA that we could all approve of.

    Ok, ok. Kidding. I know: DMCA evil. You guys are right. Now move along.
  • If you use the black marker to defeat the copy protection, can you still use the green magic marker to make it sound better? And will that improve the sound of your MP3s?
  • You pry it out of my cold dead hand.

    Or...

    When Sharpies are outlawed, only outlaws will have Sharpies

  • DMCA jokes (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Erasmus Darwin (183180) on Wednesday May 22 2002, @10:38AM (#3565734)
    Call me crazy, but I'm getting tired of all 30 billion variations of "OMG! A paperclip is an illegal copy protection circumvention device because I can use it to poke out the eye of the person who makes the CDs, causing him to go to the hospital when he's supposed to be putting on the security track."

    At this point, I long for the days of trolls posting haikus about a petrified Natalie Portman slathered in hot grits driving the Slashdot Cruiser over to a Beowulf cluster. At least those posts tended to get appopriately modded down as trolls rather than modded up as both insightful and funny.

    The DMCA circumvention device joke has been made. Several times. Stop mindlessly repeating it like you're Raymond going through the Who's On First routine. Besides, I hear Amazon.com has a patent on the business model of mindlessly repeating a joke.

    (I apologize for cluttering up the comments with meta-discussion, but I felt the point needed to be made. Also, since this is just a repost, most important points have already been made.)

    • The DMCA was used to smack-down 2600.com for simply linking to a copy circumvention device (DeCSS) -- they were successfully prosecuted for providing information on copy protection circumvention devices even though they did not distribute the device or engage in the circumvention themselves.

      While Sharpie markers are not likely to be outlawed since they have known legitimate functions (whereas making a non-CD workin your computer is illegal), giving information on how to use a Sharpie marker to circumvent a copy protection device probably is illegal. That's the absurdity of the law and proof that the legislators responsible for the piece of filth known as the DMCA deserve to be shot. And stabbed. And beaten. And boiled. And whipped. And drawn and quartered.
    • Natalie Portman
      slathered in hot grits driving
      the Slashdot Cruiser.

      Beowulf cluster
      imagining it is a
      Black Sharpie Marker.

      The DMCA
      circumvented by markers
      Sony weeps openly.

      Haiku just for you
      all insightful and funny
      Slashdot is ok.

  • of violating the DMCA. It's illegal to spread information on how copy protection systems can be circumvented. Just ask Dmitry...
  • this is classic. this article is really about how the editors hate our story submissions, and how they really don't care about the news anymore. but that's nothing new either. so it's a double repeat!
  • Well, I dont know for sure, but CNN has an article from Reuters which was able to confirm this as well.

    Here [cnn.com]

    Following is purportedly what transpired in one of the RIAA + MPAA meetings.

    Jack Valenti : Let me show you on the whiteboard how we plan to crush these individuals using Kazaa as a medium..

    (Proceeds to the whitebard with a felt tip pen in hand)

    Ms.Rosen (screaming) : Jack!!! Noooooooooooo.... For the love of humanity, drop that darned thing..

  • Read the DMCA (Score:5, Informative)

    by Royster (16042) on Wednesday May 22 2002, @10:45AM (#3565791) Homepage
    Right here. [harvard.edu]

    Specifically:
    Title 17, Section 1201(a)

    (2) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that -
    (A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;
    (B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or
    (C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.


    Felt tip markers are not primarially designed to circumvent access controls. Felt tip markers have lots of commercially significant purposes other than circumvention.

    But, if you marketed a felt tip pen with the name CD Rip (TM) brand felt tip pens and included instructions for how to circumvent CD protection than you should expect a C&D letter.

    It's the same situation as the fellow who's program unset the true type embedded bits [slashdot.org] and a generic hex editor. The first tool has one purpose, to twiddle embedding bits. The second tool has lots of commercially significant purposes many unrelated to any kind of circumvention.

    • But, if you marketed a felt tip pen with the name CD Rip (TM) brand felt tip pens and included instructions for how to circumvent CD protection than you should expect a C&D letter.

      It's the same situation as the fellow who's program unset the true type embedded bits...

      IMHO, it's very interesting that you brought these two things up together.

      One of the factors that made the "embed" author clearly safe from DMCA infringement, was that he owned some fonts that needed their bits fixed. By the definitions within DMCA, you can only be engaging in "circumvention" if you don't have "authorization" (presumably from the copyright owner) and since he obviously authorized people to use his tool on his fonts, it's primary purpose was not to circumvent. Yes, it's primary purpose was to unset the bits. But that isn't circumvention, because having authorization causes the act to not be circumvention. Yes, I'm being pedantic about the definitions, but hey, that's what the DMCA text says.

      In the DeCSS case, nobody who was friendly to DeCSS, happened to also own the copyright on a CSS-protected DVD. The only entities who owned CSS-protected works were the MPAA. Thus, MPAA had a case for claiming that no one had been authorized (ignoring the implicit authorization that comes with selling someone a DVD -- Kaplan was very MPAA-friendly). Thus, this point didn't really come up (but it would have, if someone friendly to DeCSS had managed to create a CSS-protected DVD).

      So in light of all that, let's not forget something: if the copyright owner of even one of these "protected" CDs decides to authorize people to use markers in order to play their CD, then even CD Rip(TM) brand markers will become legal. The marker's primary marketed purpose will be to defeat the protection, but this activity will not be the same as "circumvention" as defined by DMCA.

      There are a lot of musicians. The rest can be inferred by the reader. :-)

  • WARNING: The following image may be illegal under the DMCA. Further, the image depicts the actual commission of a felony offense in the USA. You have been warned.

    Marker Method Illustrated [www.chip.de].

  • OfficeMAX Commercial? (Score:5, Funny)

    by _ph1ux_ (216706) on Wednesday May 22 2002, @11:02AM (#3565908)
    Life:

    Customer: Hi, where can I find blank CDs?
    Employee: Making Copies. huh? They are on isle five.

    If Life were like OfficeMAX:

    Customer: Hi, where can I find blank CDs?
    Employee: Making Copies. huh? They are on isle five.Right next to the felt tip pens which can be used to circumvent the copy protection of the CDs taht you may be copying. Here I'll print out the instructions for you. And here is my username and password to ftp.phat-warez.com

  • Here's an Idea (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MadFarmAnimalz (460972) on Wednesday May 22 2002, @11:07AM (#3565937) Homepage
    Let's see what you folks make of this.

    The way that democracy and judicial system of yours works at the moment, just about the only thing that will get lawmakers to stick up for Joe and Jane is public outrage/ridicule.

    Basically, I think the EFF should throw the DMCA at the people who make Crayola. Sue the pirating bastards.

    Don't tell me that wouldn't make headlines. And headlines would raise public awareness of the DMCA issue.
    If the DMCA is ridiculed in public over its potential uses, I don't think it'll last long.

    Never mind whether the EFF would win or lose; the whole point is to showcase the idiocy of this law.

    Anyone listening?

  • ThinkGeek (Score:5, Funny)

    by tzanger (1575) <akohlsmith-sd@mixd[ ].ca ['own' in gap]> on Wednesday May 22 2002, @11:12AM (#3565981) Homepage

    I don't know about the rest of you but I think that ThinkGeek should start selling DMCA Circumvention Devices. e.g. a Sharpie with a custom label with a caution symbol and the text "This object may be used as a device for circumventing copyright protection methods as outlined in the DMCA."

    I think they'd sell. Who wants an entire office toolbox filled with copyright protection circumvention devices? I do, I do!

  • It was bound to happen... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by l1gunman (463233) on Wednesday May 22 2002, @12:08PM (#3566289)
    Funny, huh?! This is major egg-on-the-face for the developers of that so-called protection. In my 'experience', this has always been the case. Even the most sophisticated protections are defeated by the simplest of hacks. You can keep your data encrypted, and protect the decryption routines with anti-debugging methods but, at some point, the data must be rendered. Once it's rendered, it's fair game again and everything you did until that point is moot. Take TotalRecorder, AudioJacker, LoopRecorder, InternetNinja, even the PrintScreen key as examples of that. (Or a scheme of siphoning the audio from a protected DVD by rendering it in a hand-built filter graph with a splitter and dump filter in the audio path.)


    This latest hack is a twist on that theme - the marked lines invalidate the disc track that's supposed to keep make your PC think it has a bad disc. If you kill the bogus track, the PC's CD-ROM drive can simply go on to rendering the next one, the real one.


    No matter what you do in the digital world, there is still the possibility of ripping at the analog level. Standard consumer equipment exists that can make a really good A/D conversion and get a high-quality rendering of the audio content back into the digital realm without any DRM encumbrances. CD players exist that have digital output (S/PDIF) - run that output back into a sound card with matching inputs and you're done. Any of these so-called protected discs can be played, and ripped, in such a set-up. My goofy DVD/CD/MP3 player has such an output (yours too?). Once you have one digital copy, it'll show up on the Internet all over again.


    Only by encrypting the data all the way to a closed rendering subsystem (decrypting speakers or headphones?) could you prevent this - and consumers will never stand still for that. Any solution that prevents consumers from getting their fair use out of purchased content, by that I mean the ability to play it wherever they want (iPod anyone?) is akin to handcuffing everyone in order to prevent crime.


    This is a war that can never truly be won, the only solution is for the content producers to embrace the technology rather than trying to kill it. A new business model that exploits the Internet and its bandwidth and provides a reasonable exchange of fair value for goods received is the only way they can inhibit (not wipe out) piracy. If discs were fairly priced, rather than selling for 30 times their manufacturing cost, there would be little need or impetus for Joe-Sixpack to participate in piracy. If you could buy the songs you wanted, rather than pay full price for an album that has more filler than meat, that would also help.


    I'd really like to see an unbiased, non-knee-jerk-reaction analysis of the so-called harm done to RIAA member studio profits by the file sharing. We've all read analysis that suggests CD sales were actually helped by the emergence of Napster. Recent downturns in the industry are more likely due to general lagging in the economy rather than lost sales due to piracy. Any 'solution' to this problem needs to take a cold, hard look at those facts, first.


    I have a very curious view on this given that my 'job' for the last few years has been on the side of the protectors...

  • Ok ok ok, we get the jokes (most of us anyway).

    The important thing is not whether felt tip pens will become illegal. It's that somebody figured out a laughably simple way to defeat something Sony must have spent a good chunk of money coming up with. I'm thinking meetings, demos, testing, approval, and at least one large congratulatory catered lunch. And now they look like idiots. Nothing, I mean NOTHING, upsets corporate management more than being made fools.

    Right on.

  • CD Protection Strategy May Be Violating 1992 Act (Score:5, Informative)

    by ranb (218716) on Wednesday May 22 2002, @12:16PM (#3566380)
    I came across this interesting angle on CD copy protection a while back in Now you can't make a copy [observer.co.uk]:
    "The other difficulty for the recording industry's new CD protection strategy surfaced on 28 December in a letter from the Virginia Congressman Rick Boucher (Democrat) to executives of the recording industry's trade association. The letter reminds them that their fancy new technology may violate a statute for which they themselves lobbied vigorously a decade ago. This is the 1992 Act which gave music listeners the right to make some personal digital copies of their music in return for allowing recording companies to collect royalties on the blank media used for this purpose . Under this, the industry cheerfully collects a few cents for every digital audio tape, blank audio CD or minidisc sold. Boucher has not yet had a reply from the movie and record moguls. But when he does he will discover vicious animals are at their most dangerous when cornered."

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