Still More 'Copy Protected' CDs 453
maniac11 writes: "This story describes new CDs planned on being released by Universal Music Group that sport anti-copying technology. Not much in the way of actual details, but a heads up on a new plan to foil." Same price, worse product -- higher sales! Universal seems to be the first company to commit to downgrading its entire lineup over the next six months or so.
Joe Public doesn't care. (Score:5, Insightful)
Only to the rippers, my friend, only to the rippers. The average "Joe Public" could care less.
Ask your mom if she cares that she can't copy it to her computer or an MP3 player.
"Can I still copy it to a cassette tape to play in my Suburban?"
"Yes, mom."
"Then how is it 'broken'?"
Re:I think it's time (Score:3, Insightful)
Obviously the big record companies have no interest in doing this as they are more committed to maintaining their monopolies then providing a legitamate service, but it would be pretty dope if indie labels started doing that.
Sad thing is... (Score:3, Insightful)
I for one think it's exceptionally unethical to muck with standards like this. Of course, someone will figure a way to work around it, and the files will end up out there anyway. Those files will probably get pirated more just out of spite. The best thing any of us can do is boycott any "modified" CDs like this, and tell our friends to do so as well. It's been said before, speak with your wallet. That's what I intend to do.
Re:Joe Public doesn't care. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Label clearly, or get sued for misrepresentatio (Score:4, Insightful)
Possible Consequences (Score:5, Insightful)
"Oh, I didn't buy it. I downloaded it. I woulda bought it, but you can't play CD's in your computer any more."
not to mention high-end manufacturers! (Score:4, Insightful)
of a company marketing high-end home and car cd players
that utilized cd-rom drives and now Universal
decides to make their disks such that they won't
play on my head units and players...
I would be all about lawsuits for lost business
and research
Re:Joe Public doesn't care. (Score:4, Insightful)
When you have a defect (fingerprint or something
nastier) on a normal cd, you won't hear it, because there is the error correction.
With a copy protected cd you will hear most effects. So a copy protected cd has a lower quality. And I'm deprived from my right of fair use, too.
And it won't play on cd players with a bad error correction - so yes, Joe Public will care.
Why Copy Protection is Irrelevent (Score:4, Insightful)
Checkout This Incredible Idea: Run a cable from your portable cd player to the audio-in on your computer. Play+Record the track. Run resulting file through mp3 encoder. Viola, you now have an mp3 of a 'protected' cd. Sure, it isn't a digital extraction from the cd, but I bet the average mp3-downloader couldn't tell the difference anyway.
All it takes is one person getting a decent recording of the cd for it to get in circulation on p2p servivices like gnutella.
If you can download these copy-protected cd's for free anyway, then the copy protection is worthless!
Car Audio (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, most of the old CD-Rom drives, as well as some new ones, have stereo miniplugs for headphones in the front, will you be able to play these cd's through that? I doubt it based on the previous reports of "no disc detected" but you never know.
I think most people buy cd's to listen to in their car anyway, or at least, that's where the majority of music listening takes place, so if they're not compatible with car audio then the industry is going to have a lot of irate consumers on their hands.
Stop bitching about copy protection (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, obviously the Slashdot vibe is that this is a flawed model for making music, and I'm inclined to agree. That is why you should be supporting independent artists who don't pull this copy-protection bullshit on their listeners. The media cartel only exists because people keep fueling it and voting with their dollars; if we want to beat it, we need to make our own content. Support independent films, musicians, and other artists who do their work for the love of it. Hell, make your own music and give it away on the Internet; there's bound to be somebody who likes it, no matter what it is. Hell, there are people who like listening to white noise.
As long as you continue to buy mainstream CDs and DVDs, you are going to have to take whatever copy-protection measures the publishers decide to incorporate. If you don't like their terms, take your money elsewhere. That's how our society works.
Re:Label clearly, or get sued for misrepresentatio (Score:4, Insightful)
Their defense would probably be that the intention of the CDs they are selling is to be used to play music in a standard CD music player. No where is it stated that they have to allow non-musical-playback purposes.
If the argument is then that they are degrading audio quality, you have to prove that audio quality is degraded. It's not that hard to design the intentional errors so that the interpolation produces the value that would normally be in the music (or very close to it).
I highly doubt that an A/B test would be able to find the difference to any ears.
Summary of all comments in this article (Score:3, Insightful)
You know, I bet we could just take the digital-out of the cdplayer and pipe it into our soundcard....
Even a D-A-D conversion would be a little lossy, but after that we could copy as much as we wanted.
Damn those RIAA bastards to hell! They're releasing defective CDs!
These go against the redbook standard. For shame.
Hey, I think I'm witty! I'll make a list of all the comments that people will make in the article because that's all people ever say in these articles! Oh, wait....
Scratch Tolerance Lowered? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Joe Public doesn't care. (Score:2, Insightful)
And on top of that, I think Gateway, Compaq/HP, and Dell might also care. Just think of the technical support costs!
User: "My CD-ROM doesn't work"
Technical Support: "What seems to be the problem?
User: "Well I've placed the CD in the drive, and it won't play. My machine is still under warrantee, and I want it replaced!"
IF $TECH_SUPT.IQ >= AVG($TECH_SUPT.IQ) THEN
Technical Support: "You don't happen to have a Universal/Vivendi CD, do you? Why don't you try another, older CD"
ELSEIF $TECH_SUPT.IQ Technical Support: "Alrighty, your RMA is XXXXXXX, and you'll receive your CD-ROM in two days with a pre-paid UPS box to send back the old one."
Two Days Pass.... User: "I think it's my sound card now..."
Well, you get the idea.
It's not just the CD-ROM manufacturers, MP3 player manufacturers, and similar software/hardware vendors that might get a little upset. There are some big-name hardware people that might get stung by this if they aren't kept on their toes....
-Got Class-Action?
Re:Sad thing is... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Stop bitching about copy protection (Score:3, Insightful)
Otherwise, they are misrepresenting their product. I believe this can carry rather heavy civil penalties. Now, let's say that the package itself doesn't carry the logo (or doesn't say that it is a CD, or some such). Now the vendor (Sam Goody, Amazon, etc.) would likely have to have a separate section. By lumping these products in with 'real' CD's, they imply that these defective products are 'real' CD's.
Yes, they can do whatever the hell they want, but not if it includes defrauding the public. (Universal Studios, for instance, refuses to properly caption their DVDs. Which means they might should get slapped a bit for displaying the captioning logo on their products.)
Database (Score:2, Insightful)
This way it would be possible to reference this database before a purchase and be able to determine the ability to rip it based on others experience. If it's a title that's protected, sipmly don't buy it.
I agree this stuff should be labeled but that's nothing more than a pipe dream. Instead of just complaining about the problem, let's do something about it!
Time to make new firmware. (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure, it will depend on whether your CD Rom drive can be flashed (and it probably can't if it is a plain reader, not writer or DVD), but I guess those that are informed (i.e. the rippers) will look for CD devices that have the required features. Those that don't know will just remain inconvenienced and in the dark.
As for piracy. It won't stop it, nothing can while CD prices are so high. Just get a PC and HIFI with SPDIF I/O and you presumable can make mp3's to put on Napster (or what ever is taking it's place).
I think you can still stay 100% digital (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see how they could hobble the normal playback mode of a CD ROM - is this actually the case, or do they just hamper direct digital extraction? I just haven't had the slightest urge to buy a Michael Jackson or Charley Pride CD to try this out...
I know how to play that game... (Score:2, Insightful)
Remember, people, the ball (money) is in our court. We need to understand collectively that music piracy is a legitimate form of protest against these damaged products being sold. Use it.
What happens when microsoft throws its 2 cents in (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I think it's time (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Okay, we need to organize something. (Score:5, Insightful)
Feh, yeah right. There is no larger collection of vociferous "do-nothings" in the entire frickin' universe.
Someone set up a domain. "CopyproofCDs.org" or something. Make a list of every copy-proof CD out there.
You, sir, provide a perfect example. Why don't you set up this domain and database? Do you really think there are people sitting around out there with nothing better to do than wait for suggestions from /.ers?
I don't mean to harp on you in particular, but 95% of the people here are all talk. Nobody is writing their congressman about restrictive IP legislation. Nobody is boycotting the RIAA or the MPAA.
Apart from whining exhaustively, nobody around here is doing shit.
Copy "protection"+DMCA vs fair use and our tech (Score:5, Insightful)
(If some random person, not acting on orders from the local gov't, padlocks the public park, it would be legal to break that bogus lock. And the one that put the lock there would likely be in trouble. It would be nice if obstructing fair use were similarly illegal.)
Even the DMCA [cornell.edu] itself says it doesn't affect fair use. Anything that violates fair use is also unconstitutional.
Of course, Judge Kaplan ignores all that (DeCSS case), and he isn't the only one out there.
So we morally, and according to the letter of the law as I understand it, have the right for "self-help" to get back fair use, but not according to the gov't. As they can assess monetary penalties and even lock you up, we need to keep in mind that we need more than just a technical solution.
We need to repeal the DMCA.
Of course, anyone that knows of a defeat method or code, please do let us know.
Re:Label clearly, or get sued for misrepresentatio (Score:4, Insightful)
http://www.licensing.philips.com/partner/data/s
It basically says that if you pay the license fee, you can use the logo. Nothing in it says that your CD _must_ meet their standard, only that in order to produce a CD using their patented technology, you must agree to their terms which include money, money and more money.
This is far from definitive, but it would seem that a company could license their technology, produce compact discs with the tm logo, but as long as you keep up with the license fees, Phillips and Sony probably wouldn't care if you mangled the layout.
Buy then Return (Score:1, Insightful)
If they get thousands of returns, they'll take notice....
DVD Audio Will Solve CD Limitations (Score:2, Insightful)
So I agree that current standards for digital sound recording on DVD-Audio may solve the problem with 24 bit sampling rate and 96,000 hertz at the high end.
Re:I think it's time (Score:2, Insightful)
I bought the new CD from Einstürzende Neubauten (Berlin Babylon soundtrack). On the case it says, in German, that the CD cannot be played on computers. My DVD-ROM drive and PlexWriter act like it is a blank CD-R. My CD player does recognize it, with some effort -- it takes a few seconds of seeking before the CD will begin to play. The CD clearly "breaks" the CD standard, but not badly enough that a standalone unit can't plow through it.
I have not yet tried it in my standalone DVD player, or tried to send the digital output into a DAT deck or pro sound card.
You may notice -- unfortunately I do not have the URL -- that BMG backed off one of their protection schemes due to 2% difference in returns. It is quite possible that this latest scheme will cause just enough grief among consumers that other companies will back off as well.
The CD-R has replaced the "mixtape", and today's tech-savvy population is not likely to stand still for this for long. People have been able to take it for granted for about 20 years that you can compile tracks from different discs (CD, vinyl) onto the medium of choice (cassette, CD-R). The people who buy the most music also make the most "mixtapes", and turn other people on to new artists that way. I couldn't count the number of people I turned on to how many bands over the years this way. Napster just brought this type of "promotion" to a different scale. Unfortunately the media giants do not seem to appreciate the value of free publicity.
You're mistaken (Score:5, Insightful)
What I'm thinking you should do is buy CDs. Take them home and rip them. If they don't rip, take them back and get a refund. This FORCES the store to take notice, and data on the number of returns goes all the way up the distribution chain to the asshole execs who try to work out exactly how unethical a policy they can get away with.
I'm new to this country and don't know much about consumer rights laws here. Given that CD stores are reluctant to take back used CDs (and sometimes have a policy against it), it would be useful for us to know our rights. That the CD violates your right to format-shift might be sufficient grounds that they cannot legally refuse the refund, as might the misrepresentation of the product looking like a CD but not playing in all CD players. I don't know.
If someone like the EFF could get a lawyer to write a page explaining our consumer rights with regards to these degraded-CDs, that would be very useful. It may be that the matter is legally grey and we wait for the results of lawsuits. In which case, it's up to us to not take "no" for an answer when demanding our money back.