DVD Drives Defeat Cactus Data Shield 381
jsepeta sends in a story about Cactus Data Shield, one of the schemes to be used for copy-protecting compact discs. A reporter for TechTV notes that DVD drives see right through the disc corruption that Cactus uses to supposedly prevent those CDs from being ripped.
So? (Score:3, Insightful)
Time for a new media or new way around it perhaps?
A theory if you will (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to me this is just one of those CDAutoStart things that Windows responds to in particular.
I got tipped off to this by when they mention "Track 1" never plays. I BET they didn't notice the total track count go up by one, as the Windows software talking to the DVD player parses its error-handling differently (correctly), and the result is like putting a PC hybrid CD in a Mac. In fact i strongly expect this Cactus lockout thing would not work on a Mac by default, and very very likely Linux/*nix as well. The tracks would appear as normal, though possibly not that first track, because its header DOES get lost in the scrambling, maybe.
Perhaps this is hogwash, but I've heard about Macs seeing through similar schemes before. I think that these TechTV guys sort of percolated through the truth of older reports to home users that are kinda savvy but don't like leaving their Gates Paradigm Computing, thus only the windows DVD stuff, no mention of other platforms at all.
On the other hand, if this is not unique to Windows (I wonder about Mac DVD players) then maybe that program has low-level drivers which affect how the CD drive does checksums, but DVD players do differently anyway.
Yeah, another victory for the Fair Use groups, as the people designing this have their asses backwards because they're counting on all computer users (mass 37331 pirates) to be Windows computers. OOPS...
Universal, i will scout for your discs, and as a Mac user of self-proclaimed badassary, "hack" via insertion your CD, rip, burn and mail to your well-tanned California ass.... Mwahaaha... All right enough fevered fantasies of geek revenge... back to work...
First Track (Score:2, Insightful)
if you can listen to it, you can rip it (Score:5, Insightful)
Not even watermarking is going to see them out of this. Watermarks can be removed anyway, and even if they succeed in a lunatic scheme to require that every computer audio board have some kind of watermark detection circuit, A/D and D/A converters that are fast enough and good enough are cheap, widely available, and easily hooked up to a PC.
Are the record labels just clueless or is there some other diabolical plan in the wings?
Just like the good old days! (Score:3, Insightful)
The only way they'll win is if they make CDs connect to the Internet and verify with the record company everytime you play it, ala Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Or have some crappy activation featuers, ala Windows XP. Then again someone will work around that too
Read the classic Copy Protection: A History and Outlook [textfiles.com]
Perfect copy protection IS possible! (Score:5, Insightful)
All kidding aside— here is a formula that might be useful to publishers of digital data:where If L > 0, the data will be copied.
A publisher can control the level of his data's protection only to the degree that he can control these variables.
- Cm cannot be kept artificially high, due to market forces to the contrary;
- Ce continues to drop, as coding ingenuity continues to outstrip copy prevention standards almost as quickly as they are developed;
- Ca is relatively low for the end user, since it usually only involves paying for software you had anyway; and
- Pa is low because the crime is widespread and social costs are low, so enforcement at the end user level is minimal.
This leaves a publisher of digital data with two variables he can control: the data's cost and its value. This provides two options for perfect copy protection:- make the product free, or
- make the product worthless.
Since neither option would be attractive to most publishers, it would appear that widespread copyright violations (and violators) will be with us for a long, long time.Good for music trading after all? (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing hurting the warez scene is games being so friggin big nowadays... multiple CDs, etc. You can't run bladeenc, or oggenc on a game.
Maybe DVD-Audio will help combat music piracy, but that's a bit off.
Re:Perfect copy protection IS possible! (Score:2, Insightful)
Conveniently, most of the music put out by the major labels these days IS worthless. Maybe that's the plan. Personally speaking, you couldn't pay me enough to waste my time duplicating more than 99% of the music released in any given year.
[elitism:OFF]
These kind of findings are exactly what will ... (Score:2, Insightful)
And heres where the crappy DCMA really starts to leak water, because now these products (ie. DVD-ROM drives, etc) that are being manufactured by large corporations some of which don't give a f*** about the MPAA and the DVD Forum because they allow all of that to be handled by software, are circumvention devices, and thus illegal. All it takes is a lawsuit and there is no way that anyone can tell me that this crappy law can stand up in court when multibillion dollar industries go head to head with each other. Now IANAL but in my opinion the DCMA has the quality of construction roughly equal to that of M$'s software, and that under this much scrutiny it will (and forgive the really corny wording of this but i'm tired) BSOD.
Well at least thats what I hope happens.
"fair use" is not a right. (Score:4, Insightful)
Having said all this, record industry does have the right to implement copy protection. I'm not saying that it's good, I'm just saying that they have legal right to do so. Under current law, record company is not obligated to grant you the ability to use the material in "fair use" manner. At the same time, you are not obligated to buy copy protected CDs.
In the Bad Old Days of diskette copy protection.. (Score:3, Insightful)
In the Bad Old Days of diskette copy protection, the good guys eventually won. You had the usual arms race, the usual idiocy, companies wasted time devising slightly corrupted disk formats that could be loaded but not copied, schemes that would allow you to install on a hard drive but forced you to deinstall before the diskette would allow a reinstall, and so forth and so on.
You also had legally-purchased diskettes that wouldn't install because of SQA issues with the protection scheme, or hardware incompatibilities with certain drives.
But you had vigorous free enterprise producing products like Locksmith and Copy II PC, constantly improving them and developing new "parms."
This meant that the companies using copy protection had to spend serious development resources devising new and better copy protection schemes, AND were constantly pissing off legitimate customers.
Eventually the Lotuses of the world got tired of it all and decided not to bother with copy protection. Lotus has declined, but as far as I know, not one person has suggested that the decline was caused by software piracy...
Right now, CD protection is in the same stage that diskette copy protection was... and we'll have these amusing stories for a while... and occasionally decent law-abiding customers will find that their new CD's don't play.
What we WON'T have is a vigorous free-market solution. In a free market, of course, the DVD-drive companies would realize that the ability to read "copy-protected" CD's gives them a valuable competitive advantage. But, instead, thanks to the DMCA, they will probably be FORCED to become Midbar-compliant whether they like it or not.
And it will only get worse.
Unless consumers wake up... and that, alas, doesn't seem likely...
Copy Protection taken to extremes. (Score:2, Insightful)
You thought 1984 was bad?
Re:Soon to be illegal... (Score:2, Insightful)
I've read that the major HD manufacturers have been toying with implementing Digital Rights Management on the hard drive, but I doubt any OEM would touch that...geeks would then make a small fortune building gray boxes for all their neighbors, who might finally realize that trusting the techie guy next door is a better idea than giving Dell/Gateway their $$$.
Unless, of course, the absence of rights management on a PC is outlawed. Way, way unlikely, that. Would you sit still for it? I wouldn't.
Formula is wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
Has no one ever tried to understand the formala you posted ?
The risk that data will be copied rises when the cost of recordable media rises ? Your formula should have been:
Rc = ((Ca * Pa) -Cp) * Vd / ( Cm + Ce )
Re:Unjust laws (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Difference between copying and reading? (Score:1, Insightful)
Since I am already paying $0.25 a piece on CDR in Canada to RIAA regardless of what I am using it for, I should not be able to copy whatever I want to.
Re:Difference between copying and reading? (Score:1, Insightful)
Totally senseless... (Score:4, Insightful)
LOWER THE PRICE OF THE GOD DAMN CDS IF YOU WANT MORE VOLUME SELLS, I can see some mozart crap sold at C$6 at my local music shop, why would I have to pay C$20 for a metallica CD? Don't tell me because of the expenses and all, the expenses are the packaging, the design, the loans, etc etc.. YES... well, the mozart CD went thru the about the same process, Metallica sells a LOT more hense more VOLUME hense more PROFIT in the end to repay that possible loan (well now they are rich anyways), so why 20$? maybe they'd sell a LOT more if CDs would be cheaper and become the "trading cards" of the kids instead of being overpriced unreachable-to-most-teenagers-that-aren't-working
3 times cheaper would mean greater volume, greater splitting among artists, greater audience, greater penetration of the market, and I'D BUY SOME, which I don't do since maybe 5 years after being raped having to pay c$50 for imports that I really wanted and they would classify imports when they had actually a TON of them and anyways, even metallica is "imported" to canada so who cares about the "import" label. I was ripped off, I've searched for alternatives, and I got one.
You can screw people off big time and keep it up for YEARS, but history shows that in ANY circumstances, people will find alternatives or revolt when they are mistreated or abused.
I did my part, I have 100's of Original CDs, but I had it with that system, and seeing them investing massively in crap like DMCA or DRM instead of doing the obvious: CUTTING THE PRICES, simply disgust me. Again, I'd buy a shitload of CDs if the price would be right, it isn't.
For people with the lame "expenses" arguments, tell me, why are tapes 1/2 the price of the cd? it's the SAME process, heck a cassette costs more to produce than a CD, in both time and material, so why is it cheaper? there are many reasons, but I don't care, WHY wouldn't the CDs be cheaper? why would I shell C$30 for a DVD or C$20 for a CD if they could be sold for a fraction of that price?
I am not saying I copy my stuff, I don't even own a dvd player because I just skipped that technology, I'm still happy with my SVHS tapedeck. But I am really not surprised (like most of the people here) of what's happening. Someone is really high at RIAA... Towelie must be running things
Re:Now the big question: Who will cave in first? (Score:2, Insightful)
I think a distinction to be made here is that in the Macrovision case, the copy-protection scheme predated the hardware to beat it, so that it could legitimately be argued that the hardware was designed specifically to defeat Macrovision copy protection.
Whereas in the use of the computer to copy digital media, the computer's ability to do so predates any copy protection scheme to prevent it from doing so -- it's simply what computers do. As a result, the case that computers are designed specifically to thwart digital rights managment schemes is absurd, which is why the record companies are going to Capitol Hill to buy legislation. As the law presently stands, their case against the computer industry is unwinnable in court.
Re:if you can listen to it, you can rip it (Score:3, Insightful)
There may be. The copying/piracy argument is only a front. It is the CREATION of content that the studios and labels are worried about.
There economic mode is to control the access of artists to audience and make money by charging as much as possible to the audience and paying as little as possible to the artists.
So if they can get most people to use a player that only they can create content for then they can squeeze the artists. As long as it is possible/legal to may copies you can make originals.
This is why we as information smiths need to get artists on our side. Once content begins to travel from artist to audience (and the rewards back the other way) without the studios and the labels then things will begin to change.
Charles Puffer
Re:Unjust laws (Score:3, Insightful)
But you drug bashers don't seem to understand that alchohol and cigarettes are actually much more destructive and addicting than drugs like marijuana and to a certain degree even cocaine (but not necessarily "crack" cocaine). But despite that, I still think people should have the freedom to do whatever they want to themselves. A law shouldn't prevent me from losing my job, health, and general well-being because of my own choices. That's not what American laws are supposed to be for. They're supposed to advocate freedom, not be a straight-jacket that protects us from ourselves.
Besides, the whole "it's for your protection" thing is a bullshit reason anyway. Do all of the trees in my yard have to be regulation height so I don't jump out of them and hurt myself? Do all businesses have to line their parking lots with foam so I don't scrape my knee on their pavement? Is there any law that says that my kitchen knives can only be as sharp as a butter knife?
Drug laws were born out of the lust for money, that's still what they're about, and that's the reason why they're so inconsistent and illogical.
The problem is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Instead of taking the loss and deciding, "Hey, we should stop producing crap or mimicking bands," they decide they can turn out ten bands under the profits of one major one. If one of those other bands happens to make it, then they have another band to help sell more bands.
Sadly, though, this practice is done regularly, even with some of the independent labels. I just wish there were a distributor out there who would handle completely independent artists. You want to spend your money and time doing your own CDs for your band, send it to the distributor who puts out a catalog of discs. These discs can be ordered by any major chain or music store. Then it's just up to the bands themselves to promote themselves and let people know they have a disc out.
This would really make the costs dive down if people could just get into the stores without major labels and without the RIAA.
Obvious metaphore - Organized crime (Score:2, Insightful)
1) Ripping CD is ALWAYS going to be possible
2) People like getting something for nothing (I rip my Cd for personal use only and don't share them, you may too but what all this noise about
3) It is prohibitively expensive to prosecute individuals for trading/sharing music only - both finically and in terms of bad publicity
RIAA, face it - you are just giving more power to your "enemies" (read customers) by making this such a big issue. If you want to stop music trading/sharing online -- make it cheep and easy to download songs! That's the only way your gonna stop this. ANY other action you take will just force the "Bad people" committing this crime against your pocketbook to organize to become more effective.
Re:Good for music trading after all? (Score:2, Insightful)
maybe this place isn't as bad as the vocal minority says it is
As to your points, I agree - although it is getting easier every day to find larger things, due to more bandwidth being in the hands of more people who run p2p filesharing apps and better apps are written. Someday soon it shall eclipse USENET. Personally I'm looking forward to it, I pine for the days when lurking on USENET was actually fun