Sony Intentionally Crashes Customers' Computers

Uttles writes "According to Yahoo!, Celine Dion's latest CD will not play in computer drives. In fact: 'Should the consumer try to play Dion's CD on a PC or Macintosh, the computer likely will crash.' How is this legal?" Since Sony admits that their product is designed to cause damage to your computer system, almost anyone would likely have a good lawsuit against them. Attention Celine Dion and all musicians: crashing your fans' computers is not a good business practice. No matter what your agent says.

You aren't making sense

[ChazeFroy]

Since Sony admits that their product is designed to cause damage to your computer system, almost anyone would likely have a good lawsuit against them.

How would that make a good lawsuit? Seems to me that Sony is covering its ass by letting the consumer know up front, which would make the lawsuit more difficult.

The users were warned!

[Jucius Maximus]

Quoth the article:

"According to a spokeswoman for Sony Music Entertainment, it is clearly stated on the front of the booklet and on the back of the jewel box that the CD "will not play on a PC or a Mac" in the language of the country in which it is sold. Besides those notices, which the spokeswoman said were readable before purchase, the disc itself bears the same warning."

And physical damage to the computer is supposedly in the firmware of the drives (on macs)

"On the German discussion boards at MacFixit, Mac users claim that the CD will not eject using normal methods and that the intentional corruption of the disc's session data could unpredictably affect the drive's firmware." But Sony said that the firmware problem is not real.

Please keep in mind that I'm not saying that any of this is right or ethical. It's just that the post doen't completely represent what happenned (and I am sure that article has some shortcomings in the 'truth dapartment' too.)

/me runs out to the store, buy open and return

[Drakino]

Ohh, another confirmed, mass distributed copy protected CD. Time to make another round and buy these, open them, and return them. Remember, thats the best way to get the message across, at their cost. And if the stores eat the cost, they will get upset with Sony, and end up solving it as well.

http://riocar.org/cd/ [riocar.org] for the 7 I have returned to date.

Re:/me runs out to the store, buy open and return

[jgerman]

You're not likely to get very far doing the "buy,open,return" scheme here. The cd is labelled, that's only a protest of un-labelled cd's.

Clone CD can copy it

[PineGreen]

For how to copy it and more information see here [cdmediaworld.com]

Re:Swan Song....

[jgerman]

Isn't that Whitney Houston?

Re:maybe if this sort of CD protection worked...

[Sc00ter]

The problem with this is.. How do I get my music that I bought on my portable MP3 player? The one that I use to listen to because it's way smaller then any portable CD player and will never skip when I go for a run. How do I make a backup copy for me to have in my car so the one I paid for doesn't get scratched to hell?

Re:Why not just use new media?

[lmfr]

"I think the RIAA should just use new media for music and stop using CD's"

They did (maybe not directly), it's called DVD. It has a audio only format.

But even if they changed to a closed format and media, the problem would be that the instaled base of cd players, either in cars, stereos, etc, is way to big to let RIAA change from cds to that new media in a period less than a few millenia... Will still having to release a cd version...

Re:You aren't making sense

[Carlos Laviola]

This is not an audio CD. It cannot bear the logo that all standard, red-book-following CDs do. You may call it anything but an audio CD.

--

Re:Sony being sued, don't think so

[Anonymous Coward]

Not necessarily so. My father works for a company whose lawn-mower and tractor division was being sued. Apparently this one guy decided that his lawnmower would be great to trim the top of his hedges. So, with the mower running, he tried to pick it up by reaching under the side. The guy lost all of his fingers, in spite of the warning label on the top of the mower stating that the blade is sharp, can cause damage, etc. He sued the company, and when the judge asked him why he didn't heed the warnings, his response was "I can't read none too well". The judge saw in his favour.

If only this guy was as sharp as that blade...

Re:/me runs out to the store, buy open and return

[Anonymous DWord]

It's a logo that's licensed from Philips, with the expectation that a disc with that logo conforms to standards. These don't. Ergo, they shouldn't have the logo.

What CD Media World says about key2Audio

[akac]

With key2audio Sony DADC is offering you the optimal protection for your Audio CD's. Using highest quality and ensuring best compatibility, key2audio was developed to support the music industry in protecting its music from illegal duplication and copyright infringement. Without altering the music data stream, key2audio CD's still offer crystal clear sound and no read fault errors.

During glass mastering, several special hidden signatures, similar to a unique fingerprint, are applied outside the music data area. These signatures can neither be duplicated by CD-R/RW burners, nor by professional glass mastering systems.

Audio discs protected with the current version cannot be recognised by standard CD/DVD-ROM, CD-R and CD-RW drives, thus they do not play on PC, Apple Macintosh or other systems equipped with CD- ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-ROM and DVD-R devices. This ensures the highest efficiency currently available. Due to the fact that key2audio(TM) protected discs do not play on PC, no ripping is possible. Analogue copies, on the contrary, can be made to any analogue devices. (eg MC).

key2audio does not alter the sound quality in any way. Music data is not accessed, the bitstream is exactly the same for a protected and an unprotected CD (no C2 errors/uncorrectables in the music data). Only the copier notices a difference, for the listener, the sound remains the same.

The audio part completely complies with Red Book standard. In addition, a CD protected with key2audio still guarantees a maximum playing time of 77 minutes and therefore does not limit the pleasure of listening time at all. Full ISRC, UPC, CD Text capabilities are supported.

The key2Audio work on most CD Readers but on a few (more expensive) readers they fail to work.

Re:How fast will it be ripped?

[crisco]

Well over a thousand hits on WinMX, including the entire album zipped up and assorted bitrates over 128.

The proverbial cat isn't so easy to put back in the bag, is it Sony?

Re:/me runs out to the store, buy open and return

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

Philips still has a TRADEMARK on their logo. That does NOT expire. Even though their patents will.

So yes, after 2003 they can't sue for patent infringement, only for trademark infringement (whereas now they can do both).

Trademark infringement can even carry criminal penalties.

You'll never be able to independantly sell a "Whopper" hamburger - because of the trademark. Same deal here.

Not that great

[legLess]

Apparently these CDs still adhere to the Red Book (somehow). But the consensus seems to be that the Key2Audio protection isn't that great:

• Bypassing it: CDFreaks article [cdfreaks.com], although I don'tthink they're the original posters of this method.
• Hardware solution: AOpen CD 56X AKH/A80 (unconfirmed [google.com])
• Windows software solution #1: EAC [exactaudiocopy.de]. This is truly excellent software in its own regard, and apparently it bypasses Key2Audio nicely. You're better off Googling for EAC, as the site isn't updated often. Also check out the EAC mailing list [yahoo.com], and this message [yahoo.com] in particular.
• Windows software solution #2: CloneCD [elby.org]. Many swear by it, but I haven't used it myself.

Most importantly, the tests are over - this is for real. It seems that Celine is Sony's biggest-selling "artist" - they wouldn't use her as a beta test.

Definitely illegal

[DaveWood]

Remember all those frighteningly vague and overbroad "computer crime" and "anti-hacking" laws that most states have passed over the last 20 years? You know, like the one that got that college kid a felony indictment for installing SETI@Home at his university?

This CD is illegal under almost all of them.

http://nsi.org/Library/Compsec/computerlaw/statela ws.html [nsi.org]

Of course, so is all "spyware," including RealPlayer/CometCursor/RealJukebox/etc., and for that matter, perhaps even Windows Media Player 8 (silent reporting) and Microsoft Word (silent GUID/CPUID tagging). Not to mention all spam/UCE. Then again, so is even portwalking or attempting to log in to a computer that's not yours... And I could go on.

Then again, if the government is corrupt enough for Bono/DMCA/UCITA/SSSCA, it's way more than corrupt enough to conveniently forget to enforce these laws to any good end.

Trivial workaround (and the *real * agenda)

[fanatic]

1. cable line-out of CD player to line-in of computer.
2. start analog to digital software on computer (I like wavrec)
3. play cd
4. encode to mp3
5. upload the fuck out of that thing

Oh, yeah, copy protection will keep this of the Internet. Right.

This is just cover for the real agenda: to convince people that they don't own what they just paid for, and must have the RIAA's permission to use it.

Pay per play is the ultimate goal and this is just a step in that direction.

Jogging, not cars

[yerricde]

The reason that cassettes are still available is that people like to listen to music in their cars.

Not cars. As lucifuge31337 said, any car CD player over $50 should handle bumps well. The same can't be said for pocket CD players. No matter how big your pocket CD player's buffer is, it won't be able to buffer over 10 minutes of jogging. A pocket tape player is also much cheaper than a MiniDisc recorder or an MP3 player.

In any case, part of what I was saying was that the 'new media' would be a higher quality than CD.

No. Quality is not a linear function of signal-to-noise ratio or frequency because the ear has limits to what it can hear. The recording industry will have a hard time convincing the audio-enlightened that their new format has higher fidelity than good old CD Audio. A well-mastered CD has 120 dB dynamic range in 20-16000 Hz and decent dynamic range above that because modern mastering techniques shove all the dither noise into the high frequencies (16-22 kHz) where the human ear is not nearly as sensitive. (Look up "noise shaping" on Google to see how.)

These CDs *can* hose XP

[kawika]

The errors that the CD causes are interpreted by XP as a failure of the drive, so it permanently turns off DMA in the hopes that will make the drive usable. Here's an informative Usenet post [google.com] about the problem. So Sony is wrong when they say the CD "...will not alter anything."

I'm tired of CD's

[n2dasun]

They cost too much, especially thinking of how much cd media costs, and all this copy protection talk is pretty tiresome. I always go to Cheap CD's [cheap-cds.com] to find the track listing and some sound samples, then go to Audiogalaxy [audiogalaxy.com] if it sounds interesting, so I can listen to all the songs before I decide if I want to purchase it. I hate paying for filler material. I want songs that were made because the artist wanted to make it and put some heart into it, not something they had to cook up to finish the album. I'm threw with fattening up record execs just by doing(IMHO) the right thing and purchasing cd's.

I think the folks at Fairtunes [fairtunes.com] have the right idea. Check out this link [musiclink.com] I got from their faq to see how much artists actually get from these cd sales.

Re:I don't think so

[ColaMan]

Firmware isn't as 'firm' as you think.

Most cd-drives have firmware that is upgradeable, similar to the BIOS in your PC. Mainly to fix or work around the bugs that they didn't see at the factory.

For example, I upgraded the firmware on my DVD drive because it didn't do DMA properly when it came out, but a firmware upgrade fixed it.

It's pretty unlikely that it would cause firmware corruption though. It is possible however to "crash" your firmware , so that it ends up in an unknown state (it's unknown, because the damn drive just sits there, and there aint no monitor or keyboard directly attached to your CD drive to see what went wrong).

Most likely, with a corrupted CD, all you get is a drive that spends 10 minutes trying to find a table of contents that makes sense. This (esp in windows machines) means 10 minutes of waiting for your cursor to respond, or rebooting.

A little on the anti-social side for Sony though.

Re:/me runs out to the store, buy open and return

[ShawnH]

I don't see a "BIG warning sticker on the front [amazon.de],"
only a small label that says (I think) "Will not play on PC/MAC"

I think Sony is blowing some smoke.

Re:Celine Dion, eh?

[jbn-o]

'Hi, I'm a thief, but don't let that make you think any less of me.'

Unauthorized duplication is not stealing, no matter how many people fail to recognize the difference between physical property and intangible concepts. Please don't refer to it as such. What johnnythan admitted to is illegal, but you'll lose any rational argument about copyright if you insist on talking about copyright infringement as theft of property. Siva Vaidhyanathan has written an excellent book called "Copyrights and Copywrongs" in which he explains the dangers of thinking about copyright as property law. I highly recommend it because it is easily read, concise, and very well researched.

Re:warnings get sony off the hook?

[Skidge]

Sorry, that was a bad example. The McDonald's coffee law suit wasn't quite so cut-and-dry frivolous as many people believe. The coffee at McDonalds was, as a matter of policy, stored at scalding temperatures. The woman, who was 79, was sitting in the passenger seat, not driving the car. The car was parked, not moving. Many people cite this case and claim to know the facts, but most people are just perpetuating misinformation.

More details on the McDonalds coffee law suit [lectlaw.com].

Re:warnings get sony off the hook?

[Inthewire]

I agree that frivolous lawsuits are a pox on the legal system, but the McDonald's case had a point.

By its own corporate standards, McDonald's sells coffee at

180 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit. A scientist testifying for McDonald's argued that any coffee hotter than 130 degrees could produce third degree burns. Likewise, a scientist testifying on behalf of Ms. Liebeck noted that it takes less than three seconds to produce a third degree burn at 190 degrees.

During trial, McDonald's admitted that it had known about the risk of serious burns from its coffee for more than 10 years. From 1982 to 1992, McDonald's received at least 700 reports of burns from scalding coffee; some of the injured were children and infants. Many customers received severe burns to the genital area, perineum, inner thighs and buttocks. In addition, many of these claims were settled for up to $500,000.

Witnesses for McDonald's testified that consumers were not aware of the extent of danger from coffee spills served at the company's required temperature. McDonald's admitted it did not warn customers and could offer no explanation as to why it did not.

There's a hell of a lot more information at http://www.citizen.org/congress/civjus/tort/myths/ articles.cfm?ID=785 [citizen.org]

Works for me...

[strangel]

I'm currently listening to this cd on my pc... works like every OTHER cd I own...tested on a Samsung SW-408B CD-RW drive and a Samsung SD-608 DVD drive. No problems.
Are you sure all of them are protected?
I tried it in WinAmp, Roxio EZ CD Creator, and even Windows Media Player...if it doesn't crash WMP, I think it's safe to say it's not gonna crash anything :P
Perhaps I got lucky? Can anyone verify?

Jim

Online retailers don't state disability

[ejoe_mac]

Just to prove a point, I have looked at both Amazon and CDNow's sites and neither one state that the disk won't play on a computer. So I can buy it online, but can't play it on my desktop.

BTW - Has anyone tried to play this on a console system? I can see it crashing a XBox just because of the underlying OS.

Re:/me runs out to the store, buy open and return

[grahamm]

Not only is it on the wrapper, it is printed on the case (and on the CD)

Cutting nose off to spite the face.

[downundarob]

Well it seems that the new single will NOT be played on the radio station I volunteer at. If we are not able to make the (leaglly permitted) ethereal recording of the CD and encode it on the the digital playsystem used in the studio, then it wont go to air. Simple as that really.

No air play, no publicity:
no publicity, no sales.

Re:Clone CD can copy it

[radish]

Seeing as mr PineGreen's URL indicates a UK domain, the DMCA does not apply, ergo he's very unlikely to have broken the law in the manner you suggest. The world != the USA.

This protection prevents listening on regular HiFi

[Anonymous Coward]

On:

http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_prot ections_key2audio.shtml [cdmediaworld.com]

Is this quote:

A digital-2-digital (digital CD output to digital CD-Recorder/MD input) generates an "Copy Prohibit" or "Cannot Copy" error message!

I have a HiFi system which delivers digital data to the ampiflier, which has a DSP processor (all modern A/V receivers are like this). This way I avoid introducing the noise/distorsions through audio cables between CD player and ampifiler, and also let the ampifiler process the digital signal better than CD player would do.

I use all normal HiFi components, and just use the digital connection between them through optical cable between my CD player and my ampiflier.

In short, the disk with stated protection wouldn't play on my HiFi system. Note: I don't use any computer.

And that is not stated on the sticker. Fantastic reason to buy, open and return the opened disk to the store.

At the end, Sony'd have to put on the sticker something like:

"this disk won't play on Mac, PC and on digital HiFi systems"

CD disk which you can't play on digital HiFi systems -- only on analog ones -- it's really a good buy. ;>

Even if somebody at the moment doesn't have the system which I explained (and a lot of people can upgrade the present systems to it by just buying once optical cable), why would anybody buy a CD which wouldn't work once he improves his HiFi system?

Re:Intentional Harm

[Anonymous Coward]

In the UK it is illegal to modify the normal running of a computer or software. This "CD" will clearly breach this law, so if Sony try and sell it in this country knowing that it will crash a computer if it is run, then they might find the full weight of the law being applied against them.

Depends on how large a donation Sony make to the labour party I suppose...

It does play on Linux though :o)

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have the Celine Dion CD, but the same
warning is also on the new Sony Local Music CD
'Leaving' by ML (released in the Netherlands,
great music BTW).
So I dropped it in the DVD-ROM player of my PC
and it played perfectly using the native KDE 2
CD player. It does see two additional tracks
at the end that it isn't supposed to see, but
if you just skip those, you're fine and you can
even mount the CD and copy the songs as .wav
files, just as usual.
I wonder why Sony even bothers coming up with
half-assed copy protection like this...

Playing CD on MAC

[Anonymous Coward]

I have the K's choice 'Live' CD which also has this copy protection on it. And as with Celine's CD it won't play on PC's or MAC's with OS 8 and above.

However, I have 2 Power Mac 7500/100 with OS 7 and I can get them both to play the CD's using the following steps

1. Insert the CD

2. Try and run the CD

3. You should get a message saying the CD isn't initialised.

4. Holding the CD drive in to stop it ejecting ,tell it to try and initialise the CD. You may get asked to do this twice.

5. An icon should now appear on your desktop. Double click on it and the cd player should start.

6. Please note I can only get this to happen on the machines with OS 7 on. I have one with OS 8 and this trick will not work. The specs of the machines are all the same

Hopefully this is going to be of use to someone.

That depends on what country he's from ...

[Hektor_Troy]

In Denmark (where I'm from) it is perfectly legal for me to have digital copies of every single cd-album ever published - even if I don't own a single album.

Why?

Because the copyright law in Denmark allows me to make copies of original works - no matter who owns them. If I wanted to, I could walk down to the local library, borrow a copy of every album they have in store, go home, rip them onto my computer and return the albums - without breaking any laws in Denmark.

I can even take the copies, burn them onto CDs, and play them where ever I want to (just not to loudly, or I'll have to pay KODA/IFPI for playing music in public - stupid law). The only thing I can't do is give the copies to anyone not living with me. I can't give them as gifts, I can lend them to friends etc. But other than that, I can do just about everything I want to.

Now - I can't download music off most P2P networks, because then I'd be copying an illegal copy, and I'm not allowed to do that. But hey - I can just walk down to the local library and check out their CDs ...

How's that for fair use?

The warning doesn't say it will CRASH your PC

[StarmanTHX]

The disclaimer says that the CD won't work on it. To most people, this simply means that it won't work and get ejected. It DOESN'T say that it will CRASH your computer. I smell a lawsuit. Mike

Cold Hearted Business View

[johnos]

From the business point of view, this is as stupid a move as a consumer oriented company could make. Anyone with an MBA and a brain in their head would come to the same conclusion.

The potential gain (avoid lost sales) is so far below the potential loss (lawsuits, internal Sony politics, losses to other Sony divisions, lost sales to pissed off consumers, lost sales due to geeks cracking the cd as a point of honor, angry artists, inter-territory grey marketing, spread of hardware workarounds, etc.) that nobody in their right mind would implement such a scheme. Which is why most companies aren't rushing to try out the technology. There is no business incentive to be a pioneer.

Also, from a strategic business point of view, when a consumer company treats its customers as criminals, then there is something far more basic than technology at work. This is the classic case of a technology that allows the expression of a nacient desire. BUT IT IS NOT A TECHNOLOGICAL PROBLEM! Its the nacient desire that is the issue. So there can be no technological solution. They do actually teach this stuff in business schools. Sony is now about to re-teach the lesson to a generation of music executives. Remember to not get too pissed off and enjoy the fun.

Re:Works for me...

[Anonymous Freak]

Did you buy the european version of the CD? As stated in the story, only SOME european versions of it are this way. The American verison isn't crippled. (Yet.)

And here's how one can often work around this..

[Firehawke]

As a workaround, one could have tried Daemon Tools. DT has two primary functions, acting as an emulated SCSI controller plus CDROM/DVD to allow one to directly mount and use ISO images (with full support for almost every copy protection currently known) and it can use the same copy protection modes with a regular disc with several options that are available with the program.

Daemon Tools is also free for download and use, and you can grab it at their website [daemon-tools.com]

Re:Not in Canada!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is unfortunately incorrect.

The levy (not a tax, the government doesn't get to keep any of the money) Canadians pay on blank CDs and cassettes does indeed go to the artists (or at least a group claiming to represent them), but it's still not legal to violate copyright.

The levy does help assuage guilt over copyright violations however. And if the levy is increased as much as the artists' want, I'll feel morally obligated to copy music.