Fighting Music Piracy with Glue 610
Scott Granneman writes: "The New York Times (Free Blah-di-blah) is reporting that Epic Records, in an effort to prevent reviewers from creating mp3s or even playing the preview CD in anything they don't control, is not disseminating the new Pearl Jam and Tori Amos CDs inside Sony Walkman players that are glued shut. Oh yeah ... the headphones are glued to the players too, to prevent any authorized output. A low-tech answer to a high-tech issue."
Oh yeah right (Score:0, Interesting)
Reminds me of Nintendo's tactics... (Score:5, Interesting)
Glue... shmoo (Score:2, Interesting)
They've done pretty well here though. How many of you vague Tori Amos fans knew she had a new album out before this article?
Re:Wire cutting (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course sanity and media companies are rarely found together
Must be missing something (Score:2, Interesting)
If the seal is tampered with, then blacklist the reviewer.
Hell why even bother with walkman's at all. Just use a CD-Player amplifier set. Seal the tray and other outputs and plug in a industry quality headphone. Sony should be able to fix something like that themselves.
Re:The latest in IP circumvention (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Oh yeah right (Score:1, Interesting)
Compare this to secure document transmission. (Score:3, Interesting)
When applied to music, if you don't trust the reviewers at all, you make them come to a hotel room where you've set up a hi-fi, give them a comfy chair to sit in, and let them listen. You don't ever give them the CD. The best they can manage is smuggling a Minidisc recorder in, and the quality won't be great.
Glued-together Walkmans? I'd only settle for _that_ if they supplied quality headphones. You can't possibly review music properly on anything less than proper hi-fi equipment. Walkmans, micro systems and the like just don't have sufficient quality.
Oh the Irony (Score:3, Interesting)
Article 1: Record companies are sending expensive sealed players to reviewers instead of just CD's.
Article 2: Artists are fed up with being screwed over by the record industry, but the industry keeps bleating about how expensive it is to handle their artists.
I see a nice cycle here: They have to spend more money to keep their music controlled because they need to make more money to spend more money to keep their music controlled because they need to make more money to spend more money to...
Canary Trap (Score:2, Interesting)
Perhaps the company also thinks that most of what it considers "legitimate" reviewers will acquiesce.
Re:Wire cutting (Score:4, Interesting)
You don't even need to cut the wires. You can just put a coil around the earpieces or the wires leading to the earpieces and pick up the content inductively. Most journalists won't know that, but it only takes one leak :-)
Re:Pearl Jam?? (Score:1, Interesting)
that's totally BS
do a search online and read for yourself, it had NOTHING to do w/ Pearl Jam wanting a larger cut of ticket sales, jesus that's the biggest BS thign i've heard