BMG's New Copy-Protected Audio CDs 296
PCB writes "I found the following on www.heise.de:
BMG-Entertainment started selling audio-CDs using the Cactus Data Shield, a copy-protection system developed by Midbar and Sonopress which makes it impossible to grab the music from the CD and to listen to it using "an old CD-Player" or a CD-ROM-drive. It is used on the albums "Razorblade Romance" by Him and "My Private War" by Philip Boa & The Voodoo Club. What's worse: the copy-protection is not even mentioned on the outside of the CD-case, and as these CDs are not really RedBook-compliant, they actually don't contain CD Digital Audio. " You'll need use the Fish of Many Languages to translate into your appropriate native tongue.
Re:No prevent, but maybe reveal (Score:1)
What an interesting idea. You're right, paying with a credit card opens one up to that sort of abuse, doesn't it? Cash purchases, though, are (for now) anonymous.
But it would still cost the record biz a mint - every CD package would have to bear a sticker with the CD's serial number in bar-code, or some similar scheme, so the checkout computer could match up the purchaser and the purchased material's serial numbers. Manufacturing the CDs and packaging could get a lot more expensive. Either the CDs and the packaging would have to be carefully tracked to ensure they matched up, or the packager would have to have a quick way to scan every single disc for the watermark when putting the disks in the cases. Then of course the retailers would have to cooperate by setting up their systems to read the extra bar codes and reporting everything to Big Brother.
It's certainly possible, but I doubt the record biz is likely to foot the bill, so I'm not worried about it just yet. Heck, my favorite CD shops allow trade-ins, which sidestep the money thing all together.
Re:All copy prot fails so long as we can hear and (Score:1)
Now, there is no doubt that big time pirates had very expensive equipment to copy ANYTHING for ages, and they are the real trouble for software/music industry, because people who are BUYING pirated music/software indeed could have bought the authentic ones, and thus really do hurt sales, unlike little guys who make a copy or two of a music CD to listen not only at home but also on their way to work/school.
Thus, all these copy protection measures are just a hassle and extra problems for end users. Almost anyone can make a very high quality copy of an audio=cd and this will only be more common in the future.
Re:Java my ass (Score:2)
Re:Slashdot is Sloooowwwwwww Today (Score:1)
(In my experience, most of the slashdot slowdowns I've seen are because of the ad banners taking forever to load).
Java has it's place, but it unfortunately hasn't lived up to its hype in time for it to be the ubiquitously accepted language touted to be. The fact that you have to stop just short of sacrificing your first child to the java gods in order to get IO to implement cleanly doesn't help much either. Yes yes, I know you can get newer versions of Java which "fix all the old problems". Unless you're using it as a language for embedded apps or intranet glue (or other situations where you have direct control over the running environment), you're producing products for the general populace and most people's java availability begins and ends on their webbrowser.
--
rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
Re:Ok no cheating this time (Score:1)
If all people want to do is make a copy of the audio then the workarround is utterly trivial...
If you can play it, you can copy it... (Score:1)
It is more time consuming, but comes out sounding just fine.
There is really no way to get around people recording sounds (ie copying cd's). If it makes a sound, it can be recorded -- it just might be a little more difficult in some cases than in others.
PEACE
Re:Store return policies (Score:1)
Re:I've seen such disks a few months ago (Score:1)
Actually, I have a Sony Discman with optical out, and I have seen soundcards for around US$100 that have optical in.
Re:Store return policies (Score:1)
The store or record company would simply say "We intended for it to be played on standard home audio CD players. And we purposely engineered it so that you couldn't rip the data onto your computer. That is the new format's purpose and there is nothing you can do about it, ha ha."
I think the very most you might get BMG to do is put a label on the outside of the disc that says something along the lines of "This CD is not compatible with CD-ROM drives."
Re:So return 'em! (Score:1)
Re: CD Protection (Score:1)
Re:Digital Watermarking (Score:1)
Mind you that is _adding_ noise, wereas the watermark would imply _replacing_ the lowest bit with noise. But still. Just goes to show how inaudible that sort of thing is.
Re:Errr... (Score:1)
Make Seven
Bad method of copy protection. (Score:1)
This won't impress anybody, unfortunately (Score:2)
- 95% of all users won't even notice.
- 3% of all users play CDs on their computers, but don't copy them. They will be annoyed, but won't notice that copy protection is the issue. They'll play the CD on regular CD players only.
- 1.5% of all users have an old CD player that chokes. They'll be pissed, and hopefully some will return the CD.
- The reminding 0.5% are slashdot readers who definitely will return the CD.
Okay, so there is a potential 2% of users who'd return the CD, but currently there are only 2 CDs out there. How many of those 2% do currently own the CD? Almost nobody! How many people are willing to go out, buy the CD just to return it? Well, make your guess, but I doubt it'll be enough.Certainly BMG will closely monitor consumer reaction. And I am sure they will pull all strings to prevent this information to be reported in news. And probably they will be successful, as big corporations are pretty good at controlling the media. I mean, isn't it weird that nobody mentioned any US news source about this?
Hey, who wants to start cracking? (Score:1)
Re:Faulty product legislation (Score:1)
W2k comes with a fully functional one IMO.
Re:Hmm... (Score:1)
Re:So what? Just record from your CD player (Score:1)
Make Seven
WRONG WRONG WRONG (Score:3)
I'm sorry, I don't give a rat's ass about whether or not some consumer hacker type can still copy it or not. I have a problem with the idea of a gradual shift over to formats I CANNOT PRODUCE! I've been going through absolute hell simply getting the ADAT I bought into working order (fortunately all the repairs are being covered by the seller, who didn't check the machine out enough before selling it), and I am not thrilled with the idea of a new generation of CD players made to no longer understand Red Book Audio. What the hell is happening to the world?
If I seem frantic, it's because I am already profoundly committed to pushing MP3s as hard as I can- and hoped to be able to earn small amounts of bread money by selling _master_ _CDs_ of the music that's being MP3ed. I know I can put out quality that's worth getting an 'audiophile' copy, and people who want to 'support the artist' can be encouraged to get that, I don't have to build timebombs into the mp3s or go for pay-by-play or anything psychotically disgusting like that.
Now the other shoe drops, and I find that the industry is quietly shifting the CD format out from under me to some other sort of format that won't play on normal CD players.
Bets that the industry won't phase out Red Book? Anyone?
Bets that the new format will be available to me and my little borrowed CD-Rom burner? Anyone?
What the hell do I have to do, try to make _cassette_ _tapes_ for God's sake, to get a medium with a future? Press vinyl? Actually I could do that very well- but NOT in tiny small runs. And there's the rub.
DAMN it! Anyone who can't see where this is headed is an idiot... and anyone who still claims MP3s are against the interests of artists in the face of this steady 'power shift' is crazy. I don't see MP3 copiers cutting off my access to the public- I see them enhancing it, in a strictly non-profit sort of way. I see the INDUSTRY steadily, subtly cutting off my access to the public, 'deprecating' the media I used to have increasingly easy access to- and I'm freaking out! What the HELL?
This morning when I got up I would not, in my wildest flights of suspicion and paranoia, have dreamed to suggest that the music industry was taking steps to DEPRECATE RED BOOK AUDIO.
What the _hell_? :(
So return 'em! (Score:5)
My CD player happens to be my Macintosh. I choose to listen to my music as MP3's because that's a convenient method of playback for my lifestyle. If they've gone about making sure I can't play back my CD's in what is, to me, a normal method based on the standard format that has been in use for many years, then I simply have to consider their product to be unplayable and defective and demand my money back.
Re:Attack the problem... not the side effects... (Score:2)
What sound card do you have?
How have you addressed the video side?
What size and type of TV or monitor display?
What is the best solution for fast 3D graphics and high quality TV out?
Are you using DVD with a hardware MPEG decoder? Do you have an hardware MPEG encoder to compress video on the fly?
Does your solution allow you to override DVD region coding?
What kind of hard drive setup do you have for recording video?
Apologies for the brusque interrogation but I just can't seem to find someone who's actually done this sort of PC-based media system and achieved quality approaching "domestic" consumer equipment.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
good idea (Score:1)
Thankfully money talks; the millions of people with 'old cdroms' will gracefully return their 'faulty cd' and buy a cd that works on their 'old cd player.' Does Joe RedNeck know that there is a 'new cd player' for playing such cd's? Didn't think so.
If Divx failed, what makes them think something like this will not?
Thankfully smaller and independent labels have some sense of dignity, and try to promote the music, not promote sales.
Re:I've seen such disks a few months ago (Score:2)
Within 20 minutes of my first encounter with this scheme a perfect digital rip was made. But I guess that people outside the audio and music industry usually don't have access to an S/PDIF interface card.
There is an interesting conundrum here where the industry hyped new media like CDs which provide "better audio quality", requiring the music listener to ditch their reasonably adequate vinyl records. Most music listeners are actually quite happy with analogue sound - that's how it hits your ears!
But as part of pushing CDs, the industry created a demand for "digital sound" which is extending as far as digital USB speakers for your computer. But by making everything digital, they increase the number of places in the sound chain where the sound can be ripped!
This highlights the idiocy of the industry's attempts at copy protection. If they were going to be able to do it properly, they'll have to sew up not just the media, but all the places where D/A conversion occurs. S/PDIF may not be common now, but you can bet that pro level interfaces are *always* going to find their way to consumer level. You'd think they'd remember that DAT copy protection didn't work?
Danny
From Babblefish (Score:2)
BMG Entertainment, the music department of the Bertelsmann company, has since short audio DS in the trade, which is provided with the copy protection Cactus DATA Shield. This mechanism was developed in co-operation with the Israeli software enterprise Midbar and Sonopress from Germany. So far the albums " Razorblade Romance " of the group of Him and " My private ones are were concerned " the former Independent Heroen Philip Boa & The Voodoo club. The copy protection prevents not only the selection (Grabben) and a copying of the audio TRACKS with the PC, but also a playing on all D-CRcOcM-cDrives as well as on older audio CD players
Never knock on Death's door:
Re:No prevent, but maybe reveal (Score:3)
So if one were to create an MP3 that was made of a cassette recording of a CD, it would still be possible to find the serial number of the source CD in the watermark.
What I've never understood about the watermark system is what good it would do. Sure, you know this MP3 was ripped from CD#1237853, but unless you know who bought that particular CD, you haven't got a lead.
As far as I can tell, the best they could hope for with this scheme would be to do some sort of region coding in the serial number, allowing the authorities to figure that this pirated MP3 was originally ripped from a CD that was sold in, say, Ohio.
To get better info than that, they would have to demand your ID when buying a CD, and keep a database of what CD serial numbers each person buys. And I don't think that would be cost effective, not to mention that it wouldn't go over too well with the general public.
Good thing, too.
Re:So return 'em! (Score:2)
It gets worse (Score:5)
As another poster mentioned, so the old players can't play these discs? Why get a new player when you can get a DVD player made to handle the new, non-Red-Book format?
You'd be surprised how quickly it'd become possible to deprecate Red Book so thoroughly that the newest DVD players WON'T PLAY RED BOOK any longer. Only the copy protected version! But that's okay, because you can buy the music all over again... I mean, because you had it all MP3ed anyway! So who does this hurt?
Musicians. The artists. We are seeing the end of an era where, for the first time in history, you can master the preferred audio format (I'm not counting cassettes here) ON YOUR DESKTOP. You don't have to be signed to anywhere to produce the media. You can burn Red Book Audio CDs! The media becomes accessible to anyone with a CD burner!
We are seeing the first attempts to take that power back- and fussing about how expected new non-Red-Book-playing DVD players 'harm the consumer' is accurate but a horrible trivialisation of the real damage here. (And who wants to bet that the industry will preserve the rippable, uncontrolled, unwatermarked, publically-accessible Red Book Audio format? Who really thinks the industry wouldn't turn their huge collections into useless coasters?)
This story freaks me out worse than any DVD-oriented story I've read- because I had subconsciously trusted that Red Book would always be there for me, that the plain old audio CD with all its obvious faults and clear limitations would at least be a public media format I could count on. I mock the audio CD- I think it is no sort of audiophile wonder- but I trusted it to stick around, to remain hugely popular and common.
I can't say that anymore, in fact I can identify several plausible means by which the industry can deprecate it and shift popular audio onto something strictly industry-controlled- and I'm scared shitless, as Red Book was the media I hoped to use to sell to people who wanted a little more than mp3, which I intend to make lots of and give out freely.
I see the industry saying, "So you like MP3s, do you? Let's see you sell them!" and taking away the audio CD (which I hadn't thought possible), returning me to the days in which you couldn't produce popular media without going through the industry channels. This time, mp3s are likely to remain widely popular through sheer user saturation- but who the hell is going to sell them? I don't even WANT to try and sell mp3s! I think of them as radio, you should be able to listen to all the mp3s you want and only pay if you want to buy your own nice copy of something! And the day may come when indy musicians (again) can no longer produce any of the DVD-hosted, corporate-encrypted public media, without getting signed and spending huge amounts of money and time for the privilege of releasing public media.
This will happen through the deprecation of anything people know how to produce, such as cassettes and Red Book CDs. MP3s may well remain a huge ghetto of underground music- but it's technologically possible to relegate such musicians to only the (freely exchanged) MP3s and deny them access to any new popular media that people are used to paying money before. And that's how it will be done... and ten years from now, today's 'nice' Red Book-savvy CD player is going to look awfully old, most will have broken by then, and it'll be taking up space needed for the new DVD player which also plays the revised CD format, just not the old Red Book format...
I wish I was sleeping, so that this could be a nightmare :( I can't believe this is already starting to happen. And for anyone who doesn't think the industry can make you throw away all your old media and buy the music all over again- remember the CD?
return CD's with copy-protection (Score:1)
1. You buy a CD, it's marked as a Audio-CD (Red-Book compatible), if not noted, it's implicit, that this CD will work in your Player
You try it and notive a label on the CD itself, that it is copy-protected, you couldn't see this, before you bought this CD. This CD doesn't work with your Player => this CD isn't Red-Book compliant, so it isn't an Audio-CD. You had no chance noticing this before, though you can return this CD regardless what the Policy of your CD-Shop is.
2. You buy this copy-protected CD and you can play it, but you cannot copy it with your cd-recorder (the audio-type pioneer makes for example). Then you can return it. Because under german law, you can make copies of tapes, cd's, video etc if it's for personal use und you pay the fee to the gema (a kind of a record company association, that want's to be sure to get it's money). But because you pay your gema-fee with every audio-tape, with every video-tape and every cdr-audio you buy, you have the legal right to copy an cd you own or to make a sampler of your cd's for your car for example. I think in the US the same concept is called fair-use.
So in my opinion, two rights (which you have according to german laws) are not taken into recognition:
First: when you buy a product and it doesn't work for you (even if you see it at a first glance but even more, if it's kind of a shrinked license agreement which states, that this is a copy-protected disc, after you open the cover), you have the right to return it to the distributor (eg the CD-Store). If the owner of the store tells you, you cannot return it, he's wrong, because he has the obligation to get a product back, that doesn't work. And a term like 'Sie können dieses Produkt nur ungeöffnet zurückgeben' is not valid, because it puts obligations to the buyer which aren't valid and so worth nothing. You have allways the right to return something that doesn't work for you and you couldn't know that or weren't told, that it might not working with your equipment.
Second: under german law, you have the right to make copies of videos, cd's etc for personal use. If there's a cd that you cannot copy, this is a violation of german law. For your CD in your car you have the right to make a 'Best-Of' Compilation, regardless what CD's you want to use. You paid the company for their music and now you have the right to listen to this music (a little bit like the DVD Case: you baught the DVD and now aren't able to use it on your computer....Why didn't anybody sue the Companies who provide programs to copy Audio-CD's ? That's even worse, than providing the facility to PLAY DVD's on a Linux-Box....(I'm not suggesting people to sue Firms like hawkeye etc, I only want to make it clear, that there's a difference between playing and copying...).
So, that's all for now...
Hope to see you later,
Matthias
Ok no cheating this time (Score:5)
Ok no cheating this time, get yourself a copy of the cd, load your fave debugger and get cracking. A nice clean reverse enginearing is what is needed here, none of this debuging xing to get the details wus boy cheating (joke!).
Last one to crack+wideband buys the beer!Hmm... (Score:2)
Re:Precedents ? (Score:1)
I've noticed that problem with Weird Al's latest (not trying to copy, but just using DAE to play it since I have no audio cable), however the point at which it screws up is past where the final track *should* have ended (and indeed does end on a conventional CD player). Do yours fail during the music itself?
Isn't that some kind of copy-protection too ?
It could be, but there's always the possibility that there was a bug in whatever produced the CDs. Remember, "Never attribute to malice what can be sufficiently explained by stupidity".
--
Errr... (Score:1)
Re:Cleaned up some, plus a bit more, plus! (Score:1)
> Italics means BabelFish blew it so thoroughly I couldn't make sense of it.
Well huh. I looked said stuff up in a German dictionary (just Ask Jeeves [ask.com] where you can find a German dictionary) and here's what I got:
What a difference a human makes!
Kenneth
Disclaimer: This is an educated choice from the possible translations of a German dictionary (Foreign Language Master [notrix.de]). I know no German besides that which sounds a lot like English (according to one of my friends who is taking German, this is about 50%).
Re:Store return policies (Score:1)
SPDIF can be modified! (Score:1)
Wade.
So it's done with multi-session tricks, huh? (Score:1)
Re:Store return policies (Score:2)
If I you go to WalMart and buy a bicycle, try it out, and decide you would rather have purchased a TV Set.... They are under *NO* obligation to take it back. The sale was a legally binding act, and was final. (of course, wal-mart explicitly *states* that you may return it, under certain conditions.)
Now.. if the bike said 'aluminum frame, gold plated rims.. etc..' and you unpacked it and it was plastic.... then you could return it, and they would *have* to give you a full refund as the sale was fraudulent.
So.. if you go buy a CD, and it's marked as CDDA or whatever.. and it's *NOT*.. it is a fraudulent sale, they have *NOT* sold you what they led you to believe you were buying... so they *MUST* take it back, and refund your money.
So it's done with multi-session tricks, huh? (Score:1)
FYI: CD Players generally look for the TOC of the first session. (Multi-session) CD-ROMs look for the last session. That's currently how PC-only information is hidden from a CD Player. It's a quirk of history.
Wade.
Re:Moderation... (Score:1)
Sheesh, some people.
#define X(x,y) x##y
Re:Cleaned up some (Score:1)
worth a read.
Why be so modest? I think c't is probably the best personal computing magazine... Best one I ever read anyway (and I've seen alot...)
iX is nice too.
Attack the problem... not the side effects... (Score:2)
This is the audio system that the music/entertainment industry won't create.. so I had to take matters into my own hands. Does this make me a theif, or a breaker of the law? No. What it does mean is that the entertainment system that I poured time, money, and effort into can't potentially be used to play newer titles, without even more legwork and bulls*it. Figures.
This whole thing reminds me of when I was big into my Commodore 64... Electronic Arts went though a lot of trouble to make an unbeatable copy-protection system for their floppy disks.. even so far as to deliberately thowing the drive into a destructive head-smashing fit. It didn't take too long for "Fast Hack 'Em" to have, among other things, an 'Electronic Arts' copy function.. that made backups possible for my disk-eating-prone 1541. (I later found that this was due to misalignment, caused by EA's disks!)
It's over a decade later, and the game hasn't changed at all. Seems that the guys at the proverbial top of the corporate ladder have their heads in the clouds... still.
The problem with things like DeCSS isn't the fact that the code is out there, but in the fact that it wasn't underground. In the olden days of the Internet, the mainstream didn't really notice, or care, what happened. If DeCSS or something to 'fix' these noncompliant coasters wants to survive, it needs to do so on the underground, at least in the beginning.. long enough that many, many people have it and have perfected applying it to some useful product that the average Joe can point-and-click to use it without even knowing that he's using DeCSS or 'unfuck' or whatever the current industry-hot-potato is. Once it's reached that saturation point, let it surface. By that time, the source should be obscured well enough that the CCC(tm) (Corrupt/Confused/Contorted Ones - lawyers, corporate machines, FUD campaigns, et. al.) can't find the source and don't have the care to do so (too much time/money to locate it.)
"Locks are for honest people." It's true. A lock only serves to keep honest people honest. No matter how tight you wrap something up, it can be copied/stolen/etc. Obviously, locking stuff up isn't the ticket... it's time to rethink the issue. What the industry needs to do is look at the root cause of the problem. (Really, very basic troubleshooting procedures.) You can spend all damn day/year/decade/century dealing with side effects (pirating CD's, DVD's, VHS tapes, games, even Microsoft mice) and still not have done a damn thing to fix the problem that is causing the undesirable actions. In this case, the #1 root cause is price. CD's are way overpriced, every poll I have seen over the years that even goes near this issue reflects that fact. (I'm sure the record companies know it too, but they're so fat that they have to eat that much, or they'll starve to death. Funny.. dinosaurs were that big too, look what happened to them..)
Well, I think I've said enough. Sorry for the formatting, but
Ssc
--
don't mind my dumb
--
Re:My Ultimate Solution (Score:1)
A bit off-topic. But I couldn't find an email address for you. Dish Networks [dishnetworks.com] sells their non-premimum stations unbundled for $1.50 each, minimum order of 10 unless you allready buy some other package. So for $15 a month you can have what you wanted for $10 plus 2 or so extras. I suggest A and E (for the Biography show).
Back on-topic, I want the same thing. Why should I have a whole wall of ER tapes when I could pay roughtly the same to get random access to any past show? That would kick.
But I'm not sure i would be as intrested if I couldn't FF over the comercials, nor would NBC be as happy cutting the deal if they figure 80% of hte comercials will be FFed over. Plus this is a lot of bandwidth to carry. Not just over the last mile, but from whatever regonal server. Far worse then 100 cable channels. And if the movies live on a disk we are screwed, the bandwidth may be tere to feed 100 diffrent video streams off of one RAID, but the seaks will kill it. And you don't need 100s, but 100,000s or more.
I don't think the problem is just political. The technology isn't there yet. and may not be for a decade or more.
Re:Isn't this illegal in and of itself? (Score:3)
This in no way implies that anyone has to provide you with a method for making said copies, it just means that if you DO make copies, you are within your rights.
IANAL, but this is fairly obvious.
Re:All copy prot fails so long as we can hear and (Score:1)
I don't think that's entirely true.. I understand that recording a movie from a DVD was very difficult before DeCSS. If that were entirely true, the whole DeCSS problem wouldn't exist.
It's easier with sound tho..
So, is anyone working on a "DeCDS"? :-)
--
Re:hmm... (Score:2)
This is a completely separate issue from whether the produce of a media has to give you the technological means to archive it or not. It is not *their* problem. They simply cannot use copyright law against you if you *DO* figure out how to do it... as the 'copies' are legitimate.
To put it differently, them 'allowing' you to, meant 'allowing' you to legally, not technically. They cannot prosecute.
Re:Buy these CDs NOW... (Score:1)
Does anybody know where I could get a CD "encoded" with this stuff? Online prefably.. I am a geek after all.
Justin Buist
Security hole large enought for trucks... (Score:2)
Perheaps that would be a good idea if
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Watermarks and PIII serials... (Score:2)
watermarking in real time.
Since these (supposedly) can only
be played on a new type of CD player,
let the watermark be encrypted into the CDDA
stream _by_ the drive, with it's serial number,
everytime you play an audio track through it.
(This could even work with older CD in the new
drive). Then, when they find a pirated
mp3, get the watermark, track sales records,
find the drive that played it, and find the
pirate (or at least the original owner of the
drive). Sorta like the PIII serial numbers.
(RANT)
Gah!
If any of this has a grain of truth, I'm
NEVER letting go of my old CDROM drive.
Curse their copy-protected foulness!
(/RANT)
-Slackergod
Re:All copy prot fails so long as we can hear and (Score:2)
If I can hear it, I can record it.
If I can see it, I can record it.
NOTHING CAN CHANGE THIS TRUTH.
You're right, you can record it, but the fight isn't over making recording, it's about making copies (as in the same quality of the original). You can always hold your old boombox up the speakers and record what comes out, and no one is going to complain (I remember holding my boombox up to the radio to make tapes way back when). The difference being that the quality is so bad that you can't distribute it to anyone (well, you can sure try, but I doubt anyone will take you up on it). No one cares if you make a copy, they care if you make a copy suitable for redistribution.
Not Quite (Score:3)
If new but really cheap CD players won't play them either, then maybe Wal-Mart will refuse to sell the protected CD's, "Hey, they piss off our el cheapo CD vendors", and then BMG will be really really sorry.
Re:Interesting numbers (Doh!) (Score:2)
It's a shame Slashdot doesn't allow the original author to edit their post (for just such an emergency.
Calm and dignified reply (Score:2)
I realize that this message may be misplaced in its delivery to one or more of the people who have received it, but I am sending it to any and all addresses for BMG employees that appear to be potentially applicable (or who may know where it should be forwarded).
It has come to light that recently BMG has begun releasing copy-protected music CDs to the general public. Due to the fact that these CD's are not Red Book compliant, they do not play on many conventional CD players, nor do they play on computer CD drives. They do not bear a label or message anywhere on them that states this. Now, I don't know if you're aware or not, but many retail outlets do not accept returns of opened CD's (after all, someone might have copied it). This means that I, as a consumer of music, stand an indefinite chance of purchasing a useless plastic coaster anytime I purchase a CD from BMG Entertainment or its subsidiary companies. I also am a significant user of the MP3 music format. I have a household network with computers in many rooms of my home, including one hooked up to my stereo system. I have an MP3 player in my car, and also a portable player. By removing (or, as I'll illustrate in a momeny, simply complicating) my ability to convert a CD that I legally purchase into a *legal* copy for listening, you have removed a great portion of the reason for me to purchase that CD. In fact, you have not even removed my ability to perform that conversion; there are several ways that such copy-protection could be circumvented - and one of them is certain to work.
I am a long-time member of the BMG Music Service in the United States. As things stand, I have no guarantee that when I purchase a CD from you that it will in fact be a CD Audio (Red Book) compliant disc, nor that it will work in my high-end (but old) CD player. If this matter is not resolved acceptibly, this leaves me no choice other than to cancel my membership with BMG Music Service.
Here's a link to an article (in German) if you hadn't already heard about this: /data/cm-25.01.00-000/ [heise.de]
http://www.heise.de/newsticker
For those that can't read German, here it is (poorly) translated through Babelfish:c ker/data/cm-25.01.00-000/&lp=de_en [altavista.com]
http://babelfish.altavista.com/cgi-bin/trans late?doit=done&urltext=http://www.heise.de/newsti
Re:Store return policies (Score:2)
Re:All copy prot fails so long as we can hear and (Score:2)
Taddeusz
Return Critical Mass (Score:2)
a 2-3% return rate would significantly eat into profits, (extra work returning and taking care of them would help)
they would notice.
Faulty product legislation (Score:3)
I've often dreamt of suing Microsoft for their so-called TELNET programme which actually doesn't. (It violates the protocol, or at least the Win95 version did).
BMG better wise-up quick (Score:2)
Cleaned up some (Score:2)
> BMG Entertainment, the music division of the Bertelsmann company, has started selling CDs with copy protection using the Cactus DATA Shield. This system was developed in co-operation with the Israeli software enterprise Midbar and Sonopress from Germany. So far the albums "Razorblade Romance" by Him and "My Private War" by former Independent Heroen Philip Boa & The Voodoo club(?). The copy protection prevents not only playing and copying of the audio tracks with the PC, but also playing on all D-CRcOcM-cDrives(?) as well as on older audio CD players.
The italics are an uncertain fix. I (or preferrably someone else) should look them up in a German dictionary to verify the exact meaning.
AP- South Florida Hacker arrested... (Score:3)
"Really, I dont understand it.. I was just telling people how I use the digital output on my new CD deck to input the audio into my computer so that I can run it through nwfiir to make it sound better.. and all of a sudden the cops were kicking in my door."
This is stupid. If you can play it, you can copy it.
Friend @ the company.. (Score:2)
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FYI, some TLAs (Score:2)
IANAxxx - I Am Not A (whatever, usually Lawyer)
IIRC - If I Recall Correctly
AFAIK - As Far As I Know
IMO/IMHO - In My Opinion/In My Humble Opinion (also IMnsHO: not so humble)
More can be identified at this handy little Acronym Page [ihug.co.nz].
HTH. HAND.
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rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
Useless plastic (Score:3)
I'd say this calls for a boycott, but why bother? They're products are useless. Obviously, no one is going to buy a useless product.
And looking around the office, and seeing the number of headphones hooked into computers, I'd say that they've grossly underestimated the impact of this. And we're not talking about just techies, either.
Anyone got an e-mail for BMG so that I can inform them that they are starting to produce products that are useless to me?
Their web site (Score:4)
They sell a device which goes between the data source and the mastering equiptment, so it can't be fiddling with the format too much. I would guess that they screw with the formatting information that gets written (such as the block headers and whatnot)
From their web site:
I can't imagine it would take too long to crack it.They've been reading /.! (Score:5)
A music format no-one can read!
BMG == evil control freaks (Score:2)
The thing to know about BMG is that they are control freaks. They play hardball. They aggressively prosecute the copying of long-deleted albums once released on their label, to an extent that the others don't. They're not called the Big Mean German for nothing.
Fortunately they don't seem to release much worth getting (other than David Bowie's single releases). Unless they own lots of "independent" labels and keep quiet about it.
The piracy merry-go-round... (Score:4)
2) Companies get angry, include simple copy protection.
3) Crackers defeat copy protection.
4) Companies get even more angry and start including protection at the cost of pissing off honest consumers.
5) Crackers defeat copy protection.
6) New read only media comes out with no writable drive.
7) Companies migrate to new media, and relax protection measures.
8) New writable drive comes out.
7) GOTO 1...over and over and over...
People NEVER LEARN.
Return it, Return it, Return it. (Score:5)
The situation would be like when I bought a crappy VHS tape years ago from Best Buy. Not only did the movie suck, but they recorded at low speed on low quality tapes. I tried to return it, They said "it's open, we can't let you". So I explained that the tape was defective. They said "ok, exchange it". I said I would be fine with that, but the next one is most likely defective also. I explained that I would probably exchange and return every copy in the store. Ok they let me return it.
If an audio CD I wanted to buy was written in the encrapted format, I wouldn't be so easy on them.
Buy the CD,
Hey it's broke, it doesn't play on my CD player(made in 1989).
Exchange it.
Hey, this one's broke too.
Exchange it. Wow, must have had a bad batch.
Third ones broke too.
Best Buy "Exchange limit, sorry, something wrong with your player?"
My cd player plays my other 100 cd's fine.
Ok, refund.
After a few thosand people return these things, they would have to at least sell them as a separate format. So then only Circuit city would sell them in the CIVX section.
Adams reference (Score:2)
Yep, that was the reference I was after.
Which was rather unfair, of course. Hairdressers do a necessary job, after all, and we all know what happened without the telephone sanitisers.
I'd define the useless third as that breed of hangers-on whose only work is self-promotion. They join groups ending in 'AA' whose only goals are to promote their own existence at the expense of everyone else. They have their companies fight each other. They sue. They are the lawyers. They are the politicians who are in it for the power, not because they believe in any particular vision of the future.
Stick 'em on Ark Fleet Ship B and back to Golgafrincham with them!
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Re:I've seen such disks a few months ago (Score:2)
But, if it's a real CD and just uses an odd format, it won't be long before programs are written that manually decode it.
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
Then you release it on someone more popular's records.
Then when people complain you say that as you have released records before on this standard. then your ncrypted records are in fact the standard format and the CD players that everyone has are in fact the non compliant devices even though it is your CD's that are non compliant.
then not only do you have encrypted music, but you own the encryption system and no Independant artists can distribute music without going through the record companies.
Old Technology (Score:2)
Re:Errr... (Score:2)
I've seen such disks a few months ago (Score:5)
My guess is that CD players and CD-ROM drives use the CD subcode channel differently. These disks probably trash the parts used by CD-ROM drives.
A simple modification to the CD-ROM firmware can probably fix it but I don't believe CDROM manufacturers would be inclined to do that.
My suggestion to the owner of the disk was to use the S/PDIF output of a DVD player and hook it to his S/PDIF interface card. Within 20 minutes of my first encounter with this scheme a perfect digital rip was made. But I guess that people outside the audio and music industry usually don't have access to an S/PDIF interface card.
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Re:Store return policies (Score:2)
Allegedly *will* play on standard devices (Score:2)
I'm the author and maintainer of a Windows (don't flame me) dll for ripping CD audio, and so this interests me a great deal. But the bottom line is this -- if it can be read by a standard CD player, then there's no way that they can rip-proof it. Since it's quitting time here in Europe, I may head down to the local record store and see if I can't find either of these two CDs and get back with some hard, technical details, rather than the marketing hype from the article and Midbar's web site.
Store return policies (Score:4)
The rationale is simple, and compelling in college towns (such as where I live) - the store is trying to prevent students from buying a disk, ripping it to tape (or MP3 nowadays), then returning the album for a full refund.
Of course, that policy will *not* work if a label starts defrauding the public by using an incompatible format without clearly labeling it as such. The obvious solution which other people have suggested - filing criminal fraud charges against the record store and label - are unlikely to go anywhere because no DA will prosecute a case where the loss is the cost of a CD. Individuals will probably win in small claims court, but that's a hassle and BMG will continue to rake in money from the public -- and harm the reputation of its artists.
The only way to stop BMG sppears to be a class action civil lawsuit (hmm, is fraud = breach of contract and subject to treble damages?), a successful boycott, or sending the Norwegian police to arrest the president of BMG for "economic crimes."
Hmm... (Score:2)
Wouldn't something like unfuck.exe make the CD's copyable? (Besides the obvious analog copying)
Isn't this illegal in and of itself? (Score:3)
I know that a number of lawyers read
Re: My Ultimate Solution (Score:2)
But when I encode my MP5, if I want to make money off it, I register it with a public database with my public key...
Digital signature. The artist would have a keypair, and sign the work with her private key. The artist's public key would verify the signature, ensuring the consumer that this really is the artist's work, and that the royalties will go to the person who deserves them.
First we gotta educate the masses about public key cryptography. Which reminds me, I need to contact someone....
The software I use to playback the MP5 stream sends a private key to this database, unlocks the stream and hits a counter for it.
Private keys are never sent across the wire. In the ideal scheme the consumer doesn't need a keypair at all. The request itself is sufficient to trigger the counters so that the accountants know where to send the royalties.
Of course, we won't get the ideal scheme, because the human race resists that. We may end up with some sort of compromise in which consumers send digitally signed requests (the electronic equivalent of "Dear Atlantic Records, I want to listen to Tori Amos's From the Choirgirl Hotel right now. Signed, Greg."). That way, the people who run this can track us more closely. They get off on that.
Personally, I could live with that compromise, but it's probably going to be a dilemma for people who like to watch "adult" videos. They will quickly realize that there's a database somewhere that contains their entire viewing history... and that this information is available to some humans somewhere, and could conceivably be revealed to other humans who might have a motive and sufficient bribe money to obtain that information. And unless my guess is wrong, aspiring politicians are right up near the top of the adult video demographic. (Successful politicians no longer need the videos; they can get the real thing. See Clinton, Bill; Kennedy, John; etc., ad nauseum.)
Good questions! Why would a new CD player play it? (Score:3)
33 1/3 RPM is the answer! (Score:2)
I think that my dad if after discovering that the CD will not work in theit CD player, changed it, still not work, when all other cds are readable, will ask for a 33 rpm disk. Then will make a cassette copy of the disc because he will also like to listen his lp on his car.
On my side, an SL-1210 costs $600 I think, and a
good cartrige costs $200...
Who gets hurt? (Score:2)
Well, this is just brilliant. Whatever music that gets released in this format will be pirated rampantly. But if a non-pirate goes into a store and mistakenly buys one of these CDs, they can't actually listen to it. So the customer get frustrated and takes it back, with a mental note not to buy any more BMG CDs.
Total sales revenue: $0.00 It looks like BMG has essentially taken a pro-piracy stance. If I were a musician signed with BMG, I would sue 'em.
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Tech. info anyone? (Score:5)
It is interesting that "newer" CD players can deal with these mangled discs at all. Have manufacturers been trying to sneak protection into a new CD non-standard standard or is it just luck that they work at all?
Technical details very lacking at Sonopress - http://www.sonopress.de/sononews /15-99/protect.htm [sonopress.de] is about all there is.
Of course as a copy-protection method this is utterly hopeless -
- even if somehow the digital interconnects are disabled - which would seem to implicate player manufacturers in the protection scheme - it will still always be possible to save any sound a device can play back at us.
The music industry wants us to keep paying for the same music again and again, on new formats, or as old media wear out (yeah - I've got CDs that won't play properly any more already, but that's no problem once they're MP3d), or simply through making us rent all music. But since CDs the cat is already way out of the bag, and clumsy attempts like this - and DVD-Audio - to stuff it back in just won't work any more.
Oh quick, more news coming in...
Useless Third sues Rest of World
California, 25 January - A group of lawyers today issued writs against society in an attempt to preserve the livelihoods of their clients.
Moschops Ankleduster, attorney for the useless third of the population commented, "My clients feel that it is unfair to deny the vital importance of the Useless sector - those jobs that are neither productive nor creative."
"Industry bodies and bureaucracies must be permitted to make great sums of money from the work of the artists who create the products and the workers who physically create them", he continued, "and we will fight for the rights of all those upstanding citizens - ourselves included - who contribute absolutely nothing to the world".
Asked whether existing modes of distribution were still viable in a rapidly-changing information-based society, Ankleduster commented, "Fuck off".
Douglas Adams was unavailable for comment.
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This comment was brought to you by And Clover.
Uh oh!! (Score:3)
The fish sez: So far the albums " Razorblade Romance " of the group of Him and " My private ones are were concerned " the former Independent Heroen Philip Boa & The Voodoo club.. Man them krauts are kinky. They have a group called "My private ones were concerned"? Kinda makes "Limp Biskit" look silly doesn't it?
According to the fish, "The copy protection prevents [...] a playing on all D-CRcOcM-cDrives"! How will I listen to it?? I play all my music through my 26x D-CRcOcM-cDrive!
The fish also tells me that "Possibly also the seal Compact Disc digital audio is not entitled to the product". Ok, well that may be fine for "Compact Disc digital audio" but what about my pet seal Lenny? Is Lenny entitled to the product? (Man those germans have wierd names for their seals).
Ah, fun with babelfish [altavista.com], it never gets tiring. For those of you who haven't tried it, try a modern day version of "telephone". Write a simple paragraph into the box, translate it to german, translate it back to english, translate it to french, translate it back to english, and so on until you've done all the languages... then compare your original paragraph with the translation.
Copy protection from CD's (Score:3)
This new CD format, I'm guessing (and I really am guessing - I can't get decent info about it), uses some kind of audio watermarking process. This would mean that they have applied extra information to the signal in a way that is masked by the music or whatever. This would create some distortion, but if they do it right, only audiophiles will notice. This may also screw up some older CD players if the process assumes some kind of reconstruction scheme that they are too old to have is used for the D/A conversion. Doing a bitwise copy of the music (using CDParanoia or cdda2wav, for example) and writing it to a CDR will result in a copy that is playable on any CD player on which the original is playable.
The "protection" comes into play when the track is converted to MP3. MP3 encoders remove a lot of information from a track in order to get the high compression rate they have. The trick, though, is that they only remove information that you're not likely to hear. If the watermark is somehow cleverly designed to stand out when this extra information is removed, then any MP3s made from the protected disc will be of poor quality. The solution would be to to remove the watermark in the encoder, but this would extremely difficult. No one would know how the watermark is generated, and that even if one did figure it out, the record companies could just switch watermarking methods every second or so.
It can be done.
bp
My Ultimate Solution (Score:5)
The corporations are going to realize, either through enlightenment or exasperation, that a certain amount of pirating is going to happen no matter what, and all their lawsuits and dumbass anti-theft schemes just annoy and alienate a sizeable segment of their customers. And then they're going to realize that it's not really a bad deal for them... people are still going to buy real product, and bootleg MP3s can be great exposure. They'll have to grow up and take the bad with the good. Makes me want to waggle a finger at them and remind them that life isn't fair, then give them a little pat on the head and tell them to run along... the little tyrannical ballbusting corporate stinkers. They're so cute at this age, aren't they?
Now, of course, when 2.2 terabyte credit-card-size storage cards become widely available, and your common Swatch holds 400 gigs, then all bets are off. But there's enough time between now and then to implement the only system that can save the corporations' sorry asses, as far as I can figure...
You already pay $40/month for, let's face it, lousy fucking cable TV service that's unreliable and offers you no choice whatsoever. What a joke. But most of us keep paying it. Personally, I don't, but if I could pay $10/month and only get Fox (for The Simpsons and Futurama), Discovery, History, Bravo, AMC, Comedy and the Learning Channel, I'd be a happy bastard. But I'm not going to pay another $30/month for a whole pile of pathetic sports, news, almost impossibly stupid MTV shows and something called the WB Network which I'm under doctor's orders not to ever even look at. Oh... but sorry, got off on a tangent there - that's GooseKirk Rant #47. Back to...
Check this out: If I could pay, for example, $60/month for full-on media services... if I could watch any TV show anytime I want, any movie anytime I want, and listen to any music anytime I want, I would never download another illicit MP3 as long as I live. Make this media service available via DSL, cable and broadband roaming wireless, and bam, you've just effectively - not completely, but effectively - wiped out piracy.
YOU TAKE AWAY THE INCENTIVE. Why would I bother owning any physical media whatsoever? Why would I waste my time copying multiple gigs of MP3s and DVDs from my friends? I'm going to want this service no matter what -- it's cable TV, the video store and the music store all at the touch of a button, with all the new stuff available to me the second it's released and all the old stuff available any time I want. Every episode of Futurama, every song by Charles Mingus, every John Cusack movie all professionally encoded and cataloged and awaiting my command. No more schlepping around crates of CDs, no more messed up tapes and discs from the video store, no more late fees, no more unavailable titles, no more accidentally trashing or burning or theft of entire collections, no more missing a favorite show... I've seen the future, brothers and sisters, and it is cool. And add a Transmeta receiver with broadband wandering wireless service, and I'm good for home, the office, the car, jogging, whatever. And, oh yeah, make it a service that runs on top of my current internet provider, please.
The business side of a project like this... I dunno. I'm sure it could be worked out. Out of a $60/month fee, say $10 goes to overhead for whoever runs the service, and $50 gets divided up among all the artists who created content on some sort of a per-watch/listen scale. I realize this raises more questions than it answers, but I'm sure the particulars could be hammered out. Hey, I'm the visionary, I leave the accounting to the eggheads, alright?
OK, there's some privacy issues here, too, I know, I know. The Corporation is going to know everything I watch and listen to. Well, I'm of the camp that the US Gov't needs to pull its head out of its ass and enact some EU-style laws, and pronto. Sorry to my libertarian pals, but I think it's abundantly clear by now that the private sector is not going to play nice on its own, and a little governmental smacking around is occasionally in order. Microsoft. But that's neither here nor there. Personally, I got no beef with marketers knowing that I like good things and hate bad stupid things, and to please stop trying to sell me the bad stupid things and I don't care if Oliver Stone did make the football movie, I'm still not going to watch it, and I'm not going to watch his "WWF Smackdown" movie in 2012, either, so if I have to watch that idiotic commercial one more time...
Well, anyway, am I talking the crazy talk here or what, folks?
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GooseKirk
MINIDISC! (Score:2)
Re:Tech. info anyone? (Score:2)
This will *encourage* unauthorized copying (Score:5)
They can't stop people from using the MP3 format, but they are in their last and best position to influence the basic ethics of CD ripping and MP3 use. Products like the RIO and other standalone MP3 players are not going to go away. If anything, they are going to gain wider and wider acceptance.
Take for example a law-abiding, honest person. Let's make this person the "music listener of the future." He buys CDs, but he has a large collection, and he can't really lug it around, because he's on the go too much, and wants his music in walkman format. When he wants new music, he goes to the store, purchases a CD at retail price, rips it on his computer, and downloads it to his walkman-sized MP3 player, so he can carry it around with him.
Life is good.
He would never think of going to the web to "steal" MP3s from pirate sites. His conscience is clean. He has broken no laws, and hasn't even skirted any laws. He's paid for his music, and is engaging in perfectly legal use of the software.
Now, the music industry begins distributing CDs with copy protection that can't be ripped. This person, following his usual routine, goes to the store, and unknowingly purchases a copy protected CD. Now, he takes it home, tries to rip it as usual, but can't. Now he's mad, because he just paid $15.00 for a CD that appears to be defective. He goes online to find out what is going on. He discovers that he can't rip the CD because it's copy protected.
Someone suggests that he look for an MP3 of the disc online.
After all, this scheme doesn't prevent EVERYONE from making MP3 copies. It just raises the bar -- now in order to make MP3s you need special equipment.
At first, this person hesitates
So he downloads the MP3. In the process, he notices that the same site has lots of other interesting stuff that he doesn't have. Maybe he doesn't download them, but eventually, as more and more new releases are copy protected, and he finds himself going to the web again and again to obtain MP3s of his own CDs, he realizes that there is no point in buying the CDs anymore, because he is just going to have to go to the web to download the MP3 so he can listen to it.
Now this person either keeps buying the unusable CDs, and starts to feel like a sucker -- used and abused by the record labels, or simply stops buying the useless CDs, downloads the MP3s instead, and suddenly has a lot more free cash to spend on other things.
The RIAA says that copy protection "keeps honest people honest." Instead, it's primary effect is, has always been, and will always be, to turn honest people into criminals.
DON'T buy these CDs EVER... (Score:4)
The way to kill this thing is to make it cost money. Make sure BMG eats all their production and promotional costs, without getting a return on them. If you buy one of these discs by mistake, return it for refund. This also costs the store, and they may stop carrying such discs. Without retail channels, BMG will have to drop the format and go back to regular CD. Kill it the same way we killed DIVX: stay away in droves. It's the only way.
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Re:In the UK (Score:2)
Going out on a limb here I would suggest that the CD's in question are not of "marketable quality" and should be removed from circulation.
Re:Store return policies (Score:2)
All copy prot fails so long as we can hear and see (Score:4)
If I can hear it, I can record it.
If I can see it, I can record it.
NOTHING CAN CHANGE THIS TRUTH.
Get it, now?
Nitpick - not your pocketbook. (Score:2)
A passive boycott is really simple. Don't buy a company's products. Send email to your friends recommending same. When the world goes to hells, say "at least I didn't contribute." I practice this kind of passive boycott on a lot of different products/classes and depending on what you want to boycott its harder than it sounds to stick with it. It also rarely changes anything.
Then theres the advertised boycott, which is more of a media driven protest than an actual boycott. Thats where we make a web page all about the issue, get all the geeks to add a "boycott nasty new CDs! Click here for details" button to their web pages, hype it to a net presence that will sound impressive to non-techies, then write a press release about the "first international e-protest" and blast fax the major media (as well as semi-major media in the hometown areas of 5-10 major players with a press release emphasising how they got involved.)
Thats a lot harder, and requires a fair amount of cooperation. It's also a lot more likely to work, since the threat of a sales drop, even if you couldn't really get everyone who signs on to do it, will work a lot better than the tiny drop that comes from a few people sticking consitently to their guns. It also helps if you can get some public institutions involved ie "the massachusetts public library consortium has stated that they will not include XXX's CDs in their publicly avalible music collection because the company's policy conflicts with the library's mission of providing freely usable media."
Anyway, lunch break is over, gotta work.
Re:Isn't this illegal in and of itself? (Score:2)
Re:Isn't this illegal in and of itself? (Score:3)
In a true irony which I hope the BMG executives consider when deciding whether to keep the bozo who conned them into this scheme, the only way most of us will be able to listen to this music is to read the corrupted data from the block device, run a repair program on it, then burn it to CD-R. Unlike DVD, the original disk is worthless and millions of consumers have CD-R burners. And those of us who use ours for data archive, not CDA mastering, will make an exception in this case - a CD-R is *far* cheaper than a new CD player.
The Great Conspiracy! (Score:2)
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Re:Java my ass (Score:2)
for each post {
print "HTTP/1.0 200\n"
print "Content-type: multipart/x-mixed-replace;boundary=BOUNDARY\n\n"
print "--BOUNDARY\nContent-type: text/html\n\n"
print "<HTML><BODY>"
print comment
print "</body></html>"
}
Of course, if you used xml, some smarter (mozilla) browsers may well be able to reflow it and organise it as you see fit. HTML *must* still be supported tho
Re:Ok no cheating this time (Score:2)