Anatomy of Cactus Data Shield 182
meehawl writes: "This is a good analysis by CDRInfo on the current version of Midbar's Cactus Data Shield. This is the format Universal will use to protect its new audio CDs. It's been reported here already that some DVDs effectively bypass this protection, but this article addresses the specific concerns of how best to backup these protected CDs, and how to extract the music data at high quality for download to a personal MP3 listening device."
Hey... (Score:1)
Re:Hey... (Score:2)
SONY CORPORATION OF AMERICA ET AL. [hrrc.org]
v.
UNIVERSAL CITY STUDIOS, INC., ET AL.
[hrrc.org]
The Audio Home Recording Act
of 1992
RECORDING INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA [hrrc.org]
v.
DIAMOND MULTIMEDIA SYSTEMS INC.
The outcome:
All district court judges firmly believe in 'fair use' of copyrighted works. What we need now is a massive collision between companies. One that is willing to stand up and fight the DMCA. I don't disagree with copy controls, I disagree with the penalties for distributing technology which bypasses them. I urge everyone to become educated and at the very least; read the Court Opinions from these cases.
Whats the Point? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Whats the Point? (Score:1, Informative)
You're forgetting that most people will never have any problems with playing these CDs.
They use dedicated CD players not CD-ROMs.
Re:Whats the Point? (Score:1, Insightful)
Independent analysis of the recording industry have failed to indicate even a single instance of them not turning a profit in any fiscal or calendar year. The RIAA (and some independent analysts) claim lower profits for last year. Hey, guess what, the economy is in the dumper right now! 99% of the companies out there are showing reduced revenue, and many of those have gone from having a profit to showing a loss.
The RIAA claims piracy is a major problem right now, yet they have never provided a single independent analysis to back up their point. I can understand them wanting to be proactive in protecting their market, but these manipulations do absolutely nothing to prevent the kind of large-scale piracy that impacts their business. The real 'pirates' have equipment that does a bit-level extraction and is used to create new pressing masters that contain all of this wonderful content-control technology. The people inconvenienced by technologies like CDS are the consumers who only want to exercise the same rights, privilidges, and convenience they have had for decades.
Re:Whats the Point? (Score:1)
Re:Whats the Point? (Score:2)
Re:Whats the Point? (Score:1)
:-)
Re:Whats the Point? (Score:1)
Re:Whats the Point? (Score:1)
scratch those cd's! (Score:2)
-Restil
Re:scratch those cd's! (Score:4, Insightful)
You can read the mail after it's been irradiated - but forget listening to these CDs in your computer unless you happen to have the right CD ROM in your computer.
I suspect that computer CDROM players will become "smart" and eventually this copy protection will be thwarted. Expect to see some DMCA lawsuits against the manufacturers that make them though.
Meanwhile, all computer users who want to play music on their computer get burned.
One can only hope that there is enough backlash from consumers that raises awarenes to the issues at stake here. The thing that we have to worry about most is consumer apathy.
If consuners don't take a stand on this crap before long their going to have deposit quarters into their computer every time they want to listen to a song.
Re:scratch those cd's! (Score:1)
Assuming what you get in the mail is on a paper medium. What if it was a floppy disk, or a flash memory stick?
I suppose this is (-1, Redundant), but of course the thing the music industry either hasn't noticed yet or keeps ignoring is that not every player has to circumvent the protection; it's enough for one electrical engineer to get something through a S/PDIF cable and an mp3 encoder ... and then game over. People already illegally download music, all the time, so what is to stop people from downloading something they already own on CD (which in my book is absolutely permissible - morally, if not legally)?
The situation will evolve like DVD players. (Score:2)
The same will happen with CD-ROM drives. The manufacturers will make them the same way they do now but not go to any great trouble to obfuscate the firmware. Why should they spend all that money on expensive engineers when it's going to get hacked anyway. It's the media conglomerates that are obsessed about this. The hardware companies (except for one's like Sony) just want to sell the kit and get out.
Re:scratch those cd's! (Score:2)
Depends on what the mail was, if it use to be unprocessed negatives you sent to A&I because they do a better job then your local photofinisher, well, let's just say you aren't getting your pictures back. Or if it was Kodachrome you sent to Kodak because you don't live close to the few places that still process it you won't get back nice subtle tones, but blank frames.
Oh, and if you send Compact Flash not only do you get no data, you may never be able to use those cards again...(this may also hit normal FLASH, so don't let 'em anthrax process your next motherboard!)
DMCA? (Score:1)
DMCA? Probably not. (Score:2)
Kjella
One step ahead of the DCMA... (Score:1)
IsoBuster [voodoofiles.com]
feurio! [feurio.net]
Exact Audio Copy (EAC) [exactaudiocopy.de]
Clone CD [elby.org]
You've got three choices: (Score:4, Insightful)
How can they be so stupid as to think that ANY kind of copy protection will ever prevent their music from getting onto the net? Clearly, they think that someone is sitting there repeatedly dubbing a CD again and again every time something is downloaded. Don't they realize that no matter how difficult they make the initial ripping, it only has to be done ONCE to make a billion copies?
The only people they're inconveniencing with these tactics are guys like me who would otherwise have paid for the material. It doesn't make it any harder to download the file off gnutella.
Re:You've got three choices: (Score:1)
And you know what we have to blame for that... Futurama. In the kidnapster episode they showed how the only way for people to download celebrities was to keep the celebrities' heads imprisoned so they can copy from the original each time. Luckily someone came up with this copy protection for CDs so instead of hurting the poor CDs everytime someone downloads off you, the CDs are protected with cactus like spikes which hurt the evil pirates trying to download music. Phew.
Re:You've got three choices: (Score:2)
They are making their own customers mad and pissed. If I buy a CD and cant rip it's contents to mp3, I n longer can use it with most of my audio systems.. my car has a empeg, and i have a portable mp3 player, and my audiotrons in he house... at the rate the mp3 player hardware is selling, they are pissing off a large number of customers that are not happily sharing the mp3 files on the internet.
It just proves that record company executives are and always have been dumb as a box of rocks.
Re:You've got three choices: (Score:3, Insightful)
But here is the key - access is only part of the value the content companies provide - there are also things like convenience (how easy is it to download one particular song or episode of a TV show?), quality (how good is the download bandwidth?), and atmosphere (you can't download the experience of watching a movie in a theatre, or attending a live concert!). Unlike access, these things can't be transmitted across a P2P network...
Only once companies wake up to the fact that preventing unlicensed access is a lost game, and start focusing on non-replicable sources of value, will they be able to accept and profit from the internet.
Re:You've got three choices: (Score:1)
"I'm sticking with #3 [enjoy the albums I already own] until the RIAA gets a fucking clue."
gets modded up to 5, insightful. You gotta love it.
thinking ahead (Score:5, Insightful)
With the current system, the following can be done:
Person A buys CD1. Person A rips CD1 to disk, and distributes MP3s to Person B. Person B likes said MP3s, and buys CD1 for his/herself.
With "rip proof" technology (at least, until its cracked), however:
Person A buys CD1. Person A tries to rip CD1, and fails. Person A tells Person B that CD1 sucks because you can't rip it. OR: Person B can't hear MP3s from CD1, so Person B doesn't know whether or not (s)he should buy it, and possibly decides not to.
With the current system, yes, the industries stand a greater chance of losing money: but they also stand a greater chance (and, as some statistics have shown, this is the case) of gaining more money; given that the majority of Napster users (apparently, and as I did) used Napster to download a few random MP3s to decide whether (s)he should/should not buy CD1. With rip-proof CDs, however, Person A, B, C... won't be able to listen to MP3s from CD1, and thusly won't know whether or not they want to buy it.
Synopsis:
It would not seem wise, at least to me, for the industries to err on the side of greater control, and away from the potential for greater sales. Penny wise and dollar foolish, they say...
Re:thinking ahead (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right in suggesting that they want enhanced control. But remember, when you listen to your friend's MP3, decide you like and go out and buy it you're making a purchasing decision about whether or not you like the music based upon your friend's opinion and your personal preferences.
You're not making it based upon the music industry's marketing campaign. The industry pushes select artists that they have an investment in and want to succeed, and they would rather that you made your decisions on what to buy based upon they're selling, not upon what your friends like or what you find appealing.
The record companies, as subsidieries of media conglomerates, already have influence over TV, magazines, record stores, and radio stations (through direct ownership or payola). What they don't control is whether your friend tells you about a new disc he got and the music on it.
I'd agree that it may hurt sales, since a lot of records that have become popular have become popular because of word-of-mouth but I think more and more people are such slaves of the media anyway (radio in shower, in the car, in the office, MTV at home, etc) that many people by and large have lost their ability to generate an opinion of their own anyway.
Re:thinking ahead (Score:2)
I've personally noticed that pop music has hitten a real low in the last few years -- and I really think I'm being somewhat objective in this, not just square and living in the past. Pop music is being recycled longer, and bands aren't being cycled in as fast. Even three or four years ago it seemed considerably better than now.
Many of those long-lived groups are really just corporate machines. No single part of the group has enough talent to go on their own. You can't be successful based on your singing talent and dancing alone -- someone has to write the songs, someone has to play the instruments behind them, and in the case of so much boring music lately, there has to be a lot of marketing to get people to think they like the music at all.
As a result the Backstreet Boys are never going to assert their independance, or Christina Agilera, and I think a surprising number of the "Alternative" bands are in the same boat -- they are really so boring, their lyrics are so pat, their voices so cliche, that they'd go nowhere on their own. Metal is growing into a pretty boring field as well.
Given this, there's much more incentive for the labels to make sure that people don't buy according to their informed preference. If it was really just straight free market capitalism, and the labels just wanted to sell as much music as possible, then a well-informed listening audience would be great. But that well-informed listening audience would, I think, be very likely to buy from a lot of independent labels.
Re:thinking ahead (Score:2)
I'd agree completely, but I wonder if its a function of the music industry per se or a function of the lack of a "new thing" generally in popular music. One of the last great upswings in popular music was "alternative"* and that phenomenon seems to have been completely played out -- there's nothing left there that doesn't feel like its been done before by someone else. There's still good bands, but the overall feeling is that they've been there, done that and they aren't charting new areas anymore.
It took the record companies *years* to realize that the "classic rock" trend of the late 60s and early 70s was dead and that "new" artists of the alternative vein should be picked up on. How long were radio stations in many places only playing 70s hard rock? Until the late 80s/early 90s?
I think we're at that same point with alternative -- the record companies don't have an idea what the next big thing is, and I don't think the new zeitgeist has been found yet. The question is, is it because the Media Machine, in coopting alternative scenes so quickly, has squelched them to the point they can incubate anything new? Or are we just in the end days of the alternative scenes and they have to die completely before we can find anything new?
(* Yes, I realize that anal-retentive music categorization goes far beyond that label, but for my purposes its a broad category.)
Re:thinking ahead (Score:2)
I suspect that most truly new music is now hip-hop inspired, which is a bit alien to me -- and probably many of us here :) So there is the chance that things have shifted enough that we just don't see what's really happening -- maybe we're like some guy in the 60's complaining that there's no good jazz anymore, there's barely any big bands left and they just play the same old songs.
And sure, even I can tell that a lot of mainstream hip-hop is just plain bad. But pop has always been saturated with bad music, which we later forget about. I think I need to go listen to something new before I feel too old... (and I'm not old, dammit!)
Re:thinking ahead (Score:2)
Remember you are talking about a different group of people. Artists who become "known" have some kind of fanbase and possibly some level of talent. There are a great many who sink into obscurity, e.g. the "one hit wonders".
I've personally noticed that pop music has hitten a real low in the last few years -- and I really think I'm being somewhat objective in this, not just square and living in the past. Pop music is being recycled longer, and bands aren't being cycled in as fast.
Pop music has always have quite a bit of recycling, just that they used to wait around 20 years.
Many of those long-lived groups are really just corporate machines. No single part of the group has enough talent to go on their own.
Even if they do it could be difficult in "corporate environment"
You can't be successful based on your singing talent and dancing alone -- someone has to write the songs,
It's hardly unknown for singers to write their own songs...
Re:thinking ahead (Score:2)
Re:thinking ahead (Score:2)
New slashdot poll (Score:1)
1. Paid for compact disc
2. MP3/OGG on your hard drive from your cd's
3. MP3/OGG on hard drive from a modern p2p client
4. MP3 from napster (old-school, extra points)
5. Radio
6. The CowboyNeal Opera
Re:thinking ahead (Score:2)
When the latest Santana cd came out, one co-worker brought it in and played it on his PC. More than one co-worker liked the CD. By the end of the day, 14 cds were burned and no one bought an additional copy of Santana's CD. I've seen this happen for two more CDs.
This is the type of stuff that gives the music industry a credible arguement about loss of potential sales. Everybody says "Well just because they stole^H^H^H^H^Hcopied it doesn't mean they would have bought it." entirely misses the point. It's more than reasonable to expect someone in that group of 14 would have bought the CD and that constitues a loss of profit for the company and the artist. Taking into consideration that MP3s are often good enough for most people and I'm not sure I buy the argument that allowing unfettered copying promotes sales.
Re:thinking ahead (Score:2)
Person A buys CD1. Person A tries to rip CD1, and fails.
Or even Person A tries to play it. If it won't play they are far more likely to kick up a fuss with the retailer and tell their mates not to bother buying it than they are to replace their CD playing hardware.
Re:thinking ahead (Score:1)
Thats almost like having sex with your girlfriend, then going out and paying a hooker for it. If you want the CD, just decompress the tracks back into wave and make your own CD.
Don't like the quality of the convertaed waves ? Download higher quality MP3's.
Well... some of us know that if we want more music from the talents we enjoy listening to, we have to buy the CD so they'll be encouraged to make more. Your example is better laid as "Why pay for a prostitute when there are plenty of barfly sluts to lay?" Hell we can still do things by hand and enjoy the results of that work. If we share, other people can enjoy what we do. If they really love it, they can keep it forever too.
Re:thinking ahead (Score:2)
Yes.
Even if the MP3's have been ripped and encoded decently (which is rare), they are still not as good as the original CD.
Here are some albums I bought recently that I would not have bought had I not heard them on MP3/Ogg first:
Lamb - Fear Of Fours (I then bought their other two)
Autechre - Amber
Fridge - Happiness (and then Semaphore)
Aphex Twin - Classics (and then two more)
Plaid - Rest Proof Clockwork (and then Not For Threes)
Leftfield - Leftism
Dave Matthews Band - Under The Table And Dreaming.
4 Hero - Creating Patterns (and then Two Pages)
In every single one of these cases, I would never have bought their music if I hadn't listened to it first - and MP3 is my only way, as none of these people are particularly mainstream here in the UK.
Come on, guys... (Score:4, Insightful)
For every technological solution, there's a technological "hack", right?
Name one anti-piracy tactic employed by any corporation for use in consumer products that has not, is not, and will not continue to be hacked. Still thinking? I thought so.
Whatever they think of will be hacked in a matter of days (or hours even), no matter how many times or what media/record companies think up a different scheme. If we can get the ones and zeros, then that's it. I'm not sure why more people don't understand this.
The only question is how long it will take Patti Q. User to get a purdy little Windows app that will rip her new N*Sync CD flawlessly.
Who says that she will? (Score:2)
Kjella
Re:Who says that she will? (Score:1)
Hey - all of us agree, CDS and similar measures suck kidney stones through Fallopian tubes, but if Big Media were to make it clear that they would only use technological measures "against" their customers and never call down the lawyers for piracy/DRM issues, I figure that's almost a fair deal. I just hate it when they call down the lawyers.
Unfortunately we know they would never agree to tie their legal hands like that....
Re:Who says that she will? (Score:2)
I have felt, for a long time, that the role of encryption and copyright needs to be rebalanced along the following lines: EITHER
Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way and, with Big Media and the Content Cartel holding all the cards, especially the rectangular green ones, it's unlikely it's ever going to work that way.
Re:Who says that she will? (Score:2)
While I don't think any individual is owed a living, I think it behoves us to create a system that rewards the content creators in general, so that they make stuff we like. But also we need to make sure that the people get something back for all the tax money that goes into protecting these copyrights. (And that means unfettered access after a certain point.)
So yes, I think that copyrighted work should be easily accessed by all. This means that while a special machine (DVD player) may be required, they shouldn't be able to require access controls, or user tracking, etc.
Or, as you say, they require a bunch of hoops be jumped through, but lose the protection of law and are at the mercy of the first person to crack it.
Re:Come on, guys... (Score:1)
hmm... seems a controversial question, the reason I say this is that: if "they" continue to try, then it might only be a matter of time before "they" come up with a technique that, while not unbreakable, will not be worth anyones time to crack. I sometimes think that by breaking this technology we are just beta testing "their" products.
I'm more inclined to take the view that the development of such tech is illegal because it is something which takes away my rights of fair usage. I should not need to crack something just to use it in a way which is completely within my rights.
Also, it tends to piss me off that these actions also break the redbook standard and thus they are selling more-or-less broken CD's. However this is a minor concern inrelation to the above
To best illustrate my view, imagine if the government attempted to fix cars to make them impossible to break the speed limit, I gurantee the response of the average person would not be "It doesn't matter cause my kid can break it with in seconds with a flathead" but that it is a infrignment of liberty. The same kind of thinking should be applied to copy-protected CD's IMHO.
Re:Come on, guys... (Score:1)
Hah! I remember back in tha' day when they had really nasty copy protection on floppy disks. Every time some idiots wasted 6 months of their lives to come up with a new copy protection scheme, it took three weeks maximum for a crack to appear. You can see the same result in more recent times with the advent of SafeDisc2. It took several months to find a way to perfectly copy the damn thing, but you could make an imperfect copy and play it with a crack in about two weeks.
Never, ever underestimate the coolness points you get with the 1337 h@X0r crowd for circumventing a new copy protection scheme. There's no shortage of 17 year-old crackers desperate to crack the bloody thing.
Hasn't been hacked yet (Score:1)
Jargon to English Translation (Score:5, Funny)
--
Damn the Emperor!
Further Analisys of a Damn Stupid System: (Score:3, Funny)
Wait a sec, this sounds too stupid.
Try to follow a little train of thought that'd probably help
some executives somewhere in the recording industry:
Why does someone buy a CD?
To listen to the music.
What does the industry do to get more people to buy the CD?
Not let people listen to the music, by:
a. limiting the playability
b. limiting the portability
c. limiting the quality
Why do people download MP3s?
to listen to the music free.
Why do people upload MP3s?
to let people listen to the music free.
What does the industry do about it?
force us to download the music, by:
a. Not letting us listen to the CD we just paid for in any of our PCs
b. Not letting us listen to the CD we just paid for in some of our DVDs
c. Not letting us listen to the CD we just paid for in some of our cars
d. Not letting us listen to the CD we just paid for in any of our MP3 players
'cause we can't get them there
If I cannot listen to the music from a CD that I just paid for, and I have to go download it off the internet because I cannot easily rip it to an MP3 to play in my MP3 player I am a very small step from not paying for the CD in the first place and just going and downloading the songs for free.
I can make a regular cd from the MP3s that will play on anything, and the media costs a whole lot less than $9-$18 and I get to pick the tracks!
Freakin brilliant RIAA!
Thanks for making my decision so easy!
Not letting us listen to the music that is the sole reason we paid for the CD, is the most retarded thing I have heard of in a long time.
People make choices with some consideration to the ease of using the result.
CD w/ security = Hassle = less are going to choose
Free MP3 = Easy = more are going to choose
This was mentioned before, by the way... (Score:1)
Us Slashdotters read about this Cactus crap back on November 18th. And on several other dates, too.
one of 'em [slashdot.org]
So, if the only CD player I have is a CDROM (Score:4, Interesting)
This is a shameless rip-off of the consumer. It's fraudulent, in fact. When I buy a CD, I expect CD quality music, not MP3s. They should have to put a sticker on the case explaining that computer users get MP3 only quality.
And yes, my only CD player IS a CD-ROM. I won't buy one of these "CDs" ever.
Re:So, if the only CD player I have is a CDROM (Score:1)
In the end, you get your money, they get some hassle, and it gets pushed right back into the music industry. Wal-Mart sells cd's, and they won't sell cd's that are 'broken' and take a lot of returns. I suspect it might be that simple.
Mutisession cd's? That's all? (Score:2)
Re:Mutisession cd's? That's all? (Score:2, Informative)
They managed to copy the disc with CloneCD [elby.org] and the Aopen drive. They also tried to copy it whith one other drive (TDK CyClone 161040), but that one encountered read errors.
"The CDS200 cd-r backup does contain the CDS200 protection, however now is FULLY readable from all tested drives"
Translation: Rip away.
Also interesting to know is the amount of read errors in the original versus the copy. The diagram can be found here. [cdrinfo.com]
In short, the "real" cd was one solid block of read errors, the copy had a few spikes, but those were nothing compared to the other, both in frequency and seriousness (note that the scale in the two diagrams is vastly different).
Kind of reminds me of a Star Wars quote... (Score:3, Insightful)
I had bought the new Natalie Imbruglia CD (here in the UK) when it first came out and discovered myself that it was copy protected. I was very annoyed to say the least and managed to return the CD and get my money back. A while later I ordered the unprotected version from BMG and now I have a CD that I can actually listen to.
There is NO WAY I will intentionally buy any protected music CDs now, or in the future. Music publishing companies will just force copying and distribution of music from these CDs via the channels that they are trying to stop. Duh! why can they not see this?...
...Maybe its due to the age old misconception that number of pirated copies equals the number of lost sales! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!
The day that all music CDs are protected is the day I will stop buying them.
Making us criminals... (Score:2, Insightful)
1) That this copy protection will be common place in 2 years time
2) I still want to listen to "new" music in 2 years time
Then I will have been forced into criminal activity. MP3 is my format of choice - it is convenient and easy. In the future, if I want to listen to music in the car, then I will have to download it illegally. I will have no choice but to do this. Eventually I will get pissed off with buying useless plastic discs to satisfy my conscience, and they will have lost another revenue stream.
Message to the industry:
1) A large proportion of your future customers use MP3. (i.e. anyone under the age of 15 today). By doing this you are forcing them to "go pirate".
2) A large proportion of your current customers use MP3. You are making enemies of them. This is bad marketing.
3) It's been said before, and I'll say it again. It takes one copy of a CD to be made digitally, and you've lost. The story showed that this is possible - although it says that the protection is effective, it isn't. They made a copy - and that's all it takes. Even if one person makes a really good analogue transfer, then you've lost.
My first copy-pretection experience (Score:3, Interesting)
it was 'Better Days' by JOE (Jive Records/Zomba). I got it from Amazon.de. The only sign that it was copy-protected was a very small printing on the back side "This CD is not playable on computers (CD-ROM/DVD-ROM)". So I tried it on my computer running Linux, with a Creative Dxr2 5x DVD-ROM and I could hear it on audio mode. To my surprise I was also able to rip it using cdparanoia (otherwise I would have returned it immediately, I have far too many CDs to manage them in any for but Ogg Vorbis or MP3 format). So I tried it on my DVD-Player (Yamakawa AVphile 715), and it worked, too. However I noticed that the player needed an unusual long time to detect it as a CD. Next try was my stereo, an old Sony CD player: worked fine as well. Then I tried a Windows PC with a 40x Pioneer CD-ROM: did not detect the CD. Ok, so at least in one cd drive the copy protection worked.
I thought about the possibility of returning it to Amazon, but I felt bad about the idea of returning a CD that I had already ripped and that worked in most computers, so I didnt do this. I wrote a letter to Amazon.de though, asking them to include information about copy protected CDs in the description and I told them that I would never buy a copy-protected CD, and if I would ever get another one I would return it immediately. They replied, telling that they cannot put this information in the description, but because of the special circumstances I was allowed to return even opened CDs if they are copy-protected.
Isn't this copy protection always useless ? (Score:1)
Re:Isn't this copy protection always useless ? (Score:1)
We do have digital "speakers". It's called S/PDIF [andrewkilpatrick.org].
Any modern CD player and reciever should have it. (My $200 Sony disc changer does. So does my $250 Technics reciever... this stuff is consumer-grade). If you do any music production, there's a good chance you have inputs and outputs on your computer, too. [midiman.com]
Start your computer recording and then play just one track on the CD player. Strip leading and trailing silence. You now have a perfect digital copy.
Re:Isn't this copy protection always useless ? (Score:1)
What about lengthy CDs? (Score:2, Interesting)
So will the record companies:
A) Ship 2 CDs - 1 copy protected audio CD, and 1 data CD, and charge more.
B) Just not include digital formats on lengthy CDs.
C) Edit the music so that both the protected audio and data will fit.
D) Option C, and also release a "Collector's Edition", that contains the additional music cut from the original CD, at a higher price.
Just the idea of copy protecting audio CDs is repugnant, but when you really think about the side effects, it gets even uglier.
ummmmm.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:ummmmm.... (Score:1)
Re:ummmmm.... (Score:2)
This is stupid (Score:1)
You can't ban file sharing, because you would have to ban the entire idea of the internet and people would just resort to private modem-modem networks (thats if they didn't riot in the streets). So go face the music record companies - your days of extortion are over so go back to your coke sniffing and prostitutes lol
Re:This is stupid (Score:2)
However the supply and demand bit dosn't work where you have a monopoly. The laws surrounding "intellectual property" create a monopoly (originally a very restricted one. But extended, through one sided lobbying.)
Re:This is stupid (Score:2)
This depresses me... (Score:1)
Those who don't learn from history... (Score:4, Insightful)
"Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Back in the late 80's it was all the rage by software manufacturers to copy protect their software. (I still have a copy of Lotus 123 from that era.) Various schemes were used:
Many customers ran into problems when trying to use a legitimately purchased copy as their system reacted differently than expected to the copy protection. The vendors would add increasingly more complicated schemes that never blocked the motivated copier, but DID interfere with legitimate users being able to use the software on certain systems.
There was a time when I had a half dozen of these hanging off the back of my PC (imagine 12 inches of dongles sticking out the back; couldn't push the PC against the wall; major leverage against the connector on the PC, etc.) Besides, each dongle interefered somewhat with the timing of the signal going through it... we had a case where a printer attached to the end of the dongle-chain needed to be powered up for the system to boot.
The thinking was users could easily copy the software, but photocopying the documentation was a much more difficult task that most "pirates" would not go through the effort of doing. I have a game somewhere that came with a "code sheet" printed on red paper that claimed it could not be photocopied. Truly, it was difficult using the black-and-white copiers available at the time, but I persevered and got a usable, albeit poor contrast, copy. (I feared spilling a coffee on the original and becoming unable to play the game which I had legally purchased.)
In short, users began to revolt and companies eventually began to recognize they were selling fewer copies of their software as people migrated to using non-copyprotected applications.
Software vendors learned this lesson the hard way many years ago, yet we now have audio (CD) and video (DVD) treading down the same path. I'm waiting to see how long it takes for them to learn this lesson, too.
Re:Those who don't learn from history... (Score:1)
When your next CD comes with a dongle, you'll know what's happened!
Re:Those who don't learn from history... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Those who don't learn from history... (Score:1)
They could be manually copied with pen and paper and_that_photocopied and distributed. It just further illustrates that as long as any form of CP exists someone, somewhere will take the initiative to make it easier for other people. As mentioned many times, this is the same as with music: one digital copy (MP3, Ogg, whatver) is all that is needed to revert the CP to nothing and mass pirating can begin.
Speaking of older methods of ittitating users I remember the most horiffic CP "documentation" method ever: the "dual-wheel" discs. I remember them being common with popular Amiga games (Monkey Island et.al.). I do recall writing letters to the creators telling them that it was unnecessary and was alienating people - I had lost the disc many times and feared breaking it so ended up_recreating_one and archiving the master.
Nothing ever changes.
Re:Those who don't learn from history... (Score:2)
Thus, we were cursed with "Turbo" buttons for over a decade to slow the PC down while loading Lotus. I'll bet that the consumers wasted orders of magnitude more money paying for these useless hardware switches on their PCs than Lotus ever recovered with their copy prevention scheme.
Thanks Universal.. (Score:1)
(I was just sarcastic. But seriously: when you buy one of these protected CD-likes, bear in mind that they are much less robust against scratches and dust than the "real" audi CDs.)
Ability to play in a computer is questionable (Score:3, Interesting)
It occurs to me, though, that the inclusion of a compressed audio player on the CD really doesn't solve the problem, even if it's possible to copy the audio files in some protected way to a hard disk.
Here's why: my earliest CDs were purchased in early 1986. At that time, my PC was running MS-DOS 3.1. Think for a moment about the odds of a copy-protected program from 1986 working unmodified in a modern computer--let alone the computers we'll have twenty years hence. The inclusion of a copy-protected player program in lieu of a standards-compliant CD looks even more pitiful when one stops to consider the fact that the player program will be basically unuseable in a few years' time.
What about CD recorders and the AHRA? (Score:3, Interesting)
According to the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, I'm AUTHORIZED to make single-generation digital copies of CD's onto "Music CD-R" media, a portion of whose price includes a payment into two funds administered by the Library of Congress: two-thirds into a Sound Recordings Fund, with small percentages of this fund earmarked for nonfeatured artists and backup musicians, 40% of the remainder for featured artists, and the rest to record companies; one-third into a Musical Works Fund, to be split 50/50 between songwriters and music publishers.
My Teac appears to be rapidly turning into worthless junk. UMG's "More Fast and Furious" will not copy on it (it gives the error message "CANT COPY, SCMS ERROR").
So, the copy protection fails to prevent UNauthorized copies... but succeeds in preventing AUTHORIZED copies.
Midbar and UMG are cheating those of us who BOUGHT and PAID FOR the right to make copies.
There is another way.... (Score:1)
Most CD players you buy nowadays have optical outs, and most DVD players you can buy also can play cd's and have optical outs/coax.
high end soundcards have optical/coax inputs
(getting the hint?)
set up your favorite CD/DVD player with your TOSlinks, or coax... and record those tracks into wav files.
then compress with your favorite utility.
what about quality?
isnt it still digital?
yep. thats the beauty of it.
go forth, and rip disks
Proper terminology (Score:5, Insightful)
Congressman Rick Boucher of VA has written a letter [dotcomscoop.com] to the IFPI and the RIAA suggesting that under the AHRA this may illegal and asking for explanations of the methods used. Under the AHRA [hrrc.org] there is a 2% surcharge on every CD recorder sold in the US at the wholesale level (See section 1004), that goes to the RIAA, just as there is a 2% surcharge on "Music" designated CDR media.
In addition Philips refers to these corrupted discs as "silver disks with music on them, but which do not resemble CD's" See this article [boycott-riaa.com]
Boycott-riaa [boycott-riaa.com] and Fat Chucks [fatchucks.com] are maintaining a list of the corrupted CDs. Also, Check out the Home Recording Rights Coalition [hrrc.org]
Totally OT, but... (Score:2)
I know it's totally OT, but how is Boucher's name pronounced? I'm planning on trying to get a face-to-face with my local congresscritter to trye to give him a clue, and was going to tell him to look up Boucher, but I don't want to sound like a total idiot by fscking up the name...
Thanks!
Re:Totally OT, but... (Score:2)
CD Analysis Software (Score:2, Interesting)
Dumb marketing at Universal (Score:2)
Why? Couldn't cops catch more speed offenders if the opposite traffic were prevented to inform you?
Sure they would, but that's not the point. The point is to reduce traffic speed on your side, so by letting the other drivers inform you, they can slow down the traffic for more than 50 miles at some point.
The same happens with the Music industry: if they were letting other people rip cds and do the cheap distro, people would discover artists and bands that they haven't heard about before. And owning a CD would be the next thing people would do because let's face it, it's still better quality and more convenient.
So the fascists at the music companies are simply not aware of good marketing. Shouldn't we educate them?
PPA, the girl next door.
Isn't it all just ones and zeros? (Score:3, Interesting)
So, what is the problem with implementing this scheme (apart from the DMCA). Is it that there is no way of persuading a CDROM drive to output the raw data? If so, this just confirms my view that the entire problem lies in CDROM firmware. Could we re-flash this in some drives?
Somewhere in a CD player the bits we want are wizzing along a PCB track. Does anyone know the practicality of tapping into this?
Just my random thoughts on the topic.
New Trick: Buy It, Rip It, Return It! (Score:2)
If this system actually provided copy protection, or at least made ripping inconvenient, maybe it would be worth it for Universal. But since it doesn't even provide copy protection, what the hell are they thinking? It only takes one person to populate the MP3's onto the P2P network. Given that common drives (an LG 8080B CD-RW in my case) and common software (EAC, cdparanoia, etc.) don't seem to have any problem reading these CD's. And given that Universal at least has a stated policy letting you return the CD for a full refund if you have 'problems', what the hell are they thinking?
Let's break it down. Folks who don't rip their CD's and have a player which isn't impacted by the protection: no change
Folks who don't rip their CD's but experience problems during playback: pissed off, and lost sales.
Folks who do rip their CD's: they still rip their CD's, only now the pirates can return the CD's for a full refund. This is actually worse for the companies than not selling the CD in the first place! Good lord, are they actually this dumb?
Is not a CD. (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually its a good idea for the EEC - no need to pay VAT and media taxes, as it is not a CD, and the royalties, channel through tax havens.. the british tax commissioner does not know what he is missing - see us export subsidies.
Re:"backup" audio CDs for "personal" use? (Score:1)
The majority, almost certainly, but not me. I really do use cdparanoia and oggenc purely for my own convenience. I've got 10 GB of ogg files on my hard disk here at work, every last octet of which was ripped from CDs I have at home [well a few are still at work, from being ripped]. Nobody has access to this drive except me.
I appreciate what you're saying - I bet there are more people on /. who use p2p to infringe copyrights than there are people like me - but we do exist. Not that I've given you any evidence to back up my claim of personal audio copyright integrity. (:
Re:"backup" audio CDs for "personal" use? (Score:3, Insightful)
I buy more CDs than I download mp3s off the net.
Re:"backup" audio CDs for "personal" use? (Score:1, Redundant)
Re:"backup" audio CDs for "personal" use? (Score:2, Interesting)
You don't save too much with FLAC, but enough that you can fit at least two CDs onto one CDR (if you match the sizes... pick a big and a short one, or two average ones).
400 CDrs (for 800 CDs) @
So, those people do exist. I know two.
Re:"backup" audio CDs for "personal" use? (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't have any MP3s I didn't rip myself. But even so, why would I ever go back to CDs?
Re:"backup" audio CDs for "personal" use? (Score:4, Informative)
Screw you, asshole.
I have a plethora of mp3 audio playback devices. My car, home and portable personal devices. These devices have been on the market for over 4 years now and sold with high visibility advertising, so you know for a fact they exist and people are using them. Yes, I rip everything to mp3 so I can listen to it MY WAY, on MY EQUIPMENT, in my home and elsewhere. I place the CD I bought in a locked cd storage cabinet and that's where it sits until it's needed again. Now let's look at something else, what about the phillips CD recorder, compiler. Many more people with these or their computers like to make compiliation cd's. for their own personal use.
I am sick of your type of self-ritious attitude that marks everyone with an mp3 playback device, a cd burner, and linux or other non MS operating system as the pirates of the Carrabiean or Evil thieves. the cd's I bought ar my property, I can listen to them how I want, and I will...
and my atitude is the attitude that needs to be taken by everyone that hears someone even try to imply what you said... get in their face.
Re:"backup" audio CDs for "personal" use? (Score:2)
If you really were just buying a licence to listen to the music. Which is what CDs claim to be... Then people changing the media wouldn't be an issue at all.
The problem is that various people are trying to blur the distinction between use and actual "piracy".
Re:"backup" audio CDs for "personal" use? (Score:2)
Sorry nobody can impose restrictions on people that are outside the law without informing them. so the record companies can go to hell or start doing the license agreement setup that software has.... and then watch the sales drop like rocks. 90% of america and other music buyers believe that the CD they bought is their property. (which it is) and they can listen to what is on it in any way they want and how much they want (which is also true)
This is why any attempt to limit access or limit playback options will back-fire (and are back-firing) as it will make joe-12pack mad or upset. Thus driving them to alternative sources of what they want...
I want them (RIAA) to continue to push this... I want them to start getting more active in trying to force these out there... It will get everything over quickly as the national outrage and uproar will solve the problem quickly.
Re:"backup" audio CDs for "personal" use? (Score:2)
Does anyone really believe that music consumers "backup" thier discs to mp3 for purely "personal" use? Let's at least be adult enough not to sugar coat this: we want to get around Cactus Data Shield because we want to "share" [or steal] music.
On the contrary - I rip my CD's for the same reason I used to dub them to tape. Why? Cause if I only really like 3 or 4 songs on a CD, I have to change the damn CD every 15 minutes, which sucks. With MP3, I rip, I have my WinAmp play lists, and not only can I listen to them here in my room(I don't own a CD player that isn't attached to a computer BTW. I used to have one, but it broke) I can take them with me on a (small) Mp3 player or my laptop instead of dragging a book of CD's with me. If I can't get around copy protection, I don't listen to the CD. I'm not about to buy a walkman CD player just so I can actually listen to something I just paid for thats been intentionally munged.
Re:"backup" audio CDs for "personal" use? (Score:1)
Actually, I do... It's much easier to listen to a few hours of mp3's instead of having to switch cd's. And my roommates can listen to them over the LAN without borrowing and scratching my cd's.
Anyway, even if I didn't rip the cd's to mp3, I'd still want to play them in my CD-ROM-drive (which can play audio-cd's according to the specs).
Oh, and finally, this is NOT STEALING, call it illegal copying if you will (though I don't agree), but it's not stealing. I don't go around calling speeding murder, even though there's a chance you might kill someone by driving too fast.
+1 insightful to the above (Score:1)
"This is NOT STEALING, call it illegal copying if you will (though I don't agree), but it's not stealing. I don't go around calling speeding murder, even though there's a chance you might kill someone by driving too fast."
So true. There's an important distinction in 'stealing' intellectual property, that a lot of people forget. 'Illegal copying' is much more precise, because in the end, no matter how much IP you steal, the original people still have their IP, there is no exlusivity to it, and you might still go out and pay for a valid copy because you want to support the artist.
Re:"backup" audio CDs for "personal" use? (Score:2)
Why not call it what it is, which is "copyright infringement"? Not theft. Not piracy. "Copyright infringement". You want to know why the Content Cartel will not call it what it is, why they resort to distortions of language?
Because "copyright infringement" is a dry, technical term born of a dry, technical field -- copyright law -- and the Content Cartel know that to make your case, you need pizzazz. You need something sexier than "copyright infringement" to connect with the masses, to make them consider the crime as anything more than a passionless pursuit of cash through arcane usage restrictions that hardly speak to the common person. Label it "copyright infringement" and the ordinary bloke will think that it isn't really important, that it's not a "real" crime.
Now, do you want to know the really big dirty secret of the Content Cartel? The one thing they don't want you, or anyone else, to realize? Here it is: The ordinary bloke is right. It isn't a real crime, on the order of murder, or extortion, or speeding. It's a passionless pursuit of cash through arcane usage restrictions that hardly speak to the common person. It's a legal game.
So of course you can't call it what it is.
Re:"backup" audio CDs for "personal" use? (Score:1)
Heh... you must be a riaa lawyer.
We have an in-dash cd player in the car. Besides the obvious theft issues, have you ever looked closely at the back of a cd you changed while driving? It's scratched. Being left out in the heat and cold won't do them much good either, I suspect.
Now is your point I should buy 2 copies of a CD? That indeed would make the recording industry happy but I would be an idiot.
Copies made for personal use are permissable, and the recording industry is preventing that.
For myself, if there's a album I want that's copy protected and someone managed to rip it and post it to a newsgroup... I'm going to d/l it and burn my own cd.
There's no excuse for greed
Re:"backup" audio CDs for "personal" use? (Score:2)
Yes. In fact, all non-trolls believe that, because it is obviously the truth that people copy the two decent tracks on a dozen CDs onto one CD, that people convert a hundred or so tracks to MP3 so that they can be carried around on one disk, that people make listening copies for the car in case of damage or theft, etc.
Re:"backup" audio CDs for "personal" use? (Score:2)
YES.
My car CD player only holds 4 discs (with space in the armrest for 8 jewel cases). I have >300 discs at home. The average commercial CD holds about 45 minutes of music, which is about half of what it could.
I routinely burn mixes, taking the best tracks from the originals; that way I get both a greater variety and more music when I'm driving.
I know others who do the same.
Egad, I think I've been trolled!
Re:"backup" audio CDs for "personal" use? (Score:2)
You could easily make a device to play about 3 weeks of uncompressed CD audio to fit in a car. Even put the controls for this on the steering wheel. Safer than having the driver change media.
Re:"backup" audio CDs for "personal" use? (Score:2)
Um, this consumer backs up his CDs to MP3 for purely personal use. I have only downloaded one album that I did not (then) own. I'm a little ashamed to admit it was the Tron soundtrack
You know what? Within a week or so I deleted the MP3s. I don't need to make the RIAA's point for them, and I do have a legitimate use. From then on, the only MP3s I have had are the ones I ripped from my own CDs. I now listen to the MP3s, since
So yes, some consumers really do stay within the bounds of personal use and fair use. Of course I won't buy any so-called CDs that sport copy protection, as the inability to control the site of playing lowers the value of the CD. A CD that costs $20 and that I can space-shift is worth more than one that costs $20 and prevents me. The copy protection, in fact, lowers the benefit -- or raises the effective price -- beyond what I'd be willing to pay.
Final irony: When Disney finally released Tron on CD -- just this week -- I went out and bought it. Had I not refreshed my memory via the MP3s, I almost certainly would not. So that bit of "piracy" actually netted Disney a sale. In other words, the record companies are dinosaurs that don't understand all these newfangled furry things running around their feet.
Re:"backup" audio CDs for "personal" use? (Score:2)
This has the bonus effect of allowing me to play music while playing games that require the CD to be in the drive even when they don't have any need for the CD.
I would have copies of the games I own as well, except that most of them are copy-protected. So if something happens to one of my game cds (like the roomate's monitor falling on my Diablo 2 play CD a few weeks ago when the cat knocked it over), I need to either track down a receipt and pray the store will replace it or go buy a new one. Pretty odd, since it is perfectly *legal* for me to make a backup copy of those CDs, and the EULA almost always explicitly gives me the right to do it!