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Stations Can't Play Crippled Music Disks
Posted by
michael
on Sun Apr 06, 2003 05:30 AM
from the dead-air dept.
from the dead-air dept.
arb writes "The Age is reporting that some radio stations are unable to play copy-protected CDs. It seems at least one radio station is facing problems transferring CD tracks to their digital playout system. Is the lack of radio air-play a price the record labels are willing to pay in their efforts to stamp out piracy?"
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hrm (Score:5, Interesting)
Yay! The return of Pirate Radio!
And with great software like TuneTracker (at http://www.beosradio.com/ [beosradio.com] ), it's easier than ever to run a professional-level radio station with a low low budget.
Re:hrm (Score:3, Informative)
Re:hrm (Score:3, Insightful)
As long as their ASCAP fees are paid up I imagine the music industry doesn't care where a radio station gets their music from. The problem is other people stealing the music via P2P sharing without paying any royalties.
Ouch! Sound Quality Nightmare! (Score:5, Insightful)
In practice, as long as you use decent quality equipment, this does sound like a practical way to run a radio station. If the DJs are in control or the music, it lets them find and queue up material quickly, and arrange it so they can easily go from one tune to the next or cut in to talk or patch in commercials, and makes it easier for things to run on autopilot if they need it to. And with the changes in disk drive cost over the last few years, they can store a few thousand songs at decent compression levels. On the other hand, if the radio station is one of those centrally controlled things that don't have real DJs at each station, they can upload each song once and cue things remotely.
Parent
Re:Ouch! Sound Quality Nightmare! (Score:4, Informative)
That depends on your source. If you're using one of the P2P services, that's probably what you'll get. If you get your music fix from alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.*, though, it's more likely you'll see high-bitrate (often excessively high, like 256 or even 320 kbps) MP3s encoded with LAME or other decent encoders.
Parent
Call me crazy... (Score:4, Insightful)
Give them time. (Score:5, Insightful)
They will still come out ahead.
Wait, their all owned by Clear Channel. Who ownes them again?
Re:Give them time. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Give them time. (Score:4, Insightful)
The RIAA appears to have learned the lessons of religion and government which is really a lesson in marketing (that perception is reality): it doesn't matter whether what you say is true and can be proven - if you say it often enough, forcefully enough and with apparent total conviction, the majority will eventually accept it as fact.
Parent
Re:Give them time. (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Give them time. (Score:5, Interesting)
With this in mind, an "upgrade" to a DRM-based system would probably be possible, particularly if the RIAA pushed it with special incentives (upgrade your system, we'll give you some exclusive tracks 2 weeks ahead of time!). The problem for the RIAA is that the analog sound going to the transmitter is still very good quality; a dedicated tech with a laptop could probably patch his system into the link from the audio system to the transmitter and get fairly good MP3s or OGGs. Until the RIAA gets everything in the world digital and DRMed, there just won't be any way to stop a dedicated pirate. Even then, I bet someone will find a way real quick ;).
Parent
Cutting off your face to spite your nose (Score:5, Insightful)
Then again most of the crap that has the copy protection on it I won't be listening to in the first place. I try to make a point of supporting labels like Projekt Records who are vocal advocates of music sharing. Of course Projekt is only useful if you are into goth type music.
I think the answer is simple for dealing with crap like this as a consumer, stop supporting major record labels period. There is a plethora of music out there on small labels, or even DIY labels. Even better, use that $18 you were going to spend on the latest bit of top 40 crap and go see some live music. Stop being a consumer and think
-AS
Re:Cutting off your face to spite your nose (Score:5, Informative)
Well it seems that at least in some situations the record labels are in a very funny cycle of self-flagellation.
Agreed. To see just how far this can go, take a look at this article [ukcdr.org] (yes, I edited it) illustrating the situation in Germany. The Germans are currently dealing with near 100% corrupt disc releases, and people really are not at all happy. Perhaps this is worth bearing in mind considering Arista's recent announcement re US corrupt disc releases. Does the record industry really want to create the same destructive downward spiral in the US as there is now in Germany? At least Sony appear to have seen the light and have given up with corrupt releases, but EMI still appear to be believing Midbar/Macrovision propaganda [macrovision.com].
Parent
Re:Cutting off your face to spite your nose (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.heise.de/ct/cd-register/
Parent
Re:Cutting off your face to spite your nose (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
there is a clear message here (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
the stupidity doesn't stop here.... (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, that much is quite apparent. But the really stupid thing is that they blindly pretend that this small loss by going through an analog phase is enough to discourage copying, while at the same time they are agressively fighting mp3 users. Mp3's do vastly more harm to the audio quality, even at high bit rates, than a pass through the analog world with good equipment will ever do. They are willing to fight mp3s, when an mp3 user just might go out and buy an album to get a good quality copy of the songs, but at the same time tick off buyers with legitimate uses of the product they bought, and some of those will turn to making analog rips that will be far higher quality than if someone was given an mp3 file to preview a music group!
Of course, their ultimate goal is to have DRM in every A to D converter in the world, so that no one can use them to re-encode audio. Not very likely, considering the legitimate uses of A to D converters that would not work well with this, and the huge number of existing A to D converters out there. So instead they just tick off the consumer and complain that sales are not growing fast enough to suit them.
Parent
France vs. RIAA (Score:4, Funny)
France already surrendered.
Parent
Download them! (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously. Actually, I wonder how many radio stations use MP3 as a native format for songs they play now.
Re:Download them! (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Download them! (Score:5, Informative)
Although technically, "making a digital copy" of something you already own or license by downloading someone else's digital copy has not (afaik) been tested legally and may be outside the terms of "fair use" that everyone is always flaunting about, I believe that radio stations using this service was one of the very few legitimate use of Napster that there ever really was.
I firmly believe that someone could start a membership P2P service where people pay a fee necessary to license about anything they want to listen to for a year and then can download freely from anyone. The fees for small broadcast stations that don't make any money are very reasonable (like $200/yr).. This is the same kind of license that department stores and whatnot have to buy to play CD's in their store. It's very cheap and available to the public. It's kind of funny that my slashdot submissions on it all get rejected (with links directly to the damn fee schedules on the respective licensor sites!) and we have all this bottom of the barrel shit on here constantly.
~GoRK
Parent
Correction: Station refuses to play disc. (Score:5, Informative)
- It's not that they can't, they just dont want to
- The article isnt much longer than this post, so you can read it yourself.
spurious reasoning (Score:5, Insightful)
The kind of DRM software companies like Macrovision have created changes boot blocks, media player software, audio and video I/O, and CD/DVD drivers, and it is designed to limit the ability of PC users to distribute music. That is, it is designed to interfere with exactly what the business model of the station is and with what the station pays royalties for. After installing it, they may end up not being able to play, say, unsigned advertising clips they get as MP3's from customers, or rip other CDs to disk, or do any of a dozen things that they depend on.
Any radio station would be foolish to let that kind of software be installed on their PCs. These people depend on their PC hardware for their livelihood. If they refuse to install this software, it's because they really don't have much of a choice, not because they "just don't want to".
Parent
Re:Correction: Station refuses to play disc. (Score:5, Interesting)
You are almost certianly wrong. They state that they cannot play the CD's as is:
unable to play any of the CDs it received - the copy protection on the discs gets in the way.
And even if they installed the DRM software there is no reason to think the DRM software will allow them to transfer the music to thier broadcast system. The DRM system is specificly designed to prevent you from transfering the music.
-
Parent
I'd bet that many can't (Score:4, Interesting)
These days, radio stations really are just using the same technology as a normal user. They ahve specialised apps and some speical hardware, but at the heart is just a standard PC.
Parent
Re:Correction: Station refuses to play disc. (Score:3, Insightful)
Except he did NOT come to a sensible conclusion. See this post [slashdot.org].
Did you actually read the article or do you just want to bash on slashdot because you don't like slashdot bashing on DRM?
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Like that's going to stop the record companies (Score:3, Interesting)
Double-Edged Sword (Score:5, Informative)
What's more disgusting, however, is the amount of hassle that's involved installing broadcast and/or production software these days. Hardware keys, bajillon digit serial numbers, activation. You think turbo tax is bad. I guess, however, my users never really have to struggle with that sort of thing like I do.
Steve Jobs, if you're listening, there's money to be made in the radio automation business using the Mac platform w/out DRM.
Re:Double-Edged Sword (Score:5, Informative)
They made Final Cut Pro 3 into a world beater for video production.
We're running it on a dual 450 G4 with 896Mb of ram and it easily keeps pace with our Media 100 system, which cost 6x as much.
It doesn't crash, is loaded with useful features, is devoid of bloat and works exactly the way you want it.
They'll be doing similar things to the professional audio industry soon, I'll bet my hat on it.
Parent
Hopefully the radio stations won't work arround it (Score:3, Interesting)
But the point is, if the radio stations do *not* resort to these, if they just put the CD on the tray and try to download the tracks to HD and that just doesn't work, then there's a chance labels rethink the whole thing. They could choose to send custom made CDs to the radio stations (e.g., just data CDs with the audio tracks as wav files) or they could just drop the whole idea because the cost would be too high (from several POVs).
Or perhaps the labels choose to ignore these weird radio stations and all these crap gets less airtime.
Both ways, it's a win-win situation.
This is a real problem! (Score:5, Informative)
Hey, radio is piracy, too! (Score:5, Funny)
They said they were found in the mail. Freebies from EMI, yeah right. As if EMI would give them CDs so they could pirate them to anonymous people they don't even know!
Now that is a weak defense if you ask em.
It would be interesting to have those napster students sued by RIAA use this defense, though.
"Hey, we are a radio station, and we got these MP3s from EMI for free".
NOT Freebies at all... (Score:3)
So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
So the record industry's managed to neuter itself and make removable media obsolete. Boo hoo. My heart bleeds for them. Bunch of idiots.
What difference does it make? (Score:5, Insightful)
I do hope that the RIAA understands that the games they are playing aren't going to get them anything. Anyone who WANTS to pirate music is going to do so. This business with mucking with the format of the CD only irritates their customers. I sincerely believe that the whole idea was thought up by some suits who don't know their ass from a hole in the ground. Anyone with a clue wouldn't even bother with such an approach.
Lee
Re:What difference does it make? (Score:5, Funny)
Of course they know the difference. Their heads aren't stuck in a hole in the ground.
Parent
First UK exposure (Score:4, Informative)
This sort of thing is going to hit the public consciousness very soon in the UK, cos over the last two weeks there's been a new TV advert, touting the release of Pink Floyd's 30th anniversary edition of Dark Side Of The Moon using the new high quality SACD [dvd-audio.co.uk] (Super Audio CD) format.
Though they mention SACD, no where does the advert mention anything about copy protection. Some people are going to get a rude shock.
Non-Issue... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sooner rather than later, the simbiosis between radio station and record industry will repair itself and things will return to a state where there will be no need for this news item.
Payola (Score:3, Interesting)
Payola [history-of-rock.com] is reason is this a non-issue. Oh, it still goes on. In the lofty world of Clearchannel, it's all about sponsoring contests and event promotion. Nothing quite so obvious as envelops of cash. What you hear on the radio is that which has been paid for by publishers. Nothing as trivial as obsolete CD players is going to interfere with this very long. A couple phone calls and there will be a shiny new player arriving promptly at a studio near you!
how long (Score:3, Insightful)
music will always be pirated, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. we (as consumers) have been copying music for decades and sharing it with our friends. we're good at it. are they going to kill radio just to *try* to stop piracy?
i agree with a previous post ^^^^^^ up there somewhere....support the DIY's and save your 15+ bucks to go see a live show. this will support the artist more directly than passing your cash through the industry.
Placebo (Score:5, Interesting)
On the back is a blurb saying the disc is designed to play on CD players, DVD players, PCs and Macs. What it doesn't say is that in order to play it on a computer you're supposed to use the software on the disc (hmm... totally future-proof). Furthermore, it autoruns an installer to install the software.
We verified that we couldn't play the disc on a Windows 98 PC using standard audio players. We didn't install the software on the CD, for obvious reasons.
On OS X we were able to play it and rip it using iTunes. On Linux (on a same model thinkpad as the Win98 PC) we were also able to play and rip it.
The shop I bought it from was a small indie, and I notice that in the bigger shops the album doesn't have any copy-control information on it. It's possible that the indie sold me a promo, in which case perhaps they're trying to stop MP3s leaking before the album comes out, or it may be that the retail album is a regular CD (or copy-protected but not so labelled).
DRM deprives stations of their rights. (Score:5, Interesting)
IP law is deliberately confusing and can only be sorted out by human beings. (In the case of complex situations, human beings that charge high fees).
There is no way that any simple, inexpensive bit of software can correctly determine whether or not the user does, in fact, have the rights to the use he or she is making.
In every case, of course, the DRM schemes err in the direction of denying use to people that POSSESS rights, never the other way around.
P.S. Yes, I did read the article. This sounds like Midbar's scheme, in which (when it works properly!) the computer still cannot access the real audio tracks, but the special software allows access to lower-quality compressed versions--which can only be played, not copied to the hard drive. So even if the boss had allowed the software to be installed, the station would have probably found that this didn't do any good.
A Solution to CD Piracy (Score:5, Funny)
The RIAA can eliminate the financial losses due to CD piracy in a really simple way...
STOP RELEASING NEW MUSIC!
- Profits will be restored to earlier levels if the labels don't have to spend money on new artists. They're still stuck back in the Elton John days, and have no idea on how to recognise and nurture modern talent. They're full of coke-sniffing old farts hopelessly stuck within their comfort zones
- Radio stations play 90% back catalogue anyway, and this provides a steady royalties stream, especially since the US Judiciary has effectively ruled that copyrights are eternal
- Independent labels will step in to fill the gap, and will likely evolve new business models to
make full use of internet technology
- A renaissance of new musical expression will ensue
Everyone wins!The RIAA gets to keep control of the back catalogue, while the fresher new artists and labels find ways to turn a profit, and perhaps live far better, without having to suck on that toxic nipple of the RIAA ripoff recording contract.
Does this mean I won't hear... (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe when a big-name star with serious legal representation (like Celine Dion) finds that she's not getting airplay because the record company crippled her product, we'll see some progress made against copy-crippled cds.
Oh. My. God. Could it be that Celine Dion could save us?
Funny thing is, I stopped listening to the radio for anything other than traffic reports around 1993 or so. It's not like I'd have even noticed...
Don't say crippled! (Score:5, Funny)
What about the DMCA? (Score:5, Interesting)
Even though there was never any official encryption to begin with (and those who analyzed the CSS code probably consider it as minimal), that doesn't give them the right to perform an illegal act. The CD technology IS patented, and covered under international law as such.
Making a "Not-CD" (subliminal joke there if you say it to yourself out loud) in essense violates those patents, even if they removed the Compact Disc logo.
Database of copy-protected CDs (Score:5, Informative)
Query page:
http://www.heise.de/ct/cd-register/default.shtml?
Master page:
http://www.heise.de/ct/cd-register/
Feedback to
cd-register@ctmagazin.de
The words you're looking for are... (Score:5, Funny)
-S
What about watermarking? (Score:5, Interesting)
Then if a copy is found online, diff it with the original, and find out who leaked it.
Or maybe I'm oversimplifying things. I guess if you could make the key seeding random enough that it wouldn't be easy to wipe...
Re:What's wrong with sticking to pre-2003 music? (Score:3, Funny)