Crippled CD Deemed Defective In France

Noryungi writes "The daily newspaper Liberation reports that at least one person got her money back, by suing EMI, no less. She was able to do that with the help of the largest consumer organization in France, which has its own list of articles on this subject. So, French people who cannot read their copy-protected CDs can get their money back, but copy protection is not made illegal by the court decision... It's certainly a step in the right direction, though..." For the French-impaired, an anonymous reader adds "The Register has a good article on EMI being forced to refund the cost of a copy-protected CD, because it was found to have a 'hidden defect' -- it wouldn't work on a car's CD player ... Is the tide changing?"

Allright, finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think the tide is changing, media corporations in Europe don't have as much of a stranglehold on the government as they do in the U.S., although that's not to say that corporations don't have control in Europe. They do, it's just different corporations than we have here. All in all, this is pretty nice for the French, but we're still stuck in the U.S. without a viable way to challenge copyprotected cds.

If it's defective - isn't a recall in order?

[machinecraig]

Seems like they've proved that EMI made defective disks, shouldn't a recall be necessary?

CDs Death March

[Sophrosyne]

Once (and if) Apple gets their iTunes music store over to windows, and into international markets we will slowly begin to see the CD market go the way of the horse and buggy.
The market has been declining for years due to high prices, and formulaic content... there is still a possibility record labels may become more innovative and profitable with newer technologies.
I think that it's about time these huge record labels had some sense knocked into them (even if it is by the french government).

Copy protection = Defective

[Doesn't_Comment_Code]

EMI being forced to refund the cost of a copy-protected CD, because it was found to have a 'hidden defect'

What beautiful wording. And absolutely true. If you purchase data, it should be that, data, plain and simple, with no extras or hitches.

Theory and Philsophy lesson 1 for Copy protection companies:
If you can read it, you can copy it.

I think they already know that deep down. So their idea is to make the data harder and harder to read... to the point where it becomes defective.

...morons

Re:Clear Labeling of CDs..

[ajnlth]

As far as I know it's already so that Copyprotected CD's aren't allowed to use the "Compact Disc" symbol since they don't follow the CD standard.

Might just be fun to go into a record store and ask why they put a disc that clearly isn't a CD (no label) in the CD-section.

Re:Clear Labeling of CDs..

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd prefer a warning label which says something like "This disc does comply with the ???? Book standard governing the manufacture of CDs. Consequently, it will not work in all playback equipment."

Good step...

[KinkyClown]

At my work we don't have a CD player and a audio set. We all have computers, CD-ROM players and a set of speakers. I can not listen at my work to some CD's I have bought. I am not doing anything illegal and I can not listen to my own bought CD's.
I hope that a similar case will hit the courts as well. I don't want to rip my CD's and make MP3's, I just want to listen to the music. Why do I have to be punished for something I did not do? Getting my money back is no option, I can play my CD's back home on my normal audio set, but I don't like it when I am programming that I can not listen to my good-mood-programming-music.

Despite all the France-bashing of late

[West Palm Beach]

I have to applaud their Court's decision on this matter.

If the CD doesn't play in certain devices, it's defective. Period.

When is the RIAA going to realize that they're eroding their own customer base with lawsuits, faulty products and such. Especially when the end product costs almost $20 a pop.

I've bought precious little music since the advent of copy-protection, though it doens't help that theoverall quality of music lately has declined. Until such defects are corrected, I'll simply continue my stance.

Re:Is the tide changing?

[selderrr]

doh ? And who says the tide in the US is to anyones interest ouside the US ? For all I care, DRM can be enforced on everything in the US, as long as Europe sticks to its senses. In fact, that's what it's going to with US vs Asia. No way that Asia is ever going to DRM stuff that's intenede for bigbucks flowing to the US.
And just maybe, that's where your only hope lies : Europe & Asia NOT DRMing and exporting to a black US market. Remember that US alcohol fiasco some 80-70 years ago ? You guys are geniusses at fucking over consumers whilst creating a market for the mob.

Call me a troll, but if you're honest you'll admit that US politics holds world record in screwing its own people while trying to control the world market.

Re:Clear Labeling of CDs..

[Anonymous Coward]

In the meantime, is there any web page or the like where someone is compiling a list of copy protected CD's?... would be a wonderful start to avoiding getting ripped off like this while we wait for legislation, then wait for old stock to be updated.

Re:Clear Labeling of CDs..

[Anonymous Coward]

"DON'T BUY COPY PROTECTED DISKS"

It's called boycotting and it works.

Don't buy any _NEW_ CDs or DVDs. Buy only used. Borrow your friends CDs and copy them. Send a couple of bucks to the musicians. Fuck the music industry. It's time for them to die.

Re:Clear Labeling of CDs..

[NanoGator]

"It's called boycotting and it works."

No it won't. Every CD not sold will be accounted for by piracy. Buy the CD and take it back, that'll perk their ears up.

Re:Clear Labeling of CDs..

[swordgeek]

The only way this would work is thus:

1) All playback media that _looked_ like a CD but wasn't would have to have a label on the front in large letters saying, "THIS IS NOT A CD. IT MAY NOT PLAY IN YOUR CD PLAYER."

2) All such media would have to be shelved separately in the stores. There would be a CD section, and an "other" section.

What I don't understand is why Phillips can't sue for the misuse of their physical format, even if it's not labelled as a CD. It's pretty clear that these things are intended to be almost exactly like a CD, but violate the standard (and hence, not always work.) This is damaging to Phillips, damaging to their product, and damaging to the (real) CD format.

I'm seeing more of these from outside the US...

[djaj]

I buy a lot of CDs (yeah, I'm a sucker, what can I say?), and I still haven't seen a US-based copy-protected CD, but I've recently purchased three imports (one each from Australia, Germany and France) which were very clearly labelled as such. (I didn't know they would be copy-protected when I plunked down money for them, and I've been able to make perfectly good MP3s of the contents from the analog source.)

Neither disc has the CD logo on it, and both had very large stickers on the shrink-wrap with this logo [ifpi.org] on it and descriptions of what it meant, and what systems you should be able to play it on. (Since I refused to install the software necessary to actually play these on a computer, I have no idea how well they work in that respect.) I'm certainly going to avoid these from here on out if I can. I've noticed that amazon.co.uk, amazon.fr and amazon.de will occasionally note that a disc is copy-protected, so I'm going to check there first before buying from here on out.

Re:How about a copy-protection standard?

[Alien Being]

"Secondly, this type of copy-protection is a clear violation of the rights of any person who buys such a CD."

Here's where that argument breaks down. You have no rights. Rights in this country are granted by congress. You can't afford to outbribe industry lobbyists, so the laws are being made in their favor.

Many of the new laws go against the fundamental concepts of American freedom that we had drilled into our heads in public school. We want to believe that the government is "for the people", but what we see is a bunch of fatcats who don't give a damn about the Constitution and who cannot relate to the other 90% of the population.

One psychobabble term for the way all of this makes us feel is 'cognitive dissonance'. The choices for coping with it are

a) fix the problem.
b) give up your old beliefs.
c) find some new beliefs that are more important than the old ones.

Our feckless fuckwads in the whorehouse and the war department know they can't convince people to give up the beliefs that we should live free, that we're innocent until proven guilty, etc. They sure as hell don't want us to fix the problem, because that would mean putting Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, Wolfowitz, Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe in front of a firing squad. Their method is to give us some new things to believe in.

In other words, due to 9/11 our rights are not important. Due to 9/11 we must go occupy Iraq. To protect the economy (what economy?) we must allow big business to run roughshod over American citizens.

Damn, i need a drink. I guess that's option d).

Re:Clear Labeling of CDs..

[amRadioHed]

OT, but as a music store employee I have to comment... ...is alphabetical order really that complicated?
You woulnd't think so, but nevertheless a large percent of the customers in music stores don't put any effort at all into putting cd's back where they came from. Now, if the customers just left stacks of CD in a pile on the floor or on a counter, then it wouldn't be much of a problem. Sure, I would desire to inflict great suffering on them, but the discs could still be easily put back where they belong with no problem. However, the customers aren't happy leaving them in a stack somewhere, instead they put them back in the completely wrong section on the opposite end of the store, thus when someone needs to find the disc it is impossible to locate. I even had a customer complain about not being able to find a CD that I know for a fact he was looking at earlier in the day, but of course he just dropped it off in the Soul section (i found it later) when he previously decided he wasn't going to buy it.

Obviously, the employees do what they can to find cds that are misfiled, but the customers have us vastly outnumbered.

I have been told that our store is actually quite well organized compared to others, so I probably shouldn't take your commment personally, however my store is still not as good as I would like it to be. It's a never ending job. (/rant)

Re:Does this also apply to 10gb drive out of XBox

[toddestan]

My guess is no chance, as Microsoft in no way has advertised the XBox's hard drive as a standard PC hard drive. Did you also expect that the Pentium chip they put in the thing would also be a standard chip you could slap in a standard PC board? Or that it came with a standard network card? Besides, in the USA - where the corporations own the government, it would seem that you are already on shaky ground just for taking the thing apart in the first place.

I don't even think you'd have a case if you bought some OEM computer and found out that the drive was keyed to work only in that brand of computer. Heck, I know IBM had some seriously propriety stuff going on with the PS/2's (hard drives that had a special connector and controller card that would only work on a card that went on IBM's own MCA bus). I know people didn't like it because it stunk, but I never heard of anyone suing over it.

Re:Copy protection = Defective

[xenobyte]

I recently bought two EMI releases, both labelled with "Copy Control" logos and disclaimers: Kraftwerk's "Tour De France Soundtracks 2003" and Delerium's "Chimera".

I have no idea whether these actually were protected but I was able to fire up my Exact Audio Copy [exactaudiocopy.de], load the disks and make a flawless rip of everything without the slightest problem or need for tweaks.

Both disks held the data track at the end which seems to be omnipresent on these disks so I guess they were something besides a normal CD, but the copy protection was worthless to say the least - it didn't even slow me down.

The CD drive used was a regular A-Open CD-RW/DVD combo drive, about 3 months old.

The rips are to be used by myself at work (nobody wants to drag along thousands of CDs just to be able to have a decent selection of music to listen to), so they are perfectly legal under danish law, even with the stupid european DMCA in effect, according to CONSOLIDATED ACT ON COPYRIGHT 2003 (Consolidated Act No. 164 of March 12, 2003), paragraph 12, section 2, subsection (v):

"The provision of subsection (1) does not provide the right to ... make single copies in digital form of other works than computer programs and databases unless this is done exclusively for the personal use of the copying person himself or his household."

Source: http://www.kum.dk/sw4550.asp [www.kum.dk]

I broke it and complained too..

[mattr]

Well I'm not going to stick my neck out but their copy protection can be easily broken by a popular unix tool that I found after ten minutes of searching the net for it. Starts with "cdp" if that helps..

I had been presented with an EMI audio cd with their lousy Copy Control CD protection scheme, actually this is I think Macrovision/Cactus Data Shield's thing which Avex proceeded to dump all over Japan. There's windows stuff which does it too it seems.

Well I had just seen this concert as a guest of the producer and I got the CD for free. I get back for a long coding session over the weekend and want to play it on my linux laptop of course..

Well after some swearing and wasted a lot of time I solved my personal problem and no, I'm not sharing it to the masses. Even though I suspect EMI has either done a bad job of the production, or has suffered reduced quality due to this scheme (I don't know if it is true but I read somewhere that these are really just 46 kbps wmf files.. if so that is robbery).

I told the producer that they should stop using that protection which in addition to making the cd not work on my laptop or in car stereos, also is quite easy to break, plus the recording either sucks or it is made worse by the protection scheme. I certainly wouldn't buy a cd with that protection on it normally.

I don't know if this is going to make a difference but I hope these organizations get as many complaints as possible from people who are seriously pissed about this situation. The artist of course knows nothing about the issue, it is not really considered by most people in the business either yet, the protection scheme just gets steamrolled everywhere as a matter of policy I'm sure. If you have a similar situation (especially if you've actually paid for the cd, since I got mine free) please tell them.