Sony's New DRM Technique 673
skochak writes "Sony has introduced a new DRM scheme. You can burn a CD-R from the original once, but you can't re-burn from that first copy." From the article: "The concept is known as 'sterile burning.' And in the eyes of Sony BMG executives, the initiative is central to the industry's efforts to curb casual CD burning. 'The casual piracy, the school yard piracy, is a huge issue for us...Two-thirds of all piracy comes from ripping and burning CDs, which is why making the CD a secure format is of the utmost importance.'"
Not new! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not new! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not new! (Score:4, Interesting)
I sold my MD player a while ago and bought myself a MSI 512mb MP3 player. I grew sick of having to reencode my music to shitty ATRAC3.
Re:Not new! (Score:3, Interesting)
For some reason, though, MD has become very popular in Japan if nowhere else.
Who will crack it first? (Score:5, Interesting)
Who's game?
Re:Who will crack it first? (Score:5, Funny)
C'mon, give them some credit. If you would've read the article you posted you would've noticed that you need a marker. And with a felt tip, no less!
Maybe it is quite simple (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who wants to see everything? (Score:3, Informative)
Try dd_rescue, it is designed specifically for reading from media littered with read errors.
Re:Who will crack it first? (Score:4, Insightful)
To use an analogy: if a company sells super fast car engines, then wrings hands about all the terrible speeders on the highway, hypocrisy has found a new watershed.
Re:Who will crack it first? (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole IP issue has just become disgraceful. How long will this go on before people realize that the model is fundamentally flawed?
I watched testamony given to a U.S. Senate subcomittee by a researcher (from MIT, IIRC) where he bluntly said that whatever can be heard can be copied. The only way to prevent unauthorized copies is not to let anyone hear the music. All attempts at labeling unauthorized copying as "stealing" have fallen flat because of the lack of logic (to the layman) in "stealing" something without quantity. At some point we have to acknowledge that this problem is unique and requires a unique solution.
In Related News: (Score:5, Insightful)
Make music people are willing to pay for, and cultivate mature customers.
Oh wait, that means your greedy leech asses couldn't depend upon 14 year old girls for your revenue stream, doesn't it?
Re:In Related News: (Score:2)
Re:In Related News: (Score:3, Informative)
No it couldn't. "tracks ripped and burned from a copy-protected disc are copied to a blank CD in Microsoft's Windows Media Audio format. The DRM embedded on the discs bars the burned CD from being copied." Which I think limits it to media. Please RTFA before posting crap based on the never-reliable summary.
Re:In Related News: (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:spec[tt] (Score:5, Insightful)
However, since the industry is propelled to its incredible heights of profitability by fux0ring 99.99% of the artists, through creating a limited monopoly built upon advertising and rather shady market squeezing, I'd like to think that I as a consumer have been rather deserted somewhere along the line. Ergo, I am deserting the system IF, and I'm not a big pirater, so I don't do this much, but IF I go through other channels for music acquisition.
Re:spec[tt] (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:spec[tt] (Score:5, Insightful)
The first type of artist makes almost no money, plays small clubs, and maybe has an indie record out. This type of band wants his music to be copied and distributed as much as is humanly possible. Since these bands at best break even, and likely take a loss on recording sessions to make CDs they need the word to spread. When enough people have heard of them in your town they make a couple of bucks playing at the bar on the corner.
The second type of band has a major record deal. They are seing revenue from their album sales and they like it. They think that piracy is bad because their label tells them so. They make most of their money from touring, plus they're living the rock and roll lifestyle (or hip-hop, or whatever) so they really don't care about piracy, so long as people pay to see them in concert.
The third type of band is too popular for their own damn good. They make loads of money from albums and sell out stadiums. They might actually stand to make more money if piracry was made impossible. But can you really feel bad for bands like U2 and Metallica who supposedly are doing it because they love the music, but then bitch about not getting whats theirs?
The moral of the story is the only person who piracy is hurting is the label itself. They see declining sales and have to attribute it to something. Of course their ability to recognise, recruit, and foster talent hasn't waned, so it must be the evil internet.
Look at the the state of rap. When it started with Snoop and NWA back in the day it was edgy and said something about the artists culture. I don't know how it got mainstream exactly, but once it was there we got Vanilla Ice and Marky Mark. Well fortunately that died out quickly, but now that rap is fully main stream we have Ludacris rapping about the Number One Spot, Eminem and his Balls and Every rapper and their cousin talking about Krystal, Bentleys, and rims. No one can honesly say that rap has gotten better with increasing comercialism.
The solution? Get clear chanel radio dismantled under some kind of anti trust lawsuit or something. Allow independent radio stations to take back some ground. Get said local radio stations to not play shitty music (*cough* Ashlee Simpson).
So the summary is that corporate radio (MTV included), and bloated record labels are killing music as an artform. And pircay is biting the greedy bastards in the ass. People will always pay to see a concert. People won't always pay for shitty CDs.
Re:In Related News: (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, which are the greedy ones? The musicians who decide to sell music, or their so-called fans who want it without paying the artists?
The only "greed" in that picture is on the part of the people that know the musician has chosen to sell their work, and yet (while claiming to like the performer, apparently) decide they want it on their own terms (i.e., "free"), instead. Turning the musician into your pet entertainment slave is greedy. Choosing to sell your music (which may indeed result in no one thinking you're worth the trouble to spend $15) is a business venture. "Ripping" off that business (such an appropriate term) is just what it sounds like.
Make music people are willing to pay for
Hmmm. So, if musicians do not make music that [more, non-14-yeard-olds, presumably?] people are willing to pay for, how does that legitimize ripping off what they do make? This is the part I'm always a little foggy on. If someone doesn't like the music enough to buy it, why are they willing to rip it off? If they hate the music, why do they want it? If they like the musician, why aren't they willing to enter into the same transaction that they muscian has said they want to enter into? And if you think the artist is a jerk for working within the larger, traditional music industry framework, why would you none the less want the music made by that person? I've never quite been able to put myself into the shoes of the person that says either:
"I hate this guy because he charges for his music, so I'm going to rip off a copy and enjoy it!"
or
"I love this musician so much! Every time he comes out with a new recording I must show my admiration by getting a copy. It's just that I don't love him enough to actually do what he's asking and pay him for entertaining me. Too bad for him! Sucker! But I love him and his music!"
I've got a better idea (Score:3, Interesting)
The MPAA isn't pleased with people like me, who throw $6.50 their way via a matinee showing every two years, and that's only if I get dragged to the theatre by my workmates. To add insult to injury, very few of the DVDs
Re:In Related News: (Score:3, Interesting)
But not by trashing the business in question. If I open a diner that's popular with lots of local folks, but a vegan/PETA type decides that shouldn't be a "viable" business because I'm serving meat, they can vote with their wallet - but they can't vote by burning down the restaurant. Further, people can't say that the only way in which they'll consider my work in the diner as viable is if I do it for free, and show me that by hav
Why Don't They Spend Money On Better Music? (Score:3, Insightful)
These guys need a serious kick in the ass. I'm buying my son a Nintendo instead of a PS3.
They aren't getting one more dime from me.
Re:Why Don't They Spend Money On Better Music? (Score:3, Funny)
Oooh, that'll do it.
Re:Why Don't They Spend Money On Better Music? (Score:2)
Two million people doing the same can change Sony's behavior.
It worked for the Democratic Party.
Re:Why Don't They Spend Money On Better Music? (Score:2)
They lost the White House in 1980 and regained it in 1992 only after pushing a centrist candidate to through to the convention.
Their losses in the House and Senate have been due to both their lack of broad political appeal and the asinine redistricting laws in every state of the US.
The same asinine laws, I might add, that they benefitted from until they were tossed out of the majority.
Re:Why Don't They Spend Money On Better Music? (Score:2, Interesting)
Congratulations on being one of the few people on slashdot who understands how to really hurt these companies - make sure they don't get any more money.
Most people seem to think that Script Kiddie Jon's latest iTunes hack will do more than annoy a few people and encourage stronger DRM.
Re:Why Don't They Spend Money On Better Music? (Score:2, Informative)
Yeah right (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Yeah right (Score:2)
Maximum Utmost (Score:3, Insightful)
Shhh!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Shhh!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Still stupid though! Repeat after me, Sony:
If you can play it, you can copy it.
Re:Shhh!!! (Score:5, Funny)
2. Make the music tradeable only during sexual intercourse.
3. ? (What the hell do you need to know here anyway? #2 is either never going to happen, or you'll see a lot of geeks walking down the sidewalk with a smile from ear to ear.)
4. Profit
I should get paid for this.
another waste of time (Score:2)
Casual copying (Score:3, Insightful)
Sigh... (Score:2)
Won't work. (Score:3, Insightful)
Regardless, copy protection will not work. The only barrier is the energy barrier, and it constantly shrinks. Next?
Re:Won't work. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Won't work. (Score:5, Insightful)
If they really believe this will force more CD's to be bought, they are idiots. If it is impossible to rip the CD to some other form, the desire to buy the CD goes *down*, not up. The "casual pirate", knowing that the CD is worthless for them, will spend their time searching the internet, to find the "professional pirate" who has the necessary sound-proof room and microphones to do a high-quality rip right off the digitally-encrypted speakers. They will not buy the CD any more!
Re:Won't work. (Score:4, Insightful)
It is a strange peculiarity that they're spending millions of dollars to make their product less valuable. They're betting, of course, that the lost revenue from the handful of (what they think of as) fringe "rights nuts" like the people who post here is negligable because we're all pirates now anyway. But the amount of gained revenue by stopping technically ignorant pirates should more than make up for it. Dunno if they're right or not. It's always about money. They wouldn't be doing this if they didn't think it was highly likely to pay for itself and then some. And they're probably right, but the copies will still get out there and they won't stop. That's the real danger of this, is the escalating arms race.
Company introduces mildly annoying and easily sidestepped copy protection or DRM technique.
Content is on-line within hours.
Company concludes that it wasn't enough and develops new, more obtrusive, more annoying DRM.
It's cracked and the content is on-line within hours.
Company begins to push for legislation to solve this!
That'll be circumvented and on-line in hours.
Company pushes for stiffer fines and more trampling on privacy rights so they can figure out who is doing this and stop them.
Eventually this has to stop and our government is going to have to be the ones that stop them. Yes, piracy happens and probably costs them a significant amount of money but no amount of wrongdoing by a group of people justifies legislation or activity that infringes upon the rights of the innocent.
"if it can be seen [heard]..." (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:"if it can be seen [heard]..." (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:"if it can be seen [heard]..." (Score:4, Insightful)
Sometimes, the object you want to protect only needs to be broken once to get everywhere -- i.e. mp3 trading on the internet. However, in the cases where this isn't true, you don't need to make this impossible. Just hard. You can photocopy a book page-by-page -- there's no DRM tech there. But it's hard, and so books worked. There's no reason to expect that you can't curb non-internet CD ripping this way; if they make it hard enough for the average Joe to rip a CD, schoolyard piracy mostly vanishes. That's not an unsolvable problem like p2p seems to be.
So I hadn't heard the two-thirds figure. That sounds kinda crazy.
Amusing (Score:5, Funny)
Wait, or was that the Bittorrent excuse? I'm getting them mixed up now. I can't believe they're stepping all over our rights to do anything we want, anywhere, with anything.
For some reason, this is totally unreasonable!
Re:Amusing (Score:2)
What if we want to copy Linux distributions to our friends? Huh, what about that?
Well, I don't think that's much of an issue here. From the article:
So, unless your Linux distro has been distributed as a WMA file, for some unfathomable reason, you're good to go.
Of course, this only raises th
Re:Amusing (Score:2)
Won't stop me... (Score:3, Insightful)
If all else fails, I play the cd in a standard cd player, while recording it on my computer. I break apart the tracks later, and have the music in whatever format I want.
If only the record industry would realize that such actions are futile, and could just give up. Most people aren't evil pirates, I just want to be able to play back music that I pay money for on whatever medium I want to.
What neighborhood do YOU live in? (Score:3, Insightful)
secure the format (Score:3, Insightful)
I could be off-base here, but if you change the format for whatever purpose, wouldn't it by definition not be a CD anymore?
Re:secure the format (Score:5, Informative)
Philips is serious about maintaining CD compatibility, and has forced the purveyors of incompatiple DRM schemes to clearly label that they are not compatible with the standard.
See, e.g., http://www.spectacle.org/0702/evan.html [spectacle.org]
--kirby
DMCA (Score:2)
Math. Their Strong Suit. (Score:5, Funny)
But they're using high-speed burners, so that makes it at least four thirds, right?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Math. Their Strong Suit. (Score:3, Funny)
Dr. Evil: And we expect that this (air quotes) "DRM" will produce increased revenue of...(pinky to mouth) ONE MILLION DOLLARS.
Number Two: But Dr. Evil, it will cost twice that much develop and implement. And our market research shows that we could make billions more if we were to focus on increasing the quality of our music.
Dr. Evil: Why make billions when we could make...millions?
Two thirds? (Score:3, Interesting)
Been done before (Score:2)
Now, how many people have one of those? The market didn't accept it, and if this isn't cracked, it won't accept this either.
how the hell can this work? (Score:2)
Even the "original" is a copy. (Score:2)
Copy-protection schemes have been devised - and defeated - ever since people have figured out how to make money - and avoid paying - from software sales of all kinds.
An image is an image is an image, whether it is the ISO, or the "doctored" ISO that is burned onto a disc. Even "original" discs that are "pressed" at a factory have to come from a "master... copy".
It won't take long for this to be circumvented... just like every scheme that has come before.
my favorite quote (Score:5, Interesting)
--Bruce Schneier [google.com]
Re:my favorite quote (Score:5, Funny)
--Bruce Schneier
I'd add the following:
"Anyone who says differently is selling something"
--Westley, The Princess Bride
"Casual Burning", aka "Fair Use" (Score:2)
So, it'll cripple its products. Note to self, keep not buying Sony stuff.
How evil is casual piracy? (Score:5, Interesting)
But then, more willing consumer is one thing; better consumer -- at least in the eyes of the major conglomerates -- is another. I think I'm far less likely to buy into a lot of the garbage that's forced down the primary media channels today and far more likely to buy from independent labels/genres than most Americans. All that piracy in my youth made me more likely to spend my money on music today, but it made me less likely to spend my money on "the right music," as far as Sony is concerned.
Copy prevention is like perpetual motion (Score:2)
Not a single media based copy prevention scheme has worked due to the simple law: If you can read it and you can write it, you can copy it.
The only copy protection schemes that are working right now are ones that take away the writing step by locking the player hardware and the all-important step of paying congress to make it illegal to reverse-en
They do work. (Score:2)
A Step in the right direction? (Score:5, Interesting)
There is really no way to prevent technically savy people from making copies of content which is distributed on media that does not have user specific encryption without owning the complete system that is responsible for playback. I am sure the long term dream of Sony is a transition from the relatively open CD format to something more proprietary like SACD. In the short term, they have to deal with CDs, which represents more than 99% of the music that is sold in stores.
Sony's goal is probably to make it difficult enough to copy coied CDs such that 90% or 95% of the people don't bother to deal with it. A copy protection system that is tedious enough to break can be commercially successful even if it is a technical failure.
Of course, the basic flaw in this system is that most people who copy music are not that conscious about the quality. Ripping the tracks from a copied CD to MP3s and then burning them back on to a CD would defeat this sytems with some loss of quality.
Re:A Step in the right direction? (Score:3, Insightful)
Ripping the tracks from a copied CD to MP3s and then burning them back on to a CD ...
... is probably the most stupid thing i ever heard. If you rip the music from the CD why would you save it as MP3 instead of a lossless codec before burning it back to CD. BTW, Sony's New Copy Protection is nothing special. It even adheres to RedBook standards. The only thing preventing copy is a program running from the CD when using a certain Redmond OS.
Stop Piracy = Profit ? (Score:2)
Re:Stop Piracy = Profit ? (Score:2)
Go to hell Sony (Score:2)
If you dont want to risk people copying, then dont release it at all.
Screw off.
Not a CD (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing is clear -- the resulting disk is not a CD! This means it will not work on the millions of CD audio players in existence. So what consumer in their right mind would want this? No one... so the next step for Sony is to figure out how to FORCE it on us.
Re:Not a CD (Score:3, Interesting)
It complies with the redbook standards, why is it not a CD?
From TFA:
Under the new solution, tracks ripped and burned from a copy-protected disc are copied to a blank CD in Microsoft's Windows Media Audio format. The DRM embedded on the discs bars the burned CD from being copied.
I'm having problems finding mention of Microsoft WMA and DRM in the redbook standards...
It may be that the original CD (if that is the source material) is redbook compliant [I didn't see a mention in the article], but clearly
No copies? (Score:2)
HA! Ha ha ha ha ha!! Hee hee hee whoo whoo whhoo. Stop! You're killing me....
Someone ought to keep a list of stupid things people say.
dumbasses (Score:2)
Locking down CDs ain't gonna happen either. Because there are already non-locked-down cd burners.
The way to do this is to make bluray, or some other future megaformat, single-generation burnable in hardware. It'll only work for the specific type of discs, you could rip to another format, but it will work.
Details of First4Internet DRM implementation (Score:5, Informative)
The monitoring app is buggy. If it stops running or loses your device references, you will have to reinstall windows to make your CD-ROM devices work again.
Also, by messing with the internal driver properties like this, many apps simply hang or crash the system when trying to access the device.
You can forget about using your legitimate buring software after putting one of those CDs in your computer...
-- anon DRM developer
Re:Details of First4Internet DRM implementation (Score:3, Interesting)
What we need is more DRM, something like MS Trusted Computing to protect us from this other....! Oh wait....
I like how Sony made a point of saying the discs conform to the Phillips CD spec. That still doesn't mean the CD is "pure", and that it is being deceptively marketed and sold.
Leave it to the Music Distribution Cartel to team up with the Software Monopoly to insure that everybody is screwed over; listeners as well as artists.
My immediate question is if these discs will work f
Re:Details of First4Internet DRM implementation (Score:5, Informative)
Naturally, other than that, it's a partial-mixed-mode CD; first session contains audio tracks with a slightly malformed TOC, and second session contains just data track, which will be autoexecuted in a dumb machine if you don't hold Shift.
This really doesn't bring anything to the table that hasn't been brought before in terms of basic technique. Additionally, the payload definitely qualifies as malware, and therefore should really be removed by an antispyware, who have traditionally held the grounds of safe removal of malicious software created by companies; or even a competent and ballsy antivirus (surrepetitious install damaging system configuration, no safe uninstall, bundled with shiny features = Trojan horse).
My suggestion is to use Exact Audio Copy, set up correctly (use Secure mode with NO C2, accurate stream, disable cache) combined with Plextools Professional (set Enable Single Session mode before you insert the disc, and rip at a maximum of 4X) in a Plextor CD-RW drive (ideally the Plextor Plexwriter Premium). You can make a perfect copy of the actual CD-DA audio that way, burn an audio CD-R from the WAV/CUE pair if you wish, and - if you have a modicum of sense and don't wish to keep a disc with a live piece of malware in your CD collection - return it to the shop for a full refund, because hey, it doesn't work in your car/walkman/whatever. Sprinkle on additional this-stupid-CD-broke-my-computer rant should you wish. And release to BitTorrent... a stupid record company that puts malicious software on their CDs frankly deserves everything they get.
-- another anon anti-DRM developer
First4Internet messing with network drivers too? (Score:5, Insightful)
A pass-through NDIS driver would make a grat tool for spying on, oh, say, p2p traffic?
Reinstall windows? (Score:3, Funny)
From the horse's mouth (Score:3, Informative)
"XCP aims to offer a reasonable level of protection against 'casual piracy' while working to provide the authorised customer with a quality digital music experience together with DRM features for controlled copying on their chosen platform. If data in any format is digitally written to a compact disc or DVD then it can be read from that disc in some way. XCP is designed to give a level of protection that will make it suitably difficult for the general consumer to copy and/or illegally distribute the content of the disc."
http://www.xcp-aurora.com/xcp2.aspx [xcp-aurora.com]
Missing points and using charged language... (Score:2)
The amusing thing is.. (Score:2, Interesting)
I stopped buying new CDs of artists
Stored as WMA on CD (Score:4, Insightful)
From the article:
"Under the new solution, tracks ripped and burned from a copy-protected disc are copied to a blank CD in Microsoft's Windows Media Audio format. The DRM embedded on the discs bars the burned CD from being copied."
So you don't really get to burn a CD that can be used with your Ipod, old CD player on boat.
Am I missing something?
iPod/iTunes ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Round File Storage (Score:5, Insightful)
With the automation comes convenience, including playlists of all your music, accessible from any Net connection (including your smartphone, plugged into your car stereo, etc). When they change the physical format from 25-year-old "Compact Disc (TM)", your harddrive can ignore the change, and accommodate the new data. When they change the data fromat from CDDA, just run a converter app. None of that works with CDs.
CDs are still a great distribution format. Putting something in people's hands, that they can just pop in a player for music, will remain popular for many years. Virtual distribution has its own virtues, but even cheap, ubiquitous, transparent, wireless, superbroadband won't replace the physical ritual of handing someone something shiny anytime soon.
Sony is obviously blind to this distinction. They're stuck with the CD they invented (with Phillips inventing the data/software) as just "the medium", the product, without seeing its collapse in face of competition with online storage (as opposed to "nearline" storage in CDs). Like the rest of the inbred recording industry they lead, they're working against the distribution benefits of simple CDs, trying to hold on to CDs as storage media. Perhaps to their dying breath.
This is what killed DAT. (Score:4, Interesting)
The main difference between the two interfaces (other than the obvious -- S/PDIF is on unbalanced 75-ohm coax and AES/EBU is on balanced RS422) is that S/PDIF machines have to honor the SCMS ("serial copy management system") bit in one of the control subframes. AES/EBU does not.
SCMS works in the same way as this "new" scheme. As you record from a digital source (over S/PDIF), the recorder looks at the state of the SCMS bit in the incoming data stream. If the bit is set, then the machine will refuse to record. If the bit is not set, then the machine will gladly record -- but it inserts a set SCMS bit into the the recorded data. So when you go to copy your copy, you're locked out.
This, in and of itself, didn't kill DAT. DAT was killed because pro machines were substantially more expensive than the consumer machines (I remember paying a grand for a TASCAM DA-30 when DAT was still very much a viable format). Consumers weren't willing to pay a lot more to get a feature they wanted -- the ability to make copies of copies.
"Those that ignore history are condemned to repeat it." Or something like that.
Now, of course, S/PDIF still exists. I know that some S/PDIF interfaces (the CardD Digital, for one) let you disable SCMS. The most common use for S/PDIF these days is digital transfer from a DVD player to a home-theatre multichannel amp. Dunno if you can route that audio to a digital recording device and have it record.
Don't get burnt, follow the law! (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.gigalaw.com/articles/2001-all/samuels-2 001-04-all.html [gigalaw.com]
What's so different about this other than it prevents burning on a CD-ROM? If you want to burn CD's to your heart's content without fear from the man, just follow the law http://www.virtualrecordings.com/ahra.htm [virtualrecordings.com].
Link to previous comments on this issue.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=104952&cid=893 7703 [slashdot.org]
Refresher course in crypto theory (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Refresher course in crypto theory (Score:3, Interesting)
There is an Alice, Bob and Carol. Bob just happens to be a mediator (MS Bob of course..) that receives all the data, and then determines if Carol has the correct permissions to accept the data.
It just so happens that Bob is a software construct running on a computer in possession of Carol.
Isn't it amazing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Either the music industry is performing really bad studies on copyright infringement or they haven't done any studies at all and are just making up numbers to scare people into thinking a problem is bigger than it really is. I hate it how the RIAA and its friends are always shifting what the big problem is in order to compensate for their outdated marketing model. Yesterday it was online piracy, today it's school yard piracy, tomorrow it will be non-commitment piracy because you didn't buy your government-mandated 3 CDs a month to keep the recording industry alive.
It's a lie (Score:3, Insightful)
All they do, is supply some software (which I bet only runs on one single platform -- guess which one) which will encode the music in some weirdo proprietary format that most CD players cannot play. Then they let you make one copy of those unplayable files.
And somewhere, some snakeoil salesman is snickering that idiots in the music industry bought into this "technology." This is yet anecdote that makes me think, "ya know, I really ought to try out evil, at least for a few months. Just defraud a few people, then retire. It looks so damn easy!"
Re:Backwards compatable? (Score:3, Insightful)
But I still don't trust it and even moreso, I don't like my CD's to be crippled in any way, even backups. What if I lose the original, and can't backup my backup. Ugh. My head hurts.
Re:Backwards compatable? (Score:4, Insightful)
Notice how none of these folks hoisting DRM on us are even trying a little bit to help us with these concerns? They're telling us that they're giving us limited licenses to music, movies or software, but they have very few, if any, provisions to help us get replacement media if ours happens to fail.
The reason for this is very clear to me. They make money off of me buying the same music more than once. Furthermore, by limiting the copying of digital music, they're actaully guaranteeing that I'll need to buy the same music more than once if I should ever have to, or just want to, replace my computer.
They're complaining about casual piracy, but what they're giving us in return is forced obsolecense for something that shouldn't by its nature have any shelf life at all. They won't come out and say it, but they're happy that Vinyl, tapes and CDs were so fragile and they're kind of pissed that the technology exists for us to keep our music forever. Remember that line from Men In Black? "Now I'll have to buy the White Album again." They actually count on us paying multiple times for the exact same product. It's a business model.
Look, if it's just a license, then give me a way to keep that license if my media goes bad. If it's just media, then let me treat it like it's media and stop treating me like a criminal if I want to copy it. If you're going to declare war and force me to upgrade my media every few years, don't be surprised if I take your challenge and find a way to, well, not make that upgrade. You already got my money once so leave me alone.
Re:Backwards compatable? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, actually I was refering to a fight that's a bit more subtle. I'm normally a pretty good boy. I buy CDs. I avoid p2p. I've even downloaded from iTunes (though it's not my preference because of the aforementioned forced obsolecence and because of the lower music quality). But if my iTunes music goes belly up because I can't get a proper backup then I won't even consider buying another copy. I'll "pirate" it.
Right now I have a few hundred cassettes. Some are in fairly bad shape because cassettes are kind of fragile. I'll be damned if I'm going to rebuy all of U2's and the Talking Heads' early work just because the music industry is going to lable me a "pirate" if I don't. I bought that stuff once and I'll continue to use it, through downloads if neccessary.
It pisses me off because I really do try to do the right thing. I know it's not fair to just download thousands of dollars worth of music that I never paid for so I just don't do it. But I'll be damned if someone is going to tell me I have to re-buy music I already own. Think about it, they're doing this and at the same time labling _me_ the pirate. Just who is robbing who?
TW
Re:Backwards compatable? (Score:3, Insightful)
Stripped to its essentials, what you really want is a free upgrade of your collection to CDs.
I don't really have a dog in this fight, but stripped to its essentials, it seems you're saying the RIAA has a right to use DRM to lock purchased music to a piece of media and do away with fair use rights. This is how people lose their rights - one small abdication at a time.
I'll paraphrase the GP and agree with him: If the industry doesn't provide a reasonable path for full fair use rights, then they deserve
Re:Backwards compatable? (Score:3, Interesting)
But I have a question for you. Would you consider it "piracy" to download an e-book because your water-damaged paper book is unreadable? Would you consider it "piracy" to download a "pirate video" filmed w
Re:Backwards compatable? (Score:3, Informative)
When you play it on a computer or DVD player you are not listening to the CD content but rather low bitrate DRM files squeezed into a 80 mb partition.
The effect of this is twofold.
1) The sound quality is crappy.
2) There is less space on the rest of the disc for the real music (only about 60 minutes!)
I will *never* buy an XCP2 disc. It installs software automat
Re:I don't understand... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, fair use allows for any use, so long as it is fair. There's some tests to check for fairness, but there is no kind of use that can never be fair (or that always is).
As for who cares, I care. The point of having backups is that you expect that eventually you'll lose the master. In such a case, you'd better be able to make further backups from backups.
But more significantly, what happens when the copyright expires? I can then lawfully make as many copies, from whatever source I have handy, for any purpose at all. Will this DRM magically evaporate? Or will it keep me from enjoying my rights?
That's the problem with DRM. It is inflexible, it is permanent, and it is designed with stupid assumptions in mind. We're better off getting rid of DRM altogether.
Re:I don't understand... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I don't understand... (Score:2)
Re:How is those supposed to stop me now? (Score:3, Insightful)