BMG Backs Down Over Copy-Protected CD 200
An anonymous submitter sends in: "As reported by The Register, on the 5th of November, BMG released the UK's first copy-protected CD (more information on Eurorights and Fat Chuck's). It uses Cactus Data Shield by Midbar Tech, which aims to prevent CD to CD or digital CD to Minidisc copying, along with converting to MP3, but may have other bad side effects."
The submitter continues: "There were complaints from fans and many took their CDs back or wrote to the record company and record shops. Their hard work seems to have paid off since Virgin Megastores has responded to a complaint from one of their customers and said that BMG has set up a helpline to allow people who bought the corrupt version, to exchange it for a real one. Virgin and HMV will also be bringing in new stock of uncorrupted CDs. The message was originally posted to the Official Natalie Imbruglia Bulletin Board (free registration required) in the "White Lies" and "Lillies vs Cactus" threads, but several threads containing complaints against Cactus Data Shield have been deleted so the email has been mirrored on the Free-sklyarov-uk mailing list. This is very good news, but more work needs to be done. Hopefully with pressure from the public other retailers will follow Virgin's example. Also record companies need to be made clear that selling copy protected CDs, that infringe on the public's rights, is not acceptable. The battle isn't over until no new CDs are shipped in these formats so if you find a CD that is copy-protected then report it on Eurorights for the UK, or Fat Chucks for elsewhere, take it back to the shop, and let them, and the record company know your feelings on the issue."
hmm (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:hmm (Score:2, Insightful)
I doubt it. The RIAA isn't concerned about rights. They have spun the situation so well that almost everybody believes making a digital copy for any reason is theft. If a few hundred people have damaged hardware from these CD's that is the price that must be paid for trying to steal their music. The RIAA is a cartel, and cartels do not care about rights.
Re:hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Er, I think you missed the point. They don't need to be concerned about rights; they just need to be concerned about covering their ass against liability. If there's $10 of profit in selling each CD, but 1 in 10 CDs sold results in a $1200 damage claim, then they lose money since $100 is less than $1200. You don't have to be sensitive to rights to be able to compare numbers.
What a lot of people are missing, I suspect, is that audio CDs are a real standard, and because of that, there is a very wide variation in implementations. When you violate the standard, there's no telling what some of those implementations will do. What I'm getting at, is that if copies of these CDs could damage equipment, then it is very likely that the originals could damage equipment as well!
If you willfully corrupt a CD and then sell it, you're taking a big risk. Up to now, the risk has been that your customer won't be able to listen to the music they bought, generating bad will and returns. But this scheme ventures into the realm of physical damages. I guess BMG is having second thoughts about getting into the losing money business. Smarter than your typical dot-com, eh? ;-)
Re:hmm (Score:1)
Since most major American recordings go through the RIAA. Last I knew people in the UK still listened to American music.
Re:hmm (Score:1)
Stores *care* about the consumer backlash, especially if the chattering classes get wind of it - uncomfortable interviews on Watchdog to follow!
Re:hmm (Score:2)
Re:hmm (Score:3, Informative)
The presence of the ability to play the damned things is more what we're talking about here. A CD that threatens to trash your speakers if you simply try to play it on some CD players isn't just questionable -- it's broken
Re:hmm (Score:2)
Regardless anyway that you could buy several stereos several times over for the price of even a short trial, the RIAA will only fear other corporations. Other corporations who have the balls and the money to sue.
Individuals and consumers are not in the same class. This seems strange since all the laws were originally written and the courts designed to beniefit citizens and not corporations. However, in todays world the exact opposite is true.
Re:hmm (Score:2, Insightful)
Two words: class action. This is the kind of attitude that suing as a class was made to defeat.
Re:hmm (Score:3, Interesting)
Not in the UK, there is legal aid available in civil suits. Also the RIAA has to pay the costs of both sides if it looses, so the incentive to litigate consumers into submission evaporates
All this is going to do is to force the manufacturers of CDROMs to fix the broken drivers. The 'copy protection' schemes do nothing more than exploit bugs in the sloppy error handling of the standard Windows CDROM driver.
Another idea would be to use the Reverse Dimitry Sklarof tactic. Find out who is writing the Catus Data Shield and see what they can be prosecuted for.
Re:hmm (Score:2)
I was under the impression that this scheme exploited the error correction of a CD. I wasn't aware it had anything to do with error handling. This scheme makes use of the fact that if you trash the error correction bits on your CD, a digital device won't understand it. Your audio CD player doesn't care.
Say you read 3 data chunks. 0x34 0x35 0x36. The checksum values come back telling you that 0x35 should have been read as a 0x37. Well, an audio cd player won't know who the believe. The data or the checksum. So it chucks it. Our ears (as we are told, won't hear it get filtered out.) However, our CDROMs say "fine, make it 0x37." Well you do that enough times and your digital file is no good. There are no audio filters built into a cdrom to correct for these errors. The inherient nature of a Audio CD player's error correction scheme makes it rather simple audio filter. We lose that once the track is ripped into a digital file.
All of the pops and stuff that are actually on the CD, get played back by our computer. It doesn't know that 0x35 was really 0x37. It recorded a 0x37. There isn't anything wrong with the CDROM drivers... they work the way they are suppose to.
Re:hmm (Score:2)
Oh so I get it an audio CD player is analog but a CDROM is digital... Bzzzt.
The point is that the CDROM drivers should not just crap out when they get an error. They should report the fact that there were errors in the data and continue to read the next block.
This should be in the drivers in any case so that they can read scratched CDs. In most cases a single bit error can be handled transparently by simply substituting the average of the samples on either side.
The scope for fixing data on a digital CDROM should be much greater, the PC can do error recovery tricks no CD could ever do, like a Fourier transform on the good data and interpolating for the bad.
Re:hmm (Score:2)
What you want is a driver that does an excessive amount of post processing. It has nothing to do with fixing buggy CDROM drivers. The driver doesn't have to do the FFT. It doesn't know its suppose to. It just sees bits and bytes. If you want to fix a 'protected' CD, then write a program to run your FFT.
CDROM drivers crap out when they get an error because the entire packet is corrupted, not one bit. Remember when you are ripping a CD, you are ripping the digital bits. Therefore, the drive (and its driver) treat it just like data. It does not care that the data it is reading is suppose to be audio at some point.
Three words... (Score:2)
Canada (Score:2)
I'm allowed to make copies of my music for my own personal use.
I'm allowed to lend an original CD to a friend.
That friend can copy it for their personal use.
I am NOT allowed to make a copy and give it to a friend.
If I make a legal copy of the music (say for my own mix CD) and it damages my equipment, you'd bet I'm going to go after the music companies. We don't have the RIAA here.
Re:Canada (Score:1)
Blame Canada!!!!
Re:Canada (Score:2)
Re:hmm (Score:1)
Re:hmm (Score:2, Interesting)
Yep. That would be Philips. And according to an article in the German magazine C't their legal department was very interested in hearing that people were selling CDs with the CDDA logo, while not being compliant with the standard.
From what I've seen in their marketing lately, Philips is doing the right thing. They are a hardware company now, after selling their music division 3 years ago, and they just want to sell good hardware. I think Philips may very well be interested in keeping 'fair use' alive if that means shifting more CD/DVD RW players.
Marti don't care (Score:1)
The movie industry has been thinking so long about an "uncrackable" movie format. They really believed it was secure because otherwise they would have never supported it. Only a few months (I guess) after the release, it was already cracked and DVD-rips are floating on the web [isonews.com] everywhere...
If we can crack DVD, why wouldn't we be able to crack this new cd-protection?
Re:i don't care (Score:4, Insightful)
The professional, so-called pirates, will get around anyway, but Joe Sixpack doesn't generally buy many bootlegs. The proverbial geek in the basement and the hardcore fans do not add up to enough marketshare to count.
Most readers here forget that having a flawed protection is perfectly rational as long as it keeps the masses buying your stuff. It is the difference between a managerial and an engineering mindset, the difference between good enough and technical perfection.
Re:i don't care (Score:4, Insightful)
1. some nifty guy cracks the protection
2. it gets rumour on the net the protection has been cracked
3. the hardcore crackers start using it
4. the advanced PC user uses it
5. some company releases a software package that allows even my grandmother to avoid the protection...
I think about this because yesterday I saw an advertising for a budget sotwarebox which allows everybody to rip DVD's to DivX and burn it on CD with an easy point&click interface for less than $20... It just remembered me about the early DVD-rip days when you were almost a hero if you could rip a DVD
In the early days of MP3, you had to use non-UF commandline tools to rip a CD, nowadays even Windows has it's own ripping tool
It's only a matter of months before these "ripping4everybody" tools implement the latest protection-bypassers.
I guess these new protections only help small software companies sell the newest version of their copy-tools...
1 guy is enough (Score:2)
Oops.
And lest we forget. . . (Score:2)
So he signs on to the net, downloads the copies illegally for backup instead.
Oops.
wtf "uncrackable"? (Score:2)
Re:wtf "uncrackable"? (Score:2)
i believe if you do that, you'll have a perfect copy of the encrypted data, but without the key file. i'm pretty sure that there is no provision to write to the 'key area' of any of the writable dvd discs.
Re:i don't care (Score:2)
If we can crack DVD, why wouldn't we be able to crack this new cd-protection?
This thinking is both incorrect and dangerious IMHO. It works in their favour.
First of all, one MAJOR reason we could crack DVD was that in order to comply with US crypto export law, the encryption was pathetically weak.
Next format, we'll be up against serious armour, PGP-strength crypto built into the hardware. Thus breaking the crypto won't be an option - we'll probably have to hack to the hardware.
Law changes are in the works aiming at making it illegal in the USA to aquire ANY digital device that doesn't have copy-controls and cripples built in, and it's already illegal to tamper with the cripples. Naturally, you then won't be able to buy hardware that doesn't lock you out.
So if we keep thinking that we can just break whatever they come up with, we might just end up in a situation where you need a soldering iron and a shitload of illegal knowledge to remove the cripples, and you become criminally liable in the process, and you have to go through the work of soldering and chipping for each and every playback device to wish to liberate - no instant copies of DeCSS source here - but sheer manual labour from highly skilled individuals who risk their careers and livelyhoods with each crack.
In other words, we've got to prevent phase two of the RIAA/MPAA hijack of copyright law - if we sit back with the assumption that whatever they come up with we can crack, then we run the risk of being dreadfully wrong.
Also, IMHO, if joe average on the street can't make a personal copy, it doesn't matter if you or I or other "tech elites" can - the cartels have won and our defense of the copyright balance will increasing come to be viewed as illegal hacking (and economic terrorism if the RIAA gets their way
"You're recording a movie being played on HDTV? Isn't that illegal? My digital-VCR tells me that recording is disabled for the sunday night movie on digital TV. What happens if they catch you?"
You go to jail.
Don't lie back in overconfident belief that you can thwart whatever they come up with. You might just be wrong.
Difference between CD players? (Score:1)
Re:Difference between CD players? (Score:4, Informative)
The most recent format that's come to light is the Cactus Data Shield from Midbar. The earlier German tests also came under the name of Cactus, but it appears that Midbar's protection technology has developed since then. Like SafeAudio, this new method corrupts the audio signal on the CD. However, the method used is different. In this case blocks of audio are replaced with blocks of control data. A normal CD player ignores the control data and fabricates the sound of that block using its error recovery circuitry. Once again, the blocks must have been carefully chosen so that the sound is not disrupted significantly. Again, reliability of the CD will be affected. When the CD is copied using a computer or CD-to-CD copier, the control blocks are interpreted as audio, which means that the manufacturer can insert whatever sounds they wish into a copied recording, even sounds designed to damage speakers.
There's a weakness (Score:1)
So, they can only currupt the data under certain conditions. Perhaps someone could determine under what conditions the errors are correctable, and use that knowlege to manually correct for the them? By only chosing particular blocks, the protection is giving the cracker clues as to how it works.
Probably even simpler than this (Score:3, Insightful)
1) The TOC appears to be nailed so that many players looking for data can't find it. Stereo components look for the lead in track - not the TOC, so they are unaffected. PS2s and PCs look for the TOC - hence are affected.
2) If your player overcomes the TOC issue, then the data itself is full of errors that can be fixed by a domestic D-A converter, but not by blindly accepting the data (as PCs tend to do if the CRCs stack up). The algorithms in the domestic D-A converters are well known.
Neither of these problems seem impossible to resolve. I give it 3 months before all rippers have a check box labelled "rip as domestic CD player" or similar. This is not an "encryption challenge". It is a challenge of emulating a domestic CD player's D-A converter in software. This is the achilles heel: they have to maintain compatability with the huge installed base of CD players out there.
Re:Difference between CD players? (Score:1)
Re:Error correction (Score:1)
How does one use cdparanoia to avoid such CD corruption and get a decent recording?
Kind of redundant (Score:2, Insightful)
Still, it is nice to see that they've come up with a "protection" method that pisses off non-geeks. They're the ones with the numbers that'll make returning defective merchandise really hurt.
It takes balls to pretend that they're looking out for the artists. Piracy can't come close to hurting them as much as the RIAA does every day. It doesn't even occur to them that I might want to store my music somewhere usable instead of on a shelf. Bastards.
Re:Kind of redundant (Score:2)
I have a co-worker who is a big Michael Jackson and has been playing the new cd for quite awhile now. I am laughing right now because he got the cd before the album even came out. Basically This means the anti-piracy thing is useless and already circumvented! So now we all "legal" consumers are screwed for making legitimate copies while the pirates like my friend have all gotten away and are making copies to their hears content. This pisses me off more then anything. I never pirate anything yet I am the one who can't copy it or play it on my computer. ???
As I am typing this my pirate friend of mine is copying the mp3's made from his so called anti-circumvented jackson cd right now to his nomad mp3 device so he can listen on the go. Keep up the good work RIAA. Your making me consider pirating more and more everyday!
Re:Kind of redundant [And OT at this point] (Score:1, Offtopic)
I know it is a typo, but it reminds me of that Simpsons episode where the big, white mental patient thought he was Michael Jackson.
generic anti-protection arguement (Score:4, Insightful)
- Plato
Copyright protection will never really work out, because those who want to break it, will break it.. and those who follow the law anyways, won't bother with breaking it.
I have some pirated mp3's on my computer, but they are of bands whos cd's I would NEVER purchase. Generally, if I like even two songs off of the same CD, I go out and buy it.. and most other people out there are similar in nature. The RIAA is just shooting itself in the foot with all their crappy attempts at copyright protection.
I mean, the arguements against copyright protection have been posted here so many times, I think we all know the reasons that it will never work out.. I guess all we can really do is crack all of the crappy little attempts RIAA members make, and then laugh at them for dumb things like this.
Re:generic anti-protection arguement (Score:2)
Two minutes later, I had my mp3 in hand. You know what that was? Music Piracy!! Yup, I broke the law. I'll probably do it again sometime. I've spent over $30,000 on music in the past few years, so the record labels will get no apologies from me. If I want to download a song I don't remember from a band I never liked that only had one hit anyway, that's a goddamned MISSION, and all the copy protection in the world ain't gonna keep it off my stereo.
Bahaha (Score:3, Funny)
SONY says: That'll teach you to pirate music, you little bastards!
Poor Joe Consumer will be so confused he'll be certain this is because he hadn't bought SONY brand speakers along with the SONY brand DTS professional stadium concert decoder.
Re:Bahaha (Score:2, Funny)
That'll learn 'em.
Re:Bahaha (Score:2)
Re:Bahaha (Score:2)
Ever listen to heavily distorted electric guitar? ever look at it on a scope? Wow it's a square wave, digital noise? pretty much the same but to a lesser extent and at multiple frequencies.
If you play anything with digital white noise bursts in it cranked all the way up then you deserved to have your stereo trashed, because whoever play's there stereo past the 3/4 volume level is a moron to begin with. (Ever hear of harmonic distortion? your stereo has a THD of 0.05 at an RMS rating.... at max volume level it's 1-10% THD (and anything from fischer or pioneer home audio is at 30-40%THD out of the box.)
BTW. my Sansui amp from 1980 has a THD of 0.005 at 100Watts RMS.. and it still kicks the crap out of anything sold at most high end shops.. Must be the fact that the output voltage is around 200volts (GRIN) yes I can shock you to death with my speaker wires. I just wish I could buy another one or a few Marantz Model 16 amps from 1978. playing fine while spitting blue flames out was freaking awesome... but that's another story.
This would not happen in 2003 in Europe (Score:5, Informative)
In the USA the won't probably do a recall because all this is legal under the DMCA. Providing "fair use" became optional.
Re:This would not happen in 2003 in Europe (Score:1)
Thats why im sure many people returned them, if you cant play the disc in their computer they think its broken. Your average Joe, may be annoyed knowing that he can't now copy cd's so easily, but much worse he'll be quite pissed off that he cant play it in the way he play's the rest of his cd's!
As others have said before, we
Re:This would not happen in 2003 in Europe (Score:2)
Being vocal and informed has it's advantages. Most of us here are on the 'technically savy' end of the spectrum and probably known as such. Remember that when someone comes to you and complains about their 'copy protected' CD. Tell them that they should just take it back to the store they got it from and return it as defective. Remind people that they don't have to put up with corrupt buisness practices or corrupt CDs.
Our knowledge in the technology space gives us a leverage that is greater than the raw numbers might indicate. We can guide how this thing goes by what we say to the people around us.
Re:This would not happen in 2003 in Europe (Score:1)
(As an aside, if the RIAA's "There's no such thing as a customer, just a potential pirate" attitude gets wide publicity, they'll find themselves losing the argument.)
Re:This would not happen in 2003 in Europe (Score:1)
Also, I wonder who it is that owns the patent on the CD format, or administers the 'CD' trademark. Whoever it is has very good grounds to sue for very, very large amounts for people selling CDs that don't comply with the established formats.
Re:This would not happen in 2003 in Europe (Score:1)
Re:This would not happen in 2003 in Europe (Score:2)
Re:This would not happen in 2003 in Europe (Score:2)
The current protected disks are actually possibly criminally illegal in the UK anyway. The CD causes an unauthorised modification of the contents of the computer (viz you dont get the proper data when issuing legitimate commands that are actually needed eg for USB speaker kits) and it "impairs the operation of any such program or the reliability of any such data". Finally the "knowledge that the modification he intends to cause is unauthorised", which I think we can safel y assume to have been demonstrated.
I don't know if there are similar US state laws or not. The Hammonds Suddards Edge book makes passing reference to that being the case but does not cover them.
Alan
Re:This would not happen in 2003 in Europe (Score:2)
it's something copyright law says you are allowed to do, period.
Except.. the DMCA conflicts with that.
Taken From FatChucks (Score:3, Informative)
Mac OS X/iMac-DVD: Track 1 doesn't play, rest okay (ripping not tested)
Mac OS 9/iBook-DVD: All tracks play and rip okay
MiniDisk: Refuses to record digitally
PS2: Track 1 won't play, rest okay
Linux: Tried extracting tracks (cdparanoia), disk is not always recognised first time. Out of 12 tracks, only track 3 extracts cleanly - all others hang with read errors (probably work better with a better drive than mine).
Windows: Runs a custom MP3-player from the CD, playing data from a 30Mb data file of unknown format (according to a report I've just had).
This could be a good wake up call for Joe Six-Pack, if only for the PS2 having problems with the disk. If the industrys can pass it off as "Something that only affects Home Hackers", they can keep the attention down. When it starts going wrong in mass produced home appliances that could never be used to copy it, maybe the public will pay attention?
But this has been said before, last time it was about in-car CD players not playing protected disks...We can only hope public intolerance is cumulative, and people will start to vote with their wallets, because that's the only way things like this will stop.
I bought Codename Outbreak last week, and the copy protection on that game doesn't allow my (Original) CD to be read when the game boots...Have to "Hang" the system to kick start it every time. The site's forum is full of people with the same problem. Copy protection in itself I don't mind, if people want to get paid for their efforts I don't see why they shouldn't. But when you can't use the product you just paid for, something's gone awry.
Re:Taken From FatChucks (Score:2)
And even more telling, I watched legitimate users who's purchase price had gone towards funding these copy-protection schemes turn to the underground community to remove these protections. Copy protection had become so intrusive that it interfered with the product's functionality.
Eventually the industry gave up. Copy protection schemes were expensive to develop and deploy. They were quickly circumvented. And they interfered with customers.
At least - thats what it looked like. Seems we're about to go through the cycle again.
Midbars patent application for Cactus Data Shield (Score:5, Informative)
Of particular interest is the section:
During duplication the CD encoding circuitry merely sets the P-channel=0 while recording to the data are, and therefore the P-channel setting of portion 60 is ignored. Thus, during playback, the substituted audio data portion 58 is provided to the digital-to-analog converter as normal data, resulting in audio distortion and potentially damaging the output circuitry. (emphasis mine).
They also don't seem to be as confident about audio quality as I would have hoped:
Thus, the substitute audio data portion 58 of FIG. 4B is ignored, and instead an interpolation, substantially equivalent to the original portion 50 of FIG. 4A, is output, thus resulting in little or no net difference in audio quality between the corresponding track port 44 and 52 of FIGS. 4A and 4B (again empahasis mine).
If I buy music, I want the CD to be as close as possible to the real thing, not with any noise added.
Re:Midbars patent application for Cactus Data Shie (Score:2)
Nothing is said about the fact you are buying a faulty product either, nor that chunks of it have not been supplied.
Re:Midbars patent application for Cactus Data Shie (Score:1)
It means that the already-ripped track image can be processed in similar way giving the result equivalent to the audio player's one.
Re:Midbars patent application for Cactus Data Shie (Score:4, Interesting)
For that reason, the name 'Cactus Data Shield' is very appropriate: when ripped it is full of 'spikes' ruining the music, when perfectly interpolated it may possibly be sample-for-sample identical (assuming the substituted samples are ONLY those where surrounding samples interpolated will return the exact, precise amount- I'm not at all sure this is a safe assumption), but when imperfectly interpolated the _best_ output still has traces of the 'cactus spines'- like stubs :)
On a CD player with inferior interpolation it is probably slightly more sonic degradation than you get from DVD-A watermarking because watermarking is bandlimited to avoid the more sensitive areas of hearing, and this 'residual cactus spikes' effect will reach into the highs and spit out artifacts on steep wave slopes.
I know that in debugging azumith-correction algorithms I could hear high-frequency artifacts of just one sample duration when they were of this nature- a departure from the even slope of a waveform. I would respectfully suggest that the dangers of inadequate error correction are more severe and audible than the CDS guys are ready to admit, and that on many CD players traces of high frequency crackling and grunge will still be audible even after 'interpolation'...
As an indie music maven and audio tool coder I have to say I am just tickled by all this. How nice of the music industry cartel to ruin the quality of their products FOR me, thus making it easier for people in basements and dorm rooms to produce music that's actually better than the cartel makes. A few more years of that and they'll have done serious damage to the former popular opinion that industry music is more professional than unsigned music :)
Bottom Line (Score:3, Insightful)
I just sit back and laugh, personally. Because if it is possible for the medium to be recorded and perceived originally, then it can be again. This is why there will never be an end to forgery, illicit copies and that sort of thing.
On that note, why has the music industry not taken a tip from mints? After all, why don't more people forge money all over the place? Because it is too expensive. (i.e. Printing equipment, speical paper, etc etc.)
Just remember it is not the copying that is the problem, it is the distribtion.
Exactlty! Great comparison! (Score:1)
Before someone gripes, yes I know that it is illegal to copy US money without resizing it to make it obviously not legal tender...but thats not the point...copying for personal use is not an issue whatsoever because distribution is nigh impossible.
a good example is RATM (Score:2)
But there are also other reasons to copy money. If you are trying to convey the meaning of money without text, a picture is the obvious way to go.
Competative Product (Score:3, Interesting)
Counterfeit music stores were everywhere. Racks and racks of cheap, unlabled tapes housed in cheap covers with questionable artwork (side note: artwork blacked out "excessive" female skin in accordance with local laws but Madonna's erotica-laddened lyrics went unscathed). The recordings themselves were suitable enough. The tapes made use of extra space by including a few tracks from simular artists (kind of a bonus). And the product, while cheap, was inexpensive.
One would expect that legitimate music products couldn't exist in this environment. One would be wrong.
First - at the time, it seems that CDs were too expensive to create (CD burners weren't as inexpensive then). Legitimate CDs were sold on racks right accross from the counterfeit tapes. Which kind of makes sense - the product was too expensive to create and sell cheaply, yet there was added value in this format. There was a market for them.
I was very suprised to find legitimate tapes at a store in Kuwait City. Most of the music stores I had seen were, frankly, low-budget affairs. This particular store would have been at home in any mall in the US. It was chock full of CDs, listening stations, stereo equipment, conterfeit tapes, and a wide selection of legitimate tapes. Prominent over the legitimate tape selection was a (I believe Sony) sign extolling the high quality of legitimate tape music products.
And the legitimate tapes were selling.
The price for the legit tapes were a bit more than the conterfeit tapes. But they had obvious advantages in quality. That combination of a reasonable price and better quality tape offered a competitive product to cheap knock-offs.
Its interesting to watch the music industry now. Their control over distribution is crumbling. The market they're used to is being eroded by the free flow of data (legitimate or not). Its got to be stressful to watch your industry's business plan evaporate.
But all's not lost for them. They've competed in this kind of market with the Middle East. It all comes down to a competative product. Provide something of value at a reasonable price. The music industry has the resources to create a great product at a price point that would be difficult for conterfeiters to compete with - and may even make it worth the public's time to purchase rather than try and copy/pirate.
Re:Competative Product (Score:2)
Public Awareness (Score:3, Interesting)
All of this has meant that the technology hasn't just been introduced with nobody noticing, or putting up some resistance (as I'm sure the music industry would have loved...) - bringing the damage here to the attention of the public is surely greatly influential in BMG and Virgin's decision to back down somewhat.
This is indeed only the beginning, but at least it's a beginning, before it's too late. Pressure needs to be kept up. At Cato's recent [theregister.co.uk]
The Future of Intellectual Property in the Information Age conference, Mitch Glazier, legislative counsel for the RIAA stated (somewhat hypocriticaly, imho):
I can't speak for everybody else, but the RIAA doesn't seem to be anywhere closer to the answer than it was a year ago...
Re:Public Awareness (Score:2, Insightful)
When media becomes corporate, discouraging news about parent companies/corporate partners is often convieniently "not newsworthy." How much coverage has NBC given to unfavorable events for Microsoft? Virtually none because they are partners in MSNBC. Just like that don't expect to hear news of these bad CDs being mentioned on any sations on the WB network, and especially not on America's pride and joy of unbiased pinnacle television and magazine news sources: CNN and Time.
Re:Public Awareness (Score:1, Troll)
Ouch. It hurts to see a pretty decent argument shot in the foot by one careless example. As a matter of fact, MSNBC has been relatively hard on Microsoft during the whole trial mess... more so, as far as I've seen, than network TV or CNN.
Nonetheless, the point that mega-mergers are hinderng the true freedom of the press is a good one.
Re:Public Awareness (Score:2)
And PBS is just what then?
The problem with media in Britain is that it's run by and controlled by the governement. In my opinion that is far worse a situation than what we have in the US. Especially given the lack of an equivalent to the First Amendment in Britain.
Re:Public Awareness (Score:2)
No it isn't. 3 out of 5 terrestial channels are commerical, and the BBC has a long tradition of going against the government's wishes. Digital & Satellite channels have an even higher % of commerical stations. Note, the BBC is where you can get bin Laden's speeches uncensoured - something that NO American media will do.
Good news, but more work still needs to be done. (Score:3, Insightful)
Also I wholeheartedly agree with Virgin's statement: "As retailers we do support the fight against copyright theft, however this should never be at the expense of the customer."
I have no objection to meaures that prevent only illegal or immoral behaviour, but by preventing digital copying the record companies are preventing the public from making legitimate, legal and moral uses of their CD, such as making a backup copy for safety reasons or transferring to a MP3/Minidisc player. I am also unconvinced that such draconian measures need to be put in place since the availibility of MP3s has not been shown to decrease CD sales, in fact the contrary seems to be the case, as shown in the paper "The Use of Conventional and New Music Media: Implications for Future Technologies" [gla.ac.uk] by Brown, Geelhoed and Sellen (2001).
This paper argues that intangible files, such as MP3s will never replace the role of physical objects such as LPs, CDs and casettes since music enthusiasts are collectors, and just the ability to listen to music is not enough, rather a tangible object is desired. Instead of trying to eliminate duplication of Music (which, both historically and technically, can be seen to be impossible), they would be better to use it to their own advantage, which would help them, the artists and the public.
Re:Good news, but more work still needs to be done (Score:2)
Isn't that always how it works though? The last steinberg product I ever bought was a copy of LM4 -- it had this *whacky* copy protection that was incompatible with win2k (the installer always detected a pirated copy in win2k, and we're only talking about a 60$ program here) ... So I ended up having to use the pirate version anyways ... Steinberg! listen up! I'll start buying your products again when you grow the fuck up.
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Re:Good news, but more work still needs to be done (Score:2)
This sounds wacky, but I think it's true. I got a bunch of MP3s of Primus. I had heard the odd Primus song before and after hearing a whole bunch of MP3s I realised I liked them.
Now I could have just burnt their songs onto CD-R and be done with it. I only listen to CDs on a discman these days anyway, so I don't care too much about sound quality. 128kbps MP3 is good enough for me.
Instead I went and bought every Primus album I could find. I'm not sure why. It would have only cost me $5 to put all the MP3s onto CD-R, print off the album covers, and I'd have something not half-bad without the effort. Buying the CDs was a relatively difficult thing to do!
Can Copy Protection damage HiFi (Score:1)
Apparently the out of normal frequency range signals can bust the tweeters and crossovers.
Has the copy protection system been throughly tested in this regard? I doubt it.
Also how long before someone developes a way of gettign round the copy protection, has the record industry learned nothing from the digital watermarking debarcle.
Re:Can Copy Protection damage HiFi (Score:2)
The guy you talked to is a liar.
first off you have an audio amplifier there, not a broadband amplifier. there is built in (intentional or just to keep costs down) filters that remove subsonic and hypersonic elements. reproducing anything above human hearing is a waste of money and anything below 20Hz is moronic. (I doubt you have a room in your house that can hold a wave from anything lower than 40Hz. Otherwise you have to be in the near field (2X the speaker diameter in distance from the cone) to hear it.)
Second, there is nothing your stereo can produce except distortion or massive power that can destroy a crossover or speaker. that is why when you buy 3000watt speakers and put them on a 100 watt stereo you can toast them in minutes. (harmonic distortion will take out anything.)
While a 2000 watt stereo driving 100watt max speakers can drive the speakers so hard the they sound great up to the point you either melt the coil or rip the suspension out of them.
So, if I play digitally created white noise, I have a cd player that will play a CDrom track as audio... kinda wild to listen to slackware 8.0
Hell I have a set of speakers I can plug directly into the wall outlet and all I get is a really really loud 60Hz hum. (Bose 901's)
your stereo guy obviously knows nothing about audio, let alone high end audio. I suggest learning about audio yourself and then have fun making these salespeople look stupid.
Re:Can Copy Protection damage HiFi (Score:2)
The speakers are heilically wound and increase in resistance as the power increases.
anything made by bose today is pretty much innovative enclosures with el-crapo drivers inside.
Re:subsonic / hypersonic audio and hi-fi audio amp (Score:2)
Low end, the worst thing possible is DC, and your amp and crossiver will not allow that in.
High end... >50Khz will do nothing to a tweeter... it cannot make it past the inductance that is the speaker coil, let alone the components.
It's just basic electronic theory.. capacatance, resistance and inductance. then in speakers acouatical engineering comes in... but that has nothing to do with the audio source just reproduction of the audio.
Not too suprising (Score:1)
so we're already at no.4: (Score:1)
- Mahatma Ghandi
What happens when... (Score:1)
What happens when a company sells a product that nobody wants? Um, let's see, that can't be hard to figure out.
They're killing the format. Plain and simple. And forcing people to think of alternatives, big time.
You don't understand (Score:1)
These people are practically gods in my view. They could out-perform the likes of Beethoven and Vivaldi with their eyes shut. Infact, i would go as far as to say that Mr. Diddy invented most forms of musical notation, and Mozart simply finished it off.
Along with mathematical super-minds like Bill Gates, these people are the ones that drive civilization forward, unlike hippies such as Torvalds who think everything should be free and open "Ohh yeah, lets dance around in a free open world where sunflowers grow and where there arn't any bad people." I for one, think eminem should get all my money, I would actually work as the great mans slave - simply paying all my money to him.
This post is not flaimbait, trolling, offtopic or even sarcasm, it is my actual real view into the troubled world of copyright and IP.
it won't work (Score:1)
Re:it won't work (Score:1)
The customer is practically driven to buy the CD, copy it, and then return it. Under the "Sale of Goods Act" it is against the law to sell CDs like this in England - the legal term is "goods not of merchandiseable quality - unfit for the purpose for which it was sold"
As an aside: If you are making minority interest music, you probably depend on piracy to advertise your work! fans hear pirate copies, and then buy a legit copy Its only chronically commercial dross that is adversely affected by piracy.
I would not let Eminem kiss my butt
Anti-pirate system bypassed (Score:3, Interesting)
The geek vs. corporate war.... (Score:2, Funny)
All I know is that I'm keeping my DNRC card handy.
(Please save all flames saying I'm a moron for believing this. I know I'm being delusional, but heck... a man has to dream...)
TV? (Score:2)
I don't think the record companies understand that ripping a cd isn't the only way to pirate the music.
Increasingly, the MP3's being traded online don't come from CD, but from television. Nowadays, with digital cable and Sat TV all over the place, the quality of the audio coming in over your TV is as good as any CD. Digital audio out to the PC, a little record and waveform edit later (to get rid o fthe beginning and ending you messed up), and boom, perfect track.
All they are doing with these stupid schemees are annying people. They are not solving anything.
Re:TV? (Score:2)
In addition, the original video/audio feed is an analog stream. It is then digitized by your cable providor and sent to you. This may eventually change as more channels are natively digital, but this is quite a few years in the future.
A possible way to rip these CD's? (Score:1)
Something very basic these companies don't get (Score:1)
Those 99%, as well as all the people who don't want to buy the CD because of its damaged nature, will get on their favorite file-sharing service and search for the songs.
Care to guess how long it will take for the cat to be totally and irretrevely out of the bag? Remember the proportion of MP3's out there that were recorded live, which is also exceptionally difficult to do.
question (Score:1)
Why is The Register calling my backups, pirate CDs?
Surely a reason NOT to buy CDs? (Score:1)
We won! (Score:2)
He's got a magnet...everybody BACK-UP! (Score:2)
Exactly like the DeCSS key were obtained, in a way, one company (Xing in DeCSS's example) does not protect the keys in the app enough and one person discovers this.
Or, compare the data track to the pre-ripped mp3's for a higher quality rip (say 320K vs 128K) by using the ripping routines compared to the data extraction routines.
I'll probably wind up repeating myself (developers, developers...) but the mp3 codec is not "bad/illegal" in and of itself but it seems as if the 'use of' is being villified or "circumveted" (ins't that illegal under the DMCA?).
Sometimes I really, really wonder what the MPAA/RIAA et al hope to accomplish with these so called "technologies", but all too often it is over looked that your rights of "fair use/space/time shifting" are not at issue but the excercising of those rights are.
Trying to legislate morality, humm, deja vu, all over again.
Re:He's got a magnet...everybody BACK-UP! (Score:2, Informative)
bleh (Score:2)
Ruri put it best: "They're all idiots."
Ok, so Sony, who cowed my college [gvsu.edu] into banning downloading of "copyrighted information" (not just Sony's, mind you, but everything, which, because of current common law, actually does include everything, even copylefted stuff), is going to create CDs that, when copied, destroy other people's real property.
gah
Ok, let me get this straight: I can play the original, because it is read. But, magically, I can't play a burned copy? Ok, if this works with traditional copy methods, why not just instead ignore distinctions between all kinds of data on the cd, control, audio, digital, etc., and just copy an exact replica? Correct me if I'm wrong, but if it can be read, it can be written. Anything else would mean that it couldn't be read in the first place.
Easy enough to mod your COTS cd player (Score:2, Interesting)
Would be a fun project for some EE student.
copyright and DVD player (Score:2, Insightful)
The picture cycled from clear, to grey, then back again. Hum. Checked the user manual, and it was due to copy protection! The DVD player had to be plugged directly to the TV or it wouldn't work. But I wanted to play the sound through my good speakers, not the TV's speakers. I tried plugging it into the amplifier. Now the video was clear, but the sound was distorted. User manual says, copy protection: it's supposed to be that way. OK, so I hooked it directly to the TV. Now I could play DVDs. But now the VCR wasn't plugged in. Perhaps I could hook the VCR through the DVD player? No, no terminals for that. Perhaps the TV had two sets of video terminals? It did!
I still don't have the DVD playing through my good speakers. I haven't exhausted all combinations of terminals though. Perhaps there's an audio output from the TV that can be routed to the good speakers, without turning on the copy protection noise or the video distortion.
If the TV didn't have the spare set of video inputs, I'd send the DVD player back because the copyright protection measures would prevent me from using a VCR. But the TV did have a spare set of video terminals. Not being able to play the DVD through good speakers isn't annoying enough to be worth the effort of returning it.
Stand up for your right to edit (Score:2)
No-one can tell you how much of their book to read, or the order you can read it in. Why do they presume to do so with sound or video? Why must I look at a green FBI notice for 15 seconds at the start of a DVD?
It is the act of re-publishing where the potential copyright violation occurs, not the act of viewing or editing.
Reject uneditable content and say why. Rights are for people, not digits or management.
trivial workaround with regular CD player, cable (Score:2)
- Put cd in regular CD player.
- Cable from line-out of CD player to line-in jack of sound-card
- Start sound-to-wav converter and CD player.
- Encode wav to mp3.
wavrec and bladeenc work good under linux for steps 3 and 4, but there has to be something similar for windoze.It's easier to rip straight from the CD, but the quality difference probably isn't noticeable after MP3 encoding (this is a guess). This method guarantees that there will be MP3 on the net of any decent tracks 20 minutes after the CD hits the shelf. And once the first one's out, that's all she wrote baby. Eat my dust, RIAA!
But while we're doing this, don't forget to oppose the SSSCA [eff.org] absolutely and to agitate for the repeal of DMCA [anti-dmca.org]. The real danger lies in the next generation of hardware and formats, where more protection is built into the hardware.
Re:Flame bait? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Former record retailer viewpoint (Score:2)
Unfortunately, in most of the US a retailer can't get away with refusing to accept returns on defective products. The UCC requires warranty of merchantibility and fitness for purpose, and manufacturers and retailers aren't allowed to disclaim those warranties. All it takes is one customer getting ticked and talking to a lawyer, and the floodgates open.
And yes, the retailer's caught in the middle. A smart retailer would look at this and refuse to carry product that's going to cost him money. The label doesn't have to listen to consumer complaints, but they'll sure as Hell listen to major retail chains that won't carry their product because the retailers can't make a profit on it. Which is the only thing that'll kill these copy-prevention schemes for good.