Beastie Boys Respond to DRM Claims

An anonymous reader notes that the Beastie Boys have responded to claims that their new album is DRM-crippled; their response is that the US and UK versions aren't crippled, and the DRM software is only installed in RAM, not on disk. See our previous story for background.

Server is to Busy: Here is the Text

[thenextpresident]

1. There is NO copy controlled software on US or UK releases of Beastie Boys' "To the 5 Boroughs."

2. The disk *IS* copy controlled in Europe - which is standard policy for all
Capitol/EMI titles (and a policy used by ALL major labels in Europe).

3. The copy protection system used for all EMI/Capitol releases including "To the 5 Boroughs" is Macrovision's CDS-200, which sets up an audio player into the users RAM (not hard drive) to playback the RED book audio on the disk. It does absolutely NOT install any kind of spyware, shareware, silverware, or ladies wear onto the users system.

You can find more information on the technology used here:
http://www.macrovision.com/products/cds/cds 200/ind ex.shtml

This is what EMI has to say about it:
Reports that "spyware" is being included on the Beastie Boy's CD, 'To The Five Boroughs' are absolutely untrue.

While the Beastie Boys CD does use copy control in some territories, there is no copy control on the Beasties Boys discs in the US or the UK. Where copy protection is used, it is Macrovision's CDS-200 technology; the same technology being used for the past several months around the world for all of EMI's releases in those territories. This Macrovision technology does NOT install spyware or vaporware of any kind on a users PC. In fact, CDS-200 does not install software applications of ANY KIND on a user's PC. All the copy protection in CDS-200 is hardware based, meaning that it is dependent on the physical properties and the format of the CD. None of the copy protection in CDS-200 requires software applications to be loaded onto a computer.

The technology does activate a proprietary Macrovision player in order to play the CD on a PC, and that player converts WMA compressed files to audio on the fly. It also temporarily installs a graphic "skin" for the player. Nothing is permanently installed on a hard drive. These details can be verified in the 'install.log' file in the computer's root directory.

Re:It should...

[TWX]

Yep. Other companies have released audio CDs with data portions, with stuff like music videos, games, info on the band, and the like on the data segment. The "soundtrack" just happens to be the bulk of the important content while the data portion is a "value added feature".

Bought it, ripped it, stored it

[snillfisk]

.. and all that were done in Europe (where the CD actually contains a "Copy Controlled"-marking, which I didn't see anything about when ordering it on the web), under Windows 2000 (with Auth-play disabled). The OGGs came out perfectly fine without any problems. Yes, the CD should be perfectly playable under linux (unless someone has implemented insertion notification and auto-run and automagical installation and implementation of windows drivers into the kernel. ;)

And this also goes for all other current protection systems that I've had my hands on during the last months.. No idea why they even try.

Re:Does it work on Linux?

[fermion]

A similiar thing happened to me about a year ago. I was at a house concert with an indie band. I was ready to buy thier CD until I say some crap about Windows compatibility on the back. I don't know if it was DRM, and didn't really waste my time asking. I put it back and saved my money for the indie bands that distribute standard compliant CD.

Re:So What?

[Lord Kano]

Virus/Worm/Trojan? Nope.

Trojan, yes. All that is required for a trojan is that it masquerades as something else (music) and causes an undesired effect (enforcement of DRM).

This is definitely a trojan.

LK

Re:Does it work on Linux?

[TwistedSquare]

I recently bought a CD labelled as copy protected. When I inserted it into a Windows PC it installed its own little player. Fine I thought, and just ripped it to mp3 (no point making the CD-ROM spin all day). Then as an experiment I copied the CD. I also played it fine in my hi-fi. I fail to see quite how it was "copy-protected".

Re:So What?

[Corydon76]

Virus/Worm/Trojan? Nope.

Actually, Trojan is exactly right. A Trojan Horse is a program which has an unintended payload and may or may not contain self-propagation code.

Any program which installs itself on your computer without your consent would, in fact, be a Trojan, by definition.

You are, of course, correct in that it is neither a virus nor a worm. People seem to forget that the reason there are three names is that these are three distinct classes of malware.

Cache

[cgenman]

Google Cache [216.239.41.104]

1. There is NO copy controlled software on US or UK releases of Beastie Boys' "To the 5 Boroughs."

2. The disk *IS* copy controlled in Europe - which is standard policy for all
Capitol/EMI titles (and a policy used by ALL major labels in Europe).

3. The copy protection system used for all EMI/Capitol releases including "To the 5 Boroughs" is Macrovision's CDS-200 [macrovision.com], which sets up an audio player into the users RAM (not hard drive) to playback the RED book audio on the disk. It does absolutely NOT install any kind of spyware, shareware, silverware, or ladies wear onto the users system.

You can find more information on the technology used here:
http://www.macrovision.com/products/cds/cds 200/ind ex.shtml

This is what EMI has to say about it:
Reports that "spyware" is being included on the Beastie Boy's CD, 'To The Five Boroughs' are absolutely untrue.

While the Beastie Boys CD does use copy control in some territories, there is no copy control on the Beasties Boys discs in the US or the UK. Where copy protection is used, it is Macrovision's CDS-200 technology; the same technology being used for the past several months around the world for all of EMI's releases in those territories. This Macrovision technology does NOT install spyware or vaporware of any kind on a users PC. In fact, CDS-200 does not install software applications of ANY KIND on a user's PC. All the copy protection in CDS-200 is hardware based, meaning that it is dependent on the physical properties and the format of the CD. None of the copy protection in CDS-200 requires software applications to be loaded onto a computer.

The technology does activate a proprietary Macrovision player in order to play the CD on a PC, and that player converts WMA compressed files to audio on the fly. It also temporarily installs a graphic "skin" for the player. Nothing is permanently installed on a hard drive. These details can be verified in the 'install.log' file in the computer's root directory.

Bills defining a virus, and making this illegal.

[DMUTPeregrine]

S.2145 In comitte, hearings held. [loc.gov] S.2131 Status: Referred to Senate committe. Status: Read twice and referred to the Committe on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. [loc.gov] H.R.4255 The Computer Software Privacy and Control Act. Status: Referred to the Subcommitte on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security. [loc.gov] S.563 The Computer Owner's Bill of Rights [loc.gov] These bills, if passed, would make such programs illegal. YAY!

makes mp3's just fine.

[blade8086]

My girlfriend bought the CD for me the other week much to my
happy surprise ..

saw the note on the back, and was a little worried I'd have to install windows to run it..

so:

First thing I did was pop it in my gentoo box and run
'rip' ..

cddb + mp3 conversion worked just fine thank you very much.

http://www.gnu.org/directory/audio/rip/rip.html

Available at www.allofmp3.com

[davebarnes]

A wonderful music download site (www.allofmp3.com) has this new album available for download in the format and bit rate of your choice.

Prices range from $0.03 to $0.30 USD per song.

So much for DRM attempts.

Re:This is not a cd then

[RALE007]

I don't think you can trademark an abbreviation...

HP [hp.com] might disagree with you on that one. Since hp is their logo, and their logo is trademarked, it wouldn't be wise to go into a computer related business and refer to yourself as "HP".

Re:Damn Straight.

[Fruit]

Downloading is allowed under copyright law. Offering it for download isn't.
(Dutch copyright law).

The is divided into data and audio

[Mustang Matt]

The data side has an autorun and is loaded with some wma files.

Just grab the audio side like normal.

Re:Damn Straight.

[Vystrix Nexoth]

he didn't say that what he's doing is fair use. what he means is this is his way of protesting the way the record companies are trying to prevent fair use (such as with this DRM thing).
basically, "allow fair use or we won't pay money for your music".

how well that'll work is anyone's guess. that's just my view on it.

Re:Does it work on Linux?

[GMFTatsujin]

Yes. Yes it does.

On my Gentoo box, I ran Grip 3.2, and everything extracted flawlessly. There's no static, skipping, or any other hijinx going on here. It rips and encodes fine.

If you're asking "will it play under a cd-playing app instead of a ripping app," then I couldn't tell you. I go straight to rip'n'archive mode.

There is a data track on the CD -- perhaps there's some other goodies on it like wallpaper or whatever that you can only get to on a Win/Mac, but I'm not in it for that. I just want the tunes.

Re:Available at www.allofmp3.com

[Fweeky]

$0.567 for a lossless copy of the longest track -- about a third of the price of a 128kbps DRM crippled AAC from iTunes UK.

Re:Cache

[MC_Cancer_Pants]

One thing i've always liked about the Beastie Boys were their technological edge. I find your claims to be highly unfounded and based upon a few songs you heard back in the 80s.

Allofmp3.com to the rescue.

[Anonymous Coward]

Random Techie will surely appreciate the fact that both iTunes [can't get link] and allofmp3 [allofmp3.com] carry it. I'm positive he also knows that, in the case of the latter, it's available in virtually any format known to man, so that he can listen to it in his 10^-3 marketshare OS.

Re:Cognitive Dissonance?

[karmatic]

The disk uses 2 different TOCs (similar to multi-session). Computers (in general) load the second one, and the audio players load the first. The second one contains encrypted tracks, and a player to play them. It makes some ripping tools have a harder time.

And you didn't bother to show her the RIAA radar?

[MacDork]

You forgot to show her how to avoid giving the RIAA money at all... You're heart seems to be in the right place, but next time this happens, show them iTunes + RIAA radar. [magnetbox.com] For those that want free, send 'em over to iRate. [sourceforge.net] Encourage those who care to do these simple things, and bands will quickly find out how unpopular it is to be affiliated with those thugs.

Re:Does it work on Linux?

[PhrostyMcByte]

You can get past the mobo requirement of most PSUs by shorting the green wire with a black wire.

Re:Does it work on Linux?

[bluness]

Be careful about doing this on modern power supplies, some power supplies can be damaged if there is no load(something drawing power), or not enough of a load on the supply.

Re:where warez costs you money...

[Fancia]

AllOfMP3 pays license fees to ROMS, which in turn pays license fees (minus a very small percentage for operation costs) to the artists.

Re:Cognitive Dissonance?

[Graff]

I bought it from the iTunes store, only to find that I can't burn it to CD to listen to it anywhere else, so it's stuck in iTunes or my iPod. Now while I can see the point here, I was under the impression that you could burn a CD x times using iTunes. Not true.

As another poster has said, you can certainly burn iTMS tracks to CD. In fact you can burn them to CD both as the original data files and as the AIFF format found on regular music CDs. You can burn a playlist 7 times after which you can just create a new playlist and burn 7 more times, repeat as you like.

ALL songs downloaded from iTMS have the exact same license. There is none of this crap that some music distrubutors have where song x has these limitations and song y has different limitations.

Re:Cognitive Dissonance?

[Graff]

Because he wants the CD contents and all, and have the option of listening to it on a lower resolution computer based format.

The files in the iTMS were ripped from the masters using professional gear and software. This fact, along with the AAC encoding, makes it so that a 128 kbit AAC encoded music file from iTMS is much higher quality than a 128 kbit MP3 file ripped from a CD.

In fact, the iTMS music files sound damn close in quality to what you are getting on CD. Sure it may sound a little different than the song found on a CD but that doesn't mean it lost quality. Both the CD-audio and the AAC-audio introduce some artifacts simply due to the nature of digital formats and encoding.

As for other content, such as album covers and art, you get the artwork as part of your download from iTMS. If you look in iTunes there is an option to view the artwork for a song or for an album.

Re:Cognitive Dissonance?

[Graff]

i trust my cd shelf a little bit more than i trust my computer? ...
then comes all the hassle in case you some day feel like you want some "alternative-ipod"

iTunes has a way to archive your music fairly easily. Create a playlist with the music you want to archive and burn a data CD or DVD with it. It will burn all of your files to a CD or DVD as AAC files which you can then put in a safebox somewhere.

As for the alternative music players you can easily convert the iTunes AAC files to some other format by burning a music CD and re-ripping to the format you want or by using one of the open source converters that have popped up. It's fairly simple and then your music is in whatever format you need.

Sure, its a bit of a hassle as you mentioned but then again it's cheaper than buying both a CD and the iTunes songs as the parent poster was talking about.