New Anti-Swap CDs Hit Shelves 853
floppy ears writes "Watch out for the new Anthony Hamilton CD, Coming From Where I'm From. The CD has two sets of tracks: one set of "encrypted" songs that can be handled by CD players but cannot be ripped, and a duplicate set of tracks in WMA format. In CD players, the disc plays normally (in theory). When put into a computer, the disc installs software to keep the music secure, but allows you to copy some or all of the Windows Media tracks to your hard drive. What a shame that I'm running Linux and my portable MP3 player doesn't support WMA."
Simple solution.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm.. (Score:2, Insightful)
What do i care? (Score:2, Insightful)
Secure music? (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate this term. This music is not secure. It is restricted.
swap sessions (Score:5, Insightful)
A Patch exists (Score:5, Insightful)
It really makes me wonder why recording studios spend millions of dollars researching these things when all it takes is one person to post this to kazaa and defeat the whole purpose of the encryption.
I guess this is why I am a CS major and not a business one.
Must be decrypted... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This won't stop anyone (Score:3, Insightful)
Hell, you could plug it into your tape deck and record to cassette tapes. Or to your VCR and tape it on VHS. Don't know why you'd want to, but it's plenty easy.
When given the choice of buying a CD, or screwing over the bastard record companies who pull crap like this...I'm sure there's plenty who would sacrifice a small amount of quality for a "free" MP3 file.
Ability To Hear = Ability To Rip (Score:5, Insightful)
If it can be played through speakers on a computer the audio can be ripped somehow, and this will always be the case. This is regardless of whether one is ripping the track directly from the cd or ripping the audio as the sound card plays it.
When Is a CD Not a Music CD? (Score:3, Insightful)
It may use the compact disc format, but it's not a Digital Audio Compact Disc.
If they are going to sell a crippled disc it had better be marked as such. If I am lead to believe I am buying a disc recorded using the Red Book standard, that's damned well what I'd better get.
You can't sell a Honda Civic as a Porsche 911.
If the distinction is clearly marked on the disc, and that this disc does not conform to the Red Book standard and thus may not be 100% compatible with Red Book readers, then fine. I can make my decision to purchase or not to purchase.
NOT labling the CD as crippled/containing copy protection/etc and selling it along side Red Book discs is misrepresentation. Fraud, pure and simple.
(well, it my books anyway. Obviously the RIAA may feel differently).
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Re:Nothing like a good challenge (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hmph... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that I'm condoning this behavior, but that's exactly what the record industry is encouraging. I don't listen to CD's, I listen to MP3's, and if I can't rip them from the CD, then I have to ask myself why I bothered to buy it. It would probably be better for the musician if I didn't buy the CD, downloaded the MP3's and then bought a bunch of swag from them.
Load of marketing BS? (Score:5, Insightful)
So the reality of this is...
It's a CD that can only hold maybe 3/4 the amount of music CD's were designed to hold, and anything you want to snatch from the SPDIF jack on the back of your CD player can happily be recorded to... oh, say another CD (digitally, with all the original bits intact save for jitter), or Minidisc, or MP3 player, or whatever.
And when you play it on your PC, you can hold down the Shift key as you close the CD drawer to prevent Windows' Autoplay feature... Oh, wait, that is *if* you use Windows,
Now, more importantly. Labelling. Am I being *told* that I'm buying a CD that breaks my "God given right to steal music?"
Right.... Another half-assed attempt. If the music industry wanted to put some *real* effort in this, they'd simply work encryption (better than CSS!) into SACD's, and Sony would flood the market with cheap SACD players and re-release their whole catalogue on SACD, then stop pressing CDs.
Or, of course, they could price CDs reasonably so we'd go out and buy shitloads more, regardless of the fact that there's only one track half-worth listening to amongst all the made-for-radio/lowest-common-denominator garbage.
mindslip.
Re:Hmph... (Score:2, Insightful)
This sense of entitlement confuses me. If you dont like the product, you dont buy it, but it doesnt give you the right to steal it (yeah its copyrite infringement not theft blah blah).
RIAA music is not a necessity.
audio out - audio in == ripped (Score:2, Insightful)
Just make MP3s easier to buy. I'm more than happy supporting the artists!
Rich
Someday... (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, on second thought, they probably won't.
Re:Linux version... (Score:1, Insightful)
See: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/drm
It's the technology companies like BMG using in thse discs...
Whitmore quote: (Score:5, Insightful)
Why can't they just stop trying so hard to piss people off. If they'd stop trying to teach people, perhaps fewer prospective customers, like myself, would run, crying bloody murder.
I don't care to steal music-I've got the music I want (or if I want something new, I buy it/download it from iTMS). However, once I own it, I want to be able to listen to it on my terms. Why would I purchase music if I'm not getting anything better/more convenient and have to buy new equipment to listen to the music besides.
Re:Hmm.. (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm sure there is some law that would apply to this. But the music publisher is not requiring you to install this software. You only need to install it IF you want to hear the music... It's almost certainly in the EULA...
Re:Hmph... (Score:3, Insightful)
When a CD isn't a CD (Score:4, Insightful)
The owner of the trademark is Philips, not Pioneer. They get to decide who can use the CD logo, and who can call something a "Compact Disc."
Philips has already threatened to sue companies that release such discs and label them as CDs. Philips is rightly worried that such incompatible discs (which often refuse to play correctly on some high-end and some consumer level players) will dilute the Compact Disc trademark, or worse, harm it substantially. Philips' position, which I support, is that a CD must conform to the Red Book standard for audio Compact Discs. Anything else isn't a CD.
Re:Hmph... (Score:5, Insightful)
You are correct, but in the same vein, I am under no obligation to give money to the music industry unless they give me a good quality recording both technically (sound quality) and artisticly (more than 1 or 2 good tracks per CD) in the format I want/need at a price I deem resonable and worthwhile. Otherwise, I keep my money and spend it on other forms of entertainment.
-Ab
That's no patch.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously. According to the DMCA, couldn't use of that cable to rip one of these copy protected CDs be construed as such?
Just goes to show how convoluted and idiotic the logic behind these new laws has become.
Re:Hmm.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I would agree with this statement if the same content was available via alternative delivery mechanisms. It's one thing to impose a copy protection scheme on a particular method of content delivery, but it's quite another to do so when that's the only method of content delivery that's available.
Some on this thread have advocated just not buying the CD, but if I happen to really like the artist I have no alternative avenue for purchasing the content.
For me, the conflict is that the companies that have the interest in the content are the same as the ones doing the distribution. I'm all for record companies and artists making money, but I don't think they should be involved in the actual distribution of their product. When was the last time you walked up to a corner convenience store that was owned by the Coca Cola Company? Never. The content and the delivery are two distinct things, and it gets very messy and much more expensive for a single company to do both.
I think all the flap over copyright we've seen over the past few years would be solved if the record companies focused on the talent side of things -- acquiring, producing and recording artists and songs.
Once they have a finished product (albums and singles), they license the content to distribution companies who are free to distribute the albums and singles as they see fit. Some may choose to put the content on a CD and impose a copy protection scheme, and some may choose to make it available via digital download (perhaps with a different copy protection scheme in place).
The difference here is that the record companies have gone out of the distrubution business. Can you imagine going into your favorite record store and seeing the same CD but distributed from three or four different companies?
It's all about competition. The record companies don't care because they are earning a cut each time the song is distributed, no matter what form that distribution takes. The distribution companies want the markup on the actual sales of the disk, so they'll compete with each other to drive the price down so they can earn a piece of the sales.
I think this is a win-win situation for everyone involved, and perhaps on-balance will be about the same revenue stream for the record companies. Sure, they're giving up the sales of the CDs, but their content will be available in more venues.
The bottom line question: Is the content good enough to stand on its own, or is the real money where the sales are? Either way, let's turn the RIAA lawyers loose on coming up with a pen-and-paper content distribution model that allows the free market to operate. It'd be the first time this was done on pure content and not on actual physical products, but I think the model would hold quite well.
-anacron
Re:Hmph... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course they are not. Since when should business do what customer's want?
What will happen, as I've said many times, is that the more abusive the RIAA members become, the less and less people will respect copyright. I even extend this to all IP. The more IP is abused (can you say US Patent and Trademark Office?) the less people will respect IP in general. Maybe someday it will be like so many outdated unenforced laws on the books -- in Boston it is illegal to bathe without the authorization of a physician. (Wonder if Taco knows that?) In lots of places it is illegal to play with yourself. (Wonder if Taco knows that?)
Trademarks similarly could lose respect as people attempt to trademark every word used to write this post.
Re:Simple solution.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, that way they can claim P2P is eating into their sales. Simple, yet unhelpful solution.
Re:Hmph... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hmph... (Score:5, Insightful)
Suppose the CD does malfunction in a lot of standard CD players - how much effort do you really think that the RIAA would go to in order to correct the situation? Probably not much. After all, it's not like it's [Britney | j-lo | insert other crappy mega-star of your choice] or anything, so who cares?
Meanwhile, this guy's career is in the tank before it even got started. Thanks a bunch, RIAA!
Wasted effort Round 2 (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hmph... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hmph... (Score:1, Insightful)
Here's another one: Fill your lungs with air and you won't die.
Tomorrow comes after today.
Cmdr Taco loves underaged gay niggers.
Water is wet and the sky is blue.
Screw these crippled "CDs" (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, these bastards now are using this area of the CD to make it un-rippable. And at the same time, they make it much less resiliant. In other words, they are selling CRAP which will have to be thrown away much sooner. The saddest thing is, 99% of the people will just go on and buy more CDs because of this. Yeah, maybe some of them will comment that "I htought CDs lasted longer, in the past", and will be promptly ridiculed by some smartass with "sure, and LPs were even better than that, riiight...".
And once again, the ignorant and meek consumer is lead like sheep to the slaughter.
Re:Hmph... (Score:2, Insightful)
I may be talking out my ass, but I seem to recall that the SB Live series always uses 48kHz sampling rate from the digital inputs and there is a little bit of degradation resampling from the 44.1kHz rate the CD uses. Recording from the digital input at 44.1kHz would actually do 44.1kHz -> 48kHz -> 44.1kHz.
Definitly better than the analog input. I get -70dB of noise with the Line input selected and muted. The digital noise floor should be at -90dB so there is 20dB of analog noise there. This is on a Live Value 5.1 which unfortunatly has no on-board digital inputs (There is a spot for a CD-ROM SPDIF connector, but it is missing. Of course the TAD connector for a voice modem answering machine is installed :-().
Re:Hmph... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's about as much of a security hole as allowing binaries to be installed on the machine at all.
The difference between autorun on a floppy and on a CD is that floppies are RW, while CDs are either read-only or read/erase/write. For a virus to spread via CDs, it would have to detect a CD burning operation and infect the CD image before it was written. This is an extremely complex task, and it would still only allow infection during a regular burn operation.
Combine that with the fact that people don't tend to use CDs to trade data as much as people used to use floppies and the infection rate is MUCH lower. A lower infection rate means more time for a virus to be detected and stopped, so the virus writer would have to go to a lot more effort to get a much less effective virus.
So yes, it is a security hole. It's not really a security hole worth worrying about though, since an attacker would almost have to have physical access to the machine in the first place.
It is, however, extremely annoying.
Re:Nothing like a good challenge (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course I suspect all the RIAA moves are designed to in fact increase piracy. The RIAA has much more insidious plans: they want to eventually outlaw all high-quality recording devices, because they will prove that all such devices allow, and are used primarily for, piracy (and that will be true). Outlawing those devices will also make it impossible for any individuals to compete with the RIAA because they will be unable to record their own music, and the RIAA will say "well, that is SUCH a shame, but it was those evil pirates that made competition illegal".
Re:Hmph... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hmph... (Score:4, Insightful)
But anyhow, a couple comments:
Read the news: the labels are scrambling to offer legitimate alternatives.
And all of the alternatives I've seen so far, put substantial limitations on what I can do with the music compared to now. Itunes is probably the most lenient, but when I downloaded an album, I was less than pleased to realize that I couldn't play it on my linux desktop. I paid the same price as I'd pay for a physical CD and got an inferior product.
As for their legal tactics, I don't see why age or sex should matter when pursuing someone who has violated copyright law - breaking the law is breaking the law.
The age is important because in our legal system, minors are not considered to be wholly responsible for their actions. Leighway is granted because children don't entirely understand consequences, etc.
They have never tried to pass a law allowing them to attack computers. Do not confuse them with misguided legistlators.
This is a technicality. The RIAA isn't in the legislature, therefore, they cannot pass laws. I guarantee you that the RIAA was happy with that law, and that the people who sponsored it were getting money from various media companies.
I don't think so... (Score:2, Insightful)
Probably Linux won't be able to play the CD at all. The music is probably uses some form of DRM.
The best thing that consumers can do is simply not give there hard earned cash for this crap.