BMG Backs Down Over Copy-Protected CD

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

I think the recall probably had less to do with consumer feedback and more to do with the fact that they could have been liable for damage caused by copied CDs, especially since fair use law allows you to make copies in certain situations...

Re:hmm

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? ;-)

i don't care

Whatever copy protection they invent, there will always be a workaround...

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

It is not so much whether they actually believe uncrackable formats are possible, it is much more whether they believe if it is possible to deter Joe Sixpack from casually copying their stuff.

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

My opinion about the piracy-stages in music & movie protection:

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...

Difference between CD players?

I read where the Cactus Data Shield works by corrupting the table of contents on the CD so that a PC's CD player software can't play the music, but a standalone CD player can. What's the difference between how the two types of CD players operate that makes this type of copy protection possible?

Re:Difference between CD players?

Stolen from http://www.uk.eurorights.org/issues/cd/overview.sh tml [eurorights.org]:

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.

Kind of redundant

Michael Jackson is already copy protected- I won't put a pedophile on my computer.

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.

generic anti-protection arguement

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."
- 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.

Bahaha

The result: a CD-R full of noise, not music. Worse, the generated waveform is of kind to which hi-fi and loudspeaker circuitry is particularly sensitive. Play the noise-filled disc back at too high a volume and - bang - your speakers are toast.

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.

This would not happen in 2003 in Europe

With the EUCD (European Union Copyright Directive), that is starting the process of getting incorporated into national laws, BMG would have the law on it's side and copying CDs with this kind of protection would be a crime, even if it was under a "fair use" clause. This is the main problem with this law, for the first time any company can restrict how you use its products. Until now copyright law only affected copying, distributing and modifying the product.

In the USA the won't probably do a recall because all this is legal under the DMCA. Providing "fair use" became optional.

Taken From FatChucks

Mac OS X/iBook-DVD: Track 1 doesn't play or rip, rest okay
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.

Midbars patent application for Cactus Data Shield

Even though Midbar deny there is any chance of Cactus Data Shield damageing equipment, you may be interested to see an extract from Midbars patent application [uspto.gov] for the technology.

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

I don't think they can guarantee the same method of interpolation is in use in all CD players. Some might interpolate between surrounding good samples, others might just hold the last good sample until the next good one comes along. You can't guarantee what sort of error correction is in use.

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

It's such a shame to see the (inherently good) idea of copyrighting, patenting, copyprotection etc. all coming down in such a shambles.

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.

Public Awareness

As a UK resident, it's really gratifying to see some headway being made. A lot of this is thanks to the hard work put in by many to make sure that the general public is aware of what's happening, along with the alertness of some media quarters to bring the story out as much as possible.

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):

"There's only one huge question nobody knows: what the consumer wants, what will succeed... At the end of the day, I think consumers will be pretty happy with the number of competing services out there."

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...

Good news, but more work still needs to be done.

I'm glad to see BMG have been forced into seeing sense. Hopefully BMG will have lost enough money in this pointless exercise so that they won't try this sort of trick again. I also hope they realise that to customer loyalty is easily lost, but hard to gain so they need to treat the public with more respect. Virgin Megastores, in contrast, have the right idea, they seem to actually care about their customers. Top marks for them!

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.

Can Copy Protection damage HiFi

I guy at AudioT in High wycombe (Excellent HiFi chain in the UK) who is quite knowledgeable about HiFi electronics told me that some copy protection systems can blow some high end audio kit due to the noise at frequencies not normally present being transmitted through to the speakers.

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.

Not too suprising

The record companys are going to be just as effective at alienating thier own customers as Microsoft and that is what will bring about real change. I am all for it go ahead copy protect CD for players that were NEVER designed to have that done. I promise it will not affect my music listening habits on bit. Wait ... who's there? The FBI! Sorry gotta go.

so we're already at no.4:

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
- Mahatma Ghandi

What happens when...

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

We are lucky that people^H^H^H^H^H^H geniuses like P.Diddy and eminem grace us and allow us to listen to their music. If they so wished, they could keep the music to themselves, but they choose to share.

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

Ok, this copy protection stuff has been talked about for a while, and I can tell you, it's here weather we like it or not. Why do I say this? Because, every law is on the record companies side aganist piracy, the only thing that might go against the DMCA is the Home Recording Act which was implemented in 1992 when the MiniDisc came out. It clearly states what's fair use, and many laws allow making backup copies and some even go as far as to say copy protection is illegal. But, are these CD's totally uncopyable? No. As many have pointed out programs like CloneDisc and Nero are capeable of making 1:1 copies of audio CD's if your hardware supports it. So, you make a perfect 1:1 copy of a copy protected CD, theoritcally, it should play fine. The biggest problem is ripping to (crappy) formats like MP3 or (even worse) OGG. (I'm a MpegPlus man myself). The CDFS.VXD ripping program uses burst mode copying, and therefore doesn't auctually use any error correction, but, it can recover from errors better than using say, EAC's Secure mode. My G.F. bought the new Michael Jackson CD and brought it over to my house saying it wouldn't play in her car or her DVD player. So, I popped it in my Apex AD-3201 and nothing, it wouldn't play it. It showed up as an audio CD, but both the analog and digital outputs lost sync. Popped it in my Sharp player, and it played fine, my MD deck even recorded from it (as most CD player's digital out's aren't RAW data, they're error corrected PCM). So, after some reading I found it was copy protected. I put it in my drive, and tried to rip it, alas, nothing. I then switched EAC over to burst (XP Pro doesn't support CDFS.XVD to my knowledge) and granted it ripped at 3.4x, it ripped (my DVD drive usually gets about 8x) They say the protection won't affect audio quality as much, bull. If you have good ears, you can tell the audio lacks a certin oomph (same oomph missing on CD that's on Vinyl, it's not really noticeable, but, it's there) Also, let's not forget HDCD, HDCD is dependant on a good audio stream, if they corrupt part of it, theorically, AFAIK, HDCD won't function.

Anti-pirate system bypassed

Given that one of the so-called anti-piracy systems has been bypassed, according to this link [theregister.co.uk], I wonder why the companies even bother. Also, these work-arounds are more likely to be used by bona fid pirates than someone unhappy that they have a CD they can't make their MP3s from ( yes, I know its a generalization, but the general point remains ).

The geek vs. corporate war....

I still stand by the idea that copywrite protection laws are the first casualty in the war between geeks and corporations that will eventually end in the anarchistic Geek-governed utopia, which is simply a slight variation on Socrates'/Plato's Utopia.

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?

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.

A possible way to rip these CD's?

I haven't really read all of working of this, but from what I understand is that they won't play on computers, but will on normal CD Players. SO! All you need to do is to play the CD on your stereo, and plug the recording output (I've got 3 on my JVC amp, 2 on my JVC cd changer) into your audio input of your computer. With this, you can record it on your computer with the sound recorder, or download one. Sure it's a very roundabout route, but won't it work? Because this way is more or less sticking a microphone infront of the speakers, but with much higher quality. I'm not too sure, but thats my $0.02

Something very basic these companies don't get

If you sell a copy-protected CD that makes it next to impossible to rip, it may well prevent 99% of people out there from ripping it.

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

It will make an interesting test case when a punter sues Sony for blowing up their loudspeakers after playing an allegedly pirate CD...

Why is The Register calling my backups, pirate CDs?

Surely a reason NOT to buy CDs?

It looks to me like the record companies are shooting themselves in the foot. If word spreads that CDs are being crippled in this way surely it will discourage people from buying CDs in the first place? Why spend money on something that has been crippled when you could just download the album from a file share somewhere...

Punishment

From the Register article, and from the patent filing that another reader posted, it sounds as if the speaker damage might have been a design goal, or at least a side-effect that they are using to pitch the technique as "punishment" for "pirates." "You copy our CD, will ya? Let's see how you enjoy it when you play it on your blown speakers?!?" Well, let's see how many CD I continue to purchase to play on my blown speakers.

Former record retailer viewpoint

I ran a record store for several years, and we had a great copy-protection scheme in place-we didn't allow consumers to return opened product. This policy exists specifically to prevent folks from copying something and returning it. Once you opened it, you kept it. As far as I know, most retailers still stick to this policy.

The main reason for this was that the distributors only let us return opened product at a penalty, if they let us return it at all. We'd replace defectives for the same title, but that was the limit of our liability.

Of course, now that the labels are sending out intentionally defective product, I'm glad I'm no longer in the business. These are the same labels that promised us that cd's would be less than $10 within a few years after the arrival of the format.

Thing is, one of the ugly side effects pointed out in the letter is the fact that the fallout from this whole thing unfairly places Mr. Retailer right in the middle. The label doesn't have to listen to consumers' complaints. Grr...
--
erik

We won!

The Slashdot Scooby gang wins another one. We can all go home now.

He's got a magnet...everybody BACK-UP!

Ok, I'll admit I am not a l337 |-|4X0R, but seeing as the "corrupted disks" contain a player for the tracks on the computer (if I read that right) would it not be possible to correct the errors on the cd?

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.

Some comments about the Cactus patent

P-channel that corresponds to portion 58 has been set to 0. This is because standard 908-compliant CD encoding circuitry does not directly provide for the copying of the P-channel from a source CD that is being duplicated. Rather, the CD encoding circuitry itself decided when and how to set the P-channel. 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.

Why does this prevent ripping? You can rip to WAV (ignore the p-blocks which a CD-reader does)? It only explots the fact that CDR specs has a "fault" on it when you directly pass them bit for bit data it just doesn't flag the control data at all.

I mean (not to violate DMCA or anything), there could potentially be software that would strip these p-blocks out of the read stream before passing it to the CDR drive since the p-blocks are just "potentially circuitry damaging" signals and don't contribute to anything to the positive CD-features.

A Precident for Liability

In British Columbia (as well as other areas, I'm sure)if a theif slips on some ice while breaking into your home, he can sue for damages. In the 80's a theif successfully sued a car owner for putting razor blades on his car stereo and caused the theif to loose 2 fingers.

Blowing up your speakers (which couls also do damage to whatever they're hooked up to) as well as inconvienence, trama (from the 'explosion), public embarasment (if it happens while you're hosting a party or blowing someone else's system if you lend the CD to someone)could equal a very large and nasty lawsuit.

If you can sue for your coffee being too hot, why not go for the gusto?

Consumer electronics

I think that recording industries making deliberatly damaged cd will
upset not only consumers, but also AV electronics manufacturers.
In a mall or in an household appliances show, the devices you could
find are DVD players, CD recorders, AV amplifiers (with digital inputs),
and ghetto blasters or similar small CD/Tape/Tuner combo.
Separate power amplifiers, tape decks or tuners are a rarity in these
shops, not to mention turntables. If you will buy one of these, you have
to resort in a specialized hi-fi shop, and even in one of these you
can find more CD writers or DVD players than cassette recorders, and
anyway a decent dual tape deck costs more than a CD/CD-RW combo.
The average consumer, having to buy some appliances, is easy that
will buy a DVD player plus an AV digital amplifier rather than a
standard CD player. And these damaged discs will not play, either because
the DVD player got confused by the wrong TOC or because the DAC into
the AV amplifer doesn't recognise the damaged signal from the Toslink
input.
If the consumer goes into an hi-fi shop to buy a new CD player, is
possible that will have similar problems: newer ones that will read
both CDR and CDRW, can also handle multi session audio CD. I think that
a person that buys, say, a 900 euro Marantz CD 6000 KIS, or a 2400 euro
Teac VRDS-25X could become a bit upset if can't listen most of the new
CD has just bought.
Maybe will tell what happened to one of his friends, that will stick
to the older CD player and instead will buy a 1000 Euro Thorens TD 166
and a 600 euro Ortofon MC 20, a decent soundcard, and then will make
mp3 of all new 33 rpms he bought. :-)

This whole argument is simple math...

When I buy a CD I pay for 100% of the music. When a record company deliberately puts errors on the CD so my player is in error concealment when I'm playing a pristine CD, they are robbing me of my $$ and MY MUSIC! Unlike error correction, error concealment TAKES AWAY DATA (read: MUSIC) THAT CAN NOT BE RECOVERED!! Now, let's say that I get a scratch on my (formerly pristine) CD. NOW there are NEW errors in addition to the ones PUT THERE by the record company. NOW my CD won't play at all...but a CD without THEIR (added) errors would. Therefore, the math is this: I pay 18 bucks for a CD and get about half of the data that's supposed to be on said CD. Also, I'm getting a CD that isn't nearly as tolerant of scratches as the older ones. Also, I'm getting a CD whose songs I can't put on my Rio...or play at my computer..or on the DVD player in my living room...I can only play it on the stereo in the den... Finally, I'm getting a CD that just might blow up the amp and/or speakers of said stereo in my den.... In other (simpler) words, I'm being RIPPED OFF!

bleh

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

All COTS cd players have a DAC. Acheiving perfect digital reproduction is a simple matter of intercepting the clock, channel, and data lines going to the DAC. The cd player control circuitry has already made the error correction, and this data is ready to be converted to analog. The data will almost always be in I2C format (I squared C). Some professional equipment uses this format and can accept it directly. There are commonly available chips to convert i2c to sp/dif (this is how you can upgrade your old analog output cd changer to a analog + digital for cheap). There is also the possibility to build a usb interface for ripping. If you do that you might as well hook into your cd player's control buttons and make a computer controled cd changer.

Would be a fun project for some EE student.

copyright and DVD player

I just bought a DVD player. I peeked behind my entertainment unit at the big tangle of boxes and cords, found some promising terminals, and plugged it in.

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.

Boycott 'em all

I will not be participating in the DVD "revolution", and I stopped buying music, cold turkey, last year after Napster was shut down, and two reports came out : 1) record profits for the music industry *despite* napster, 2) admitting they'd been grossly overcharging for CD's for 18 YEARS!!!!!!! Forget 'em, I won't fund their greed any more. Use the money you'd be donating to these obnoxious pigs and spend it on a high speed net connection, large hard disk, CDRW setup. It's payback time.

hmmm

1.. If the player can read the original, then so can a copier - I don't see how the data can be magically readable by one device and not by another when both devices predate the format.

2.. I hope this doesn't catch on - I don't want to go back to furtling around though boxes of 5 inch plastic disks to find the track I'm after - making you keep the distribution media is like having to keep all the packaging from everything you ever bought.

This is not the way to go - ownership needs to be registered somewhere (or "right to listen/watch etc"). Thats the way software license mostly work - physically posessing the distribution CD does not mean you have the right to use it - this is dealth with elsewhere - the disk is irrelavent. Just as having a brick in your hand does not give you the *right* to chuck it through a shop window and rob the place. This crypto CD plan is like trying to invent a brick that will only allow itself to be used for wall building - "Powered by stoopid" will be the logo no doubt.. (or "idiot outside".)

Stand up for your right to edit

In the name of Digital Rights Management, corporations prevent you from editing or copying stuff they have published to you. This is odd, and at at odds with the spirit of Copyright.
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

1. Put cd in regular CD player.
2. Cable from line-out of CD player to line-in jack of sound-card
3. Start sound-to-wav converter and CD player.
4. 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?

Thats all well and good, but this is not encryption. Noise is intentionally added that 'hopefully' won't be heard when you play the cd but will prevent a copy from taking place. If you forget the piracy aspect for a moment and think of this clearly as a quality issue the record companies are reducing the quality of the product you are purchasing and not informing you about it. The price is already seriously over inflated you'd think that would already be able to account for their losses.

Re:METEOR!

He's probably just worried that if he watches the meteor shower, he'll wake up the next morning blind, unable to protect himself against the triffids that have taken over the world...