Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler What Now?

http://news.com.com/New+CD+copy-lock+technology+nears+market/2100-1027_3-5492395.html

Did I read that right? It will prevent ripping as well?

Yea you read it right.
There are more articles with a little more detail out there.
I would lay money on it, that it wont get far.
Someone will figure out how to defeat it if it does.

Guess I'm not buying any more U2 albums...

Guess I'm not buying anymore albums.

Not like that's changed from how I usually get my music. Getting lossless music off the web is cool.

I suppose they don't get that this doesn't hurt sales. For example, the CD trading around here - outside of the fact that physical media is being used, it's the same as file sharing. It allows people to discover new music. The fact that they'd like this to be disabled is just the reason they "lose money" when they bitch that they do.

Where do you get lossless of the web?

And then the issue is getting quality playback devices.

I rip my CDs and keep them on my harddrive for convenience. When I want listen critically, I use the CD.

I just bought a SonyBMG album that is copy protected with what I assume is this new copy protection. I returned it when I couldn't play it on my pc at work without installing their special music player software.

It is so hard to comprehend how they think this can be a good idea. I buy my music instead of downloading becauses I believe it is the moral thing to do. But s*&! like this makes me want to download instead. At least then I could do whatever I want to with my music.

And it's not like this copy protection will keep the music from getting onto P2P networks, I mean the cd works just fine on my Mac and on my linux box....which makes the whole DRM thing that much more frustrating.

That article is from December, if you noticed. This already exists on some CD's. The new Foo Fighters is copy protected, for one.

I'm with kaid on this. If we continue to make it less convenient to purchase music legitimately and more convenient to download without paying, this is not going to go well for the music industry. The DRM "dream" might work (something smart enough to let you copy as much as you want for your own use, lend CDs to friends but not use them yourself while lent out etc...) but the basic copy protection is a real problem.

I rarely have time to just sit and listen in the main HT/music area (ie the basement ) so I rely pretty heavily on copied CDs for the upstairs system and the car. Every album I own is bought and paid for (often twice -- LP and CD) but I do rely on being able to have multiple copies.

The only copy protected CDs I own were gifts...

ummm...didn't Sony loose this case years ago thanks to the Supreme Court?

No, Sony won the Betamax case, which is I think the test case for all of this. However, the entertainment industry has been trying to kill off that ruling for years. Sony appears to have switched sides... Hence the DMCA and DRM.

Oh ok. This stuff drives me nuts. Not to stray too far off topic, but have a read at this.

iPod tax

This is really disturbing and is a good example of large scale greed.

Infuriating. I buy CDs and rip my own for my iPod. And I buy music on iTunes. I don't pirate anymore, I can't afford lawyers to fight the RIAA. In fact, in the past 10 years, I only install commercial software I've bought. Just a karma thing.

But to limit me from burning a CD I paid for? That's ridiculous. I'd only agree to buy that kind of CD if there's a way for me to go online and download the CD as well, in MP3 format. Otherwise, "Hello iTunes".

Hello used CDs...

I feel the same as oldskool when it comes to being able to rip my own CDs. I don't want to buy MP3 because I get better quality when I rip my own. I also often make copies of my CDs for everyday use, and store the orignal in my library.

I think someone on this forum posted about http://secondspin.com before. I've ordered a couple of cd's from them and haven't had any problem with scratches. It's not quite as cheap as Amiba can be, but it's a lot more convenient

@oldskoolboarder
The CD I bought that had this protection wouldn't allow me to rip to mp3 and thus put it on my iPod. What's really funny is that enough people must have complained to Sony that they put this form up. If you fill out the form, they will send you an email explaining how to defeat their DRM!

What program are you trying to rip with?

jr

Curious how Sony suggests bypassing DRM. Wonder if they make you install a client. I'd be wary at that point, I wouldn't want Sony to know what I have on my computer. In addition, we'd still be limited to the compression that the provide. I use 320Kbps LAME but I doubt they'd provide that. Our luck, they'd give us WMA...

James,
Truthfully I didn't actually try to rip the cd from my windows pc. Winamp wouldn't recognize the cd though, so I have serious doubts that any Windows ripping software would work.

Sony's suggestion was to install the music player that auto-installs from the cd, burn the lossy WMA files to cd (thereby using one of your limited number of burns), and then re-rip to mp3. No thanks.

For me, asking Sony how they suggest getting around their DRM was a theoretical exercise anyway. I already knew I was going to return the CD regardless of what Sony said, even though it would work perfectly on my Mac or on my linux box. I just can't pay money for a product that doesn't work how I want it to work.

To defeat any of the older copyright software, all you had to do was hold down the shift key when inserting the cd.

I wonder how long it will take someone to figure out that just pressing shift or writing on the disc with a sharpie will defeat the DRM.

I use EAC to rip and LAME to encode and I've been able to rip everything I've purchased. Has anyone found a list of CDs that have this DRM on them?

jr

Bray and James,
I wish it was as easy as holding down "shift". That will keep the player from autoinstalling, but through some programming magic Sony has managed to hide the music on the cd unless you do install their special player. You can't navigate to it from Windows Explorer (even when viewing hidden files) nor does Winamp recognize it as a music cd. I have no doubt that someone far smarter than me will figure out how to defeat it, but unfortunately it will be more difficult than holding down the shift key.

Well from what I've gathered, the new Sony CDs aren't even "Audio CDs" because they don't conform to the Redbook standard. They're somehow close enough that they'll still play in CD players though.

According to the various online sounces that have said anything about it though, the only platform that the protection works against is Windows. Have you tried ripping it on a Mac or Linux box?