First things first, please know that I don't mean trading illegal files in any way - I'm not that stupid


This question just came up to me just now, listening to a song in my music collection it started skipping and jumping all over the place. I dug the original cd out of my collection and was quite surpised, there is a thick gash (more like a knife wound than a scratch!) travelling radially outwards and all along one edge what looks like oxidation from what I remember of pio's excellent discussions on cd damage.

Anyway, I tried ripping the cd again both with CDex paranoia, and EAC's Test & Copy. T&C said there were no errors in the tracks, but the track quality was down to 98% on a couple of tracks. I then compare the waves generated, and find hundereds of positions with different samples. Basically, I no longer have the 'original' track, and would have to pay the full price to have another copy, instead of forgoing the 'right to playback' and royalties etc..


Which brings me on to the point of this thread... My first thought was, maybe someone on HA has the cd, and so could rip and send me the files. The whole point is to get a perfect copy of the song for archiving, so who better to turn to than those with the knowledge.

So this led me to wonder if this would be a possibility. I own the rights to the songs, as would the kind person sending me the file, so to the best of my knowledge it *should* be legal, and morally acceptable. How it sits with the community owners is a different story, as it could be constrewed in a bad light - people flocking to HA for free files, and because HA is audiophile, they're going to be the l33test on the net..

I figured some form of proof of purchase would be needed, because I could come here saying I have a damaged copy of the next 5 albums I wantedo buy and get them here for free. So a daft sounding, but ? plausable one would be take a photo of me, my cd & its damage Wouldn't that be a nice way to bring the community together, it's always fun to laugh at pictures of people you socialise with online



I have had help in similar situations before when someone saw a request on the forum and contacted me via a PM.. however, this requires someone actively wanting to help you and bumping into your thread, which isn't specifically saying 'I'm after this'..

This might seem a crazy idea, I never know how to gauge the plausablity of my own thoughts It's worth a shot though... I'm sure there has to be well, 1 or 2 people out there who demand a perfect collection and have suffered damaged cd's.

Anyway, I look forward to seeing what the response is to this


ps. my damaged cd is Prodigy - Music for the Jilted Generation, tracks 2, 11 & 13 if anyone is interested!

Also I have a cracked cd (not warezy, physically fell out of my cd player and broke on the pavement) of Orbital - Diversions.. IIRC tracks 3-6 are ruined! It's rare in the UK, and costs £17.. I contacted FFRR about it but never got a reply....

no, silly man, no

A constructive post (as you would expect from a moderator) should go on to say WHY. Please enlighten me.

I need track 10 from the "Blind Guardian - Somewhere Far Beyond" album.

... for example

BadHorsie

PS: it's not a joke. i need it really!

it's not even clever to post such a thread. The question ok sharing and justify a download is just silly and you should know better to start with.

Why is he silly? To me it seems more like you're the silly one since you insult him without any obvious reason. Care to explain your remark?

edit: ok now at least you gave a little more reason, although I still can't figure out why you think it's silly...

Why? (please give reasons)

If I can prove I own the rights to listen to a song in my own home, but the data of that song is damaged, why can't I get a perfect copy off somebody else who owns the rights to the song?

The record company (FFRR for Orbital) don't do anything about it, and I don't see the sense in paying for the royalties and rights twice because my data is damaged...

oh really.
Ok, I've lost about 30 CDs or so, care to rip and upload me all of these?
Would you think it's legal?

it IS silly to believe it's legal and justifiable cause to download copies from the net, and more so to ask of a supposedly serious forum like HA.

Lol
At my point of view , he was nice and funny with his post.
Silly is not by any means and insult ...
But btw ....
What would stop if the link was posted here to dl the files , from anyone who do not own the copy to d/l
Why use the forum , sure is a noble cause , but ppl would abuse it.
Asking for thing they dont own ...
How you gonna prove it ? scan your receipt ?
Can you spell PHOTOSHOP ?
lol

Read the whole post first. He still has the cd, only very damaged.

(Btw, sorry for barging in like this Mac... Probably you can take care of this yourself, but I just can't accept the attitude some people show sometimes.)

Eric if you don't like my attitude I should ask of you first to try to understand the meaning of silly, as tcmjr explains it it's not a negatively loaded word. You should use this energy in other threads where it's more appropriate and needed.

about his CD, how the crap can you prove you own it, again you can't justify downloading.

Hehe, feel free to barge in and help - I have the skill of putting my foot in my mouth, so it's better to let sensible people with sensible arguments defend me )

tcmjr:
The way I had thought of it, the person with the damaged cd and the one helping them would pair off.. a logical place to go would be IRC, they can say anything they need to quickly and transfer their files in private - no chance of other people illegally leeching.

For cd's you have lost I guess you can't prove you owned it..

mtrh:
To the best of my knowledge it *should* be legal. If it's obviously not, please explain why (with legal quotes?)

**edit:**
The best way I can think to prove I own the cd is to show I *have* a copy of the cd in my collection, photographing the cd with me, with say my monitor showing HA.org in a browser. Somebody can come up with a better, more fool-proof suggestion I am sure

This is infact enough proof for insurance companies to believe you own the cd. I keep a photographic record of the cd's I own, as a friend did. He had about a dozen (12) photo's of his cd collection in their racks.. when his house burnt down he lost all his cd's.. and although the collection was not listed as an item in excess of £1000 (as technically, it is a group of several low value items) he was given £2500 in HMV vouchers to replace his entire collection, simply because he provided this photographic evidence of his collection. Were his insurance company commiting copyright fraud or something, giving him access to music he is not entitled to?..

From Lexin:

Engelskt uppslagsord
silly

Svensk översättning
dum, enfaldig, tokig, idiotisk (adjektiv)

Now in swedish that would definately be an insult. I think you'd better stay in the foobar forums where remarks like this is normal. But I don't like it here, so that's why I'm reacting.

How to prove he owns it: How about a photo of the CD? Together with a note with an arbitary code written on it so that he can't just take any picture from the web.

I'm trying to grab some quotes but the RIAA site is so damn slow, I'm sure I read some well explaining notes there.

in colloqial english 'silly' shouldn't be understood as any of the words you point out as in meaning of english in context given and structure of sentence.

put your efforts where needed.

Guys , ok
Let get inside digital world , image editing ...
Ppl would abuse the system just for the sake of doing it.
Why not just go to HA irc , and ask if someone have the cd (that woudl not infringe any law , I think) , and talk private with the person.
This kind of thing , would not work on a forum.

Just understand that , you have no way to prove you own the cd by a picture , ok ?

Btw

sil·ly ( P ) Pronunciation Key (sl)
adj. sil·li·er, sil·li·est
Exhibiting a lack of wisdom or good sense; foolish. .
Lacking seriousness or responsibleness; frivolous: indulged in silly word play; silly pet names for each other.

[edited] Well , I can say it is weird to have pictures os his cd's lol =]
That was a diferent case , here someone could drop by and edit the picture to prove him own the cd.

[I see no ofense here , dont know what language you speak , but I speak Portuguese , and by what I learned from living in the U.s is that silly is not a bad word.
Too bad text lack pronunciation , and gives ppl too much space to misunderstand. You sure could ?ofend? someone with silly but I guess would be the last way to curse someone

I know mac Had good intentions ! Just trying to point this is the Internet !
No actual way of proving it.

You may own the CD, but you don't own the rights to any of the songs on it.
The artist, songwirter, and record company own the rights.
You should be emailing them and asking if it's ok to share their song
over the internet with someone else,
instead of the administrators and moderators of a message board.
I'm sure they'd be surprised to hear from you in these days and times.
They're the only ones who can legally give you permission to do so.

Heh, I thought it was a bit strange, but it makes sense as it's proof of purchase...

Thing is - my pictures are stored on my hard disk... I have a digital camera... I asked, and the insurance company will still accept the pictures as proof, I don't think the abilities of photoshop are that comprehensive and infallable. If you know about photoshopping, why not help out and say what kind of thing is hardest to fake? Just scanning the cd cover would be easily faked, so I thought a picture of person + cd + an identifying note.. that has to make it harder?

He could prove he owns it by sending a lossless copy of damaged track.
This is slow, but should work. Damaged track for an undamaged track.
NOT for the whole CD.
He could even get a Posix diff...
/EDIT\ Slight fix. \EDIT/

But anyway, this shouldn't be done in public. (rather PMs and/or IRC).

Ok. My horrible english must have led me to belive it worse than it actually was.

But to go back on topic: How can you ever prove that you own something? There is always a possibility to couterfeit (correct word now?) just about anything. Do you think it would be worthwile to do all photoshop work to make it look good enough for a CD worth maybe $20?

Whe I said Photshop , I meant all image/video editing software

http://www.fakeorfoto.com/

[edited]
Eriks , as I said ppl would do that just for the sake of doing it.
If you really own the copy and think it would be legal to d/l it.
WHy not just go to kazaa , dc++ , emule and download back your music.
At dc++ you can find hubs where lame , aps/x are treaded even with the eac logs.

IMHO HA do no allow any kind of trading , especialy on this not so fail-proff metod.

if you buy a cd you will get just a copy of the artist's work and the permission to use it in your private environment. if you are losing your copy or it will be damaged you have to buy another one. you don't get the owner rights of the songs.

edit: you never bought the song itself! you bought a media to play it from. you don't be in a position to claim a replacement for your lost track!

BadHorsie

Aaha, there's a good idea..

It is possible to send whoever a FLAC of each damaged song, and they return a mathmatical difference between that and their perfect original.. that way nobody is giving out the perfect copy (a download which could be leeched) and it is proof that I own the original track

I agree, links should be shared and arrangements made in private. The problem is how to let people know you are looking for a replacement copy of a song? I haven't found any way of saying 'please help I need this track' that I would be listened to, people either say I don't have it, or go away because it's piracy.

If awareness was increased, it might work ok in the IRC channel - and with a common way of proving ownership and providing the fix this could work..

(that was my intended point of this topic btw.. to get some way of helping people out with damaged cd's)

Fun link you sent there... not too difficult to tell though.

"The Challenge Results Excellent, a superior performance--ten out of ten answers were correct."

And still these were pretty easy cases. A cd with a handwritten note or the owners face beside it would be much much more difficult to fake. And you see - they have already come up with alternatives. Proving the rightful ownership is not the most difficult part of Mac's suggestion. Organizing the whole thing would be worse IMO.

RIAA sueing everybody left and right nowadays for what ever reasons, there's no chance that HA would become a place for "legal" song trading to "replace your damaged originals", especially because the legality is often very hard to define and prove.

We have not enough resources to watch that this would keep in legal limits (provided that it would be legal in the first place), and RIAA could sue us anyway...

You don't own the rights to the music. You bought a piece of plastic with the music on it. If you loose it, it's too bad.
If you spill water over a book it is still not legal to go to the library and copy the whole thing eventhough you already bought the book.

Needless to say: HA can never encourage or take part in any filesharing of copyrighted material.
By buying a cd you don't buy copyrights.

This way the music industy both eat the cookie and keep it. In case you lose your cd you have bought a piece of plastic which they will not replace. In case you want to copy the CD they will say that it is not just a piece of plastic anymore. Then it's probably the content on the CD that counts. Not too logical, but who has ever thought that they (RIAA with friends) would be?

It makes perfect sense.
You buy the right to play the music on that CD in private. AFAIK it is perfectly legal to copy that music to your HD and play it from there. But you are not allowed to infringe the rights of the copyright folders by sharing it with someone else or play it in public places.

edit: how many threads do we need at HA where ppl whiny because they think the right to music is a human right? If you don't like the product; don't buy it. Stop whining about the evil companies that don't supply the product YOU want.

It is an interesting issue. But two things have become clear to me: We don't agree on the legality and HA will not organize such "trading". I won't try to change either.

Well, freedom of expression and communication is our right without any doubt.

But what makes the existence of authority justifiable? If there were an easy answer to this question there wouldn't have been an entire political/philosophical theory of Anarchism. You're being too self-righteous there. And as the majority of the population doing so, we start giving up our rights and build what's called an authority which eventually bends everything for the sake of its own existence...

Legal? Who could be entitled to determine what is legal? Majority? I strongly doubt that... We need a network beyond ethics and laws (in order for a healthy feedback loop to develop in which no government could have control over or break), an intellectual sanctuary. Just like FreeNet. I am so deeply impressed by the idea and donated money first time in my life Indeed, it could be the next major achievement towards free communication since the introduction of the internet itself.

Check their Philosophy Page. I think that is a pretty good description of why our means of digital communication should be unfettered from any sort of authority. And when we have such a network eventually it could bring drastic changes to the culture we live in today and the values we take for granted.

Thus I think it's a better idea to support and donate resources to such a noble project. If it takes off we could share music on HA running on FreeNet...

The following quote from the FreeNet Philosophy FAQ sums it up:

Hmm... Jan I wasn't meaning to be 'whiny' thankyou..

I can't see who it was that said it.. but I have already contacted the record company on a few occasions, e-mail and postal.. they never got back to me about it though, even to say 'you have to buy the full retail copy again'.

I guess the debate on 'it is legal / it should be legal / it's not legal' could wrangle on until the thread is shut.... but from the responses here I guess no established mechanism could be set up, but I wouldn't get kicked out of IRC for asking. That seems a shame to me, as there aren't 1/10th the users on IRC as there are frequenting the forum, so only the most mainstream things are likely to be fixed

No help so far.. but an interesting discussion at least

I want to share some knowledge (this may go into the FAQ) about this. First, "rational" or "logical" or "sensical" does not matter, to the people that lobbyied those laws. So to answer the original poster, yes, it is ilegal in the United States of America, home of this forum.

To quote Matt Oppenheim, senior vice president of business and legal affairs for the Recording Industry Association of America:
Source.

A diff isn't a recording
It is only a difference between a damaged copy and original.

This wouldn't break the law, if the diff wasn't whole or major part of the file.

/EDIT\ It should also be legal to send few frames of compressed file to fix it,
if there aren't too many of them continously. \EDIT/

I don't think that the HA mods would allow this kind of activities.
----------------------------


It would be easy to check if someone has the original disc creating some fingerprint software.

for example:
the software would pick random locations on the disc and check if they are error free (à la EAC), if they are error free then the software would extract digitally a small sample (5 secs or something) and encode it with FLAC adding Data for CD-length, Offsets, tracks, etc. then take more samples like this.

Then on the other's user PC he would pop his cd and open his copy of the software, download the figerprint file and the software would extract the requested samples (making sure is errror free too) and do a bit compare on the waves (it would need a tecnology for getting thru different drive offsets) and if 90% of the waves are equal then it'd tell the user that the other has got the original disc and allow coping, if the sample from the damaged cd is damaged in the second too it'd move on to the next fingerprint. this would defeat mp3 cds easily but not lossless copies.

Ignoring an offset would be the best answer:
just rip the larger part and seek to the first matching sample.

You would get an offset between your drives (if the CDs were from the same pressing),
which might be useful.

Another safeguard might be a number from CD's inner ring - you can't get it without having an original.
(or a friend, who has it, but you rather wouldn't want to download a fix then)
This would limit the method to same pressings of a disc...

hmm.. I'd prefer a method that didn't need user input.

To defeat this you'd need both drives calibrated - you could detect writer's offset.
(if someone didn't take care of it, that is,
but then there would be samples missing or extraneous at the first/last track)

Philosiphy and legality aside, i would be leery of putting HA in such a grey area in the first place. The threat of any potential legal action would be enought for me to back the moderators in a flat out "NO". If i recall correctly, which i do because i know Dibrom personally, the focus of this site was to promote innovation and improvement of "Cross-platform Cross-Format Psychoacoustic audio compression" as the logo suggests, and not spearhead philisophical crusades against tyrannical and/or immoral institutions.

yes, but then to allow the software to work, It'd require calibrated readers, which IMHO is a bad thing, I'd rather trust the user.

Absolutely. I was just commenting on why the concept of sharing could not be argued to be evil so trivially and therefore banning it is an infringement of our rights. Other than that HA is not a good place for filesharing, it is not intended to be so. However if it existed on a network that is beyond ethics/laws then people could do whatever they wanted and there would be other sites who facilitated any kind of communication.

In theory to do this would be very simple, using BitTorrent. The person with the good source only needs to rip and build a .torrent, put up a tracker and seed it. the person with the bad source does the same rip as well. Both rips should have the same names and dir structure. Now simply download the .torrent from the person with the good source, and use the BitTorrent client to download on top of the bad rip. BitTorrent will check the parts and will only request the different parts. Is that easy, and can be applied to anything, specially big things.

But i still see no need to involve HA.

Aaaah... AstralStorm has come across something I was too stupid to think of...

I have taken a look at one track.. and I need <0.01 seconds to make it perfect I believe. I am fairly sure that is classed as a 'short excerpt' which is enouraged to be posted for ABX purpouses here..

I think even the worst track has ~100 areas of 'different samples', but each is only say 20 samples long.. 20'000 samples is still only a second of material..

Would this 'revalation' make a difference file at least legal.. and also practical - as the person with the perfect copy needs only upload a few hundered kilobytes, as FLAC is transparent at 0kbs on digital silence


edit:
Armetis - HA is the source of people with large music collections and the knowhow to rip a CD securely, create a mathematical difference, and encode/decode FLACs.. I don't know where else to find a group of such people

Bit Torrent does exactly the same, but you don't need to send the file.
"The One Who Makes .Torrents" would need to have a calibrated drive.
You'd need to calibrate yours too.

Another possibility is to make the software aware of the offsets,
detecting a relative offset between yours and "The One Who Makes .Torrents"s drives.

Now I've managed to understand the technical discussion between Nephaestous & AstralStorm..

Wouldn't the proof that the damaged copy is original (rather than mp3) be that 90% of the frames are identical, as long as offset is accounted for...

If I'm correct, EAC's compare wave function can account for offset's - and will just report "5000 extra samples" or whatever if there is a difference... and will then say there are distinct areas of difference, rather than a continuous difference as with any lossy format.

But you must, because the HA founder has the right to push the orientation of this forum to that of Pychoacoustic research, in other words, this forum has a more scientific/academic purpose. I agree we are giving it too much political and/or philosophical direction. Instead we are supposed to focus on the original intent, and maybe try to find or create other places for discussion of these things. It may be that we lack a good place to discuss such matters, and we are in "desperate" need, but we have to think more in others than ourselves

Of course some discussions are so tempting, i suppose the moderators should know (and give us some advice) if they fit or not to the intent of the forum.

Just a small comment on this: Yes, you can. You are indeed entitled to go to the library and copy the entire book - they have already payed the necessary fees. (At least that's the situation in Denmark.) You are also allowed to copy CDs and DVDs borrowed in the library as long as there isn't any effective copy protection on them.

Also, on CD copying: It's the act of transferring the copied content to another individual that constitutes copyright infringement, not something vague about giving them something they don't own. You have a right to copy your CDs - taking a backup CD in case the first one gets old is a perfectly good use of this right. The fact that you didn't do so doesn't allow you to break the rules.

At least that's the situation in Denmark AFAIK, but I'm no lawyer, so...

No need to involve computer graphic skills in order to fake a photo.
Just get the sleeve on amazon.com, print in, put in in a CD case, and take a photo of you with it. No one will tell the difference between an original sleeve and a printed sleeve from internet on a photo.

T&C doesn't report, "there were no errors". The test & copy, CRC double-check system implemented in EAC shows a "#" meaning there was a CRC mismatch. Track quality just means how many errors EAC encountered so it's more a report on the CD's condition not the ripped track.


Assuming your using secure mode this is HIGHLY rare & is much more likely that you misinformed your drive features to EAC than that EAC failed to detect the errors.

I could be wrong but my impression of why Dibrom created HA for was to have an informative forum focused mainly on multi format lossy audio compression, where users & developers could meet to produce constructive ideas.

I don't see how file sharing would have a place in this situation.

Great
Hehehehe
The better solutions comes from the easiest ways (or the biggest brains) B)

You were right. You can find info on the Danish law here: http://www.copydan.dk/cm371.asp?d=1 (in Danish)

Digital medias are excepted though.