BMG has decided that it will stop producing CD's without copyprotection.



Interesting note that got my attention :


It seems as if they still haven't learned anything.

To read the article go here

I don't know if they realize it or not, but that is actually gonna lead to more piracy, not less. Why would I go out and buy a cd I know won't play in my car (where I do most of my listening) when I know that someone will figure out a way to rip it or record it so I can just download it off the net and burn it to whatever I want?

Not to mention I think that there will always be a way around copy protection unless MS and Intel have their way.

Yeah, how can they..., what they think they..., don't they get that...
Well if it reduces pirated copies flow by few percents, bmg can happily report few X.000.000 profit markup (I won't pretend I know real numbers though ).
So they learn their lessons very well, I believe. And when they operate with such monies, I wouldn't assume that these people don't know what they're doing.



I don't know will it actually increase piracy, still, I assume, they've got their market analyses, target audience researches, blablabla done... and came to conclusion it won't.
Besides there's some probability that the customers are too lazy to do such tricky copyings and will give up the piracy at last!

BTW I wouldn't ever believe that idea of "golden 60's", "70's all the way", "80's forever" compilations will became such a goldmine, but it did.
So they know about us and our tastes much more then we think. B)

#ot-split here

$18 for a CD that may or may not work. I don't think so. Would BMG have problems with the Federal Trade Commision if they tried selling these new copyprotected CDs en mass (seemingly faulty CDs) like that in the U.S.? At least without a liberal return policy? Could that be why they're only concentrating on Europe?

Personally speaking I'm not willing to pay for a cd that won't offer me the right to copy in order to keep a backup for own usage. Such behaviors prove that the companies deal with their customers like if the latters are possible outlaws, refusing them even some "inalienable" rights.

They try to confront and kill an invulnerable beast, instead of using the right methods to force it into extinction by minimizing the sources that feed it...

They were advised improperly. Any copy protection scheme that deems the CD unplayable on certain devices certainly does not follow the Red Book Standard.

In the USA (after some court litigation, of course) I think crippled CDs will have to be labelled differently since they are not truly CDs. The CD manufacturers will have to have an extremely liberal return policy or they'll find themselves in court with the FTC.

Yes this is complete nonsense. How are they able to lie like that?! Red book standards... pffff, according to whom? Little green aliens? Any HUMAN knows this is complete nonsense. They just can't be allowed to get away with not labeling defective CDs. If they do in the end (when oh when will it end), well, one more huge disappointment.

I already took the decision of not buying more CDs. I'm saying I'll go to pirate things and transgrede law? No. What I'm saying is that I'm happy with this link:

Dmoz Trance DJs

...and some others I have...

...with this, I put all record companies out of business (at least regarding me, maybe regarding you next? )

If it can be listened to, it can be copied with a little trouble.

Its too bad record companies are spending money on things that won't work instead of artists.

I don't think computer audio freaks like us stopping buying CDs will affect the market in any way. If knowledgeable people stop buying protected CDs, maybe the sales will drop by 0.01 %, because 99% of the people don't know what is a protection, and 1% of those who know will actually stop buying.

I won't stop buying. No protection will prevent me to make compiles or backups. It changes very little for me. The worst would be my extraction speed falling to 1x if I must use a standalone player as a source for digital copying. That is, if they really find a protection that none of my drives can read.

Hello kids. I have been lurking here for not many cycles of the moon. Thought it was time to start posting.


--Thank god its BMG. Have you seen their artist roster? Its absolutely abhorrent. Not the point, I know... but does anyone here rate J-Lo, Christine Aguilera, Alicia Keys, "The Best Ever Greatest 80s Album in the Entire Galaxy... Best Ever EVER! Part 43" and whoever else? Ok, this is probably way out of line, and they probably do have decent artists, but they KEEP spamming me with adverts to do with these... these karioke stars.

"we are sorry you have troubles with our copy protection technology. The copy protection reacts on the special new technology that is build in in burners. Unfortunately htis technics was built in many new CD players, even if they can't copy a cd.
--My car, Girlfriends car, all household cd players plays them. The Matsh1tadvd drive on the PC plays them (hence in my case it is painfully easy to duplicate them), but the Lite-On spits them out and the old Philips 779 Audio CD Recorder displays "Copy Protect" (or words to that effect)

The whole idea is doomed to failure. You'd have an audience that either: took cd's back, and eventually stopped buying them; took cd's back, and downloaded them instead (the vast majority of people are not about to care about the quality of 128kbps mp3s); and pirates who would find another way to copy (guaranteed to be easy in reality). People are going to buy Cd's for Christmas presents and then find they dont work, and cant be taken back because its not within 14 days and they have got slightly scratched cases, etc,... In theory and on the field it is/would be shambolic

As for the actual worry that is going on because you wont be able to back up your originals (e.g. who wants to carry around £300 worth of originals when you go out in the car? (thats only 20 cd's) - you wouldnt leave £300 of jewellery in there, would you?) - - - I can remember when people were worried they wouldnt be able to tape-to-tape Speccy games anymore when the Speedlock loaders first appeared.

Solution ?
Indipendent bands (as mine) should release theyr works under the EFF Open Audio License

I LOVE COPY PROTECTED CD'S

This give me a chance to buy a new cd.
Copy it.

Go back to the store claim that my car cd player will not play it.
Give the workers some techno babble and show that the labe didn't mention a cd car player but only PC's & Mac's, therefore they need to return me money as the trade was done under false condition.

end of story...

Another dumb laq in Denmark is that if you borrow a cd from a librarym you may copy it to keep.

now THIS is rediciolues seen from an objective side.

BTW how the h*ll do you spell redicou...redicolu.... rediciolous....

Don't you have a dictionary?

Not that this is anything new to this community, but New Scientist wrote yesterday about the copy protection methods of cd:s as "useless".

As the copy protection methods easily can be bypassed by flashing the hardware to new versions, the researcher assumes lowering the cd prices are the only way to go. If the music industry tried to prevent the software upgrades of cd units, it would only lead to buggy soft- and hardware. And who would by them then?

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?...p?id=ns99993020

Not to mention that any copy is unprotected. If copying the original may seem difficult, one can always copy a copy.

Actually MS and AMD. Intel strongly opposed Palladium to the very last breath. AMD yielded instantly without even trying to fight. Intel has roots deep in computer science, they won't degrade the memory of CS founding fathers by yielding to some retarded Hollywood tycoon's mindless mumblings.

What would Alan Turing say if someone told him how his invention is used?

Sorry. I just had to say it

Or my computer, which is the central component for both video and audio in my home entertainment system.

What about portables? Lots of them are 4 and 8 times cd roms.

How are we to make compilation cds?

If I encounter a copy protected cd, I would be tempted to copy it via spdif in, encode it with ap insane, albumwrap it and put it on any one of the 10 computers that are always feeding win mx and Kazaa at the university.

I am sick of these idiots attempting to piss on my fair use rights.

And BTW, it would serve them right to have the cd then returned for a full refund, or a working product.

Yep, yep. When will they ever learn that criminalizing their customers isn't the way to go. This decision makes me really angry - not that I am happy with copy protections nowadays but at least there was always a way around... but this move demands revenge

Just like kennedyb4 said, one is tempted to put everything online in nice quality to share with millions of other users. These idiots beg for it indirectly.

Copy protection also gives the record labels another reason to keep the price of cd's artificially inflated. Of course the consumer will have the cost of liscensing the copy protection scheme passed on to them.

This all happened before with VHS. Why don't they just come to thier senses and add a royalty fee to the blank media and burners. I would not mind paying a couple of dollars more for the right to archive my music any dang way I want. Idiot's

Trek

They're already doing that... At least here in Sweden...

In America the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 adds $8 to the price of digital recording machines and 3% of the price of digital recording media as royalty payments to be made by the manufacturers of this equipment. Of course they then pass the cost of these royalty payments right back to us,the consumers.

thanks ManyFaces for the dmoz link - downloading a 50mb mp3 to listen to.

as long as i can breath - i will make compilations. just finished one 2 days ago and working on another. i like all the artists i purchase just sometimes i like some variety while driving.
if i have to input at real time (1x) i will do so to get what i want.

i am quite sure that in USA there is already kick back to the record manufatures. don't know the exact %. pretty pitiful though getting their cut and still wanting more. sorry R-Hunter i must have been typing while you posted - i read something like that also just couldn't remember the exact details

I suggest that if the copyprotection becomes universal then the kick backs should be stopped. i mean use their philosophy. they think we can't copy them so all the blank cdrs we are buying are for our own musical creations so there should be no more "subsidizing" of the record companies, riaa, etc. sounds weak but they seem to operate on weak

and in Denmark

it sucks

I shouldn't have to pay for backups og things i legally and moraly have the rights to backup.

In the U.S. I think they only tack on the royalty charge on CD-Rs marked "Audio". "Data" CD-Rs should be without the extra charge. Or maybe that has changed?

jsut to add something to the debat

herse an articles where someone claims copy protections is not usefull in the long run

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?...p?id=ns99993020

its pretty short so read it.

i have alwasy beleive in the phrase(if you can read, it you can copy it)

It is like this in Sweden also. Only on "audio" CD-R.

This means that all BMG discs are now low quality. Only "backups" will be good and reliable.

Copy protected CDs are a guaranteed measure to prevent customers from trusting major record labels discs anymore, as a street made copy will give better quality and price, demand for such _reliable_ backups discs will only increase.

All means of copy protection are doomed to failure, and will only increase production costs, and will annoy who knows how many people.

I guess we will simply keep producing our own full quality Red Book CDs and start ignore the major brands, it could be a good thing, to promote independent artists, underground scene, and all.

Remember how Divx (copy/play controlled DVD) failed, look how SACD is doomed from the beginning, and any outragious format that they devise (unless easily cracked open) will face strong opposition from the public.

The people are starting to resort to their own formats. Divx/Xvid instead of DVD, Mp3/Ogg Vorbis instead of CD, we are even developing our own software and hardware, they are losing control, they are desperate to regain that control back, they have lost already, but they will fight, will declare the whole world illegal, the whole knowledge a sin, and freedom a crime, and put their money to buy all the politicians and fund the lawyers.

Even with Palladium, you will see how people will start thinking seriously about free software and probably hardware, when Microsoft asks regular fees to use Windows, Office, Messenger, and such things people are starting to depend on for without knowing that its exactly what they want, so later they can ask whatever they want. Its the drug dealer tactic, none the less, first for free, then you pay, then you owe, then you die...

(Note: Term "free" used as in Freedom of Speech).

Copy protection will never succeed. It reminds me of the motto of a certain group of shareware/crippleware crackers:
"We ALWAYS get what we want!"

What was I thinking? Your right this just plain sucks. Well New artists are going to suffer as I already have most of the music I grew up with that they can't take away from me. 300 cd's worth. Keep the discussion rolling people.

Trek,

this article is really interesting, it sounds that good existing hardware would only need minor firmware upgrades to bypass copy protection. Sorry that plextor, sony and phillips are macrovision partners, so my 24x plextor might be doomed. Hell with it, i still have my new LG 16X-DVDROM with accurate DAE

I agree.
As you "cannot" rip copy-protected CDs............!? (what?, what is protected? marker-trick rocks ) then you cannot know if there are wrong sectors unless you fool the protection. (I did this, when -finally- ripped all tracks succesfully (two of 'em had to be read in EAC paranoid mode a few times instead on secure mode in order to match CRCs) and finally burnt the tracks with EAC (with ISRC codes) on a high quality CD - I use HiSpace CarbonCD for those "Master" discs...They don't give me any CRC errors (after the burn, I test all the tracks, I also note the CRC values for the songs on the inside paper of the CD, as my burner is 8x (Yamaha 8424 SCSI) and burning at that speed is very secure -but I burn audio at 4x, I heard that is the best speed for that....- I seriously believe those discs' quality is much higher and BLER is pretty much lower (<10) than those of the pressed one.

Well, ok, I went too off-topic. Returning to it, I have to tell what happened to me...
I bought a copy-protected CD (Juanes-Un Día Normal, [sold here in Spain]), and the back-cover said it can be read ONLY by standard players and computers based on Windows.
First of all, without removing the copy protection, I tested it on SlimX (multisession compatible) and it read it pissing off the protection. I laughed a lot, as portables are known by being unable to read those discs.
Then, I tested it on a computer.
The surprise was that both DVD Player and burner read a small "player" program that....was playing not the songs, but a 128kbits play!!!!
I noticed it because that program was saying 128kbits, and the player led wasn't glowing as fast as it does when reading an audio CD.

For me, that was an insult. I have no real audiophile equipment and / or paranormal hearing - I have a SlimX portable and a SBLive 5.1 - , but I ONLY want quality stuff (I use, or MP3 insane, or MPC --quality 8.5, or the original WAVS. Only seeing "128kbits" on a original disc enraged me...

The solution against the copy protections must lie in the hardware....
If some manufacturer gets angry with them (think about the effect on their sales on products that "cannot read" those discs) then they should add some "evil" feature in the burners, like what I talked about in the EAC forum: It can have various usages, such destroying confidential data in a packet-written CD-R (not CDR-W) but, as a "revenge" for the sales impact, it should also be able to detect where the copy protection is located (If you know where -in this case, it's the 2nd session- , then -automatically or manually- engage up a special overpowered laser [much higher than what it needs for a CD-R or CD-RW] then physically "slay down" any pits and lands you want to remove, leaving only a extremely long pit -null info- , but without damaging the external surface, so there won't be a "2nd session" anymore.