"Copy Protected" CDs and the attitude of the record labels (long rant)

I bought the new Chemical Brothers CD today.

Tried playing it on my laptop - "to play this CD, you need to upgrade some system components" says a little box that appears thanks to autorun.

"Ah, no thank you. I know my laptop is working right now, so please don't", thinks I, clicking the "Cancel" button and strongly suspecting that "upgrade" is a euphemism for "hog tie so that you can't play CDs properly unless we let you".

It doesn't play in my car stereo either. My car CD player also plays MP3s, so if it sees data files on a CD, it searches for MP3s and ignores the audio data. No MP3s on the data side of things... So no music.

So I try my hand with Exact Audio Copy on the laptop to extract the audio, so I can make a CD of the music that I've bought and licensed which will play in my laptop. EAC refuses to extract the audio without sync errors left right and centre, and the result is unusable.

So I walk back to the shop. CD was presented for refund, an argument (friendly, reasoned) ensued over whether I should have a refund or not, manager called, refund given, punter walks out with the attitude that record companies have their heads so firmly "in the sand" (use your imagination for where else the heads may be located) that they will be bust before the end of the decade due to being unable to adapt, but instead they wish to choke the last life out of the goose that, for now, continues to lay their golden eggs.

If I buy a CD, I am buying a license to listen to that music as well as the more tangible physical CD containing information. The important bit is that *my* interpretation is that I can listen to that music how *I* deem to be fit. So, if I want to play it in the car, I should be able to. If I want to play it on my HPC or on my phone, I should be able to. I don't want to play it commercially, and that's obviously crossing the line, but I do expect that I can listen to it how I want, when I want at a decent quality.

The UK has no concept of "fair use" when it comes to copyrighted materials, but the US does. The US has the DCMA, and now the EU has the EU-DCMA, and if I allow myself to think about it, I am livid that such a skewed law has been adopted in order to protect entrenched monopolies.

The thing that utterly shocks me is that record companies believe in some way that this will protect revenue. If you give people a challenge, they'll surmount it just for the hell of it. I can guarantee that if I were of that mind, I could use a filesharing client to find a perfect copy of the CD on any of the popular networks.

In the 80s, "home taping is killing music" was the slogan, complete with natty little logo...

It's 2005, and music is still here. And, oh look, more CDs were sold last year than ever. There's even some decent bands around. But there's truly awful manufactured dross masquerading as "pop music" that is just a license to steal from children and those without sense to know better.

I think that the record industry has sensed that the writing is on the wall. They've taken liberties with the cost of CDs for fully twenty years now. The cost of producing and distributing a CD is next to nothing. The cost of hyping (marketing) a CD is still non-negligable, but with t'interweb it could be a lot easier.

There will be a revolution which comes about, allowing artists to get paid directly for their work. There'll be a shift in music culture to allow for it, but it'll come. Already if you hear a tune you like, you can dial a number on your mobile, play a snippet down the phone and then receive a text message telling you what it is. What if the service connected you to the artist's website and allowed you to buy a CD, or download, directly with no middleman?

Where are the record companies then?

I think the record companies have seen a vision of the future of music distribution, and it scares the living daylights out of them. No more riding on the back of others' talent: they may even have to get proper jobs!

The other thing that shocks me is that, technically, the record companies have bought the line that it is possible to create a CD that will read on a CD player, but not on a PC CD-ROM drive. If the information is on the CD, it *is* retrievable by a PC. It is data, and it has to be read by a CD player, therefore any other CD-capable device can be programmed to read it.

It's trivial to read the unmolested data using anything that is capable of directly interrogating the CD drive without the messiness of an OS doing the interpretation. Something like ISOBuster for example, which is designed to recover data from damaged (scratched) CDs, will always be able to get the info no matter how clever the protection system tries to be.

Spleen vented. I feel better now. Don't buy copy protected CDs - just return them. That way, eventually someone might get the message that they're losing the battle because, at the moment, they think they're being clever.

Cheers,
Nick.
(having the last laugh)

Edited by chiark 2005-01-26 12:23 PM

Son? You okay? You need an asprin? A beer?

Impressive rant... and not much I could disagree with. The music industry has always said that Technology X (being whatever the newest/latest technology was) would kill the industry. It hasn't happened yet... I'm still hacked that it costs me $15 for a new CD... give me a break

You're hacked at paying £7.80!
They're all £9.99 ($19) through £15.99 here! ($30)

The Texan Republic must be a tax haven or something

You can find $30 disks here, but most of them are in the $15-20 range.

Hey, the Republic has its power...

I'm quite happy to publicly state that every copyright protected CD I have, I have ripped anyway.
Here's a message for any RC lawyer watching. I'll listen to your hacked up CD and delete the version on my MD player, when you buy me a new high end CD deck for my living room, study, kitchen, bedrooms, office, car and of course let us not forget the Discman so I can move about with it.
Oh, and I want separates here, Technics, Wharfedale or Danon will do. None of your cheap Aiwa £25 mess.

Failure to supply me with those alternatives, and well. The copyright fair use act counters the argument. If the RC's are really desperate to have me. I can also write to the Home Office and seek authorisation to use my purchase, my way.

It is worth noting mind that this is the realm of the corporate dinosaur. The fixing arrangements are all in the realm of Universal MCA, EMI, Sony Music and the like. There are smaller RCs around that actually are not afraid of new technology, however their problem is distribution costs and keeping the prices down through the lack of economies of scale for physical media.

I would like to also state that the digital download "phenomenon" is nothing more than a hypocritical farce.
Perform some elementary maths on the costs - what's the norm, 79p a track, 99p a track. 11 track average album length these days (11 tracks is a nice new con as well. Reduce the track length and bundle a load of remixes on the end. You can get away with a 7 song album these days.)

£10.89 worst case
£8.69 best case

You can go up to Tesco's four weeks after the release and pickup a bulk ordered £8.99 album deal on the same CD, not have the DRM protection and not be limited to how / where / when and why you listen to the mp3. Much in the same way as Disc's using misaligned header information as Chiark pointed out do.

Then there is the problem that we here in H/PC Land have. Well, our devices don't have Windows Media 10 DRM, and our devices don't support interface connections with Media Player over serial. So we are told we have a £700 device but cannot use it to listen to music.

...and my last bug bare. Putting Autorun applications on to CD's. I have several CD's with them on that don't even offer you the chance to say no to the install, it'll just get on and do it. Or, they will actually spoof the fact that you said no - having already installed before actually prompting you.
It is even more irritating with DVD's! (but that is for another topic)

Short answer, CD Copy protection doesn't work. DRM doesn't work, digital distribution isn't working because of the lack of technological imperative and the need for retail outlets to survive.
Having faith in honest music listeners doesn't (necessarily) work.

The US Digital Millennium Copyright Act was a farce, just like the CANSPAM act. The EU just pandered to the American conglomerates and pressure from the US government on the EUCD.
So what are we left with? The Linux business model?

Due to all of the above, that was effectively what we had to do.

Son? You okay? Need an aspring? need a beer?

I'm ssssoooooo glad that all this crap came into play after the mid-80s. That way I can rip, at will, my Sir Mix Alot CD...

"I like big butts and I cannot lie...."

Chris, after you with the asprins

And I think Clint needs a bit of a lie down.

What-ev-er!!!

Chemical Brothers are greatness...

I feel for all of ya. Even though I haven't bought a CD in quite awhile, I know the feeling.

Here's my rant: DVD's and movies.

One day I decided to go see a movie with a couple of my friends. The movie was Underworld, a dark depiction of the vampire vs. werewolf myth. About 10 minutes into the movie, I noticed a flicker. Not much, just a single frame, and I thought it was just a standard production error of a missed frame when they were splicing the scenes together. Then it happened again, and I counted it happening about 10 times, even during a single camera shot so there was no reason for a switch.
It annoyed me, but certainly didn't distract from an otherwise great film.

I got home and started on the internet and found some other people noticed what I saw. Here, the MPAA interlaced frames randomly throughout the film. Each frame was solid white with a random placement of orange dots. The MPAA was using these dots to track which theater a pirated version from the internet (on Shakey-Cam Vision (tm)) came from.


Before I even began watching the film, I knew I was going to be stuck watching in excess of 20 minutes of commercials. Alright, I can certainly understand the purpose of commercials in publicly broadcasted mediums (such as TV and radio), but this went a step too far.
During the 5th or so commercial (for some random body fragrance crap that I will never buy because of this) I pulled out my movie ticket and looked at it. I poked my friend in the arm and asked him "Why the hell did I pay for this?"

I had recently bought I, Robot on DVD (another good film). I threw it into my notebook, and when the DVD started I was presented with a commercial by 20th Century Fox on how I could purchase other "great films on DVD."
The commercial could not be skipped. I was a) forced to watch the damn thing or b) manually scan through the entire segment. I know, probably my fault for using Windows Media Player, but on a set-top box I wouldn't even have the option of fast-forwarding. (And no, you won't get me started in the BLATENT product placements throughout that movie. Ok, I can understand Audi manufacturing the car, but direct reference to his Converse All-Stars "series 2004" THREE TIMES was too much. )


The point of this? When the **AA's of the world make my viewing experience less desirable in the name of pirates and greed, the line has been crossed for me. Unfortunately, I'm stuck living with it, since the good movies I want to watch/buy are surely going to be loaded with the crap that I just ranted about.

Now the whole ads-before-the-movie crap absolutely is a kick to the crotch. I hate it and there is nothing you can do to avoid them - WMP or DVD Player!

Oh yea, its bad.
Like TV ads when your are paying for premium pay-per-view (Sky / cable here in the UK) and especially when you pay to watch a movie on one of the hourly movie rental channels we have here.

Or worse!
Adverts in the middle of sporting events... now I'm not sports fan and avoid them like the plague on Television But that must be so annoying.
Clint as some of you may ahve noticed loves F1, I've dipped in occasionally to see what he's going on about, and suddenly everythign stopps for Adverts.

Crazy.

What I think they should do is Picture in Picture the broadcast, with the f1 still on screen and they run the adverts in the quarter segment PIP.

If you must have them, they should at least have the decency to do that so you don't miss Kimi overtaking Schumi on the larst corner of the final lap and zooming over the line.

Makes me glad to have the |B|B|C|

I agree. Advertising/Disk Protection really has gotten bad. I have older cds with 17 tracks on them each - some with 11min songs. I generally only get old cds, so I am not affected that much. What REALLY drives me crazy is when I can't skip past the opening ads on dvds. I paid for it - and I don't even have the equipment to rip it. If I bought a dvd specifically to watch it on my own terms, I do not want to wait for it to start. On my older ones, BAM! just a press of the menu button and I am where I want to be. Also - I believe the whole point of paying for your tv service was to REMOVE the ads. Obviousely the people who work in those companies are deranged and greedy. As far as the cd-ripping show, all they are doing by adding protection to their cds is pissing us all off. If we want to rip, we will do so. They are not able to protect analog recording, now are they?

This is turning the music industy INTO the crooks, not us. Ads and protection inconvinience us, and make technology just that much more annoying at times. When ads start getting onto the cellphones, then there will be a worldwide revolt that will cause the music industry to topple and be replaced.

My own partner is causing the Ads on F1 broadcasts?!?!?!

I've not gotten any CDs, VCDs, DVDs for a long time ... but I can imagine how frustrating that would be!

Next thing you know, you get a pop up in your retina when you take a breathe of fresh air!! *shiver*

THATS when you find a cave to dwell in.