CD copy protection

[UED77]

My family and I were in Hungary for 3 weeks recently, and my mom bought a few CDs from Hungarian artists.

Once we got home, she tried to play them in our Comp CD-ROM drive, and it just didn't read it. I suspected that the disks were likely copy-protected, and they can only be played in CD-audio players, but not in computers.

What really pisses me off are the following:


Only one of these 3 CDs were marked with the "Copy Protected" label, and that one was on the actual disk, so you could only see it once you opened the jewel case, which of course you can only do after purchase.
I bought the CD. I wanna rip the tracks into FLAC to keep a backup copy on my HD in case the disk ever gets damaged. And my mom likes to cook and spends most of the day downstairs, and she likes to listen to the music that she bought. We have a DVD/CD/mp3 player downstairs, and in order to avoid changing the CDs every 74 minutes (usually less), what I would do is I would rip the CDs into mp3's, burn them onto one CD, so my mom always has something to listen to. Now, because of the copy protection, I'm not able to do any of this.
Why not? I paid for the CD. Just because mp3 could be illegally distributed, I can't use it for my personal uses?
Heck, a scissors can be used to kill people. Are they gonna ban scissors next? A photocopying machine can be used to make lots of cheap copies of copyrighted works. Are they gonna ban those as well?

This is absurd.

UED77

[EdvardMunch]

Just color the sides of the CD with a marker, that'll beat it. Or hold the shift key.

Anyway, here's a site that does a pretty good job explaining wtf the RIAA are smoking:
http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/article.asp?section_id=2&article_id=453&page_number=1

To sum up the article, these are some of the reasons that CD sales have slumped and downloading is not as much of a factor as they pretend it is:
- There are 20-25% fewer releases since the record high CD sales of 1999
- The average price has risen quite a bit
- 1999 was a bull market, this is a bear market
- There actually was an even larger drop in CD sales in 1992, (long before P2P) and the RIAA's current losses pale in comparison to that
- Clear Channel owns 60% of radio stations in the US, and they play only the top selling stuff, so there's less variety on the radio stations and this means less advertising for non-top 20 bands
- Advertising just plain costs more

And let's not forget that Norah Jones' latest album had the biggest opening weekend in 3 years. Damn P2P networks are no doubt responsible for this!

Something that's funny about P2P, is that the availability of an artist on networks seems directly proportional to their success. You'll have no problem finding Britney Spears and Metallica on Kazaa, but try finding half of those indie rock bands that are mentioned in the Entertainment Compendium.

Therefore, the bands you can easily download are the ones whose sales aren't hurt anyway, and the bands which are tougher to download (which many users don't download at all because they're so rare) are the ones who need those sales.

[Montgomery]

Exactly. I've never tried to download anything extremely popular - or really rare, either. I download the stuff that's sorta mainstream, often really aged, so I'm not hurting anyone either. The people who copy protection REALLY hurts are those smaller bands, the ones who need the cash. NOT the one's whose music gets downloaded.

[Neo]

YOu mean actual Audio CDs?

I dont know of any copy protection that wont allow it to be viewed bye the computer... I assume you have a pretty new CD Drive (you burn stuff right?) So whats the deal?

Ive never had this problem...What I run into more is the hard-to-fake things (Like faking a drive so I can 'mount' CD Isos for games and stuff so they run faster) but never this O_o

How wierd...

-Neo

[OboeGuru]

Here's the trick:

You say it plays in a personal stereo or whatever?
Get a double-ended 1/8" stereo cable like this (http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?catalog%5Fname=CTLG&category%5Fname=CTLG%5F007%5F002%5F003%5F007&product%5Fid=42%2D2387).
Plug one end into your stereo, the other into your computer's Line-In jack.
Open some sort of recording software where you can record sound from your System Mixer.
Play the CD (track by track), recording each individual track. Compress.

Voila.

I've never heard of CD copy protection that actually works. Wacky. :p

[Cygnus]

Always finding a way to beat the system, eh Guru. I also side with you guys on this, but also like the thing said small bands best hopes might actually be on the internet. If you can get your songs over the net and let people download, you might just be able to reach more listeners than you might from a small record label. So in the end it might not hurt them either.

[hammocksleeper]

Voila.Not a bad idea, but burning it of course would be much faster. If you do what Oboe said, just use Sound Recorder that comes with Windows.



Hey UED even though you already opened the CD, if it's copy-protected, in theory you should be able to return it to the store hassle-free, right? Because there's no way you could have copied it, unlike software or something.

[UED77]

Yeah, thanks Oboe, that's actually how I used to digitalize my old compact cassettes a while back :)

hammockslepper, I'm not sure about that. Hungary is an eastern european country, which means it doesn't really believe in stuff like return policy, except in stores that are owned and operated by western companies.
And another problem is: I'm in Virginia right now, and my next visit to Hungary will be in 2005 August.
GG, huh?

UED77

[GiaDragoness]

It's sad ued77, but unfortunatly, the companies have no way of knowing that you don't plan to rip them off. They only care about their profits, and are not about to let someone slip because they don't feel like it. If you want the MP3s, I dunno, go to someplace like 24seven downloads.com or something like that. They charge like a 70cents a song or something, but unless you wanna try getting illegal software, the companies dont know you, and they don't want to know you. All they care about is their profits, and people buying their stuff. Yea, it sucks i know.

:smash: Smashy Smashy! :smash:

[singo]

welcome to the free market economy......our little corner of hell

[Killphill]

It's just, whats "right" and what's "wrong". If you could go to the store, buy a CD and only copy it for personnal use. That could be and I think is "right". But what if you go buy a CD and copy it for a couple of your friends, is that wrong? Your friends could have paid for it themselves, or did you buy the CD and you should be able to do whatever you want with it? Or you just dont give a damn about piracy. What if you went to the store, bought five CD's and copied them all ten times each. Then you went to a street corner and sold them for 10$ each. That I think is obviously wrong.

They just don't trust you to make the right choice.

[bluemicrobyte]

the world would be much more honest if there were no such things as CD copiers, photo copiers, or anything that duplicates stuff.....

[TranquilNightElf]

Ha ha h ahhaha,....oooohh you're serious :o

[Modred]

And after hearing this sad story, a little boy by the name of Modred plans to one day grow up and make a recording label that knows what it's doing....

All of this chest-beating and bullying by the labels has generated lots of ill will. Until recently, hardly anyone even knew what the RIAA was — today, its Web site is hacked and shut down about once a month.

Heh...that makes me laugh.

As for my opinions on copy protection:

Artists don't make that much money off of the royalties that the record companies give them. As was pointed out by that article that Evard posted, some artists have even sued their record labels over this. The point of the RIAA isn't that we are stealing away from artists, as they want us to believe. In fact, the money that the recording industry loses goes to money hungry executives. This is basically captialism at its worse. I'm a large believer in the free market, however free does not give the right to take advantage.

While it does not appear to have gone to such a great extent yet, the record label executives literally use artists to line their own pockets. Sure, music artists can make a great deal of money, but not from CDs alone, especially with the label taking such large cuts from the sales. If the artists actually made substantial amounts of money from their CD sales, I am sure that more people would buy their albums out of sympathy.

In my opinion, if the artist takes the time to learn and perform, and sometimes even write, a song, they should make the majority of the profit. The benefits of producing your own albums. You pay the recording and production costs, and then the rest is yours. However, I doubt that any major labels will take up this philosophpy any time soon.

After re-reading, I just realized that this post has little to nothing to do with copy protection. Oh well, I'll just consider it my off topic rant for the day.

[GiaDragoness]

Uhm, so does that mean pirating is bad, or good, mordred? lol. thx fonr the input though.


:smash: Smashy Smashy! :smash:

[Nuts]

Stealing copyrighted material is illegal, period. It doesn't matter if the profits are used to feed a village in Somolia or to pay for a new luxury jet liner, it doesn't make the crime any less credible. It's called justification, and people use this thought process every day to steal from those whom they feel don't deserve what they have. Be it a white collar wall street criminal or a petty thief, they share a common bond, and that bond is indifference.

I steal music, applications, games and other media elements almost daily. I admit that I'm indifferent to the plight of the media executives. What I don't do is pretend that my actions are somehow justified because of who loses the profits. The accumulation of wealth is not evil, just as the executives whom belong to the RIAA are not evil. They are men and women whom earned that money just as much as you or I. The artists are no saints either, they're as guilty as the executives when it comes to greed. If the artists are so incredibly upset, why haven't the created their own independent label, free from the RIAA and the horrible "executives?" Because they know damn well that they don't have a clue about the recording industry, and the money they pay to these companies is what keeps them on top of the charts.

To think that those of us who steal media are any better than those record executives is completely ignorant to say the very least.

[Basan]

I'm more on the Nuts side here... mass dl's and ripped apps u name it, I've certainly done it! ;)
But went low profile 4 a while. :cry: *Argh, only 3,3 Gbs HD free space left*