DRM Crippled CD: A bizarre tale in 4 parts

On another note… What were your reasons for not purchasing those other Sony products?

I just want to say thank you for making me laugh out loud reading your post. As a high $ audio tech spender, I sympathize with your trauma.

With the full corporatization of radio limiting 98% of music to viral marketing, crippling CDs through the use of DRM further limits music from reaching a wider audience. Given the immense quantity of music available, if an album is prevented from making it onto the networks than its visibility would be severely reduced.

I feel that P2P is moving music consumption in a new direction, towards a ‘try before you buy’ paradigm. Just as you’d want to try out a TV set in the store to see its picture quality, or take a car for a test drive, I want full information before I commit to a purchase. As time passes, and as my discretionary budget allows, the digital copies of albums I find remarkable are slowly being paired by physical copies on my shelf.

read towards the end of the post:

If you think that this cannot get any dumber, you would be wrong. The coup de grace of this exercise in corporate stupidity is this:

“If you have a Mac computer you can copy the songs using your iTunes Player as you would normally do.”

Words simply fail me . . .

Hubby works for Sony Playstation, and I gotta say he’s as pissed off at Sony music for their stupidity issues as anyone. Sigh. Hopefully they’ll get the next round of makeovers that Sony Electronics is currently undergoing…

This is what happens when good engineering companies get taken over by the marketeers. Time for an engineering revolt…

“I make a backup copy (in case of loss). If I really like a disc, I make a copy for the car or the weekend house. If the disc is “youth-friendly,” I’ll make a copy for my wife’s classroom. She teaches art, and I refuse to let her take any more original discs to school — they have all gotten destroyed.”

Don’t know where to come out on this. You’re arguing in favor of buying a kind of unlimited personal use license, which I sympathize with, but Sony seems to be following what every business does with their property: try and extract the maximum possible revenue stream from it. Within the strictures of fair use doctrine and copyright, you get the license they give you, a license that you obviously should reject if you absolutely have to have four copies of the CD.

Suncomm encourages people to break its DRM

Barry bought a CD by the band My Morning Jacket, only to discover that it was crippled with Suncomm DRM, apparently as a ploy by Sony to make keep its music from being played on iPods (which compete with Sony’s own proprietary players). The band appare…

I own My Morning Jacket’s “Z” and had no issue at all with importing it into iTunes and onto my iPod. I read other sites about the DRM and was worried, but I love the band and bought it anyways. And I had no issues. Are there others like me?

I thought you might like to know about this.

http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/10/sony-rootkits-and-digital-rights.html

So, if the software on the MMJ is the same (being a Sony brand) then anyone who has bought the CD and gone through the normal get-to-play-it steps might actually have been installing a ROOTKIT.

Lovely.

Downoad from iTMS (if you enjoy the sound quality like I do) and do a Google for “jhymn”.

Or, buy a Mac! OS X is a wild experience – try it out!

So, in effect, Sony is telling you that the way to get full use from their CD is to buy a competitor’s (Apple) computer?

Doesn’t sound like good marketing to me……

But a good suggestion, none the less.

When I first heard of this DRM stupidity, I wrote directly to the band. They responded with pointers on how to evade the copy-protection, and noted that they use Mac computers, and had no problems importing the disc into iTunes/iPods.

Try before you buy isn’t a 30 second snippit.

Thank you for taking the time to document this process. I, too, am a hardcore music lover with 3000+ CDs in my collection, and am constantly recommending new stuff to friends and co-workers. I refused to buy both this CD and the recently-released Harmonies for the Haunted by Stellastarr for just this reason…. and I warned everyone I know not to buy them either.

I love my music, but it’s an optional purchase. If the record industry starts DRM’ing every CD, fine, I’ll stop buying. I’ve got my 3000 DRM-free CDs to listen to. And I guess I’ll have to find a new hobby to spend my hundreds of dollars a year on…

Interesting read regarding CD DRM

A very interesting tale detailing the absurdity of recent Digital Rights Management enforced on CDs. I’m not a business major, but it’s my guess that the solution to solving dwindling CD sales is not to piss off your customers.

DRM Crippled CD: A bi…

Mosz, as someone said earlier, its not about WHO’s doing it, its that all of these companies have somehow tricked the market into believing that they are using DRM to protect copyright, but as you say, are actually using it to protect their profits by forcing you to only use their store to continue to buy their product. (what??? have they LIED to US??? NO, not the god honest record companies???) The only thing is, Sony have it backward. They have no store like Itunes, so are trying these ridiculous methods to force you into …… not buying their product…. Who was the brainiac that got that passed the board…?

Well, I think the best idea on here is to never buy CDs that you don’t like, if you can avoid it. That would be like buying a CD you knew contained crappy music, only this time, it contains crappy encoding crap.

By the way, record companies make a lot of money by selling crappy CDs full of crappy music, and I for the life of me don’t know whay people buy them. So don’t. Find something else to buy, or save your money. Sooner or later when these things quit selling, they’ll quit making them.

CD’s could be and will be smaller, audio bitrate IS an important consideration, for fans and for the musicians themselves.

Sure, you can fit that many songs at 128K, but at 320K they sound so much better.

Well written. It is very like something I wrolte for my own blog, only better.

A friend of mine had purchased a CD by a relatively obscure gothic metal band (can’t remember the band name), only to find that his computer would not let him play the CD in iTunes, nor copy the files to his computer. He called the record store where he bought it, and they basically told him he’s out of luck- has to listen to it on a stereo system. This amazed me, especially since the band wasn’t a ‘radio band’, and it was certainly not on a major record label.

Of course the problem that comes up now is that he’s a college student sharing an apartment with other people. His computer *is* his stereo system- so if it won’t copy to his computer, it’s as good as useless. Rather unfair when record labels don’t consider that in this day and age, many people don’t listen to their music by putting a CD into the CD player, but by firing up iTunes or WinAmp and listening to what they’ve imported.

DRM Crippled CD: A bizarre tale in 4 parts

Or, “Sony cripples its CD to spite iPod users”. Brilliant…

so sony puts in this copy protection to hinder people who use ipods?

but look at the results

buy the CD:
crippled on PC, can’t copy to ipod
works on Mac

buy the album on iTunes (lesser quality than CD):
works on both, copies to ipod

pirate the album, good quality:
works on both, copies to ipod

so they only hinder people who use PCs and buy the physical CD, and you have more options for use if you either pirate it, or buy it on iTunes (assuming you have an ipod). Conclusion: buy a Mac or buy the album on iTunes, or pirate the album. In fact pirating the album is the now the sole *best* way to get this album, because you can get a 100% compatible, full quality copy that you can’t even buy in the store. (notice that music piracy has probably been a huge factor driving mp3 player sales in the first place.) Woops, didn’t they do this to try to *hurt* apple? They have managed to only hurt themselves, both as sellers of PCs and as sellers of CDs, not to mention the fans of My Morning Jacket, and the band themselves.

morons.

I like MMJ and was considering buying this album, but now I’ll probably try to get a pirated copy and just go see MMJ in concert.

Its a side point, but have people tried their copies of Z? Mine copied to I-tunes without any problem — no drm protection.

“Try before you buy isn’t a 30 second snippit.”

Exactly.

“If you are able to download a song via p2p you have no economic incentive to buy the CD. If you do, that’s just you being nice and obeying a law.”

Wrong. In this new paradigm I am making a rational decision to support artists who put out quality material. I am giving them incentive to compete through the production of top notch music rather than flashy marketing or catchy artwork. My own incentive is to enable that artist to continue making excellent music instead of relying on ‘best of’ compilations and name brand recognition.

99.8% of the music I listen to recieves no radio airplay, and 30 second samples do little to tell me about the quality of an album. I mean, I could purchase a car without getting it inspected or test driven becuase it looks nice on the outside, but frankly that’s a huge risk I’m not willing to take.

It really isn’t much different than checking CDs out of the library before deciding which to purchase. Being equipped with full information is a theoretical lynchpin of the market system, and P2P is bringing this closer to reality.

“Try before you buy isn’t a 30 second snippit.”

Exactly.

“If you are able to download a song via p2p you have no economic incentive to buy the CD. If you do, that’s just you being nice and obeying a law.”

Wrong. In this new paradigm I am making a rational decision to support artists who put out quality material. I am giving them incentive to compete through the production of top notch music rather than flashy marketing or catchy artwork. My own incentive is to enable that artist to continue making excellent music instead of relying on ‘best of’ compilations and name brand recognition.

99.8% of the music I listen to recieves no radio airplay, and 30 second samples do little to tell me about the quality of an album. I mean, I could purchase a car without getting it inspected or test driven becuase it looks nice on the outside, but frankly that’s a huge risk I’m not willing to take.

It really isn’t much different than checking CDs out of the library before deciding which to purchase. Being equipped with full information is a theoretical lynchpin of the market system, and P2P is bringing this closer to reality.

Though you folks are not generally techies, other DRM news on the hardware and security side:

Sony DRM thought to install software on your computer, bypassing prudent security practices.
See: http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/10/sony-rootkits-and-digital-rights.html

Between this and this (the fact that the DRM rootkit cannot even be installed on a Mac), I am happier and happier to be a Mac user. Have you thought of doubly ‘voting’ against Sony by spending that $3,000+ you were going to use to buy a Sony Vaio on a MacIntosh Powerbook instead?
; )

One of the ironies of this, is that Steve Jobs made an attempt early on, before itunes took off, to enlist Sony in the use of AAC and Fairplay. At the time, there was no guarantee that itunes would succeed, and Sony wanted to push its proprietary ATRAC. Nothing became of this.

The funny thing is, Apple created Fairplay specifically to bridge the gap between consumers needs and the record companies requirement for DRM. Apple’s overwhelming success with the itunes store can almost be directly related to having put in mild DRM in the first place, and the overwhelming success of the iPod + itunes application.

My Morning Jacket Z

As previously discussed, the newest My Morning Jacket CD, Z, has some DRM software included. This doesn’t mean shite apparently, if you own a Mac, because I’m listening to the CD right now, and it plays fine.

I would have bought a Sony HD5 audio player by now, but they lost that sale because of their idiot anti-piracy techniques.

Sony is headed for oblivion. I hate their proprietary, overpriced Memory Sticks, and their proprietary battery technology. After going through four $90 batteries for my CyberShot, in three years (the failure of each one being “unusual bad luck”, apparently), my next camera was a Canon, which uses plain old AA batteries.

I spend $1,700 on their product, and they can’t even reply to my emails? Up yours, Sony.

from mefi: “Do you play Sony DRM-protected CD’s on your computer? If so, you might be wide open in terms of security. It seems that Sony is installing an almost-impossible to find rootkit on the computers of purchasers of their music. Their EULA doesn’t mention the fact that their ‘small, proprietary’ program goes much too far, managing to bypass security software, firewalls, etc.”

“If you have a Mac computer you can copy the songs using your iTunes Player as you would normally do.”

So, buy a Mac! Wintel is part of the whole mindset that Sony exemplifies. Why support them?

Being both a technology company and a content company seems to have induced fatal schizophrenia in Sony. Their music players have been crippled and unpopular, and now they’re screwing their recording artists by crippling their CDs.

The best possible thing for them, probably, would be to sell the music and movie businesses, and get back to making technology, which they used to do really, really well.

If they are so concerned about sending feedback to Mac to open their stuff, maybe we should start sending feedback to them, telling them to quit crippling our CDs because of some hissy fit tantrum.

My bizarre solution? I bought this CD (very nice btw) but haven’t even taken it out of the case. I downloaded the content from P2P (surely legal as I own the CD) and made my backups & nice playable CD’s from that. DRM does zero to counter piracy and much to counter legitimate sales.

i had the exact same problem with the new switchfoot cd. same reaction from the band and record label. now they said they will exchange my cd with a non drm one. great story!

Please see:
http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/10/sony-rootkits-and-digital-rights.html

this is more than DRM… it could seriously compromise your computer

“These arguments are just silly. Many stores used to have samples of songs – amazon has many samples of songs. If you are able to download a song via p2p you have no economic incentive to buy the CD. If you do, that’s just you being nice and obeying a law.”

The “samples” they put on Amazon aren’t nearly enough to get a good feel for an album. Quite a lot of them contain a quiet intro, the first few words, then tail off.

I don’t do P2P anymore. When I did, I was buying far more albums than I ever did before. Sure, I had plenty of stuff I’d downloaded that I didn’t buy the album for. That was generally the artists that had no substance outside the one or 2 songs they got known for. I refuse to pay $12-20 for crap, and I’m certainly not paying $5 for a CD-single.

I only recently got an iPod Nano, and that only because it was free with a class I took. I love it because I can listen to Sci Fi podcasts and audio books. I listen to virtually no music on it (40 mile commute).

Maybe its because I’m getting older, but I find I have only passing interest in music anymore. Maybe its just because most music nowadays is crap. Dunno. I’ll take a listen to MMJ for grins, maybe I’ll like it…

The whole DRM thing is such a crock when I can load a “DRM protected” CD into my Linux box, rip it, and slap it on my iPod without a problem. Unfortunately, the general public is none the wiser. Most ppl will just follow Big Media’s lead and eat whatever is shoved down their throat’s. We tech weenies are only a sliver of society that can even grasp (or care about) the implications DRM has on consumer products.

links for 2005-11-01

EssentialPIM – the powerfully simple Personal Information Manager (tags: free download pim) The XHTML 1.1 Attributes (tags: xml html reference webdesign) p2pnet.net – the original daily p2p and digital media news site (tags: goodread drm copyright p2p…

I’m not sure about the audiophile claims made here about compression quality. CD _is_ a digital media already, like it or not, recorded with a certain sample rate. It sounds absurd that someone can claim being able to distinguish between 128kHz and 320kHz sample rates – AND even bother listen to digital media at all!

That said – DRM must be gone, and Sony along with it. The company isn’t even an electronics pioneer it once was, just grabbing the straws here and there to stay afloat.

Workaround.

I have found that the Sony DRM CDs are very easily copied – you simply need software that can read multiple data partitions on a CD and voila! The music is right there, unadulterated.

The best of breed in this area for Windows is EAC (Exact Audio Copy). I have found that while iTunes cannot “see” the DRM-protected disc, EAC has no problem distinguishing the data (put in to confuse CD rippers) from the music. It is then no problem to extract the music to a lossless format such as WAV and reburn a non-DRM disc at 100% audio quality. This “un-DRM’ed” CD may then be read by iTunes, MusicMatch, etc.

I realize that this is too esoteric a series of steps for most users, but when I want my music (that I paid for!) I am going to get it. I agree completely that the DRM is in place for reasons that have nothing to do with anti-piracy, and consumers are the whipping boys. While I very much wish to compensate artists for their work, I have no interest in supporting a global corporation in a pissing match.

Sony is behaving like a spoiled child now that their days of innovation are long over.

DRM and the power of blogging

Last week David Lyons and Forbes published ‘Attack of the Blogs’ talking about how evil all bloggers are and how to combat our influence. I, along with most bloggers, was a little ticked off at the Forbes for publishing this…

Have you tried ISoBuster on the disc? The latest 30 Seconds to Mars had similar, if not the same, ‘copy’ protection. ISOBuster was able to lock onto the audio tracks and export them as wav files.

It sucks when you buy music, that you have to jump through hoops to get what you paid for onto your computer or iPod. Males me wonder why I still buy mainstream music, when local artists have the passion still..

It seems it is now obligatory for all windows users to d/l PowerToys from microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx
Use this to disable auto-run on your CD/DVD drives.
If you now insert any type of disc, it will no longer play/open and prevent the installation of DRM, unless you stupidly double-click it in Windows explorer.

All my PC’s are now set up like this. If I purchase any CD it goes through the following process:
Use EAC or Isobuster to extract the audio in WAV format, and burn to a CDR to produce a DRM free disc. The original is then put away in storage as a backup, as most of the protected ones will not play in my DivX capable DVD players. (I do not use CD players as they are restricted to audio cd playback only)

Last Call!

The Radical Religious Right: Officially Pro-Cancer(Paul Waldman, The Gadflyer) Cable News Coverage Of Alito Nomination Skewed Right(Media Matters for America) Alito Would Be 11th Catholic Appointed to Supreme Court: When Might We See a Muslim Supreme C…

What’s saddest about this saga is the toll it will take on the artists. They only get paid after the label recoups all their costs, and they will recoup those costs through all the revenue, including that percentage denoted for artist royalties. This can mean that the artists won’t see a dime of the CD sales until more than 300,000 are sold. And how likely is that to happen with crippling DRM and the bad word of mouth leading to boycotts?
I’m really feeling horrible for the poor artists who created this piece of art only to have it wholly owned by a label and then made inaccessible.

Copyright Craziness

It keeps getting weirder.
One journey through the strange world of DRM.

…

The post by Pat is very, very, important to read before you buy any Sony recordings, esp. if you want to utilize them with a Windows environment. The DRM root kit they are installing is nasty. And then they don’t leave you any way to uninstall it.

I am trying to do some more legal analysis and integration at: http://bhayden.blogspot.com/

Buying music is getting out of hand. These huge record companies don’t want you to buy an album, they want to sell you a very limited license to listen to the music in a manner they choose. That’s ridiculous!

What happened to buying music to enjoy it when you like, how you like?

Fortunately P2P downloading is perfectly legal in Finland at the moment, so I can get my music with much less fuss than if I bought CD’s. This DRM nonsense is only hurting the honest CD buyers. By the way, I buy my music on vinyl.

Protect customers from competitors

We are often asked how the internet has affected our business. To be honest, we dont know. Since we are still a small label that grows and our potential is not yet utilized, we havent experienced any slip in sales. Maybe we would sell mo…

Sony and Apple fighting it out in your CD player

Wow, it appears that Sony and Apple is having a turf war using legally bought CDs, which are artificially crippled to n

More on Sony DRM

Bad publicity for Sony’s DRM is busting out all over. First there was the post about Sony music CDs silently installing a rootkit when you insert them in your computer, and now we learn that Sony is using DRM to…

Want a “backup copy”?

Buy another CD.

Simple as that.

Want music in your car? Turn on the radio.

At the beach? Don’t forget the portable.

Or learn how to play an instrument and make your own music.

Random links

Stuff I’m into today that you might enjoy as well: My friend Ted and his friend Javier go to India Time to boycott Sony those bastards (credit kottke) Cay and I are starting a small business called Swell Film…

On Sony’s site… “If you believe a Sony Music product has a manufacturing defect, please call our Quality Management Department at 800-255-7514” Maybe it’s time to consider the installation of a Root-kit as a “manufacturing defect” and let them know. After all, it only costs THEM for YOU to call.

I agree, Sony is wrong. They will only succeed in driving costomers to the black market. I also think that they are setting themselves up for some great lawsuits with this rootkit nonsense…and the artists can’t be happy either. I too will vote with my wallet…no more Sony products. The last few things I bought were POS anyway, but this has destroyed any remaining confidence I had in them.

Barry – seems like you and others got a small rise out of Sony, at least according to the WaPo

This goes way beyond simply setting a cookie in someone’s internet files. Rootkit’s are a violation of a user’s OS. The system techs at Sony are trying to sell us on an illegal hijack program. Say I pay good money for my Operating System. I can tweak it, modify it or change it any way I please. This person comes along and corrupts it. Their software runs without my permission and removing it might destroy the product I purchased. I would consider this illegal, yes?
Found a reply website to Sony:

http://cp.sonybmg.com/xcp/english/form2.html

I agree with your fair use statements up to the point where you make a copy for your wife to play in class. In the UK you would require a Public Performance Licence to do this as what you are doing goes beyond personal use.

However, all this copy protection stuff is a nonsense. You, the consumer, purchase music and then can’t do with it what you want, without a great deal of hassle. Stop the people who leak stuff to the internet pre-release and those who stick shed loads on P2P sites, but don’t mess with the music buying public.

If you want a perfect digital copy use a mac and rip it with the lossless codec and then burn it.

Almost everyone here agrees that Sony have gone completely over the top with this rootkit-DRM. So do I. However too few seem to understand that Sony and Apple/iTunes are both trying the do the same thing – sell you DRMed music that will only play on their kit/terms.

The one thing Sony are right about is that iTunes stranglehold is bad. It’s OK if you buy an iPod and buy all your music from ITunes, but why on earth should you have to? – you should be able to use any music supplier and any player. That’s what competition is all about.

I’m not buying anything from either of them. I get unencumbered music from places like magnatune.com (and the artists get 50%), or if you don’t care about artists payments and want big-label bands then go to allofmp3.com and download in whatever format you like from raw-CD to ogg. (or use P2P of course – not always legal, but if it’s cheap, effective, convenient, wide-ranging and unencumbered one can be forgiven for going that way).

Supporting DRM will be bad for you (and everyone else) in the long term – don’t do it. And just because Apple’s DRM is less obnoxious than Sony’s completely OTT effort doesn’t make it right. If Apple end up with a Microsoft-like monopoly on music players and distribution we’ll all suffer the costs and inconveniences.

More on DRM

…

I find it kind of bizzare whenever one of these threads come up and people complain both about DRM and how bad modern music is and then P2P is the solution.

Don’t fall into the trap of letting the big labels define what you listen to. Sure there’s a lot of good music that they put out but there’s plenty more from the indy labels that do great stuff.

Someone posted Magnatune and I do like them, but I’m surprised no-one mentioned eMusic.com yet. Most of the big-name indy labels (Matador, Kill Rock Stars, etc) and a lot of smaller ones. No DRM and only 25cents a song. I wish they had a pay-as-you-go system like iTunes instead of being subscription ($10 a month for 40 songs in the cheapest plan), but I’ve found enough stuff to make it worth it.

I never actually bought many CDs. Occationally I’d get some obscure j-pop and such on p2p or some legal MOD files but I just didn’t listen to music much. Now I’m getting way more stuff than I ever did before..

That Sony rootkit thing is pretty scary. I think I’ll just stick with buying stuff online for now, where I know what to expect. I wouldn’t mind the DRM in apple’s stuff so much if it was cheaper. $1 a song is just too much IMO in most cases. At 25cents I don’t even mind going by 30-sec previews most of the time since it’s not like I’m out much..

CD+DRM+PC=PITA

Yarr, ahoy mateys! No, its not Talk Like A Pirate Day (that was back on September 19th) – instead, recent actions taken by various music companies may make you feel like youre one. In particular, a number of distributors have been includi…

Burn the WMA protected music to a CD at highest quality with Windows M Player…now Rip this CD with ITUNES ;=)

Stop posting the SYS-internals blog. WE GET IT ALREADY, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

To the person who said that it’s ridiculous telling the difference between 128-320 “KHZ”, you should be informed that you’re mixing and matching terms. CDs are played at 44.1 KHZ; FM radio and TV is recorded at 16KHZ; AM radio is recorded at 12 KHZ and telephones use sound at 8 KHZ. The other number is in bitrate, and that’s where the audio-file compression comes in. The highest quality mp3 file is at 320kbPS; if I recall correctly, an uncompressed .wav file is something like 1320 kbPS, but I could be wrong. I, personally, hear very little difference between 320kbps and 192, though I have yet to really sest that in a while. However, teh difference between 128 and 192 is VERY noticeable to my ears. Sampling rates and bitrates are two completely different and unrelated things. Thank you.

I, personally, am delighted that all this stuff is happening, the way I see it Sony will finally be forced to pay for their horrible business decisions. I don’t quite know how they’ve avoided being sued for this yet, but restassured that time must be coming, and when it does I can’t see a way for Sony to wriggle out of it. So to those who may be considering it, I have this to say: go for broke. Bleed the suckers dry. Bankrupt them if you can. Because no matter what amount of money you ask for, odds are you’ll get it. Kep up the good work, everyone.

Oh yeah, also about that Neil Diamond album. It appears that you can’t add a personal review of this album on the Amazon website. Maybe they are trying to hide the DRM crack listed here…

Thoughts????????

A Rip-Off You Can’t “Rip”

So the music industry is taking a turn for the worse… what else is new. Consumer rights are being eaten alive with the newest idea in usage monitoring: installing software to actually play “parent” to what you’re doing with the…

I don’t have time to read all the responses, so sorry if this has already been pointed out. You are doing everyone a great disservice by calling any disc with DRM a CD. Compact Disc™ is a registered trademark and, as such, can only be applied to disks that fit the specifications given to them by their creator (either Philips or Panasonic, I think). IIRC, that company has explicitly stated that any disk with DRM can not have the term CD applied to it (or the CD logo printed onto it) as it breaks the specifications of what constitutes a CD. IMO, this should allow you to return to the store any “CD” with DRM (sold to you as if it was a CD) as they have broken the trade descriptions act (or its non-UK equivalents). IMNSHO, any shops selling this crap should also be forced to physically separate these DRMed disks from legitimate CDs to make this point more explicitly – these disks are not CDs. Including them amongst other legitimate CDs is clearly designed to obfuscate and blind the consumer to there true identity.

As I see it most CDs have been over-priced. I can understand when they started the format but 20 years in they can’t claim they have to pay for R&D. I buy all my CDs in the resell market, many times without a case or booklet for a buck or two. Do these new DRM disc have labling on the actual disc that I can look for? I do own a imac so for me at this time there is no problem but there are alot of PCs out there waiting to be corrupted by one of these things. Something I don’t understand is that iTunes excepts and even converts to MP3s so how is this keeping other music out? There are plenty of FREE conversion kits on the net if you need them. In time I think all OS will have to include their version of a conversion program so people can use all the different formats on any computer. :)

http://img469.imageshack.us/img469/1824/sonypriceless3tg.png

Music Industry Determined to Drive Away Customers

Via DRM Crippled CD: A bizarre tale in 4 parts, I came across this article: Burning the Faithful: The ironic result is that record companies treat their customers — those who’ve chosen not to acquire music via illegal but easily accessible file-sharin…

Music Industry Determined to Drive Away Customers

Via DRM Crippled CD: A bizarre tale in 4 parts, I came across this article: Burning the Faithful: The ironic result is that record companies treat their customers — those who’ve chosen not to acquire music via illegal but easily accessible file-sharin…

Music Industry Determined to Drive Away Customers

Via DRM Crippled CD: A bizarre tale in 4 parts, I came across this article: Burning the Faithful: The ironic result is that record companies treat their customers — those who’ve chosen not to acquire music via illegal but easily accessible file-sharin…

Music Industry Determined to Drive Away Customers

Via DRM Crippled CD: A bizarre tale in 4 parts, I came across this article: Burning the Faithful: The ironic result is that record companies treat their customers — those who’ve chosen not to acquire music via illegal but easily accessible file-sharin…

Music Industry Determined to Drive Away Customers

Via DRM Crippled CD: A bizarre tale in 4 parts, I came across this article: Burning the Faithful: The ironic result is that record companies treat their customers — those who’ve chosen not to acquire music via illegal but easily accessible file-sharin…

HOW TO BEAT ANY AUDIO CD COPYRIGHT PROTECTION SOFTWARE – NO OTHER SOFTWARE OR ILLEGAL PRACTICES REQUIRED!

buy a discman – sony make goods ones (poetic justice dept!)
insert audio cd
link cd headfones/line out to the line in on pc soundcard
play audio cd
record each track one at a time
re-assemble audio cd and burn to disc
everycopy made from that disc will be copyright protection software free
they can do nothing about this – if they did we wouldn’t be able to listen to the audio cd’s at all!

It is legal – you are allowed to make as many copies of a legally purchased product as you like so long as you can convince the judge that they are for personal use or are backup copies.

FTW

I suggest that the five hacker groups who have declared war on SONY-BMG rethink their decision. We do not need or want a cyberwar. It will disrupt the internet; it will be illegal; it will tarnish your reputations. Join EFF. Write your senators and representatives. Sign petitions. Please use legal and moral methods to curb Sony.

“The consumer experience is our primary concern, and our one and only goal is to help bring our artists’ music to as broad an audience as possible,” John McKay, a Sony BMG spokesman, said late last week. “As a result, we’re constantly identifying new ways to meet consumers’ demand for flexibility in how they listen to music, while at the same time protecting the rights of artists.”

…AND this is what Sony REALLY means…

“The piracy experience is our primary concern, and our one and only goal is to help wring out profits from as broad an audience as possible,” John McKay, a Sony BMG spokesman, said late last week. “As a result, we’re constantly identifying new ways to restrict consumers’ demand for flexibility in how they listen to music, while at the same time protecting the right of our profits.”

Get ready for the unemployment line, RIAA!!!

I don’t know about you, but $18.99 is way too much for a CD–we are paying for an outdated and cumbersome distribution model where the record companies and middle men reap the majority of the profit. The artist usually only receives pennies (CDs average $2-3 to manufacture, distribute and market).

IMHO Apple has caused a revolution with the iTunes music store and the iPod. They picked up the ball and ran with it because the music industry has alienated their core market (us), which they treat like criminals. Apple has set up a system where they deal directly with the consumer, and also make sure the artist is compensated fairly. What a concept…

It should now be clear why Sony is a little perturbed, but they ironically helped to create this monster through their shortsightedness and greed. Payback is a bitch.

So the thousands of dollars I used to spend on CDs will go elsewhere. Now I download music (legally) from the iTunes music store which is great, since I don’t have to buy the songs I don’t like. This empowers the consumer by giving them choices, not taking them away.

Sony should be slapped with a class action lawsuit for their sick, deceptive and twisted plot. I can’t believe the stupidity and greed. I will never buy another product from them, ever. Thanks for letting me rant.

(BTW — I have been using Macs since 1986. Think different…)

You complain about Sony’s stupid DRM but defend Apple? Don’t you realize that you don’t own any song you download from Apple and they can limit how long you rent it and what you do with it? They both are just as bad.

Oh, and where do you get this rent / time limit supposedly embedded in the files you download? That is a complete myth…once you pay for the song, you own it. You can make a limited number of backups from the AAC file(s), but once they are converted to .AIF/.WAV format Apple no longer has “control” of it and their license ends there. Then what you do with the song file is up to you and your integrity as an honest consumer. I know I don’t want to just give away what I paid for…

I’m pretty interested in this whole rootkit/DRM thing even though it hasn’t affected me personally (I don’t really “buy” music, and now doesn’t seem like a good time to start). I was wondering if anyone knows anything about the status of the affected bands’ relationship with Sony/BMG. Z happens to be one of my favorite albums this year, and I also dig Kings of Leon and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, two other bands whose current albums include malware. I heard about a NY Times article that reports that people are directing their anger/boycotts toward the artists on the list rather than Sony. As mentioned above, My Morning Jacket’s website includes a post decrying the use of DRM software, and I’m certain they’re not complicit. If consumers do blame the artists, that’s terrible, and hopefully the artists are taking the necessary means to extricate themselves from their Sony contracts. I also hope that Sony finds it impossible to sign new clients to distribution deals. Anyone know anything about this?

If the distributor is reading this, I hope they read this loud and clear: I WILL NOT BUY MY MORNING JACKET’S CD. I want it, I would love to hear it, and did a search on Google which brought me to this site.

I WAS on my way to Best Buy this MORNING TO MAKE A PURCHASE.

Not anymore. I will find another method of obtaining the music I want.

I’m so pissed. I bought the My Morning Jacket CD, knowing that some SONY CDs had this “copy-protection software” on it and didn’t really think anymore about it. Until today, when I tried to rip the CD onto my work computer ITUNES. I immediately clicked “Import” when the CD showed up in ITUNES and actually downloaded all of the songs – but when I went to listen to them, they were all “skipping” like the CD was dirty. What’s wierd is that I clicked on the “Disagree with” button when the legal stuff popped up and it SEEMS (I know this is unscientific) that only AFTER I clicked “Disagree” that the music I ripped started to skip. The first song sounded alright until minute 2. This is messed up. I CANNOT explain how angry I am. I love My Morning Jacket and this CD is awesome! I listened to it on my CD player at home and couldn’t wait to have it playing at work and this happens. I want to take this CD and throw it in some SONY executive’s face. I BUY CDs, I don’t STEAL music – which I guess isn’t SONY’s goal to protect anyway. I can’t say it enough – THIS IS RIDICULOUS! I am NOT going to buy SONY products ever again. That includes CDS – no matter how bad I want to listen to that music. This sucks.

In a related front, Disney is now jumping on a similar bandwagon. I frequently play dvd’s on my spare computer for my kids while I am working in the computer room. I have a copy of “the incredibles” that used to play in ATI dvd player that came with my video card. Last Christmas, I purchased “Kronk’s New Groove” and tried to play it. An error message came up stating that it could not initialize copy protection management. If this wasn’t bad enough, whatever the disk did to my system now keeps me from playing “the incredibles” the way I used to. Same error message. When I contacted Disney, I was told I would have to get a copy of Intervideo’s player. No one would tell me what changes they made to my system. Why isn’t anyone talking about this? That will be the last Disney DVD that I ever buy.

you are correct — they are NOT CDs — but what to call them?

SHIT!

I was so glad to hear that there was a class action suit against Sony for this that won in court here in the U.S., if I were a musician/filmmaker, firstly I wouldn’t bother with Sony or anyone who employs DRM technology in thier products but, if I did I would be suing them and the RIAA/MPAA right about now for loss of sales to the tune of $999 Googl dollars plus outright transfer of ownership to all their patents/copyrights and businesses. Then I would take those copyrights and give them back to the original owners, and if they don’t exist any longer, then I’d put them up for sale on ebay. I’d keep the patents, create a few more so that these business couldn’t open again in the future and immediately shut their doors, selling off the sony empire bit by bit!!! Then I’d demand of congress to pass an ANTI-DRM bill that would still protect the artists and at the same time still protect the original Fair Use Act of the 1970’s!

No, I wouldn’t think that $999 Googl dollars was enough to satisfy my potential losses either but it would be enough to assure that Sony, the RIAA, and the MPAA would surely have to transfer over all assets and interests including all patents/copyrights to me. The individual artists would be then returned their rights to their works where they can then profit from it in a way that they see fit. Along with this, I would start my own label and company, along with any artist would like to join with me, to provide a much better form of distribution method for our works. Including re-releasing all our previously released works without DRM and provide an exchange program for those who have purchased the shit media a way to trade it for copies that aren’t DRM protected. Taking those worthless POS’s and recycling the media to create new media that doesn’t have that crap on it. Since all a CD/DVD is, is plastic anyways, it can be recycled. Sure it would be at a loss to the company but it would also give the company due respect and increase it’s future sales profits, so in the long run, the company would be a winner.

What would my new company name be? Fair Rights Recordings! This way people could rest assured they would be getting media that conformed to Fair Rights, when they purchased it. Sure there would be widespread pirating of the media, but at the same time people will only have the one way to purchase it, from my own online store. You’d only be able to purchase it as an Apple/Windows Media lossless file or direct to CD/DVD or have hard media shipped to you. You’d also be able to listen to any of the media prior to purchase through the online radio which wouldn’t limit you to a subscription service, but instead stream only analog quality music/videos, this way if you really want to purchase it to get the CD/DVD quality you would be able to purchase it right then in a way that you desire to have it. By analog quality, I mean 56Kb/s streams for music and 100Kb/s or less for video.

FWIW, I’ve only made three purchases of Sony products back in the mid 80’s, each product lasted less than a week, so I personally wont and haven’t purchased anything else that has Sony’s name on it, I won’t purchase it, nor will I have it in my house! I highly reccomend to my friends/neighbors to get rid of their Sony crap and get better products from more reputible manufacturors. You will never see me reccomend a Sony product to anyone, in fact I will most likely tell you not to get a Sony product! Sony doesn’t even have enough money to pay me to think about getting a playstation, let alone to purchase one. Hell, I’ve only played one game on it, and found it to be trash then, and that was at a store when they were first introduced! With their crap they are putting on the PS3, which has since been pushed back to a November release probably due to the lawsuit and class action ruling against them, I wouldn’t have it either!

As far as the Mac issue goes, if it weren’t for the gaming market not porting over to the Mac, I wouldn’t have a need for a PC at all, and when it comes time that I MUST upgrade from Windows XP, I will NOT be upgrading to the current version of Windows, as I will only go to Mac and convince everyone I come in contact with to do the same, (hell I’ve already started on it now as I currently own two Powerbooks and my next PC purchase will be an Apple, (though I’m hoping that by holding out Apple will release a version to run on the AMD/nVidia platform as well,) and I’ll be running Mac OS, as it stands I’m currently trying to get it running now on my AMD-SLI setup,) so if there aren’t any games for it by then, then I guess the gaming market will do without my hard earned money too! The Macs are the wave of the future, catch it now, while you can or get drowned by the Wintels of yesteryear!

I personally have only purchased music from three places in the last 15 years, as cassettes/PreDRM CD’s from wherever, as downloadable files from iTunes or MusicMatch, and have since quit using MusicMatch! Since the inclusion of DRM on CD’s, I’ve quit purchasing them altogether now and refuse to, this way I rest assured I don’t get any virusware on my systems. DVD’s are the same way, I rarely purchase any of them too, and when I do, the first thing I do is rip them to my computer before I even play them the first time, remove all the DRM and then burn the resulting back to a NON-DRM protected DVD and place the original on a shelf somewhere to be forgotten about. It has drastically cut down on the movies I purchase as it’s few and far between since the move from VHS, but I refuse to have a DRM protected disk and I only purchase the copy of the original IF it’s a MUST have movie that contains something that’s not shown on Starz, because I’d rather pay to watch them on Starz, copy them to my HDD and get them that way, then to put money in the MPAA/RIAA’s pockets! I rarely go to concerts/theaters because I don’t like the crowds or obnoxiously loud environments that play havoc on my extremely delicate hearing. (I can hear a pin drop onto a haystack at a mile away!)

For those of you looking to purchase a new “Media Center”, Apple makes the best one of all, it’s called a Mac! You say it’s pricy, but hell the last I checked prices, (this morning,) it was much more expensive to purchase a fully equipped Wintel based system to do all that the Mac does for a fraction of the price! For the $2500-3000 I pay for the Mac and software, it would cost $10,000+ to do the same on Wintel system at the same quality, in the same time-frame. Hell full version of Adobe’s PDF software and Microsoft Office alone will set you back an easy grand right off the bat. Not to mention the $100 for Nero, another $50 for Norton Anti-Virus, another $50 for ZoneAlarm, Another $100 for Utility software to do such things as defragging the system, and all this is before you start to think about decent audio/video software. In comparison, I paid $40 for Burning software, $0 for a firewall, the ability to do PDF’s or the Office software, my anti-virus software was only $30, and my Utility software was only another $50. Admittadly you can get the OpenOffice I use on the Mac for the PC, but you still can’t create PDF’s and that is nearly a grand in of itself for the Adobe version. You can also get free firewall software for the PC and virus scanners for them both, but not with the features that I have with the software I use or is built into Mac OS X. When it comes to audio/video, movies studios use Apple for a reason. Sure it’s going to cost at least a grand or two for that no matter which system you use, but the quality is much better on the Apple! Oh, if your interested in writing software for the computer, we wont get into how much it’s ridiculously priced to get into that on the Wintel, but on the Apple, it’s free as it’s included in the Mac OS!! Sure there isn’t much of a 10′ interface yet for the Apple around, but I’ve also not looked much for it either, as I don’t have a need to have a 10′ interface on a 20″ monitor! You wanna talk about speeds, it’s pathetic that it takes a 300+Ghz system to compete with a 1.2Ghz system IMHO! I just wonder why there hasn’t been any PC mags ready to pounce on Apples Mactel systems for comparision tests, is it because the PC can’t hold a candle to them now?!? I think so!

Sorry for this being so long winded, but I wanted to put my ideas out there in hopes that my words may influence others to do the same thing as well. I have expressed my opinions all over the internet and they are all the same, the words you say with your pocketbook get across much louder than the words you say across the internet! It’s just a shame that the majority of people don’t care enough to do the same and are willing to cow down to minority of businesses that will shove their shit down their unconscious consumers throats than to speak their minds with their wallets! IF more people were to do the same, shit companies such as Sony, the RIAA, and MPAA wouldn’t exist!

are these all spam?

you can’t convert a DRM file to mp3. You also cant just make copies of the copy like that. thats the whole point of drm.

Well, To start off, I am about as fed up with the MusicMatch, Ipod, Sony control freaks as one can image. I’ll avoid going into full details since that takes as long as it does to make a copy of a protected CD or play a track you just paid for on anything other then the PC / you first set it up on after purchase. These so called copy protection issues are simply put “CRAP” copy protection would be stopping a ring of theives that manufacture and distribute thousands of copies under ground to woodbe street merchants and selfish music store owners who don’t care about the business their in. Protect me, us the consumer and you will protect everyone that matters along the way. Let’s get back to old school… let’s cancel our online music services, delete our laptop audio devices and go 100% CD / DVD all the way… I spent the better part of the past two days trying to play music I bought and paid for on my newly reistablished MusicMatch service I setup on a new $1,200.00 laptop bought specificly to play music and pay bills online, well the hel-l with it. My time and energy and integraty is worth way more then this. I can’t even get a response from MusicMatch to why they won’t fix their system that apparently is not working since the so called licence atachment on their music downloads were placed there by THEM, not me! So in the end we only have our ownselves to blame. If we don’t play they can’t make us pay and in the end they haven’t a choice other then to change their stupid tactics …and start letting us worry about how and where we listen to music and get back to just selling the music to us….we will never break them, they will break themselves. At this rate it won’t be long… they wil be begging us to forgive them and get our business back… As for me, my download days are over… I’ll locate a nice allround audio player that isn’t associated with any online service load it to me PC’s and laptops and load via CD only from now on. Hell, I don’t have one copy of a single song that I did not either get free or purchase with my own hard own mone…who has time for these guys anyway…. let’s get back to the basics….TONE….MUSIC…Enjoying the music is what it’s all about. If you can’t enjoy it well…then get one of their online setups and waste your time trying to play something…I’ll be listening!

G from N.O…The bIG eASY