A cold play

[greatbear]

One of my fave techie sites, Ars Technica, has a little write-up of yet another example of just how far the recording industry will go in delivering a crippled, defective and damaging product to faithful paying customers as well as leaving them no recourse whatsoever in returning such products or repairing any damage done.

I realize that I am preaching to the choir here in my blog. Just today I had a discussion at work with a couple people who basically did not realize that this kind of shit goes on, or is becoming more prevalent day by day. This has not one damn thing to do with stopping so-called 'piracy', and it has never been. These companies want to be able to control every last aspect of how 'their' 'content' is used, and making money on it at every turn. The reactions from these people was nothing short of shock and anger. Spread the word to your non-technical friends. Point out every instance of such heavy handedness from conglomerates and tell them to vote with their dollars. Turn them away from manufactured, focus group-derived tripe and onto talented, independent artists on listener-friendly labels. Your friends, and those artists, will thank you.

And for you Windows users, disable autorun on your optical drives. Your PC will thank you.

Comments

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

I use CDex as my ripper. As long as it's started prior to inserting a CD, it has exclusive use of that particular drive and will not let anything 'autorun'. It will then rip normally. I tend to not play any CDs in the PCs, instead they arrive there once to simply rip the tracks into my ever-expanding library, and an occasional copy.

[furr-a-bruin.livejournal.com]

I haven't been buying many new CDs lately (frankly, the last new group I liked hit the scene back in 1992 or so) which means the only one I've gotten with any kind of copy protection is the first disc of the two-cd live album by A-ha (How Can I Sleep With Your Voice In My Head) that I had to import from Europe. I managed to rip it OK (thanks, Plextor!) but I'm having trouble re-assembling the "seamless" blocks of songs so there isn't a little glitch in between....

Any idea how common this crap is on CDs released here in the US? I suppose I should just hie my butt to a record store and start looking....

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

The music companies treaded lightly into the US market at first, foisting (rather, beta-testing) their control schemes in Europe first. Lately though, it's becoming more and more prevalent here as the companies' greed and control-freak nature takes them over.

I had a link to a site that had listed CDs containing DRM measures but cant seem to find it. The list was quite huge.

[in-fin-i-ty.livejournal.com]

God. It's fucking amazing that anyone wants to get signed to a label anymore - especially since it seems like most 'indie' labels are backed by a major anyways. Urf.

I have to love this one: "Some car stereos with satellite 'Guidance' systems" BWAH!?!? Am I just missing something or is there like some way for the satellite to like take over your stereo, hijack the music and then beam it to Mars or something?

But yeah! Support independent music! :)

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

I remember when a major label deal was something. Now it's like selling your soul to the devil and dining on feces daily.

The issue with the 'guidance system' players is simply that there is more to the player than a simple audio player (it's more like a PC) and might see the data track as invalid, and refuse to do anything more with the disk. But, there aint no way you can get a refund. I would be a prick and return it as defective, take the 'new' one out to the car, tear open the package, walk back in, "Defective, gimme another" and repeat until something were done about it.

Independent music, and independent musicians ROCK. :-)

[in-fin-i-ty.livejournal.com]

and repeat until something were done about it.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAH!!!!! (And that icon makes it sooooooo much funnier!)

Unfortunately I suspect they'd just pop it in their own system (which they'd make sure was compatible) and be all nasty. (I bought a porn once that, for whatever reason, didn't seem to run on my Mac. Worked fine on a PC, tho, so they wouldn't take it back. *GRRRR*) Though it would be funny if they put it in their computer and whacked out the system somehow.

On the other hand if you had a whole crowd of people target a series of known mal-ed CDs you could like drain their stock in no time. That would be HAWT.

[furrbear.livejournal.com]

Good write-up on Groklaw this afternoon.

The only drives I have with autorun enabled are the pseudo-devices Daemon-mount creates so I can mount disc images: ISO, NFO/BIN, NRG,...

Independent music, and independent musicians ROCK. :-)

A-MEN!!! And are usually better.

Macs won't play

[fingertrouble.livejournal.com]

..yes you don't have this problem because the discs won't play! See the exceptions on this Coldplay CD, it says the CD won't play on Macs, or PC on a Mac. Most DRM won't work on Macs because it's usually PC software.

Greatbearmd - I posted about this on Radio Clash: http://www.mutantpop.net/radioclash/archives/2006/01/04/autorun-is-evil/

Re: Macs won't play

[jrjarrett.livejournal.com]

Um, say what?

I will admit that I haven't tried the ColdPlay disc (ColdWHO?), but I believe arthole is right, and so are you. It's not a problem on Macs because the autorun software on the disc that attempts to hijack use of your audio drive and its mapped audio applications is PC-only. Since there is no autorun feature (at least in OS X), there's no way on a Mac to hijack. Since these discs ostensibly still have to play in generic CD players, they must follow the Redbook standard for audio tracks, so if there's no other software in the way, they'll play.

That's why turning off autorun on PCs pretty much defeats this.

(What a great security feature. "Here, just start executing whatever code you want to as soon as I slam the door shut on this optical drive! No, really! Please! Take over my PC!")

neway. YMMV.

Re: Macs won't play

[fingertrouble.livejournal.com]

actually some of the DRMs break the redbook standard and don't play on non-standard or different drives and aren't normal CDs...and wouldn't play on Macs, as wouldn't this DRM wouldn't unless you have a non-CD writable drive on your Mac (unlikely)

The one that Universal (I think) used did that.

Re: Macs won't play

[furr-a-bruin.livejournal.com]

As timbearcub noted, some of these schemes DO break Red Book; that's why Philips - when the first of these schemes surfaced - took a very firm stand that they would sue anyone who put out a "broken" disc with any of the official CD logos on the package. The one that greatbearmd linked to an example of might actually get that label sued by Philips - although the logo isn't on the printed materials, the fact it's on the case is probably enough to put 'em in jeopardy.

While I'm sure it's possible to find nasty stuff any major corporation has done, I do have to applaud Philips for insisting that the CD standard not be corrupted.