From: adam at nhh.hu (Szilveszter Adam)
Subject: [Fwd: Caveat Lector: Beastie Boys Evil]

Eric Paynter wrote:

> The sad part about this entire topic is the futility of attempting to copy
> protect in the first place. So they install some software and Mac and
> Win... then some Linux kiddie rips the CD and puts it on P2P and it's out
> now for the whole world. All it takes is one person to break it and it's
> all over. What a waste of resources trying to protect it.

Unfortunately, it's worse now. They will in all seriousness put out a 
broken (non-Redbook compliant) CD (that still has the "Compact Disc 
Digital Audio" logo on it in many cases!) that has the audio tracks in a 
format that most CD-ROM drives and burners etc will not be able to 
properly play because they eg look like data tracks with intentional 
errors in them, or a TOC where all tracks are just 2 seconds long or TOC 
entries that point to junk etc, while count on the fact that most simple 
audio CD players don't give a s*t about data tracks, or even the audio 
CD standard's finesses but will just start playing anyway and therefore 
the "copy-protected" (in reality: playback protected) CD will work there 
(most of the time. If you are unlucky and have a more picky model, then 
it will not work even there. Like car stereos, for example) And then, so 
that the computer people cannot claim that they cannot play the CD, they 
will also include a dumbed-down low-quality version that is only 
playable ba the special player application that also comes with the CD. 
(That's how eg Cactus works) This application will of course only be 
available for win and perhaps the mac. So on your Linux or BSD box, you 
will not be able to even play the CD, if your drive is 
standards-compliant. The labels figure that even if you "break" the DRM 
on the dumbed-down versions, there is really no point, since the quality 
is just ****. In order to get to the audio, you would often have to muck 
around with low-level stuff in reading routines of the drives however, 
which may not always be possible.

Of course, this is not to say that some manufacturers of eg CD burners 
have not started implementing workarounds for some of the (older) 
copy-protection schemes so that those drives will still be able to grab 
the CDs. The really funny part is that some of these manufacturers are 
members of big conglomerates that also include record labels... although 
I am not sure that eg Sony models can circumvent copy-protection in use 
at Sony Music... I somehow doubt this... but possible. These big 
corporations are funny places, even the parts internally compete with 
each-other on who is best and who generates more revenue.

This is also not to say that once the content can be played back the 
analogue signal cannot be re-converted to digital (and this is even not 
forbidden by the many laws against circumvention of "technical 
mesaures") and with sufficiently high-quality parts the difference will 
not be that big for the ears... hey many people still find quality of 
normal tapes acceptable!

But still that means that I never buy a CD that is copy-protected, no 
matter what. The more people who do this the more impact it will have. 
(And I am absolutely mad at some labels who do not even warn you on the 
cover that they use copy protection, or only do it in English, which 
many people here do not understand. Luckily this is getting rare.) For 
example there is a somewhat-popular radio DJ in Hungary who puts out a 
new mix of the previous year's hits each year. He is signed up with Sony 
Music Hungary. One year the CD contained copy-protection. I did not buy 
it, and told others not to do it either. Next year, the copy-protection 
was gone. Probably, because sales dropped significantly (while the 
copying didn't) This merely confirmed my belief that consumer behaviour 
may be a key.

Regards,
Sz.

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