http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/28009.html

Oh man, the music industry needs to die.

maybe they could just lower their prices to a point where it would be cheaper to buy a cd then copy it???

yes... yes they do.

Only this much: There are 250 Million blank CDRs and tapes bought and used this year for copying music in comparison to 213 Million prerecorded audio media. This means the owners are only being paid for 46 per cent of the musical content. For a comparison: In 1998 almost 90% of all audio media was paid for.

Of the blank CDRs mentioned in this letter how many were used for non-audio releated activities. You know legit purposes like data back up, sending a copy of my pictures to a friend, theses submission. And so on.
Big time number fudge.

Of the blank CDRs mentioned in this letter how many were used for non-audio releated activities. You know legit purposes like data back up, sending a copy of my pictures to a friend, theses submission. And so on.
Big time number fudge.

We should mail them all of our "spent" data CD-Rs and ask them to deduct the appropriate number from their claimed totals.

Not only that, When I buy a CD the first thing I do is rip it so I can put it on my Empeg. The second thing I do is make a copy for me to use. The third thing I do is put the CD away and only use the original if I have to. CDs are expensive. Why not take care of them?

Every US citizen has the right (as defined by the AHRA) to make first generation copies of a CD they own. This is controlled by SCMS.

That means there is a legitimate explaination of every one of those blank CD's purchased, putting aside the fact that many of them will have been used for entirely non audio purposes. That is no more an absurd statement than EMI saying they were all used to pirate music.

The scariest part is that the record companies may well be about to bring the MP3 consumer electronics market crashing down. They have the means (backed by the DMCA) to do this, and I'm not totally convinced that there are enough tech savvy consumers to create sufficient backlash to stop them.

Rob

Rob, so do you think it's time for one of those (anonymous) anti-DCMA petitions on behalf of the MP3 hardware industry? Get enough publicity, hit /. and The Register and some other rags, and we'd be in business. I can't speak for everyone, but there are plenty of people I know who would be mad if were illigal to go for a run with their 64meg Rio's; forcing them back to skipping CDs.

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Only this much: There are 250 Million blank CDRs and tapes bought and used this year for copying music in comparison to 213 Million prerecorded audio media. This means the owners are only being paid for 46 per cent of the musical content. For a comparison: In 1998 almost 90% of all audio media was paid for.

Of the blank CDRs mentioned in this letter how many were used for non-audio releated activities. You know legit purposes like data back up, sending a copy of my pictures to a friend, theses submission. And so on.
Big time number fudge.

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I agree. That statement they made almost infuriates me as much as their claim about how many millions they're losing per year due to pirating. What makes them think that every cd downloaded free would've been a sale for them? I've downloaded a few songs over the years, mostly of things that are out of print. Out of print! Even if I had wanted to buy them, how could that have been a sale?

I think we should try to get everyone we know to boycott the industry and not buy any music till they come to their senses.
If that doesn't work maybe we should torch all their corporate offices to the ground.
I'm getting really sick of all these groups/companies/individuals trying to impose their views on the rest of the general public!!!

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The scariest part is that the record companies may well be about to bring the MP3 consumer electronics market crashing down. They have the means (backed by the DMCA) to do this, and I'm not totally convinced that there are enough tech savvy consumers to create sufficient backlash to stop them.

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You may be right in this but that raises a few questions.

1. What does that mean for the future of the Audio team within SB - since many of these products rely on consumer being able to make legimate mp3 copies of their legally purchased and owned CDs?

WMA is not the answer here either.

2. Even if the music industry had the ability to do this, do you think that the music industry can get its act together sufficiently well to actually do this in a co-ordinated way, without falling foul of other laws in the US (such as RICO), designed to stop such anti-competive behaviour? Their track record to date (no pun intended) is a woeful lack of co-ordination in everything except their desire to maximise their profits at every turn of the way.

3. How long before some influential consumer groups in the US (or a bunch of fed up citizens) take a class action against the record companies for selling copy protected music "CDs" when they clearly violate the letter and spirit of the definition of a music CD as per the Philips trademarks and other (common law) definitions?

Even if the DMCA is used to stop people making their own mp3 (or other format) copies of their music then that will merely push this activity underground and offshore (e.g. to China) - it won't stamp it out.

I know that the record companies try and make everyone believe that "all mp3s are theft", when that clearly is not the current legal situation - in the US at least.

They also want people (especially polticians) to believe that every CDR ever bought by anyone is going to be used to priate a music CD - which is also not the case.

If the US government decides on allowing a "digital prohibition" then like the alcohol prohibition in the 20s and 30's it will not work in the long term.

That's my point - I don't think geeks alone have enough influence. Right now those seriously affected will be early adopters - people with in car MP3 CD players, MP3 portables, people who use their PC or DVD player to play or rip audio CD's and so forth. That's quite a lot of people, but I doubt it's a significant dent in total consumer CD sales.

Furthermore, if all CD's are protected, it will be the consumer electronics manuacturers that will be seen to produce "incompatible" CD players, even though the exact opposite is really the case.

Rob

Ironically the people who ARE mass pirating music will be largely unaffected by this. Defeating the copy protection methods is very simple - lots of free software already exists that will do just that, and I'm sure every free ripper will be protected TOC agnostic when protected CD's become commonplace. Kiddies downloading thousands of tracks from Kazaa won't be affected in the slightest.

The people who WILL be affected are those that adopt relatively expensive products to enhance their listening experience. These are the types of people who are the most likely to buy their music before transfering it to their preferred environment. The record labels, armed with DMCA, will be able to go straight for the companies and individual employees who implement "a means to work around a copy protection method", i.e. by allowing the user to continue to enjoy their music in the way they prefer.

The ability to go after an individual (e.g. Skylarov) is the worst part. If I asked a developer to write a ripper for CD's with broken session TOC's (i.e. "copy protected") then that developer would face arrest and prosecution under the DMCA if they were to enter the USA.

I sincerely hope that this situation gets resolved in a sensible way, but you have to wonder whether the record companies are too powerful, paranoid, greedy, ill informed and perhaps plain evil for that to happen.

The above represents my personal opinion, of course.

Rob

What does that mean for the future of the Audio team within SB - since many of these products rely on consumer being able to make legimate mp3 copies of their legally purchased and owned CDs?

Well, I can't speak for the others, but personally I reckon that developing crap products is no fun -- and developing crap products purely for legal reasons is the least fun of all.

Peter

I don't think it will be about developing crap products. If the record industry exercise their muscle to prevent any kind of DAE from CD then I'd suggest there is no market for good OR crap products. Maybe we could go develop a new kind of missile or phone tapping system - you know, the kind of products the government actually approves of.

Rob

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The ability to go after an individual (e.g. Skylarov) is the worst part. If I asked a developer to write a ripper for CD's with broken session TOC's (i.e. "copy protected") then that developer would face arrest and prosecution under the DMCA if they were to enter the USA.

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I understand what you are saying, but if you extend this to its logical conclusion, then Philips (or any computer manufacturer) would be liable for the same thing if they ever released a version of firmware for their CD/DVD etc drives that could play a copy protected "CD".

I somehow doubt that this situation will ever be allowed to come to pass.

Skylarov was a unfortunate incident, but I can see a way around this by the rise of third party data havens that are used to develop (and distribute) drivers and software that can play such CDs on existing hardware - outside of the control of the US and its DMCA.

Much like used to happen in the 90s when encryption software was being developed for export to countries besides the US. Many US (and other) companies had research centers in Israel or Switzerland to get around the stupid US encryption export ban laws of the time.

There is also the question that if a CD drive maker (say Toshiba) makes changes to their players firmware so that they will now play copy protected CDs, then is that change also going to fall foul of the DMCA?

I would have thought not, as the legitimate purpose of the change is to let the device play music.

And if the DMCA allows such "licensed" devices to playback "copy protected" CD content without breaking the DMCA rules, then its only a short step before the drive can be used to make digital copies of the content.

I also find it difficult to believe that every "multizone" DVD player ever made (and the people who create or modify the firmware for these devices) are not guilty of breaking the DMCA and thus the companies and programmers who create such firmware surely are liable to be arrested if they ever set foot inside the US.
Tehnically under the DMCA, multizone DVD players defeat the copy protection on DVDs.

The sad thing is that while all these copy protection schemes will keep the "honest" person from making digital copies, the pirates will have even more incentive to steal the music, and the listening public (well those that know or care at least), will have no bother with obtaining such pirated music either.

However, in the case of the current copy protected CDs ripping software, surely if you asked for, and your programmer added, a piece of code to the ripping software that let the end user select which of the (many) Table of Contents (TOCs) on the disc to use for "playback" of the music "CD" on their PC's, then this would not be falling foul of the DMCA?

As this would have (and does have) a legitimate purpose besides defeating the "copy protectiion" - the primary purpose is of course letting you select which session of the "multi-session" CD you want to access.
If it had a side effect of defeating the copy protection, then thats unfortunate, but not illegal.

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I'm getting really sick of all these groups/companies/individuals trying to impose their views on the rest of the general public!!!

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Example here.
This is more of the kind of crap I mean. All these different a**holes are starting too piss me off so bad that I'm ready to do a drive-by from NY to LA

I don't think it will be about developing crap products. If the record industry exercise their muscle to prevent any kind of DAE from CD then I'd suggest there is no market for good OR crap products.

What I meant was, there would probably be a market for DRM-only digital audio players, if non-DRM-only ones were illegal. But that would be a crap product, as it would obsolete everyone's existing music library.

Maybe we could go develop a new kind of missile or phone tapping system - you know, the kind of products the government actually approves of.

I guess the closest analogy in US history would be Prohibition: we brewers and vintners would just have to temporarily retire (perhaps producing products of the "do-not-dilute-this-grape-concentrate-with-four-volumes-of-water-and-leave-in-a-dark-place-or-an-illegal-alcoholic-substance-may-result" type) until legislators come to their senses and sheepishly put things back how they were before.

Peter

It's surprising how many people here do this: buy the original, rip it, and then store the CD. I also hear this from others who listed to MP3s on other systems: and finally, there's a large number who (cassette) tape them to stop them being knackered in constant use.

The most often-quoted reason for this? "They are so expensive, I can't afford to replace them", a sentiment I can agree with entirely having been infuriated on several occasions by the destruction of a CD from use in car or other locations. (Aside: is it just me, or are the things getting softer/more scratchable?)

Contrary to the way they are actually marketed, the CD was never designed to be a rugged medium, and it's pretty sensitive to dust & scratch damage. I recall seeing the original CD-A decoder board prototype (one chip built as a discrete TTL circuit, about 2m square!) at Mullards in Southampton in 1980, and the engineer proudly showed me the glass CDs that they were using for playback tests. He showed off the fact that they were scratch-resistant and impact safe. What happened to these? The cheap plastic [censored] we get now is nothing like that.

I am currently sidestepping the protection issue by only buying cheap back-catalogue material, which is invariably unprotected. What strikes me as odd is that the "new wave" of remastered "Old Masters" is entirely unprotected, even though someone has been paid to put in the effort of re-mixing and re-digitising analogue master tapes from years ago (even some digitally recorded ones, too). So why is this stuff apparently less in need of protection than the lastest stuff? Has it got something to do with the fact it's a minority sales market, selling to a different type of consumer? What criterion do they use to decide which material must be protected and which not? Seems to me there's only one simple one - if it's new and mass-market, it needs protection.

This entire story of "pirating" is an almost word for word repeat of the "Home taping is killing Music" campaign that they tried just as vinyl LPs were being superceeded by the CD: they also pushed for a levy on blank cassette tapes in those days, similar to the blank CD-R levy now. Joke, joke, joke. . They're not so pissed about people taping CDs these days, are they? Of course - no one has cassette players any more.... But then, we are the modern equivalent, aren't we?

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This entire story of "pirating" is an almost word for word repeat of the "Home taping is killing Music" campaign that they tried just as vinyl LPs were being superceeded by the CD:

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And you know, the funny thing is, they don't see the correlation between this and the old issues. Which just goes to prove that you don't need any kind of grey matter to work as an exec in the music industry.

clearly violate the letter and spirit of the definition of a music CD as per the Philips trademarks

The trademarks aren't important: to be allowed to place the Compact Disc logo on your product (whether player or disc) means you have to comply 100% with the Philips Red Book CD-A spec. This used to be based on a certification process: something that has quietly disappeared over the years as the product reached maturity. This was important - you couldn't make and market product without it. That's how Philips and Sony earned their early money on the technology.

Although Philips is now belatedly doing something about compliance, it's not very much. If they really wanted to, they could hit the companies placing "red herring" multiple directories on disk (to put off the CD-ROM drive based players) but I am pretty much certain that they are not going to do this since the current economic climate makes them sensitive to alienating their market. Unforch in this case, there's more royalty revenue from bulk disc sales than players - effectively meaning they don't want to piss off the big music companies by (legitimately) blocking production of non-compliant product that violates the conditions of the license granted to them by Philips to produce CDs.

A more effective long-term strategy for the punters (you and me) would be a mass-protest letter writing campaign to Philips NV in Eindhoven (the corporate headquarters) asking them to enforce the license conditions of licenses granted to BMG, EMI, et al. The net result could be that they are forced to remove the Compact Disc logo from their products. So what? Big deal! you say, and unforch - as Rob has already eloquently stated elsewhere - there aren't really enough tech-savvy consumers for this to make a difference. Only if Philips or Sony thought it worthwhile to force removal of non-compliant product from the market place would this make a difference. Inter-corporate wars would be far more effective than the big guns versus the Great Unwashed (us) 'cos we haven't the clout to fight back.

At least you'd be able to see which product is protected/non-compliant. Use your head, and vote with your feet - buy music only from manufacturers/distributors who don't employ copy protection. Economic power!

My take on this is that the only way copy protection will fail is if there are large numbers of returns; the retailers will complain bitterly. The cost of processing a return is likely to be far higher than any profit margin they make on the sale.

We know there are incompatible audio players; many DVD decks, quite a few car decks (including the one in the new 7-series BMW, I believe), etc - almost anything capable of playing multisession CDs.

If someone compiled a list of players that barfed on these discs, then a protesting consumer only needs to return a protected CD claiming it doesn't play on one or more device they want to play it on, despite them being compliant CD players.

The stores (who, no doubt, will soon be equipped with EMI/BMG supplied lists of incompatible players for accepting such returns) will have to accept the goods back as not being fit for the purpose they were sold for - at least under UK law - as there's no way they can verify that the consumer actually *owns* the incompatible playback device.

Just an idea

Hugo
disclaimer: my personal opinion only, not a company view!

(sounds of off-screen, loud, rousing applause for the hero)

Bloody marvellous idea. So who's going to organise the web site with the list?

Not for nothing, Mr. Fiennes, were you successful (you were, you know) in setting up (more rousing applause) empeg Ltd.

Come on you lot, less talk, more bloody action!

Bloody marvellous idea. So who's going to organise the web site with the list?

I volenteer to host this somewhere off RioCar.org, as I personally believe this method has the best potential of actually stopping copy protection on CDs. I haven't seen more then this one disc on local shelves, so I might as well help others in places where there are plenty to buy and return.

I am currently sidestepping the protection issue by only buying cheap back-catalogue material

Surely it depends how old is old, much of what I (re)collect is over 50 years old and has no copyright to protect.

I've just got a refund on the new Rod Stewart CD on the basis that I can't read German, so didn't understand that I couldn't play it on my PC.

I haven't liked any of his stuff since Any Picture and Atlantic Crossing anyway.