Here.



Paul.

Well, that's me and Natalie Imbruglia finished then

Oh my God, that is the most frightening photo of Micheal Jackson I have ever seen.

I think it's about to inspire a "separated at birth" picture I'll submit to Blue's News... Keep your eyes peeled for it...

Nah, I give it a month at the most before too many customers complain that they can't play it, and the record company will be forced to offer non-protected versions. It will just end up being another proof that copy-protection methods are always doomed to failure. Besides, from what I hear there are already CD rippers out there that just grab the raw CD audio and ignore the TOC, which defeats the copy protection mechanism.

Copy protection is always doomed to fail, because bits are always copyable. Nothing you can do can stop information being copied. And I'm still awaiting any proof that all these Napster clones are doing any more damage to the record industry than the legions of Hong Kong and other Asian counterfeiters and copiers.

Have fun,

Paul

Never mind. Can't find any pictures of Phyllis Diller good enough for submission...

I'm sure you probably saw these.... but here's a few...hahaha

http://www.wic.org/pic/pdiller.gif
http://www.pacemakerclub.com/phyllis_diller.jpg
http://www.dybbuk.com/mgp/people/phyllisdiller.jpg
http://www.maryellenhooper.com/photos/diller.JPG
http://www.vinylcheese.com/graphics/surgery.gif
http://fools.abc.net.au/tours/img/fp205.jpg

man, i was really looking forward to that album release! now i'm not going to buy it and i'm pissed.

stupid ignorant record companies.

//m

Heh, I hadn't seen some of those. I was hoping to find one that looked almost exactly like the Jackson photo, but didn't. Oh well.

Back on topic for this thread...

Note the quote in the article:

"There are some PCs that will rip all the tracks and some that don't even recognise the disc"

This is the very thing I have been saying all along. Because some drives will reject it and some will copy it fine, it will:

a) cause returns, which reduces record sales numbers, and
b) cause it to be distributed in MP3 form more heavily, which is the opposite of what the they intended.

Somehow I don't think the artists would approve. Of course, the artists are obviously either not being consulted, are not allowed to have a say, or are being misinformed about the technology.

Just for curiosity, I did a search for it on Bearshare. As you can imagine; found the entire album (including the cover art).

[rhetorical] So what was the point... [/rhetorical]

b) cause it to be distributed in MP3 form more heavily, which is the opposite of what the they intended.

exactly. Fewer people who would buy it even if they ripped it (i.e. most of us... well, if your into her at least) WON'T buy it now, simply because they can't rip it... and they'll seek it out online. On top of that, all it takes is ONE person who's drive can rip the disk... and bam, the whole scheme is averted in less time than it takes that person to share it on <\? echo "$file_sharing_utility_of_the_month" ?\>.They are shooting themselves in the foot.

Her first album was decent pop, and I would probably buy the second. I won't now, and I don't like her enough to spend hours of my 56kb/s $0.20/hour connection on downloading, and will probably lose interest completely by the time the third album is out (copy protected or not). So, Ms. Imbruglia and morons at the record company, you lose! (Truth be told, those morons have to show their even more moronic shareholders and Wall Street 'analysts' They Are Doing Something (TM); they are probably aware that this will do them much more harm than good).

This all kind of reminds me of the whole PMRC debacle back in the mid-80s where a number of Senator's wives decided that all music should be censored. Frank Zappa was one of the most vocal opponents of the scheme, and testified in front of Congress about it. The PMRC idea failed, but record companies assumed some self-censorship that we still see in the form of the Parental Advisory stickers.

The thing that this specifically reminds me of is that one of the first albums stickered in such a way was FZ's Jazz From Hell -- which is entirely instrumental.

BTW, if you haven't read it, you should totally check out FZ's speech. It should be required reading ... somewhere.

Yeah, I've already had one colleague ask me to rip it so that he could listen to it at work (none of his rippers liked it, but mine didn't notice anything unusual - on identical hardware.) While I was doing so, I was strongly tempted to take a copy for myself out of spite for a company deliberately selling goods "not fit for purpose" and not "as advertised" (Compact Disc logo). As someone else said, such measures will reduce sales.

10-30-2001 74 mb 1218 166 7 +5.00 a info Natalie_Imbruglia-White_Lilies_Island-2001-DVNMP3 (Pop - 2001 - 192kBit - 44kHz)

And there was even a promo released back in early September. And the album still isn't out in stores until november 27th. So obviously, this protection scheme did NOT work, as the mp3s are already out there (and have been for a long time) available to p2p and other networks.

Who is the recording industry trying to prevent from making mp3s of the albums? It's obvious the technology isn't stopping the MP3 release groups from making the rips, and it seems to me THIS would be the group of people you would want to try to stop - not Mr. Joe Blow who goes to buy a CD and wants to make digital copies of it for his own personal use.

Dumb, dumb dumb.

This IS stupid, but I do support the companie's right to do it on promo copies. Technically, they are owned by the record companies and are on loan to radio stations and reviewers. It is sad that the latest Crystal Meathod CD was available on Morpheus a month before it was released. But for a public release, this is stupid.

Hi,

The female ape from "Planet of the Apes" springs to mind.

The point if the matter is, its not going to even stop people who get promo copies -- obviously. The new Crystal Method was out almost 3 months before it hit stores -- and a promo version was even available before that.

This technology will not stop ANYONE who has the correct hardware to rip/encode the albums. And it only takes one person with ties into the MP3 scene (and trust me -- many, many of them exist) with this equipment and it completely defeats the purpose of the companies spending massive amounts of money putting this technology into the albums.

So basically it stops nothing except the average enduser who just wants to rip his MP3s from his LEGALLY PURCHASED CDs to stick on his multitude of MP3-enabled devices. Like I said before -- not the group you really want to be affecting.

You know, I am not a user of any of the file sharing apps and I rip all of my own music.
I like Natalie Imbruglia's music so this time I think I am crossing over to the dark side.
I think it is the only way to teach them a lesson. (not that my single crusade will make a tinkers damn... but hey it a statement.)
So, I'm off to get me a copy and send my message to the RIAA and Natalie.

So, I'm off to get me a copy and send my message to the RIAA and Natalie.

I hope that by "get" you mean "download". Purchasing a copy would send them the wrong message.

Purchasing a copy would send them the wrong message

Well... but if it was accompanied with a very vocal return of the CD to the store.?..

/Michael

Yeah, I'm tempted to buy the album just so I can return it. I'm sure that would get noticed more than me not buying it in the first place.

Richard.

yah not just that, but also, blind read, blind write. i guarantee i could make a copy of that cd, using many different methods. If they can crack dreamcast games, this will be no problem.

Most Plextor drives don't have a problem with the protection schemes released so far for CDDA. Certainly the Macrovision hasn't been a problem for anyone with a Plex that I've seen posting to the Audiograbber forum.

Just as a recap, can someone list the few new titles to feature this protection? I have to go CD shopping again soon, and if a couple of the titles aren't over-the-top embarassing, I'll pick something up and return it afterwards. HMV here in Canada always asks you to fill out a reason on a tracking slip. I'll be very specific.

I just returned a DVD that I bought not noticing that the Canadian version was full-screen only. I made it pretty plain that I returned it for that reason alone. If it's not widescreen, you don't get my money. :)

If it's not widescreen, you don't get my money. :)

I take that a step further. If it's not anamorphic widescreen, they don't get my money.

(Letterbox widescreen looks awful on my 16:9 television).

My Plextor drive has the "Compact Disc" logo on it. This means that it complies to the Philips/Sony Red book standard for CD-A (Audio CDs). There is a similar one on my CD player, and various other bits of kit I have about the place.

In the past, this meant that a) it was a certified compliant device b) the manufacturer was paying a royalty to Philips/Sony. These days it just means a royalty, since Philips relaxed approvals a goodly number of years ago.

In the case of the Imbruglia disk (I'd love to hear her views on her music being used for guinea pigging), it also carries the logo. Since it does not play on my CD player, and all my others do, it implies to me (as a mere thicky) that her disk is at fault, and therefore should not bear the logo. Philips is unlikely to do anything about this, but they should. Someone should mount a legal challenge from the big electronics conglomerates to protect the value of the base standard, but it's also unlikely; it has been left to a private individual in California to make the attempt. Ridiculous.

The only way that this can be dealt with is by returning the album (assuming you are actually interested in buying it in the first place Yuk!) as many times as it takes before you get a good one. Irritate the shops selling the disk, not the music publishers. If this happens enough, the returns rate reported to the publisher will go up and if there are enough complaints from the music shops, then they might wake up and pay attention, since it will hit their bottom line. Also, writing letters of complaint directly to the artist (again, not the publisher) may get a two sided attack going if you get their interest due to the number of letters received.

Think about this for a second though. I hear no protests from Philips, or Sony, or any of the major makers employing the logo; shops all over the Netherlands are dumping cut-price back catalogue at half the price they were a few months ago, including some recent stuff that I bought full price over the summer. Weak evidence, but given the complaints over CD pricing in the EU for years where no action was taken and with floods of protests from the major publishers, how come they are now doing it voluntarily? (and no, it was already taking place well before September - it was around the start of the year when it started).

Could it be (let's be really cynical here) that for the last two years or so, there has been an unannounced industry agreement which means that recent new players have been modified to play these damn things without a problem, and people have been buying them unawares for that time? Does the industry now believe there is a sufficient installed base of new "tolerant" players out there to ensure that there will be a smaller than expected (and still decreasing) number of players intolerant of this protection, thus reducing the number of returns made by consumers of protected disks? Does this mean that by making it public that they are now starting to mass-market protected albums, they are confident the greater mass of consumers will simply accept this out of ignorance or the "Well, it plays OK on my player!" effect?

I may well be a suspicious old git with conspiracy in mind, but from my past experience working on the hardware side of the players, I wouldn't put it past the buggers....

To follow up....

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/cn/20011119/tc/customers_put_kibosh_on_anti-copy_cd_1.html

I knew it would not last.
It is a battle that is sure to give us something to do for a long time.

Viva! La Resistance!!!!!