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http://www.macnn.com/articles/02/05/20/usa.today:/

USA Today: Sony copyright protection foiled

updated 04:40 pm EDT, Mon May 20, 2002

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USA Today notes that the copyright protection scheme of Sony (named Key2Audio) has been foiled by hackers - by scribbling along the outside edge of the disc with a felt-tip marker. The technology, which can cause Macs to crash, is the latest in a bid by the recording industry to curb illegal copying and sharing of songs.

by MacNN Staff

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MacNN.com Reader
Fresh-Faced Recruit

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0

05/20, 04:59pm | report spam | close Reply |
hehe

Stick it to the man...

MacNN.com Reader
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05/20, 05:22pm | report spam | close Reply |
Fools

When will corporate dolts learn that you can never, ever stop technology? Once a ball gets rolling, you either jump on and figure out a way to MAKE IT WORK FOR YOU, or you spend millions trying to squash an amorphous, moving target. They deserve to lose every dime they spend by treating their customers like criminals.

Green_Speed
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05/20, 05:31pm | report spam | close Reply |
What they deserve

Greedy corporate b******* trying to keep the man down are getting what they deserve and I love it!

MacNN.com Reader
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05/20, 05:55pm | report spam | close Reply |
Duh,

Sony probably spent tens of thousands of dollars to come up with this protectiin scheme. But in their infinite wisdom they did not test how easy it would be to circumvent this joke of a protection mechanism. I sincerely hope that the kick-a** engineers and the MBA's who came up with this brilliant idea will be fired on the spot.

MacNN.com Reader
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05/20, 05:59pm | report spam | close Reply |
Violates fair use

I buy a lot of CDs. I rarely download songs and when I do, if I like the music, I buy the CD (except in cases where the recording is sold, the CD is out of print or impossible to find). So, buying anywhere from 30 to 50 CDs per year, I suppose I am one of the recording industry's good customer. And I want to be able to catalog and play back my music collection via iTunes and my iPod. Typically, I only use the CD as archival backup media, and of course I enjoy have the artwork, liner notes and lyrics. I think this is a completely reasonable use of their product and I have no intention of ever buying a CD that won't allow me to play it in my preferred fashion; no matter how much I want the music.

cpowers

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05/20, 06:02pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Can't help beat the iron

A high tech solution destroyed by the lowest tech idea, a magic marker..

cpowers

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05/20, 06:02pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Can't help beat the iron

A high tech solution destroyed by the lowest tech idea, a magic marker..

woowooo
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05/20, 06:27pm | report spam | close Reply |
All Your Magic Markers...

Belong Us.

All Sharpees, El Marko and Black Permanent markers will hearby be classified as illegal under the Digital Copyright Act as instruments of theft. Thus sign Senator "Billary" Clinton of the BillHilly Clintons.

And to think, years ago I used a hole punch to double side 5.25" floppies! that way I circumvented paying more for double-sided Double Density...Man am I old...

Marcus
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05/20, 06:59pm | report spam | close Reply |
Warnings

Are Sony warning people that the CD you are buying may cause your computer to crash. I think the music buying consumers should just not buy those disks.
This is almost as good as the cracking of the DVD protection.

Patrick_Starfish
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Joined: Feb 2002

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05/20, 07:10pm | report spam | close Reply |
i dont give them money

The best way to hurt these labels is to refuse to pay for a CD you cannot put on your 'pod. that said, I think anythnig that can be done to stick it to the man is fair play. I'd love to see sony try to sue sharpies via DMCA since they could be construed as an instrument through which copyrighting can be circumvented. I think I'll go download audio galaxy now so that i can steal some sony music (note to self, check their web-site and see what c*** they distribute) and then chunk it in the trash!

fair use lives on!

haha corporate pig dogs! I blow my nose in your general dirrection.

mytdave
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Joined: Aug 2000

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05/20, 07:55pm | report spam | close Reply |
Boycott?

Sony (& others), are you listening? There's a few things you should know:

1. We have a right to use the music we purchase in any way we see fit - for personal use (not for distribution) such as copying it to our personal portable music players.

2. You will never, ever be successful in stopping people from copying their media. We will always find a way. Furthermore, people have a right to do so for personal use only.

3. I personally will not tolerate CDs or other media that have been manipulated in this "copy protected" fashion. I will no longer buy any music from the Sony label until you cease and desist from using this "schema", and if I discover a CD encoded with this or any other non-standard format, I will immediately return it and demand a full refund. I will not pay good money to be inconvenienced or have a disc that plays poorly, not at all, or with substandard quality.

4. Read and learn: The more you and other companies tighten your grip on the average consumer, the more money you will lose. You have already lost my purcahse dollar. I have a modest music collection of 102 CDs, and it grows as often as I can afford to purchase another disc. It will no longer grow with new titles from Sony or affiliates who "copy protect" the CDs.

5. You need to go after the large-scale counterfeiters and black marketers and leave the consumers alone. We're not the problem. The problem is the big bad-guys and it's also fueled in part by your own greed. So knock it off.

On another note, it's time for someone to challenge the constitutionality of the DMCA. I'd do it, but I'm poor so I wouldn't even get past step 1. :(

MacNN.com Reader
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05/20, 08:04pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: All Your Magic Marker

And to think, years ago I used a hole punch to double side 5.25" floppies! that way I circumvented paying more for double-sided Double Density

Me too. :) Some boxes even said expressly not to do this because it wouldn't work, but it always did. Why didn't they just punch a hole in it to begin with and sell them as double-sided disks?

Re: Warnings
According to the article linked above, "The cover of the copy-protected discs contain a warning that the album will not play on Macintoshes or other personal computers." But I thought last week MacNN linked to a story about Macs crashing, in some cases to the point of needing to reformat the drive, and the issue was that there wasn't a warning. Maybe now they're labeling them properly so as to avoid lawsuits. I would certainly hope so.

MacNN.com Reader
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05/20, 08:14pm | report spam | close Reply |
Hole-punching disks

99.9% of the time it did work. But single-sided media was only quality tested on one side. Essentially, though not accurately, singled-sided media was just double-sided media that failed the double-side quality control.

And that was merely being a skinflint, not thievery. You stole nothing from the floppy maker; you just voided your media guarantee.

MacNN.com Reader
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05/20, 08:44pm | report spam | close Reply |
The hand that feeds you

It's really funny; although I'll confess to having a couple of MP3s of songs I don't own on my hard drive, I run a website and I am an active anti-piracy advocate through that channel and in regular life. I buy CDs and DVDs. I also like to occasionally rip some MP3s onto my hard drive so I don't have to have the CD handy.

I also know that fair use has been in the law since the early days of recordable media, and even though I'm not the problem, I'm not going to pay money for an unnecessarily copy protected CD (Though I don't condone the copy protetion on DVDs, I make an exception with them, since the situation is significantly different there--there aren't many situations where you really need to rip one of those).

So, there's one less customer, on account of their "anti-piracy" scheme, the actual pirates got around it anyway, and instead of saying "don't copy that, even if you can", I'm now inclined to say "Stick it to 'em!"

MacNN.com Reader
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05/20, 09:14pm | report spam | close Reply |
Record Companies are

fighting a losing battle. If the record industry was focused on distributing music on formats with better audio fidelity than CD, we would never have been happy downloading the same CD as an MP3 for free.

eee

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05/20, 10:31pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
To pirate those CDs...

First they'd have to put something I want on them, because as much as I love hacking I'm not gonna bother for a celine dion CD. Man is she a no-talent crack ho'.

eee

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05/20, 10:32pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Near, far...

That song belonged in a Sesame Street episode.

MacNN.com Reader
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05/20, 10:43pm | report spam | close Reply |
Greek CDs

Most of the major popular artists in Greece publish their music via Columbia records, part of Sony. Every single new release in 2002 has been copy protected.

It is only a matter of time before CDs start showing up in the United States that have copy protection (what's the point of selling CDs in Europe with protection when the ones sold here in the US are not protected? Internet anyone?)

Here is what will happen in the US, once the major labels release protected CDs... there will be a HUGE consumer backlash, and the labels will have major problems then. I predict that stores will be forced to put protected CDs in their own section, and nobody will buy them after that.

eee

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05/21, 02:01am | report spam | close Reply | delete
So...

Since Greece appears to have a headstart over the US, what happened there? Are the copy-protected CDs selling at all?

darcybaston
Grizzled Veteran

Joined: May 2000

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05/21, 07:24am | report spam | close Reply |
audio

Portable CD-player, Audio IN, MP3 encoder, content management preserved.

HiFiGuy
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Joined: Feb 2000

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05/21, 12:26pm | report spam | close Reply |
No Longer Forced 2 Pirate

Boy, I thought I have to download all the songs, liner notes, and artwork from the Internet.

It's good to know that I can now go to a store and buy the pseudo-CD (and a marker).

(Oh, and while I'm whining... Give me a full-size plastic jewel case, not the shoddy cardboard or the slim c***.)

spinoleone

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05/21, 05:13pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Despite..

..all the garp of copyrights, I actually agree with keeping copyrights for the benefit of the artist. (Note: Not the companies that promote them, that's a contract with the artist and the company). I support that artists can distribute their own material without the consent of the company that can pay them for the rights of a certain amount of material. I support the right for any artist to make money on their work if they feel they have a market to sell to.

What I find deplorable is enforcing a copyright against the very people who are buying the product. The only way you can "steal" something off the CD, is if you have the CD in your posession, which usually means you bought that CD And the only reason companies do this is that they can't come up with a sane method to stop those have not purchased the music but still have a copy of it. And even then, thse people might just have this music JUST by listening to the radio. The companies "give away" the properties of artists they bought, then complain about people having copies of it?! That's stupid. As an artist, I would complain to a company, despite any compensation, that would completely mismanage the material that represents me and my talents. And how do the radio guys get to play the companies' bought music? They negotiate with each other. The companies need to create a dialouge with those who want to distribute their goods, not burn them at the stake..(and if those who want to distribute can't handle it and decide not to deal with "those capitialist pigs", then tough.. they own the rights to it ) *But* the companies can't have it both ways...Bottom line: those that have paid for the goods, should be able to enjoy the goods, not punished for the lack of scruples of record companies and the anarchists that hate them.

So a little note to you fat corporate slackers: instead of spending $$ on how to stop people from being able to listen to music, how about figuring out better ways to sell it so we all can enjoy it...not only will your customers enjoy it more, so will the artists that keep you people in business.

MacNN.com Reader
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07/23, 02:18pm | report spam | close Reply |
This just gets uglier

Ever wonder how the latest hits become hits? Is it because people are actually requesting the songs? Or because the record companies pay the radio stations to play them? Hmmm...check out http://www.salon.com/ent/clear_channel/index.html

But I digress.

I came across some survey results the other day (http://www.edisonresearch.com/RecordBuyersIIPress.htm) that discuss the "download problem". One of the suggestions is that the record labels enlist the help of the artists in cracking down on piracy. Folk singer Janis Ian, however, gives an idea of why artists may not be in a big hurry to help here: http://www.janisian.com/article-internet_debacle.html.

The truth of the matter is that there is just about no evidence that conclusively points the finger and says, "Yes, your sales are down because people are downloading MP3s instead of buying CDs". All they can do is point at circumstantial evidence ("Our sales are down, and look at all the blank CDs sold!") and claim that "No, those CDs were not used to back up personal data or send digital photos of the kids to grandma. Nope! They were all used to STEAL MUSIC FROM US!!!" Let's face it - this is a weak argument on a good day, and I'm not having a particularly good day. After all, concert ticket sales are down, too. If I was stealing recordings off of the internet, would I not still go to the concert? Or buy T-shirts? Perhaps there's another problem, here. Perhaps...just maybe...the record labels aren't selling what people want to hear!

(An interesting side note - Counting Crows' second and third albums were considered 'flops' because they sold only 2.2 and 1.1 million copies, respectively. We'll ignore the fact that that represents somewhere between $30 and $40 million gross for "Recovering the Satellites" and $15-20 million for "This Desert Life". A decent amount of money, I'd say.)

The average price of CDs has gone up, while the cost of manufacturing has gone down, and people know it. (Have you noticed recently that it's cheaper to buy a movie on DVD than it is to purchase the soundtrack for that movie?) In the meantime, the amount of money spent on promoting artists and albums has skyrocketed, and it shows. People are starting to feel ripped off by the music industry. That doesn't make stealing music right, but it does make it attractive.

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USA Today: Sony copyright protection foiled

updated 04:40 pm EDT, Mon May 20, 2002

hehe

Fools

What they deserve

Duh,

Violates fair use

Can't help beat the iron

Can't help beat the iron

All Your Magic Markers...

Warnings

i dont give them money

Boycott?

Re: All Your Magic Marker

Hole-punching disks

The hand that feeds you

Record Companies are

To pirate those CDs...

Near, far...

Greek CDs

So...

audio

No Longer Forced 2 Pirate

Despite..

This just gets uglier

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USA Today: Sony copyright protection foiled

updated 04:40 pm EDT, Mon May 20, 2002

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hehe

Fools

What they deserve

Duh,

Violates fair use

Can't help beat the iron

Can't help beat the iron

All Your Magic Markers...

Warnings

i dont give them money

Boycott?

Re: All Your Magic Marker

Hole-punching disks

The hand that feeds you

Record Companies are

To pirate those CDs...

Near, far...

Greek CDs

So...

audio

No Longer Forced 2 Pirate

Despite..

This just gets uglier

Login Here

Register for our weekly email newsletter:

Connect tools:

Subscribe

to our RSS

Follow us

on Twitter

Most Read

10 Most Discussed

MacNN Marketplace