I have a personal policy to never buy CDs that have DRM software on them. For a simple reason - they are useless to me. I don’t listen to CDs. I listen to music on my MP3 player, and my wife listens to it on hers. So when we buy a CD, it gets ripped immediately, then goes on the shelf and we listen to music digitally.
A couple of weeks ago, I bought CD for my wife. I didn’t see the DRM notice (cleverly displayed inside the spine where it was hard to spot). So I get it home, pop it into the computer, and suddenly this DRM notice pops up. To rip the disc, I have to install their damned software on my computer, which then locks the files to my machine so they can’t be played elsewhere.
I don’t want more software on my computer. I have enough already. And the nonsense with Sony’s rootkit shenanigans makes me wary of DRM software at the best of times.
Then a notice pops up saying, “IMPORTANT - READ THIS TO FIND OUT WHAT WE’LL DO TO YOUR COMPUTER IF YOU INSTALL THIS!”. But their lame-ass shockwave player is so stupid that it won’t let you read this 10-page notice page by page. You can only click ‘scroll up’ and scroll down’ - which on my computer causes the notice to scroll ALL THE WAY up or down. So I can read the first page of their notice, or the last one. The stuff in between? Who knows? I searched the disc for a text file or HTML version, but it doesn’t exist. It’s flatly impossible to read their own legal agreement you have to accept before continuing.
So, the CD went in the wife’s car so she can at least listen to it on the way to work and back. I don’t listen to it, and there’s no damned way it will ever be played in one of our computers. Its real value to me is zero, and to my wife about half of what it should be.
The record company, by the way, is EMI. Do not buy any of their DRM-enabled CDs. You’ll be sorry.
Revtim’s makes a very important point. One of the first things I do on a new windows install is to disable autorun. Once that’s disabled, you can rip your ‘CD’ like any other without worrying about DRM popups and covert malware installs. Or, if that doesn’t work, try using Isobuster to extract the tracks directly to your hard drive before compressing to MP3.
You may already be infected so don’t forget to scan your system for spyware.
I know I can do all of these things (unless the tracks are encrypted in the first place without a redbook format). But the average computer user doesn’t. And frankly, I have better things to do with my time than figure out how to crack a $7 CD. I just won’t buy anything from them again unless it’s clear that there is no DRM on it. What made me really mad wasn’t so much the DRM as lousy way it was distributed and implemented. Hiding the DRM notice inside the spine of the CD was nasty. Making it so that I couldn’t read their own legal contract that I had to accept was inexcusable, as was not knowing exactly what their software was going to do to my machine.
I wonder what it is exactly the record companies want from us. They hate selling us music over the internet for too much money that we can put on our mp3 players legally, and they hate selling us CDs for too much money which we can rip legally. Meanwhile, I can put six gigs of files on a player that’s the size of a stick of gum. What would the consumer rather do, stick a Nano in his pocket and hit “shuffle”, or lug around a 5.25"-format player and a satchel full of his or her favorite disks to swap out every fifteen minutes? Now they only want to sell us CDs for too much money that we can only conveniently listen to at home.
I’ve been voting with my wallet for quite a while. It’s files I buy online or nothing. I really don’t give a shit about the cover artwork, and resent having to pay for it anyway. They pull out of online, they’re dead to me. Not another cent.
I applaud your decision not to give them any more of your money, but since you’ve already bought this CD, you should know that it isn’t difficult to rip. Passive audio CD copy protection is pretty weak, since it has to remain compatible with regular CD players, and you’ll probably find that decent ripping software (such as CDex or EAC) can breeze right through it.
The last time I bought a CD, I noticed that it didn’t have a Compact Disc logo on it, so I immediately suspected DRM. This was at Best Buy, so I asked if I could try it in one of their display computers to make sure it would play on a PC, and the manager came out and accused me of wanting to copy it illegally… I’m still not sure what reason I might have had for ripping tracks onto their computer, but this guy clearly rode the short bus to work. If I bought it there and it turned out to be tainted, I’d have no recourse - they don’t accept returns on opened CDs.
So I left the unpurchased CD and went down the street to Circuit City, where they said I could buy it, test it right there on one of their computers, and return it for credit immediately if it didn’t work. Still not the best deal, but I took them up on it and the disc ended up working just fine.
Moral: Carefully inspect any CD case before you buy it, and make sure management knows your purchase is contingent on its being a genuine Compact Disc that won’t interfere with your fair use rights or your PC’s operation.
I totally agree with you on the underhanded way they try to sneak this crap through to the consumer. I consider myself pretty technically savvy and informed on copyright and DRM issues but I’ve still been burned by this crap. Unfortunately, I haven’t yet trained myself to look for missing CD logos.
My own shitty experience was with Demon Dayz by The Gorillaz. After purchasing the CD, I tried to play it in my car stereo on my way home from the store but the player choked on it. That was annoying enough, but what really pissed me off was when I found I couldn’t rip it to my hard drive as I normally had (I’ve since educated myself on different ripping methods). I eventually ended up downloading the CD in losslessly encoded APE files from usenet. As far as I was concerned, I was morally and ethically in the right to do so, regardless of the actual legalities. The lesson is that DRM is never going to stop file traders, all it does is inconvenience legitimate customers.
Huh. I bought Demon Dayz and was able to rip the tracks and copy them to my iPod without any trouble. Well, that’s not quite true: I had to enter all the track names by hand, but at the time I assumed that it was because of my occasionally hinky internet connection.
I think my problem was a combination of an old CD-ROM and even older ripping program. Since I upgraded my computer and switched to Exact Audio Copy, I’ve had no problem ripping CDs whether or not they’re infested with DRM.
My car stereo still refuses to play anything but strict Redbook CDs, though. It most recently rejected Cassandra Wilson’s Thunderbird (which I may end up doing, too. I’m not sure I like Cassandra with looped electronic backbeats).
How come you won’t return this CD? EMI went to some effort to deceive you, they succeeded, and you are angry enough to open a pit thread. Why miss this perfect opportunity to vote with your dollar? EMI marketing is probably discovering that their DRM-CDs that are clearly marked don’t sell as well as their DRM-CDs that are misleading.