So I just bought the new Foo Fighters with the anti-theft technology. First off, it has to check for licences to pay and wants to install something on my computer. Fine. It’s my work computer but I just wanna listen to the CD. Then it launches that stupid interactive window which all the CDs seem to do nowdays and I hate, especially because it looks stupid stretched across two screens. Close that window, open Windows Media player and get horrible skipping. Run updates for Windows Media player. Still no freakin’ dice. Get online and discover that the encryption technology has majorly screwed everyone, especially those that wanna load the album onto their iPods.
My other new Cd is Offfspring’s Greatest hits which is in that new stupid Dual Disc format that has DVD on one side and CD on the other and “is not guaranteed to play in all CD players”. What the heck is that? I’ve already had problems with other Dual Disc Cds in my little portable player at home.
All I wanna do is play the freakin’ CD! And music companies wonder why they’re freakin’ losing business. I go out and actually buy the disc and now I can’t get it to play. I’ll probably eventually get it to play but will have wasted an hour of my life doing so (actually my IT guys volunteered to see if he could rip the songs so I coudl listen to them so he’s wasting his time too). Argh.
You really have to wonder about an industry whose business model seems to be along the lines of “In order to keep our sales high, we need to inconvenience our customers as much as humanly possible”…
Probably will, the reviews haven’t been kind for this album. But I’d sure like to figure it out for myself. And it looks like I can as my IT guy figured out how to rip the songs off. I’m tempted to return the freakin’ CD just because it was such a pain in the ass.
But, seriously, does anyone ever use all the fancy interactive media crap they try to cram on CDs nowdays? I’ve always just thought it was a huge waste to time and energy…
Please do, and make sure they understand why: Ask to speak to the manager, ask for a customer complaint form, write a letter, etc… Only when enough people complain and refuse to buy defective goods (so-called ‘copy-protected’ CDs break the redbook CD spec) will the music companies will stop screwing the honest consumer.
It’s probably too late now, but in the future, disable autorun for your CD drive. Never, EVER let a CD try to automatically install a program on your computer. Right now you’ve got hidden background processes (malware/spyware?) running on your computer and they can be notoriously difficult to remove. This is one of very few ways that they can try to lock up content so don’t give them an opportunity to do so.
It ruins the aesthetics of CD itself too when it is engraved with the FBI warning: “Burn… in hell/jail!”. I hate that. Specially worse are the cases you mentioned, but I don’t listen to CDs on my computer so I’m safe there.
What the hell new inconvenience are the fuckers foisting on us this time?
I bought The Offspring’s Splinter, the morning it was released. It was my day off. I was headed home for a day of XBox, beer and new music from one of my favorite bands playing through the 5.1 with the power sub turned wwwaaaaayyyyyyyy the fuck up.
(fast forward an hour)
harp music and wavy visuals, with ole duffer staring at the system
“why the FUCK won’t this goddamn thing play the disc?!?”
Oh, I wonder if it’s the extras I can access from my computer? Because when I want some rock, I damn well better be hearing it from these little speakers! Fuck sound quality, I want to have the fucking video playing at the same time. Or watch the recording of the music. That sounds like shit on these speakers. That I only want to hear on the decent sound system. But I digress…
So I rip it to my HDD and burn the obligatory backup. SUCCESS! I’m half in the bag when the issue is resolved, and I’m happier than Michael Jackson in an unsupervised day care center. I’ve got The Worst Hangover Ever blasting from the system.
Then I wonder about people buying this album in the same spot but with no option of ripping and burning. They’re out the money. This is partly why I’m so adamant on the rights of P2P users. But again I digress…
Now they want to make it even HARDER to enjoy the music we’re paying for? :smack:
I’m guessing whatever new trick they came up with will be cracked before I hit “submit”.
I’m deeply sorry for the slight hijack, but I just can’t type this all out again in another thread.
I just can’t understand an industry trying to thwart it’s own customers from “stealing” music by making it more difficult to enjoy the music they’re PAYING FOR! If I pay for it and can’t use it, who’s the thief?
Things used to be so simple. When I was a young’un, we bought discs made of vinyl, with grooves cut into them. We would place these discs inside of machines called “record players”. We would then hear our music.
Let me know if you do find a solution - I even read the damned fine print on the back of the CD and figured I’d be good to go. I just want to play the CD through the speakers on my work computer, too, though if I can rip it to a CD-ROM so that I don’t have to change CDs so often, that’d be best.
Yeah, but you had to walk 15 miles through the snow, uphill, with no shoes on just to listen to the music. And it was good music too. None of that screeching and yelling you kids consider music. Buncha noise. And stop playing it so loud!!
I had heavy problems with the last foo fighters album. It had all the bells and whistles, so my stereo didn’t want to play it. I tried burning it, since my player would play burned cds. No luck. The protection kept it from writing. The only place I could play it was at home on my pc. I was a little less than happy.
Here.
Don’t you people remember the first time this happened? I can’t find any linkage at the moment, but when it first came out everyone was pissed and looking for a way around it. To the rescue comes some teenage boy with the trusty advice; “Hold down shift while inserting the cd!”
Once again, Celine Dion is a pioneer in methods of fucking up popular music.
This is one area where being a music snob has a definite advantage. None of the bands whose CDs I buy are on major labels, so none of them have found it cost-effective (yet) to employ the new anti-theft technology. I’ve also noticed that for the most part, CDs put out on indie labels are almost always cheaper (by a noticeable margin) than those put out by the majors. Plus, you get to see the bands in small clubs rather than huge arenas, and their ticket prices are about 1/4 the price. I guess my point is: my musical tastes may well be dictated by my limited funds.
You don’t happen to have a link to the original story do you? I found it quite amusing that they’d spent all thsi money developing anti-theft technology that could be literally disabled at the push of a button.
That pretty much sums it up. Also, the sellers of this product are competing with a completely free, convenient and unlimited (though illegal) version of their product, but instead of improving their product they choose to make it worse, so as to introduce greater incentive to break the law. Then they whine about that. Then they worsen their product, and whine some more. And so forth.
Or the one right before that, in which the carefully engineered copy-protect technology was defeated with a Sharpie (permanent marker). Article about markers/tape here.
I’ve got a Soundblaster Audigy, and I use the software that came with it to rip CDs for my personal collection. So far, the only copy protection scheme that’s even slowed me down was one where the computer wouldn’t even recognize that there was a disc in the drive. Of course, the Audigy is not cheap, so it’s not the ideal solution for everyone.
I wish someone could explain to these people that not everyone who’s trying to rip an album is planning on pirating it. I rip all my albums so I can put them on my mp3 player and listen to them at the gym. If I paid for the music, why should I not be allowed to easily do this? It’s not like mp3 players are illegal or difficult to obtain.