Yeah, that’s right. You’re paid probably millions to produce a shitty piece of software that can be rendered ineffective with one simple keystroke, so you sue the first person that mentions this.
Instead of getting your lame shitty butts back on the drawing board and coming up with a new version that actually works.
This reminds me of a quote that I read when it looked like some ABC employees were going to be arrested for showing how easy it was to smuggle depleted uranium into the US.
But it’s so weird.
They start out by saying:
“We were fully aware that if someone held down the Shift key the first and every subsequent time (they played the disc) that the technology could be circumvented,” BMG spokesman Nathaniel Brown told Reuters, adding the company “erred on the side of playability and flexibility.”
(http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/031007/media_bmg_protection_1.html)
And then they go right into this.
just incredible.
I realize that that quote is from a BMG person, and not SunnComm, by the way. It’s just so strange. And that’s without even going into a ‘copy protection’ scheme that pre-supposes that you have autorun enabled, or would just randomly say ‘yes’ when it pops up a window saying “hey- this CD has super-special stuff that I will now install. Do you like ice cream? yes no”
Or better yet, give up the stupid “copy protection” idea alltogether.
Copy protection is fantastically stupid in any of it’s forms. At risk of possible legal action, I’ll point out that any such sceme can be broken with less than $5 of equipment for more or less anyone reading this board. I’ll not say exactly how, as although it is as legal as church on Sunday, I doubt the mods want even the remotest possibility of the SDMB/the Reader being targeted.
Robert, recording analog electrical signals used for audio has been trivially easy for amateurs since the introduction of the audio cassette over 40 years ago. It’s no secret. Once that deeply encoded and protected digital signal is analogized (is that a word?) a chimpanzee could make a copy.
What really bugs me is that this copy protection scheme seems to load itself onto computers without the approval of the owner. I don’t particularly like the idea that merely playing a CD in my computer will open me up to having extra drivers and software loaded. I’ve played CDs in my work computer to make particularly dull work more palatable, what gives them the right to load software there? Who is liable if the new software causes an error or conflict?
Cheese, I do believe that this program technically qualifies as a Trojan Horse, as they advertise it as “enhanced content”.
I know that, you know that, and every great ape that’s evolved enough to lose it’s tail knows that, but apparently the makers or more likely the buyers of of copy protection scemes don’t. Draw your own conclusion.
From what I’ve read, Cheesesteak, the “extra software” that they install, they ask you before they install it. If you say “no”, they eject the CD. What it is is a filter driver that sits on top of the CD-ROM driver, and then when you put in a CD, it senses if the disk employs the copy-protection mechanism, and if it does, then it only allows read requests to the DRM versions of the songs.
What the shift key does is keep the driver from installing, after it’s installed you need to delete the driver to keep it from working. They were suing primarily because the guy released the driver name, and the file to delete to make it stop working.
How this doesn’t effectively half the storage capability of the disk (they can’t legally call this a “CD” anymore, because they’re breaking the music CD spec), since they’re storing two copies of each song (one that normal players can read, and the DRM version for computers), I wouldn’t know. So you’re getting less music for your money, as well as the music being less accessible. Sounds like a good buisiness plan to me!
-lv
From what I’ve read, it doesn’t actually block requests to read the CD audio tracks, it merely distorts the audio. You can rip an MP3 from the disc with the driver installed, but it’ll sound all muddy. I don’t know whether it distinguishes between “protected” and normal discs, or just garbles all tracks that you try to rip from any disc.
It doesn’t break the spec because CDs with data on them are perfectly legit. A CD Extra has an audio session and a data session; CD players see the audio session, and computers see the data session. Such discs are usually used to put music videos or games on a CD, but as I understand it, a SunComm disc is merely a CD Extra with some special software on the data session. You could say they aren’t “music CDs” because they don’t just follow the red book, but they’re still Compact Discs.
It doesn’t halve the capacity of the disc because the DRM versions are Windows Media Audio tracks, which are even smaller than MP3s. A song that takes up 30 MB as a CD audio track is probably only 2 MB as a WMA.
Interesting. According to the Princeton student’s analysis:
But regardless of the lack of a logo, I can’t see anything in the analysis to suggest the disc violates the Blue Book.
Wow. If that’s true, that’s really shitty and completely worthless.
From Wired News: http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,60780,00.html .
Funny how the media jumped onto the obvious hook and got everybody up in a dander :rolleyes:
Apparently Jacobs doesn’t think I have the right to protect my physical property by managing what is and isn’t loaded on it.
Just remember: when they outlaw the shift key, only outlaws will type in all caps.
I love how SunnComm CEO Peter Jacobs tries to pretend his decision not to sue is about not wanting to stifle research, but he can’t help slipping out:
That’s really what your U-turn is about, Peter, isn’t it? Money. You don’t want to spend the money to sue, because you’ve probably been advised you’ll lose, and the appalling publicity will only damage your company further.
Here’s one of the best articles ever written on the futitily of RIAA heavyhandedness
Progress and technology will prevail.
I think Nintendo’s Idea of copy protection for the GameCube is both novel and functionally uncrackable (meaning it’s hard/expensive enough that most wouldn’t bother), and more importantly, it’s done in such a way that noone really is bothered by it.
If you were focusing your statement solely on music DRM, I apologize, and concur.