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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 143 responses total. |
gull
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response 7 of 143:
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Mar 28 02:45 UTC 2001 |
Re #1: It'll also affect audio quality on regular CD players that aren't
well adjusted or don't have good error correction algorithms, I suspect.
This varies widely. My 1986 Sanyo CD player will muddle through
scratches that cause my more recent Discman to give up entirely. The
audiophiles who don't already hate CDs will really hate this. ;>
I seriously doubt it'll take the people who write CD rippers more than a
couple months to find a way around this, and meanwhile it'll
inconvenience lots of people with poorly designed CD players. Sounds
like a really bad idea, to me.
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senna
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response 8 of 143:
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Mar 28 05:45 UTC 2001 |
I'd have serious problems if my cd players suddenly didn't play my music cds.
My computer is one of the main places I listen to music, and in fact the
ability to listen to music on one's computer was one of the early selling
points of the cd-rom device in the first place. As lynne said, this will only
start having a major impact a ways down the road, when hundreds of loopholes
will already have been found. Stupid.
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mdw
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response 9 of 143:
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Mar 28 06:33 UTC 2001 |
I've already got one CD that seems to be "defective" somehow. The fancy
cd-rom burner won't play it, but the old cd-rom drive in the laptop
seems to play it just fine. I found one cd ripper that could rip the
tracks, so I'm seriously considering ripping and copying the tracks just
so I can listen to it on the computer with the burner...
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sironi
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response 10 of 143:
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Mar 28 09:12 UTC 2001 |
Suppose this kind of protection will work (i do not think so).
My hi-fi will read all these new protected cd right?
I can plug a cable from my stereo to my computer and do hard-disk
recording.
Then I could also "treat" the signal.
I do not think the quality of the recording will be much worse.
Computers are wonderful instruments for this kind of games.
About linux/unix paranoia i've got a scratched cd (REM's NAIHF) that
failed to do a good job with it.
There's a windows program (www.exactaudiocopy.de) that is IMHO better
(i succedeed).
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mdw
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response 11 of 143:
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Mar 28 10:39 UTC 2001 |
"I can plug a cable" -- you just introduced two extra a<->d conversion
steps. You'll lose on quality, gain noise, &etc. How bad will depend
on what you do next and the quality of your equipment including cables.
The recording industry is hoping to discourage that "next" as much as
possible. Whether you care is a mark of whether you're a true
audiophile of course.
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sironi
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response 12 of 143:
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Mar 28 13:00 UTC 2001 |
Of course I introduce two a<->d and this is bad.
But suppose i've got a DAT.
I could digitally copy, and i could digitally extract raw data on pc.
Noise on my soundblaster is rather zero (my good shielded cable is less
than one meter).
Personally I was able to backup and restore many LP and cassettes on
cd.
Of course is not like having remastered cd.
But it's good until i've got enough money to rebuy this (original!)
stuff.
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lynne
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response 13 of 143:
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Mar 28 15:51 UTC 2001 |
<notes that putting an "&" in front of "etc" is redundant>
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mcnally
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response 14 of 143:
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Mar 28 22:11 UTC 2001 |
re #11: I think that massive MP3 trading, with the format's lossy
compression, has already proven that a huge consituency of listeners
care less about sound quality than about convenience and price.
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tpryan
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response 15 of 143:
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Mar 28 22:18 UTC 2001 |
Stores, retailers, and customers should demand that such CDs
come labeled as "may not play in all CD devices" in print as big as the
banner across the top. If it does not fit the "CD standard" it is a
fraud.
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mcnally
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response 16 of 143:
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Mar 28 22:22 UTC 2001 |
I'd go a step farther and label them "Specifically designed *NOT* to play
in many CD devices." After all, that's the point, right?
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krj
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response 17 of 143:
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Mar 28 23:10 UTC 2001 |
News articles in many online sources report that the RIAA is going
back to court to complain that Napster is not doing enough to block
RIAA-controlled songs from being swapped through Napster.
The RIAA is demanding that the preliminary injunction be modified in one
of two ways. First, they want the Napster filters to become "opt-in"
rather than "opt-out;" under this plan, Napster would block all song
files except those where the copyright owner had explicitly permitted
Napster trading. It's unclear to me if this would satisfy the concern
of the appeals court panel that the trading of files not owned by
the plaintiffs not be unduly hampered.
Second, the RIAA wants Napster to adopt a scheme to filter files
based on their checksum (based on the belief that most files traded
come from a very small number of original rippings to MP3 format)
and their "musical fingerprint" using technology from someone like
Cantametrix, which I don't understand much at all.
This demand seems to fall afoul of the Appeals Court's direction that
Napster was to filter out copyrighted songs to the extent that their
technology permitted them to do so. Remember that Napster never sees
the actual song files; they only run a directory server, and the
song file exchange takes place between the two users' computers.
This is why the filtering has focused on file names.
The plaintiffs argue that if necessary Napster should be forced to
re-design the system.
My I-Am-Not-A-Lawyer take on it: I think Napster is complying as
best they can with the injunction as modifed under the Court of Appeals
direction. The record industry is arguing that the loopholes enacted
under the Court of Appeals direction mean the injunction has very
little effect, and they want to effectively go back to the trial court
judge's original injunction, which was that Napster must halt the
trading of their songs, regardless of the effects on non-infringing
users or on Napster Inc.
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russ
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response 18 of 143:
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Mar 29 01:00 UTC 2001 |
The solution to deliberately buggered CD's is to buy them and then
return them as defective. Exchange, and then return the exchanged
one as defective. Do this enough and stores will stop carrying
buggered CD's, and the record labels will stop producing them.
That'll be the end of the problem until some other format comes along
that's got an apartheid policy built into the hardware. If players
and computers are built differently at a fundamental level so that the
computer can't read the audio (except, maybe, to pass it on to a
speaker in an encrypted form) then you'll be back to being unable to
rip your music. Even if you *can* play the music through your speakers,
you'll be unable to re-balance the tone, add reverb, or otherwise play
with the material YOU paid for... except as THEY allow you to.
I think this situation sucks. Sometime in the future I intend to
transfer my entire CD collection to HD storage and put the originals
into safekeeping somewhere. I may compress to MP3 for the car or
a portable player. That's my right under fair use, and any company
that tries to deny me my fair-use rights deserves a kick in the balls.
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mdw
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response 19 of 143:
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Mar 29 03:53 UTC 2001 |
[ English is redundant. ]
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lynne
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response 20 of 143:
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Mar 29 15:41 UTC 2001 |
<yes, but you're using French *and* English to say the same thing> :)
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mdw
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response 21 of 143:
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Mar 29 19:41 UTC 2001 |
[ Sure it ain't latin? ]
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mcnally
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response 22 of 143:
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Mar 29 22:31 UTC 2001 |
Yes, it's Latin, and once you've identified it as Latin you ought to
realize that either the "&" or the "et" is redundant.. Sometimes you'll
see "&c", but that's not particularly common..
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lynne
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response 23 of 143:
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Mar 29 23:07 UTC 2001 |
ah, my mistake. however, if you ignore the cetera part, "et" means "and"
in French as well as Latin. .
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gelinas
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response 24 of 143:
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Mar 30 03:46 UTC 2001 |
Well, yeah; French ain't nuttin' but gutter Latin.
;)
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krj
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response 25 of 143:
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Mar 30 04:07 UTC 2001 |
(*ahem*)
resp:0 :: More information comes from a story in today's USA Today.
Apparently the copy-protected Charley Pride disc isn't supposed
to fail completely in a CD-ROM drive:
"The disc will direct PC user to the Web site of ((the
copy-protection firm))... There users will be offered free
downloadable Windows Media versions of Prides's songs, which
can also be copied to portable players that support the
music industry's copy protection standards."
So that's what they plan to offer anyone who wants to listen to
their Charlie Pride CD on their computer.
So we might drift into a discussion of Microsoft's plans to make the
PC a copy-proof device. There's something called the Secure Audio
Path coming in one of the upcoming versions of Windows, and apparently
Windows Media is locked down, at least in the digital domain.
Remember that, as the court rulings have fallen so far, you do not
have a legal right to watch DVDs on a Linux computer.
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carson
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response 26 of 143:
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Mar 30 04:26 UTC 2001 |
(does anyone actually listen to Charlie Pride?)
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gelinas
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response 27 of 143:
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Mar 30 04:32 UTC 2001 |
Used to. And would again, did I buy music with any regularity.
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micklpkl
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response 28 of 143:
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Mar 30 04:50 UTC 2001 |
Thanks for mentioning the report in #25 --- I heard a snippet of that on NPR
this morning, and meant to research this a little more online. I don't
understand how this can be effective. What about all the users of these
so-called CD_ROM devices, what will they see to explain why they can't play
what should be a standard audio CD? There are many other unknowns in this
roadblock the industry is considering.
As an aside, does anyone know if the component audio recorders use CD-ROM
technology, and will thus be affected by this attempt at copy-protection?
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senna
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response 29 of 143:
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Apr 4 18:37 UTC 2001 |
That still screws people like me over who don't have the bandwidth to download
songs regularly. I don't even have an MP3 player on this computer.
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flem
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response 30 of 143:
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Apr 4 23:46 UTC 2001 |
I read a few days ago that some of the big boys are planning to start some
kind of subscription-download service of their own. Anyone know anything
about that?
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krj
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response 31 of 143:
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Apr 6 06:14 UTC 2001 |
There's a raft of articles and I'm not coming up with a good synthesis.
Some time back the Universal and Sony labels announced that they would
offer a subscription plan called Duet, and this week it was announced
that Yahoo will become a part of this project. Details are scanty,
and the articles I've seen indicated that the files will come with
"digital rights management" encumbrances to inhibit trading and
loading in portable MP3 players.
Monday's announcement was that BMG, EMI and AOL-Time-Warner are going
to do a partnership with Real Networks to form a subscription service
called MusicNet. The article in NewMediaMusic.com said that
MusicNet would be offering Mp3 downloads, but I'm not sure that's
a reliable report. MusicNet had the air of having been thrown together
in a big hurry so that, in last Tuesday's congressional hearings,
the industry could claim to be moving forward in offering music
on the Internet.
But I think the major labels have decided that they need to have something
which looks sort of like Napster in place when Napster-as-we-know-it
comes to an end this summer. Users with some technical sophistication
will probably continue on with underground Napster clones or Gnutella,
but millions of Napster users aren't too sophisticated and the record
companies need to have something to offer them by, say, July.
So, all five of the majors have signed up for one service or another;
the indies are so far out in the cold, and also left out in the cold are
today's music retailers, who are starting to scream very loudly.
Also apparently out in the cold are the holders of the music publishing
copyrights; the blurb in Inside.com says the proposed subscription
services are not dealing with the concerns of those copyright holders.
Unfortunately inside.com isn't offering much content for free any more,
so I haven't been able to read the details.
There was another story in today's news: MTV has concluded a deal to
sell song and album downloads -- priced individually, rather than in
a subscription service as described above -- from all five labels.
This is the first time anyone has been able to offer "one-stop shopping,"
and of course the indies are left out again.
Things are moving very fast, and my picture of what's happening is murky.
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