Comments on: The people:1, The Man:0

The people:1, The Man:0

mathowie — Tue, 07 Oct 2003 12:49:31 -0800

If you've bought one of BMG's new copy-protected CDs, remember to hold down the shift key while loading it into your PC. That one keystorke will let you be free to rip, mix, and burn it.

By: jon_kill

jon_kill — Tue, 07 Oct 2003 12:53:09 -0800

From the article: Though simple, the act of holding down the Shift key in order to enable copying does let computer users know they're doing something unauthorized, he said. That alone will dissuade many people from making copies, he added. Someone must have invented a new drug, and he must be the first addict.

By: anathema

anathema — Tue, 07 Oct 2003 12:55:41 -0800

"This is something we were aware of," BMG spokesman Nathaniel Brown said. "Copy management is intended as a speed bump, intended to thwart the casual listener from mass burning and uploading. We made a conscious decision to err on the side of playability and flexibility." Seems almost reasonable.

By: mcsweetie

mcsweetie — Tue, 07 Oct 2003 12:56:13 -0800

haha!

By: shepd

shepd — Tue, 07 Oct 2003 12:57:34 -0800

Will this software be recognized as the trojan it is by various Anti Virus software? Does this not leave these companies open to lawsuits?

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Tue, 07 Oct 2003 12:59:24 -0800

Since it's an autorun thing, and I have autorun disabled, I wouldn't ever notice it anyway, right? The keystorke brings baby keys?

By: signal

signal — Tue, 07 Oct 2003 12:59:46 -0800

In order to fully prevent the antipiracy software from loading, a listener has to hold the Shift key down for a long period of time, at exactly the right time, every time they listen to the CD on a computer. Unless you have 0.1g of sense and have disabled autorun.

By: pmurray63

pmurray63 — Tue, 07 Oct 2003 13:00:25 -0800

News of the future: RIAA sues to ban 'Shift' key "When Shift keys are banned, only criminals will have keyboards with Shift keys," the RIAA's Cary Sherman said in a statement.

By: shepd

shepd — Tue, 07 Oct 2003 13:02:48 -0800

Yes crash, but under the DMCA you have committed a felony. You'd better re-enable autorun.

By: DevilsAdvocate

DevilsAdvocate — Tue, 07 Oct 2003 13:08:35 -0800

mr_crash_davis and signal both beat me to it.

By: Acetylene

Acetylene — Tue, 07 Oct 2003 13:10:09 -0800

Does the CD include a version of its "protection" for Macs? (I won't even bother asking about Linux.) If not, does that mean the "bonus features" won't be available to non-Windows users?

By: bshort

bshort — Tue, 07 Oct 2003 13:11:52 -0800

The RIAA could help out a lot of the starving artists that they love nattering on about with the money that they spend coming up with ineffective schemes like this.

By: eau

eau — Tue, 07 Oct 2003 13:17:33 -0800

"Copy management is intended as a speed bump, intended to thwart the casual listener from mass burning and uploading. We made a conscious decision to err on the side of playability and flexibility." I don't think the casual listener is the listener they need to be afraid of. How many "casual listeners" do you think are swapping files?

This sounds like a giant disconnect between the recording industry and their understanding of music listeners and file sharers.

By: ZachsMind

ZachsMind — Tue, 07 Oct 2003 13:18:26 -0800

You know what would be a better deterrent of digital music file swapping? Vinyl.

By: mosch

mosch — Tue, 07 Oct 2003 13:31:28 -0800

Zachsmind, would that make me a pirate, because I own one of these? Clearly, I was thinking ahead, getting ready to produce counterfeit vinyl!

By: oaf

oaf — Tue, 07 Oct 2003 13:34:18 -0800

Halderman's paper Does the CD include a version of its "protection" for Macs? (I won't even bother asking about Linux.) Mac OS X, yes; Mac OS 9, no; Linux, no. Since Linux lets you copy these CDs, does that make Linux a violation of the DMCA? I'd say of course not, because the DMCA requires that the protection method effectively control access to the work.

By: Pollomacho

Pollomacho — Tue, 07 Oct 2003 13:36:36 -0800

You know what would be a better deterrent of digital music file swapping? Vinyl. Oh, is that so?

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Tue, 07 Oct 2003 13:40:25 -0800

"...under the DMCA you have committed a felony. You'd better re-enable autorun." Actually, I used Microsoft's own Tweak UI to disable that. Does that mean that MS is also in violation of the DMCA?

By: straight

straight — Tue, 07 Oct 2003 13:44:17 -0800

Sheesh. I forgot autorun even existed. When I first read about this scheme, I couldn't for the life of me figure out how they were going to get users to install copy protection software on their own computers. Idiots. Their real problem isn't people ripping CDs, it's people downloading music when they don't have the CDs. It only takes one hacker supergenius to find that mysterious "SHIFT" key, and the music will be available to everyone. The only thing this could possibly accomplish is frustrate a few computer newbies trying to to transfer some of their CDs to that weird MP3 thingy they got for Christmas.

By: golo

golo — Tue, 07 Oct 2003 13:45:59 -0800

Moreover, anyone who doesn't load the software won't get access to the second session tracks, which on future CDs will increasingly include videos and other bonus material, record company insiders say.

As if you couldn't let it load once to check it out and then press the shift key the next time for ripping it.
For anybody that works in any technical field and has to deal with marketing people this should sound familiar. Completly dissconnected from reality until it comes back to bite them.

By: Eloquence

Eloquence — Tue, 07 Oct 2003 14:03:54 -0800

The idiocy about the whole concept of copy protection is, of course, that any CD, video, ebook etc. only has to be transferred once into an unrestricted format. At that point it is easily replicated by millions of file sharers. The people hurt by these measures are not file sharers but average people with relatively little tech literacy.

By: Eloquence

Eloquence — Tue, 07 Oct 2003 14:04:38 -0800

(Sorry for redundancy in above post with previous post by straight.)

By: iamck

iamck — Tue, 07 Oct 2003 14:14:38 -0800

mosch - not to derail, but you wanna cut me some vinyl??? ;)

By: WolfDaddy

WolfDaddy — Tue, 07 Oct 2003 14:28:03 -0800

I despair of ever seeing the recording and motion picture industries ever ever ever obtaining a clue. The television industry, oddly enough, seems almost subdued in comparison.

By: Outlawyr

Outlawyr — Tue, 07 Oct 2003 14:33:13 -0800

Well, they've convinced me. I'm going back to downloading free MP3s, this new shift key thing is too confusing. What they really should do is make the whole CD copy protected so it won't play unless you run their virus on your computer, that also blows up your computer if you download MP3s, and tells your wife if you're cyber-cheating. That would be pretty cool.

By: shadow45

shadow45 — Tue, 07 Oct 2003 14:42:26 -0800

yay, an arms race. exactly what this retarded little war needs! how the hell can that be legal, anyways?

By: ubi

ubi — Tue, 07 Oct 2003 14:48:05 -0800

...would that make me a pirate, because I own one of these? Whoa. Must have one. Korg is listed as the US distributor, but I don't see this thing anywhere on their site. Where can I get one in Ami-land?

By: spazzm

spazzm — Tue, 07 Oct 2003 15:21:56 -0800

"How many "casual listeners" do you think are swapping files?" All of them? I remember days of yore, when fileswapping was an underground thingy, there were rules of conduct and a sense of community. Days and nights spent in determined searching, looking for that one particular song. All that has changed now; a friend of mine works in a hi-fi boutique and told me this tale of the granny who comes in to buy a digital, portable mp3-player. She asks all these questions about wether she could upload any mp3 to it, or if there were any DMCA protection software built in? Could she download mp3s from it to any computer?

By: psychomedia

psychomedia — Tue, 07 Oct 2003 15:58:32 -0800

CD. HiFi. Player. Amplifier. Slots. PC. Slots. Cables. And now they tell me I have to press the frigging shift key. I forgot - the point was...?

By: SoulNoise

SoulNoise — Wed, 08 Oct 2003 02:14:04 -0800

mmm. I work in a record store and have macosx and 9 at home, but i've NEVER run into any cd that i couldn't play or rip. The only difference is that i get 2 disks on the desktop. Copy protection doesn't work in my computer, something must be wrong with me....

By: kindall

kindall — Wed, 08 Oct 2003 07:23:06 -0800

don't think the casual listener is the listener they need to be afraid of Actually, they are precisely afraid of the casual listener (i.e. 80% of people). They want to keep copying music difficult enough that these people won't bother. They'll never stop the hax0rs, and I'm sure they know it, they just want to raise the bar enough to keep regular people from finding it less trouble to "share" the music than to buy it. I think they're too late but I don't blame 'em for trying.

By: straight

straight — Wed, 08 Oct 2003 08:13:03 -0800

They'll never stop the hax0rs, and I'm sure they know it, they just want to raise the bar enough to keep regular people from finding it less trouble to "share" the music than to buy it. But that's what's so stupid. Their problem is not that lots of people are sharing, but that lots of people are receiving from those who share. Like someone said above, this means that, for the technphobe, it will be easier to download a song and share it than to buy a song and share it.

By: theora55

theora55 — Wed, 08 Oct 2003 08:26:40 -0800

Thanks for that link, Pollomacho. My dance group has a lot of music on vinyl that is irreplaceable as new cds.

By: kindall

kindall — Wed, 08 Oct 2003 09:08:59 -0800

Their problem is not that lots of people are sharing, but that lots of people are receiving from those who share. Which is why they're also suing Kazaa users who share a lot of files. If few people are sharing, the network becomes a lot less useful and nobody will bother trying to find songs on it. They go at it from two directions. They're not going to sue someone who's only sharing a few files but if they can prevent a certain percentage of them from ripping them in the first place, that'll help. You've got to remember, most people buy at most a handful of CDs a year. Most CDs sold are sold to people like this. They were worried with Napster that "sharing" was going to go mainstream, that the people who are their bread and butter would find it easier to download the music they wanted than to buy their one or two CDs a year. Music "sharing" is now safely underground, though. Their goal now is to make that it never escapes to anything resembling the mainstream. The strategy is similar to the one software companies have used for decades. But it's doomed in the end, I think, because the software companies have one advantage the music companies do not. A large portion of software is sold to corporations, usually in bulk. It is a lot easier to sue a few big companies with illegal software and receive significant damages for the effort. But companies generally don't buy music, which means you have to go after a bunch of individuals, which is unpopular and unfruitful. I think the music industry is going to have a real tough time making its lawsuits pay for themselves, and when they twig to that, it'll be the beginning of the end.

By: Foosnark

Foosnark — Wed, 08 Oct 2003 09:38:48 -0800

This isn't like locking your front door. This is like sticking a Post-It note on the doorknob that says "Please Don't Rob Me." After you've already sold the house to somebody else.

By: HTuttle

HTuttle — Wed, 08 Oct 2003 10:25:06 -0800

RIAA are price fixing crooks. Stealing from crooks is the honorable thing to do.

By: mrgrimm

mrgrimm — Wed, 08 Oct 2003 11:00:56 -0800

cheers to HTuttle. there's nothing wrong with stealing from thieves, though it's a hard sell to convince a lot of people that downloading a song you don't pay for is even stealing at all. it's just borrowing, you know, b/c these cheap-ass blank CDs don't last forever, and i'm gonna be sick of that fucking song in less than a week. the recording industry is *way* screwed. sound capture, file compression, etc. technologies are only going to get better and better. memory is only going to get cheaper and cheaper. people don't care about "master" copies. they just want to listen to music they like, and they don't think it's stealing. how can the recording industry possibly survive when eventually no one will buy their product? unless there are massive global restrictions placed on Internet usage (which i can't imagine just yet), there will always be free options, which i see getting bigger and bigger. the recording industry is just trying to maintain profits as best they can b4 they flame out and try to take over the concert promotion and ticketing businesses. my prediction (not very bold, but): CDs will be produced at a lesser rate than vinyl records in less than 5 years.

By: punilux

punilux — Fri, 10 Oct 2003 04:31:19 -0800

Coda : Now the student is being lined up for a suin'. Surely this is ridiculous? He's using a documented feature that's been in Windows since '95. Very daft...

By: djspicerack

djspicerack — Fri, 10 Oct 2003 06:48:59 -0800

Just saw that same thing on MSNBC, punilux. What's up with that....