August 1, 2001

11:16 AM

Anti-rip CD system bypassed.heh. nice try, boyos. i've never understood how people can believe something digitized can possibly be protected in such a manner as to be foolproof. what one process can scramble, another can undo. [via /.]
posted by fuzzygeek (5 comments total)

My guess is that there will never, ever be a fool-proof way to stop the ripping of CDs. That being said, the point of SafeAudio may be to simply make it less easy. Instead of using MusicMatch, now we'll need a special app that takes three times as long to make an MP3. That might be enough to dissuade some people from ripping CDs, and perhaps purchasing them in the first place, knowing that that can't copy them onto their hard drives. SafeAudio: yet another sign that the end of the music industry is near.
posted by tranquileye at 12:47 PM on August 1, 2001

As slashdottirs are starting to notice, it's odd that neither the CDFreaks announcement nor the Register story contain the names of any CDs known to be "protected" by SafeAudio. The labels aren't talking, and Macrovision isn't talking, so if the proponents of the crack aren't talking, then there's really no way to verify their story.

Their story seems shaky even aside from the lack of empirical evidence. The published reports about SafeAudio didn't claim it would cause MP3 rippers to abort with an error, just that the MP3 copies would contain annoying pops and crackles. This proposed solution doesn't even line up with the problem as it's understood.

This smells like a hoax to me.
posted by bumppo at 12:48 PM on August 1, 2001

Which side is a hoax? The CDProtection itself or the bypass? Of course if the first is the hoax then the latter would undoubtedly be.
posted by Satapher at 1:24 PM on August 1, 2001

It's no hoax, folks.

I have a copy protected CD. Two of them, in fact.

Lamb: Fear of Fours.

The Cranes: Loved

The Lamb CD produces absolutely ZERO sound when ripped using the "usual" digital methods. When "ripped" using the method described in the article, it sounds splendid. In fact, because I was unable to rip it, I'd never even heard the CD until today, that is....I don't actually own a discman any more....

I haven't verified 100% that this is the case with the Cranes disc yet, but the result I got when I ripped it was exactly as the macrovision encoding is described. All kinds of annoying pops, clicks and jitter.

When I find the damned thing (the Cranes CD, that is), I'll try again, and I'll be happy to update. Both of the CDs are over a year old, but I've read rumor that certain labels have been trying to do this for a few years now. I seem to recall reading something about BMG trying it in Germany at least 2 years ago.
posted by jaded at 10:36 PM on August 1, 2001

jaded: The Lamb CD produces absolutely ZERO sound when ripped using the "usual" digital methods. When "ripped" using the method described in the article, it sounds splendid.

That may be, but I still don't think we're talking about the same thing. "Zero sound" is not what Safeaudio is supposed to produce, according to the company hawking it.

Also, the timeframe doesn't line up. Macrovision announced in February of 2001 that it had just completed a beta test with a major label. "Fear of Fours" came out in July, 1999. That would be a twenty month beta period, started well before Napster was anywhere near the labels' radar.

satapher: Which side is a hoax?

I was referring to the CDFreaks announcement, but I was guided in part by the fact that I don't own a Windows box, and so Windows-specific announcements always sound a little theoretical to me. Macrovision is flogging Safeaudio too hard for it to be a total fiction. I'm reacting to the odd discrepancies in the CDFreaks account.
posted by bumppo at 1:26 AM on August 2, 2001