Britney will shred your speakers!
 

I have seen some posts on those copy protected cds. Even came across articles telling how they can be bad for speakers.

This is about the dumbest thing I have seen yet. Buying a protected cd, then going online and entering a code if you want to download a version of it to listen to on your computer.

Any way heres the article. Hope its not old news on the boards.

Looks like Sony wants to satisfy consumers who are not able to play any of their CD in their computers by using a system called "Key2audio", from a company called eSquare4U.

When you purchase a CD, it will ship with a 9 digit number which will allow the CD owner to download specific tracks from the CD from Esquare4u.com's web site. Formats include Real Media streaming or Windows Media (wmv) for local storage.

Here is a breakdown of the service being offered :-
ESQUARE4U.com is a music portal created by Sony DADC Austria. It enables customers, who bought a key2audio CD, additionally to get their music tracks online. This service is provided, because key2audio CDs do not support playback on computer drives, due to reasons of copy control.
The 9 digit code, on the inside of the CD-jewel-case (e.g. A4R-7TH-B9C), can only be used ONCE to download the tracks, so don't give it out or pass it to other users.
Because of the digital rights management systems in place, you can only play these downloaded songs on the PC with which you downloaded them to. Support for other devices has bot been released at this time.
File size for each download will be approx 1mb for 4 minutes of music, on a 56k modem this will be around 2min 26sec, with times for Cable obviously much faster. (No information is available at this time as to the quality of these DRM locked media.)
Streaming can be performed from any computer at any time if you have the key2audio key code for the CD. The advantage of streaming is, that you do not have to wait until a file is completely downloaded. With streaming the music will play quite immediatly. In addition to that, the audio quality of the streaming content will match itself with the performance of your internet connection.

does this mean you have download ALL the sound information that you already have on your CD, instead of just a key that'll unlock the info on your CD?

Madness...

Re: Britney will shred your speakers!
 

OMG, I'm having .com bubble flashbacks! :eek:

Of course, one thing to notice is that it seems that the downloaded and (supposedly) high-quality version is 1mb/4min, which works out to a rate of roughly 32kb/s. Normally, lowest quality mp3s available are at 128kb/s (1mb/1min)... you can imagine what 32 will sound like. I bet that sound coming out of any speakers over $10 will shred your eardrums, not just your speakers.

And to add insult to injury, you can only download once, and can't transfer between devices. I have to assume if you get a new computer or are forced to reinstall your current one, you're shit out of luck. This is of course the problem with every DRM scheme endorsed by the industry to date.

What about if you get disconnected mid download?

Hehe..I'd bet these CD Keys would find their way to astalavista in a heartbeat.;)

^LOL^
These companies that are trying to stop copyrighted stuff from being shared should just give up. There are much smarter ppl out there, that are creating new p2p programs and these morons can't think of anything better to create?