BMG: "There will be no cd manufactured without copyprotection any more."

[Smoketoomuch]

They are going to do it!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/27960.html

So, need a good CD-RW (Plextor, Teac?, some LGs) and CloneCD for Windows or just the default cdparanoia witch comes with your Linux distro - keep sharing folks

Still, they make me angry - SABOTAGE BMG! - I say

[theknife]

methinks they are wasting their time - so does this guy.

[JackSpratts]

even if copy protected cds get better - and they will - i foresee relatively inexpensive analog to digital sound converters popping up all over the place, perhaps incorporated into the sound cards themselves that back feed to hard drives, and in so doing negate all cd based copy protection schemes.

it won't be stopped. sure a country can make it illegal but that just moves it underground and across the borders and creates a serious advantage in technology for the countries where development continues.

- js.

[theknife]

If you can hear it, you can rip it



i love that line.

[Smoketoomuch]

WARNING! Long post ....

Originally posted by JackSpratts
even if copy protected cds get better - and they will - i foresee relatively inexpensive analog to digital sound converters popping up all over the place, perhaps incorporated into the sound cards themselves that back feed to hard drives, and in so doing negate all cd based copy protection schemes.
- js.

How true! I think they are digging their own grave - even while its a "new" technology, it is rather a step backwards. mp3 and CD writing made it possible to make a playlist of the music I have and listen to it whenever and wherever I want. In fact this was a possibility for decades (with tapes for instance), technology just made it easier. Now all is taken back - theoretically of course. If you already own a good CD writer and have clone cd, and if you use linux, you even may not have noticed that a CD is copy protected, since most CD burning frontends use cdparanoia - if you had a good drive of course. I have a 8x4x32 LG, a bit old, so it might be that it would not work... Another interesting thing is that they might claim that cdparanoia infringes upon DMCA since it circumvents copy protection technologies. However, cdparanoia exists for some time, and is licenced under GPL - so legally speaking, it is impossible to hold DMCA against it. It is not even designed to circumvent copy protection, it is just the way it works, and it is the intellectual property of the Open Source community, so it is protected by intellectual property laws. Strange paradox, isn't it?

Access to information, the free flow of information is the basis of a democratic society, yet right now, I (and EU citizens) have access to information US citizens don't:

It (DMCA) has come to the forefront once again for two reasons. First, Red Hat recently issued a security patch for the Linux kernel. Unfortunately, due to the DMCA's provisions, company officials believe they cannot explain to U.S. citizens what the patch does. A European Web site (www.thefreeworld.net/ non-US) will divulge the information to non-U.S. citizens but will deny access to Americans. Explaining the problem might violate the DMCA and leave Red Hat exposed to possible prosecution.

http://www.infoworld.com/articles/op...28opsource.xml

Acquiring that information theoretically makes you violate the laws of your government. I think this is not good. And this is not an isolated example either....

Originally posted by JackSpratts

it won't be stopped. sure a country can make it illegal but that just moves it underground and across the borders and creates a serious advantage in technology for the countries where development continues.
- js.

Yeah, those who read EFF newsletter might know that it is already happening. What I was not aware of is how actually this already happens/happened : take for example the cell phone market:

So now you know why capital has deserted the PC software business. Nothing goes in, and nothing comes out. It's a monoculture every bit as sterile as America's cellphone business, which takes its cue from Qualcomm, a company with superb technology which almost from day one made sure it would be a backwater, thanks to its obnoxious licensing practices. (Phones here are years behind the rest of the world: have you tried buying a Bluetooth-enabled CDMA 1X phone? You can't. Because there isn't one.)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/27913.html

This article dealed with the current DoJ settlement of Microsoft. Now you may have noticed that I often mention Linux. I just want to make one thing clear: I don't mean to push it. It is simply that it is the OS I use now, I don't know about XP, and forgot most things about win98 (took me 5 minutes to figure out how to format a floppy last time ) I am all for free choice: you like XP - use it! I think it is a good piece of software - it is based on NT kernel - and from what I seen from debates (not flame wars, but serious debate among programmmers), it is not inferiour in any way to the linux kernel, moreover, Microsoft undoubtedly made an excellent desktop for XP, and various linux desktops are just beginning to catch up with it. Nevertheless, the ideology of Open Source and linux is very similar to the ideology of p2p, and it is at least an interesting technology for even those who don't intend to use it - and making its existence known is not a bad thing. Licencing policiy is an entirely different issue, but I assume it is irrelevant for most of us - unless, of course, you are running business and might expect occasional visits from BSA.

You may wonder why I wrote this apology... I often find myself defending my choice of using linux, which is amusing to some extent, since I never flamed someone for using Windows - not becuase I'm diplomatic, but because its all about choice - and the freedom of choice has a higher priority to me than pushing "linux for everyone". And I only tried to convince those people to try it out, who already use Windows in linux fashion - editing registry and ini files to tweak it. In fact, I know that my roommate never did, and perhaps never will do such things, yet he became interested in linux (his desk is near mine) : it was me who told him: I'm not sure that it is a good choice for you, but OK, read this manual (100 pages with lots of pictures, beginning with "how to use the mouse") and if you are still interested, I'll do what I can to help you. Of course, he never read that (its a 2 hours read), so we let the matter to rest.

Now the reason for this long linux/windows rant: I wanted to prove how the DoJ settlement is bad for EVERYONE. It is yet another nail in the coffin of free competition in US. You use XP? You like it? Then it is in your interest as is in mine to have a good competition on the desktop market - it would drive microsoft to compete on the quality of its software - since it cannot compete on prices with Linux. Linux just reached a 4,9% share on the desktop market, and Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer already made an announcment of Microsoft's doubling its efforts to improve its products. The bigger the competition, the better Windows will become ...

"Linux is a serious competitor," said Ballmer. "We have to compete with free software, on value, but in a smart way. We cannot price at zero, so we need to justify our posture and pricing. Linux isn't going to go away--our job is to provide a better product in the marketplace."
...
And IBM, arguably the No. 1 player in the Linux market, promotes Linux to big users, but does not actually sell Linux: "It's weird! IBM says 'Hey British Aerospace! Buy Linux.... From SuSE."

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-959112.html

The first part can be taken as a kind of confession - need to justify our posture and pricing ... have to add value - meaning... its unjustified? OK, but imagine how Microsoft software would imporve if Linux's share on the desktop market would be 20% instead of the current 4.9? And the current DoJ settlement just made it a lot harder for competitors - be it linux or any other initiative - to reach that. However, EU did not accept the ruling, meaning that Microsoft would have difficulties here in becoming monolithic - leading exactly to what JS said (in a different context though) : "...creates a serious advantage in technology for the countries where development continues."

Although most the reception of the DoJ settlement was pessimistic (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/35/27950.html) , there is an interesting article of how Microsoft might have won this fight but might loose the battle on the long run. If you are interested, read this article:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/27921.html

Bye.

[Mazer]

You call that a long post? I've read rants that went on for ten pages (though they didn't make as much sense as you do, smokey). Good read.

I think all you said applies directly to CD protection. They have every right to do it, since it's their own product. And consumers have every right to deprotect their own CD's too, no matter what the DMCA tells them. Most people will go on buying the protected CD's and never care that they're copy protected. But the people on the fringe will bypass every countermeasure the record industry throws at them. The battle will become more and more obscure as CD's become more and more mutated.

Eventually every copy protected CD will be required to carry a warning label, and after that Phillips will force them to remove the 'Compact Disk Digital Audio' label. At that point it will harm sales, and as other mediums like DVD Audio take hold people won't even buy the copy protected CD's anymore. (Maybe it's an elaborate ploy to make people buy DVD Audio players, but probably not.) At any rate, CD's are becoming more obsolete as time passes, and the industry is making it happen faster.

This is one technology that won't be pushed underground and across borders, for once it gets there the people there will reject it as inferior. In a short while the companies producing protected CD's will be as few as the people hacking them. CD's were supposed to be a great technological jump forward when they first appeared, but decades from now they will be looked at as a failed experement that somehow managed to last a quarter century. Centuries from now archaeologists will discover landfills filled with billions of junk disks and look at them as evidence of our primative civilization. Heh, that's the legacy the record industry is leaving us with.

[multi]

i use linux and xp and will probably put 98 back in one day but linux is rapidly becoming my favorite...
thx for the tip on cdparanoia
and thx for the rant wich as always has been quite enlightening...
the person i share a house with (he's the real linux tweeker around here )made a nifty little
shell script for burning cd's i just wonder how i could get him to fit cdparanoia into it...
edit to say he forgot that he has a script already with it...but its just for music cd's...wich leads me to ask is there a linux tool/app like clonecd that rips the subchannel data on data cd's? or can cdparanoia do this with the right switches?

things that initialy seem quite a hassel compared to windows end up being quite simplistic use of command line and text file manipulation.....for example.....scheduled tasks in .cron hourly/daily..ect
compared to that annoying taskbar resident in windows
try start a Konsole session
[user@linux]$ apropos man|more
and scoll thru the list (if you have time)
i find one thing leads to another..and pretty soon you are hooked

i still like to keep my hand in with windows too ,and totally overload my brain with too much info...silly me

all i can say is keep all of your options openfolks....(scuse the pun)

[SA_Dave]

Originally posted by Smoketoomuch
WARNING! Long post ....

http://www.infoworld.com/articles/op...28opsource.xml
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/27913.html
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-959112.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/35/27950.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/27921.html

Bye.

Oooh! Long post, lots of links and more text than smilies. None of those useless, nested quotes either. I like it.

Keep on posting. I'm guilty of posting long, rambling and sometimes well-organised comments, so I appreciate a fellow forum muso!

Fair-use protection is such a joke!

[pod]

Originally posted by Smoketoomuch
Another interesting thing is that they might claim that cdparanoia infringes upon DMCA since it circumvents copy protection technologies. However, cdparanoia exists for some time, and is licenced under GPL - so legally speaking, it is impossible to hold DMCA against it.

Why not? If it circumvents a copy protection methods? WHat does the licence have to do with this?

it is the intellectual property of the Open Source community, so it is protected by intellectual property laws. Strange paradox, isn't it?

Not really, it isn't. Software is protected by IP laws by default (ie: copyright). Just because it is protected by IP does not in any way mean that it is immune from DMCA. Also, cdparanoia is not 'property of the Open Source community', it's the property of whoever created it. In this case, the copyright belongs to:

(C) 2001 Monty <monty@xiph.org> and Xiphophorus

[SA_Dave]

Originally posted by pod
Not really, it isn't. Software is protected by IP laws by default (ie: copyright). Just because it is protected by IP does not in any way mean that it is immune from DMCA. Also, cdparanoia is not 'property of the Open Source community', it's the property of whoever created it.

You're looking at it from the point of view of traditional software licensing. The GPL is a legally binding copyleft contract. The original author is always given credit but the community can manipulate or distribute his IP in anyway they see fit.

I do agree with you that that doesn't make the software immune from legal challenges. However once it's released it's very difficult to prevent further distribution. I think that's what S2m was implying.