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[Rusty]

Greetings All,

Shock ... Horror, I have just come across the first of the probable new wave of CD's that cannot be played on & hence copied by computers ... Is there anything that can be done, via Media Jukebox or via any other means, about this nasty, nasty new weapon now being employed by the (ever greedy) Record Companies??

[Xstatic]

Yes, this is indeed a very nasty thing.

More and more people that I know are dumping their conventional cd players and use their cdrom drive in the pc instead..

Only way I know of is to make a analog recording copy, connecting your hi-fi equipment to your soundcard, and make a line-in
recording with MJ. It is a lot more hassle to do it this way, but the result is fine.

Try also to make a search at interact about this, I've seen a couple of threads concerning this evil thing.

[KingSparta]

Rusty

Take It Back To The Store

[Ingo]

and don't forget to copy it first (it's legal, at least in Germany)

[Rusty]

Take it back to the store you say ... I agree with that 100%.

Trouble is the CD's in question aren't mine (just borrowed) & luckily I never bought them. The labels on both discs read e.g.

"This CD cannot be played on a PC/Mac. If in doubt please consult your dealer."

So very obviously, in future we are all going to have to closely scrutenize all writings on the front & reverse of a new CD package (which will more than likely be sealed & here in Australia they won't let you return CD's, especially if any packaging has been removed, precisely because of the copy before you take it back brigade) before purchasing it ... & if we find these dreaded words ... Take it to the front counter & say ... "I would've bought this CD, but won't because THEY won't allow me to play this on my computer!!!  All this is not so easy when you buy via the Internet!!!

United we stand ... Divided we fall.

[zevele1]

Tell us the name of the cds.There is sites who keep a data of all of them.

[Rusty]

I borrowed this CD today from a guy who was working in a CD store in Holland last year.

The CD in question is "K's Choice - Live" ... "K's Choice" is apparently a very established & popular Belgium band, who sing in English.  This particular CD (according to him) was the first one he ever saw that had the dreaded STICKER on the outer cover, this was around Oct 2001.  Now (according to him) ALL new CD's being released in Holland, Germany & Belgium (there may be other countries he doesn't know of) are being labelled as NOT PLAYABLE ON COMPUTERS!

[stereoless]

http://msn.com.com/2100-1106-859089.html

[Doof]

Didn't somebody post in here about a company that had created a CD-ROM drive that read CD's the same way that an Audio CD player did?

[Trelane]

These discs are a joke. From what I've been reading, a CD-ROM/CD-RW drive will read these discs if it has RAW support. As far as I know, all burners have RAW support. This same crap happened with software CD protection. It was broken. CloneCD does a lovely job!

I do not expect these discs to do well. I, for one, will not be buying these protected discs and I suspect other will follow the same path. When I can't play my own purchased discs in all of my equipment, they aren't worth my money. I also won't be buying MP3 files online either (MPC files, maybe ). If I'm paying for the music, I want the uncompressed version.

One final thought... "anything your engineers can build, my engineers can destroy." --Some cool dude.

[Udo_1]

If anyone is interested in some infos:

http://slashdot.org/articles/01/08/01/1620225.shtml

Udo

[Anon]

Anti-rip CD system bypassed
By Tony Smith
Posted: 01/08/2001 at 12:40 GMT


Macrovision's SafeAudio technology, designed to prevent PC-owning music fans from ripping CD tracks onto their hard drives, has been bypassed.

Commercial CDs protected by Macrovision's technology went on sale to the public in the US and elsewhere last month, part of a test programme to ensure listeners aren't upset by the company's system.

SafeAudio essentially corrupts the data on the CD. Hi-fi CD players' error correction systems can cope with the bursts of noise added to the music, so the listener remains - allegedly* - unaware there's anything they're hearing anything but a perfect sound reproduction. The error correction system treats the noise as just one more result of the inherently noisy environment, thanks to high disk speeds, grubby disk surfaces and frequent laser mis-reads, that all CD players are. Listen to an audio CD with error correction switched off and you'll hear little more than hiss.

PC CD drives, on the other hand, require the mediation of a controller application, which treats all this extra noise as corrupt data and trigger a read failure. That, reckons Macrovision, renders SafeAudio discs unrippable. Every time you try to do so, you're told that the data has been damaged and the copy has been aborted.

The bypass, highlighted by European Web site CD Freaks, converts the disc tracks to .wav files in RAM and mounts them as readable volumes. At that point any .wav app can handle the rip. The bypass uses a custom VXD virtual device driver file. ®

*Macrovision claims that return rates on SafeAudio-encoded CDs are no higher than unprotected discs, but we're still not too happy about a technology that explicitly messes with a recording's fidelity. Doubly so, since it appears record companies don't seem too keen on actually telling consumers they're buying a SafeAudio CD.

[zevele1]

It is CloneCd the software you speak about.Not that underground,you can download it from cnet and other sites
In fact i have it on a disc.I just miss a protected cd  to try it........

[Rusty]

This sort of thing has the potential to impact on all of us in the future, so I think it's very important. But at least what can be made, can be broken.

Regarding CloneCD - Well I tried it & I thought it was going to work but it didn't ... it copied 99% & wouldn't complete, while the CD player just kept making funny noises, so I had to abort it after about 35 minutes.

Regards Rusty.

[Trelane]

Did you use the burner?

There's also a bunch of settings that may need tweaking. I can't test this myself, as I don't own a copy protected CD.