Mattcrampy
Level: Smitemaster

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They're going after lyrics sites now.

Lyrics sites. Surely that has to come under fair use.

I mean, guitar tabs and sheet music I understand, but lyrics are harmless, exceedingly useful as a supplement to the song, can't really be used in an infringing way and to top it off they're rarely provided by the stupid labels, not to mention if you hear them on the radio. It's seriously broken if that's considered infringement.

I'm still annoyed, hours after I read it.

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Beef Row
Level: Smiter
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Registered: 12-28-2005
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Heh, lyrics sites as copyright infringement? Sounds like a case of 'we can't get the people we really want to, so we'll spread the misery around amongst our entire fanbase!'

Its gotten to the point where I feel like I'm doing something wrong if I *DO* spend any money on music, because I know where the money is going (hint: its not the part going to the musician that bugs me).

The game industry is in danger of making me feel the same way, but I still feel like enough money and encouragement actually goes back to the creators as opposed to folks engaged in simultaneously manipulating them and the fans, that I'm still willing to buy games, especially from creators I really like. Thinking its fairer may just be wishful thinking though

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Mattcrampy
Level: Smitemaster

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On a related note, I've found a couple of artists I really like and wanted to support them, and it turns out that the iTunes music store has their work. So while I'm shopping I buy an iTunes voucher and go to try it out.

One hour later, I've resolved to never ever ever use the iTunes music store again. Except to use up my remaining balance, but that'll be it.

I can't play my music in Winamp. It turns out that I can't play it on anything other than iTunes and an iPod. iPods don't support Ogg Vorbis for some unknown reason, and frankly that's a dealbreaker as all my other CDs are ripped to Ogg Vorbis, so it's either the iPod, which frankly I've heard mixed reviews about and is right now out of my price range, or the setup I already have and have tuned to my satisfaction. There are apparantly Winamp plugins I can use so that I can play these 'music' files, but can I get them to work? Nooooooo. There's also apparantly a program I can use to strip off the DRM and convert it to an MP3/Ogg, which I'd need to do if I ever get an MP3 player, but I can't use it until they work out iTunes 6, so I'm sort of pissed that I upgraded QuickTime, and thus iTunes, just to watch the X-Men 3 trailer, which was pretty mediocre, really, considering all the trouble it's caused.

Stupid frickin' Apple. Can you just play with the other kids for once? So annoyed. Welcome to the digital frickin' future, where you're locked into one company, no matter how bad they are, because you can't take anything with you when you leave.

I am going to be a bitter and twisted old man at 25. Either that, or I'll be kissing some dodgy chick while credit card company building are detonated around me, which isn't a healthy prospect either.

Edit: Oh wait, the 'plugin' is an install program. Now I'm annoyed with an overture of embarassment that it took me that long to notice the extension.

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What do you call an elephant at the North Pole?

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[Last edited by Mattcrampy at 01-05-2006 03:10 PM]

micke8
Level: Goblin
Rank Points: 22
Registered: 05-14-2005
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Hmm, it seems to be a late answer, but I hope I can help you. The first thing is that no software can help you, when you don't have the right hardware. When I backup a copy-protected CD, I use my Yamaha-CDRW-F1. This Drive ignores all today used audio-copy-protections. You don't need any software like EAC, Just put in the CD and do what you want. *g The problem is, that this Drive is no longer be sold, you need Ebay to get it. If you don't want to use Ebay, I recommend Plextor-Drives with the mentioned programs like EAC, it's a littlebit harder to get your Rips, but you can get them.

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[Last edited by micke8 at 01-05-2006 10:01 PM]

GSwarthout
Level: Roachling
Rank Points: 10
Registered: 01-09-2006
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cheese obsessive wrote:
Well, I do know someone who has a linux system, but I won't see him until Monday, so I will go eight days without once listening to my CD. :/ If all else fails, I think I am probably just going to return the CD back to the store, and just download it from iTunes. It's 8 bucks cheaper, anyways.

And cheaper still here: http://music.allofmp3.com/mp3/Coldplay/group_6340/albref_14/mcatalog.shtml

micke8
Level: Goblin
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Registered: 05-14-2005
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jamie wrote:
FreeBSD does that natively

I.e. (using windows terminology): if you put an audio CD into your cd drive, then look at your 'dev' folder you will see acd0t01, acd0t02, acd0t03, acd0t04 etc.. which you can simply copy/drag over just as if it's a data file or 'real' wave file.

A level higher, and the filemanager program Konqueror on KDE (Linux/FreeBSD) displays your CD as a series of folders: WAV, OGG, MP3 etc... Inside those folders are the track names (automatically retrieved from CDDB if possible).. Drag the relevent file or folder, and the transcoding is done on the fly.

It's correct, what you wrote, but just for copy-protections, which use a second session like CactusDataShield 100,200 ( the CD's which launch the Cactusplayer, when you turn them in your CD-Rom-Drive) or Sony's Key2Audio (has up to three sessions). If the copy-Protection uses a non-standard TOC or somewhat else that is non RedBook-Standard, your CD-Drive will also fail with Linux (for Example DocLoc, ...) What I want to say is, that the CD-Drive must be able to see content of the CD, if not, no Linux or whatever can help you. The only help is a CD-Drive with a good firmware.

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[Last edited by micke8 at 01-09-2006 09:08 PM]

jamie
Level: Smiter
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Registered: 04-15-2005
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What puzzles me about this, is if an audio-cd player can skip to the second or third session, why can't a computer-cd player ?

I am not disagreeing with what you say, and I have no direct knowledge of this but I don't see how you can't specify the session of a multi-session cd in unix-like systems...

Something like this, for example: http://linux.sgms-centre.com/howto/cdwriting/08.php


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micke8
Level: Goblin
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jamie wrote:
What puzzles me about this, is if an audio-cd player can skip to the second or third session, why can't a computer-cd player ?

I am not disagreeing with what you say, and I have no direct knowledge of this but I don't see how you can't specify the session of a multi-session cd in unix-like systems...

Something like this, for example: http://linux.sgms-centre.com/howto/cdwriting/08.php

An audio-cd player doesn't skip to the second or third session, he is not able to read them. An audio-cd player reads only the first session of the CD. If you put a CD in your CD-Rom Drive, not the first session will be read first, but the last will be. Thats the basic knowledge about how audio copy protections work.

And yes, of course, you can mount a specific session with Linux, you only need to write a TOC (Table of Content) for yourself.

All audio copy protections have one thing in common: "normal" computer users are not able to make a copy with the method : Starting Nero -> CD-Copy. And that is all the music companies want.
Computer users with more knowledge (e.g. music pirates) will always be able to make a copy of an audio-cd.

AlefBet
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 979
Registered: 07-16-2003
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Well, the music labels would also like to prevent savvy users from making copies as well, if they can. But in the end, if you can play the CD, there's a way to copy it. It's a losing battle.

The really ironic and/or annoying thing about it is that it's the power users that the labels should really be worried about. Or, strictly speaking, the unscrupulous professional pirate power users. But that is their business and if anyone can make copies those guys can figure it out. And we end up with systems that make it a pain to do things normal users should be able to do without deterring professional piracy at all.

IMO copyright should be enforced by an ethical populous, and in the courts when breakdowns occur.

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I was charged with conspiracy to commit jay-walking, and accessory to changing lanes without signaling after the fact .

++Adam H. Peterson

jamie
Level: Smiter
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Registered: 04-15-2005
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Ah I see.. Thanks micke8.. I had my session ordering the wrong way around! Errrm, I'm not trying to be difficult, but why can't a cd-rom drive, when playing an audio cd simply just stick to the first session, and do the same 'thing' as a consumer cd player would, using the same TOC as the consumer player would ?

But as Alefbet says, the whole thing is crazy - it just pisses off those people who actually BUY the cd, not the real pirates who can get around it anyway.

In my day, we'd buy records/tapes and tape them for our friends.... The record industry slogan was "home taping is killing music" - Rubbish! Home taping (mates passing stuff around) promoted music -- people - especially kids - only have so much income to spend on their music...

I'm totally against the people who pirate things for profit, but mates sharing a cd should be fine - just like it's ok to lend someone a book etc.. (I know that you don't COPY the book, but still, generally, you borrow the book, read it, then return it, and then have no further use for it)

And as I've said before (knowing my luck, it will be further up in this thread... oops!), it does'nt really matter HOW good the protection gets... Even if they have new DRM computer hardware, all protected and locked from start to finish... The bottom line is, audio comes out of the leads to the speakers.... People are happy to accept all sorts of low quality mp3s, yet an analogue stage is considered not acceptable...

However, a simple analogue loop through to the 'line in' socket would produce a DRM-free 'clean' copy, that although has gone through digital-> analogue -> digital encoding, is far better than a "first generation analogue copy" which involves some analogue storage device (e.g. cassette tape), and probably sounds a lot better than some of the badly encoded, digital-bit-juggled mp3's, wma's etc.

EDIT: *reads back thread to check* -- Nope, ok... But am I REALLY so much of a FreeBSD fanboy ?

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#f3i2g# Disclaimer: I'm Welsh, left-handed, and stupid. #f3i2g#

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[Last edited by jamie at 01-23-2006 06:01 PM : I need professional help!]

micke8
Level: Goblin
Rank Points: 22
Registered: 05-14-2005
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jamie wrote:
Ah I see.. Thanks micke8.. I had my session ordering the wrong way around! Errrm, I'm not trying to be difficult, but why can't a cd-rom drive, when playing an audio cd simply just stick to the first session, and do the same 'thing' as a consumer cd player would, using the same TOC as the consumer player would ?

Hi Jamie,
the problem is, that the RedBook-Standard (Audio CD) was first, nobody has thought about CD's with data content for use with PC's at this time, and of course nobody has thought about a CD-Writer and CD-RW's. For the new "CD-variations" new Book-Standards were founded. ( yellowBook for Data-CD's, the orangeBook for CD-R, and so on) With these Standards the multisession-cd's were introduced.
I don't know why, but the 'multisession-drives' need to read the sessions from the last to the first, i think, this is fixed in one of these standards. And so all CD-Rom's read from the last to the first session (exeption: the Yamaha CDRW-F1, I don't know how he does that, but there is no audio copy-protection, which he can't skip (this drive was sold for only a year or so, then Yamaha announced to cancel the building of any CD-Drives, i think they were paid for...))

And did you know, that some copy-protected CD's have 'built in' Read-Errors in the Audiotracks? (Your CD-ROM slows down when you want to rip..) The error-correction of your Standard-Audio-CD-Drive should be able to skip them, but if you use some HighEnd-Devices you can hear them....

I'm from Germany, a CD is about 15€, and for this amount of money I don't want to buy a manipulated CD.

Tim
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1979
Registered: 08-07-2004
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micke8 wrote:
I'm from Germany, a CD is about 15€, and for this amount of money I don't want to buy a manipulated CD.

If everything was so easy... The great thing is, if they make a bad CD, you pay for them even if you don't buy them.

In Holland (but this apply to most countries, even Germany), every time you buy a CD-ROM (to backup my large list of holds ), some of the money will go a foundation, and then it distributes to the industry and the artists themselves.

Well, that's the theory. In fact, it turned out that that there were no clear defined rules to say which company gets how much. (Okay, according to Google, at least 20% goes to the foundations that founds the founadtion, and about 50% to the salary of foundation itself. The rest is divided according to non-existing rules to playlists of radios.) Which is stupid, because if they had more transparency they could have made a further levy possible.

But back to my original post in this thread, why not try streaming internet radio? I mean the legal ones, the ones that pay the royalties or being promoted by the industry. The ones that the industry push the music to us for free. There are lots of choices, and if you search for it carefully, you will find good stations that suits you.

I must thank you all for buying CDs, because now I can listen to music for free because of you.

-- Tim

PS. Have you noticed that I didn't mentioned the quality of the music at all in this economy? Because, well, as you can see, it doesn't matter in this industry.

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