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Music's 'big five' test new CDs that cannot be downloaded
By Leo Lewis
26 August 2001
British, European and American CD buyers have unwittingly become part of a secret global experiment by the "big five" record companies to stop people downloading music.
The five – Sony, EMI, BMG, Warner and Universal – are said to be testing a new technology that will make it impossible to transfer music properly from a shop-bought CD to a home computer.

The "stealth CDs" are being slipped quietly into music stores around the world, though most of the one million secretly altered discs are thought to have landed here and on the Continent. They look and play like normal CDs but hidden in the music is a ground-breaking piece of encryption software.

If played on standard equipment, the CD sounds normal. But if the music is transferred to the hard disk of a computer, the quality will be so low that the file will be unplayable. Even those who own CD-burning equipment will find the resultant copy will sound terrible. The project has been kept under close wraps, and one particularly guarded secret is which artists are being targeted.

The experiment is part of the developing relationship between music companies and the internet. Companies are eager to find ways to reverse slumps in shop sales. Music-sharing websites such as Napster sent a chill through the industry. Computer technology has given any PC-user the ability to make perfect digital copies and distribute them for free around the world.

Although record companies are becoming increasingly involved with selling music online, the new encryption technology is seen as the first serious move the industry has made to protect its artists and their intellectual property.

There is alwayz a way for anything & everything.. They said dvd's were un-burnable, well.. My point exactly , dont worry guys.

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you would think that there is no way to actually stopp duplication of music from a cd. sure they can make it difficult to rip it, but it will always be possible to record a stereo's direct output or even from a cd rom. plug into sound card and record to wave.. convert to mp3.. done.

i wonder how much money they wasted trying to come up with that idea.

There will always be someone out there who comes up with something new.. im sure there will be someone eager to invent something different and more expensive... and thats when you know technology is pretty much advanced these days.. but there shouldnt be any worries... think of napster for an example.. how they shut it down and made this WHOLE BIG DEAL about it.. and now look what we have.. we have audiogalaxy.. which is 10 thousands times better than napster
so when one door closes another will open... this is how i see things.... and that 's how it is.. these are the things that makes the world goes around... and round ... and round..

xoxo Ur Dream Grl

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" when you are in love...it doesnt matter whats happening out there.. ' cause everything is happening inside of you "

Amen for that! My brother came up with one of this supposedly UN COPYABLE CD'S...he ripped it usin the audio catalyst with no prob. even the pirates could copy it almost as easy!

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So damn Happy!

quote:

Originally posted by Ur Dream Grl There will always be someone out there who comes up with something new.. im sure there will be someone eager to invent something different and more expensive... and thats when you know technology is pretty much advanced these days.. but there shouldnt be any worries... think of napster for an example.. how they shut it down and made this WHOLE BIG DEAL about it.. and now look what we have.. we have audiogalaxy.. which is 10 thousands times better than napster so when one door closes another will open... this is how i see things.... and that 's how it is.. these are the things that makes the world goes around... and round ... and round.. xoxo Ur Dream Grl

AMEM!

there you go again with the good answer!
dude you are awesome!
hahahhaha

hey, u gotta admit the conceptual tech. for unrippable CDs is pretty cool. Those engineers can really think up great things. But...it just doesnt work lol

the only CD that NOONE can rip would be a cd that begins a thermite reaction when the play button is pressed heh

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i think they dont really care about the money on researching it because they can always jack up the price for cds like tehy do already to cover up the cost.

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i remember that i saw somewhere that someone successfully copied one of these cds using clonecd, anyone hear anything about that?

Published Friday, August 24, 2001

Hacker-proof CDs shrouded in secrecy as they hit markets
Ron Harris / Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO -- Slipped quietly alongside regular music CDs in record stores, mostly in Europe, are more than 1 million secretly altered discs -- stealth compact discs that represent the recording industry's hopes for a solution to digital music piracy.

The five record labels aren't disclosing many details on this experiment in copy protection -- including which artists' works have been digitally padlocked -- and various technologies are used.

The nature of these discs could explain the labels' reticence. They aim to do something no CDs before them could -- provide an impervious barrier against the Internet music free-for-all that Napster and CD burners have made so popular.



Plunk a stealth CD into your stereo and it will play fine, tech experts say.

But try to stick one in your computer and turn it into MP3 files, or try to record its contents onto a blank disc, and you're in for a rude awakening: Either it won't work, or the result will sound so bad, it's not worth sharing.

This new anti-copying strategy for CDs isn't widespread. Among the nearly 400 million CDs shipped in the United States alone in the first half of 2001, they're merely a beta-test.

And if it becomes standard music industry practice, it might provoke a consumer backlash. Music fans have long made personal copies of purchased music in the format of their choice -- an activity legally sanctioned as a "fair use."

Daniela Mohor, a 26-year-old University of California-Berkeley graduate student who often makes copies of CDs for her friends, thinks the strategy is ridiculous.

'Benefit both sides'

"With tapes it was the same thing; You could record them and the industry didn't fall apart," she said. "I understand the industry is trying to protect its profits, but they should find a solution that will benefit both sides."

The industry disagrees. Giving consumers the ability to make perfect digital copies that can be shared on the Internet goes far beyond fair use, it argues. So after prevailing in cyberspace against Napster, Universal, Warner, EMI, BMG and Sony are exploring technologies that will limit the digital duplication of CDs.

Warner and EMI would not comment on their CD-protection trials. Universal Music Group confirms it evaluated copy-protected CDs but says it has not put any such music on store shelves in the United States or Europe.

BMG has introduced some copy-protected CDs in the European market; it won't say how many. Sony confirms that it released stealth CDs in Europe but says it hasn't put any on U.S. shelves.

Phil Leigh, a digital media analyst for Raymond James and Associates, thinks such efforts are doomed to fail.

"Music needs to be portable," he said. "It needs to get into the car and into your portable device, and the industry will find it's a losing battle unless they provide copying."

In Europe, more than 1 million CDs using the copy-protection technology of the Israeli company Midbar Tech have been released -- including 10,000 CDs Sony released last year in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the company says.

One of Midbar's three copy-protection options permits tracks from a CD to be copied to a computer for listening but not moved to another PC or shared online.

Annoying pops

Another Israeli company, TTR Technologies, Inc., has developed a way to add distortion that it claims is undetectable even to the music industry's golden-eared experts. Cassette tape copies would sound just fine, but the distortion would create annoying pops, clicks or hissing in unauthorized digital copies.

TTR founder and CEO Marc Tokayer says the technology, called SafeAudio, is being tested by each of the top record labels -- including one that put 200,000 SafeAudio-protected CDs on store shelves in Europe.

Sami Valkonen, senior vice president of new media and business development at BMG Music, says his company is not looking to eliminate music from computer desktops -- but rather wants to control how it gets there.

"A lot of people enjoy their music digitally these days," Valkonen said. "We would never ever in the U.S. have the situation where people would not have the ability to enjoy their music as digital files."

The methods employed to protect content on compact discs do not, however, appear destined to make handling digital music any easier.

One involves disguising the disc's directory of songs so that popular CD-ripping programs can't find the tracks to extract.

SunnComm Inc. of Phoenix used this method to protect 50,000 copies of a Charley Pride CD released in May, and the company president says its technology has withstood the test of would-be hackers.

But it didn't please fans who weighed in on Amazon's Web site where the CD is sold, saying the Pride disc was unplayable on their home stereos.

Several top labels

Also in the United States, as many as 200,000 copies have been sold of CDs protected against digital duplication by Macrovision Corp., which has worked with several top labels, said spokeswoman Miao Chuang of the Silicon Valley company.

Kevin Gray, a recording engineer for Hollywood, Calif.-based Future Disc Systems who does work for all five record labels, opposes inserting "undetectable" pops and clicks into the music of his clients, which include Madonna and Cher.

He says adding any distortions to music, no matter how seemingly indiscernible, is a mistake that would be "very audible" to clued-in listeners of jazz or classical recordings, for example.

Gray also thinks hackers will find a way around most CD copy protections, a point that even Peter Jacobs, SunnComm's CEO, concedes.

SunnComm's solution adds a sufficiently high enough hurdle to frustrate the bulk of casual music fans, Jacobs said.

"We liken ourselves to a padlock on the music," he said. "There will always be people with bolt cutters out there willing to steal things."


© Copyright 2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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What a joke, They think they have it solved. Mp3ing cannot be snuffed out like, there are to many die hard mp3ers who are willing to do anything to keep the mp3 scene alive, cause the record companies don't understand the power behind mp3's.

I will do anything to keep the flow of mp3s to my HDD, it is the main source of Trance musik for me, and to sever that, there would be retaliation!!!!!!!!

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hehe doesn't matter to me i use minidisc

It's all a moot point anyways...
Think about it: most of the mp3's you could ever want are already on the internet being exchanged, and the number of locations grows exponentially with continous downloading... all it takes is one hacker to "break the code" and upload an mp3, and a week later everyone has it....

Not to mention there is that program, Virtual Audio Cables which uses your soundcard to record whatever sound is coming through your speakers... this program is popular for recording live streams of RealAudio and music from Flash sites (.swf files)..... I use it all the time.... and i could use it to record music as its playing the "encoded" CD on my PC cd player....

Big deal. a big extended middle-finger to the record companies! Not to worry anyways, most of the stuff we like this is N/A to anyways... And shit, all the CD's that i WOULD pay for i can't even get... so screw it all i say!

-ABT-

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Peace.