"Corrupted" CD's! How to stop this?

Oh, you can also find some DMCA/SSSCA info at www.theregister.co.uk

i'm very disappointed they didn't come up with a funny name for o-town as well, it's about time someone took those sacred cows down a notch.

Blow-Town, duh... I think their new single warrants that.

I bet you can still make minidiscs digitally though.

Isn't "O-town" a rather ridiculous, self-parodic name to start with ?

the riaa has a constitution?

Aren't these CDs basically supposed to be unrippable? In other words, you can play them on yr stereo and make an analogue copy onto tape (or, probably - unless they've beefed up the SCMS or crippled the S/PDIF stream - make a digital copy on MD or CD-R), but you can't perform DAE at some dazzlingly fast speed and then turn it into an MP3.

It didn't take very long for some Norwegian teenager to crack the DVD- A watermarking, so I fully expect a hack to be downloadable within weeks to sidestep this form of protection too. They can't win, basically.

No, what I'm saying is that some of these CD's actually won't play on some equipment AT ALL. It's more like how come movie DVD's for Europe won't play in an American DVD player and vice versa.
It also would not amaze me if there is watermarking involved as well.

Does anyone know of any other CD's 'afflicted' with this (besides the ones listed on the Fat Chucks site?

I find all U2 CDs unplayable. Is that what you mean?

Here's a faq that explains what I mean.
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THE NEXT TIME YOU BUY A CD, REMEMBER TO ASK: “Will this CD really play on my equipment?” Why? Because the record manufacturers are quietly shipping corrupted CDs into all U.S. stores.
 Many of these CDs won’t play on computers, Playstation 2 consoles, DVD players, car CD players or MP3 players, have lower quality sound than normal CDs, and are less resistant to scratches.
 It’s impossible to copy or make MP3s from these CDs, even for personal use.
 The manufacturers want to charge you the same high prices for a lower-quality product.

Why are they doing this? They claim to want to stop illegal copying, but the CDs cause other problems.
 They can’t be copied for personal use.
 If the plans of the labels succeed, you’ll no longer be able to make your own music compilations or keep a spare copy for backup purposes. If the CD stops working thanks to scratches, which is more likely with these corrupted CDs, you’ll have to buy a brand new copy, increasing their sales.
 DJs will no longer be able to take high-quality digital samples to create new music with.

How do I tell if the CD I just bought is corrupt? There is no way to tell by simply looking.
 YOU HAVE TO ASK BEFORE YOU PAY FOR IT.
 If Music Land, Best Buy or Wal-Mart can’t give you a straight answer, let them know you will be returning your CD for a refund if it is defective.
 These corrupted CDs have already been found in the USA, and the labels and record stores are planning on releasing millions more.
 They do not want you to hear about this until it’s too late.

What can I do? If a CD you’ve bought goes wrong much sooner than usual, TAKE IT BACK.
 We have to make it clear to the labels and stores that we will not pay good money for sub-standard CDs.  Eventually the record labels want all CDs to be like this. This is happening now, but by early 2002, most CDs will be like this unless we stop them now.

Won’t determined music-lovers copy these CDs anyway? Oh yes.
 Creating a perfect anti-copying mechanism is impossible.
 However, the DMCA law, passed by Congress in 1996, makes it illegal for anyone to tell someone else how to access one of these CDs on a computer.
 Already, Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested in America this spring for creating a program that allowed blind people to listen to copy-protected Adobe eBooks, and legitimate owners to print out the books or copy them to another computer. He was arrested because of the DMCA.

But if I bought it, it’s mine to do what I want with, isn’t it? Not according to the record industry.
 We are used to buying a CD and being able to play it on any CD/DVD player we want, or lend it to friends, or sell it when we’ve finished with it - copy protection takes away these consumer rights.
 If you want to make a copy of your CD, you must ask the record label for permission, or pay a second time for the right to download "authorized" MP3s from their Internet site.
 What would you think if your new CD only worked on one CD player? It sounds crazy, but that’s exactly the kind of thing the record industry is trying to do.

If you buy one of these CDs by mistake, TAKE IT BACK.
If you feel strongly about this, let the record stores know. They do not want to be stuck with music that people won't buy.

U.S.A.) FATCHUCKS.COM / (Europe) UK.EURORIGHTS.ORG
NO TO CORRUPT CDs!
COPY AND SHARE
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Well, I'm not sure about 'lower quality' and 'less resistant to scratches', but there are certainly a few copy-protection schemes knocking around now.

The two that seem to be earning something of a foothold in the market are Macrovision's SafeAudio and Sony's Key2Audio.

The former inserts glitches into the raw digital data which look, to a CD player's error-correction circuitry, like uncorrectable errors which must be interpolated or muted. Unless the glitches are very frequent, or occur in long bursts (and they don't have to be to achieve their aim), their effect on normal playback will be inaudible. However, performing DAE on a disc in a computer's CD drive doesn't generally involve any sort of error-correction, so the glitches are copied faithfully, and will show up in all their staticky unpleasantness in any CD-Rs or MP3s you make from the ripped WAVs. You should still be able to make a cassette copy (or, for that matter, a digital copy to DAT, MD or CD-R from a domestic CD player equipped with a digital output) from such a copy-protected CD without any problem. Some fancy combinations of ripping software (Feurio, EAC) and CD-ROM (ones capable of giving C2 error info) will also get past this protection (by interpolating the glitches). Actually PLAYING the disc should be possible in just about any machine.

Now, the Sony/Key2Audio method relies on some form of watermarking applied at the glass master stage - OUTSIDE the audio data area. I don't know how this works, but this does seem to prevent CD-ROM drives from accessing the audio portion of the disc. It was used on promo copies of the Michael Jackson single. I still don't see how this prevents any kind of analogue or real-time digital copying on stereo equipment.

One disc widely reported as 'corrupt' is the Elektra version of Bjork's "Selmasongs". Nothing underhand here, I don't think, just some sloppiness in adding the non-audio content to the disc - my DVD- ROM drive struggles to read the TOC, misreports the length of the final track, and 'fails' to rip properly (actually, the spurious crap at the end of the last track that causes the rip to fail can easily be chopped out in Cool Edit). My CD-RW drive reads/plays/rips this disc perfectly.

Here's the thing though, as much as I wanted to rah-rah the underdogs and poo-poo the villians, I can't figure out who's who. I mean, I can't figure out a single legitimate reason for anyone to steal a cd just because it's unreasonably priced. I know the topic here is boycott, but I see the distant rumblings of "fuck the man, I'm gonna steal it 'cuz they're ripping us off"--and while I certainly get the urge to do so, there's no logic I can see to "it's too expensive" thus "I have a right to steal." Can someone help me out?

"I mean, I can't figure out a single legitimate reason for anyone to steal a cd just because it's unreasonably priced."

Quite. I initially thought what people were objecting to was an apparent violation of the Fair Use law (I'm not terribly familiar with the legal details, but essentially [in the US at least] making copies of records you own for your personal use would appear to be, if not technically *legal*, then protected from possible prosecution. Or something like that), but I'm not sure these copy protection schemes do that. I always thought computer based copiers were specifically excluded from this legislation anyway?

I can understand someone wanting to make a 'backup' of a £13 CD onto a 50p recordable (and transportable) medium, and this is still not affected - just the speed with which it can be done (hence the deterrent to large-scale piracy). Actually preventing playback AT ALL in CD-ROM drives seems a bit much though.

Though it's one in the eye for those shamefully dissolute employers that I read about (with disbelief and horror) on ILx who ALLOW MUSIC AT WORK. Gah.

No, the sick part is, they wanna do this to EVERYBODY's CDs.
Hypothetical Scenario: Imagine someones completely saintlike Mother Teresa-esque grandma, who doesn't even know what Napster is, picks up that Greatest Hits of Wayne Newton CD and takes it home. She puts it in her bog-standard CD player and...it doesn't play at all.
Why? Because her CD player isn't made by Sony or Phillips?
"No...because she's a music theif and must be punished! And if she's using a cheap brand of CD player, it must obviously be a CD Rom Drive! Ergo, she's naughty." the multinational media conglomerates bark.

I can sense a rising level of hysteria in these web-sites, Lord C.

Where's the evidence that anyone has yet released a CD which *due to deliberate corruption of the Red Book format at the manufacturing stage* won't actually play on a regular CD player?

Maybe it's true what 'Fat Chuck' has to say about certain batch runs of CDs being 'testing grounds' for copy-protection - hence the fact that the three titles he lists as corrupted on his web-site which I actually own ("Selmasongs", Staubgold comp, "O Brother..." soundtrack) can be played/ripped/copied on my PC perfectly well (despite the fact that my copy of the Bjork album has exactly the same batch info printed on the disc as one reported as corrupt). But I've a feeling it's more likely to be dodgy ripping software or hardware incompatibilities on the user side of things in a lot of these cases(the Bjork CD's non-audio content confuses my DVD-ROM drive, but not the CD-RW drive).

I suspect there's some over-reporting of defects going on, and the actual scale of the 'corruption' might be smaller than you think.

Lets hope so.
It would suck prodigious frog fundament if this really was the beginning of something hideous.

Ya, well maybe the RIAA has won a battle, but the consumer still has control over their choices. The RIAA is a strong organisation now but who knows if they still will be a few years down the road. People will soon realise that if they want quality music they can't even find it stores, it is getting harder and harder to find a good quality CD for any money at all. The music on radio and MTV is also really bad. In the end music will be sold on fast downloading service, it will be possible to quickly own a high quality audio file, that will be transferable to any device, and will easily be accessable over a home LAN.

MP3.com, emusic.com ... they are going to be the market leaders. Everyone is a winner. The artist makes about half a dollar on sold CD, that is not much money for a quality disk. People are willing to pay for fast efficent, easy service.

It is impossible to defeate anyone with money, and there is a lot of money backing the campaign behind the RIAA and the music industry. But consumers will always chose an option where they get the most out of their dollar.

If the kids of today would just buy vinyl instead, we'd have none of these problems.

If the kids of today would just buy vinyl instead, we'd have none of these problems.
But...but...I can't get my rekkids into my 'puter, man! I haven't been burned too much by this evil phenomenon yet, though both my recent Einsturzende Neubauten purchases are protected like this. Sheesh. And you know, I don't think I like them enough to buy a minidisc player just to figure out a way to rip 'em.

I'm going to start buying records because they're really cheap and I now have a record player. It sucks to have to flip the thing over, but listening to the records I have (except the real low budget punk ones), I like the way vinyl sounds. It's weird. Whether or not it's what the music is actually supposed to sound like, the sound is cool. $3 used records, here I come.

I just stumbled across a possible answer to the problem. Check the "FYI: alternate cdfs.vxd" thread for details.