Downloading music could spell JAIL!

[Happy Go Lucky]

Downloading music could put you in JAIL!!

http://www.indiemagazine.co.uk/cgi-bin/news.cgi?id=1673&section=3

Apolgies if this has been posted before, personally I don't download stuff not since the days of mp3.com this is probably one of the reasons why, and the fact downloading software updates keeps my crappy 56K very busy.

This is the first time that weirdo jacko has spoken sense, surely theres some benefit of trying before you buy. The media industry couldn't stop customers selling their wares as pre-owned, so I don't think they'll suceed with this.

It's just seems extreme to make it seem as bad as for eg. child porn.

Can't see it ever getting approved here.

 

[Will]

RIAA is issuing 75 court orders a day in the US and fining people who have downloaded as few as 5 songs. The court system can't cope with that. Soon all Americans will all be living in music pirate camps, working off their debts.

Land of the free indeed.

 

[Scooba Da Bass]

Nobody is going to jail. They are sueing for massively inflated sums, something along the lines of $15,000 per song. No one can afford that sort of cost especially the students who they are after so they end up accepting out of court settlements for as much as they can get.

Frankly this is even worse than going after people in the first place, it's using the legal system to blackmail people into not fighting.

 

[Will]

Also, if you went to court, you'd have to pay costs...I dread to think how expensive their legal team would be.

 

[Wij]

Fuck it. Everyone should download a few tracks and hand themselves in to the police. Plead Not Guilty and defend themselves. They couldn't possibly handle that number of cases.

But then again, I'm stupid.

 

[ECA]

Originally posted by Wij
Fuck it. Everyone should download a few tracks and hand themselves in to the police. Plead Not Guilty and defend themselves. They couldn't possibly handle that number of cases.

But then again, I'm stupid.

Its the RIAA not the civil courts sueing for damages :/

 

[Wij]

Yeah - I'm just being a martyr for the sake of being a prick.

 

[(Shovel)]

Originally posted by Wij
Fuck it. Everyone should download a few tracks and hand themselves in to the police. Plead Not Guilty and defend themselves. They couldn't possibly handle that number of cases.

But then again, I'm stupid.

If everyone did it - as in, literally millions (10 million+ download in the US), then it would have an effect, possibly. Though as to what effect that would be is hard to tell.

Went shopping for CDs today, HMV wanted £15 for them, it's a joke.

And was going to buy the new Kings of Leon, but after the pain in the arse that I had with Radiohead's copy control, the only way I can listen to it is to download it... ah the irony of RIAA incompetance.

 

[Tom]

On a slight tangent, how does this copy protection system work?

 

[mank!]

Takes the piss really, doesn't it? sigh.

 

[Happy Go Lucky]

True enough the legal system wouldn't be able to cope, but isn't it scare tactics?, you pick up the metro newspaper whatever, and find that some kid got fined a couple of hundred £, which his parents had to pay.

 

[Scooba Da Bass]

There's 2/3 main systems being used at the moment. The current system is to have a data track at the start of the cd. Normal CD players just ignore it due to the way error correction works however PCs and some game consoles/in car systems get caught up trying to read the data and just end up stalling on it. The fun comes if you have a slot loading machine that can't be manually ejected when the power is off, like the Apple Superdrives on the last iMacs. When a copy protected CD was inserted they'd totally freeze up, and since ejection is handled in software it's impossible to get the cd out without opening up the case and disassembling the cd meachanism.

Now companies have started putting a data track at the end with the tracks encoded in a custom format that can only be played with the player they provide. The tracks are normally encoded at ~64-96 kbps which kind of defeats the whole point of buying a CD.

 

[(Shovel)]

Originally posted by Tom[SHOTTEH]
On a slight tangent, how does this copy protection system work?

Not 100% sure, but it's something to do with making the disks multi-session, so CD ROMs get confused, while normal simple players ignore it and play as normal.

When you attempt to rip it/clone it/play it on a PC outside of the provided pile-o-shite software, it plays with pops and clicks.

All DVD drives get knackered by it, some Lite-On CD-RWs will get round it, for now at least.

The gist is: "We're the RIAA, we can't think of a positive solution to internet piracy, so we're going to sue people. Oh, and lets restrict the poeple who do the albums just in case they are filthy pirates(TM) as well".

If it carries on, I wont be able to listen to a single legitimate CD on my system. Got to admire their genious.

 

[doh_boy]

why don't they do what scallies do round here:

Plead guilty say you'll pay the damages but you want to pay them in installments (1p a week should do it )

 

[Will]

Tom - it introduces faults into the recording, which a audio CD player compensates for, but a PC CD player thinks the disc is damaged instead, since it reads much more precisely.

Thats the super-simple version.

 

[Tom]

Hmm, that does sound a bit simple Will, I understand exactly how a CD stores music (did it all years ago at college). A CD-ROM drive cannot actually read any more precisely than a CD player, but I don't wanna get dragged into that argument! My understanding therefore is that:

You buy a CompactDisc branded product
You buy a CompactDisc CD
The two refuse to work with eachother
You find that the CD has been altered from it's original 1983 spec
You sue the manufacturer of the CD for false advertising

That's essentially true, they can't retrospectively change things on the fly, and expect us all to fork out for new hardware.

 

[Tom]

Anyway, I think the RIAA would be much happier if goverments would do something about the scale of bootlegging in the Far East. Last time I was there you could get ANYTHING at really low prices.

 

[Will]

Scoob posted a less simple explanation...I like his better.

 

[Will]

Originally posted by Tom[SHOTTEH]
You buy a CompactDisc branded product
You buy a CompactDisc CD
The two refuse to work with eachother
You find that the CD has been altered from it's original 1983 spec
You sue the manufacturer of the CD for false advertising

Phillips did threaten to sue people who used the CD logo on copy-protected CDs. Not heard much about that since, I assume they gave up or were bought off.

 

[(Shovel)]

Originally posted by Tom[SHOTTEH]
Hmm, that does sound a bit simple Will, I understand exactly how a CD stores music (did it all years ago at college). A CD-ROM drive cannot actually read any more precisely than a CD player, but I don't wanna get dragged into that argument! My understanding therefore is that:

You buy a CompactDisc branded product
You buy a CompactDisc CD
The two refuse to work with eachother
You find that the CD has been altered from it's original 1983 spec
You sue the manufacturer of the CD for false advertising

That's essentially true, they can't retrospectively change things on the fly, and expect us all to fork out for new hardware.

THey're one step ahead. The CompactDisk brand logo is absent from Copy Controlled CDs. They have a new, someone sinister looking, logo for the new Copy Controlled disks. So they watched their backs - understandable for an industry that is acting clinically paranoid.

 

[whipped]

The stupid thing is, the answer is staring them in the face.

Lower the price of CDs. If new music CDs cost £5, I'd probably still download them, but if they were any good I'd happily go out and spend a fiver to get a case and a nice booklet.

Plus, HMV, etc. should take a leaf out of GAME's book and offer £10 return guarentee. That way, if the new album you buy is a pile of shit, at least you have the oppertunity to exchange it.

 

[Happy Go Lucky]

perhaps GAME should sell music





































I'll get me coat

 

[Rubber Bullets]

I think the stupid thing is that copy protection doesn't work anyway.

OK so it makes copying a CD a bit more difficult than putting it in 1 drive with a blank in the other and pressing a button, but it really isn't that difficult to copy these discs, and they are all available to download anyway.

What does copy protection achieve? It pisses off legitimate users without doing anything at all to combat music piracy.

s

 

[nath]

I was restricted from doing several legitimate things with my Radiohead CD because of copy control. Thanks to Stu, I found out that it's very very simple to get round. Get clone CD, make a copy, and select the option to only burn the first session. Voila a perfect copy of the original cd without the copy protection. I was then able to copy the music on to the hard drive of my XBox so I could play it with burnout 2. Hurrah!

Totally legal btw, I actually had no illegal reasons for doing this. Using this method to do illegal things is wrong and illegal, so don't. etc.

 

[Meatballs]

/me strokes nath

you are so sexay and moral!

 

[kanonfodda]

Can't stand all this copy protected crap, they don't play properly in my car! I gave up on them now, if an album doesn't have a CD logo, I won't buy it.

I have sent complaints to amazon about this, as they still advertise them as CD's, so you don't know if it is copy proteted or not :S

 

[(Shovel)]

I was restricted from doing several legitimate things with my Radiohead CD because of copy control. Thanks to Stu, I found out that it's very very simple to get round. Get clone CD, make a copy, and select the option to only burn the first session. Voila a perfect copy of the original cd without the copy protection. I was then able to copy the music on to the hard drive of my XBox so I could play it with burnout 2. Hurrah!

Sadly it wont work for everyone (namely me). That is the way to do it, but it still depends on the drive you do it in. Cloning from either of my drives (Pioneer DVD/Creative CDRW) didn't escape the pops and clicks. However, like with ripping, Lite On is your friend

 

[Xtro]

Quite frankly it takes the piss that I had to use Kazaa to get the new Radiohead album in mp3 format when I had the *purchased special edition* sat on my desk.

I didn't know about the clone CD thing, cheers nath.

 

[Gef]

I like The Registers quote..

As Boycott-RIAA's founder Bill Evans notes, "there are more file-sharers than voters for either candidate at the last Presidential Election".

When Evans dubs the 'Recording Incarceration Industry of America' he's only half-joking. If the RIAA was to be indulged in its whims, the statistics suggest that the USA would rapidly become a vast, continent-wide penal colony. And that's hardly a beacon of liberty to shine on the rest of the world.

 

[Any]

How about you all realise that what you are doing is stealing? If you get caught you should face the consequences.
You wouldnt go into a shop and steal a CD so why is it ok to download it?

Why should the record companys lower the price of CD's? They own the music and should be allowed to charge whatever they like. If you cant afford something then live without it.