Having previously easily ripped a supposedly copy-protected disc I felt lucky and tried again with Delerium’s latest, Chimera. My CD-RW drive didn’t even want to recognize the disc at first, giving me the “I-have-no-idea-what-the-hell-you-just-stuck-in-me” flashing light error, but ejecting and reloading it repeatedly eventually got it recognized. My older drive in the other system just locked up any time I tried to access the disc.
Tracks 2 and on were ripped without incident, but track 1 insisted on being a pain in the ass. Each attempt to rip it resulted in a ton of ATAPI errors and a big blank spot in the resulting file. I even tried the marker-around-the-rim trick to no avail. Eventually I decided to try taking the output from multiple attempts and manually merging them into a single file, but miraculously enough after a few more ejects and reloads, on the third try I got a perfectly clean copy. It took way too long to get there though.
Stuff like this is more likely to make a person like me, who does legitimately buy most music, go and pirate even more tracks. I don’t think I’ll be buying any more Copy Controlled discs anymore, at least.
I wish businesses would realize how this is *really* affecting people. Again, Cory Doctorow. We just need him on their doorstep. :)
It’d be nice if the stuffed suits in the recording industry had at least one brain cell between them.
As you so eloquently elaborated, things like this aren’t protecting music, they’re driving customers away. Like you, I’m infinitely less likely to make a purchase if it’s got limitations on it beyond anything reasonable. Next, I imagine CDs will evaporate completely after being played twice – and the cost will go up, too…
Real music fans will support artists / bands they like. And that is the key here. We as fans and customers don’t support the recording industry, we support the artists.
Ah, who am I kidding. Reason has no place in business. :-)
Actually… There is now a company producing DVD discs which will self-destruct 48 hours later after the package is opened.
The rationale there is the same as it was for the old DivX players. It’s mainly meant as an alternative to rental, so the discs are cheaper and people wouldn’t have to worry about returning them. I’m sure they could easily string along everyone else to squeeze as much money out of them as they can, though… “Oooh, sorry, the collector’s edition won’t be out for another year. In the meantime, why not buy our Kablammo version of it? Just come back with your $5 whenever you need a fresh copy…”
Hasn’t happened in the music industry yet, at least. The artists are still getting screwed though.