Copy-protected CDs: Technically flawed?

Reuters/ZDNet ^

[SamAdams76]

Adding weight to this lawsuit is the Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA) passed by Congress in 1992. Little known to most consumers, this act levies a 2% tax on all recording equipment (i.e. tape recorders, CD writers) and a 3% tax on all blank media, including tape cassettes, DATs and CD-Rs, which is then rewarded to the recording industry to compensate for "lost royalties." It can and should be argued that copy protected CDs removes the justification for the AHRA levy.

Of course, any copy-protected CD can easily be circumvented with one of these:

Simply use this marker to color the outer edge of your copy-protected CD (on the shiny side) and the measures are defeated.

[RabidBartender]

But make sure it's a 99 cent marker. A 79 cent one just won't do. :)

Thanks for posting this - it's good see the RIAA start to get what's coming to them.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

To find all articles tagged or indexed using tech_index

Click here: tech_index

[goldstategop]

Yup. $1.00 marker defeats a protection scheme that cost millions to develop. Its so easy to show RIAA their pushing muscle around and shaking down consumers for millions extra is all for naught.

[kevlinsky]

CD protection will never work. No matter how much protection they put on, some company will create a device that will allow you to play it (i.e. I have heard of some Taiwanese companes that make cd-rom drives that can play these CDs. I am not sure if what I have heard is true, but it is inevitable).

[LibKill]

Simply use this marker to color the outer edge of your copy-protected CD (on the shiny side) and the measures are defeated.

I haven't seen one of these CDs from hell yet. Is the Kopy-proteKtion on the outmost track?

[OC_Steve]

What really burns me up is that I just bought a Sony Viao desktop and guess what, it has a CD burner and software to take songs off CDs. If Sony was so fired up about this they should stop packaging this with their computers.

They are such hypocrites!!!

[SamAdams76]

The recording industry made an agreement in 1992 with the AHRA and have been collecting revenue on the sales of recording equipment and blank media ever since. By accepting this money, they have legitimized and sanctioned home recording. To attempt to put out products that prevent consumers from making legal recordings of the music he/she purchases while still collecting this revenue on blank media is the height of arrogance.

The recording industry should have to pay back every penny of AHRA money they have collected over the years.

[Thud]

The lawsuit is a slam dunk on labelling. The rest is just a stickup.

[SamAdams76]

Don't you think it's also a stickup for the recording industry to collect taxes on blank media while at the same time trying to prevent consumers from using that blank media with their products?

[zoyd]

Labelling would be a great start. I've avoided buying several CDs on the grounds that I play them on my PC a lot, and without that capability, they're much less appealing. I think a label stating the form of copy-protection should be on there, at least. Until that happens, my CD-buying sprees will be much more infrequent.

But since I have a Sharpie...

[SevenofNine]

COOL Sam RACK ITTTT DUDE OHHHH Sam THANK YOU FOR Idea LOL! I am Music troll Hey I rather spend what 9.95 a disk downloaded my fav songs that I only LIKE not entire CD which I don't like

[Thud]

Yup, but they did it the old-fashioned way - they bought Congress fair 'n square.

[Nick Danger]

I don't understand why the record companies don't just take the studio master recordings and lock them in a vault. It's this process of making copies and selling them to the public that causes all the piracy. If the major goal of record companies is to protect their intellectual property, they shouldn't be out there selling copies of the stuff. I'm sure their lawyers have been telling them this, why don't they listen? End piracy now: stop selling records.

[general_re]

Don't you think it's also a stickup for the recording industry to collect taxes on blank media while at the same time trying to prevent consumers from using that blank media with their products?

One might expect that involuntarily paying a piracy tax on the assumption that you were going to pirate things would constitute a tacit license for you to then go ahead and pirate things. Alas, it is not so...

[wafflehouse]

i believe it is actually a 'corrupt' data track..
as most PCs default to scanning data tracks first, they
hit the bad data track and hang up right there
unable to play the music tracks..
i am pretty sure that was the deal..

[SamAdams76]

One might expect that involuntarily paying a piracy tax on the assumption that you were going to pirate things would constitute a tacit license for you to then go ahead and pirate things. Alas, it is not so...

Your reasoning is flawed. The tax imposed on blank media and the acceptance of that money by the recording industry for "royalties" legitimizes the transfer of copyrighted material onto the blank media. I have the legal right to make as many copies for my own use as I wish. Due to the recording industry collecting this tax on blank media, buying blank media is no different than buying the CD itself.

[Starwind]

audio CD recorder will not operate with a data CD blank

Technically, why is that? I assume the recording surfaces are the same and they're both digital...what's the diff between sound bits and info bits?

[general_re]

The tax imposed on blank media and the acceptance of that money by the recording industry for "royalties" legitimizes the transfer of copyrighted material onto the blank media. I have the legal right to make as many copies for my own use as I wish.

The problem is that this right of archival copies was simply codified by the Audio Home Recording Act of 1976 (and its 1992 revision) - it was not created at that point, as the piracy tax was. You had the right to make archival copies before that, it just wasn't a matter of statute law until that point. And if you check the record of that legislation, I think you'll find that the blank media tax was explicitly sold as a pre-emptive remedy for the piracy and distribution of copyrighted material - the tax is itself a presumption of guilt that you pay because it is assumed that you will use blank media to pirate copyrighted material.

Therefore, if you are paying for it, you must have a tacit license to do it - otherwise, you'd be paying for nothing at all except the "right" to do something you already had the right to do. And Congress would never allow such a ridiculous situation to come about, would they? Naaaahhhhhh... ;)