Full Article Here --LA Times (registration may be required?)

By Jon Healey and Charles Duhigg, Times Staff Writers


Music fans who copy CDs for all their pals, take note: It may be time to shed some friends.

Executives at EMI Group on Monday said they planned to begin rolling out CDs with technology designed to limit copying. The technology allows buyers to burn onto CDs only three full copies of a disc's songs, and the burned discs cannot be copied.

Sony BMG is heading even faster down the same road. About half the discs it releases in the United States today have the three-copy limit, and it plans to have a similar restriction on all its U.S. releases by the end of the year, said Thomas Hesse, president of the company's global digital music business.

The new CD technology still has some compatibility issues — most notably, the songs on the discs cannot be transferred directly to Apple Computer Inc.'s popular iPods. Such limitations are one reason that the two other major record companies, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group Corp., have yet to make the switch to "secure" CDs.

Nor is the technology foolproof. Executives at EMI and Sony BMG said the point was to rein in copying by the everyday music fan, not to stop determined bootleggers.

Nevertheless, if fans do not rebel, the companies' discs are likely to chart the rest of the industry's path into secure CDs. The goal, label executives say, is to have anti-piracy technology on every track sold, whether it is encased in plastic or downloaded from an online store.

Many music executives blame digital piracy for the prolonged slump in CD sales. That piracy comes in two main forms: free downloading from Internet file-sharing networks and using CD burners to copy entire discs.

The file-sharing issue receives more headlines, but CD burning may be more prevalent. Hesse said a survey by market research firm NPD Group found that fans acquired twice as much music through burned CDs as they did through file sharing.

The labels have been selling secure CDs overseas for several years. But they have been reluctant to bring the discs to the United States until the technology was flexible enough to allow some degree of copying to computers and to blank CDs.

Before merging with Sony Music, Bertelsmann Music Group was the label most willing to experiment with secure CDs in the United States. Its releases included two hits: Velvet Revolver's "Contraband" in 2004 and Anthony Hamilton's "Comin' From Where I'm From" in 2003.

Those CDs used technology from SunnComm International Inc. of Phoenix that blocked the discs from being copied onto a computer. Instead, the discs contained a second set of tracks in Microsoft's secure Windows Media format that could be copied onto a computer, transferred to portable players and burned onto a limited number of CDs.

The technology left several notable holes in the security, however. The burned CDs had no electronic locks to prevent them from being copied an unlimited number of times, and hackers quickly found a way to circumvent SunnComm's technology entirely to remove all the restrictions.

Since then, SunnComm and three other companies have developed a more secure approach. The new versions are designed to allow a limited number of copies that can be burned onto CDs that cannot, in turn, be copied.

EMI plans to begin selling secure CDs in the U.S. in mid-July; the artists affected include 30 Seconds to Mars and OK Go.

Both EMI and Sony BMG plan to let buyers get around the CDs' restrictions so they can get tracks onto iPods. Executives said they were willing to sacrifice security in the name of playability.

Still, the technology leaves at least one analyst skeptical.

"Here you have a product with declining sales, and for the same price you want to decrease the potential value of it," said analyst Phil Leigh of Inside Digital Media. "Basically, music companies are saying, 'We're going to lock up the front door of the store now, but the back door is still remaining wide open.'"

"Executives said they were willing to sacrifice security in the name of playability."

So let me get this straight - they're doing all this for the sake of security, and yet they're willing to sacrifice security in the name of playability? If they really want to sacrifice security for playability, they'd just leave the damn cd's alone and stop wasting money on drm.

fuck em
theres always mp3 decrypter..
i have the enwest dvd dycrypter for that 6 billion dollar infinifilm css coding...
audio is just 1 stream...
the free sourcers willhave a crack out for it as soon as they get the code for this socalled audio protection...
hehe
thast why its called a rca or usb digital audio capture device...
use a normal cdplayer... get some rca cable or(if possible) usb and connect it to either a normal cd recorder or a computer and record trhe audio in real time or a fwew times faster.. then rip the copy^^...
so ya these guys are wasting money just so they can have a exuse for their loss of money. oncne they realise theyre failure theyll blame of course,, un filesharing, they cant even admit thayre own fuck ups...
this is just like cooking the books as they say... i think theres a more financial sinister purpouse going on...
maybe its the mob laundering money and usingthe lawsuits against copyrighta s afront to wash their money, hehe
who knows
but the riaa isnt too bright
like a retard in a room full o bouncy balls^^ hehehe

Stories like these have popped up in the past about "uncopyable" CDs and in this article there is some sort of scheme that limits you to 3 copies.

What I never see is a real technical explanation as to how this is accomplished. How can they be backward compatible with all CD players and somehow keep your computer from deciphering the same 1s and 0s and encoding them into .mp3s? Or if my CD player can read all the tracks on a CD then I would think my computer could read all the tracks on the CD and if my computer can take in the tracks and lay them down on a CD-R, how in the hell could they stop this? In other words, if you can make an exact copy of a CD, and that CD has DRM or whatever on it, how does the DRM on a CD stop the copying process? I would have thought tracks are tracks and when copying my PC doesn't give a crap what's in those tracks, it just reads tracks and writes tracks. Obviously I'm missing something since there are all these companies making these claims so it would be nice if there was a real technical explanation as to how this is accomplished. I'm just curious.

"Executives at EMI and Sony BMG said the point was to rein in copying by the everyday music fan, not to stop determined bootleggers."

Gee that explains why the RIAA labels are losing sales and money. If they would spend more time and money worrying about the true bootleggers that SELL copies of their product for profit, they might even be making money. But they'd rather sue potential fans, 12-year-old girls, and dead grandmas to prove their point. Idiots.

Not that we'd buy ANYTHING from an RIAA artist, but for those with weak stomachs that can't handle a full RIAA boycott, at the very least don't buy "the artists affected include 30 Seconds to Mars and OK Go." And don't waste any money on the "Velvet Revolver's "Contraband" in 2004 and Anthony Hamilton's "Comin' From Where I'm From" in 2003" either.

The smart thing to do would be to stop buying ALL RIAA crap alltogether. It's not that hard to do, honest.

Again, does any of this copy protection have a termination date? If not, it is unconstitutional, because the copyright is not being held for limited times.

Well, considering the only way to limit the number of copies of a CD you can burn must be in the regestry of the PC that your burner is on, a ystem restore would certainly circumvent this. Once they pop up, I'm sure that the reg hack needed to fix this will be found quickly.

"What I never see is a real technical explanation as to how this is accomplished. How can they be backward compatible with all CD players and somehow keep your computer from deciphering the same 1s and 0s and encoding them into .mp3s?"

An audio CD can have a second "session" which shows up as a second CD if you put it in a non-Windows computer. To be backward compatible with CD players, the audio session must come first. The CD player will ignore the rest.

The second session contains the DRM and Windows Media files.

"How can they... somehow keep your computer from deciphering the same 1s and 0s and encoding them into .mp3s?"

They count on it being a WinTel box, running Windows with the "Autorun" feature on your software/CD player being on.

But the answer is that they can't. If you've got a Mac, they haven't even considered how to stop you yet. Actually, if you have an IQ above 20, they haven't considered how to stop you yet.

"If you've got a Mac, they haven't even considered how to stop you yet. Actually, if you have an IQ above 20, they haven't considered how to stop you yet."

That's right. And until they do, a cheap Mac can make all the copies an RIAA music junkie would need for himself or others. Don't even need a hack, a crack, or special software or a physical technological maneuver.
Yeah, there are so many ways to defeat DRM, I can't believe they keep wasting so much money and time on it. Oh, well, let them use up their resources along with their false hopes. That's just fine.

Plus, I've heard a Mac comes in handy in other ways: like not having to be concerned about viruses and many other intrusions that Windows are so prone to.

One of the common objections is that software for it is hard to find. One of my friends says that isn't really true except for the lazy or the mentally challenged.

I may get one, but right now I'm too busy for much of anything, and I'm trying to learn Linux.

Wellcome CherishTruth, know that you have company with Linux. I installed a dual boot with Suse the other day with the full intention of learning the nuts and bolts of Linux.

For those that intend to buy this crap, laced with DRM, good luck. I don't want it. Not today, not tomorrow, not next year will I want it either. I would encourage the RIAA and the MPAA to continue to lace DRM in their products. The end result is that less and less people want their product as it isn't friendly to the user and it is their consideration if they want to spend the money to buy such crap. It is my estimation that each purchaser will come to the same realisation that it isn't worth the money all on their own. Nothing like running a business in the ground is there?

Thanks.
You guys are great.

I like this website. I guess I should say, affiliated websites.

Since I have a Mac, this could be a bad thing. One day, I might be buying RIAA music again, and I may not realize when a CD has DRM since my Mac wouldn't recognize it. I want to know so I could return it and demand my money back.

Something the RIAA hasn't considered in their war on Piracy is the reseller market via the Internet. Some years ago, when I was still buying RIAA crap, I bought a lot of CDs on ebay. The RIAA is totally ignoring these alternate sales channels.

'Executives at EMI and Sony BMG said the point was to rein in copying by the everyday music fan, not to stop determined bootleggers.'

So these security measures aren't aimed at criminals who're eating into their profits, but at 'everyday music fan[s]'. Bastards.

Welcome aboard CherishTruth!

Thank you. Glad to be here.

You know what? Maybe these idiots will package all the garbage with DRM.. and restrict and sue themselves right out of business!! smart move, RIAA!!

Back in the day, I'd buy an LP, take it home and then record it onto a cassette tape. The LP went on the shelf where it was safe until the tape wore out. Now a days I buy a CD and copy it to my hard drive as mp3s. Winamp plugged into my stage PA makes for the best stereo I've ever had. If I can't do this, Im not buying it. I don't even own an old fashioned CD player nor stereo. This was legal last I heard as I don't fileshare nor make copies for all the hotties who hang out.
Then again I haven't bought a CD in years. Other then Walmart it's a 100 mile drive to a CD store that stocks anything worth buying.
I also do this with DVDs. Since my 5yr old son destroyed Pink Floyd - The Wall, I copy 'em and then hide 'em away. (why couldn't he destroy a Barney DVD?!?)