"Copy protected" audio CDs & installing the Sony rootkit

After two decades of trying to prevent consumers from making digital copies of music they own, the big record companies thought they finally had the problem solved, until it blew up in their faces.
More information on the Sony rootkit scandal:
en.wikipedia.o...
Includes video clips from:
"PHILIPS COMPACT DISC CD early 80s introduction" by Hans Driessen:
• Video
"West 57th - Story about DAT cassettes and music industry 1987" by mjanovec:
• West 57th - Story abou...
"Digital Audio Tape: The one DAT got away" by Techmoan:
• Digital Audio Tape: Th...
"Dell Commercial 'All I want for Christmas'" by Clive Weston:
• Dell Commercial "All I...

[@pikminfreak0011]

Gotta love how the disk called "Lost in Translation" is the only disk that outright won't play no matter what.

[@Mario583a]

Looks like someone forgot the music...

[@BillAnt]

Well, the music on that CD is "lost in translation" he-he

[@darinb.3273]

Its possible that the disk wasn't finalized or closed (as some programs call it) normal audio CD players and CD-roms CAN NOT play an un-finalized or open session disk

[@bigsky1970]

@@darinb.3273 Exactly. If a disc isn't "finalized" it essentially becomes a drink coaster.

[@pauldickhoff3594]

@@darinb.3273 Or simply bit rot. That disk is 15 years old.

[@FirstLast-vr7es]

Now they've come up with the best copy protection yet. They just don't release anything worth listening to. It's genius, really.

[@neil2nd722]

lol

[@faequeenapril6921]

yep lol the artists I listen to all release their music on bandcamp with high quality drm free audio files.

[@UNSCPILOT]

heh, now I go to Bandcamp for releases from artists I like, or find CDs in thrift stores, I rarely buy "new" CDs mostly to get soundtracks I want because I don't want to stream music period, much like my games, I only want a Local copy so I can play it even if my internet is out or I'm in a bad coverage zone here in BC. Course I'm also trying to build a Windows XP era machine to load with linux, I run around with a old Sony Mavica Floppy-disk Camera, and still have a full sized Bluray drive on my main desktop so maybe I'm weird

[@buster5283]

I guess you do not consider anime music good music because Sony released some decent anime music in the last 5-7 years. I like many different kinds of music so maybe that is a factor though as well. I bought these songs on disc because I like them so much after listening to them on the internet and in movies and tv shows.

[@vhfgamer]

I just go to goodwill and pay 25-50 cents each per cassette or CD that I like.

[@VochoTalacha]

I had an Eminem CD that had some sort of copy protection. I just hooked up my CD player to my computer through analog audio cable and recorded all the tracks.

[@sweetestperfection90]

I used to save songs from KZbin via an analogue cable. My poor windows 98 system was not able to handle it too well. Plus it was 2006 so the tracks came out mono...

[@doltBmB]

Internal CD drives can output analogue audio as well, you typically would need to connect a special cable to your sound card to get "CD audio" output.

[@svenschwingel8632]

I got myself a high quality soundcard in 2001 (Terratec EWX 24/96) that was based on the ViA Envy24 chipset. It had SPDIF in- and outputs and could sync to external clocks like the 44.1 kHz from a CD player. I was able to record bit-true copies to harddisk, just like a standalone DAT deck. No SCMS or any other bullshit. It turned out I never really needed it because my Plextor CD drives always handled anything I threw at them 🤷🏼‍♂️

[@ericwood3709]

I have a German CD with copy protection on it, but it hasn't stopped me ripping it (the normal way) on Mac or Linux.

[@MrJaz8088]

Was plenty of programs for Recording Audio via Line In on PC and with all the Filters it could come out better

[@ourplesoop]

It's hilarious to watch these old dinosaurs trying to put severe limitations on their products instead of actually innovating and adapting to the times.

[@olik136]

and the only reason they aren't doing it right now is that they have found ways to get their money from streaming - not because they have learned something....

[@Denji2006]

Playstation 3 literally lets you convert CDs to MP3s.

[@joejoe4games]

Nah, they just moved on to digital video

[@LiEnby]

joejoe4games irony

[@frazzleface753]

It's amazing that they didn't understand their market or the technology. Sure, no one could look into the future to see exactly how things would go, but hearing their statements from the late 80s/early 90s, these industry 'leaders' sound clueless.

[@DONK8008]

And to this day companies still don't understand that DRM only hurts legitimate customers. PC gamers dealing with DRM while the pirates who have to wait 2 weeks tops to get the game have no (or at least bypassed) DRM.

[@theirisheditor]

Indeed, DRM = Dishonest Restrictions Mechanism

[@DONK8008]

At least the current forms of game DRM are not as bad as they used to be, SecuROM and StarForce were by far the worse culprits. Sadly those DRMs left some games unplayable without cracking which is kinda ironic now.

[@TremiRodomi]

The Denuvo DRM on my legit copy of Prey locked me out once.

[@DONK8008]

I got locked out of Sonic Mania for 2 hours after release thanks to Denuvo. Can't say I was too pleased with that seeing that the Steam store page had no mention of it pre and post release.

[@MosoKaiser]

At least GOG gets it.

[@povilasstaniulis9484]

The Audio CD standard (aka. the Red Book) simply does not allow for any kind of DRM. What Sony did with this XCP thing is beyond my understanding. Their system can be easily bypassed by those who want to copy discs by just disabling Autorun. It literally only hurts average non tech-savvy consumers who just want to play CDs they have purchased. Thank god Microsoft disabled Autorun in modern versions of Windows.

[@pokepress]

Povilas Staniulis even if they wanted to put some sort of on-disc encryption in the original format, they would have run into the same problems as DVDs, and probably run the cost of players up considerably. Back then, of course, your average home computer was nowhere near being able to play CDs, let alone rip them.

[@simontay4851]

Autorun is dangerous, stupid and should never have been enabled. What's so difficult about going to the optical drive in My Computer and opening the file(s) you want manually. People managed perfectly OK in DOS and Win3.1 without autorun.

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

@ Povilas Staniulis: Yup, as soon as you add any program or non-audio content to the audio CD, it becomes a CD-ROM and no redbook audio CD.

[@cashnelson2306]

All DRM only hurts the people foolish enough to pay money for these products. Pirates don't give a shit. The only digital media I pay for is that which comes DRM-free.

[@renakunisaki]

I'm pretty sure XCP is the reason they disabled autorun.

[@emolovetree]

Fun fact: ok go said they added the 35 minute track of near silence to deliberately pad out the disk to make it impossible to add drm

[@danieldaniels7571]

Xylophone T geeks looking out for other geeks. You have to love that

[@simplyalonso]

....but apparently the record company said "FUCK THAT!!!" and shipped some versions with the very DRM they tried to stop

[@scoutdy6547]

I know this comment is 6 years but it makes me happy to know even artist are like "THIS DRM BULLSHIT IS HORSE SHIT"

[@albertoamatucci6167]

It's not oddware... it's assholeware. I had some piece of software on an Anastacia's album and it was messing up my pc entirely. I had to listen the disc on a PlayStation

[@Lovuschka]

I hope you sued Anastacia for that.

[@beezanteeum]

@@Lovuschka It's not the artist's fault, but the record label's

[@Lovuschka]

@@beezanteeum Just more people to sue then.

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

I remember the german Band "Die Ärzte" (the doctors) always deliberately avoided adding a copy protection on their CDs and even had a mockup of the WMG "Copy Control" logo, which looked like that same logo but with a middle finger in it instead :P They were (and still are) absolutely against such anti-consumer and anti-fan mechanisms.

[@kpanic23]

KRAFTWERK2K6 They even added blank CD-Rs with the same print as the original CD, encouraging you to create copys for your friends :)

[@yellowcrash10]

kpanic23 That is _awesome_. The RIAA would have a heart attack.

[@300DBenz]

The Dead Kennedys felt the same way: m.imgur.com/blhnH?r Even though theres no copy protection on analog tapes.

[@retrocysper3709]

Sounds like an amazing band. I would like to listen to them.

[@nocturnalsunlight3639]

@@300DBenz Ahahahahaha

[@nokiot9]

Holy CRAP. THATS why audio CD-r were so damn expensive? A royalty tax? That's insane. I never knew that.

[@billdang3953]

How much do you wanna bet that the recording artists and song writers are hardly getting any of the tax money while the music company executives are getting almost all of it.

[@tiobetio9501]

I remember buying a pack of what I thought were CDRs only to find out the goddamned things were Audio only. The store wouldn't take them back either because I had opened the package. I still did burn music onto them but what a pain in the ass.

[@rasoirwolf]

They came in cool colours or faux vinyl though. Still bet the artists and songwriters get nothing from the extra in price.

[@gamagama69]

@@billdang3953 ofc its like that they used the artist cope for support. as always

[@uxwbill]

I became aware of this nonsense after buying a copy of _The Essential Dion_ by Dion DiMuci. At the time it made me quite angry...angry enough that I called Sony DADC to a report a "quality issue". The people who answered the phone were polite, but utterly bewildered. I suppose, being a duplicating plant, that they just put on disc what their clients provide and don't know or care about the contents. Interestingly, none of Windows 95, Mac OS 10.4 PPC or OS/2 had any problem playing the CD as a standard audio disc, with their bundled standard CD audio playback software. iTunes on the Mac had no problem ripping the disc's tracks to MP3. (Yes, the disc in question was actually copy protected. It had the XCP software installer on it, and a Windows XP machine refused to treat it as a standard audio CD.) I submitted the disc for replacement under the recall and never looked back. A few weeks ago, I actually came across the paperwork in my filing cabinet.

[@jeanbonnefoy1377]

normal you had no problem ripping to mp3 since this format, though digital is a compressed data loss one.

[@RetroReviewYT]

That’s interesting uxwbill, very informative!

[@Fender178]

Very interesting Story William. I am glad that Sony got sued over this crap because I am willing to bet that alot of computers back then got screwed up majorly. Reminds me of the old anti-piracy BS that game devs used to prevent copying but it backfired in their faces when users had burner of some kind in their computer causing them not to be able to play their legally bought game.

[@Fablefirethischannelislame]

The reason why Windows 95 and OS/2 era machines had no problem with playing these discs is because back then PC CD drives acted like normal CD players. The drive had to be connected to the sound card in order for the user to listen to CD audio, both in a music player and in games that used redbook audio (Quake, Rainbow Six, etc.). It was with the advent of different kinds of drivers for sound cards that this method of CD playback was subverted, but the cost is that CD drives can no longer act like CD players, so copy protection and rootkits exploited this. I'm not an expert on this but I think this is what was going on.

[@thomase13]

Fablefire Very interesting! I'd wondered about this!

[@davidkennedy8]

0:49... also home cooking is killing the restaurant industry

[@larmondoflairallen4705]

That would be analogous to live music versus recorded music, not getting an exact copy of a restaurant meal for free.

[@szr8]

0:43 to see that message better.

[@seafong]

Greedy record company executives take note. My first introduction to New Order was via a pirated copy of Low Life that my friend lent me in 1987. That opened my ears to good music and I have since spent hundreds in buying New Order records and CDs. If not for that pirated cassette, I wouldn’t have fallen in love with the band.

[@axadams]

The audacity of the Sony rootkit is still hard to believe after all these years. It's surprisingly under-discussed on KZbin. Great to see it in action here.

[@BeefIngot]

Believe it or not, a worse system is currently on everyones computer and google and your hardware vendor are responsible. It is in many ways more powerful than a rootkit as you cannot remove it as it is hardware.

[@agy234]

@@BeefIngotTPM?

[@ugh.idontwanna]

When I first heard Natasha Beddingfield claim "These words are my own", I didn't realise it was part of some larger copyright scheme.

[@pettttson]

The people behind this stupid scheme probably held a knife to her throat when she was writing it down.

[@differentbutsimilar7893]

Record companies messed up by telling people piracy puts them out of business. That's exactly what a lot of them want.

[@lsswappedcessna]

wish I were half as rich as these lunatics. I'd buy the rights to a metric shit ton of music and start paying the people who ACTUALLY deserve to profit from it. The composers and performers.

[@figaro-dg5c5]

But it's true what they said. People are being manipulated. Most people don't really understand the consequenses of their actions.

[@Halterung01]

I remember a CD with a weird copy protection system being jammed in a Volkswagen RCD300, it totally bricked the head unit. Every time you powered it up with this CD inserted it just shut off in panic. In this state it was impossible to eject the CD.

[@71.218-westshed]

Wow...

[@AaronOfMpls]

Oh my... Did you ever get the CD out?

[@RogerBarraud]

Collateral damage.

[@delresearch5416]

Wonder if the data track was trying to update firmware(i mean when data found in first track it was looking for update code)

[@DaRush-The_Soviet_Gamer]

There's no such thing on any standalone CD/DVD player. UPDATES haven't started being a thing until BLU RAY@@delresearch5416

[@danielpena2726]

Not too long ago, people were getting prosecuted and jailed for swapping audio files of popular songs. How many innocent lives were ruined by greedy record companies?

[@joeblow8593]

Like the person that didn't even own a computer, or in the classic case of suing someone's dead grandmother...

[@getxyzzy]

according to record labels, the most expensive object in all of creation is an ipod shuffle with 40gb of songs on it, worth several quadrillion dollars in a court case...

[@larmondoflairallen4705]

I give up. How many?

[@adamkwalczyk]

Don't make stealing sound like it's an okay thing to do.

[@Journey_to_who_knows]

How would they even find out

[@lollllloro]

"Eventually, record companies are just going to stop making certain kinds of music." The implications... just wow... I'm glad everyone knows how badly they have been ripping artists off since CDs became cheap to manufacture.

[@vhfgamer]

Yeah they stopped making certain kinds of music. They stopped making good music.

[@FTWOBR2000]

One of my favorite stories regarding the copy protection CD scandal is from OK Go. Their album Oh No (which has "Here It Goes Again" on it) was released around the time record labels like EMI were putting stuff like that on their CDs, so the band's lead singer snuck in a 30-minute recording of his girlfriend taking a nap before submitting it to the label. The album clocks in at 42 minutes, so that recording basically filled the remaining space on the CD - and thus purposely prevented their label from putting any DRM on the album.

[@brun20]

The Lost In Translation CD had a very poor quality CD-R dye. I lost a ton of information recorded on those Silver CD-Rs. Usually those discs had a life span of five years.

[@wildbilltexas]

They probably used some cheap Chinese or Korean made brand like CMC Magnetics.

[@renakunisaki]

Time Machine yeah, considering the disc wouldn't play in *anything*, I'm guessing it's just defective.

[@wildbilltexas]

I've had a few CD-R's I made in the early 2000's go bad, and most of them were budget brands. The old CD-R's that still play fine are the Verbatim Data Life with Blue AZO dye, FujiFilm's made in Japan by Taiyo Yuden, and some Kodak CD-R's with a gold ink. I wish they still made them.

[@brun20]

wildbilltexas those budget brands were always made by CMC Magnetics. But it's a general problem with the technology of CD-Rs. They're not made to last. I had a Verbatim recorded 18 years ago, and don't play anymore. Sometimes it had to do with the storage of discs, like humidity, light and other kind of stuff.

[@wildbilltexas]

I agree. A CD-R can be erased if its left face up in bright sunlight. Most of the cheap CD-R's I bought then were for my car stereo. Most of them worked fine then and I kept them in a CD binder, and some still went bad after 10+ years (Princo, Khypermedia)

[@sirMAXX77]

Gotta be embarrassing for the artists. I'm sure lots of them didn't sign up to break people's computer and how terrible would it be to sell albums, only to have them returned and not only pissed at the record company, but would be turned off by the artist for having a bad experience that wasn't their fault. On top of all that, it's not even playing the CD audio, just some compressed file. I would pissed if I was an artist that had a record company do that to my album.

[@nikostormkilla]

That was exactly the case with My Morning Jacket ironically, they ended up burning copies of Z themselves for free and sent them out to others and even had information on how to bypass the DRM on their website when Z was basically brand new

[@wildbilltexas]

Copy protected CD's were "too little too late" in 2005 when music corporations had already released billions of CD's that didn't have it. And I remember reading around that time that some CD car stereos, walkmans and boomboxes had trouble playing XCP discs. I've bought import CD's that have had copy protection, all I do is just hold down the shift key when loading to keep it from booting, and then rip it to Mp3 or Wav files to burn a unprotected CD-R.

[@MoeNinjaCat]

That quote from that record executive at the end is so funny to me. The internet has allowed for so much more in terms music diversity. It just goes to show that suits will talk out their ass just to save themselves.

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

To be honest, ever since the Patent of the Compact Disc expired in 2001/2002, every CD produced ever since is not really a real Redbook CD anymore but an un-CD. I remember when this insanity started in late 2002 / early 2003. Especially when Warner Music Group released their "Copy Control" labeled CDs and the Music Industry started the next level of escalation. >_

[@hillaryclinton2415]

That someone in Sony thought this was a good idea is mind boggling....

[@Manawyrm]

0:00 Dire Straits - So Far Away 0:16 Alan Parsons Project - Mammagamma 22:42 Dire Straits - Money for Nothing 23:00 Dire Straits - Sultans of Swing Very nice, couple of my favorite tracks :)

[@LightTheUnicorn]

Ugh, yup, you actually go and buy the darn things and you're the one who's treated as a pirate. I still have a few old CDs with this trash, knew exactly what was going to happen when you subjected that poor Thinkpad to the Unwritten album. Utterly ridiculous.

[@DMack6464]

h

[@thanthanasiszamp4707]

GloomyJD I remember a few years ago I didn't know about DVD decrypter, I rent the "Die another day" movie with 007 James Bond. My only option was to rip it by connecting my laptop's USB TV tuner to the standalone DVD player.

[@dlarge6502]

I remember back in the day when I was trying hard to convince my mates about the evils of DRM. They basically had no clue, thought it was like a conspiracy theory. I described in detail how the fake CD's worked (or didnt) and it went over their heads. A couple years later I get them coming to me wondering why they are having problems copying/ripping this CD they got for xmas to their MP3 player. They wanted me to use my uber computer skills to rip it/fix their computer. I told them a flat no, explaining to them I only let standard CD's enter my computer. Recommended that they hook up a cassette recorder to an older older 80's CD player to copy it. I wanted to say "TOLD YOU SO" so loudly but took satisfaction at the look on their faces when they realised that this was all true. In those days I was almost militant against DRM. Went round the area putting up Defective By Design posters! One stayed up for 10 years!

[@und4287]

10 YEARS?!

[@JJschannel255]

Ok

[@bsanchez3563]

At op woah cool fwiw that is no joke the same thing I do from having thankfully depite loving or liking sony in general fwiw as a brand and a whole fwiw of the other stuffs but not so much the idea of drm like hindering or even having hidden/not always known to all.. some type of software etc that just puts itself where one does not want it to be.

[@bsanchez3563]

Oh just so you know for vhs the word Macrovision is something to know for mere amusement even if not for the actual purpose of.. other, reasons for maybe like just preserving history and things as such maybe if possible a dvhs or even wvhs deck for hd upscaled version dubs or else fwiw eg to reg vhs then use a 1986? Or prior deck manufacturing date of deck/vcr for the ability to use as the recording vcr for they firmly or frankly are purportedly said to ignore macrovision.

[@threeminuteshate]

“YOU DIDN’T UNDERSTAND A TECHNOLOGY YOU HAD NO POWER TO STOP SO I WILL NOT HELP YOU!”

[@darkdoescosplays]

Found it hilarious how easy it was to circumvent the 1-2 CDs I owned that had these systems on... Just use a black marker pen on the outside of the disc, where the separation between the the music and data was obvious

[@devjock]

Oh wow, I remember Minidisc One generation copy'ing. That was almost trivial to circumvent once you knew how. Record a blank Minidisk with nothing but silence until the disk is full, then before doing the whole "Write TOC" thing, swap out the disk without letting the lid-sensor get activated (ea; hold it down with a toothpick while swapping minidisk). Then write the "74 minutes of silence" TOC to the gen1 digital copy disk. Voila, audio is crystal clear, just have to go in and split+name the tracks again, and it's copy'able again. Good times!

[@hingeslevers]

Holy shit. If only I knew that back when I still used MD!

[@pineappleroad]

I've heard of a method which doesn't require you to open up the deck, which only works on certain decks (both decks I have are able to do this trick, but you only need 1 deck that is able to do the trick in order to carry it out) AND it also allows the names of the tracks to be copied across 3 blank minidiscs are required in order to do this trick first, you use this trick to copy the TOC of the source onto a blank minidisc next, record a second blank disc with silence now you overwrite the TOC of the source minidisc with the TOC of the disc which has the silence on it next record the source minidisc to a blank minidisc then use the trick to restore the original TOC to the source minidisc finally, use the trick to add the TOC of the source minidisc to the copy

[@barryrudolph9542]

It is now 2021 and record companies have indeed stopped making certain kinds of music, the kind people want to listen to.

[@lolman123401]

I've been waiting for a video like this! You keep improving your production quality over the years too which is nice. Keep up the good work, VWestlife!

[@megaspudjasny]

15:50 They actually removed autorun from Windows for exactly this reason. Malicious USB sticks would have an autorun file that pointed to a malware executable, which older systems would run without prompting the user first.

[@SailorMoon126]

AutoRun (AutoPlay) is still there, it's just disabled.

[@gamagama69]

you can enable autorun on a media type basis. not something you should do tho

[@UHOH3300]

They'll never be able to close the analog loophole! CD Player>DAC>ADC>CD replicator

[@birdscds47]

Yes, you are right, if you have the equipment, you can just copy it via analogue then copy it to CD, I know it would be maybe one percent less good but then would anyone notice that ?

[@DMack6464]

if you can play back on ur pc or whatever, just record the output from the stereo mix

[@oevergonzalez5005]

Well... to match the original audio you need a flat response 22kHz 4th order low-pass DAC and a similar ADC... Oh and a perfect cable to connect the DAC and ADC... (Also you can rip streaming audio from an iPhone to a Mac using the digital Lightning to USB audio to get a bit-perfect copy of the audio that sounds on the iPhone)

[@ricardomontalban6004]

Just hold one phone up to another and record.

[@ssokolow]

Actually... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinavia If you can hide a robust fingerprint in the analog signal, and then have something which runs at a higher privilege level than the OS check for it, such as the firmware for the Intel Management Engine or AMD Platform Security Processor, (which are now built into every x86 CPU and must be running properly signed firmware or the system will keep rebooting like an NES cartridge without a CIC chip), then all it takes to close the analog loophole is making the fingerprint difficult enough to obscure without trashing the audio quality... and yes, ARM has something similar. AMD actually licensed ARM TrustZone to make the AMD PSP.

[@POLO9999]

Today i were digitizing some old tapes and i come accross some local news in Belgium in regards of the Copy Protected CD's and they showed how to circuvent them with ... a single piece of adhesive paper to the edge of those CD's ! According to him, it will disables the whole "PC" part and just plays like a regular CD.

[@GoldSrc_]

I love hearing old farts trying to understand new technology, it reminds me of that "Old Man Yells at Could" from the Simpsons xD. Funny how all those anti-piracy attempts mostly affect legit users, while pirates just sail away :D.

[@DMack6464]

the pirates have it easier than the customers

[@xeero24]

as an old fart my self, I was a teenager during the early days of Napster. I can say I didn't even know about all of this BS, because from the time period of 1999 to 2005 (when this nonsense was in place) who the hell was buying CDs??????

[@russianbot8576]

i remember my uncle teaching us in the early 2000s, how to pirate legally: download audacity, play album with headphones, record audio out headphones via audacity, cut dead space, cut out individual songs into separate saves and viola! jokes on all these companies.

[@RobertJW]

I think your Westlife CD was one of the rereleases without the copy protection on it, they just didn't bother updating the cover at all. Inside the jewel case, the Compact Disc logo is visible (at 10:17), which as you said earlier in the video wouldn't be able to be used if the CD didn't meet the standard. Since the rerelease isn't actually copy protected, it met the standard and could use the logo?

[@QueenDynamo]

If you're referring to the Red Book standard, the disc can still be under it.

[@thereallantesh]

I had forgotten all about this issue. I've been running Linux on my home computers for so many years that stuff like this isn't an issue for me. I actually wonder if I still have any CDs with any of the copy protection methods that you mentioned. Great video by the way.

[@HyperBiker]

What a brilliant piece of KZbin content. Really enjoyed this.

[@JacGoudsmit]

Meanwhile, music companies have now found the perfect copy protection system: Just push the volume into the limiter and make CD's sound so crappy that people are going back to vinyl and paying a lot more for the same music on an inferior analog medum.

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

Yeah… pushing everyone to overpriced (and "super limited & very rare") vinyl releases... that even sometimes come with crackles and noises already added into the Lacquer Master during manufacturing and and then getting pressed into the mass produced vinyls... so you get a horribly noisy sounding (and yet clean groove) vinyl-release for 50+ bucks because "HIFI".... only to avoid brickwall-limited and clipping CDs wthout any dynamic range what so ever... The demand for Vinyl has lowered the quality standards into oblivion.

[@sunforged1662]

Jac Goudsmit Eh, I use Spotify so I have volume normalization. So the audio isn't very loud, it's tame. I say compressed music has it's benefits (Not a lot of change in volume which leads to a more comfortable listening experience). But when I want to listen to music in an energetic mood, dynamic range is nice. It would be cool if there were two versions of every album, one with a low DR, and one with a high DR.

[@JacGoudsmit]

Sunforged: Normalization is not the same as (dynamic over-) compression. The former is reversible, the latter is not.

[@sunforged1662]

Jac Goudsmit ... I know that. I'm saying that since I have loudness normalization I don't have to worry that my eardrums are gonna get blown out.

[@sunforged1662]

Jac Goudsmit *And then* I was talking about music that's compressed in the mastering/mixing stage has some benefits such as having a more comfortable listening experience since there's not that many changes in volume.

[@mikemclintock3893]

The labels are still doing this crap, with Blu-Ray audio discs. The recent John Lennon Plastic Ono Band box had a Blu-Ray audio disc, and I wanted to rip the hi-res audio. But of course, the disc has BD+ copy protection. So you have to download MakeMKV and make a copy of the whole disc to your PC, then use DVD Audio Extractor to get to the music. Why do record companies not want us to have the music we bought?

[@neongoblin2171]

"MUSIC PLAYER" sounds legit..

[@MetalTrabant]

Go.exe even more... who the hell ran these anyway? I'd never allow those types of unknown shit to be installed on my PC...

[@ThatGuy-nv2wo]

I don't know how someone makes me interested enough to watch over 20 minutes of outdated copy protection software. Also, I'm surprised you didn't get a strike for playing that music.

[@Z3R0FiR3]

Back in the late 2000s, I once borrowed "unwritten" from a friend in high school and ripped the CD. Unbeknownst to me, because I didn't pay attention, I installed that Sony Rootkit. CD ripped and played fine with no issues. Computer was slow even before I ripped the CD... so I didn't notice an issue. Then I read up on the rootkit situation. Sony actually at one point had an uninstaller for the rootkit... but uninstalling it caused even more issues. Long story short, The rootkit killed my CD drive of the computer I used at the time. Thanks Sony!

[@Fluteboy]

I have only ever had two copy protected titles - one was Siobhan Donaghy's first solo album, and the other was the DJ only compilation Mastermix Issue 196. The Donaghy disc would flat out not operate on a PC, while the Mastermix disc installed a media player on my PC entitled "Player" (funnily enough) that played the tracks in what sounded like 32K resolution. It seemed so petty, trying to prevent us from effectively USING what we had paid for! So I just employed a Discman to do the old analogue hole workaround.

[@raafmaat]

lol it played music in 32K resolution? you seem to be mixing up some stuff there xD

[@vwestlife]

He's probably referring to 32 kHz sampling rate. But at least for the Sony XCP discs, they'd play the audio via either 128 kbps WMA or 132 kbps ATRAC files, both at 44.1 kHz sampling rate.

[@Fluteboy]

Whatever rate it played at on that mystical "Player", it certainly sounded like an MP3 at a low bitrate like 32Kbps. It was very poor, almost like they were trying to dissuade me from listening to it on the PC. On a standard CD player it was just fine. Rest assured my punters were not being subjected to low-res audio!

[@raafmaat]

yeah sorry i just ment that i found it funny how you used "32K resolution" to desribe the MP3s quality, but whatever you ment exactly, it would still mean the same: the quality was crap :)

[@Ramdileo_sys]

@@vwestlife .. and in 2023 the industry of music is gone.. no more great bands anymore.. no more endless word wide tours or great concerts anymore.. just an endless amount of nobodies and his amateurs songs on internet.. and with the industry of music.. also the Hi-Fi audio equipment industry is gone.. people don't even listen music in stereo anymore........ ironically.. was not because of illegal copies or any real audio equipment ........... hope Steves Jobs rots in his grave with is fuc^&%ing iPod..

[@irtbmtind89]

MPEG-1 audio actually includes SCMS too (You can manually set the SCMS bits in LAME), but AFAIK no decoders implement it. I've actually seen mp3 files in the wild with the SCMS set to 11 which theoretically prevents copying.

[@UnimatrixYoutube]

Interesting video. Just a note, Napster (and later Kazaa) weren't "sharing sites" they were peer to peer sharing programs which made them so revolutionary for that time.

[@SpeakerFan]

They're still at it though. These days they are called SONY DADC. Morphing invasive security measures with marketing terms like Digital rights management. A great example is SECUROM.

[@20035079]

i've heard of securom but i didn't know it would go that far

[@simontay4851]

Digital restrictions management.

[@TremiRodomi]

And then the same people that brought you SecuROM made Denuvo!

[@abyssstrider2547]

Marije Steenbergen And let's not forget how Sony is anti consumer even today. especially on consoles and their phones. consoles are restrictive, you have to pay for a subscription to play online (60$ monthly) and there is no cross play like on other consoles or PCs. they also don't release their exclusives to other systems and the games in their library are 20% more expensive than in other consoles or online games stores. their phones are full of bloatware and it slows the phone down. they are also overly expensive compared to others performance is mediocre but they ask almost 800$ for it.

[@und4287]

suckurom

[@RCM442]

My best guess is that the XCP protected discs have 2 sessions, one containing the compressed mp3s and the first being the standard tracks. Most CD drives ignore the first session and go straight to the second. Would be interesting to open it in explorer see what's on it though.

[@povilasstaniulis9484]

I think it is basically a mixed-mode data/audio CD with a data track (containing the rootkit part) and normal audio CD tracks after that. Some old games used to use to come in mixed mode CDs for storing both data and in-game music on the same disc.

[@Madness832]

"Loom" comes to mind. The game data was on track one, while the voices & music were CDDA. So, if playing it in a an audio deck, avoid the first track! :D

[@Silanda]

That's not the same thing as what RCM's talking about. On a multisession disc the data isn't usually on Track 1 before the audio, it's in a second session after the audio. Some audio CD's used this to add "multimedia" content to audio CDs: a normal CD player would only see the audio tracks in the first session, but a PC would see the data in the second session. FWIW, I checked out my CDS protected copy of Tubular Bells 2003. It has two sessions, with audio on Track 1-17 in the first session, and compressed audio and a player in the second session (track 18). It also has lots of "damaged" sectors mixed in with the audio, and deliberately corrupted data in the second session.

[@AaronOfMpls]

@@povilasstaniulis9484 I have/had a few 90s games like that, with the music as CD audio (in tracks 2 through the end of the disc), and the game data track in Track 1. _Civilization II_ has the game music like that; _The 7th Guest_ mostly has FM synth music, but the intro and ending music is CD audio. And my brother had _Test Drive: Off-Road_ which has several Gravity Kills songs as its soundtrack.

[@TattiePeeler]

I remember a CD that had a group of audio tracks split into segments of less than 4 seconds, which would only behave in an audio CD player.

[@Intelwinsbigly]

@@passatb6break you can just copy the disc image.

[@danieldaniels7571]

Thanks for this great video. I’m a karaoke DJ, and this sort of thing made it’s way to karaoke discs also, and some CD-G discs from Sound Choice and Chartbuster have digital copy protection. The Sound Choice ones I was unable to rip, and fortunately the store I bought them from was willing to take them back. The Chartbuster one rips fine until the last track. I found an easy workaround for it, but it’s a little tedious. After that the karaoke industry launched a proprietary format called Super CDG, which was a DVD-ROM with the tracks embedded in proprietary .dat files. They were a commercial failure, and it didn’t take long for someone to write a program to rip the tracks to standard computer files. I’m so glad the industry finally moved forward to a DRM free download model.

[@macieksoft]

1:15 "It is a very dangerous machine" Guy from the country that invented nuclear bomb says that about a tape deck? Doesn't him sounds like drunk?

[@HariSupriono]

He did say that it's dangerous *unless* if it's controlled in one way or another

[@Raveheart]

Although I drastically reduced the size of my CD collection in the past 10 years, I still have some of those "Copy Control" discs lying around. I remember when they were new, I tried out that crappy player and immediately noticed that (like that CD in this video) they don't play the actual CD audio, but some highly compressed files instead. So that player got uninstalled instantly. Funny thing is, even with the CD drives back in the days, ripping the CDs was still possible in like 80% of the cases. At least when it came to digitally ripping the tracks to .wav files. I remember having more trouble when I tried to make a 1:1 copy, or pulling an ISO file off those CDs. As a last resort, I used a standard CD Player connected to the sound card via an optical cable. Although those copies were not bit-accurate, quality was still close enough for all of my needs.

[@vwestlife]

You illustrate one of the flaws of any attempt at "copy protecting" digital audio media: if anyone really wants a copy of it, they can do so via recording the analog output, with little or no loss of quality.

[@Mrvideosandgames]

That's scary stuff. Fortunately I don't think I have any "copy-protected" CDs. Honestly, a solution that doesn't conform to standards is just asking for trouble. Copy protection in general doesn't seem to work - I think 4K Blu-Rays are the only medium that can't be easily cracked for ripping purposes.

[@Codemantic]

Mr Videos & Games there are programs that can crack them but the discs and burners are not common nor with disc drives becoming less common on PCs I don't think they have to worry about it like in the late 90s and early 2ks

[@jouebien]

The 4K Blu-Ray ripping is a thing. It took a while to get going but the scene is now starting to become mature.

[@thanthanasiszamp4707]

Mr Videos & Games unless you camera-rip the blu-ray movie.

[@Mrvideosandgames]

^ Ew, Blu-Ray cam copies. You'd be better off stripping the HDCP and capturing what gets sent through the HDMI cable from a Blu-Ray player. Not sure how easy that is for 4K Blu-Rays but for regular ones it's as trivial as buying a cheap HDMI splitter.

[@pineappleroad]

I happen to have two blu-ray drives with modified firmware, one in my desktop PC, the other in an external enclosure, which can both read 4K Blu-ray discs (the modified firmware is required in order for the drives to be able to read the 4K discs, as these drives can't officially read 4K Blu-ray discs) only thing I dont have set up is the software to rip the discs (not even regular Blu-ray or DVD, as I have to be careful, due to something which happened over 8 years ago)

[@pnadk]

I also hate being treated like a criminal when I try to watch a blu-ray disc and it has a minute of un-skippable copyright warning.

[@JohnZombi88]

One of the reasons I rip my DVDs too.

[@gamagama69]

the fact that 4k blurays are only viewable on the vast majority of pcs by bypassing the drm is very funny tbh. like, intel removed support for it in 12th gen cpus, amd never had support, you need like cyberlink media center which is garbage, and ofc the drm is windows only, fuck you linux and macos (actually hd blurays dont have official support either). you need a makemkv plugin for vlc for this to work, which is kinda fucked up. they should reward the people who actually care enough to buy bluray which makes them more money than a stream, but instead they decided nope fuck you 4k blurays shouldve been way bigger, a lot of bluray drives got firmware updates to support it, and forwards compatibility is built into the bluray standard. but they kept doing the same dumbass thing that a higher quality copy needs more restrictive drm which hadnt worked every since they tried it back with digital audio

[@j2simpso]

Interestingly enough, the cover of the Lost in Translation disc had a Compact Disc logo stamped inside implying it complies fully with the standard.

[@jokersinurface]

Music companies were idiots thinking they could be a step in front of the consumer. I used to digitize everything to MP3 back in the early to mid 2000s and if you were doing that there were many ways to get around this protection. There was even one open source ripping software that detected the copy protection. I agree with the author of the video, disabling auto-play is one of the smartest things to do on any Windows based system.

[@WaybackTECH]

Ohh this just reminded me of why I HATE the RIAA and any bands that associated themselves with the RIAA during this time of Napster, sending people to jail over sharing music. So 2 questions come to mind. Do these play fine in older cdrom drives which had the play/stop buttons on the front without any software intervention? I would think so since they have their own DAC's but curious non the less. And lastly, if you install the Sony craptastic protection software, does it have to be re-installed with every disk you buy which uses XCP or is it a one time install?

[@vwestlife]

In those old CD-ROM drives when you played a CD it just acted like a normal CD audio player with its own DAC and fed analog audio into a special input on the sound card. In that case the copy protected CDs should have no effect on them.

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

@ WaybackTECH: You can also thank the RIAA for pushing Creative Technology into removing the Radio recording function of their ZEN MP3 players with built in FM Radios. One particular firmware update then simply removed the FM radio recording feature. That was in already the mid 2000s. >_

[@pault151]

I had at least one audio CD from that era that had one of these copy schemes that would not even play in a regular, audio CD player. So there were problems in both directions. I tried that disc on several players and eventually threw it away, having bought it on vacation and being unable to return it.

[@yellowcrash10]

dandanthetaximan Have you heard of Rockbox? It's custom firmware that mainly lets you play more file formats but does tons of other cool and handy stuff. I run it on my Sansa Fuse+.

[@Musicradio77Network]

I hate them back then. I remember Kazaa was a good program for file sharing. I can download any music that I can’t find since I didn’t get a CD or a cassette back then. Not anymore. Thanks to KZbin and others for putting all the music on there. I can see music on the KZbin Music section that you hear music with ads. The problem with KZbin is copyright troubles. Look what happened to Viacom (aka “V of Doom”), they took them down where they had clips from shows on Nickelodeon, MTV, Showtime and others. WMG also blocks and get copyright strikes from users who doesn’t give a s*** about it, or WB for their “Looney Tunes” content as well as “Tom & Jerry”, the show I used to watched as a kid, and NBC Universal for the Walter Lantz library including “Woody Woodpecker”. I have a few 8mm prints of Woody cartoons in silent form, and it was by Castle Films, except “Pantry Panic”, a silent B&W 8mm version is in the Public Domain, and of course, a couple of AAP 8mm versions of WB cartoons in B&W and I can’t do it, because of copyright problems. In addition to KZbin, there’s Spotify, and Pandora, and online radio streaming like TuneIn, and iHeartRadio. They got great music on there, and it’s legal free. It’s like they did with fireworks when they were legal in New York State where people can get consumer fireworks before July 4th and New Year’s Eve where people can set them off at night. But they’re still illegal in NYC and in most of California. I’ve seen “Shango066’s” video on restoring his early Panasonic 12” B&W TV from 1962 and it works perfectly after it brought back to life from the surrounding desert. During the finishing touches, I hear fireworks in the background where people were setting off, and it was all over the place. I remember since the 1980’s and 1990’s when I saw it, and as a kid, I was scared by the fireworks where people was using bottle rockets and colored balls and M-80’s.

[@AutistCat]

Thank God the Westlife disc works.

[@kennynvake4hve584]

I find it strange that you played the brother's in arms CD at the very beginning of this video...because my first CD I bought was brothers in arms on CD, and that was the first song I played and heard on CD at home. I played it on a Technics player which cost me over 200$ but I cant remember the model number. I was very impressed how clear it was....

[@C.I...]

One of the first mainstream albums to be recorded 100% digitally, I think.

[@PhilXavierSierraJones]

That last clip. (Dramatic movement) (Puts disc in the player) "Error"

[@wxTVTWC]

Yay another a vwestlife upload

[@Litepaw]

DRM ruins the experience and quality of the product you purchased, forces you to buy the same product multiple times, prevents backups, and doesn't even work? Music, film, and video game industries: We need way more of this!

[@rs0389]

But musicians dont really suffer from copying music, if anything they benefit from it. They become more well known and are heard more in more places. I make music and i do not care about stuff like this. It is just time wasting and depressing.

[@simontay4851]

Yes, real musicians aren't greedy bastards like the recording industry asshole of america and don't care so much about the money from sales but about how many people hear their music, whether they buy a CD or copy it.

[@MasterYoshidino]

Anyone that is familiar with how the industry works knows it's the label companies that care because that is how they make money. The statement on the video about labels will stop making music is wrong. It should have said "stop licensing music".

[@MetalTrabant]

I actually prefer to buy more physical medium from artists that have publicly declared they don't really care about illegal downloads, and don't bitch about loss of money all the time... I don't like the greedy ones... If a band/artist is doing it just for money, the product won't really be worthy or honest. Only if they do it because they love making music, and don't care about success, that is when great things happen.

[@NPGLAMB]

The CD daft punk random access memory doesn’t let you put it in the computer. It just spits it out . It doesn’t list it anywhere on the cover or the back which was a shock to me back when it came out .

[@dashtesla]

And a cameo from Techmoan/Muppets XD

[@WheresMyGin]

Awesome, thank you!!!

[@Musicradio77Network]

Techmoan’s version of the “Muppets” are just “Muppet” rejects. I used to watched “The Muppet Show” and any of the “Muppet” movies, it was good, but not much of a fan, except for “Sesame Street” which I’m too old to watch, because of the educational factor. Kermit the Frog is not on any of the Techmoan videos. Techmoan is from the UK, and the “Muppets” are from the UK before they characters ended up in the US since the “Muppet Show” came on in the 1970’s. They were popular in both US and UK. Just like they did with “Benny Hill” when they brought to the US from the UK, that what I’m talking about UK shows imported to the US. That was a long time ago.

[@Okurka.]

@MTN, you think that the Muppets originated in the UK?

[@robthemodYT]

@@Okurka. Well it depends on what you count as "The Muppets". Kermit first appeared on Sam & Friends in the US, but that was only a local show, and none of the other Muppets appeared. Then Sesame Street launched. Henson then tried to get a national show for what would become the Muppets but no US TV channel was interested. So he went over to the UK and produced The Muppet Show for ATV (now part of ITV)

[@enricosanchez894]

They need to copy protect each Muppet.

[@cee128d]

From what I remember to some extent it depended on what optical drive you had in the computer whether it would play or rip some of the copy protected disks. I had a Toshiba CD player and a Plextor CD-RW drive that would play, rip, and copy any so called copy protected disk I threw at them back then. Very few, if any of the OEM drives that shipped in pre bullt Dells, HPs, Compaqs, Gateways, etc. could handle them. I still have both of those drives as they are able to read some old CD-R and CD-RW disks that newer drives can't allowing me to recover old photos and other data that people backed up to them and can't read. It's amazing how many people used the cheapest blank disks they could find to keep their precious old photos and then stored them so poorly.

[@LazyJesse]

Do you remember the exact name/type of CD player/drive that you used?

[@cee128d]

@@LazyJesse The Plextor was a PlexWriter 12/10/32A IDE drive. Don't remember the exact model of the Toshiba and it's packed away in a box somewhere. It was just a regular IDE CD player. Sorry I can't be of more help.

[@gamagama69]

plextor drives tend to be the ones primarily recommended for proper disk dumping for redump hashes. not sure exactly how, maybe its just a higher quality laser that tends to be an after thought on most drives.

[@lemagreengreen]

Interesting topic to look back on, thanks for the video. While the music industry has always been somewhat hysterical in its reaction to piracy, the Sony rootkit was that step too far. I realise the tech. wasn't quite there at the time but it's quite apparent now that the correct response to piracy has been to simply make it simpler/cheaper to stream music legally. I remember the late 90s/early 00's. We did copy a lot of stuff, I'll freely admit. The bulk of the people who were involved in all of that piracy back then are likely all streaming their media from legal sources now though.

[@CoolDudeClem]

If I was to copy CDs with this I would just say "screw it" and make a copy from the analog line out of a CD player. That was kind of strange at 22:24 where he says "there will be less varieties of music", because that actually happened! These days there literally only 3 different genres of new music being made (EDM, Rap and mushy gooey luvy-duvy pop), whereas back in the old days there was so much more variety.

[@rat9625]

CoolDudeClem you just aren’t looking hard enough

[@ProdigalPorcupine]

CoolDudeClem - I thought the same way, until I started to explore Prog Rock. There’s a staggering variety of music in this genre and I have a whole new love for music again. None of this stuff gets airtime, you have to look for it. The charts have progressively worsened over the last 30 years or so. It’s all dreary wailing ‘r’n’b’ (it doesn’t earn that moniker) or hip hop/rap. Kids are forced to like what the record companies want them to like. It’s the record companies that are killing music, not their customers. They can’t or won’t face up to this.

[@ArruVision]

On mainstream radio, sure. But it started going downhill in the 1990s already. Now, if you truly crave diversity in music, check out Bandcamp, or even SoundCloud. There was nothing like that back in the “golden days”.

[@abyssstrider2547]

CoolDudeClem That's only for the mainstream music. look harder on the internet and you can find songs from independed artists and even music made by normal people which still sounds better than whatever these "popular" "artists" which work for media companies can make.

[@taofanarchy96-renzomaracas14]

Amen, bro.

[@Austin989891080p]

There is nothing wrong or faulty with your Lost in Translation promo cd-r. i own 2 XCP promo cd-r discs and they exhibit the exact same behavior as you described in your video. The only way to get these discs to play is to use a bare bones standard CD player such as a cheap portable player you can get for $10 at Walmart. I have figured out how to bypass the protection by taking apart the CD drive itself but its an annoying process just to get a rip from EAC. using copy protection breakers such as "clonecd" don't work with these discs also since the drive itself sees it as blank or nothing at all.

[@MasterYoshidino]

There are ways around that. It's not blank. A good software will be able to create a 1:1 copy while correcting the intentional errors added to the discs. It's a lot like dealing with creating backups of PS1 games.

[@mytech6779]

There are standard strings of lead-in header data on iso compliant data CDs, Usually handled at a very low level in software. Its probably something with this. I've only come across it when messing around with dd and creating .iso files. (dd is an old unix tool for raw data at the lowest level, it can read and write single physical bytes on any sort of disk or file. No safeties, no handholding, but accurate and simple.)

[@kreuner11]

MSVCRT32.DLL is the C standard library implementation, providing many basic operations like opening files and allocating memory to a program, which it may have overwritten

[@squirlmy]

In high school, in the 80s, a friend of mine copied most of the rock, folk, country and blues record albums from the town library onto a collection of cassette tapes. None of the latest music, but a sizeable collection. While not digital, most were certainly good enough. Recording from radiobwasnt too bad either. It seemed really strange to me then, that the RIAA was claiming this copying would ruin careers and hurt musicians, then going so far out of their way to protect digital music. For decades, people made backups, album to tape, and enjoying music they already paid for, in cars and Walkman's (Walkmen?) Digital copying wasn't fundamentally different, it was only different by degree. The hatred and contempt of the RIAA for its customers ensured that people would use file-sharing extensively when that tech came out. 😡🎵

[@waynehickman8317]

I've got quite a few Sony published CDs that refuse to rip to PC... Ironically they rip just fine on a Playstation 3... Bravo Sony, bravo... so much time and money spent stopping other equipment and they fail to test their own.. laughable...

[@simontay4851]

Try using dB power amp CD ripper and use secure rip.

[@waynehickman8317]

It's not that any programs won't rip them, they're just not seen by my CD/DVD drive or any other drive I've tried, Windows explorer just shows the drive as empty, to be honest there's not enough of them to worry about it, I'd prefer to use EAC to rip them, but I can't fault the MP3s produced from the PS3 and I'm yet to notice any problems with them

[@waynehickman8317]

All copy protection is counterproductive... especially to the legit customer, just look at all the unskippable anti-piracy tripe that appears the second you stick a DVD in a player, pirated copies don't have it.. the only people it serves to annoy is legit customers who are basically treated as potential criminals

[@josugambee3701]

@@waynehickman8317 VLC lets you skip over the ads. It's only the DVD player responsible for doing that.

[@waynehickman8317]

@@josugambee3701 I was talking about actual DVD players that live under TVs... the majority of people don't watch DVDs on PC

[@raabsand]

That's crazy that they still install the rootkit even on modern windows. Doesn't surprise me since a lot of ancient software still works

[@ssokolow]

Whether it's actually hooking into a modern system kernel on the other hand, is a different question. The whole reason SafeDisc-protected games won't run on Windows 10 is that Microsoft refused to sign the SafeDisc driver because it was too buggy and insecure, so the Windows 10 kernel won't even try to load it unless you go out of your way to switch your Windows 10 into the mode intended for testing and developing new drivers... which isn't something you can do by accident.

[@MetalTrabant]

More surprising is how the antivirus software allows them to be installed in the first place...

[@killertigergaming6762]

@@ssokolow to buggy and insecure what a bunch of hypocrites

[@ssokolow]

@@killertigergaming6762 I have to be fair to Microsoft. It's usually that they're hamstrung by bending over backwards to stay compatible with existing software and drivers. This video on the history of the Blue Screen goes into more detail on that. kzbin.info/www/bejne/gZjUe317eLaEfpI

[@AaronOfMpls]

@@ssokolow Dave's Garage FTW

[@PinkJazzTrancers]

I've been looking for an actual demonstration of this for so long. God bless

[@Eliotime3000]

Japan: Let's make better music and mastering for incentivate the physical format. US: Let's cringe to all to our consumers with 1984 measures for incentivate the physical format.

[@Yeen125]

Eh, Japan isn't innocent when it comes to poor attempts at preventing piracy, either. Just ask anyone on KZbin who tries to upload an Anime clip, only to immediately get hit with a copyright strike from the original producers (e.g. Toei Animation).

[@freedomseekr]

@@Yeen125 Or companies outright banning the export of their products. Avex Entertainment famously cracked down on sites like amazon JP or CDJapan about five years ago and if you want to buy anything they're associated with (this famously hit fans of Yuri!!! on ICE hard), you have to go through a proxy shipping service.

[@user-lk2vo8fo2q]

sony is a japanese company

[@astral-p1823]

@@user-lk2vo8fo2q they have a us subsidiary

[@user-lk2vo8fo2q]

@@astral-p1823 what does that have to do with anything?

[@JohnCran]

You gotta love how the industry wraps itself up in protecting the creators. They are the biggest abusers of creators.

[@julianmurillo4678]

"it can still give you a rootkit in a modern version of Windows" _Allows administrator permissions from an unknown publisher_

[@johnny-becker]

I remember containing one of these copy-protected music. I also remember being surprised that my computer didn't even see it at all. I did end up being able to get a MP3 version though, what would otherwise be an illegal download but since I owned the disc itself and can prove it to anyone who asks, it was totally legal for me to obtain. Often times, when I buy a brand new CD, which is rare to never now-a-days, I will download a copy keeping the CD sealed so I can get maximum value for it should I ever choose and be able to sell it yet I still get to enjoy the music.

[@TremiRodomi]

I have a CD with that MediaMax trash on it. Humorously, since the servers are down, you can't make the DRM-protected .wma files with it's player program anymore. Not a problem for foobar2000 + AccurateRip however.

[@M6GOF]

Got a Satyricon album in my collection (Scandinavian black metal band, think they were signed on a subsidiary of Sony at some point) and it has copy protection on the CD. What did I do? Ended up torrenting the album so I could have it on my mp3 player. That worked out well, didn't it?

[@twocvbloke]

I remember having a bit of a crush on Natasha Beddingfield back in the day, haven't heard of anything from her lately, shame, she was a decent singer... :)

[@5roundsrapid263]

twocvbloke She was very pretty. I always thought she was a dead ringer for a young Stevie Nicks!

[@BilisNegra]

Natasha is my age (well, half a year older to be accurate), and I'm old as fuck now. Time is a hell of a bitch.

[@herbiehusker1889]

She was born in 1981. I'm older than her, and I'm not that old.

[@twocvbloke]

She's 4 years older than me then...

[@EscapeMCP]

Last thing I heard about NB, she was skint as no-one bought her CD due to the excessive copy-protection. And yet *still* people say that piracy is NOT a victimless crime.

[@orangejjay]

Over time, CDRs lose their data. It's likely that the Lost In Translation burned disc has suffered from aging and worked when it was released.

[@JessicaFEREM]

you could say it got "lost in translation" from being written to a CD-r

[@matheusm9146]

To see how ridiculous this protection system was, once in 2006, I bought a "pirated CD" that had this anti-piracy software lol

[@geezheeztall8590]

I remember Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief had copy protection that made it rather useless in my cars. It was a later revision of EAC that allowed me to make a copy that worked on all my equipment. While the record company offered a replacement, as it was to a PO Box, I didn’t want to risk losing it in the mail through regular postage.

[@AnthonyHandcock]

I've always loved the music industry's "The world owes us a living" attitude while comprehensively shafting not only the music buying public but the majority of artists. It's probably a sign of my advancing years but most of the bands I follow these days are on either their own or a truly independent label and they make most of their money by touring... Probably not much of an option if you're an auto-tuned, lip-syncing, talentless creation of the PR men unless you appeal to teens and tweens and ten year olds who are too stupid to know any better or care.

[@thorbjrnhellehaven5766]

I remember one kind of copy protection: the CD was made "multi session", replacing the address table for the tracks in session two. Old Audio CD players would not see the second session, and play just fine. CD-ROM-based players and computers would read the final session and the replacement address table, and fail, because track 1 was changed to 0xFFFF (or whatever) outside the size of the disk. But all other tracks were OK. But I was unable to make a backup CD-to-CD on the fly. It was easy to rip tracks 2+, but track 1 was the challenge. I decided to try ripping in raw-mode, overriding the address. I used start = 0x0000, end end = track2start - 1 Then I had all tracks, then to burn to a backup CD. Was forced to use the backup-CD in the car, because the CD player was CD-ROM-based. I remember the dealers were forced to accept return if customers claimed they were unable to play the music, and thats bad for business when it actually is possible to make a copy, then claim you can't play it, and get your money back.

[@tuxysmagicaljukebox5431]

I never saw many of those discs in stores. In fact I think the only one I saw that had that copy protection symbol on it was a Peggy Lee Songbook album by Bette Midler. Although, I remember when I got Velvet Revolver's first album in 2004, it had problems copying to my computer, and the songs always sounded all static-y and really weird.

[@obits3]

I remember the Sony root kit issue. Many artists lost money from me not buying because they allowed their music to be on those CDs.

[@AaronSmart.online]

I took that picture at 4:18, it's from a PC Plus magazine (UK) from somewhere in 1996. The prices in brackets are including tax - that's what a normal consumer would have to pay! I have no idea where I put that photo on the internet though...

[@1980sGamer]

0:16 - 0:21 NO WAY. THERE'S MUSIC ON THIS THING!?

[@yellowcrash10]

1980sGamer The future is now!

[@DMack6464]

cool pfp owo

[@1980sGamer]

:3 It sure is isn't it?

[@DMack6464]

yus ^w^

[@mahoot81]

As a Neil Diamond fan I was cheezed off as it took his 12 Songs album from the number four position to no position at all on the charts. Neil Diamond had to ask his son Jesse to what was going on and he was cheezed off along with the album's producer Rick Rubin.

[@jamesslick4790]

Since the copy protected discs cannot conform to the CD Digital audio standard, and don't have the official logo, this is a valuable quick test "heads up" for anyone buying used CDs! Thanks, that's a thing I'll keep in my head.

[@jess648]

I find it hilarious that record companies were that afraid of their own consumers and that their attempts to thwart CD copying bit em in the ass

[@mydasmurray]

No way! Daniel bedingfield sister had a music career. Another note I remember 'enhanced cd's' loud records put some 'extra content/low res music videos on it. Was nice at the time

[@velvetpilot2008]

I think Velvet Revolver "Contraband" had the same Sony-BMG DRM software rootkit installer hidden in it as well. Those bastards. Also, I have the DualDisc version of Natasha Bedingfield's Unwritten album and it doesn't have the copyright protection included which I'm happy about but also curious as to why.

[@quinton1661]

My all-time favorite fix for this crap was a Sharpie. Shine the disc in a point-source light, find the end of the audio session, then make a mark through the second session where all of the data was. When the computer couldn't read it it just gave up and presented a normal audio CD to you. If for some reason you wanted to remove the mark, rubbing alcohol takes it right off.

[@seanC3i]

Ahh ... this brings back memories. I remember buying a "CD" that had some kind of physical malformation/DRM on the disc (in addition to autorun software that caused problems with ripping tools) that put one of my computer DVD drives into an endless loop of trying to read the disc and failing. Whatever the hell the "CD" did, it made at least one of the drives I had misbehave so badly that I couldn't use it and couldn't take the disc out without using the emergency pinhole. Nice way to treat your customers, bozos. I became a big(ger) fan of P2P file sharing after that mess.