Damn Copy Protection

So a coworker wanders into my office with the latest Foo Fighters CD yesterday and points out the label on the cover. It’s not the now-ubiquitous FBI Anti-Piracy Warning that adorns every new CD, instead it’s a sticker that reads:

This CD is protected against unauthorized duplication. It is designed to play on standard playback devices and an appropriately configured computer (see system requirements on back). If you have questions or concerns visit www.sunncomm.com/support/bmg

Several companies have been working on anti-copying technology for CDs for several years, and every one of them has failed to protect the CD from simple workarounds. The copy protection on the Foo Fighters CD is, as indicated by the label referenced above, produced by SunnComm at the behest of Sony/BMG. Personally, I absolutely will not stand for DRM or Copy Protection in anything I purchase. I’ve ranted about this subject elsewhere, so I’m not going to go off the deep end again. Suffice it to say that I find DRM to be akin to a destructive computer virus and anti-copying technology an assault upon the original purpose of copyright law, as well as fair use.

So my coworker hands me the CD to see if we can bypass the protection. He didn’t see the sticker until after he’d purchased the CD and was less than pleased. His intent in purchasing the CD, as it is for more of his music purchases (and he makes a lot, so this is basically labels pissing off their best customers…good thinking there, Sony/BMG), was to rip his favorite tracks to his system and make mix CDs for his car. SunnComm’s protection doesn’t allow for such fair use purposes and only allows copies to a computer in the DRM-infected .WMA format (which also means that iPod owners are out of luck, since iPods don’t play .WMA files). Needless to say, he was pretty annoyed that he’d bought a CD that was, for his purposes, useless. We took a quick crack at it with some basic tools, but the CD protection held up pretty well. We didn’t spend much time because we’re at work and there’s lots to do, so he ended up returning the CD to the store.

Well, I’m not about letting some company intent on destroying my fair use rights get away with their evil plans. So I broke my own rules a bought a copy of the CD today. Well, it didn’t take long before the protection was circumvented (although they’ve made it slightly more difficult than their last version of this protection scheme) and unfettered access to the music was obtained. Of course, I already knew that it could be broken because copies of the album were cirulating the usual places several days before release, but I wanted to make sure that I could do it on my own in case I ever accidentally purchased a copy-protected CD and couldn’t return the damn thing.

Now that I’ve proven to myself the copy protection is only slightly better than their last attempt, I will happily delete the files from my system and return the CD myself. I like the Foo Fighters, too, but I’m not going to be a party to increasing the sales of infected CDs. The worst part is that because so few people will realize that they’re purchasing copy-protected CDs, the sales of the new Foo Fighters album will probably be good and these companies will postulate that the US buying public is willing to accept this shit. Unfortunately, they’re probably right because most people don’t even realize what they’re giving up and won’t until they try and do something simple, like make a mix CD or move files onto their favorite portable device, and discover that copy-protection is waiting to pounce.

Just like everything else, your dollars speak louder than email complaints. Don’t buy infected crap. BTW: just for giggles, I asked the SunnComm tech team a simple and very legitimate question:

I want to make a mix CD of my favorite songs from all my Foo Fighter albums. Is there anyway for me to copy individual tracks in uncompressed WAV format so I can make a mix CD for personal use using music I legitimately own?

I’ll keep you posted as to how they answer.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 15th, 2005 at 4:18pm and is filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.