Lasse Penttinen
6 Nov 2002 11:45
Faced with adverse publicity to copy protection on CDs, a year ago Bertelsmann Music Group bravely gave in and promised to replace a clutch of Natalie Imbruglia CDs which were protected by Midbar's Cactus Data Shield. But a year is a long time, BMG is at it again, this time apparently set on applying copy protection to all its music products.
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This is a clear commitment to 100 per cent copy protection, and once implemented will no doubt ease the workload of the various 'corrupt CD' identification sites considerably. Ah, but what if you have a problem playing the CD? "If you can't play the BMG product on your player please contact your dealer or the responsible person at BMG under (email address of the responsible person)."
We're sure it makes more sense in German. If you fill in the form and send it off to who knows where, this is what you get from the BMG Kopierschutz Team (typos left in):
"we are sorry you have troubles with our copy protection technology. The copy protection reacts on the special new technology that is build in in burners. Unfortunately htis technics was built in many new CD players, even if they can't copy a cd.
The copy protection yet does not recognize wheather that burner technics is build in a cd player or in a burner. That's why the cd playern might not play a copy protected CD. Since burner technics are also built in car radios, this may be the reason, why you can't listen to a copyprotected cd in your car.
As far as we were adviced, our copy protection is according to the Red Book Standart as well as all labelling on the cd.
A standart home CD player is one that has no burner technics built in. Our Cds play on all Cd players without burner technics.
There will be no cd manufactured without copyprotection any more."
Philips has made a statement that protected CDs are not Red Book compliant and therefore the "Compact Disc"-logo is not allowed to use on protected CDs. However, according to this article, they do use the logo.
And the fact that BMG is about to ignore the clients with advanced MP3CD players is disgraceful. But this also means that a ripped & de-protected copy of an audio disc is actually better for the consumer than the original one.
And the protections -- they just fail to stop anyone.
TheRegister