Anti-Copy CD Technology Leaves Linux in the Lurch

[CMonster]

New Anti-Swap CD (http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2003-09-22-copycd_x.htm) technology for MS Windows and Macintosh operating systems only; once again a new technology that fails to take Linux and opensource seriously, despite a growning number of users that now may even rival the number of Mac OS users. This will more than likely result in an "unoffical" opensource solution that will become a target of criticism and possibly litigation by the music industry.

I have already sent an email to the president of sunncomm.com expressing my concerns and what I believe are the needs of the OS community in this regard.

[sharth]

If the normal cd players can play them, the the encryption can't be that great, and as they said, its software thats installed that makes it unreadable. Unless they did something weird, we should be able to rip them perfectly normally as we would any multi-session disc.

Why wouldn't we be able to... oo.. the windows software might install... And we don't need to use the wma's...

I give it 2 days before its on kazaa, well, one.

[SeT]

what they're doing sounds like a good idea. sucks that it's in the shiety wma format tho.

[CMonster]

I think these anti-copy cds will very likely not even play on a Linux run machine and that will bring frustration to the many who have dumped or are dumping Microsoft. That is the basis of my concern at the moment regarding this issue, and not the broader issue of music piracy or "big brother."

As most here know, there has been a war raging over the use of DeCSS to view encrypted DVDs. That litigation was primarily spawned by the fact that a young Linux hacker simply wanted to view DVDs on his Linux box and share the code so others could too. I certainly don't want to see "DeCSS Part II" played out in the arena of encrypted music CDs.

It would be a simple matter for the authors of this copy protection to provide a "closed-source" binary player or key software plugin that would allow these CDs to be played legally on Linux boxes -but they don't offer a port of the software for Linux and will likely end up in a battle with the opensource community over accusations of piracy.

[Sepero]

quote:
"When put into a Macintosh or Windows PC, the disc installs software to keep the music secure"

This is why it won't work with GNU/Linux. And this is a perfect example of why I LOVE GNU/Linux! Vitrually No GarbageWare!

If these CDs are still able to play normally in CD players, then it is very likely that they are still able to be ripped on GNU/Linux. GNU/Linux users may end up being the only ones that can rip CDs for a while. This may mean a huge boost in the number of OGGs! :D

[Satanic Atheist]

If these CDs are still able to play normally in CD players, then it is very likely that they are still able to be ripped on GNU/Linux.

Come on, I mean, seriously. How long did it REALLY take to crack the uncrackable DVD Content Scrambling System and DVDs started to get ripped? Although DeCSS has been trashed, plenty of people have the libdvdcss.so libraries lying around (I know I do and I know two other people who do also).

Once this code gets out, it's simple. Grab it and don't let go. Let them take it off the net and do whatever they want. As Linux users, we don't need to worry about legalities of our software (for the most part since it's free) and it still makes me laugh when I tell people that all the software on my machine was downloaded from the net and copied off other people etc etc and they are horrified. Then I explain (if I can be bothered).

Anyway, back to the point:

If the normal cd players can play them, the the encryption can't be that great

Damn right. If a normal CD player can manage it, then it'll be something like the DVD "Macro-Vision" hack that never really came off (a lot of DVD players actually allow you to turn this off!!!). CD-Players do not have the "intelligence" (metaphorically) of a PC and you can't just give it something unplayable and expect it to manage it. I mean, how do you give it the decrypt code? CD players do not (and cannot) run software.

Lastly, is it actually possible to play WMAs in Linux? A friend of mine (stupidly) encoded all his audio files into WMA. I know about the licence file thing, but can Linux actually use this licence file?

Anyway, looking at that CD, I've heard it's not that great so I'm not missing out.

James

[JamminJoeyB]

Not being that familiar with the inner workings of my cd player (circa 1987). Yes it's old, but it works like a champ. How is an encypted music file going to play. I didn't think there was any sort of chip on a regular cd player to handle encrytion. I will have to research this.

If there is some sort of chip to read these encypted tracks on a cd, when did they start putting them into cd players?

If I remember correctly CDs started to come out around 1985 or so and copying a CD meant recording it to a cassette. They even made special cassettes for a while that would hold a cd perfectly. The same thing can be done with a computer.

Maybe I will have to see if one of these new CDs will actually play in my trust old cd player. If not, all I can do is return it as I feel no need to upgrade to something newer when what I have works well.

Now a great idea would be for music stores to be able to sell digital tracks to you. Walk in with your mp3 player check out some songes. Have the clerk load them up and pay and off you go. This could also be done with USB storage keys etc. I'd be willing to pay $1.25 per track. I'd just want to be able to choose the format. ie ogg or mp3, but not wma. RIAA would be happy and the artist would get paid.

Then again, I could just be so far out in left field I didn't even see that my team is now up at bat.

[sasKuatch]

DeCSS isn't trashed. The source code is freely available, protected under the First Amendment.

It's just not legal to have binaries.:D

[Satanic Atheist]

Sorry, I'm not American so I don't know about the amendments.

Libdvdcss.so is no longer available for download from anywhere that I could see. If you know of a link, then please let me know as I could do with "upgrading" and I'll be reinstalling this machine soon with a gleaming vanilla Linux (non-distribution) system.

James

[Floog]

me too. if anyone knows where I can download the source and any necessary libs, please let me know. Or, if you have it and would be willing to email it to me, that'd be great too.

i've been interested in exploring this for quite a while but simply haven't done the leg work to acquire the tools.

Thx,

Floog


Originally posted by Satanic Atheist

Libdvdcss.so is no longer available for download from anywhere that I could see. If you know of a link, then please let me know as I could do with "upgrading" . . . .

James

[keyshawn]

floog,
are the libs that you are looking for on the this page - http://www.catb.org/~esr/ ?
[not sure if that's them or not. i never used them]

The cd protection ? I'm thinking it's probably already cracked.
With crackers, when there's a will, there's a way.

[sasKuatch]

Originally posted by sasKuatch
... It's just not legal to have binaries.:D

Look on google for 'decss', and you'll find the source.

[evulish]

I might be wrong but I think there are links to them from xine and mplayer's sites. (Seems like apt-get install libdvdcss gives out a URL where they can be downloaded...since we all know the world runs on Debian :))

[Floog]

Thanks for the hints and pointers, fellas. I'm on the path.

Best regards.

Floog

[Satanic Atheist]

If you read my post slowly, you'd know that I already have a copy. Then again, that's forgiveable since we lot of Linux users like speed!

If you PM me an e-mail addy I'll send it to you.

James

[CMonster]

you can still find an rpm through rpmfind.net -including source rpm ;)

[sasKuatch]

No thanks, I don't have a dvd drive.

And yes, my point for bringing this up was that even with 'protection', DVD's work so I don't see why CD's won't.