From: "Wim De Smet" wdesmet@yucom.be
I'd like to draw some attention to a news message I read. It's on a bit = of a free software unfriendly site (zdnet belgium).
It's in dutch, and gives some details about a new cd, that will be = protected by cactus data shield technology. What's so bad about this, is = that it's a propietary format that will only play on a specialised = player in Windows. No mac or gnu/linux support. In my eyes this is = extremely bad. The 'experiment' will be carried out in the US and off = course the program etc. fall under DMCA. I think this is a good example = of the reasons why DMCA should be abolished. If more record companies go = this way, eventually we will be unable to buy cd's anymore.
Your reaction is completely off topic!
- These disks are not CD's... They in most cases do not carry a compact disk logo.
- The junk *.exe in the the second session does not give you access to the to full quality audio data so the company that made the disk did trick you. Take the disk back to the dealer and get your money back.
If you complain about the .exe to be only of use in M$ boxes you already have been trapped by companies like BMG.
- The CD may be copied with the latest cdda2wav (part of cdrtools) if you use a Plextor Plex-40. Future versions of cdrtools will copy the disk with any Plextor drive
The correct reaction is:
- make a copy of the content of the CD (you have the right to do this)!
- Take the disk back to the dealer and get your money back.
- Tell the dealer that you will sue him if he continues to put those falsified CD's at the same place as real CD's.
- make this reaction as public a possible.
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
Keinen HTML Muell bitte! No HTML junk please! Jörg
EMail:joerg@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin js@cs.tu-berlin.de (uni) If you don't have iso-8859-1 schilling@fokus.gmd.de (work) chars I am J"org Schilling URL: http://www.fokus.gmd.de/usr/schilling ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix
----- Original Message ----- From: "Joerg Schilling" schilling@fokus.gmd.de To: discussion@fsfeurope.org; wdesmet@yucom.be Sent: Sunday, December 23, 2001 4:39 PM Subject: Re: cactus data shield
From: "Wim De Smet" wdesmet@yucom.be
I'd like to draw some attention to a news message I read. It's on a bit = of a free software unfriendly site (zdnet belgium).
It's in dutch, and gives some details about a new cd, that will be = protected by cactus data shield technology. What's so bad about this, is
=
that it's a propietary format that will only play on a specialised = player in Windows. No mac or gnu/linux support. In my eyes this is = extremely bad. The 'experiment' will be carried out in the US and off = course the program etc. fall under DMCA. I think this is a good example = of the reasons why DMCA should be abolished. If more record companies go
=
this way, eventually we will be unable to buy cd's anymore.
Your reaction is completely off topic!
- These disks are not CD's... They in most cases do not carry a
compact disk logo.
- The junk *.exe in the the second session does not give
you access to the to full quality audio data so the company that made the disk did trick you. Take the disk back to the dealer and get your money back.
If you complain about the .exe to be only of use in M$ boxes you already have been trapped by companies like BMG.
- The CD may be copied with the latest cdda2wav (part of cdrtools)
if you use a Plextor Plex-40. Future versions of cdrtools will copy the disk with any Plextor drive
The correct reaction is:
make a copy of the content of the CD (you have the right to do this)!
Take the disk back to the dealer and get your money back.
Tell the dealer that you will sue him if he continues to put
those falsified CD's at the same place as real CD's.
- make this reaction as public a possible.
Why in heavens name would I be so dum to buy such a cd?
Discussion mailing list Discussion@fsfeurope.org http://mailman.fsfeurope.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discussion
And now for a more in depth discussion
- The CD may be copied with the latest cdda2wav (part of cdrtools) if you use a Plextor Plex-40. Future versions of cdrtools will copy the disk with any Plextor drive
Can you get the content? Have you read the article? The program they use has a propietary audio format. This means that it falls under DMCA and WIPO agreement. If you try to extract the sound from the cd you're evading copyright.
The fact that you can copy it is very nice, but what you're copying is worthless. And I meant cd in the context of music cd, this is how they are marketing it.
Could you elaborate on that trap? I am complaining yes. I won't buy the cd, no. And I won't buy anything else from BMG that is protected this way. But by applying this strategy they are not only coercing their clients to use windows. They're also laying out their future plans, in which it will be impossible to play any of their cds in linux. You might want to download copyrighted music without paying for it, I don't. If then, they can persuade other companies to do the same, we won't be buying any music in the future. I think I was right to signal this thing. And if it has nothing to do with DMCA it has everything to do with freedom.
If you think artists can get around this, you're wrong. The record companies own them. There are allmost no independants, and if there are, they usually won't see the problem I saw here.
thx for your patience, Wim
PS: don't mind the other letter, shocked that anybody could think I would buy such a monstrocity