Fuddland

Just so you know, if any of you wanted to purchase Norah Jones’s lovely new album but were a bit concerned that the so-called “copy protection” would prevent you from ripping it legitimately onto your computer, to transfer to your portable MP3 player for example, let me reassure you that I’ve ripped it with no problems using nothing more than Windows Media Player on Win XP.

When the CD is inserted a dialogue box pops up asking the disconcertingly vague question, “Certain files need to be updated in order to play this CD. Proceed?” Hitting Cancel and opening up Media Player allowed me to rip it error-free to my library. I don’t know what would happen if I’d hit OK—perhaps this would have locked the CD—but I wasn’t going to chance it.

The same is true of the Dave Matthews Band’s Central Park Concert; I haven’t tried playing either album in my portable CD player, but I suspect the same thing will happen as with Radiohead’s last effort: I’ll have to burn a new CD from my rips in order to play them.

#1

mrtn | 2004 / 03 / 22 – 14:23

ditto clapton’s new album, ripped with no problems despite “copy protected” sticker on the front…

there’s a clue in the small print on the back though:

“this disc contains copy protection, it is playable on most cd players and can also be played on most cd-rom drives by means of the included compressed sound file”

haven’t looked at the CD in detail yet though.

the disk itself rocks btw…

#2

David | 2004 / 03 / 22 – 14:39

Re #1: I read something about this the other day: these CDs contain compressed versions of the songs alongside the ordinary CD tracks—i.e. they’re hybrid CDs—and it is only these inferior versions that are supposed to be accessed and played via a CD-ROM.

It’s interesting because artists get paid royalties according to how many tracks [no mention of uniqueness] they have on a CD, and since these hybrids technically have twice as many tracks on them as usual, the artist could argue for twice as much in royalties.

“From a legal standpoint, the position of the music publishers is that these discs contain two separate (copies of each song),” said Cary Ramos, an attorney representing the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA). “The fact that they are the same recording doesn’t mean that we should treat it as one.”

Oh, and an update: neither CD I mention above would play on my portable, so I had to burn my rips onto blank CDs. Absolutely crazy.

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