Caboose

My parents got me a copy of the Foo Fighters album One By One for Christmas, I was a bit disappointed when I noticed it was a “copy protected” one.

In fact the tiny print on the back says: “It is intended fro use only in standard home CD players and may not play on other devices, especially computer drivers”.

This is completely incorrect, computer CD drives (not “drivers”) comply with the Compact Disc Digital Audio standard, BMG’s protected discs don’t. This is why they don’t have the familiar CD logo, Philips won’t let people use it unless the product complies with the standard.

In fact BMG are producing deliberately faulty products, I reckon they’re probably not “fit for purpose” if they don’t play on CD-DA compatible equipment, it’d be interesting to see what Trading Standards think about it.

Fortunately BMG are rubbish and their copy protection system doesn’t work. I ripped the CD to MP3 this evening, so I’ll be able to listen to it when and where I want to rather than where they think I should.

The point is that I’m not going to distribute the MP3s, I’ve made a copy for my own use. The record companies are using technology and new laws to restrict things we’re currently entitled to do. They seem to be succeeding at the moment on a wave of hysteria and poor journalism (the BBC seem to repeat verbatim anything the record companies PR people come out with).

In case you’re interested the equipment I used to rip the CD was: PC, Gentoo Linux, Samsung SD-612 DVD-ROM drive.