Forum - View topicWhat is the "Copy-Protected" technology about?
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Koumi addict
 Posts: 40 |
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I've been noticing lately that more and more CD's from Japan are undergoing to such technology.
It was even used when the 1st OP of Airmaster was released in CD! Why? (PS: mods, please help go back to the topic/make it appropriate. Thank you) |
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cookie
Former ANN Editor in Chief
 Posts: 2460 Location: Do not contact me for support. |
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More and more, we live in a DRM (digital rights management) world. CDs and DVDs are just two examples of how intellectual property has changed since the 70s. In the 70s, if you bought a record, you had a "raw" format. What was on the record was, exactly, what you would hear. Anyone with a pin and something that could spin fast enough would be able to reproduce the music. In the 80s-90s, if you bought a CD, and could interpret the dots (i.e. with a laser) you could produce the music, much as it might be if you were listening to the grooves on a record. Now, in the 2000s, CDs contain extraneous data that your CD Player automatically adjusts for. Now, the CD doesn't read "0001011100", it reads "000XX10X11X10X0" -- and the CD Player just skips the bad data ... but if you try to rip the CD to a digital format, it will pick up the bad data and make the sound all messed up. This, of course, doesn't always work as planned, as some CD players _do_ read the bad data and play it! CDs didn't initially support any kind of protection scheme, so these ad-hoc additions actually RUIN what the CD is supposed to be like. When they developed DVDs, however, they expected the need for protection, so they wrote "CSS". CSS-encoded data is not the actual audio. Instead, it is data that when decrypted BECOMES the data necessary for the audio.. which is MPEG-2 and is another complex mathematical decryption... so something that looks like this: "AB6F391A2B0" (CSS'ed) then becomes "01000100110" (without CSS), which then can be played by the DVD player. The reason for this is because the companies didn't want people to copy their CDs and DVDs. CDs, however, hadn't been designed with encryption in mind. If someone writes a new standard for CDs, one with encryption, it would make any CDs that used that standard to be incompatible with standard CD players. DVDs, however, were designed with that feature in mind.. and everything was going okay until someone realized you could just copy a DVD bit-by-bit and produce an exact copy.. and then in 2000, DeCSS came along, and the secret was out.. which has lead to even further growth of DVD rippers. If things remain unchanged, the next big media technology (cubes? ;)) will have even more encryption, to try to prevent people from making illegal copies.. and (invariably) it won't last long before someone breaks it. It's more of a delaying tactic; how long can encryption last before pirates start cutting into sales? |
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Kidotai
 Posts: 138 Location: one of those islands in the pacific |
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The real question is, are pirates actually cutting into the sales of records, or is it the fact that the economy and changing demographics of the listening public is not being truely pointed out and pirates are a convient scapegoat? Your basically asking in the same line of context of "Does a CD have a B side?" when the answer is gonna be "No, CD's don't have B sides, only LP's and Tapes have them." |
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Meson
Posts: 219 Location: Buffalo, NY |
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The only reason you don't see it as much here in the states is because us webcasters fought it in court (we need to encode to broadcast). Other than that, Cookie said everything that had to be said.
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radicaledward
 Posts: 776 |
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I think the better question is how long can encryption last before consumers stop buying CD's. Simply put, why would you buy a CD that you can't play? The problem that companies are encountering requires a bit of background. Currently there are two major forms of copy protection, the junk data scheme that Cookie described and software protection of the audio contents. The software protection works in the same way as an Enhanced CD (The CD's that have video clips and such when played in a computer), when you put the CD in the computer it first reads the Yellowbook (Data format file table, think the file allocation table for a CD-ROM) and see a autorun command a loads a program that is intended to prevent the copying of the disk. Or in cases of psudo-encrypted disks, play the CD on a computer. The down side for both schemes is junk data can cause the CD to not be playable in most older CD players and a good number of the newer one - which is bad because consumers tend not to buy things that they can't use; and any CD that uses a program to prevent copy prevention can be circumvented by holding the "Shift" key when you put the CD (Windows command to not autorun the CD). Now on to the consequences of this; which are two fold. On one had you have the company trying to prevent copy of their CD’s (Which if you consider the position that the company is coming from, is understandable) and on the other hand, you have the consumer that can’t play the CD that they paid money for. This ends up being a lose-lose situation for both sides (Already there are class-action lawsuits being formed over the copy protection here in the US; and over seas there have been successful lawsuits filed for “sale of a defective product”) As for the pirates ~ well in terms of the ones that sell copies of CD’s illegally, I think that they will become more of a problem by selling copies of the CD’s sans copy-protection. As for hackers/crackers, I think it will be the same as with CSS and DeCSS, most of the better ones are doing it for the challenge (DeCSS was originally written so that Linux users could play DVD’s in Linux) or so that they can listen to the CD’s, sure a few unscrupulous ones will be in it to rip off the music companies, but its always been like that in just about anything. |
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Sword of Whedon
Posts: 683 |
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JASRAC actually is requiring protection on all member CDs now.
While it stops much casual copying. It only takes one person to rip it to spread it all over. The biggest problem with the US industry that isn't as much of a problem for Japan is that the albums here are truely terrible. In Japan the artists typically have 2-4 singles between albums to try out new concepts on and get a feeling on response to different songs. In the US, the single is pretty much dead, and most of the artists being pushed are frontmen/women for a sound the corporation has decided are popular. To sum up- In Japan, you have to be an artist to succeed. Here it's just been how many suits and people are starting to rebel. |
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radicaledward
Posts: 776 |
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Um, what's the JASRAC? Also, I agree with you 100%; almost all of the new CD's and artists are lousy. Perhaps the artist might be a good singer, but the songs and the sound of the CD sounds the same as everything else outhere; or its just not what I want to hear. Personaly, I think that the reason that there has been a decline in CD sales is because there has been a decline in good CD's coming out. The last CD that I wanted to get when I came out was Fiction by Yuki Kajiura - most of the CD's that I still do buy are older releases or Indie releases. |
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cyrax777
 Posts: 1825 Location: the desert |
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BWAHAAHAAHAHA im sorry but that has to be one of the funnyest damn things I've read on here in a while ever notice the huge bulk of crappy mass marketed Japanese Pop? |
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Meson
Posts: 219 Location: Buffalo, NY |
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The Japanese song writier union. Click here for their website. They are the Japanese affiliate/partner of ASCAP (American Song Composers Associative Partnership), the American union. |
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Sword of Whedon
Posts: 683 |
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But they aren't successful except very rarely (SMAP). They typically don't last more than 6-12 months. The bands that actually succeed are the artistic ones. |
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Zoe
 Posts: 898 Location: Austin |
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There are many non-"artsy" groups/singers that have lasted on the top for years. |
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Iron Chef
 Posts: 487 Location: Seattle, WA |
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*coughmegumihayashibaracough* 
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Jeff-Kleist
Posts: 8 |
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Megumi Hayashibara is hardly a top act. She's popular here because the fanboys like to drool over her.
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