Congressman against DMCA "anti-circumvention" clause

[grif_mcrenolds]

Remember when napster first appeared and we all thought it was the only way to download music? I remember in 8th grade when in science class we had to read this article in scholastic (gayest magazine ever, i hate it) about napster. It explained to the class what MP3 was, but they were so stupid that they didn't understand it themselves. They said that MPEG audio was a "brand new renovation" or something along those lines. Ahhhem... MPEG audio has been around for years! It's not until a few years ago that layer 3 became popular!

The article even had a stupid quiz at the end that we had to take. It asked "how did music get on computers?" like we had to solve esome crime or something. I wrote "Audio tracks are extracted from the CD to PCM format, then encoded into MPEG layer 3 for playback. The teacher marked me wrong! You know what they said the answere was? "Music is changed from sound into little ones and zeros." Holy crap! This is what won over my answere?? Are these people that stupid??

The same thing with other news types. I read this article that was written about DVD ripping and how it'll never last since it's too complicated. They said that the "mainstream" would never get into it because thier own tech guys couldn't figure out how it works. More supid people in the news! I've been ripping DVDs since the old 3.11 days and I'm only a lowly freshman!

[virtualXTC]

all digital copying to be policed?



I have a parinoid friend who dosent trust the goverment about alot of things (chemtrials, biowarfare, the whole hoax war against the taliban, the rewritten constitution) but I think she finally found something worth worrying about

http://www.stoppoliceware.com/

I had heard MS win XP was already doing something like that, but hell - this seems kinda insane - but they did pass that DMCA thing

the site has some reasonably credible sites with similar parinoa so I guess it's actually true.

Is there any way we could just get a whole new goverment?


this is my small cry for anarchy!
-Jason

[grif_mcrenolds]

Holy crap! This is the same thing I've been worrying about since Napster went down. I just read the article you told me about and now I'm alittle scared too .

For those of you who didn't read the article, it adresses a new law that the industry is trying to pass called SSSCA. The bill would force ALL operating systems to have spyware to be built in to ensure that all of us "bad little children" don't do anything to break copyright laws, like ripping DVDs.

I've always been for copyright laws since without them there would be no reason for the artists to make any thing. I myself rip DVDs and CDs for my own use and for backups. But they don't want us even doing THAT! This time they've gone too far! Now they're putting spyware in our OS! And even worse, it's LAW!

I know that many of you will take this as a hoax, but I did alittle web search on SSSCA and there's a whole bunch of site about this. And I can belive it, too. Read the article and I assure you - YOU WILL BE PISSED OFF. I trust that all of you wil not stand for such intrusion as this and neither will I. So join my thread at http://forum.digital-digest.com/show...&threadid=3986 and give your protests there. If we can construct some kind of boycott against the industry, maybe we can show these *******s that we don't take any bullshit. Pardon my french.

That article again is at http://stoppoliceware.com

[owenowen]

Copyrighted CD's

I've returned 5 CD's to Border's Book store. They love me, well not really. I buy em, burn em to mini disc, and bring em back.

I check out Fat Chucks site to get my shopping list together, and it's time to go shoppin.

I love this country

[rokatoh]

copy protected cd's

HI everybody,
I found a digital way to copy those copyprotected audio cd's to your pc!
I have the new celine Dion cd, which says clearly in the front and back that it "will not play on pc/mac". Of course you can copy it with those new copy programs, but i wanted it to be on my pc as an mp3 file. In the end I found a program called windac 32 1.53 at www.windac.de which copy's the audio to the harddisk withaout any problems!!

While i was trying to break the protection(before i found windac) I read somewere that the protection works like this: All audio cd have a table of contents(TOC) copyprotected cd's have two. the first one is the one that contains the right info, and the second one, directs to a non existing track outside of the cd range. Normal/standalone cd players read the first toc, while cd-rom players always read the newest toc(the second). If you think of it it's all quite logical

good luck
Ps this Celine dion cd did not cary the Compact disk logo at all!!

[EighteenthVoid]

The idea of putting a diferent TOC in the second or last sessions of audio cds to hide the data in the audio session, also known as the Cactus Data Sheild protection, is very VERY futile.

Ok, Sure, *by default* cd-rom drives read the last session of the cd get their TOC, but can be overridden by many programs.

One being NERO burning rom.
Anyone who uses even a demo copy of nero knows that it installes a program that integrates into explorer's shell. It's accessible thru right-clicking a cd-rom drive and selecting the "Properties" option. There you will find a tab called "Volumes".
Say you have one of these "copy-protected" cds in your drive, or any cd-extra disc for that matter, you will see a list of all audio tracks, as well as the cd-xa data track. You'll notice, the data track has a check mark next to it, meaning it is the session that windows is currently getting the disc's TOC. A simple click-highlight on any audio track and a touch of the aplly button and boom:
As far as windows is concerned, Your cd is nothing more than an audio CD, and can be ripped as a normal audio cd.

But, oh, it gets better. There is a freeware program that can literally take a cd (or cd image) apart: ISOBuster.
This program can read the entire layout of a cd. Load it up, select the first session and biggity bam... there is all the audio tracks. BUt here it the icing on this cake, isobuster can also extract the tracks to wav format.

So, in conclusion, the cactus data sheild was obsolete before it hit the cd manufacturers.
Booyah

http://www.ahead.de/

http://www.smart-projects.net/isobuster/

[hounslow]

If this motion goes ahead wouldnt it make it easier for hackers to get into other peoples PC's? ie the linux users (dont mean to single you guys out), all they would have to do is use the ports that the government uses and it wouldnt show up on any firewall the would it?

[Ostaf]

I think someone misunderstood here. It won't make it legal to copy CDs and DVDs, it just won't make it impossible.
Believe me, though, you don't want it to be legal to make backups of CDs and DVDs. Not just two years ago, the copywrite laws in Canada were changed to allow consumers to make personal copies of music they owned. Recording companies somehow managed to slip a levy on all CDs, meaning that even if I have no intention of copying music onto a CD, I still have to give 21 cents to the music industry. Considering I pay 30 cents per CD, this really pisses me off (see my post on CD Levy)

Anywho, the spyware OS thing will never fly, because the instant that ANY of my computer data crosses the border (remember, I'm Canadian) there are going to be some heavy law suits. Furthermore, it's actually quite difficult to do. They'd have to force firewalls to conform to this new law so that it couldn't be blocked anywhere.
As for the hacking thing, it would most likely be an out port, meaning that it still wouldn't allow hackers anymore access in.