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"Copy protected" CDs and iTunes/iPod? (1 Viewer)

Ted Todorov

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I was about to pick up Benjamin Biolay's Negatif CD yesterday and I noticed a big "Copy Protected, may not work on your equipment" warning. This is a European CD, so it shouldn't be a surprise as there are greater CD copy protection efforts in Europe.

My question is, how bad is this beast? Will I still be able to rip to AAC in iTunes? My general impression was that the copy protection stuff tends to be PC centric, and Mac OS X will simply ignore it, but to my knowledge I have never bought a CP CD, so I have no personal experience.

Anyone know what the story is?

Thanks,
Ted
 

DaveRU

Stunt Coordinator
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Feb 20, 2003
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97
I've ripped all my "copy protected" CDs via iTunes with no problems. Just don't let the CD install anything on your computer :emoji_thumbsup:
 

Chris Farmer

Screenwriter
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Aug 23, 2002
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It also helps if you hold down the "shift" key when inserting the disc. That prevents the CD from auto-running any software when it first loads up. If you still have trouble, I don't remember the specifics, but drawing a ring around the outside of the CD with a black magic marker can also help deactivate some copy-protection schemes. A quick Google search can probably turn up more specific instructions. Any further methods that are more technical are probably off limits, but those are simple enough to probably be alright, especially since you're in Europe and outside the DMCA anyway. Mods, please correct me if I'm wrong.
 

Chris Farmer

Screenwriter
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Aug 23, 2002
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Good catch on location, I read just the post and assumed he was in Europe. My bad. The "shift" trick however works on both, and in fact I believe originated on the Mac. I know that's been the key combination you hold at startup to prevent non-essential extensions and startup items from loading for well over a decade at minimum; less familiar with its history on Windows.
 

Brendon

Second Unit
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Jun 15, 1999
Messages
257


Quite often true. I picked up Jem's Finally Woken album here in the UK yesterday, which features said copy protection. My eMac running OSX 10.3.8 simply sees the data section of the disc as a seperate volume from the audio. Unlike Windows, OSX will not simply execute any code it sees on an optical disc when it's been inserted - especially if the code is for Windows!

Other protected discs I've picked up have also worked fine on the Mac + iPod/iTunes: Norah Jones' Feels Like Home Deluxe Edition, Velvet Revolver's Contraband, Namie Amuro's 181920 amongst others.

Hope this helps,

Brendon
 

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