Kings of Leon/Velvet Revolver (1 Viewer)

[DavidNighorn]

I have just come up against copy protection in its newest incarnation and it really blows. With these two discs, you cannot listen to the cd on your computer at full bitrate. Rather, you have to download the DRM license and then you can play the cd at wma 128kbs or you can copy the files (128kbs) to your hard drive.

I use iTunes and rip all of my cd's to Apple Lossless for use on my in-house music server. As far as I know, this is fair use per the Betamax case. If I try to do this with the two cd's in question, I get terribly garbled results. Essentially, this copy protection will not let me use my music server or computer to listen to all of the 'bits' that I paid for.

As a result, I will not purchase any more cd's (no matter how good the music) if this copy protection is in place. I can't believe that the entire music-loving community is not up in arms about this.

David

 

[AricB]

that sucks, I hadn't heard about that yet. I'm doing the same type of thing for my iPod, hooked to my home stereo.... that would piss me off too.

 

[Rob Gardiner]

David,

Have you tried using Exact Audio Copy to rip? It works especially well with Plextor or Lite-On drives.

 

[Brian L]

IIRC, the VR disk would play and be rippable w/o issue in a drive that was not set for auto-play.

I know I ripped into my iTunes without problem.

There was a lot of discussion about that when it came out. The consensus at the time was that the copy protection on the disc was laughable.

BGL

 

[Scott Lawrence]

How to defeat the copy protection on the VR disc for sure is.....


Hold down your shift key for about 30 seconds right after you close the drive door.


This suppresses the autorun, and the driver that would otherwise load from the disc and garble the ripped version will not get loaded. I have a copy of my VR disc on my computer and it sounds wonderful.

Try it. You may have to reboot first to clear the driver if it's already in memory.

 

[DavidNighorn]

Worked like a charm. What an incredibly stupid way to implement copy protection.

Even though I managed to get around the issue this time, the episode brings to mind some very important issues. For instance, can DRM really be implemented to limit the resolution of the music I listen to? I paid for the cd yet I could only listen to 128kbps through my computer.

Just when the music industry starts to show signs of life, they go and do something stupid like this. A freedom, once tasted, is impossible to take away. All this is going to do is piss off the very people that are starting to buy discs again. And like it or not iPod/iTunes is king. If your copy protection scheme prevents the user from listenting through iPod/iTunes, then you will fail miserably.

end rant.

David