SACD playing hardball (1 Viewer)

[Ray R]

About a month ago Philips had a press release stating that the copy protection on the new The Fast and the Furious soundtrack which makes the disc unplayable in most computers, did not conform to the standards they had established for the CD format they own the rights to. Philips presented it from the angle of integrity for the CD format. Almost sounds admirable, right.
What they really said was; record industry, if you want copy protection, take a look at this wonderful new technology we're coowners of.
Then not too long ago Sony issues a press release stating that they will not guarantee their CD and DVD players will play CD's with this new copyright protection scheme.
What they really said was; Consumers, we do music AND hardware and this CD copy protection stuff is really scary. You should stay away.
Call me crazy, but I think the RIAA fired back a reply to this strong arming. The recent RIAA press release talked about a 10% drop in CD sales last year and blamed it on music swapping and CDRs.
What they really said; Sony and Philips, The top brass at our member companies didn't get their bonuses last year, we want copy protection and we can't afford to retool our whole process to accomidate SACD.

 

[Philip Hamm]

Wow what a conspiracy you've uncovered!!!! :rolleyes

 

[Ray R]

Forgot one other aspect of this issue. The patents that Philips and Sony own on the original CD format started to expire last summer. This means that they no longer get .03 for every CD sold. Using RIAA figures that means a lose of $29 million a year.

Your probably right. Philips and Sony wouldn't care too much about $29 million.

This battle has actually been going on for a while. Philips is the one who owns the patents on CDR which is what helped create this big push for copy protection from the music industry. Again, here comes Philips and Sony to the rescue with a copy protected format, new patents and royalties for the next 20 years.

 

[Ryan Spaight]

Not to sound too much like a corporate tool, but if it means we get SACDs instead of crippled CDs, then go Sony/Phillips!

Ryan

 

[Thomas Newton]

Aren't you guys forgetting that Super Audio CD has anti-copy provisions built in from the start?

You can play standard Red Book Audio CDs on your computer. You also can extract tracks from standard Red Book Audio CDs on your computer, to put the audio on your hard disk or to burn a compilation CD. All legal Fair Use. All uses that copy-protected pseudo-"CDs" threaten.

With Super Audio CD, there's no drive that will let you read a SACD on your computer, let alone one that will let you burn one. Even if there was, SACD players are set up to spit discs out whenever "digital watermarks" don't match up to the physical properties of the discs. Compilation discs would be instantly rejected. (BTW: There's no need for the mechanism to be this aggressive. Merely turning a "genuine factory-made SACD" indicator on or off without rejecting discs would allow for home recording while retaining the value of "digital watermarks" as a deterrent to commercial counterfeiters.)

Going to SACD to "escape" copy protection is like jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

 

[Ryan Spaight]

It's not copy-protection in general I'm seeking to escape -- it's the badly retrofitted copy-protection that makes the crippled CDs unplayable on DVD decks and the like. SACD copy protection is part of the spec and won't cause player incompatibilities.

I couldn't care less about playing SACDs in my computer. If I want to rip for CD-R comps, I can always do it analog. SACDs are not any more copy-protected than LPs in that regard, and I've been happily making CD-Rs from vinyl for years.

Making personal copies might be "fair use," but nowhere does it say those copies have to be digital.

Ryan