[DMCA-Activists] Sony copy protection

[Matthew Caron]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/bpihw/20020403/en_bpihw/dion_s_new_cd_crashing_party_for_some_users&printer=1

(sorry for the long link, but included below because it will wrap and be 
a PITA)

In my opinion, this is a "broken" cd. However "fixing" it is illegal 
under the DMCA. Is this in consumer's best interests? I don't think so.

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LOS ANGELES (The Hollywood Reporter) --- Celine Dion 's latest release 
is generating heated discussions on Internet message boards. But the 
subject under fire is not the star's music -- it's that the CD will not 
play on computer CD drives.

Epic/Sony released "A New Day Has Come" embedded with Key2Audio copy 
protection in Germany and several other European countries. According to 
a spokeswoman for Sony Music Entertainment, it is clearly stated on the 
front of the booklet and on the back of the jewel box that the CD "will 
not play on a PC or a Mac" in the language of the country in which it is 
sold. Besides those notices, which the spokeswoman said were readable 
before purchase, the disc itself bears the same warning.

Should the consumer try to play Dion's CD on a PC or Macintosh (news - 
web sites), the computer likely will crash.

Some fans believe that the CD is more damaging than that, however. On 
the German discussion boards at MacFixit, Mac users claim that the CD 
will not eject using normal methods and that the intentional corruption 
of the disc's session data could unpredictably affect the drive's 
firmware. (Firmware is a combination of hardware and software 
instructions that are permanently embedded in the hardware's controlling 
chips, such as with a computer's CD-ROM, and altering it could cause 
permanent damage.)

Sony denied these allegations. "The CD will probably cause a system to 
crash, but it will not alter anything," the spokeswoman said. "And it 
won't eject properly, but that's just because the computer has crashed."

"New Day" was released in the United States on Tuesday. Industry 
watchers expect it to sell more than 500,000 copies by the end of its 
first week.

More than 10 million discs using Key2Audio CD-audio copy protection have 
been produced and sold, primarily in Europe. Key2Audio is a product of 
Sony DADC, a 100% affiliate of Sony Corp (news - web sites). of America 
headquartered in Austria.

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