Re: [DMCA-Activists] Sony copy protection

[Jonathan Watterson]

There's now a link to this on digitalspeech.org. The new Celine Dion Cd
may crash your computer, and not because of her singing!

J

On Thu, 2002-04-04 at 16:30, Matthew Caron wrote:
> 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.
> 
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> 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.
> 
> -- 
> Please do not send me Word or PowerPoint attachments,
> or request that I send them to you.
> See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
> ~~ Matt Caron ~~
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
Jonathan Watterson                                Digital Freedom Organizer
http://digitalspeech.org                        Free Software Foundation

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