Stupid DRM. My computer, of course, gets around the copy protection on this CD instantly. My DVD player (which I use as a CD player: shut up Steve, CD players don’t sound a-few-hundred-dollars better, so I don’t care! ;-) ), on the other hand, can’t play the damn thing. As of right now I’m ripping it to my computer (losslessly with FLAC) and will have a prestine, non-DRM copy on a burnt CD for my use in a matter of minutes.
And if a friend ever asks if they can borrow my Yellowcard CD (bought on a whim knowing only one of their songs, I’ll add), I’ll be sure to lend them the version that works better: The one I burnt myself, without your stupid-arse software all over it.
Oh, yeah, and I’ll hesitate to purchase EMI CDs in the future. All other DRM-encumbered crap I’ve bought in the past has at least had the courtesy to work in my DVD player (this one made detection take ages, then picked it up as a VCD with wierd timecoding) — this is the barrier at which point it becomes infinitely easier to use Peer-to-Peer than buy things that look like they might be interesting in a CD store.
With physical media, I can (read: should be able to) toss it in anything and expect it to work instantly (no ripping required, etc.).
And, you know, if I wind up using Peer-to-Peer for this kind of stuff, my lossless (yeah, that’s CD quality, not MP3 junk) audio collection will be shared back with the rest of the world. Yes, even the CDs you make it harder for me to use legitimately. I will figure out a way to get them onto my computer (or someone else will with another CD), and I will use sharing networks if scumbag content providers provide me with sufficient impetus to do that.
(Incidentally, if anyone wants to borrow a non-DRM-encumbered Yellowcard CD…)
How much does postage to the UK cost for a CD? :P
$6.00, but it’d take 2 – 3 months to get there :P
$2000 and I’ll deliver it personally within a week (I’ll even include album art and the original CD to wear as a necklace or something equally aesthetic + pointless this way!) ;-)
how do you get past the copy protection on the cd thing?
DVD players aren’t made for listening to CDs. When will people learn?
Depends on the CD. Often holding down “Shift” as you put the CD in the drive (and Windows reads it, etc.) helps. (Stops programs on the CD from auto-running and installing blocking software). Mind you, I’ve leant CDs in the past which had copy protection and ripped into iTunes fine (on other people’s computers, I don’t do the iPod thing). So who knows. There’s always some way around all copy protection… complexity can vary a little, though.
As an aside, some Sony copy protection installs software that creates a back-door into your computer for anyone to access… so copy protection is bad for security of your computer, too. (This has since been ‘fixed’ in that no new CDs are shipping with that software. But that doesn’t mean it can’t happen again, or that these CDs aren’t still out there.)
[…] So far as the album Lights and Sounds goes, this song is pretty different. Jimmy wasn’t really popular He had a couple of friends back home And sooner or later they’re all getting out so he had to join up alone He was dreaming of the Ivy League since he was only three feet tall And get the hell out of jersey and then he would never look back at all […]