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iPod grr...copy protected cd's

homerjward

homerjward

macrumors 68030
Original poster
May 11, 2004
2,745
0
fig tree
i was at circuit city tonight and was going to use a giftcard to buy rammstein's album "rosenrot" but then i saw a copy protection logo on the cd! what does this mean? are those the cd's with special software on them and that don't work on some cd players? i ended up paying $1 extra for the import version because it didn't have that logo. was that a good idea or should i have just bought the us version?
 
I have not found a copy protected CD that wouldn't work on a Mac, they are blocked on Windows for some reason.

But who knows they may now block Macs from ripping as well
 
eva01 said:
I have not found a copy protected CD that wouldn't work on a Mac, they are blocked on Windows for some reason.

But who knows they may now block Macs from ripping as well
Click to expand...
i'm still macless....
*keeps telling self he'll get a mac mini sometime but still doesnt have a job*

but they don't work on windows at all? that's really, really retarded.
 
It surprises me that Rammstein would have copy protection. It's not a rootkit, is it?

*le sigh* At least you have an OS, hopefully, that is smart enough to not allow malicious companies like Sony from installing malware on your computer... :(
 
I can't imagine how this works. Even if you can't do a straight forward CD-Copy, I wonder if you can just extract the audio as .aif's and then just recompile them to CD or convert them to MP3.
 
Foxglove9 said:
I can't imagine how this works. Even if you can't do a straight forward CD-Copy, I wonder if you can just extract the audio as .aif's and then just recompile them to CD or convert them to MP3.
Click to expand...

Those that I've seen have the AIFF files in one section but there is a Windows-formatted part that starts automatically and it only includes WMA files and it seems that you can copy those.

I've not had a problem with most but one Korean CD had to have an Windows executable to get the full CD working and I don't understand how you can sell something as compatible with CD players but it may be the way that things are laid out. That's the only one I've seen not work on a Mac.
 
just tried the one i bought (import version) and it works fine. glad i didn't buy the copy protected one!
 
mannix87 said:
I have 20 or so CDs w/ the copy-control protection, all of them work fine w/ iTunes, including the import function. both w/ a PC and a Mac.
Click to expand...

I've never had problems with importing songs from German copy protected CDs on a Mac, but recently for the first time I couldn't burn a direct copy with Toast (it was a new Françoise Hardy compilation, Le Temps des Souvenirs, Virgin/EMI).

So I guess you still don't have to worry about copy control with regard to iTunes, but from now on think twice if you want to make a copy.
 
Foxglove9 said:
I can't imagine how this works. Even if you can't do a straight forward CD-Copy, I wonder if you can just extract the audio as .aif's and then just recompile them to CD or convert them to MP3.
Click to expand...

There are several methods to "copy protect" cds, one method involves writing intentional errors to the cds, because cd-rom drives in computers are a lot more picky with errors than audio cd drives they have a hard time reading the cds.

Another method uses a piece of software than automatically installs itself on the host machine and stops you from ripping the music, the worst one of these was sony's root kit, fortunatly most of this stuff is windows only.
 
I had a CD the other day from Universal Records that would not copy in Toast and would not import into iTunes.

I thought I was buggered, until I looked on my desktop to see two CD volumes. One had a few HTML files saying it was copy protected and would not work on a Mac and WMA files were encoded into the disc for Windows. The second CD volume was full of AIFF files, ~590MB in size. It seems they have overlooked this. Copied the AIFF files into Toast and made a copy as a red book CDA. :D
 
micha10589 said:
So I guess you still don't have to worry about copy control with regard to iTunes, but from now on think twice if you want to make a copy.
Click to expand...

You could do a lossless rip into iTunes then make your copy from that rip.
 
eva01 said:
I have not found a copy protected CD that wouldn't work on a Mac, they are blocked on Windows for some reason.

But who knows they may now block Macs from ripping as well
Click to expand...
Don't you just have to hold down Shift to stop auto-play when ripping Copy Protected CDs on Windows (to stop the software installing).

By the same principal they'll always work on a Mac, as it'll need your password to install the software to stop it working.
 
Some of these record companies complain about the industry and not making enough money with iTunes and all..or whatever they are complaining about. But with all their money that's the best copy protecting they can come up with? Look at Sony, they were sneaky with that spyware and it ended up costing them even more in the end.

I have a program from Native Instruments called Battery and I couldn't copy that. Actually I was scared to try because it said in the manual it could damage my CD drive. The disc has 2 little notches cut out that must prevent the laser from scanning the whole disc. Seems like a simple and good idea to me. If it actually works.

Maybe they should start including dongles with the CD's. And you can download a serial code to unlock your each disc. :rolleyes:
 
and if you're stuck...

homerjward said:
i was at circuit city tonight and was going to use a giftcard to buy rammstein's album "rosenrot" but then i saw a copy protection logo on the cd! what does this mean? are those the cd's with special software on them and that don't work on some cd players? i ended up paying $1 extra for the import version because it didn't have that logo. was that a good idea or should i have just bought the us version?
Click to expand...

set up a program like audio hijack and just record it while it plays :)

seriously, i think most protected CDs stop the direct copying to another CD. some will play a few seconds and then go staticky. ok...we need a better word for staticky :)
 
Eraserhead said:
Don't you just have to hold down Shift to stop auto-play when ripping Copy Protected CDs on Windows (to stop the software installing).
Click to expand...
Or, just use a Sharpie to prevent the data track from being read. http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,52665,00.html

Peronally, I have just turned off autorun on the Plextor burner in my Dell box I use to import to iTunes and load EAC before loading a new CD. Rip to FLAC and then I just iTunesEncode to get them into iTunes.

B
 
Nermal said:
You could do a lossless rip into iTunes then make your copy from that rip.
Click to expand...

Good suggestion. I forgot to mention by the way that Toast offered to burn the files in audio disc mode (I don't really know what conversion process it would have used). But that is still not the same thing IMHO because it is not a full copy of the disc. So if for some reason you would want to import songs from that copy in iTunes again you cannot contact the CDDB to retrieve track information.
 
Same problem but found no work-around!

I have a Jennifer Lopez CD from, urm, 2002/03 (I think).. its got a few remixes of some of her songs at the time.

Anyway, it has the little copy protection logo on the back, and it has never played on ANY Mac.. and on my G4 iBook (when I had it) - it refused to come out the drive for aaaages and was quite scary!

Any ideas how I can import this into iTunes? I don't have any cables or anything like that to hook up to my iMac, so any software based solutions would be fantastic!

...:rolleyes:
 
micha10589 said:
So I guess you still don't have to worry about copy control with regard to iTunes, but from now on think twice if you want to make a copy.
Click to expand...

There's actually a list of copy protected CDs on heise.de (only in German, sorry). Seems that some drives are unable to read certain CDs, so it's not exclusively a matter of the OS. I guess that these CDs have (intentionally) bad CRCs and sectors and that kind of stuff, so any built-in error correction has to fail.
 
I never buy any music with the copy-protection logo. Because when you import an album like that, the sound quality is worse than tape. I've got one disc which I bought by mistake, and it sounds terrible. :(

The way the protection works is by riddling the disc with errors, so that the only way to compensate for the errors is to use the program stored on the disc. (The program that auto-runs on PCs) There is usually a Mac version on the disc as well (which doesn't run on my mini core duo)

Why should we pay the same price as real CDs for something that sounds worse than cassette tape? Notice these discs don't have the Compact Disc logo anywhere on them? They were ordered not to, because the sound quality didn't meet the requirements to be called a CD.

It pisses me off when I go to a music shop... and this crap is mixed in amongst CDs. They should be isolated into a special section in the store, and clearly labled. :( grr.
 
I had a couple of CDs that I was reviewing three or four years ago (Dave Gahan and the other bloke from Depeche Mode doing their solo albums). Neither would copy to iTunes without all sorts of horrible clicks. It's a shame because there was a really nice Eno cover that I wanted to stick on my iPod.
 
Eraserhead said:
Don't you just have to hold down Shift to stop auto-play when ripping Copy Protected CDs on Windows (to stop the software installing).

By the same principal they'll always work on a Mac, as it'll need your password to install the software to stop it working.
Click to expand...

Well macs don't auto-execute files on mounted volumes. The most it does is open the mounted volume up if it contains Data.
 
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