Sony BMG DRM part of battle for control between Apple, labels
posted Jun 21st 2005 10:24AM
Here's one reason why Sony BMG has made their
new CD-based DRM relatively easy to crack: it's not
exactly pirates they're after. According to Variety, the new copy protection scheme — which makes it difficult to
rip CDs and listen to them with an iPod — is designed to put pressure on Apple to open the iPod to other music
services, rather than making it dependent on the iTunes Music Store for downloads. Of course, while this would be
good for the labels, since it would diminish Apple's control over their business, it flies in the face of Apple's
razor-and-blades strategy for the iPod and iTunes. And given Apple's 80% share of the digital audio player market,
we somehow suspect that the labels aren't going to do too much to faze Stevie J.
I have a feeling Sony are in trouble... and it looks they they are trying to dig themselves out.
Hey Sony... try digging up instead!
Umm...seems to me this would just send users to iTMS, and away from record stores. How does this hurt Apple, again?
The only thing Sony has been good at for the last few years is shooting themselves in the foot. Oh, and pissing off loyal customers. Call me when the Sony Music biz quites running the show, I'm off to buy another iPod.
Ah, Gillette practically gives away the razor, and charges a boatload for the blades. Apple is doing the reverse - charging a pittance of a markup on the songs, and a boatload for the I-pod.
So let me get this straight - Sony wants my money, but they also want to use me as a pawn in their war on Apple?
When I buy a CD, it goes straight onto my iPod - if Sony has a problem with that and makes it impossible to do what I want with the CD I just purchased, I just won't purchase CDs from Sony. They aren't going to help their situation by irritating me. I wish Kuturagi was in charge at Sony now...
No problem.
if (artist.label == "Sony") {
iTunes.purchase();
cd.burn();
}else {
amazon.purchase();
iTunes.import();
}
good luck, Sony.
Hey I thought there was Brit in charge the mans a bonehead if he thinks this is progress the opening up iTunes is a dead argument as the figures purchasing from iTunes would show. Sony better be careful otherwise Steve might try and buy the Sony label.
To make matters worse, Sony's DRM software is practically impossible to remove from a Windows computer once it's been installed. After obtaining the new Foo Fighters album I contacted Sunncomm (the company that creates the DRM software for Sony) and I asked them how to remove their DRM software from my computer. It turns out the only way to completely restore your computer to its original state is to reformat your hard drive! I shared my interactions with Sunncomm on my web site: http://www.michaelrighi.com/2005/06/20/use-sony-drm-format-your-hard-drive/
Record Labels: this isn't the way to get us to buy more CDs. In fact, I'd be a lot more likely to download the songs via peer to peer in this instance.
We must applaud Apple's efforts to be consumer-friendly on these issues. Folks may forget but the online music stores prior to iTunes weren't nearly as liberal in personal use rights as Apple's store has been. They're keeping the cost reasonable too.
Remember who is being anti-consumer and you know who the villian is on this issue.
#8, It's not hard to uninstall sunncomm at all apparently. I haven't read it myself, but apparently there was a huge scuffle with regard to an academic report written by Alex Halderman. It disclosed how to beat the the SunnComm DRM and uninstall it from the PC. They even wanted to sue him and claimed the article went against the DMCA but later backed off.
Read it here: http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~jhalderm/cd3/
TWC said, "It's not hard to uninstall sunncomm at all apparently."
The article that you reference is now two years old. Sunncomm has since enhanced their DRM software, but unfortunately they don't include an uninstall utility on the audio CDs.
If you beg, they'll provide you a link to a web site that contains an ActiveX control which deletes the DRM software but NOT the DRM license keys. According to Sunncomm, the DRM license keys are stored in a "hidden database on the system" which can never be removed.
I describe this in more detail at: http://www.michaelrighi.com/2005/06/20/use-sony-drm-format-your-hard-drive/
i have the exact same foo fighters cd, and i did the same thing you did and that article still applies, two years old or not. uninstall the program first, then open command prompt and type the following lines to remove the driver that causes the cd to sound garbled when played on your computer:
net stop sbcphid
del %systemroot%system32driverssbcphid.sys
heres the link for the article, but there has been no copy protetcion yet that cannot be prevented by holding down shift and inserting the cd the first time. http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~jhalderm/cd3/
The only problem here is that Sony's CD protection only works on Windows PCs. They rip just fine on a Mac. Oh, and the protection prevents using the CD on some of their own DAPs and miniDisc players too.
If they were trying to hurt Apple then they've got their gun aimed at the wrong target as one barrel seems to have shot their own foot and the other is aimed at Microsoft.
I also heard from an 'inside source' that Sony BMG is threatening to take down their content from iTMS... seems crazy to me but they have done stranger things
Andrew Wilson said, "...but there has been no copy protetcion yet that cannot be prevented by holding down shift..."
This is completely untrue. The MediaMax driver does not scramble the audio. It unscrambles the audio. If you hold in shift to prevent MediaMax from installing, you CAN NOT listen to the songs in Windows with normal software such as Media Player.
The Foo Fighters CD contains two images of music. The first image is pure unscrambled audio which works fine in CD players. The second image represents scrambled WMA files. Using some sort of CD trickery, they convince audio software such as Media Player and Winamp that the scrambled WMA files are the only files on the CD.
For some reason, operating systems such as Linux don't fall for this trick and only see the pure audio files.
It's not a software trick that prevents Windows Media from recognizing the audio, it's a "hardware" trick if you will. For example, I have a really old DVD player which plays most audio CDs just fine but won't play the Foo Fighters CD because it apparently thinks it's a data CD. My DVD player is certainly not running Windows.
If you are using specialized software such as Clone CD, you will be able to see both images on the CD and rip one of the two to a separate disc. Check out http://www.slysoft.com/en/clonecd.html
Also, Andrew provided an instruction on how to delete one of MediaMax's runtime files. Keep in mind that this does not delete the license keys that MediaMax downloads. Those are stored elsewhere and can't be deleted, as far as I know.
From Sunncomm's web site, "[the drm license keys] are hidden in a secret database on the system that only Microsoft knows how to get to. Since those keys are very small and literally do nothing other than help the user play content that would otherwise be inaccessible, Microsoft never envisioned that anyone would have a desire to remove them. As a result, we do not have a way to tell the Windows Media Player to remove a particular key."
Again, I explain all this at: http://www.michaelrighi.com/2005/06/20/use-sony-drm-format-your-hard-drive/
Napster + Audacity = Happy consumer (except the time it takes to re-record the music LOL!!!)