copy protected audio cds with linux ?

[Markus Grunwald]

Hi !

Some time ago, a friend of mine had a problem copying a copy-protected
CD-Audio. He asked me to help copy it with my linux skills ;)

Well, I couldn't since cdparanoia and the like didn't work. Can you tell
me some linux tools who might help me with this task ?

BTW: What we wanted to do is perfectly legal, since everybody can make a
copy of his own CDs for personal use only. So no juristic comments,
please ;)
--
Markus Grunwald

Registered Linux User Nr 101577
http://counter.li.org http://www.grunwald.2xs.de

[Oliver Elphick]

Post by Markus Grunwald
Hi !
Some time ago, a friend of mine had a problem copying a copy-protected
CD-Audio. He asked me to help copy it with my linux skills ;)
Well, I couldn't since cdparanoia and the like didn't work. Can you tell
me some linux tools who might help me with this task ?
BTW: What we wanted to do is perfectly legal, since everybody can make a
copy of his own CDs for personal use only. So no juristic comments,
please ;)

I believe these copy-protection schemes work by introducing a lot of
errors on the CD. Audio CD players skip them but computers treat the CD
as faulty.

If this were in Britain I would take the CD back to the shop as unfit
for the purpose for which it was sold and/or complain to Trading
Standards. I should have thought that you could do something similar in
Germany, since the quality of the CD has been deliberately downgraded.

[Nathan E Norman]

Post by Oliver Elphick

Post by Markus Grunwald
Hi !
Some time ago, a friend of mine had a problem copying a copy-protected
CD-Audio. He asked me to help copy it with my linux skills ;)
Well, I couldn't since cdparanoia and the like didn't work. Can you tell
me some linux tools who might help me with this task ?
BTW: What we wanted to do is perfectly legal, since everybody can make a
copy of his own CDs for personal use only. So no juristic comments,
please ;)

I believe these copy-protection schemes work by introducing a lot of
errors on the CD. Audio CD players skip them but computers treat the CD
as faulty.
If this were in Britain I would take the CD back to the shop as unfit
for the purpose for which it was sold and/or complain to Trading
Standards. I should have thought that you could do something similar in
Germany, since the quality of the CD has been deliberately downgraded.

A recent 2600 magazine had an article on how to patch cdparanoia so it
would read these copy protected CDs.

[Mario Vukelic]

Post by Oliver Elphick
If this were in Britain I would take the CD back to the shop as unfit
for the purpose for which it was sold and/or complain to Trading
Standards. I should have thought that you could do something similar in
Germany, since the quality of the CD has been deliberately downgraded.

For sure you can do that in Germany too. It's a clear case if it was
sold as an "Audio CD", since Philips, as the main patent holder, has
said that they are, in fact, not Audio CDs
http://www.tecchannel.de/news/20020110/thema20020110-6415.html

[Dave Steinberg]

Post by Oliver Elphick
I believe these copy-protection schemes work by introducing a lot of
errors on the CD. Audio CD players skip them but computers treat the CD
as faulty.
If this were in Britain I would take the CD back to the shop as unfit
for the purpose for which it was sold and/or complain to Trading
Standards. I should have thought that you could do something similar in
Germany, since the quality of the CD has been deliberately downgraded.

Hi Oliver, hi all,

In that case, get ready to start making a lot of trips to the record
store.

Post by Oliver Elphick
From what I understand, Sony Music is, this week, starting to release all

new albums with their key2audio protection (http://www.key2audio.com/).
It seems the first disc to be crippled is the Celine Dion release, "A New
Day Has Come." Dion is, far and away, Sony's biggest selling artist, so
it's pretty safe to conclude that the experiments are over, and Sony is
going full speed ahead.

According to the site, "...key2audio does not introduce artificial
(C2) errors into the music, thereby preserving the title's original sound
quality...A hidden signature applied to the disc during glass master
manufacturing prevents playback on PC/MAC and thereby prevents copying or
track ripping. The high reliability is due to the fact that the audio
part fully complies with the Red Book standard - not a single bit is
changed in the audio data stream - i.e.: no uncorrectable errors are used
to protect the audio data."

Apparently, the discs are clearly labeled along the lines of "This CD
does not play on PC/MAC."

If the claims of Red Book compliance are true, and the CD's are clearly
labelled as not playing on PC's, how can we justify returning them?

[Oliver Elphick]

Post by Dave Steinberg
In that case, get ready to start making a lot of trips to the record
store.

That assumes that I have the money to buy lots of CDs, and anyway I
don't really see Naxos getting into this game.

...

Post by Dave Steinberg
According to the site, "...key2audio does not introduce artificial
(C2) errors into the music, thereby preserving the title's original sound
quality...A hidden signature applied to the disc during glass master
manufacturing prevents playback on PC/MAC and thereby prevents copying or
track ripping. The high reliability is due to the fact that the audio
part fully complies with the Red Book standard - not a single bit is
changed in the audio data stream - i.e.: no uncorrectable errors are used
to protect the audio data."

If it has a good audio data stream, I should have thought it must be
capable of being read somehow.

Post by Dave Steinberg
Apparently, the discs are clearly labeled along the lines of "This CD
does not play on PC/MAC."
If the claims of Red Book compliance are true, and the CD's are clearly
labelled as not playing on PC's, how can we justify returning them?

You couldn't, if the shop made it clear to you. If you told them
beforehand that you wanted it to play on your PC, you could return it.

[John Cichy]

Stupid question...I thought making a copy of the original CD to 'preserve' it
was 'acceptable' use??

On another note, I buy CDs (I know I can 'share' but until now, I like have
the originals, I still have a collection of LPs, but no turntable ;-) for my
office to play while I'm working, on my PC. I have not used any of the file
sharing services before, but...

Now for the dark side... how hard can it be to connect a digital out on the
cd player to a digital in on a computer and ...

When will the get it through their heads, if it can be secured, it can be
cracked!

Post by Dave Steinberg

Post by Oliver Elphick
I believe these copy-protection schemes work by introducing a lot of
errors on the CD. Audio CD players skip them but computers treat the CD
as faulty.
If this were in Britain I would take the CD back to the shop as unfit
for the purpose for which it was sold and/or complain to Trading
Standards. I should have thought that you could do something similar in
Germany, since the quality of the CD has been deliberately downgraded.

Hi Oliver, hi all,
In that case, get ready to start making a lot of trips to the record
store.
From what I understand, Sony Music is, this week, starting to release all
new albums with their key2audio protection (http://www.key2audio.com/).
It seems the first disc to be crippled is the Celine Dion release, "A New
Day Has Come." Dion is, far and away, Sony's biggest selling artist, so
it's pretty safe to conclude that the experiments are over, and Sony is
going full speed ahead.
According to the site, "...key2audio does not introduce artificial
(C2) errors into the music, thereby preserving the title's original sound
quality...A hidden signature applied to the disc during glass master
manufacturing prevents playback on PC/MAC and thereby prevents copying or
track ripping. The high reliability is due to the fact that the audio
part fully complies with the Red Book standard - not a single bit is
changed in the audio data stream - i.e.: no uncorrectable errors are used
to protect the audio data."
Apparently, the discs are clearly labeled along the lines of "This CD
does not play on PC/MAC."
If the claims of Red Book compliance are true, and the CD's are clearly
labelled as not playing on PC's, how can we justify returning them?

[Alan Poulton]

Post by John Cichy
Now for the dark side... how hard can it be to connect a digital out
on the cd player to a digital in on a computer and ...

I was just thinking the same thing.. why not use a home stereo CD player
and plug it into the Input of your sound card? Then it's being played on
a non-PC CD player. It might make individual track ripping more work,
but it should work.

[Dimitri Maziuk]

Post by Alan Poulton

Post by John Cichy
Now for the dark side... how hard can it be to connect a digital out
on the cd player to a digital in on a computer and ...

I was just thinking the same thing.. why not use a home stereo CD player
and plug it into the Input of your sound card? Then it's being played on
a non-PC CD player. It might make individual track ripping more work,
but it should work.

See SSSCA.

Dima

[Craig Dickson]

Post by Alan Poulton

Post by John Cichy
Now for the dark side... how hard can it be to connect a digital out
on the cd player to a digital in on a computer and ...

I was just thinking the same thing.. why not use a home stereo CD player
and plug it into the Input of your sound card? Then it's being played on
a non-PC CD player. It might make individual track ripping more work,
but it should work.

Of course, then it's an analog copy, not a digital copy. Though if
you're planning to Vorbis- or mp3-encode it, then it may not matter
much.

Craig

[Ron Johnson]

Post by Alan Poulton

Post by John Cichy
Now for the dark side... how hard can it be to connect a digital out
on the cd player to a digital in on a computer and ...

I was just thinking the same thing.. why not use a home stereo CD player
and plug it into the Input of your sound card? Then it's being played on
a non-PC CD player. It might make individual track ripping more work,
but it should work.

Then you'd have a degraded analog signal...
--
+------------------------------------------------------------+
| Ron Johnson, Jr. Home: ***@cox.net |
| Jefferson, LA USA http://ronandheather.dhs.org:81 |
| |
| "(Women are) like compilers. They take simple statements |
| and make them into big productions." |
| Pitr Dubovitch |
+------------------------------------------------------------+

[Sean]

Of course the thing that just baffles my mind during this whole mp3
nonsense is the fact that an mp3 is _not_ an exact digital copy of the
original. A 128kbit encoded mp3 is a very lossy compression, even higher
bitrates still aren't as pristine as the original. Same goes with ogg
files, though I think they sound better at equal compressions as wavs.
For songs I care about, I want the original wavs (read original album),
so I can fiddle with the type of compression I want to use to achive the
best quality level for my particular purpose. If I want to listen to a
massive collection of songs via the DVD player in the living room, I'll
use a different compression level than if I want to listen to a massive
collection of songs on my computer speakers.

I can't believe the lossy compression argument _never_ came up during
the whole Napster debaucle. The other side kept talking about how
downloading the songs was no different than listening to them off the
CD. That couldn't be more wrong. Either the Napster lawyers really
sucked ass, or there were other agendas at work.

Of course, anything further is just entering the world of paranoid
speculation ... but it still has to make ya wonder.

Sean

Post by Ron Johnson

Post by Alan Poulton

Post by John Cichy
Now for the dark side... how hard can it be to connect a digital out
on the cd player to a digital in on a computer and ...

I was just thinking the same thing.. why not use a home stereo CD player
and plug it into the Input of your sound card? Then it's being played on
a non-PC CD player. It might make individual track ripping more work,
but it should work.

Then you'd have a degraded analog signal...

[Craig Dickson]

Post by Sean
I can't believe the lossy compression argument _never_ came up during
the whole Napster debaucle. The other side kept talking about how
downloading the songs was no different than listening to them off the
CD. That couldn't be more wrong. Either the Napster lawyers really
sucked ass, or there were other agendas at work.

Well, if you have a vested interest in MP3, you don't really want to
admit that 128 kb/sec MP3 is inferior quality, since MP3 promoters have
been saying all along that it's CD quality (despite the fact that it
obviously isn't).

The latest Ogg Vorbis release (RC3) sounds incredibly good at quality
settings averaging 160-192 kb/sec -- far better than MP3 at anything
less than 256 kb/sec.

Craig

[dman]

On Mon, Mar 25, 2002 at 07:43:30PM -0500, Sean wrote:
| Of course the thing that just baffles my mind during this whole mp3
| nonsense is the fact that an mp3 is _not_ an exact digital copy of the
| original.

True, but notice too that a CD is not an exact copy of the sound
created by the artist. Sound is analog energy; the vibration of
particles at any possible frequency. A digital encoding is inherently
limited to representing only a subset of all the potential sound
waves. The key to all this, though, is that the sensitivity of humans
ears is limited (some more so than others, like mine ;-)). If the
digital encoding can represent _enough_ of the sound waves then the
human ear can't tell the difference between that and the original
sound the artist generated in the studio. This is the whole idea
behind jpeg and mp3 and ogg. If you can throw away some of the data
then you can reduce storage requirements. If you don't throw away too
much data, then human ears (eyes in the case of jpeg) can't tell the
difference. If you study, for example, PCM or v.90 you'll see the
same issues. With POTS, though, the requirements are merely to be
intelligible and recognizable, thus a 8KHz sample rate is sufficient.
(Have you ever wondered where the 56Kpbs limit comes from?)

| If I want to listen to a
| massive collection of songs via the DVD player in the living room, I'll
| use a different compression level than if I want to listen to a massive
| collection of songs on my computer speakers.

If you're talking about laptop speakers, then you really don't need
wav quality :-).

-D
--
The heart is deceitful above all things
and beyond cure.
Who can understand it?

I the Lord search the heart
and examine the mind,
to reward a man according to his conduct,
according to what his deeds deserve.

Jeremiah 17:9-10

[Rob Weir]

Post by Sean
Of course the thing that just baffles my mind during this whole mp3
nonsense is the fact that an mp3 is _not_ an exact digital copy of the
original. A 128kbit encoded mp3 is a very lossy compression, even higher
bitrates still aren't as pristine as the original. Same goes with ogg
files, though I think they sound better at equal compressions as wavs.
For songs I care about, I want the original wavs (read original album),

Have you tried FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec)? As the name suggests, it's
completely lossless, GPL programs, LGPL libraries, and seems to give about 33%
compression. IIRC, it's available from flac.sf.net.

-rob

[Dale Hair]

Would the same work with the output jack on the cd player in the
computer. I don't have any copy protected CDs to try this, or headphones
either.

Post by Alan Poulton

Post by John Cichy
Now for the dark side... how hard can it be to connect a digital out
on the cd player to a digital in on a computer and ...

I was just thinking the same thing.. why not use a home stereo CD player
and plug it into the Input of your sound card? Then it's being played on
a non-PC CD player. It might make individual track ripping more work,
but it should work.
--
I'm really easy to get along with once you people learn to worship me.
--

[dman]

On Mon, Mar 25, 2002 at 04:00:38PM -0500, John Cichy wrote:

| Now for the dark side... how hard can it be to connect a digital out on the
| cd player to a digital in on a computer and ...

Can't be that hard, if you really do have a digital out and digital
in. (I don't have any quality sound equipment. It's outside my field
of expertise).

The simplest counter-example would be to take your (high-quality) CD
sound system to a studio and play the cd into the microphone. Then
you can make your own cd that isn't protected :-).

| When will the get it through their heads, if it can be secured, it can be
| cracked!

They'll understand as soon as managers become technicians. Did the
DVD copy-protection group give up with the realization that if one
player can play it, then anyone (with the right knowledge) can play
it?

-D

[Alberto Vecchiato]

I've installed potato on my laptop (NEC VersaNote VX), later upgraded to
sid. Trying to get the sound working, I've also upgraded the kernel
2.2.19 to the last release 2.4.18 via dselect using the appropriate
debianized kernel image.

The audio support is installed as a module in the kernel, and lspci gives
00:00.1 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82440MX AC'97 Audio
Controller
for the audio device. After some investigation I discovered that the
right module to load should be i810_audio, so using modconf I loaded
sound, soundcore and i810_audio. The last one automatically loaded also
the ac97_codec module. Looking the output of lsmod it seemd all OK, so I
tested the installation sending some sound files to the sound devices.
For example I issued the following commands:
cat endoftheworld >/dev/dsp
cat crash.au >/dev/audio

The result is a bit puzzling for me. The sound card seems to reproduce
all of the files at a very fast speed. Can anyone help me?

Thanks in advance

Alberto Vecchiato

[Rob Weir]

Post by dman
| Now for the dark side... how hard can it be to connect a digital out on the
| cd player to a digital in on a computer and ...
Can't be that hard, if you really do have a digital out and digital
in. (I don't have any quality sound equipment. It's outside my field
of expertise).
The simplest counter-example would be to take your (high-quality) CD
sound system to a studio and play the cd into the microphone. Then
you can make your own cd that isn't protected :-).

While all these play-cd-in-cd-player-then-recorcd-via-sound-card
schemes may work, they do sacrifice one of the most important feature
of ripping: convenience. Recording off my stereo will take ~72min per
CD; even on my crappy little IDE CD-ROM drive, it takes about a
quarter of that. Sony might not be able to stop people ripping their
CDs, but it certainly does make it less convenient.

Of course, the other side of the coin is that it only has to be ripped
once, by someone, somewhere. Once they post it to Gnutella, or
Morhpeus or whatever the leading network of the day is, anyone can get
it.

-rob

[Craig Dickson]

Post by Dave Steinberg
According to the site, "...key2audio does not introduce artificial
(C2) errors into the music, thereby preserving the title's original sound
quality...A hidden signature applied to the disc during glass master
manufacturing prevents playback on PC/MAC and thereby prevents copying or
track ripping. The high reliability is due to the fact that the audio
part fully complies with the Red Book standard - not a single bit is
changed in the audio data stream - i.e.: no uncorrectable errors are used
to protect the audio data."

I don't understand this. What is this "hidden signature", and how does
it prevent the disc from playing on a CD-ROM drive? If the disc is fully
Red Book-compliant, then why would it not play? Is this a cheap trick
like putting a faulty non-audio session on the disc (separate from the
Red Book CD audio data) in the hope that a CD-ROM drive would be
confused by it, and therefore be unable to read it?

Craig

[John Cichy]

Post by Craig Dickson

Post by Dave Steinberg
According to the site, "...key2audio does not introduce artificial
(C2) errors into the music, thereby preserving the title's original sound
quality...A hidden signature applied to the disc during glass master
manufacturing prevents playback on PC/MAC and thereby prevents copying or
track ripping. The high reliability is due to the fact that the audio
part fully complies with the Red Book standard - not a single bit is
changed in the audio data stream - i.e.: no uncorrectable errors are used
to protect the audio data."

I don't understand this. What is this "hidden signature", and how does
it prevent the disc from playing on a CD-ROM drive? If the disc is fully
Red Book-compliant, then why would it not play? Is this a cheap trick
like putting a faulty non-audio session on the disc (separate from the
Red Book CD audio data) in the hope that a CD-ROM drive would be
confused by it, and therefore be unable to read it?

Now that I think about it, I remember on the show TheScreenSavers
(http://thescreensavers.com), they had a show where the took apart a CD
Player (sorry I don't remember the brand) and found a computer CD-ROM inside.
Will the CDs play on this equiptment? Who would be liable if not?

[Karsten M. Self]

Post by Oliver Elphick

Post by Markus Grunwald
Hi !
Some time ago, a friend of mine had a problem copying a copy-protected
CD-Audio. He asked me to help copy it with my linux skills ;)
Well, I couldn't since cdparanoia and the like didn't work. Can you tell
me some linux tools who might help me with this task ?
BTW: What we wanted to do is perfectly legal, since everybody can make a
copy of his own CDs for personal use only. So no juristic comments,
please ;)

I believe these copy-protection schemes work by introducing a lot of
errors on the CD. Audio CD players skip them but computers treat the CD
as faulty.
If this were in Britain I would take the CD back to the shop as unfit
for the purpose for which it was sold and/or complain to Trading
Standards. I should have thought that you could do something similar in
Germany, since the quality of the CD has been deliberately downgraded.

There's also a question of whether or not such products qualify for the
"Compact Disk" lable under the Phillips standard. Phillips itself
(inventer of the CD) has objected to DeCSS under similar grounds.

Peace.

[Joey Hess]

Post by Karsten M. Self
There's also a question of whether or not such products qualify for the
"Compact Disk" lable under the Phillips standard. Phillips itself
(inventer of the CD) has objected to DeCSS under similar grounds.

Well I bought a CD today, which is from one of Sony's labels, and
interestingly there is no occurrance of "CD", "compact disk", or the CD
logo anywhere on the case[1]. Sony is also rumored to be rolling out
copy protection on a large scale, and they have that particular base
covered already, it seems.

I was half-way expecting the thing to be unreadable, which would have
let me perform the amusing feat of calling up sony's computer tech
support and ask them why my sony CD player hooked up to my sony
laptop[2] refused to read a sony CD, and should I return the laptop, the
CD player, or the CD for a refund. But actually it's ripping happily
now.

Anyway, once it _is_ the 80's all over again, and copying protection of
varying degrees of effectiveness is making life more interesting for the
people who get off on breaking it, I just don't plan to buy any more
CD's. Just as I don't use DVD's because of the evilness of that
standard. No great loss to me. YMMV..
--
see shy jo

[1] It does appear once in the liner notes.
[2] Which I just bought this week. Evil send-Sony-large-amounts-of-money
week, this.

[Kurc, Marcin A.]

well, since they say it does not play on PC/MAC you can always put it in
a HP, Sun (insert your favorite one) box and if it doesn't play complain :)

Marcin Kurc
CAD Systems Administrator
Cooper-Standard Automotive

-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Steinberg [mailto:***@taro.homeip.net]
Sent: Monday, March 25, 2002 3:27 PM
To: Debian Users List
Subject: Re: copy protected audio cds with linux ?

Post by Oliver Elphick
I believe these copy-protection schemes work by introducing a lot of
errors on the CD. Audio CD players skip them but computers treat the CD
as faulty.
If this were in Britain I would take the CD back to the shop as unfit
for the purpose for which it was sold and/or complain to Trading
Standards. I should have thought that you could do something similar in
Germany, since the quality of the CD has been deliberately downgraded.

Hi Oliver, hi all,

In that case, get ready to start making a lot of trips to the record
store.

Post by Oliver Elphick
From what I understand, Sony Music is, this week, starting to release all

new albums with their key2audio protection (http://www.key2audio.com/).
It seems the first disc to be crippled is the Celine Dion release, "A New
Day Has Come." Dion is, far and away, Sony's biggest selling artist, so
it's pretty safe to conclude that the experiments are over, and Sony is
going full speed ahead.

According to the site, "...key2audio does not introduce artificial
(C2) errors into the music, thereby preserving the title's original sound
quality...A hidden signature applied to the disc during glass master
manufacturing prevents playback on PC/MAC and thereby prevents copying or
track ripping. The high reliability is due to the fact that the audio
part fully complies with the Red Book standard - not a single bit is
changed in the audio data stream - i.e.: no uncorrectable errors are used
to protect the audio data."

Apparently, the discs are clearly labeled along the lines of "This CD
does not play on PC/MAC."

If the claims of Red Book compliance are true, and the CD's are clearly
labelled as not playing on PC's, how can we justify returning them?
--
Dave Steinberg
***@taro.homeip.net

[Kurc, Marcin A.]

it is not difficult to copy the CD, like you said with digital out and in
the whole point is to use such tools like cdparanoia to make it easy.
I know you can mount a music cd as a file system under BeOS and copy
whatever
you need. I don't think linux can do it at the time though.
There is no way they can make a cd to be 100% copy protected, they are just
trying to make it harder for an average aol user.
On the other hand, I know a lot of people who did rip/downloaded music
for maybe 2 months when napster came out but then they realized that it is
not
worth it to spend couple hours, download it to only find out that they have
some
low quality copy. Everybody knows that if you want good quality fast you
have to have
an access to a protected ftp site, but hey .. it was there before napster
and the rest,
it was there even before, when you borrowed records or cassettes from your
friends
and recorded it.
Also, how much music people really need. After going through all the crap
they
are feeding us you will always come back to your old favorites (which would
be nice
if you can copy to play in you car for example, and preserve your original).
Maybe the recording industry should look somewhere else for the reason of
failing sales
... maybe listen to the radio
... tune ... creed alike music .... tune .... NSYNC (or however it is
spelled ... tune
... creed alike ... tune ... NSYNC ... tune ... titney for change
hell how many NSYNCs can you sell
In some way I understand them though, now people can actually listen to the
whole cd,
not only the one song the radio plays 24 times/24h, and then decide if they
want to
spend $15, $20 or whatever.
btw, you can return almost anything if you don't like it, this rule should
apply to
software and music cds too.

Marcin Kurc
CAD Systems Administrator
Cooper-Standard Automotive

-----Original Message-----
From: dman [mailto:***@dman.ddts.net]
Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2002 11:56 AM
To: Debian Users List
Subject: Re: copy protected audio cds with linux ?


On Mon, Mar 25, 2002 at 04:00:38PM -0500, John Cichy wrote:

| Now for the dark side... how hard can it be to connect a digital out on
the
| cd player to a digital in on a computer and ...

Can't be that hard, if you really do have a digital out and digital
in. (I don't have any quality sound equipment. It's outside my field
of expertise).

The simplest counter-example would be to take your (high-quality) CD
sound system to a studio and play the cd into the microphone. Then
you can make your own cd that isn't protected :-).

| When will the get it through their heads, if it can be secured, it can be
| cracked!

They'll understand as soon as managers become technicians. Did the
DVD copy-protection group give up with the realization that if one
player can play it, then anyone (with the right knowledge) can play
it?

-D
--
He who belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear
is that you do not belong to God.
John 8:47