I have just had a really nice surprised after a horrible stress : Being really happy to just received the last album from the band Guano Apes (a band which should be more known!!), I can not resist to insert this CD in my G4 and perform the small import into iTunes 4... Ouch! A big sticker on the jewel case indicates that this CD can not be played on a computer, I look on the back : editor BMG (like for the last album from Robbin Williams), there are indeed two sessions on the CD, the sound and the anti-piracy protection. anyway, I insert the CD in my G4 and iTunes displays the following screen as expected  The first six tracks are readable and can be imported, but not the other 6 songs (track 7), and iTunes blocks trying to read them. I go back to the finder, and open the CD window. Get info on track 7 indicates 22 min 18 sec, instead of 15h 33 min in iTunes.  I copy the 7th track on the desktop, and open it with QuickTime 6.3. Miracle!! The 7th track is in fact tracks 7 to 12 collated one after the other!!  After a small series of copy - new - paste, I finally end up with the last 6 tracks in an AIFF format. Final result : the album is now complete, after imports into iTunes and AAC encoding!!  Info : On the back of the CD jewel case, it is written that to read this CD it requires : PC : min Win 95/64MB RAM, Pentium II 233 Mac : CD not recognized Others : CD not recognized There is sometimes advantage to be part of a community which represent only a small % of the computer market, that way they did not test their CD protection under MacOSX!! This mail is dedicated for users who have enough not to be even able to make a private copy of a CD that they have legally purchased. I also want to point out that my CDs are not available on P2P network. I know many musicians that are trying to life from their skills, and I am the first support them and I am not releasing my music tracks to the web pirates!! |
We also want to mention 2 important things:
1) This tip described here is not a reason for hacking or so!
We also find that it is simply not normal to not be able to import a music track on a computer in order to be able to transfer it on an iPod.
2) Those anti-piracy protections are actually the topic of a justice procedure started by the main french consumer association ("60 millions de consommateurs") which we expect will be received and accepted. anyway, even the so-called "protected" music CD can be found on the P2P networks so at the end only honest consumers are the victims of the majors.
[Follow up] Thanks to François for this additional info.
A small additional info concerning the article where Thierry describes how to rip a CD from BMG. He says that the last album from Robbie Williams is also distributed by BMG, which is wrong. Robbie Williams has a contact with Capitol and he even extended recently the contract for 3 or 4 albums. Capitol uses another protection system. concerning this point (I am working in musical press), Capitol (ex-EMI, + Virgin, Labels, etc.) is applying an anti-copy protection on all CDs at the European level , except for the UK (are the British more sceptical !!!). Jewel case are in addition covered with a sticker, sometimes affecting the design (the last album from the Bangles has a quarter of its case covered by different warnings). However, Sony has recently decided to stop using anti-piracy systems, because they are probably thinking that it is too late for the CD, and that only the SACD is the solution for the music majors regarding piracy protection. |
