Jafo,
You are 100% correct and I understand what you are saying, and as a moraly and legaly abiding human being I agree, I purchase software to be used by me on equipment I am the only user of and would not think of stealing anyones livelyhood, this goes for any industry and their offsprings including the music industry. I do belive that if I buy a music cd, that if I want to play it in my stereo system or play it on my computer solely for my enjoyment or use upto and including backups for archival use (old music disapears after awhile and you can't get them any more) so ripping to save as archival use in my opinion should be ok. I understand there are pirates out there but If the music industry wants to stop transmittle of ripped music over the internet get with some of the master programers out there and come up with a filter inbedded in the tracks that would transfer over to a ripped mp3 file to prevent it from being transfered over the internet. I hope you guys don't think I'm some kinda hack or putting anyone group or person down as I'm not trying to do that and am sorry if it sounds like that. As you know, locks and copy protection are only for honest people anyway. if theres a lock or block theres a hacker out there that will overcome it, and sadly we pay in the long run. Let me get off my soap box now and say see ya and thanks for listening to me ramble.
Roger

You realize that the price you pay on the cd, less than 20% of it goes to the artist, right? Who's stealing whose livelihood? Us or the IRAA?

Roger....it's a common occurrence...the recording of radio....and I think is generally ignored in itself. Any subsequent distribution or broadcast of the recording would not be, though, as that is the same as the Internet distribution of ripped MP3 files....

Elfie...that is a hopeless argument. One way or another, the artist 'agrees' with the amount he gets...via contract.
With MP3 'distribution' online the artist gets absolutely ZIP.

Copy protected CD's is going to hurt the radio business. I work for the largest chain of stations in Canada and at the HQ in Toronto we convert all CD's that come thru the door into ... you guessed it MP3 and MP2 formats... not only that but we re encode our broadcasting for the internet into MP3 once again so that it streams quickly with no need to Pre Cache. If we can't rip the CD's we get for on air play they will not make it on air.

Not only that but most copy protection formats used reduce the quality of the music which in turn has forced Sony and Phillips the owners of the Compact Disc patent to refuse music publishers to emblazen their discs with the CD logo.
Seeing that the music that can not be ripped will not make it on the air at our stations that also will hurt the artists.

The idea of including CDA and MP3 versions of the music on a CD is possibly the solution...where the relevant format is accessible by the appropriate hardware....

here here! thats using your noggin!

Sony's screwed themselves over with protection too... They released a Celine Dion CD that crashed conmputers and was unplayable even in some of their own drives...

CDA and MP3 on a CD is a bad idea for copy protection... it's just a rip-able as a regular CD, and would raise cost of production just a tad for the time spend getting the music into MP3 format (no label is dumb enough to record in it initially)

on a side, if you want to get you music fix even if you drive won't read it, you can get a nice little program to extract the CD image and mount it with a drive-image tool... It doesn't bypass the cd-protection because you're accessing the drive using normal means, just not reading it as an audio CD (most extractors do a byte-for-byte read) I like alcohol 120% and daemon tools

The only way to prevent ripping of the tracks, would be to make them unplayable on equipment that can rip (computers, some stereos, etc...) Tool's Lateralus won't even go from my stereo to my minidisc player because of a protection scheme (anti-optical output)

But...

preventing playback on certain equipment is a bad PR issue for labels, so it's a f___ed if you do, f___ed if you don't.

My opinion is that I own the CD, I get to listen to it my way... mp3, minidics, tape, etc... I supported the artist, now I could go for some support... btw, for peopel who need help getting support, feel free to contact me...

I'm not suprised Celine Dion is unplayable...

Indeed.

I stopped running into cd protection problems when I started ripping my cd's and playing the resulting files through my computer (plus audio out to my stereo).

UHRBid...
When you buy a CD you 'own' the plastic.
The content [music] is owned by the artist/manager/label/etc....not by you.

You are legally entitled to turn the CD into a drink coaster or perhaps pop-art...but the audio content is not yours to alter, just to play [privately].

Once that reality is understood, the concept of audio format conversion possibly infringing on copyright becomes apparent...

It's really no different than software in that sense. My copy of XP Pro is mine - the disk anyway. The OS still belongs to Microsoft. have only a license to use it, or play/listen in the case of a music CD

I like my home country. There's no such thing as copyrights.

I'm still waiting for some Chinese server to take your stuff and host it.