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June 18, 2004

Down With DRM

In this Slashdot discussion about the DRM on the new Velvet Revolver CD's copy-protection, there is this comment by blincoln:

Backups are simply not an issue for the mass market.

Backups are not the issue for audio. Making custom mix CDs or transferring the music to a digitial audio player is.

Any CD that goes in my car is a CD-R for several reasons:

- I don't want the originals to be stolen/melted by the sun/scratched/etc.
- I can condense the music off of 50-100 CDs down to 10 or so CD-Rs because I *really* only want to hear maybe 1-2 tracks off of each one when I'm driving, and almost no pre-pressed CD I own is a full 80 minutes in length.

I also rip tons of my CDs to Ogg Vorbis at work for similar reasons - I have something like 100 albums on my hard drive there, so I don't have to keep lugging CDs back and forth and hoping they don't get broken in my bag.

If a record company wants to prevent me from making mix CDs and ripping to Ogg, they won't get any business from me. I think that once more people realize that that's their goal, it will seriously impact their sales figures. Not everyone I know rips music to their hard drive, but everyone makes mix CDs.

I do use some original CD's in the car, but other than that I am aligned with blincoln. The RIAA needs to decide whether they're going to sell media or licenses. In the digital age, the two don't cleanly mix.

Update: Reading a little more about this, it appears that as long as you don't allow Windows to auto-run the DRM software included on the VR CD, your access to the digital audio isn't impeded.

Posted by Alex Harden on June 18, 2004 12:39 PM |

Comments

(listens to his self-ripped MP3 of "Sucker Train Blues" by Velvet Revolver)

Wait... that disc was copy protected? Could've fooled me... :)

Posted by: Don | June 18, 2004 1:09 PM

It sounds like the DRM on the VR CD is pretty tame compared to others. I assume it didn't have the same disclaimer as the new Beasties CD you refused to buy?

Posted by: aharden | June 18, 2004 2:17 PM

Nope - all the VR disc said was "This is copy-protected." Nothing about the possible destruction of my hardware.

Posted by: Don | June 18, 2004 3:59 PM

I have a Love Parade CD from Germany that says it is copy protected from use on any PC. It's a dual CD set. I was able to rip one of the CDs to MP3 with no problem using iTunes but the second CD wouldn't even play on my Mac or a PC.

I have an Alpine CD changer in my glove compartment that plays MP3 CDs so I make a bunch of MP3 mix CDs and load them up in my changer for hours of audio enjoyment.

Posted by: dziner | June 18, 2004 4:42 PM

I saw this same Slashdot article and immediately thought of Don, because he mentioned it in one of his posts. He said he ripped the music no problem. So I was kind of wondering what the deal was. I am an audio idiot, I have done very little ripping and read even less about it.

I was pleasantly surprised that the best selling CD in the country was a Rock CD. :) Probably because with some of the manufactored garbage out there, America was hungry for a change. Though I have not heard the Velvet Revolver CD I am assuming it has some good stuff on there.

Posted by: Scotbuff | June 18, 2004 7:23 PM

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