Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: an0n on January 10, 2004, 04:53:02 am
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Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but surely despite all the millions of dollars of investment into anti-copy research, all the thousands of little programs and hardware devices, all the thousands of people around the world being paid big-bucks by the global super-cocks of Corporate America™, all the new powers given to law enforcement, all the teams of lawyers rallying behind the RIAA like sharks in bloodied waters trying to cash in on all the new anti-copy technologies, all the thousands of reports on copy-prevention being written up by the music industry, all the masses and masses of law-suits against people distributing programs that crack copy-protection........
........can't I just circumvent any copy-protection by hooking my mic port to my speaker port (on any device) and pushing Record in Sound Recorder?
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Ultimately yes, but you will probably lose some quality that way from digital to analogue to digital conversion. Whether it's noticeable, you'll have to see :)
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Not if you hook up your digital out using the light cable, but I dunno if that also transfers the "copy-protection" along with it. But if it doesent, lossless quality music.
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It wouldn't have to be done directly like that, but what I'm saying is: What's the point in even trying to prevent copying when the very fundamental principle of tapes and DVD's and such is that they output data to another form?
As long as a DVD outputs an image, all you've got to do to get around any copy-prevention is take the image outside of the medium in which the copy-prevention exists. Which usually means shifting it into some analogue form and then back to digital.
They try to get around this by using things like the Mark system in VCR's whereby it stops you recording things with an underlayed 'I'm copy-righted' signal. And granted, to an extent this works. But to get around that you need only use an old VCR, and thus by using the anti-copyright system they're slowing the spread of newer and better entertainment devices.
I realise this is just my personal opinion, but I'd happily for-go buying a new VCR for 10-20 years if I knew that upgrading to a newer model would mean losing the ability to back-up my tapes and/or DVD's.
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Hmmm. Now there's a thought.
Y'know all those masses of distorted tracks that the RIAA sticks on KaZaA?
Wouldn't that constitute illegally providing copy-righted material?
"Well, of course not. It's their stuff", I hear you cry. Also, because it's distorted it's no longer the copy-righted material, correct?
So, if you took the clear pieces from several of these files and pieced them together, would it still be illegal?
Technically, it'd be no more illegal than playing Amerian Pie on your guitar at home. You'd be playing parts of files that were free from copy-right. And even if the re-made file was to be considered the same as an original CD-rip, the RIAA would be the ones providing it to you.
Hmmm, indeed.
EDIT: I've had another flash of brilliance.
Put 'Microsoft' in all the file descriptions of the real files.
So people only need search for whatever they want and add Microsoft to the search words.
The only way the RIAA could counter this would be to start adding 'Microsoft' to the file descriptions, at which point Microsoft (or whatever trademarked company name you saw fit to use) could sue the goddamn **** outta them in some kind of anti-trust suit. As the RIAA would be purposely damaging the Microsoft name to improve their record sales.
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That's wha I did, back then, with my C&C musics ( I wanted them on tape :p ).
Worked surprisingly well, no noise, nothing.
So yeah, that's still a valid option ;).
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Originally posted by an0n
Hmmm. Now there's a thought.
Y'know all those masses of distorted tracks that the RIAA sticks on KaZaA?
Wouldn't that constitute illegally providing copy-righted material?
"Well, of course not. It's their stuff", I hear you cry. Also, because it's distorted it's no longer the copy-righted material, correct?
So, if you took the clear pieces from several of these files and pieced them together, would it still be illegal?
Technically, it'd be no more illegal than playing Amerian Pie on your guitar at home. You'd be playing parts of files that were free from copy-right. And even if the re-made file was to be considered the same as an original CD-rip, the RIAA would be the ones providing it to you.
Hmmm, indeed.
No, that's different. Coz what you're describing is sampling, and that falls under the same copyright issues as the full music/musics.
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Yes, but they'd be being made available for download by the RIAA itself.
So they'd be guilty of entrapment and all law suits would be therefore invalid.
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Haha. There's a nice defence:
You: "I download the music accidentally."
Lawyer: "How so?
You: "I was trying to get one of those distorted copies of the track that the RIAA put up."
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better circumvention of the RIAA...
Move to australia
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False [Arab] Beard + Bag + Tricycloacetone Peroxide = Bye-bye. Wehey. No more RIAA.
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Well, Creative Labs stuff has always come with a 'What you hear' channel you can record, so they already provided the means.
And since the RIAA are currently being sued by Kazaa for breach of copyright, they've been pretty quiet of late ;)
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The whole industry has become a total farce since the advent of digital media. They are still stuck in the 80's while the users are plunging forth into the 21st century. Lawsuits and big money aside, its totally comical how badly the RIAA handels itself.
The movie industry has already come out and said that they will use the RIAA as an example of what not to do. But the movie industry really isn't having any problems...this year was a bit of a shortfall of the recordbreaking year they had last year but you can't be record breaking every year.
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HOME TAPING IS KILLING THE MUSIC INDUSTRY.
That was 20 years ago.
If they don't want you to copy music/videos/etc, then why do they sell blank media?
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The movie industry's problems are easy to fix.
All they've got to do is make films longer (file-size), make them so they go from real-dark to real-light more during the film (contrast issues) and make them have more detail in the scene (quality issues).
Three relatively simple things to have their directors, editors and set-dressers consider during production and by doing such things they make it so you either have to get the 1.4Gb version of the movie (thus killing all dial-up downloads), watch a version so low in quality that there's little point watching it (thus killing all 'casual downloaders') or you pay to go see it at the movies (increases revenue).
I've got no problem with the movie industry. They're not being dicks about it. If I got caught copying and selling movies by the MPAA I'd be like "Damn. Ah well. Serves me right" but if the RIAA caught me I'd be all "Fight the power! Death to the RIAA! ATTICA! ATTICA!".
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Cuz they're stupid and greedy. And think that they will make more money that way, and they're depending on the consumer to NOT use it for anything illegal, like pirating. Blank media (such as VHS tapes) are for home videos of course! ;)
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Originally posted by an0n
but if the RIAA caught me I'd be all "Fight the power! Death to the RIAA! ATTICA! ATTICA!".
:lol:
what kills me is the softwere they relese to counter piracy. Remeber the whole shift key deal?
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Also, it's not the RIAA/MPAA selling tapes.
People see a nice opportunity to cash in on pirating movies and **** so they start selling blank media.
Hmmm. Wouldn't that be considered 'aiding the circumvention of copyright infringement prevention devices'?
C'z if they had nothing to copy to, it'd stop the circumvention. But then I suppose hard-drives would be outlawed too.
What they don't seem to understand is that while they've got tons of people sat working on way to build a system to stop copying whose only concern is getting paid, there are ten times as many people looking for a single crack in such software to exploit and to bring it down with. And while the RIAA has 9-to-5 morons doing it with all the energy a cup of coffee affords, the EFF has people willing to sit at a computer for 20 hours attacking the code with as much vigour and energy as they would use to defend their first-born child from a coyote.
They can't win, but they just flat-out refuse to accept it.
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I seem to recall that the old tape copy-protection used on 8-Bit games was far more effective that anything produced since.
But then, it was often so effective you even had to try the original about 3 times before it believed it was real.
Ahhh... the good old days :D
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Gimme a nice number-table or a plastic-tag system over this techno-crap any day.
Even after all these years there's STILL no crack for Mega-Traveller 2. You either need the number-table or you're ****ed. Which, incidentally, is why I can't play my legal copy of Mega-Traveller 2. Bastards.
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Not to forget the copy protection of Elite, Bye bye retina :)
What makes me laugh is that most of the copying facilities are provided right there with your fully legal software and hardware, and then as soon as we actually use what we have paid for......
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Originally posted by an0n
Gimme a nice number-table or a plastic-tag system over this techno-crap any day.
Even after all these years there's STILL no crack for Mega-Traveller 2. You either need the number-table or you're ****ed. Which, incidentally, is why I can't play my legal copy of Mega-Traveller 2. Bastards.
[color=66ff00]Nobody NOP'ed the code out? Well I guess a decent coder could remove the possability of using something as simple as NOP code skipping. You'd be surprized what it still works on though. :)
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well, blank media has an intended purpose of backing up files, just like KaZaA has an intended purpose of sharing your own music.
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Originally posted by IceFire
The whole industry has become a total farce since the advent of digital media. They are still stuck in the 80's while the users are plunging forth into the 21st century. Lawsuits and big money aside, its totally comical how badly the RIAA handels itself.
True dat. I'm wondering when they're going to wake up to themselves - they won't last forever this way.
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Or Indy Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. You had to match up these 3 disks printed on the manual to unlock the manual. And the 3 disks were also in the game, so that was just freaking immersive. But if you loose the manual, then you can't play. I mean, they have some crack or something these days, thats how I was able to replay it after I had lost the manual.
But still, that was an awesome way of protecting your stuff. It was pretty efficient back then (not so today I suppose) and it totally immersed you in the experience even during installation.
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I remember copying every ne of the little sysmbols printed on the TIE-fighter manual so I could play it (from 3 floppies, IIRC)..... :)
On the subject of the RIAA and thier idiocy, I buy more CDs when I can download tracks in advance. since I got broadband and,er, suitable software just before Xmas, I've bought more CDs than I did in the preceeding 2 months.
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yup. the games of old used to use the manuals a LOT. Even Star Trek 25th Anniversary was unplayable simply because you never got the system co-ords without the manual. Another good example is F117a or even Gunship 2000- but i think they eventuall cracked those........
That, and many other games.....dunno why the newer companies dont bother with the same thing, at the least its going to deter the smaller hackers and copy people.
And as regards to the RIAA- they are just money-grabbing fools. As an0n mentioned earlier, at least the movie industry is a bit smarter about these things.
heck, if music CDs and copy-rights were cheaper, or if the cash actually went back to the artists, 50% of your problems would be solved because the consumers would prefer to buy the original CDs cheaper or at least know that they are supporting their favourite artists. Heck- if you released free CD samples of the artists, and then offered discounts for the real thing, it would be just as effective.......i think.......Americans are too unpredictable to tell
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They do a lesser degree with cd keys printed on the backs of manuals and in boxes.... the last few games I've bought - Call of Duty, KoToR, Rise of Nations - all had cd-keys on the packaging.
I think it went out of style becuase it's now very easy to photocopy or scan in manuals and distribute them - so they've had to resort to more hardware specific methods.
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Well i'd say the reason the RIAA's doing all this stuff is to make MP3 sharing as hard as possible, not impossible... they know they're never going to stop MP3 and file sharing completely, but they want it to be hard for people to be able to share MP3s. and they've succeeded for the most part. it is harder than it was a year ago to find and download MP3s
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Problem with the RIAA is they're trying to bring a dictatorial approach to consumerist capitalism- trying to keep up the illusion that the problem isn't in their business tactics, but in that the populace refuses to actively conform itself to the RIAA's needs. It's a pretty basic rule of business that if you're trying to sell something people can manufacture at home you need to somehow make your version more attractive than the homemade one. Price-gouging and sabotaging your own products with over-restrictive security systems that bother the legal user more than hinder crackers really aren't the way to do that. And if your product is less desirable than the free version, no legislation in the world is gonna make people do what you want 'em to.
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Not to mention using bully boy tactics which are often misdirected or comepletely disproportional makes it less moral to buy their 'products'.
Any sense of moral superiority the RIAA may have had from people who consider themselves 'honest' supporters of music has been crushed by stuff like sueing little girls & grandmothers who don't even own a PC, often for sums equal to the profit of amny thousands of CDs!
They've managed to make attacking the RIAA a justifiable cause, which is a fairly impressive achievement in itself.
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Thing is the Music industry needs to take a note from what DVD's did to the movie industry. Just a movie wasn't good enough - you gotta provide extras (which are often times stock footage anyways or pre-recorded nowadays), top quality sound and mixing (which has fallen by the wayside in recent years), and when it comes to movie soundtracks from a 2 hour long movie we want a bloody soundtrack that compairs to the movie one. I've seen alot of movie soundtracks that I really wanted to buy (whatever the price was) but they have cut it down so much that half the music is missing. Hans Zimmer's Pearl Harbor springs to mind. Almost three quarters of the movies themes and music are totally absent from the soundtrack CD including the entire Pearl Harbor attack sequence which could easily be 10-15 mins in a slightly abridged version. Where is it? Missing. Other movie soundtracks suffer the same problems and they are simply out of the 'worth buying category'.
No the music industry needs a rethink. This won't happen but I'd say throw out the RIAA, throw out the power hungry, dollar centric, beaucratic record labels and replace them with a new consortium made up of artists where its the consortiums priviledge to sell as many artists as possible using multiple media distribution and marketing products like DVD movies.
If its a rock band we want stuff about the band...and band junkies will want it and we want the best possible sound quality and positonal audio so if you crank it and you have the right system the band is there with you. All too often the mixing is so horrible that it doesn't really matter how good your system is, how many channels its running and how many sound processors you have making it happen. And If its a movie soundtrack it better be in order, comprising the movies music in as much detail as possible, and don't skimp on the sound quality.
Gosh the music industry is so backward it makes me mad.
But I'll be ok :)
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If they actually used some of the newer technology, such as the CDs that actually have more than 2 channels, then they probably wouldn't be having these problems. I didn't even know they made 5.1 CDs until about a month ago when I saw about a half-dozen of them in a store.