C-Mart

So, I get the new Montgomery Gentry Best of CD, and its great. But I go to import the songs into my iTunes and guess what? No Go... I take a look at the CD case and it is copy protected out the ass... only compatible with Windows Media player 9 and Sony devices... The stupid thing is that I can buy the damn album from the iTunes music store!!! Anyone know a way around this...

I'm sure this has been brought up before, but this and I think the Velvet Revolver CD are the only ones I've ever encountered with this problem. Thanks for any help you can give.

cdollaz

Return it to the store and download it on the cheap or for free.

auto

What store will take back an open CD?

C-Mart

Nope, no store takes opened CDs anymore.

cdollaz

Well then, take it back, trade it for a new, unopened copy, sell the new unopened copy, then download it.

auto

Did you ever notice that when you exchange a defective CD at Best Buy they open the new one so that you can't do that? Assholes.

Double Down

If it's the same copy protection as the Velvet Revolver and Sarah McLachlan CDs, just follow these instructions:

http://weblogs.asp.net/christoc/arch...08/151147.aspx

cdollaz

Yeah, I hate that. They are the only store I have ever had do that though.

If you want to really let the artist know how you feel, eat the few bucks you spent on the cd, send it to the artist with a letter telling they can keep their shit, and explaining how you will no longer be purchasing any of their music, but will be downloading it for free from now on. You may actually hear back from them, you never know. Send another letter to the label saying the same thing.

maxfisher

Call the record label (Sony Music Nashville) at 615-858-1300. Tell them you bought the cd and are horribly disappointed you can't play it on your iPod, as that's exclusively how you listen to music anymore. If they say you should've bought the album on iTunes, tell them you like to keep the cds because you're a collector by nature and enjoy having a physical version of the album.

Ask them how you can put it on your iPod. If they don't tell you how to do this, ask them to send you a postage-paid envelope and to refund the amount of your purchase, as the store you bought it at refuses to take back open cds. If they do tell you how to get around the copy protection, voice your displeasure at having to jump through hoops to listen to an album you bought and ask them if they are trying to alienate customers with iPods. Whether they help you get around the protection or not, ask them if there's any way they can mail you a list of all albums containing 'copy protection' so you can make sure not to accidently purchase any of them in the future.

If you feel like going the extra mile to make your point, call Sony Music USA's quality management department at 800-255-7514. Report that you purchased a defective cd and explain that you can't upload it to your iPod. When they explain that it's not a defect and actually copy protection, ask if it's now Sony's official policy to sell defective merchandise to unsuspecting consumers and then refuse to do anything about it because the product was actually intentionally designed to be defective.

All of this may or may not get you anywhere, but unless record companies start seeing firsthand that they may actually lose legitimate customers and profits through bullshit like this, it's only going to get worse.

Mopower

Or just get it from another place (wink wink) and put it on your Ipod. Then call Sony and tell them to fuck off.

C-Mart

Thanks everyone. I'll definately try the instruction link, and thanks to max I may just call Sony and the label and complain.

The Bus

The Bus's Foolproof Way to Bypass Any and All Copy Protection Forever

• Never let your operating system auto-load software from a CD once you've put it in the drive. Never ever ever ever.
• Any copy-protected CD you get, load it into the computer while off. Turn on the computer again with the disc in the drive.
• Rip the CD using real software like www.exactaudiocopy.com and enjoy.

Jason

Check your computer for spyware too. Sony's DRM puts all kind of shit on your computer. There was an article on Slashdot about this recently.

Tscott

Or just download Tweak UI, run it and goto My Computer->Autoplay->Drives and uncheck any CDRoms on your computer. After that the only way it will install is if you double click on the autoplay icon on the CD.
http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/tweakui

The copy protection that slashdot had the article about is actually worse than spywear, it's a rootkit that hides files, and if you work to find the files and delete them, it disables your CD drives. Once it's installed any file put on your harddrive starting with $sys$ is automatically invisible to spywear detectors and antivirus programs. Here's a detailed account:
http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/200...al-rights.html

Basicly it hides ANY file that starts with $sys$. So if you make a copy of notepad.exe, or whatever, and rename it to $sys$notepad.exe and it disappears you know it's been installed.

Sony has released a "patch" that removes the rootkit, but it leaves the copy protection on your computer. It can be found here: http://updates.xcp-aurora.com/

It's just hideous that they would do this to legit paying customers, while it does nothing to stop others from downloading.

C-Mart

I've tried ripping MP3s from the Foo Fighters disk, the Velvet Revolver disk, etc... with Exact Audio Copy and they come out distorted. Thanks for reminding me that I have to do a spyware check... and a check on that $sys$ thing... Ok, after I add the $sys$ in front of a file name, the $sys$ dissappears, but the rest of the filename is unchanged... and after that it won't let me rename the file... or delete it. I get a "Cannot read from the source disk or file" error.

Tracer Bullet

Does this stuff work with Mac OS and/or Linux? If not, yet another reason not to use Windows.

Tom Banjo

The problem still exists with Mac, just not as much. For instance, I've got a Mac mini and can burn these discs just fine into iTunes. I've never had to do any kind of system modification to make it work. It hasn't been a problem for me yet. However, I've heard of others on a Mac that have had the same problems as the typical unsuspecting Windows user.

My office has a computer that's shared by 4 people to input data when needed into a database. MIS has set the thing up somehow so that if anyone tries to download software to it it shuts down and alerts MIS. We sometimes put cd's in to play on WMP. Well, I almost got my ass canned earlier this summer because I put in a copy of DMB's latest and it tried to download that copy-protection software. My head was halfway under the chopping block before I found a guy in MIS that knew about these DRM problems and managed to save my ass and turn off autorun on the office computer.