Copyright Crackdown And My Switchfoot CD
This is the first time I’ve ever had a problem ripping a CD. My current format of choice (and has been for some time) is WMA. My reason for this is that it sounds better to me than MP3 and it plays on almost as many devices. I have a Panasonic DVD player that can play discs with WMA and MP3 files and a Panasonic portable CD player that can do the same. Most recently, I bought a Panasonic CD player that is now in my truck that can play WMA/MP3 discs. The beauty of course is that I can put a bunch (15+ depending on length and compression) of CD’s onto one CD-ROM of WMA files. It’s like having a CD changer without any extra equipment. As an album oriented person, I tend to buy whole CD’s and I have not gotten into buying a bunch of individual songs. So this whole system has worked pretty well for me until today. XCP2 Copy-Protection is being used on my new Switchfoot CD. iTunes users are particularly out of luck.
In order to rip the files I have to install the special software included on the CD (out of luck if you run Linux I guess). Without that software, the PC CD-ROM drive just sees it as a CD-ROM with no audio info. If you decide to use their software you can get Digital Rights Management WMA files (which won’t play on any of my previously mentioned devices). You can then use those WMA files to burn an audio CD from Windows Media Player. From there, you can then turn around and re-rip the CD back to normal WMA files (or rip to iTunes). But to do this, you have to have Windows, a CD burner, and you lose quality because you are going from true CD audio to lossy-compression back to CD-audio and then back to lossy-compression a second time. Boo hiss! In the future, I’ll be looking to avoid these disks.
September 14th, 2005 at 5:50 am
iTunes people are particularly lucky. We can just download the songs from the new album from the Music Store. The whole album is $11.88.
September 14th, 2005 at 5:57 am
Well, I still consider that unlucky because I bought the CD at WalMart for $9.99 (via price match) although this week, some WalMarts may have it temporarily ringing up at $9.72. Normally, I definitely prefer having the master copy available (the CD). But if I can’t really rip it correctly (for use with my devices), it isn’t as valuable. What I dislike the most is that Linux folks who buy the CD are really stuck. It isn’t like they can rip to MP3 or OGG or something for use on the computer.
September 14th, 2005 at 8:25 am
All Linux users are unlucky. Those guys can only afford to spend $4 on a used CD. They should get Switchfoot by sometime in 2007.