http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2095931,00.html
Michael Jackson rocks the copy-protection world
10:15 Tuesday 25th September 2001
Wendy McAuliffe
Sony has used a copy-protection measure on Michael Jackson's CD to prevent
people from making digital copies
Digital rights activists are angered by evidence that the new Michael
Jackson CD "Rock Your World" will not be playable in PC CD-ROM drives.
Sony's decision to bend the standard CD format has been branded "dubious"
and "underhand" by the UK's Campaign for Digital Rights. The record label's
decision to modify the CD singles so that they are only playable by stereo
systems risks breaching trading standards, as no
warnings are included on the packaging.
"One of the most underhand things in this situation is that these new
modified CD formats are being introduced secretly, without the
public's knowledge," said Jim Peters at the UK's Campaign for
Digital Rights.
The copy-protection measure is aimed to prevent people from ripping digital
copies of the single into MP3 format, or burning them onto a CD-recordable.
It is thought that Sony has used a variant of the SafeAudio protection form
by Macrovision, which corrupts the audio signal stored on the CD. These
errors cause the CD-ROM to reject the disc, but in some
cases the corruption is so severe that the reliability and sound quality of
the CD is damaged as a result.
The UK's Campaign for Digital Rights argues that Sony is not concerned about
the affects that this copy protection might have upon the quality of the
Michael Jackson single, especially when the consumer isn't being informed.
"The most unfortunate thing for hi-fi buffs is that audio
quality is no longer a primary motivation for the media distributors," said
Peters. "They have already shown that they are quite willing to sacrifice
the purity of audio quality, and even the reliability of CD media, in order
to install copy-protection mechanisms."
Peters and his campaigners will be issuing leaflets alerting people to the
modification of the CDs over the next few weeks. The "Rock my World" single
will be released in the UK on 8 October.
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