THOSE BASTARDS.

I almost never buy cd’s because I can use one of the wonderful tools available to find the music I am looking for, IRC for instance was around before napster and will continue to be around long after napster files for bankruptcy. And I’m not saying that I download illegal “pirated” music because thats illegal! That said I was in Barnes and Nobles last night and saw the New Santana CD “all that I am”. Now I love Santana, but I am not a fanatic fan and own every CD, but I feel that when I really enjoy an artist they should get credit where credit is due. Meaning I should buy their cd… Had I looked on Amazon prior to my compulsive purchase I would have seen this:

All That I Am [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD]

But I missed that part in browsing through the recent albums, the only thing I was thinking about was about how it’d be nice to have the cd. I listened to it in the car and then this morning brought it into work and low and behold what pops up?

Yep you guessed it. This piece of crap intrusive big brother software. Now, I don’t know what I am going to do, I’ve of course opened the CD so taking it back is out of the question, but the thought of wiping my ass with it and lighting it on fire comes to mind too. Here’s what I want to do. I want to mail $20 to Carlos Santana myself with a picture of me lighting his album on fire. I will explain that while I want to buy his record, I feel that he diserves the whole $20 and not the Record Company SONY BMG that pays him pennies on the dollar. Not only that, I plan on Ripping the CD to microsoft secure WDM format(not to be confused with WMD’s but fairly similar), then burn it to a regular audio cd, then convert back to MP3 since that’s the only way that you can actually get around the whole issue. Then I plan on just formating the test computer I use to do this. Because if you look below, this is what people have found out:

I, too, bought this Santana disc and unknowingly loaded this crap onto my pc. I contacted Sony and went through all of the hoops to remove it, only to find out it sunncomm is responsible for this DRM. The website`s FAQ claims they cannot remove it:

“Is there a way to remove your software from my computer?”

“Please note that MediaMax was designed to manage and safeguard the copyrights of specified artists’ CDs while giving you an enhanced visual and listening experience. It does not interfere with or impact any of the normal operations and/or functions of your computer.”

“Is there a way to remove the DRM files?”

“Please note that because the keys are very essential in controlling access to protected music, Windows Media doesn’t allow anyone to have access to them directly. They are located in a license store file that is handled exclusively by Windows Media Player, in accordance with the way your Windows system is configured. Since those keys are very small and literally do nothing other than help the user play content that would otherwise be inaccessible, Microsoft never envisioned that anyone would have a desire to remove them. As a result, we do not have a way to tell the Windows Media Player to remove a particular key.”

Bullshit. The people who have tested at the machine level have found considerably more.

Russinovich also discovered that the DRM software is poorly written and could cause system crashes — often referred to as a Blue Screen of Death — on Windows. “This flaw highlights my message that rootkits create reliability risks in addition to security risks,” he said.

Now I know that a lot of the artsits are simply at the whims of the record companies. So don’t just blatently copy and distribute without contributing to the artists. But once you’ve paid them their dues, make sure you make SONY BMG pay. Don’t buy any CD that has the DRM software on it. Oh and all of my friends are mysteriously going to get a copy of this CD, not from me of course because music piracy is bad, and I’d never do that. But most likely from SANTA.

Update:
Here is how to get around the autorun feature

When an Autorun-enabled CD-ROM is inserted into a CD-ROM drive, Windows automatically launches the program contained on the disk, whether you want it to or not. Similarly the audio CD player pops up whenever you insert an audio CD and starts playing it immediately. This is cute the first or second time, but soon gets infuriating. What’s worse, is that if you double-click on the your CD icon in My Computer, the autorun fires up, instead of a folder window as you’d expect. This is especially irritating on slower computers, where you have to wait for what seems like an eternity for it to load some ridiculous welcome screen. Here’s how to do it:

Any OS

* If you hold down the Shift key when inserting the CD, the autorun is bypassed. (although it’s not exactly graceful trying to insert a CD while holding down keys on the keyboard.)

Windows XP - Solution 1

* Right-click on the drive icon for your CD drive, CD recorder, or DVD drive, and select Properties.
* Choose the AutoPlay tab, and choose the desired action for each type of CD. For example, choose Music CD, then click Select an action to perform, then select Take no action.

Windows XP - Solution 2

* Obtain and install TweakUI (part of the PowerToys for Windows XP package), and then start TweakUI.
* Expand the My Computer branch, then the AutoPlay branch, and then select Drives.
* Turn off the checkbox next to each drive letter for which you want AutoPlay disabled.

Windows 2000/XP

* Run the Registry Editor (REGEDIT.EXE).
* Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Cdrom.
* Double-click the Autorun value, and type 0 for its value. (If it’s not there, create it by selecting Edit -> New -> DWORD Value, and typing “Autorun” for its name.)
* You may have to log out and then log back in for this change to take effect.

* Note: With this solution, Windows will no longer be notified when you insert a new CD. To make sure the correct icon and title for the current CD are displayed in My Computer and Explorer, press F5 to refresh the window.

Windows 95/98/Me - Solution 1

* Right-click on the My Computer icon (or whatever you’ve renamed it - hopefully something less cute and more meaningful than “my computer,” such as “Bart”), and select Properties.
* Choose the Device Manager tab.
* Open the CD-ROM branch, and select the entry for your CD-ROM drive.
* Click Properties, and then choose the Settings tab.
* Turn off the Auto insert notification option.
* Click OK, and then OK again. You’ll have to restart Windows for this change to take effect.

* Note: With this solution, Windows will no longer be notified when you insert a new CD. To make sure the correct icon and title for the current CD are displayed in My Computer and Explorer, press F5 to refresh the window.

Windows 95/98/Me - Solution 2

* Run the Registry Editor (REGEDIT.EXE).
* Open HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Policies\ Explorer.
* Change the Value of NoDriveTypeAutoRun from 95 00 00 00 to BD 00 00 00.
* You might have to restart Windows for this change to take effect.

* Note: With this solution, Windows will no longer be notified when you insert a new CD. To make sure the correct icon and title for the current CD are displayed in My Computer and Explorer, press F5 to refresh the window.

Windows 95/98/Me - Solution 3

* Because of new features in TweakUI, this can now be truly disabled by turning off the Play audio CDs automatically and Play data CDs automatically options in the aptly-named Paranoia tab.
* Also, make sure that the AutoInsertNotification option is turned back on - see Solution #1 above for more information.

* Note: With this solution, Windows will still be notified when you insert a new CD, so you may not want to do this if you use CD Recorder software (the constant polling can interrupt the recording process).

.

But with that said, browsing the Santana CD turns up no actual audio files that can be ripped. Here is a list of other CD’s to avoid buying:
A Static Lullaby - Faso Latido
Acceptance - Phantoms
Ahmed Jamal - The Legendary Okeh and Epic Recordings
Amerie - Touch
Amici Forever - Defined
Anna Nalick - Wreck of the Day
Bob Brookmeyer - Bob Brookmeyer & Friends
Buddy Jewel - Times Like These
Celine Dion - On Ne Change Pas
Charlotte Martin - On Your Shore
Chayanne - Cautivo
Chris Botti - To Love Again
David Gray - Life In Slow Motion
Dexter Gordon - Manhattan Symphonie
Dion - The Essential Dion
Elkland - Golden
Foo Fighters - In Your Honour
George Jones - My Very Special Guests
Goapele - Change It All
Hitch - Soundtrack
Horace Silver - Silver’s Blue
Kasabian - Kasbian
Kings of Leon - Aha Shake Heartbreak
Life of Agony - Broken Valley
Los Lonely Boys - TBD
Mario - Turning Point
Mary Mary - Mary Mary
Montgomery Gentry - Something To Be Proud Of: The Best of 1999-2005
My Morning Jacket - Z
Natasha Bedingfield - Unwritten
Neil Diamond - 12 Songs
Nivea - Complicated
Our Lady Peace - Healthy In Paranoid Times
Patty Loveless - Dreamin’ My Dreams
Pete Seeger - The Essential Pete Seeger
Raheem DeVaughn - The Love Experience
Ricky Martin - Life
Santana - All That I Am
Sarah McLachlan - Bloom Remix Album
Shelly Fairchild - Ride
Susie Suh - Susie Suh
Switchfoot - Nothing Is Sound
The Bad Plus - Suspicious Activity
The Coral - The Invisible Invasion
The Dead 60s - The Dead 60s
Van Zant - Get Right with the Man
Vivian Green - Vivian

Here is the issue now, Sony is offering an exchange for the CDs that contain the XCP DRM software but not the sunncomm software which is just as bad. So remeber to tell people Sony Suncomm DRM is crap too!

So if you have a Santana CD or any other CD that has Suncomm software on it, and you are annoyed - use this form to tell them!

Heck even if you don’t have a CD just use the form to tell them what you think of them.

Tags: asshats, DRM, Sony
Posted in Uncategorized |

This entry was posted on Monday, November 28th, 2005 at 8:01 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.