FC: More on Apple's warranties and copy-protected CDs

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

Previous Politech message:

"Clarification on Apple's warranties and copy-protected CDs"
http://www.politechbot.com/p-03553.html

Sorry, Matt, for the domain name typo!

-Declan

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Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 11:26:14 -0500
From: Matt Deatherage <mattd () macjournals com>
Subject: Re: FC: Clarification on Apple's warranties and copy-protected CDs
To: declan () well com

On 5/20/02 at 10:16 AM, Declan McCullagh <declan () well com> wrote:

> [From MDJ, available at macjournal.com. --DBM]

<http://www.macjournals.com/>.  We couldn't get the singular domain name,
and there's now an Apple Design Award-winning shareware product named
"MacJournal", written In Cocoa, for keeping diaries.

--Matt

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Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 12:37:53 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Matthew G. Saroff" <msaroff () fellspt charm net>
Reply-To: "Matthew G. Saroff" <msaroff () pobox com>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
cc: politech () politechbot com
Subject: Re: FC: Clarification on Apple's warranties and copy-protected CDs

        An interesting sideline on this is that there is a CD copy
protection scheme that can be defeated through the use of a marker pen.
Quoting:
>Music disc copyright protection schemes such a Cactus Data Shield 100/200
>and KeyAudio can be circumvented using tools as basic as marker pens and
>electrical tape, crackers have discovered.

>The Blue Peter-style hack, which was first unearthed by a reader of
>chip.de works by covering up the outer ring of a copyright protected
audio disc.

>On copy protected discs this outer track is corrupted, which prevents
>copying, or even playback, by PCs but is ignored (at least in theory) by
>regular CD players.

>Simply covering up the outer track disables the protection, allowing a
>disc to be played as normal in a PC or Mac.

        The story also makes mention of how it locks up Macs.
        I'm wondering if Mac users can sue.  It sounds like an illegal
hack of their machine to me.

Link:
http://www.theregus.com/content/54/24940.html

--
Matthew Saroff

---

From: "Blane Warrene" <bwarrene () msn com>
To: declan () well com
Subject: Re: FC: Clarification on Apple's warranties and copy-protected CDs
Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 12:57:23 -0400

As a Mac user - the warranty verbage is a bit muffled and disappointing.
However, the underlying issue appears to be more that a company or group of 
companies released a product which veered right or left of a known industry 
standard (CD's with copy-protection technology).

This caught me by suprise as well with some recent cd's which I was unable 
to pull their songs into I-Tunes for listening to them on the hard 
drive.  I have actually returned the media for a refund and no longer plan 
to purchase media from those labels.  I of course sent them letters 
regarding this hoping they would change their minds.

---
Blano
"The shell is the well"

---

Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 14:55:52 -0600
To: declan () well com
From: Mark Armbrust <mark.armbrust () pobox com>
Subject: Re: FC: Clarification on Apple's warranties and copy-protected
  CDs

>   Apple first removed and then replaced the KnowledgeBase article
>   [4] on the topic. The new version, dated 2002.05.16, says only
>   this: "Audio discs that incorporate copyright protection
>   technologies do not adhere to published Compact Disc standards.
>   Apple designs its optical disc drives to support media that
>   conform to such standards." The company suggests you take your
>   computer in for service if a paranoid CD has crippled it. The word
>   "warranty" is nowhere to be found in the new article. It's not
>   clear if Apple has changed its policy or not, but at least the
>   company isn't publicly blaming you for not reading the fine print
>   on CDs. (MDJ_ 2002.05.12)

Seems to me that the customer should then file in small claims court to
recover the cost of the service call from the CD label.

--Mark

---

To: declan () well com, gnu () new toad com
Subject: Re: FC: Clarification on Apple's warranties and copy-protected CDs
Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 14:01:07 -0700
From: John Gilmore <gnu () toad com>

Is Sony selling Apple the CD drives that lock up when consumers put
Sony copy-protected discs into them?

This is a point that would require more investigation, but I know that
Sony used to make a lot of the parts that go into Macintoshes.  For
example, the power supplies, some of the monitors, and the floppy drives.

        John




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