Band Recalls Its Own Copy Protected CD, While Sony BMG Refuses To

from the protecting-the-artists,-huh? dept

While Sony BMG has agreed to recall some of the copy protected CDs that have security holes, they’ve left others on the shelves. As more musicians have begun realizing that the copy protection harms them, one band has decided to issue its own type of recall. They’re sending unencumbered, burned CDs to anyone who has their copy protected CD. They started out doing this to help fans get around the fact that Sony BMG’s copy protection won’t let you play songs on an iPod, but say the security holes only reinforce the belief that they need to do this. Some bands have simply taken to posting instructions on how to get around the copy protection — but clearly this band feels that even that’s too much of a pain for its fans to go through. Notice that the band is most likely paying for all of this out of their own (collective) pocket. What was that line the recording industry liked to use about how copy protection “protects the artist?” Seems like an awful lot of evidence that plenty of artists feel pretty harmed by it.


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Comments on “Band Recalls Its Own Copy Protected CD, While Sony BMG Refuses To”

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6 Comments
Michael "TheZorch" Haney (profile) says:

The Last Days of the RIAA

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. We’re seeing the death throws of the RIAA. It took the SonyBMG XCP crap to finally bring the problems of the RIAA to light and make the general public finally wise up and listen.

Recording studios will turn a blind eye to artists and bands when they complain about copy-protection hurting their reputations and income. Eventually these artists and bands will break off form the studoes and go into business for themselves selling via the Internet. It was start a dangerous trend that may one day lead to the end of the RIAA as we know it.

Good riddance I say.

In this new digital age the RIAA has outlived its usefulness and has become a serious burdon. We don’t need them anymore. Its time for them to finally realize that and disband.

Amanda Rush (user link) says:

Re: The Last Days of the RIAA

I think the reason the RIAA is as useless as it is is due to the fact that they refuse to work with the technology that’s already there and being quite capably exploited by the end user.
They started this “us-against-them” battle sort of with Knapster, and then really ramped it up with the internet radio crowd.
The amount of paperwork that has to be filled out and the money that has to be spent just to guarantee the right to play someone’s song is ridiculous, especially when you consider that, though the bigger stations aren’t necessarily profitless, they’re not making nearly as much as the terrestrial stations.
I’d love to see a campaign that serves to educate artists and producers in the use of the vast technology, available both for the PC and the Mac, so that they can efficiently use it in order to cut the studios out of the equation, spending a lot less, and thus giving the record companies a lot less in recoupable costs.

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