CD glued shut to stop piracy

CD players glued shut to stop piracy

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992804

A US record company has issued reviewers with portable CD players that are glued shut to prevent two new albums from being pirated online before their official releases.

Epic Records Group has taken the drastic step of sealing CD players shut and gluing headphones onto them to stop digital copies being made from promotional albums. The albums involved are Riot Act by Pearl Jam and Scarlet's Walk by Tori Amos.
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This seems to be a little dramatic to me, if they just wanted certain people to sample the music...send samples. its like "oh! poor me! look at the steps i must take to keep my music from getting stolen. you should really let me hurt them."

I dont really see how this would stop anybody from just breaking them open, unless they had to be returned or they wanted it to be stolen.

I think that this is a pointless waste of time...they need to come up with something a little more creative than glueing them shut... I mean, do they think that they are dealing with toddlers or something...this is the equivalent of childproof caps on medication! :D Hey, but if this makes them feel better...

This is a clear, and desperate attempt by the record company to stop the leak before it spreads out in p2p distributions. Next, they will try to outlaw massive 320 gb hard drives such as Maxtor's because they believe people will use it to store massive amounts of music and video files. It's only an exaggeration but you never know with these people, they will do anything illegal or otherwise.

However, epic records relied on a much creative way of decreasing it, which is when you buy a bon jovi cd you get an exclusive access to I think, a couple of extra unpublished songs and access to other stuff, now I think that's much creative , than bullying people by threatening them with lawsuits.

what they should've done was put an imbedded digital numnber on each cd they sent out. if they put a difer # on each cd, with each song, and keep track of who they send what, then they should find out who is leaking what songs, by the digital #

/me takes a hammer to the CD player and looks at the shiny CD inside...

This is a very interesting article, and I agree this is not drastic, it's a desperate attempt to thwart the explosion of p2p piracy. I have no idea how this going to be solved, and it's only a matter of time before somebody takes drastic action somewhere.

This will work until someone, just to prove they are better than the security measures, strips the insulation off the headphone wires and promptly sends em a copy of the CD.

Actually (though im not completely sure about this, im open to corrections) but couldnt you just use a wire with stereo jacks on both sides, to interface to a tape recorder, then put that tape into one of those stereos with a cdburner in it, and voila, ready to rip? Or, for those more inclined to messing with audio cables, attach a set of rca composite plugs to a headphone wire (again, not sure if it would work) and cdr it like i already mentioned, or use a audio capture card to put it directly onto a computer? I know both of these would probably lead to some really crappy quality mp3s, but it would still show it that it can be done.

Yep, there are even clips built with sharp points that dig through the insulation, and when removed it leaves almost no mark.

the signal coming thru the wires would have an amped output, so the quality would be a bit poor. But you could take a measurement of the wave output on an osiliscope, figure out how much the signal is amped. Create a negative amp signal to cancel the wave. Then plug it in to a computer preamp input for near digital quality output. :D


Sometimes companies amaze me with how stupid they think people are.

i think your missing my point. anyboby could see ten ways around this. including them.

Its not a 'desperate' attempt, its a dramatic ploy for sympathy and free advertising.

Why arn't they sending samples only, you know, like 3/4 of each of the songs or something along those lines. its not that they don't want them on P2P. i think they do. that way they can bitch real load about how hard the tryed to stop the piracy, now its up to the tax payers to foot the bill. if you think its stupid people were dealing with here...i don't think so. besides getting free policing it will be tremendous advertisment....with all the talk that will occur about people stealing it it really must be someting...remember markie mark (i don't know how he spells it)

Ya know...after reading my reasoning here, i think i missed the point. its only about advertising. how many millions are made on a best selling cd? a few hundred cd players is really a small investment for the advertisment this is already bringing, thanks to **** heads like me....duh!

id like to see, just one time, 2 cd's of this caliber released without massive advertising campaigns. only announcements to mags, web sites and radio stations, pass the massive savings on to the customers in the form of much lower prices and compare the net profits.

herm... sounds like a somewhat moronic idea.. i couldnt believe that someone would vouche to have there cd players actually glued shut, unless of course they are company provided or they are being paid to do it. what i dont get is how and why they plan on stopping all piracy like this, it may stop some, but you really cant stop them all. just seems pointless.

What kind of glue are they using?

ok, book publishers send out advanced reading copies so that booksellers can say lots of good things about the new book befrore, and as its first coming out. Music publishers do the same. Audio book publishers send out sample chapters.

sometime they ship them out with gimmicks, one book biiled itself as being so cold blooded they shipped the adv. reading copy in a freezer pack. the book tuscany shipped out with a window box and window frame, with a picture of tuscany as the view threw it, we've all seen the theatrics star wars sends out in advance, but you've never read about any of this in the news.

what great minds these guys have, they send out advanced listening copies in inexpensive sealed cd players, the sellers get the hyping they need. a few words about piracy, digital rights, hackers, P2P and their once un-noticed sales promotion becomes highly visable in the news for free, people that really don't follow music but like the group (like me) now know these new cds are coming out. (i would have never know if it wasn't for the article) and they don't have to pay a dime more for the publicity. PLUS they can use it in a court of law to plead for their case..... absolutely brillient