Play copy-protected 'CD's' on your computer

bchookang

Does anyone have tips on how to play copy-protected CD's on their computer? These are music CD's that have the 'Copy protected' sticker and logo on them, that have been tinkered with by the music company so that you can't rip them (copy the music onto MP3 files) on your PC.

Fair enough but on some PC's (including mine) the CDs may not even be recognised by the drive and if it is, you can only play it using the poxy music software included on the disc. I listen to a lot of music on my PC using Windows Media Player and its a real pain when these so-called CD's don't play (they are technically not CD's as they conform to the specifications laid down for CD's).

Having searched the internet I have found a few ways of getting the CDs to play. The two that have worked for me are putting a little bit of black tape on the edge of your CD (which is meant to prevent the CDROM from reading the information track that confuses your computer) or simply pressing Control when you load the CD (which is both simpler and safer!).

However, this does not work with all CDs. I think that it is variable from CD to CD and PC to PC. My worst one is Zero7 'When it falls' which I can't get to play at all.

Does anyone else have any experience with this?

nearlyrich

I have it on good authority that the coding is on the extreme outer edge of the disc, apparantly if you use a permanent marker round the outside of the CD it fools the player.

I wonder if anyone has tried this?

bchookang

I think that this is similar to the 'black tape on the edge of CD' method whereby a tiny piece of black tape is stuck to the outer edge. It seems to work with some, but not all CDs. I haven't been brave enough to try the black marker all the way around yet!

System

Take it back to the shop and complain it won't play. If the music industry gets enough complaints maybe they will stop playing silly games.

As an aside these items are not CDs as Philips will not allow the use of the name or logo as they don't meet the relevant standards. If the shop who sold them had them advertised as "Compact Discs" then they mis-sold them to you.

Shawz

There is some software you can download for a free trial called anydvd. This should allow you to play the cd's and any region dvd's on your pc.



http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvd.html

mediaman

Try holding the "shift" key. This prevents the disc from playing automatically. Then go to "my computer" select the drive and and play it from there.

alexj2002

Isn't this illegal under new EU laws (assiting a person to break copy protection?)

anyway the shift key stops the CD autorunning and the copy protection starting. Then use Winamp or whatever to play the CD.

You are right in saying they aren't Compact Discs - the CD logo (disc in big letters with Compact by the l of the letter d) isn't to be seen either on the CD itself or the case.

I wouldn't recommened using a permanant marker on the CD - bit hard to explain if you take it back.

If you do take it back (without perm. marker) and they say they can't accept refunds because you broken the shrink-wrap (as they once said with me) answer it can't be copied as it has copy-protection. It's worked twice for me.

If there are no other options try downloading the MP3's of a P2P program. Techincally you have a right to play these files on your PC and so you are very unlikely to be prosecuted.

Alex

lellie

I've never ever had a problem with copy protected cds as I've disabled autorun on my computer (you can do this in XP) and then just play with winamp.. (2.9 - refuse to use any other version)

however you can normally copy them with CD-EX (and lame) to mp3s then play that without any bother.. sometimes you get a slight jitter but they're still better quality than the poor quality copies they use on their player.. (copy protected cds with a "player" so you can use it on your computer use poor quality (62k) mp3s and sound appalling!)

Island have clever copy protection on their promos.. they're copy protected and watermarked.. and all promos are numbered with a record of each person who receives each number kept (and the corresponding watermark). - Then if the mp3 appears online and is leaked they can use the watermark to trace it back to the original owner of the promo!

I'm not even taking a cd player to uni so if I got a copy protected cd I couldn't play on my pc I wouldn't be able to use it at all! Which is a bit crap really.