EMI Records

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Today I purchased a CD which refuses to play on two of my computers. When the disc is inserted into the drive it causes the system to hang for about 10 seconds and then the cd drive reports that I have nothing in there. When I researched a bit further on why this was happening I found the following article, related to practices by EMI Records, who released the cd in question.

When copy protection backfires http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/ ... 71111.html

I am taking the cd back to the store for a refund. I am not going to buy any more CDs released under EMI Records and urge people here to do the same.

That's pretty scungy of EMI. I guess one way to circumvent the issue may be to buy a USB turntable, and hunt down a brand-new vinyl edition of a particular album. No record company can write restrictive coding into a technology that's been around for sixty years, can they?

I tested the CD on all my cd players and found that it also won't work on my portable CD discman or in the car cd player.

Note in the article EMI's managing director in Australia, John O'Donnell says "All compatible hardware is detailed on the artwork of each CD containing the copy-protection technology.

This is the back cover of the cd I purchased. There was nothing on the front cover besides the album artwork and the CD title. In red is the aforementioned warning, which you can see if you squint hard.

Also note what's not shown on the insert. There's no COMPACT DISC - DIGITAL AUDIO logo, because EMI Copy Protected discs don't conform to the international standards defining a compact disc. They're neither fish nor flesh. (Yet there is a DVD logo - maybe DVD standards are less narrowly-defined?)

I solved the puzzle of getting this onto my computer. It took me half a day, which EMI owes me. The computer disk drive would not recognise the disc at all, so the numerous FAQs and guides on the net didn't help me as they all assumed that it would be recognised. It is lucky that I have a PS3, as only that was able to read the disc and bypass the copy protection. Using the PS3 I converted all the files to 320kbps AAC, then used a flash drive to take the files back to my computer. I had to manually tag each and every file then downconvert them to 256kbps VBR which on my iPod is the standard quality I have my files at. Then finally I could add them to my media library.

If this hadn't worked I would've gone onto bittorrent and pirated them all. Yes, EMI's ridiculous copy protection would've made a music pirate out of me.