I buy 1 or 2 albums a month, and I recently bought the Athlete album. I copied it into my media library in windows media player and all the tracks have got cracks/hisses on them or they cut out for a few seconds. When I play the music from the cd though it is fine. This is annoying, I don't like having to put a certain cd in the disc drive to listen to it. We are losing out because of pirates. I suppose this sort of copy protection will be the norm from now on?

Have you got a CD Writer on your computer. If you have then rip the songs through your CD writer as this by-passes the copy protection and you'll have the songs hiss-free.

You can turn the copy protection in WMP off, but sometimes multitasking can effect the quality of ripped CDs in WMP so try again and leave it to get on with it.

No, you're losing out because of the record companies vain attempts to plug a flood wall with a 1 pence piece.

Ypu could just listen to it on it's perfectly good player included on the CD.

Yes but the point is he wants to listen to it without the CD in

The "perfectly good player" on copy-protected cds insists on inserting gaps between tracks, rendering cds like Tubular Bells 2003 unlistenable (to those of us who actually want to listen to them ).

I've never pirated a cd in my life, yet I'm being fobbed off with an inferior product thanks to this "perfectly good player".

I don't know what lable Athlete are on - however, a few months ago I purchased an EMI CD which had a copy protection mechanism on it.

It played OK on my CD player so, out of curiosity, I put it in my PC to see what whould happen. To my suprise it behaved just like any normal CD. I even made some MP3 from it.

On closer inspection I discovered that the "copy protection" mechanism was in fact software on a data track. This software is set up to autorun when you put the CD in your PC. I hate to think what it might be doing to your PC.

Autorun has always annoyed me. When I configure a PC I always go into the Windows setting and disable the autorun. Apparently, that is all you need to do to by-pass EMI's "copy protection" mechanism. Just disable the autorun BEFORE putting the CD in your PC.

Just hold down Shift until the CD light's gone out, that stops it.

Holding down left shift to prevent autorun doesn't get round BMG's copy control. When you start up Windows Media Player 9, it doesn't detect a cd in the drive. You're stuck with the inferior BMG player.

Has anybody been having problems Permission To Land by The Darkness? The CD carries a warning about 'Copy Protection', yet I am able to play and extract tracks on my PC. However, it will not play properly on a Technics hi-fi - it cuts off 9secs into a track!!

Never said it did, just saying that will stop it for that CD only, if you didn't want to disable it alltogether. It seems it would work with EMI discs.

Dido's "Life For Rent" cd album (on BMG) has the 'copy control' on the disc, but I simply put it into my dvd-rom drive and then ripped the entire album through RealPlayer to my hard drive and it plays perfectly.

Copy protection? What copy protection! Back to the drawing board BMG.


Yeti

athlete's album is brill!!!!, i have the same problem, but i just got a cheap cd player/radio and put it beside my pc, far handier!

I always copy CDs to keep in the car - so originals don't get nicked - and Dido's Life for rent (supposedly copy protected) copied fine in Nero - play like a dream in the car.

Is there something going on that I am missing? Or is it Serial Copy Protection like on Minidiscs?

I also bought this CD and it won't play in my home theatre DVD player (Marantz). This is now the second one after Michelle Branch - Hotel Paper. I was able to rip both of them to mp3 with Musicmatch though.
I emailed BMG and they just said, sorry there's nothing they can do. I told em to sort their copy protection software out so it can at least play on 100% all CD and DVD players.
They better sort it out fast cause I will be pretty P***** off if all albums I buy from now on won't play on my DVD player.

I also found something else out. The athlete album won't play from the cd in windows media player without cracks and hisses etc. And when it plays from the free player it only plays at 48kbps!

I wish they would realize there are legitimate reasons for copying your music. I like to make copies of CDs for my car because I'm worried about them getting stolen. My sister made the mistake of keeping the originals in her car - and then some thugs broke in and stole them all! I think she ended up losing $300 in CDs.

It's an old point but it always amazes me that on the one hand Sony screams blue murder about the harm music piracy does to the industry while on the other releases hardware which makes the art of copying music much easier, m' Lord I call the NetMD to the stand.

G

The very same Sony who also do two CD-ripping juke boxes.

The copy protection hasn't really phased me yet though. The CDs all seem to play fine, and I've ripped them no problem.

i have the same cd and my pc wont even accept it it works in my hifi but the pc spits it back

I was just thinking about this problem.

I was half-way to the checkout when I noticed a tiny diagram on the back of the Neptunes' Clones album which showed that it would play in a PC but not in a Mac, which is what I've got. It's quite a dilemma: buy it and risk it (which could actually damage the computer - the "Celine Dion killed my iMac" story is all over the web), buy it and never let it near the iMac, or leave it on the shelf, save a tenner and try to find an illegal copy on the net.

Not sure this copy protection is actually discouraging piracy.

I looked at the cd in the shops on the day it was released and noticed the copy protection info,however I had a copy pre-ordered from Play,which was waiting for me in the mail when I got home from work.As with most of the cds I've bought from Play it turned out to be a Canadian copy,no mention of any copy protection on the sleeve,stuck it in the pc and ran off a copy for thye car,no problems whatsoever!

Heres the latest easy way to defeat copy protection. Use your shift key to disable Auto Play on the CD player when you put the CD in or just disable Auto Insert Notification.

More info: The Register - Shift key breaks latest CD anti-rip tech - grad student.

Everthing Goes, I tried that but it doesn't work.