Stickin' it to the Japanese recording industry

[saturnotaku]

I was browsing ebay a couple weeks back and picked myself up an import copy of Ayumi Hamasaki's "Ballads" CD. It has renditions of some of my favorite songs of hers...songs I already had some low-quality Mp3s for. This is the way I've been buying CDs lately - get the mp3, buy the album.

Problem with this particular CD is on the cover, it's touted as a "Copy Control CD." Hmmm...not good. CD plays fine in my car player and in all my CD-ROM drives (because it has its own embedded audio player). Try to play the CD in Windows Media Player...no go. Fire up Exact Audio Copy...sorry, Charlie.

Then I read a post somewhere about Feurio CD Manager being able to beat most copy protected audio CDs. Lo and behold, it worked! My Lite-On burner ripped tracks to .wav files with ease and I fired up RazorLAME to encode. Now I'm listening to the Mp3s I created from this protected CD.

So to the Japanese music industry, I say

http://www.envynews.com/phpBB2/images/smiles/finger.gif

And to Feurio, I say rock on! :jammin:

[-=Gib-McFragger=-]

LOL Don't hold back man, let it all out. :D

[saturnotaku]

Originally posted by -=Gib-McFragger=-
LOL Don't hold back man, let it all out. :D

Damn right - I ain't gonna let them trample on my fair use rights. Now to get myself together a massive j-pop Mp3 CD for me car. :D

[vampireuk]

Think I'll get hold of that program for when I get some more albums:cool:

[R.Carter]

Well, it's nothing to do with the Japanese recording industry, it's the label that decides to put any copying protection (anti rip) on the album or not.

Some labels use it on every album they release, for example BMG titles will have protection on them.

See Corrupt audio discs (http://ukcdr.org/issues/cd/) for more information.

[saturnotaku]

At least I can give this label credit for actually putting a warning on the cover that says the CD is copy protected. This is more than most folks can say for a lot of CDs that are making it into the mainstream.