[i_wolf]

Hi Guys,
i did a search and no cigar.
I bought sleeping with ghosts ~ placebo yesterday. I want to put it on my ipod. However i couldn't play it or rip it in itunes. I would have bought it from itunes music store but it aint available over in europe yet!
In my country I am 100% within my rights to make a personal backup of something i bought for private and personal use. I am also entitled to have the backup on a different medium -> ipod! So all is above board.
I found an app on the Pc that allows me to rip to wav. Audiograbber. It builds the real cd TOC and ignores the fake one put on the cd to fool PC and Mac's.
Now that i have figured out how to do this on PC, is there a similar app out there for Mac??? if so what is it!
How do you guys get by this stupid problem?
Regards
i_wolf

[wataru]

I've been able to rip copy protected CDs from Asia on DVD drives. That is, the copy protection seems to be targeted at CD-RW drives, and a plain old DVD drive will be unaffected.

[starman]

Originally posted by wataru:
I've been able to rip copy protected CDs from Asia on DVD drives. That is, the copy protection seems to be targeted at CD-RW drives, and a plain old DVD drive will be unaffected.

Same here. I (unknowingly) bought Tubular Bells 2003 and Final Fantasy X-2 from overseas only find that they were copy protected. On my G4 here at work with the DVD-RAM drive, the audio was flaky, but on my Powerbook at home, it ripped fine.

Mike

[Sarc]

Mac OS X 10.1 and earlier will allow you to rip copy protected CD's as well. Using iTunes you can rip into AIFF and then use a newer iTunes to convert that into AAC/MP3

[tooki]

I'm not aware of copy protection being OS-version-sensitive on the Mac.

In fact, a recent update to iTunes enables a preference to use error correction when ripping CDs, a feature which has been found to conveniently circumvent certain types of copy protection.

tooki

[wataru]

Originally posted by Sarc:
Mac OS X 10.1 and earlier will allow you to rip copy protected CD's as well. Using iTunes you can rip into AIFF and then use a newer iTunes to convert that into AAC/MP3

I highly doubt this one. The copy protection in question is dependent on hardware, not software.

[RayX]

Personally I'd be returning this CD and demanding a copy that is not copy protected. Why pay for and support something that you can't even use...

Copy protected CDs do not comply to the Red Book Audio CD standard. Notice how they don't have a 'Compact Disc' logo on them, so they shouldn't be marketed as such. Even some older CD players cannot read these things.

There have been cases of CDs being released in one country with copy protection, but without it in others. If you were to return it you could possibly locate a a copy that does not have this protection.

I think rather than just 'accepting' this, people should stand up for their fair use rights.

[bmedina]

FireStarter will rip the individual sessions to the hard drive. Then you can burn a copy of the session that contains only the real audio and rip that CD in iTunes.

Then return the CD and complain that it doesn't work in your CD players.

[Sarc]

yes, I know about the software/hardware thing ... but bottom-line is, -some time ago- I could rip a copy-protected CD on my indigo imac (350MHz), with 10.1, and not on my QS733 with Jag.

could have been the CD-ROM on the iMac against the CD-RW though.

[eevyl]

I just don't buy music from a company that treats me as a criminal from the start. I only bought one copy protected CD, and no more. Not going to pirate them though, just don't listen to that music (any artist reading this? ).

[i_wolf]

yeh guys i gotta agree. The thing that really annoys me most is that it isn't obvious looking at these cd's that they are copy protected or not.
I wouldn't let it stop me buying the music and putting it on my ipod though. I will try that firestarter software! thanks.
It sounds like it does the same thing as audiograbber on pc does! Actually thats going freeware at the beginning of february, hopefully someone will come along then and offer the developer to port it to OS X. really cool app.

[york28]

This site might be interesting for some.

I've been downloading music like crazy since all this copy-protection crap and RIAA strong-arm stuff started. Until the big companies learn to treat customers decently, they can screw off. (I've also bought lots of CDs, but only those on independent labels.)

[i_wolf]

ok i had absolutely no luck with that software
FIrestarter unfortunately just didn't like it.
Can anyone else here with that placebo album vouch for same?

Again... i can rip with audio grabber on the pc. But i really want to find an alternative to this app for the mac that will rip these copy protected albums.

[biscuit]

This site may also interest UK CD buyers.

Personally I'm boycotting copy-protected CDs, which is a shame because there's quite a few I'd like to buy. Then again I haven't bought CDs in ages, I usually nick my friend's stuff by recording onto MD (unaffected by copy-protection it seems).

But I would prefer an iPod and people have bought me a couple of corrupt CDs, so a way to rip them would be good.

CD album sales here in the UK are rising without threats from record companies to sue file swappers (yet). I think the big players would take notice if we continued to buy CDs but then take them back making noise about them not working properly. It's interesting to note that 1 in 6 iPods sold worldwide in December was sold in the UK and that we're the biggest European market for them. Surely there must be a lot of disgruntled iPod owners who can't rip their BMG-released music?

biscuit

[eevyl]

Originally posted by tooki:
In fact, a recent update to iTunes enables a preference to use error correction when ripping CDs, a feature which has been found to conveniently circumvent certain types of copy protection.

Holy cow! I just tested this with the only one copy-protected audio disc I have and it works!

[i_wolf]

i will try out the error corrrection in itunes and see how she cooks!

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally posted by i_wolf:
i will try out the error corrrection in itunes and see how she cooks!

If it does, rip it and bring it back.

Because copy-protected disks are defective media, unless stocked in a separate section of the CD store, and they infringe upon your basic rights.

-s*

[SomeToast]

Originally posted by Spheric Harlot:
If it does, rip it and bring it back.

If it doesn't rip, bring it back.

You're hardly justified in returning as defective a product that does what you want it to (and then keeping the audio content to boot).

[biscuit]

Originally posted by SomeToast:
If it doesn't rip, bring it back.

You're hardly justified in returning as defective a product that does what you want it to (and then keeping the audio content to boot).

The point is that a message has to be sent to the record companies producing these CDs. It's not just computers that have trouble with these things.

I agree with Spheric; rip it then take it back.

biscuit

[SomeToast]

Originally posted by biscuit:
The point is that a message has to be sent to the record companies producing these CDs. It's not just computers that have trouble with these things.

I agree with Spheric; rip it then take it back.

Copy protected "discs" are an abomination. I'm all for buying them (preferably at some large chain store) and then returning them while raising a big stink about the album being defective (which they are). Let the complaints fly!

If, however, you're able to rip the music to use on your iPod, computer, etc without incident and still return the disc, you're not some kind of activist for industry change, you're a thief.

[i_wolf]

I have to agree with you SomeToast.
If i manage to rip it I will NOT bring it back.
However i WILL return to the record store and ask to speak to the manager and complain why he placed the cd in the compact disc section when it doesn't play back in compact disc compatible players like pc and mac.
Very frustrating.
I just wish there was an app like audiograbber that had an option to rip copy protected cd's like audiograbber.
In audiograbber you tell it to generate proper audio sessions and rip from that.
There has to be some app out there that can do this.
I have tried other cd's like shakira (NOT MINE... SISTERS ! ), and a few other copy proteced cd's to see if they rip in iTunes... they do.
Just this placebo album is the only one that doesn't.
The sooner apple brings their iTunes music store out in europe the better. Hopefully they will also offer higher bitrates as well. I prefer to have my music encoded at 192 AAC.

[brachiator]

Originally posted by bmedina:
FireStarter will rip the individual sessions to the hard drive. Then you can burn a copy of the session that contains only the real audio and rip that CD in iTunes.

Then return the CD and complain that it doesn't work in your CD players.

How do you configure FSx to do this? I've been trying to extract one of those annoying "hidden" tracks that is laid before track 1 (you have to rewind past 0:00 to listen to it on a player...)

[blackbird_1.0]

Its kind of funny, because I'm a big fan of jrock, and i found out that a lot of the cds are copy protected, when i read the info about the cds, it says windows, and won't work with a mac, but will it work anyway?

[wataru]

Originally posted by blackbird_1.0:
Its kind of funny, because I'm a big fan of jrock, and i found out that a lot of the cds are copy protected, when i read the info about the cds, it says windows, and won't work with a mac, but will it work anyway?

I've been able to rip CCCDs from AvexTrax with my girlfriend's iBook's DVD-ROM drive. Like I said earlier in the thread, CD-RW machines will choke on these discs, but non-RW machines likely won't.

[mitchell_pgh]

Originally posted by blackbird_1.0:
Its kind of funny, because I'm a big fan of jrock, and i found out that a lot of the cds are copy protected, when i read the info about the cds, it says windows, and won't work with a mac, but will it work anyway?

I bet you these people think their albums are bullet proof.

I was talking to an art dealer and said "How do you deal with people using the photos from your website as their own personal graphics" he said "they are secured by the server, it's impossible to copy them" I giggled and said "Oh really" he said "Yes, there are a few things we do so people can make copies..."

I made a point to send him a screen shot the next morning...

I'll admit that they were clever, but hardly impregnable.

[Thorin]

I have the kings of leon youth & young manhood, which has copy protection. When the whole copy protection thing started, I remember reading that some mac users had found that copy protected CDs broke their CD drives. With slot loading drives they'd needed a trip to an apple service centre to repair them. I wasn't a mac user at the time, and haven't heard anything about it since, so it may well have been rubbish. Because of reading this article though, I've been too scared to try a copy protected CD in my powerbook. Am I right in thinking this isn't an issue anymore?

I just downloaded a copy of the album to use on my ipod instead. The problem is it's not great quality, and I'd like to rip my own copy. Should I chance it? Has anybody else had any success ripping the same album?

[Thorin]

I found this knowledge base article about the problem I mentioned. After reading that, I decided to chance it with the disk, and iTunes (4.5) just read the whole thing no problem at all, didn't have to use firestarter, didn't have to enable error checking.

[blackbird_1.0]

Originally posted by wataru:
I've been able to rip CCCDs from AvexTrax with my girlfriend's iBook's DVD-ROM drive. Like I said earlier in the thread, CD-RW machines will choke on these discs, but non-RW machines likely won't.

What about a Superdrive? Will it choke that up, too?

[legacyb4]

I've ripped two or three CP'd CDs that I've purchased and iTunes has imported them without a hitch. I've got error-correction enabled to ensure better importing and never tried it with it disabled.

As far as I can tell, no problems.

Originally posted by blackbird_1.0:
What about a Superdrive? Will it choke that up, too?

[Krypton]

My Windows using friend showed me that iTunes can rip copy protected CDs with absolutely no trouble at all

[threestain]

The Kings of Leon copy protection is completely ignored on the mac in my experience.

In fact, I have never had a problem ripping any of my "copy-protected" albums. It just shows what a complete waste of time it actually is. If I wanted to I could have hundreds of these copy-proof CDs lying around my flat. Stupid stupid people these record executives - lets inconvenience people who legally buy by putting together a system that occasionally stops people ripping them. That a good plan.

[wataru]

Originally posted by blackbird_1.0:
What about a Superdrive? Will it choke that up, too?

For the CDs I have, I'm pretty sure anything with CD-RW capability would not work. In other words, yes.