Every Time I Sell a Fake CD, a Kitten Gets Hooked on Phonics

[forsyth]

One of the things that most annoys me at my job, on a fundamental, geeky level, is all the fake CDs we keep getting in and selling to people. I don't mean Hong Kong knockoffs, or things some dude made in his basement, I mean not-CDs put out by the music companies. They're not CDs, because Phillips, who owns the Compact Disc trademarks and such, won't let the other companies call them CDs, since they don't meet the standards. They don't meet the standards because they're broken. Deliberately broken. The media companies refer to this as "copy protection", but it's bullshit. The CDs are broken, and will not play in many computers and CD players. The companies break their CDs to keep you from copying them or ripping them to music files. Except for the fact that ripping a CD to a music file is completely legal, and also perfectly moral. But they've been talking up the whole bullshit "EVIL INTRANETS ARE DESTORYING OUR BUSINESS PAY NO ATTENTION TO OUR RECORD PROFITS BEHIND THE CURTAIN! PIRATES! PIRATES! ARR! LET'S SUE SOME SIXTEEN YEAR OLDS! YARRR!"

And, of course, the REAL annoying part, besides the fact that the companies figure their best business practice is to screw the customers, the real annoying part is this, like EVERY OTHER DAMN "copy protection" scheme, doesn't work. It's easily defeatable (ask Google), so it won't stop the real pirates, or the tech-savvy customers, or the customers who use Google, all it'll do is annoy their customers. There's no upside!

So, yeah, yet another reason to not buy new CDs. Or if you do, at least take the time to look and make sure it actually is one.

For more, see here.

Technorati Tags: Work, Rants, Music, Everyday Evil

Comments

[leticia.livejournal.com]

You tempt me to start writing music publishers and asking if such-and-such will be coming out on CD.

When they write back to say it is already... (because of course, clueless customer service goons will be answering the e-mail), respond with "No, that's not a CD, it's a cheap knockoff optical disk."

[forsythferret.livejournal.com]

That's a very tempting idea. Heh. Now, if we weren't lazy, and our friends weren't lazy, and we could get people to do that, that might help stop the companies doing it. Since they'd keep getting the calls, then they might realize people are noticing.

But then again, they're gits.