Beastie Boys CD - Virus?

Mr E · 23-06-2004 1:50pm #1

According to The Register, the new Beastie Boys CD installs a virus (malware, really) which prevents you from ripping CDs on your machine. It uses autorun on PC, and autoplay on the MAC.

A step too far?

Can anyone who bought the CD confirm this? (look at autorun.inf on the CD)

- Dave.

Doctor J · 23-06-2004 2:36pm

A step too far indeed.

Scratch that one off my 'to buy' list. That's €20 of my money now not going to Capitol.

Cake Fiend · 23-06-2004 2:43pm

Would this be the same protection that was cunningly defeated by someone by holding down the 'shift' button on a Windows PC as he inserted the CD?

Doctor J · 23-06-2004 2:58pm

It doesn't appear to be on UK and US releases of the cd, however, as a point of principle, EMI gets veto'd from any future CD purchase by me.

ballooba · 23-06-2004 2:59pm

Bought the CD at lunch time.

Must be true, it won't let me rip cds anymore.

Time Man · 23-06-2004 3:09pm

I got mine from CDwow and it has the protection, it installs a player on your pc to play it. Ripped it fine with Audio Cat, it couldn't get the tracks from CDDB though

joe_chicken · 23-06-2004 3:15pm

Originally posted by Sico
Would this be the same protection that was cunningly defeated by someone by holding down the 'shift' button on a Windows PC as he inserted the CD?

hahaha....who was it who did it before and they tried to sue someone for telling people to hold down shift.....hahahahaha

the beatsie boys though... c'mon..... when will the madness end

/edit still gonna buy it though

davej · 23-06-2004 4:14pm

From a stickie on the "official" B-boys bulletin board...

http://www.beastieboys.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=20219

davej

ian
Administrator Join Date: Apr 2003
Posts: 7

The skinny on the copy protection

Just to clarify, here's the deal with the copy protection on the CD:

a) The copy protection is in all territories except the US and UK -- US and UK discs do not have this protection on them;

b) All EMI CDs are treated this way, TT5B isn't protected in any special way;

c) Beastie Boys would have preferred not to have the copy protection, but weren't allowed to go against EMI policy in these territories.

There ya go.

ian

DerekD Goldfish · 23-06-2004 6:37pm

I bought it lucky its not on mine or i woukld have brought it back i cant stand copyright protection and refuse to buy a cd that has it maybe ill boycott the label as well.

Señor Juárez · 23-06-2004 9:38pm

Well, you should have autorun disabled anyway, it does nothing good.

I am presuming that this is one of these cds that has protected, uncopyable music files on em to allow them to play on PC's

The Beer Baron · 23-06-2004 9:40pm

Like Ma Bell I got the ill communication...

Zanza · 23-06-2004 9:55pm

wow, thats.. big. Simply big!

I am feeling that there will be a war soon. Most of the artists will do the same. Either that or no one will buy any CDs at all! heh.

Anyway, I don't play my CDs in my computer, just the CD player most of the time. The virus doesn't effect the CD player no? (Just overly suspecious

)

Time Man · 24-06-2004 11:21am

There is no virus, it doesn't affect your ability to rip cd's

Doctor J · 24-06-2004 11:34am

Read the posts, "Beastie Boys would have preferred not to have the copy protection, but weren't allowed to go against EMI policy in these territories" - the software isn't on the UK and US editions of the CD, but they have put it on CD's from other regions.

It's only a matter of time before they start to do it here. For shame EMI.

Civilian_Target · 24-06-2004 2:44pm

Meh. I was going to buy that album, but i don't do DRM. Shame.

LFCFan · 28-06-2004 5:03pm

surely your Anti Virus software would treat this as dodgy and give a warning?

Señor Juárez · 29-06-2004 12:22am

hard to tell. is it a "virus" as such? I guess it is up to the virus scannage companies to decide whether to identify it as destructive. I would be all for that, but I think that they could get into a lot of trouble with the RIAA/record publisher should they choose to.

Drag00n79 · 29-06-2004 12:56am

Did not the Chili Peppers Greatest Hits CD have something similar?

Señor Juárez · 29-06-2004 5:08am

Hrmm....hope this doesnt get too widespread. I don't know why they do this anyway, if people want to rip to mp3, they still will. True, idiotproof software like iTunes and the like isnt going to do it for them, but advanced users have advanced tools, and they will always win - even if they have to resort to recording it in an analogue fashion. The quality is still better than that which comes out the other end of most audio compression codecs anyway.

Then, once it is on the computers, it pops onto the internet. The masses download it anyway. So what is happening here? All that is being achieved is that those who actually buy the CD's cannot listen to it with as much freedom. Freeloaders still continue as usual.