This has been all over the net for the last year or so but a few music companies have started this complelely stupid thing called CCCD
What are they? They are “Copy Controlled Compact Discs”. That means you can’t play them except on basic CD players. No computers, no DVD-players, no car navigation systems, no PDAs, no iPods, no MP3 players.
I don’t hold it against the music companies to try to stop the copying but in this case they are shooting themselves in the foot. The majority of my friends don’t use CDs anymore and I know that number is only growing. Several of my friends have gone to the music store to legitimately buy a CD but as soon as they see the logo above they know they will not be able to listen to the music.
Specific examples include M-FLO’s latest CD, Massive Attack, Janet Jackson’s Damita Jo, Radiohead.
At that point they have 2 choices. Go without or pirate. Guess which one they choose. The goal was to prevent piracy and all it did was encourage it. All of the music is available to be pirated online regardless of this CCCD thing so the only thing it accomplishes it to prevent legit sales. Really stupid.
Even if it’s your favorite band if their CD is released as a CCCD DO NOT BUY IT!
I ordered two CDs from Amazon (Japan) last year for the OP and ED of the new Astroboy only to find out that the CDs are protected by CCCD. What makes it worst was that the Labelgate, which suppose to allow a user to play the CD on a PC, is for Japanese resident only and I am currently living in Switzerland… What the F$#*?
I am sorry but the Japanese should know by now that there are other people outside of their country who who are buying their CDs and DVDs and they should give this more thought before pulling this “Resident Crap”. [They should be honoured that there are foreigners who have found a passion with their Pop culture.]
Greg, thanks for your post because I just went back to Amazon (Japan) and recheck my latest order of CDs and made sure that they weren’t CCCD.
you can alwyas play the cd on a normal discman via the digital out and record it to your pc. great! let´s see them try screw that one up.
ever since i’ve been visiting Shinseido in Hong Kong, this Japanese music store, i’ve bought and ordered many CDS that are CCCD. honestly when i first saw it i thought it pretty clever. the sticker is stuck onto the outer plastic packaging and i don’t have any right now, but i think it allows only md and cd players to play it, and i have no problem with that. i only listen to cds at home and mds when i’m out. mp3’s to me are pretty cruddy anyway.
Japsac or Jarsac (whatever it’s called) has put the screws on Japanese internet radio so that most stations that used to broadcast over the net – do not. royaltie$ bullshit. Anybody know of any Japanese radio stations still broadcasting on the net (besides Shonan Beach FM?)
Anyway, the connection being – you have to jump through hoops to enjoy the music and then you go for piracy. You cant enjoy it via the radio to sample it first.
Then there’s region coded DVD…
the Millenium Digital Copyright Bullshit has gone too far.
I’ve seen these CCCD CDs and I’ve rented them before at places like Tsutaya. I’ve never had a problem playing them in my computer and ripping them to MP3s. I’ve been able to do it every time. I think they just put the stickers on them to try and stop people from copying them and I have a hard time believing that they actually have some technology that stops them from being played in all CD/DVD players except regular ones. Or maybe they do and I’m just lucky that my DVD burner can read them.
Jonah: You were lucky you could copy the CD on your computer. Of course since you only rented the CD you were therefore stealing the music. That’s not cool.
Buto: digital out is one way around it but it’s a pain in the ass. It’s like recording off radio. You have to record for an hour (instead of a few minutes) and you have to manually cut up the songs, name them, re-compress them, etc.
well….if you insert a CD and it warns you that you must update files in order to play them on your computer, just hit cancel, and open up media player. This works for me….as soon as you say “Yes” to updating the files….it automatically installs that crappy player, and ONLY allows you to play the cd through that player…which sounds like shit, and doesn’t allow you to copy the songs to your computer.
What bothered me maybe more than the “can’t play on dvd players” etc. was the fact that it said you can’t play them on Macs. That’s really not cool. OS discrimination gone all wrong.
Though of course since I’m still running an older mac, I had no problem ripping the CD I quite *legally* bought.
Most of the cds that I’ve seen labeled this way, claim to play on PCs though. Just not copy/rip.
Damn, that sucks, i just ordered the new Mad Capsule markets album from Japan coz it aint gonna be out in the uk for ages and its CCCD, AND ALL I WANNA DO IS PUT IT ON MINIDISC! Can i do that? I have The open MG Jukebox. Will it still got to mini disc through computer does anyone know? Thanx Geezer1287@aol.com
Anyway, if it dont work, ill just download it all off kazaa, mwahahaha.
I was doing research on how to rip my own JPop CDs that are CCCD and I came across your blog. I have read quite a few of blogs and none of the suggestions worked. I have been trying to rip the CD “Soul Tree – a musical tribute to toshinobu kubota” that I bought from CD Japan.com, but it never worked until now. The stupid CD has a label-gate shitware that disallow non-Japan residents to rip and I live in the mid-west US. Because of that, I couldn’t rip the songs and put them on my minidisc player or play the CD on my computer until … I put the damn CD in my DVD drive, fire up Roxio 6.0 Disc Copier and change the drive to where my CD sat. I went to File\Device and Disc Information, opened up all the dropdown list and found surprises!
)
I hope this works for you.
Check out this guide to copying copy-controlled CDs: http://www.dsg.cs.tcd.ie/~haahrm/copying-protected-cds/
as someone mentioned, if you have a cd-r drive, I was able to find the audiotracks only on the cd, which I burnt to a blank cd, and then was able to take the songs from the copy. I only used cd creater, so was pretty easy.