Ripping EMI copy protected CD's

[Justme]

Has anyone overcome this problem?

I have just bought a couple of CD's from EMI over the internet, and they are copy protected.

My CDplayer in my PC can't even recognize them, so there is no way to play, let alone rip the tracks. I tested them in a friends stand alone CD player, and they work there.

I also tried a PC at work (keeping my finger on the shift key to stop any autostart) and I can se the tracks, but they will not rip.

Is there any solution to this? I feel really cheated by this. The CD's were imported from Australia, so it's quite a bit of hassle to send back, and the fact that EMI's copy protection actually stops me from playing the CD's as well really seriously angers me.

But as I listen to all my music now through my SB2, and this stops me from doing that, I am quite upset.

Here I am, doing the right thing by buying my CD's, only to be hit like this from the record company's. I have more than 500 CD's, and these two are the only CD's that don't work, so I know that there isn't a problem with my PC.

[gorstk]

Justme wrote:
> Has anyone overcome this problem?
>
> I have just bought a couple of CD's from EMI over the internet, and
> they are copy protected.
>
> My CDplayer in my PC can't even recognize them, so there is no way to
> play, let alone rip the tracks. I tested them in a friends stand alone
> CD player, and they work there.
>
> I also tried a PC at work (keeping my finger on the shift key to stop
> any autostart) and I can se the tracks, but they will not rip.
>
> Is there any solution to this? I feel really cheated by this. The CD's
> were imported from Australia, so it's quite a bit of hassle to send
> back, and the fact that EMI's copy protection actually stops me from
> playing the CD's as well really seriously angers me.
>
> But as I listen to all my music now through my SB2, and this stops me
> from doing that, I am quite upset.
>
> Here I am, doing the right thing by buying my CD's, only to be hit like
> this from the record company's. I have more than 500 CD's, and these two
> are the only CD's that don't work, so I know that there isn't a problem
> with my PC.
>
>

If you are using windows try using EAC (exact audio copy).

I have just ripped several 'protected' discs from different labels using
this tool.

HTH

[Justme]

Justme wrote:
> Has anyone overcome this problem?
>
> I have just bought a couple of CD's from EMI over the internet, and
> they are copy protected.
>
> My CDplayer in my PC can't even recognize them, so there is no way to
> play, let alone rip the tracks. I tested them in a friends stand alone
> CD player, and they work there.
>
> I also tried a PC at work (keeping my finger on the shift key to stop
> any autostart) and I can se the tracks, but they will not rip.
>
> Is there any solution to this? I feel really cheated by this. The CD's
> were imported from Australia, so it's quite a bit of hassle to send
> back, and the fact that EMI's copy protection actually stops me from
> playing the CD's as well really seriously angers me.
>
> But as I listen to all my music now through my SB2, and this stops me
> from doing that, I am quite upset.
>
> Here I am, doing the right thing by buying my CD's, only to be hit like
> this from the record company's. I have more than 500 CD's, and these two
> are the only CD's that don't work, so I know that there isn't a problem
> with my PC.
>
>

If you are using windows try using EAC (exact audio copy).

I have just ripped several 'protected' discs from different labels using
this tool.

HTH

Thanks for the reply.

My first problem, is that my CDROM cannot even "see" the tracks, when I put in either of these two CD's, nothing comes up, no tracks, just a "please insert CD" message. (My CDROM works with all of my 500+ other CD's)

I have tried the CD on a friends laptop, it then see's the data tracks, but not the music tracks ??? In a CD ripper program on the laptop, it see's 12 tracks (there are 11 songs), tracks 1-10 are 16KB large (???) track 11 is 650MB and track 12 is 11MB ??

Now, I wacked the CD in a PC at work, and it did see the correct track listing in Window's Media Player but it wouldn't rip, just hung. However, I didn't try setting to EAC, I'll give that a go next.


Again, thanks for your help!

[Fabrice Rossi]

Justme a écrit :
> Thanks for the reply.
>
> My first problem, is that my CDROM cannot even "see" the tracks, when I
> put in either of these two CD's, nothing comes up, no tracks, just a
> "please insert CD" message. (My CDROM works with all of my 500+ other
> CD's)

Then I would say you're done with this cdrom drive. My experience with
those crappy CD is that the result really depends more on the drive
itself than on the ripper. Under linux, with cdparanoia and a "recent"
(one and half year) DVD drive, I managed to rip copy protected CD that I
was not able to read at all on an older cd drive (4 years old) with the
same ripper (which is the best under linux). I think cd/dvd rom builder
have introduced more robustness in their recent models against the
errors that are deliberately introduced in the copy protected CD.

> I have tried the CD on a friends laptop, it then see's the data tracks,
> but not the music tracks ??? In a CD ripper program on the laptop, it
> see's 12 tracks (there are 11 songs), tracks 1-10 are 16KB large (???)
> track 11 is 650MB and track 12 is 11MB ??

track 11 must be an error in the CD TOC. Some of the "protection" are
based on this kind of trick.

> Now, I wacked the CD in a PC at work, and it did see the correct track
> listing in Window's Media Player but it wouldn't rip, just hung.

In general, those CD include a data track that contain DRM protected
version of the regular content encoded with low bitrate. Are you sure
that WMP does not report those files?

> However, I didn't try setting to EAC, I'll give that a go next.

Fabrice

PS : If I were you, I would at least download from wathever P2P network
a version of my very own CD. This will be low bit rate mp3, but that's
better than nothing.

[dbls]

Fabrice Rossi wrote:

> I think cd/dvd rom builder have introduced more robustness
> in their recent models against the errors that are deliberately
> introduced in the copy protected CD.

I've been trying to rip a CD purchased in France while vacationing
there, and EAC, while displaying the track names, wouldn't allow
me to copy any tracks, so I just tried it on my son's newer
desktop. On that machine, EAC will allow me to initiate copying,
but it comes to a dead stop after 4% of the first track. Trying
other single tracks yields the same result. So it may have
something to do with the type of copy protection.

One odd thing was that on my laptop, Windows Explorer will show
the contents of the CD (but not any conventional .cda tracks),
however, on my son's computer, Explorer will display the message
"Please insert a CD", even while EAC is successfully showing the
track names! Both machines run WinXP.

-:- dbls

P.S. I had to manually enter the mailing list address for this
message.

[Fabrice Rossi]

dbls a écrit :
> P.S. I had to manually enter the mailing list address for this
> message.

This happened to me too. The mailing list is configured in such a way
that the reply address makes you reply to the author, not to the list.
You should try reply all. What is misleading is that many people are
using the forum and when you reply to them, you don't have to use reply
all...

Fabrice

[jth]

You may want to try a program like CloneCD or Daemon Tools. These programs will allow you to make an image of the CD to your hard drive, then mount the image on a virtual CDROM device. You can then use the EAC and the virtual CDROM device to rip the audio. I've been able to bypass several copy-protection schemes this way. Good luck!

[dbls]

Fabrice Rossi wrote:

> This happened to me too. The mailing list is configured in such a way
> that the reply address makes you reply to the author, not to the list.
> You should try reply all. What is misleading is that many people are
> using the forum and when you reply to them, you don't have to use reply
> all...
>

For some reason, the headers of messages generated from the
"Ripping" forum don't include a "Reply-To:" item, as do
messages from the other lists. I have no idea where in the
sequence of events that this should be fixed.

-:- dbls

[dbls]

jth wrote:

> You may want to try a program like CloneCD or Daemon Tools. These
> programs will allow you to make an image of the CD to your hard drive,
> then mount the image on a virtual CDROM device. You can then use the
> EAC and the virtual CDROM device to rip the audio. I've been able to
> bypass several copy-protection schemes this way. Good luck!
>

I'll give it a shot, but I'm doubtful. Here's the file list
from my CD-RW drive:

File Name Size Date Last Mod.
------------------- ------ ---------------------
autorun.inf 31 30 Oct 2001 9:51 am
MacPlayer.app 2,062 27 Jun 2002 10:35 am
player <DIR> 9 Aug 2004 1:17 pm
player.exe 69,632 7 May 2003 7:06 am
UninstallPlayer.exe 53,248 4 Mar 2003 11:23 am
UninstallPlayer.txt 197 26 Jun 2002 12:56 pm

It certainly ain't your normal CD.

-:- dbls

[Justme]

Fabrice Rossi wrote:


> I think cd/dvd rom builder have introduced more robustness
> in their recent models against the errors that are deliberately
> introduced in the copy protected CD.


I've been trying to rip a CD purchased in France while vacationing
there, and EAC, while displaying the track names, wouldn't allow
me to copy any tracks, so I just tried it on my son's newer
desktop. On that machine, EAC will allow me to initiate copying,
but it comes to a dead stop after 4% of the first track. Trying
other single tracks yields the same result. So it may have
something to do with the type of copy protection.

One odd thing was that on my laptop, Windows Explorer will show
the contents of the CD (but not any conventional .cda tracks),
however, on my son's computer, Explorer will display the message
"Please insert a CD", even while EAC is successfully showing the
track names! Both machines run WinXP.


Year, this is exactly the same thing that happened when I tried to rip on a work PC. It saw the track listings, but stopped ripping at 4%.

[Fabrice Rossi]

Justme a écrit :
>>I've been trying to rip a CD purchased in France while vacationing
>>there, and EAC, while displaying the track names, wouldn't allow
>>me to copy any tracks, so I just tried it on my son's newer
>>desktop. On that machine, EAC will allow me to initiate copying,
>>but it comes to a dead stop after 4% of the first track. Trying
>>other single tracks yields the same result. So it may have
>>something to do with the type of copy protection.
>>
>>One odd thing was that on my laptop, Windows Explorer will show
>>the contents of the CD (but not any conventional .cda tracks),
>>however, on my son's computer, Explorer will display the message
>>"Please insert a CD", even while EAC is successfully showing the
>>track names! Both machines run WinXP.
>>
> Year, this is exactly the same thing that happened when I tried to rip
> on a work PC. It saw the track listings, but stopped ripping at 4%.

That's strange. I've just ripped two brand new EMI copy protected CD
(the last Gorillaz and the last but older Starsailor). Did you both use
a DVD drive or a pure CD drive? I'm using a DVD drive. I used cdparanoia
to do the ripping, so maybe it's better than EAC. Can you try to rip the
CD in a linux computer? Grip is very user friendly, but you need a linux
installation...

Fabrice

[radish]

Grip is very user friendly, but you need a linux
installation...
Or a knoppix CD :)

[Andrew L. Weekes]

Most of the Copy protected CD's I've come across use the Macromedia CDS system. This system often has a music and a data portion of the disc, the latter containing a media player to enable listening to a lossy, compressed version of your CD.

I use a session selector program, from an old copy of EZCD Creator (about the only useful bit of it ;) ), and change to the music session, which then usually allows unadulterated ripping, but very slowly in EAC secure mode, due to the errors 10s into every track.

Works though, sometimes EAC seems to select the right bit anyway, but it seems to depend on the reader a bit, a Philips writer I have works well, as does my LG DVD writer, but the Pioneer DVD ROM doesn't.

Andy.

P.S. the other alternative, if the record company are contactable, is to give them a very hard time and claim the disc doesn't play in your CD player. This worked with BMG, but EMI won't even answer calls or letters. Customer service - huh?

[Justme]

Justme a écrit :
>>I've been trying to rip a CD purchased in France while vacationing
>>there, and EAC, while displaying the track names, wouldn't allow
>>me to copy any tracks, so I just tried it on my son's newer
>>desktop. On that machine, EAC will allow me to initiate copying,
>>but it comes to a dead stop after 4% of the first track. Trying
>>other single tracks yields the same result. So it may have
>>something to do with the type of copy protection.
>>
>>One odd thing was that on my laptop, Windows Explorer will show
>>the contents of the CD (but not any conventional .cda tracks),
>>however, on my son's computer, Explorer will display the message
>>"Please insert a CD", even while EAC is successfully showing the
>>track names! Both machines run WinXP.
>>
> Year, this is exactly the same thing that happened when I tried to rip
> on a work PC. It saw the track listings, but stopped ripping at 4%.

That's strange. I've just ripped two brand new EMI copy protected CD
(the last Gorillaz and the last but older Starsailor). Did you both use
a DVD drive or a pure CD drive? I'm using a DVD drive. I used cdparanoia
to do the ripping, so maybe it's better than EAC. Can you try to rip the
CD in a linux computer? Grip is very user friendly, but you need a linux
installation...

Fabrice

Hi there, it is odd. I have also just bought the latest Gorillaz CD, and despite the copy protection, had absolutely no problems ripping it (with shift key method). The Cat Empire CD’s I bought seem to be very tough.

[Justme]

First of all, thanks to everyone here for their reply's.

I finally managed to succeed in ripping the CD's. If you remember, my CDrom wouldn't even see the CD's. Looking around my box of tricks at home, I found an old CDrom and tried that, still no success. However, I did find an old DVDrom, that I threw out because it stopped reading DVD's. I tried it anyway, and it saw the CD!

The first Cat Empire CD would have about 14files (it had 13 songs). The first 11 files were very small and data. The 12th file was about 460mb long, and turned out to be the first 12 audio tracks. Using a normal ripping program I converted this to wave. The 13th file was the 13th song on it's own, and the only file identified as an Audio file.

Anyway, once in wave format for the first 12 songs, I slowely split them apart with an audio program and saved as MP3's.

Everything worked fine.

The 2nd CD from the same band was different. This one all tracks came up as normal (once I changed to the half working DVDrom), but any attempt to rip with JRiver media center or windows media player failed at 4%. So I downloaded a free ripper and gave that a go.

Worked fine. Can't remember the name of the free ripper (I'm at work now, and completed this all late last night) but will post the name here later.

I am so happy I finally got around this, I hate the idea that I legally purchased this CD (as I do with all my music) yet was treated with so much contempt by EMI.

Anyway, thanks everyone for your great help. By the way, the Cat Empire is a great band. Sort of Cuban, Hiphop Jazz, but from Australia. Just be careful buying the CD!

[greedy_grendel]

Hi,
I don't know whether the following URL will help as it seems to be dealing with Suncomm's copy protection found on BMG releases, but hey, it may give you some clues as to how to bypass the copy protection on EMI discs. I've bought heaps of Australian EMI discs and have never had a problem, I just ignore the small dialog box that comes up which says something like "Additonal Software needs to be loaded, proceed?" I just leave it in the background whilst media player does the rip.

http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~jhalderm/cd3/

MJM

[Jeff52]

Ahhh, the joys of DRM, Digitally Restricted Music, er, um, uh, excuse me, Digital Rights Management.

[Mike Hanson]

The EMI copy protection prevented EAC from ripping them on my machine. However, I had no trouble with CDex. Of course, I omitted the last track, which is only data for their built-in player, and not a music track at all.

-=> Mike Hanson <=-

[Andrew L. Weekes]

The EMI copy protection prevented EAC from ripping them on my machine. However, I had no trouble with CDex. Of course, I omitted the last track, which is only data for their built-in player, and not a music track at all.

I've had some similar issues with recent releases, the cure I elected to use being to make sure the disc is clean and rip in burst mode.

I've tested this on a couple of discs and done a binary file compare and the results were identical.

Obviously one loses the safety of secure mode, but as a fix for the odd disc it works well, and rips them on my drive at around 20x, compared to 4-5x for secure mode (or about 0.1x for a protected CD!).

Andy.

[cliveb]

I've had some similar issues with recent releases, the cure I elected to use being to make sure the disc is clean and rip in burst mode.
I did a test recently to compare various ripping strategies:
1. EAC in burst mode.
2. EAC in secure mode but with c2 switched off.
3. Plextools with Audio error detection switched off.
4. Record the SPDIF data stream from an audio CD player.

Methods 1, 2 and 3 all produced bit-identical files.
Method 4 produced a file that was different in a number of places (presumably due to the CD player having a different error concealment algorithm from the ripping drive).

I inspected the waveforms at the places where they were different to check on the quality of the concealment. I was surprised to see that the visual shape of the interpolated waveform looked better on the rips than it did from the audio CD player (although I could detect no audible differences). The rips were done on a Plextor PX712A, and the CD player used was a Micro-Seiki CD-M100 (which has a Philips CDM1 mechanism).

My conclusion is that provided you use a decent drive (such as a Plextor), ripping in burst mode will give essentially perfect results on those discs which use a strategy of incorporating uncorrectable errors. That said, it might be better to use secure mode with C2 switched off: this way concealment of deliberate errors will be the same each time, but genuine read errors due to scratches/dirt/etc may be detected.

[TurboPlay]

I DID IT!

i was gettig really pissed off at EMI, because nothing worked. i tried EAC and loads of other programs, but i encountered the same problems as listed above... i saw the tracks, but it would not rip.

Finally i decided to record the album manually onto my MP3player with line in, but this is no fun because i dont have auto track separation on it, plus i have a bad CD player. anyway, in the end i got a huge file containing all the songs as one. not ideal... so i found on google a program called WavePad by "NHC Swift sound" to cut my BIG mp3 to smaller pieces.

I know what you think, "this is to much truble", or "i dont have an mp3player with line in" but hold on!

i saw a button in wavepad called "load cd". i put in the EMI protected cd, and clicked load CD. VOILA!!! it could read it and rip it, no problem! included in this program was another little program called Express Rip Plus. It did the works as well, only better! wavepad made the files into wavefiles, and then you had to "save as" mp3. Express rippes it directly to the desired file format! YAAAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO plus it gives me track titles, album name and artist automatically! LOVE IT!!!

ps: works with BMG too, currently ripping Maroon 5, songs about jane.

[Heuer]

Just EAC ripped the Red Hot Chili Peppers Greatest Hits album from Warner. Has Copy Protected stickers everywhere but this disc is clearly in contravention of the Trades Description Act. I will send it back complaining the copy protection does not work and I want my money back!

Ditto Joss Stone Album.