If you can "burn" DRM'd songs to a CD...

[Adam8281]

First, please note that this thread is not oriented towards piracy at all. I'm not interested in learning how to strip the DRM from files (I don't own any DRM'd music, and I never will). But the recent news from Yahoo music has got me thinking about this.

In case you didn't read last week, Yahoo Music announced they're shutting down, and all legally purchased songs from their music store will cease working, since they're bringing the validating DRM server offline. Yahoo itself actually recommended that people who had purchased songs from the service, burn them to CD before the DRM server goes offline, and then rip them back to the PC, to strip off the DRM.

So question: why isn't there an easy way to "burn" songs onto a "virtual CD" on a hard drive, just as you would burn them to a CD, and thus be rid of the DRM? People who own Yahoo music might potentially have to burn thousands of songs to CD, just to get rid of the DRM. Since it's so easy to create virtual drives on a PC, or to write files to an ISO, it surprises me that (apparently) it's difficult or impossible to make a computer "think" it's burning to a CD, when it's really writing to a "virtual CD" on the hard drive.

Once again, I'm not looking to start a conversation on how to violate intellectual property rights, but a technical conversation re: what's going on when a computer burns a CD, and why it can't be easily "virtualized."

Moved to appropriate forum - Moderator Rubycon

 

[Mark R]

The burning software has to know what it is writing to.

However, the developers of the burning software have to sign a contract with the DRM publishers that they will not allow burning to a hard drive, or other image file. If they don't comply, then the DRM publisher can revoke their use of the DRM decryption.

The DRM system may also keep track of how many times the track is burned. E.g. the burning software will open the file and request 'decryption for CD burning'. The DRM system will then update the file to say that it has been burned. If the maximum number of burns for that file has been reached then the DRM system will deny access to the file.

It should theoretically be possible to have the burning software request 'decryption for playback' - but modern DRM systems are sophisticated enough that if the data is requested from the file in a way that is different to would be expected for playback (e.g. the file is being requested from the hard drive at 32x real time) then it will shutdown and deny access to the file.

 

[Adam8281]

Ah, makes sense. I never realized that there are agreements between content distributors (like iTunes) and CD authoring software creators (like Ahead) that allows the software to burn the DRM'd tracks; I just assumed that DRM'd tracks were inherently burnable by any software - whether I wrote it myself, or it's commercial. What won't they think of next...(don't say rootkits

 

[Eeezee]

Still, you'd think that someone could develop a CD emulator that can spoof blank discs, and then burn to those.

I don't see the point in that though. The file is already on your computer, why do you want an image of it? I'm not familiar with how DRM works (I avoid it - I either find DRM-free copies or remove the DRM with whatever software I can find)

 

[Foxery]

Originally posted by: Eeezee
Still, you'd think that someone could develop a CD emulator that can spoof blank discs, and then burn to those.

Sounds very easy to do, but I can't think of any other reason why someone would want this functionality.

I don't see the point in that though. The file is already on your computer, why do you want an image of it? I'm not familiar with how DRM works (I avoid it - I either find DRM-free copies or remove the DRM with whatever software I can find)

I think the idea is that once you burn music to a CD, there's nothing to stop you from ripping it back into your own unprotected files. (That just wastes a CD. Does Yahoo Music really have such an inane loophole?) The OP is adding an extra step that isn't needed; a 3rd party program can crack open the DRM files, and ignore the burning software entirely.

 

[QuixoticOne]

You're losing quality when you go from say MP3 to WAV and then reconvert that WAV to
another MP3 or WMA or whatever.

Don't ask "why wouldn't this work...." as a logical question. If logic applied, DRM wouldn't exist. Nothing about the design / implementation / user interface of it is designed to make any sense or operate efficiently with other programs / utilities on your PC that "should work".

If it made any sense, people wouldn't be in the position of irrevocably losing the music they've paid for just because someone decides to turn off a server somewhere 2000 miles away.

The most pragmatic thing to do would be to get a fairly fast CD-RW burning drive, burn it to a CR-RW at 32x or however fast you can, re-rip that to another MP3/OGG/WMA/FLAC or whatever, then reuse the same CD to burn another 20 tracks and so on...

You could check if some of the CD emulation tools like daemontools or alcohol or whatever support virtual writing but I strongly doubt it, and even if they did the DRM may very well screw with your PC enough such that those tools won't work anyway.

If they gave a cr*p about their customers' satisfactions and rights they wouldn't have DRM at all or they'd at least just have a simple "export as WAVE PCM audio files" batch conversion option that wouldn't involve CDs, but they don't care, and they're clueless about customer needs and even their own business models otherwise they wouldn't be going out of business and shutting down their servers.

If it was me and something like this happened I'd likely dispute the charges with my credit card and say "hey, I paid for this with the understanding I'd be able to use it in specific ways even if I change PCs, now they've made continued usage in the expected ways impossible, I want my money back, they aren't delivering the advertised product!".

If you want to work on a virtual CD-RW emulator, great, I'd imagine it is probably possible to get to work under some cases. It remains just a less inconvenient kludge to a problem that shouldn't exist, though, and which, if it does exist, would be better handled by just stripping the DRM without the conversions (if possible), or in getting your money back and let them keep their uselessly encrypted bits.

 

[AleleVanuatu]

This is so funny, once more the non-pirates get screwed in the nethers, while us pirates live long stress-free beautiful lives full of ponies and bunnies!!! God! just dont buy anything with DRM on it, just dont.