Velvet Revolver - Contraband

Has anyone out there bought this disk? I really like the music but the disk itself has copy protection and will install unwanted scrambling software on your computer. Here is an article about it and a link to all the comments at Salon.com http://features.engadget.com/entry/4115667344500767
I can't tell you how it pisses me off to try to play an audio CD and find that malicious software has been installed on my computer.

Kathleen

I read about that too. Isn't that you can't copy the disk more than a few times?? I thought that is what the article said. It is a good CD because I was thinking of getting it, but wasn't sure.

promo copies are fine

No - you can't copy it at all unless you disable autorun on your computer. It checks for the license and then installs software on your computer that scrambles the sound if you try to copy it. Then it only lets you play (not copy) wma files at 128 kbps. You can't play the real wav files that you purchased on your computer at all unless you beat the copy protection. The article I posted is at Salon.com and it tells you how to do it. Or send me a pm and I'll tell you how. It's a good album and yes I paid for it and I will never buy another like it again. The people that bought it at iTunes can copy it anywhere (including their iPod) and they paid $4.00 less than I did for it. Can you tell that I'm really angry - grrrr

Kathleen

disabling autorun (which i had done anyway) and using easy cd-da extractor got me through copying it to hdd with no problems whatsoever.

autorun might make your life easier in some cases, but just as often it may install unwanted crap.....disable it, at the end of the day u'll be happy not having it on......

You're right Stone. This is the first disk I have run into with those problems or I probably would have done it sooner. I seldom install stuff from a cd - I usually install from a server drive so it has never been an issue before.

Kathleen

I'm glad i looked at this before i played it on my pc but i do like the CD

I don't seem to be able to save tracks onto my PC (running Win XP Professional) anymore without the track jumping all over the place. I don't know if it has something to do with having tried to save one that have this copyright thing on it. I thought it was something to do with the format or quality level that it was being saved at but that hasn't made a difference.

What is this software that gets onto your computer?

Look for a file on your hard drive called SbcpHid. Either search for it or you will find it in Windows\System32\Drivers. Delete that file - it is what is scrambling the music. THEN - disable autorun on your computer - if you don't know how to do that, read the link that I posted in my first post. It will walk you through it step by step. It worked for me

Here is another link that describes the copy protection system and how to defeat it:

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


Kathleen

I can't find that file anywhere. Doesn't look like that's the problem.

Thanks for the help anyway Kathleen.