Hello all

I have bought Eric Clapton "Me and Mr Johnson"
on Reprise Records (belongs to Warner Bros, I
think).

I find to my utter disgust that there are no CDA
tracks on it
(which would allow me to pick and choose which
tracks
I want to copy to play in the car etc)
but a player software and all the audio tracks
packed in one big file.

OK - it plays on my hifi system but
a) it automatically installs WB player software on
my PC and
b) it won't play in the car at all
(anyway I don't want to use the original CD in the
car;
so I shall have to illegally clone the whole
thing).

Anyway I reckon that when I buy a CD
I buy the rights to copy selections of the music
for my own use
- and I can't - using any of the usual legal
means.

This is taking copy protection to absurd and
user-unfriendly limits.
It's the last CD from Reprise Records I shall be
buying !

Best regards from Ray Russell

Raymond RUSSELL wrote:
Hello all

I have bought Eric Clapton "Me and Mr Johnson"
on Reprise Records (belongs to Warner Bros, I
think).

I find to my utter disgust that there are no CDA
tracks on it
(which would allow me to pick and choose which
tracks
I want to copy to play in the car etc)
but a player software and all the audio tracks
packed in one big file.

OK - it plays on my hifi system but
a) it automatically installs WB player software on
my PC and
b) it won't play in the car at all
(anyway I don't want to use the original CD in the
car;
so I shall have to illegally clone the whole
thing).

Anyway I reckon that when I buy a CD
I buy the rights to copy selections of the music
for my own use
- and I can't - using any of the usual legal
means.

This is taking copy protection to absurd and
user-unfriendly limits.
It's the last CD from Reprise Records I shall be
buying !

Best regards from Ray Russell

I've had similar problems with other CD's, but it's quite easy to get
around. The way they 'hide' the CDA tracks from you when you put the disc
into your PC is by sticking them in a second session on the CD. Because the
PC reads the first session and sees a whole load of data, that's what you
get. When you stick the CD into a CD player, it cannot read the data
session, so skips to the second session where all the (higher quality) CDA
tracks are. There are a few tools (free) that allow you to extract
different sessions on a CD to ISO files, that you can then use NERO (or
similar) to burn back to a standard CD as CD-Audio. The tool I use for this
is called ISO Buster (www.isobuster.com).

I hope this is of use.

Nick wrote:

I've had similar problems with other CD's, but it's quite easy to get
around. The way they 'hide' the CDA tracks from you when you put the
disc into your PC is by sticking them in a second session on the CD.
Because the PC reads the first session and sees a whole load of data,
that's what you get. When you stick the CD into a CD player, it
cannot read the data session, so skips to the second session where
all the (higher quality) CDA tracks are. There are a few tools
(free) that allow you to extract different sessions on a CD to ISO
files, that you can then use NERO (or similar) to burn back to a
standard CD as CD-Audio. The tool I use for this is called ISO
Buster (www.isobuster.com).

Having done that, take the so-called 'CD' back to the shop and ask for a
full refund on the basis that what they've sold you isn't a CD! The more
we let 'them' get away with this, the more copy protection will be added to
CDs. Before long there'll be a Microsoft-style online activation required
before a CD will play in anything other than a consumer CD-audio machine ;-)

Thanks Nick, Stimpy, et al

ISObuster did the job.
I'll complain to the shop and to Reprise Records
tomorrow.

Best regards from Ray