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Belgian consumer organization sues record companies

Written by tevensso on January 5, 2004 to .

BRUSSELS - Copy protection of CDs is illegal, claims the Belgian consumer rights organization Test Aankoop, who sued EMI, BMG, Sony and Universal for copy protecting their CDs. The companies will have to defend their position regarding copy protection in court. “This kind of protection violates the consumers’ statutory right to copy. The words ’copy control’ do not free the record companies of the law,” the organization says in a press release.

  According to Test Aankoop today’s CD protection misses the target when it comes to hacking and record piracy, while it undermines the consumers’ rights to use the CD as they want for private purposes.

  Their Norwegian counterpart Forbrukerrådet follows the case closely. “We find it positive that the question has been asked, and we’ll monitor the upcoming lawsuit with excitement,” Paal Bjönness, legal councelor of Forbrukerrådet says. “This will probably not be the last lawsuit of this kind,” Bjönness continues.

  Last year both a French and an Australian consumer rights organization sued record companies.

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12 comments

CRIZ said on :

Oh yeah..can I join in? My DVD player is not able to play the latest Per-single without jumping....and my 14 year old CD player got broken before. I’m not in the mood to buy a new CD-player...WHY? (If so I need to buy an older one cause the new ones are also very “sensitive”)
Stop this stupid protections. Everyone who really wants to copy CD’s will always find a way to do that.

Anyone got a burned (and working) singleCD of “Tycker om när du tar på mig” for me >:) **evilkidding***

Jud (moderator) said on :

true, i still have to fine a super-protected album that’s not available for download at high quality the same day of release or even earlier!!! As long as the CD sounds, you can copy it, and those hackers know how to do it.

I read somewhere a survey run in Spain why ppl bought pirate CDs and not originals, I remember price was the highest factor, but then another high one was that many of those CDs were protected and therefore didn’t play well in some players, so ppl just skip those problems and spend 3€ for a shitty copy that PLAYS instead of 15-20€ for one that will mean having to go back to the store 1-2 times to get a new CD or get the money back...

So instead of investing in these useless protections.. just LOWER THE PRICES and make QUALITY music :)

Parre said on :

I have to agree with Judith
today i saw aprospect where they offer dvds for only 5-6 euro
whats that??
and a normal cd still costs at least 15 euro, the same as 10 years ago
thats so stupid, why they dont reduce the price first and then put sort of a copy protection on it if they really think that will make any sense
i havent bought any cd (exceept from some rox-,pg-,gt-,mf-stuff) in the last 8 months coz they are to expensive for me

Vixzter said on :

Copy protection and updating it only gives the hackers something to work do. ;) Record companies don’t seem to notice and just bring out more and more ways of ’copy protecting’ a disc.

Jud (moderator) said on :

yeah, there are ppl who are just sitting there waiting for the new copy-protection system just to hack it, as there is ppl who program viruses, who hack websites etc etc, these ppl have this as their hobby as we can have collecting Rox albums, hacking a new system is like a new challenge, and they love challenges :P

The only non-rox/eva related CD I bought last year is Bon Jovi “this left feels right” *because* I had a voucher from Amazon for 3€, so it only costed 10€ ;)

xarrrr said on :

well... i kinda agree with the idea.... but i hate the fact that i cant copy songs onto other CDs for my own use.... its a bit annoying seen as i have already paid for the songs on the disc! let me do with it what i like!

Stormkeeper said on :

go xarrr go

coyboyusa said on :

record companies are like the church they are afraid of change and they think that sticking to old ways will solve their problems...tyhey should embrace the digital media and instead of attacking the consumer develope truly exceptions digital media...i saw the spectrograph of a cd made in 1989 where they didint boost the bitrate of the cd to increase volume and the sound was as good or better than vynil...now they force cds to sound louder and they destroy the quality of the recording...we’re getting screwed on every level

squigger said on :

Copy Control doesn’t seem to work very well anyway - I copied the 6 new tracks from TPH (allegedly copy protected) with software (Nero) that is not in any way designed to defeat it :)

On the other hand, my cd player jumps ever so slightly at just one point of Permission to Land by The Darkness, which also has Copy Control - this can never be a good thing, even though I can easily enough make a copy of the damned thing that will play better than the original...

I would love to see similar rulings in Australia, but our consumer watchdog, the ACCC, has decided that it can’t see any problem with companies making and selling CDs that don’t work in brand new CD players... Even Philips’ declaration that CC discs are not real CDs hasn’t had any effect here.

It is a bit ironic, really, that Sony makes CC discs that won’t work in its own CD players...

Denstandigaresan said on :

Mazarin won’t play in my DVD player, unless I fastforward a few tracks. It struggles and sends the lazer into a mad panic, and the dvd player won’t eject the disc. On my stereo, it plays really quiet too. On mums cheap DVD player and stereo, plays perfect. :(
Although, I did manage to copy it, for my own use, I never play my discs, always just copied to tape before and then put discs on shelf to collect dust!

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