Hail to the Thief rips fine in iTunes

[eustacescrubb]

If there's copy protection on it, as was rumored, iTunes isn't affected.

The packaging for the Limted edition is lovely.

[hellRaven]

I guess you guys in the USA are lucky...

>> http://www.greenplastic.com/news/index.php

HTTT and Copy-Protection
June 10, 2003 09:07 PM

We've heard from fans all over the world from Japan to Argentina telling us that their copy of Hail to the Thief is copy protected and won't work right in older cd players and home computers. It appears that the only country that doesn't have copy-protected copies of HTTT is the United States.
<<

I bought the limited edition here in Germany 2 hours ago and it is copy protected. But...

I'm using Windows so you don't have to read on if you have a Mac ;-)

If a CD is copy protected CDex usually works fine for me. Not this time (at first).
With the CD in my Plextor burner CDex showed me the first 8 (or so) audio tracks and then some other tracks with some GB in size and so on (I'm sure you know what a copy protected CD looks like in a ripping program) => no luck.
So I tried my Asus CD-ROM drive. All 14 Tracks were shown (I guess the Plextor burner wasn't fooled by the copy protection and showed what tracks are really on the CD). But ripping was terribly slow.
Next and last try: A Sony DVD drive. 14 tracks showed up in CDex and the ripping was at normal speed.

I'm feeling punished for buying this CD. Just downloading it would have been faster... But I love packaging like this!

Right now I'm listening to the wonderful music and I'm so happy to see Radiohead live in 11 days :-D
(I hope I can still stand on my feet by then. They are the last band on the 3-day-festival Hurricane)

[Anubis]

If more artists start doing this then what is going to happen to all the MP3 players?

I have bought this album and used Cdex to convert it to MP3. And because of the 'protection' I can't get a good cop on to my iPod!

Surely this can't be allowed to continue!

[stasyna]

yeah i also bought/ripped this album at home. Using a lite-on burner drive with EAC; worked perfect. Too bad i dont even like radiohead. Heard good things about this album, but its a stinker to my ears.

[Bob]

It is hard to do, but I will not buy a CD that has this on it. There are several that I would like to have but it is my own little protest against the record companies and their interpretation of what I can and can't do with a CD I have bought.
Boycott the artists/record companies who employ this evil method of censorship.

[reorx24]

Man, I dont live in the US, and I checked my local record stores, and there it was in the back, the dread words "copy protected". This is a real bummer coz I do MOST of my listening through my ipod.

However, i was able to sample all the leaked 192 kbps versions, so I KNOW i WANT this album. Problem is, why will I buy an album that cant be transferred to my ipod??

Would any of you guys know if the "leaked" 192kbps songs are the final mixes and final versions of the songs? Coz if they are, Im sticking with those

Stupid Record Industry, they think they're so smart thinking that copy controlled cd's will stop piracy. Well it just backfired doofs!! I WAS going to buy a LEGITIMATE copy of this fine album, but since I cant play it in my ipod or my computer, Ill stick with the bootlegs. Or, rip a copy off an american version. Sheesh.

[SalsaVibe]

I wonder if one could return a CD that is copywrite protected?

I bought Hail to the thief over ebay and ripped it right into my ipod and put the Cd in my closet.....

[ironchef9000]

can't you just rwite on the back with a permanent marker, and you can rip it?

or is this a different version?

[eustacescrubb]

I bought Hail to the thief over ebay and ripped it right into my ipod and put the Cd in my closet.....

That sounds morally dubious to me. If it ripped fine for you, why return it?

[hellRaven]

Originally posted by eustacescrubb
That sounds morally dubious to me. If it ripped fine for you, why return it? Why that? He baught it, ripped it, and keeps it.
Same as I do. Or did I miss something?

Edit: I missed the part, not quoted by you ;-)

[Hephador]

Slightly off topic, but what's the difference between the regular and special edition of the cd? I'm looking but can't find a definitive answer so far.

[SalsaVibe]

The point I was trying to make was if someone were to purchase a CD that was copyprotected, they should be able to return it.

I mean for us Ipod users these Cds would be useless if we couldn't rip them and put them in the Ipod...

If I came accross I cd I couldn't rip I would go back to where I purchased it and demand a refund. (Would I get it? probably not)

[reorx24]

From what Ive gathered in other sites, some people HAVE been able to return copyprotected cd's, for the main reason that they cant play them.

I think that copyprotected cds have been made in a way that computer-type cd players (like cd-roms, some car changers, some stero systems, etc.) CANT read it. Something about the index of the cd's being tweaked or sumpin. Im not an expert on this, so i dont know what exacxtly was altered, anyone know?

Remember, some people have only their Computers to play their cds, and a copy protected cd is thus useless to them since they cant even listen to them, or in HTTT's case, they can listen to them at a very crappy bitrate. In fact, some audiophiles say that a copyprotectd cd is of less audio quality than a non-copy protected one. If this is the case, then a copyprotected cd MUST be returnable.

Of course, most copyprotected cd's have big warnings in the front and back, so it can be held against you since you were given ample warning and thus assumption of risk. Caveat Emptor.

Needless to say, if copyprotected cds are the wave of the future, then this very well spells doom for ipodders and other mp3 based listeners like us, for now we HAVE to listen to such cd's on stereos and other "allowed" players, thus rendering our ipods obsolete for future music. This is why I am staunchly against such cds. In their drive against piracy, they are alienating a huge section of legitimate music listeners, such as us and other "non traditional" cd buyers. A classic case of throwing away the baby with the bathwater.

Not to seem repetitious, but i ask again, does anyone know if the leaked 192 kbps mp3s of HTTTF are the final versions? I have listened to these copies, and was blown away, which is why I was sooooooo excited to buy the real copy, only to realize I cant rip em to my pod (which is where i do the BULK of my listening). Unfortunately, I am not a US resident. Coz if not, I waill be faced with the painful choice of buying a cd i CANT listen to the way i want to, if only to hear the final, mastered versions of the songs in the album.

Copyprotected cd's signal the beginning of the end of mp3 based listening, which is my drug of choice. If all future releases are in this format, (with no U.S. exception as in HTTT's case) then the ipod, and all other mp3 players for that matter, can only listen to "older" or already existing mp3 music, and not furture music, which i find truly frightening.

[Zimmerman]

Well, all of this copy protected CD nastiness is one reason that I don't buy CDs anymore. I haven't bought one yet, and I don't intend to, though I find that quite a few of them rip rather easily using Exact Audio Copy.

There will always be a way to get the music into MP3 format. If you can play it, then you can record it with a computer and then encode to MP3, AAC, or whatever you want. Record companies will never be able to close the "analog hole" because if we can hear it, we can record it unless there is some dramatic change in playback technology that would make the recordings sound bad. If that happened, then the record companies would lose A LOT of business, blame it on pirates (Arrr, matey!), and find some way to get a law passed to make everyone pay them money to compensate for their losses due to this imagined theft of their product that no one can use.

What really amazes me is how the RIAA treats their own customers like criminals and then when their customers leave, they're surprised. That just strikes me as odd.

Lately, I've been getting a lot of free music from all sorts of sites like DMusic and OC ReMix. I don't think that I've listened to any commercial music other than Depeche Mode and Rammstein for a few months and I haven't even turned on the radio since I got my iPod almost six months ago.

Oddly enough, some companies are still using the Phillips CD icon on their crippled CDs. Isn't that illegal? Last time I checked, the CD icon means that the CD will play in any Red Book compliant CD player, but they don't, so isn't that false advertising?

[Jackonicko]

I just hope to god that HTTT is less irritating than the Glastonbury performance was.

[Palazzo]

For what it's worth I had no trouble ripping Hail to the Thief with Media Center. I wouldn't have bought it if I'd known it was copy protected, so it's just as well it didn't not work!

In my experience if you have a couple of rippers and fiddle around you'll get most 'protected' discs to rip. My experience being with Windows btw.

[ajo]

Ive got the Special Edition of HTTT here in the UK and mine ISNT copy Protected.

Anyone Else?