Can anyone point me to a good list of copy-protected CDs? I rarely listen to music that is popular enough to be copy-protected, so I’m pretty ignorant of what artists are copy-protected. My wife just handed me her scratched up Modest Mouse CD in hopes that I could burn her a backup copy, and, well, it doesn’t seem that my drive will read it. So I’m wondering if that could be why and if there is a way around it.
I’m not sure where to get a set list of copyrighten CDs, but you have a few options.
If it is copy protected, then you could probably still burn it on a linux box with the right software… but if that’s outside of your experience level, then I’d just suggest downloading the album.
Copyright law CLEARLY states that you can make backups of the digital music that you own, and since your wife’s purchased the CD, you are certainly able to download it with zero legal or ethical conflicts. If you’re familiar with how bittorrents work, I’m sure you could find any Modest Mouse album hosted on one of the tracker sites.
I don’t know of a current list. There were some sites that were keeping lists back when the copy protection flack started, but they’ve given up now.
Pretty much anything by the Big 4 labels (EMI, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony BMG) and all of their sub-labels are suspect to possibly have copy protection measures.
One way to check is to look for the Compact Disc Digital Audio logo on the CD itself or on the printed cover notes. If the CD has that logo then it is not going to have copy protection because the copy protection measures violate the Compact Disc Digital Audio standard by Philips. If the disc doesn’t follow the Red Book standard made by Philips then it can’t have the logo.
Modest Mouse should be fine. I have “Good News For People Who Love Bad News” and it has the logo on the CD. I ripped the CD with no problems.
If the disc is scratched you could have difficulties ripping it. Try using Exact Audio Copy to rip it. It can do a good job with scratched CDs, although it will take longer.
If you are using something like iTunes or RealAudio Player to rip the CD then make sure you select the option to do digital extraction and enable error correction. Both packages default to no error correction. With a scratched CD you need the error correction.