CDROM was confusing the drive: copy protection
Today a friend of mine tried to play his CD on my computer running
Debian Sarge but couldn't. He asked if he was doing something wrong and
I looked into the problem. The disc was 'confusing the drive'. I tried
playing it with xmms and the CD player in gnome but both hanged. For a
moment I thought something was broken either with the drive or with hal
(once I got the message that hald was not running). I had to reboot the
computer twice before finally realizing that the data on the CDROM was
probably defective or the CD itself was defective. However, my friend
insisted he could play it on his CD player. Then it dawned on me, and I
looked for the small print on the CD cover. It was a Sony copy protected
CD! I frantically looked at my CD covers as well, and surprisingly I had
a CD like that one too. Appararently I didn't really looked for the copy
protection notice while buying it.
So is there a way to play that copy protected CD in Linux? Curiously
enough, the same CD was playable in Windows media player and Realplayer
in Windows XP. My friend was also able to 'rip' the CD in Windows Media
player to obtain it's lossless wma version of the tracks. Do I have to
fallback to Windows to play the CD on my computer or can I do it Linux too?
thanks.
->HS
PS: I have learned from this experience, no more buying of copy
protected CDs at all.
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