I just borrowed a CD from a friend. I find it weird because If I played it on a stand alone CD Player, it plays well. Now, I wanted to copy it on my laptop (I'm using SM 3.4.3). What I noticed is that the CD itself has its own player. You will need to install the player on your PC before playing it. My problem is that it doesn't have an installer for linux.

Is there a way for me to crack it so that I can convert the audio files to mp3? I am not going to sell the copy or whatsoever. I just want to use it personally. Is there a way to do this and what do you call this kind of CDs?

It is possible, but not legal. Technically, it's not legal even if it's your own CD, but as it's your friend's CD it's even less legal. Hence, I'm not going to go into details, except to say that it is possible.

Okay. Wouldn't you be kind enough to teach me? We are sharing knowledge here. And I will not use it on illegal actions. I just want to know what is going on and how they did it.

I'll tell you how the copy protection works, but I'd rather not go into details about how you crack it - I'll leave that as an exercise for you, but if you Google around I'm sure you can figure it out.

As you noticed, you can play the CD in a normal stand-alone CD player - so this means that there is a normal audio track structure on the disk. This is what matters. The fact that when you play it in Windows you are forced to install a separate player is incidental - this just means that the CD also has a data component which attempts to stop you playing the audio component of the disc through a computer.

I'll leave it up to you to figure out how to rip the audio tracks, but it really is very simple.

Hope this helps a bit. Please don't ask me to go into any more detail as I'd rather not, because this is a bit of a grey legal area and I don't want to cause problems for either your or me.

Regards
David

If you can play this CD on a stand-alone CD player, you do not need to install some special player included on the CD to play it.

The player on the CD is included only to enforce the copy protection. You may want to warn your friend, as this sort of copy protection is incredibly insidious, and even compromises the security of your computer (if you run Windows, that is... Linux is unaffected).

(see http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XCP)

The above link also describes how to bypass it. Sony provided their own uninstall tool (which you should NOT use), so I would assume that any other means of bypassing the copy protection is also legal. Since the uninstall tool provided by Sony compromises your security even further, I'd go with the opaque tape / magic marker approach. Or, even better, just stick with Linux.

As long as you don't install the player, I'd think you should be able to rip a copy protected CD with your favorite CD ripping tool (which, to my knowledge, is not illegal if you own the CD).

If you don't own the CD, I assume that you'll abide by the law and not make illegal copies.

cdhgee,

I found a way to copy the CD. But shouldn't we tell everyone how to do it? I mean, there are already answers found on the web. Even Sony manifested the solutions for this.

it is possible, but not legal. Technically, it's not legal even if it's your own CD, but as it's your friend's CD it's even less legal. Hence, I'm not going to go into details, except to say that it is possible.

As far as I am aware, it's only the USA that has daft laws that make it a crime to bypass copy resriction technology, to use music that you have purchased in the way that you want. I am sure that it was not voted for in a democratic way either, but rather passed as law thanks to big bribes to politicains by people who stand to make money out of the inconvenience.

Please be a bit more open minded and explain how to do this for the benefit of people outside your crazy country.

If you looked at my "Location" tag, you'd notice that I actually live in the UK, and I believe (though I'm not certain) that copying CDs is also illegal here. I do agree that the laws restricting what I would consider "fair use" are ridiculous, both in the UK and the US, as well as probably many other countries, but despite that I am not going to post instructions on doing something that is potentially illegal, as I don't relish the thought of getting carted off to jail.

If you're determined enough to copy a CD to your computer, I'm sure given Google and a minute or so you can find the information you need.

And as a side note, insulting all Americans by calling the USA a "crazy" country isn't going to make you any friends either...