Velvet Revolver's Copy Protection, and getting around it.

Published Tuesday, June 08, 2004 2:32 PM

I ran out and bought Contraband today from Best Buy. For those of you who don't know who Velvet Revolver is here's a summary. Lead Singer: Scott Weiland from STP. Then Slash, Matt and Duff from Guns-n-Roses. Their show is awesome, I saw them a few weeks ago here in St. Louis with Russ, his brother Matt and friend Kenny.

Now for the album details. The album is awesome, I've been listening to it on MTV.com for the past few days now. Now that it was released I ran out to buy it. On the cover it says that the CD is made to play in audio devices, and some PCs that are configured properly. Basically it tries to install Digital Rights management licenses onto your machine so that you can play the CD.

I decided I didn't like that option, so here's what I did.

When you insert the CD and you have autoplay enabled, it will bring up a licensing agreement, don't accept it, just click on the X in the upper right corner of the window to close. I then proceded to try to RIP the CD so I could make a backup copy of this for my archives. It appeared to actually rip, but each song was taking quite long to do so. I played one of the ripped tracks and noticed that it was garbled to hell, so I tried playing a track off of the CD, garbled as well. Let me note that all of this has occured through the Beta copy of Windows Media Player 10 that I installed last week.

After a little googling I disabled the autoplay feature on my PC. Next I found this article by the “student” who figured out how to defeat this protection software.

    Start with a Windows 2000/XP system with empty CD drives.

    1. Click the Start button and select Control Panel from the Start Menu.
    2. Double-click on the System control panel icon.
    3. Select the Hardware tab and click the Device Manager button.
    4. Configure Device Manager by clicking "Show hidden devices" and "Devices by connection," both from the View menu.
    5. Insert the Anthony Hamilton CD into the computer and allow the SunnComm software to start. If MediaMax has never been started before on the same computer, the SbcpHid driver should appear on the list for the first time. However, on some systems Windows needs to be rebooted before the driver becomes visible.

    At this point you can attempt to copy tracks from the CD with applications like MusicMatch Jukebox or Windows Media Player. Copies made while the driver is active will sound badly garbled, as in this 9-second clip [10].

    Next, follow these additional steps to disable MediaMax:

    1. Select the SbcpHid driver from the Device Manager list and click "Properties" from the Action Menu.
    2. Click the Driver tab and click the Stop button to disable the driver.
    3. Set the Startup Type to "Disabled" using the dropdown list.

    With the driver stopped, you can verify that the same applications copy every track successfully. Setting the Startup Type to disabled prevents MediaMax from restarting when the computer is rebooted. It will remain deactivated until LaunchCD.exe is allowed to run again.

This successfully worked for me. I am listening to the CD right now through windows media player, without the protection running. I've also archived the CD into my system so that if I ever lose it I have a copy for myself!

Hope this helps people get this running.

by Chris Hammond
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Comments

# Rulez said on Tuesday, June 08, 2004 3:56 PM

Cool

# TrackBack said on Tuesday, June 08, 2004 4:40 PM
# Kcimat said on Tuesday, June 08, 2004 11:54 PM

Get a mac, and all you'll have to do is copy it in toast! macs rule

# Ramone said on Wednesday, June 09, 2004 10:32 AM

It is too difficult to newbies, doesn' it? Unfortunately (for the RIAA), it only needs ONE techy guy with wrong intentions to this content be spreaded on p2p networks... Better luck, next time!

Conclusion: the only function of these silly mechanisms is annoy to hell the legal buyers.

# swatch said on Wednesday, June 09, 2004 12:25 PM

I blame the Dutch

# Monkey Boy said on Thursday, June 10, 2004 10:12 PM

I didn't even have to use that, i used itunes and it copied it perfectly. Very slow but still worked. So much for their great protection.

# MoFo said on Saturday, June 12, 2004 2:22 AM

Damn thing still messed up my Windows Media Player. Now I get skips every once and a while when playing my digital files.

# Steve Wallace said on Saturday, June 12, 2004 1:07 PM

Thanks for the info. You have no idea how pissed I was when I went to MP3 the songs and they had all that jitter. I have no intention of distributing them, but I put the MP3's on my PC then play them via my Linksys Media Center on my home theater.

I also checked out what they "let" you download when you installed the license and at 128k it sounded like shit. When will these people figure out that people will continue to use P2P instead of the paid services because the quality of music from the paid services SUCKS!!! 128k was 6 years ago.

# Adam said on Tuesday, June 15, 2004 2:34 AM

This fix worked for me. You must follow the instructions exactly as given and it will work. I am using iTunes as my player and the first time I tried to rip the CD, it came out garbled (protected). Worked great after the fix.

# Greg said on Tuesday, June 15, 2004 10:50 AM

Let me tell you what, this kicks ass.

One thing, what you can do in case it doesnt appear is :
Click on the "Action" button, and Scroll down and click on "Scan for Hardware Changes"

This will cause Device manager to search for new stuff, and Sbcdhid will appear. and you wont have to reboot.

Dude, you rock.
Thanks for the tip.


~Greg

# Curtis said on Tuesday, June 15, 2004 12:32 PM

This is brilliant!
I can't express how mad I was when I tried to copy this to my hard drive. I keep a monster library of music on the server at work. I thought velvet revolver would be a nice addition. Thanks for making this a reality for me.

# Mike said on Tuesday, June 15, 2004 2:50 PM

Thanks so much! I get the feeling this is going to invaluable in helping me with the crap my kids are always downloading as well!

# Dave said on Tuesday, June 15, 2004 4:28 PM

I can't seem to get the SbcpHid driver to appear. I've followed the instructions, but no luck...

Any help would be appreciated.

# Dave again said on Tuesday, June 15, 2004 4:41 PM

Duh, I had already disabled AutoPlay so SbcpHid was not loading. As soon as I ran the MediaMax program it showed up. I disabled it and now all is good in the world again...

Thanks.

# Chrisgeee said on Wednesday, June 16, 2004 10:57 AM

It's a tiny bit confusing at first. I had to re-read the instructions, but it WORKS! And that's all that matters. Thank you very much for the help! And the Record companies wonder why people download music....quit messing with the consumer you freakin' IDIOTS! You are only killing yourselves in the long run....

# zcrowder said on Wednesday, June 16, 2004 1:50 PM

Thanks from all us honest users who just wanted an honest backup. Dont these dumbass record companies realize that bootleggers already know how to beat it?

# bishop easybake said on Wednesday, June 16, 2004 2:30 PM

actually, if you just restart your computer with the cd in the tray, it will bypass the DRM software. i was able to play and rip in musicmatch just fine. simple solution to a complicated problem. like someone else on this post said, 'better luck next time' and 'this is only done to annoy the legal buyers.'

peace,
the bishop

# DLjUnkiE said on Wednesday, June 16, 2004 11:19 PM

Chris, great info worked like a charm. ripped wav's and mp3's and gonna burn a 100pk spindle and give them away. even gonna send a couple to BMG and VR as a big F-YOU !!!!!

# brent said on Thursday, June 17, 2004 3:33 PM

record labels are evil, evil entities. DLjUnkiE, if you send some to VR and BMG, make sure you throw my name on a couple. when will they stop whining and fighting and just come up with another solution??

# jz said on Saturday, June 19, 2004 10:14 AM

Doesn't work for me. I bought the CD here in Finland but there's no driver appearing in Device Manager after running player.exe. It only asks for permission to install a few files and then an ugly player appears...

# D said on Tuesday, June 22, 2004 6:56 AM

I followed the instructions, but a pop up from WMP said that I needed a license, I ckicked ok to retrieve the license and then a pop up from sunncomm said that I did not have the digital keys needed to play ythe WMA files. Anyway, I opened roxio and looked at the disk properties. The disk has two sessions. One session contains the WMA files and other associated files, the other session contains what roxio says are audio files. Since these files take up about 500 meg, they are probably the CDA files that my cd walkman sees since it is too old to play WMA files. I ripped these files to my computer through roxio (WMA 128 kb, not great, but good enough for the office). These CDA files could be copied to a CD and then you would have a perfectly good VR cd without all the other unecessary stuff. Just a thought.

# darkness said on Saturday, June 26, 2004 3:42 PM

I copied the CD with Nero - but I only copied the music portion - no data, using the burned copy I extracted to .mp3 for my digital jukebox, 256k.

# wrdsmyth said on Monday, June 28, 2004 12:02 PM

I had trouble with the fixes as I couldn't find the driver to disable it and just pushing SHIFT when starting up the CD didn't really seem to do much. I'm running Windows 98 SE, so that's probably why.

The more time I spent on it, the more pissed I got. I finally worked around it by saving the wma files to my harddrive, opening the files in GoldWave, and resaving them as MP3s. It took a bit of time because my computer is about 5 years old and not fast enough for the new technology, but it was worth it.

Unfortunately, now my computer seems all f***ed up and I keep having fatal errors. I will never buy another CD with this crap on it. To be honest, I didn't even pay attention to it when I bought it. I will know better next time.

Thanks for giving us a place to share info.

# Joe said on Monday, June 28, 2004 11:17 PM

I've thought about plugging the speaker output on one PC to the the line in on the sound card of another PC, and playing a protected MP3 from one to the other.

Has anyone tried this? Was there a noticable drop in sound quality?

-Joe

# kdawg said on Wednesday, June 30, 2004 8:37 PM

Amazing.
Thanks!

# Max said on Thursday, July 01, 2004 4:37 PM

Excellent instuctions...I thought it was a lost cause...

# willcee said on Saturday, July 03, 2004 10:14 PM

I paid way to much for this album but I was legal. So when I went to put it on my MP3 player and go for a run --- it's garbled? THANKS ALOT RIAA!!

What a crock. Why does the public put up with this? I'm going to write my congresspeople.

But thank you Chris for posting the great instructions to let me enjoy the music I paid for the way I want it.

# moo said on Monday, July 05, 2004 7:42 PM

I had no probs at all obtaining the files from the CD. I wont post how because that is just going to contribute to the next stage in development. But anyhow. we will always find away.

# bkbroiler said on Sunday, July 11, 2004 12:34 AM

This tip made my day. I did the right thing and bought the CD, and BMG tried to screw me. Now that I have my perfect MP3 copies, and I can listen to this in ITunes, the original CD now serves appropriately as my new beer coaster.

Thanks for the great instructions.

BK

# TonyMetro said on Thursday, July 15, 2004 10:23 PM

This worked well for me. But I wonder what uninstallling the sbcphid driver altogether might do, instead of just disabling it.

# TonyMetro said on Thursday, July 15, 2004 10:24 PM

DlJunkie, if you still have those 100 CD's around, I'd be glad to buy one off of you. Preferably the uncut version. I bought a CD off the rack that, unlike the others, did not have a sticker on it that read EDITED. Naturally I figured it wasn't edited. Now, since I've opened the CD, the store won't take it back and exchange it, even for the same CD.

# Pepper said on Friday, July 16, 2004 1:36 PM

Thanks so much dude! wow you are brillant!!!! this is the third day ive had CD and i was about to kill my computer because the CD wouldnt play right

WHY? do these people do this, we at least bought their CD i mean 19.98 of our money and we cant even play the music, i hate the BMG music label

but thanks again you are a life saver

# ThuranX said on Tuesday, July 20, 2004 8:00 AM

How do I get it out of Windows 98? Yeah, I'm a loser for not having anything newer... but I'd really be grateful if someone could help... I didn't know about this stupid guerilla warfare of a CD... all I wanted was to be able to rip it to my winamp to listen to... not make 50 copies for friends or send it up on WinMX or BitTorrent...

# enrico said on Wednesday, July 21, 2004 1:46 PM

First let me thank Chris for the above instructions. It sux that I had to mess with my system to just to rip a copy of a cd that I actually paid for but at least I was able to do it with help from Chris. Much thanks.

# Venom said on Wednesday, July 28, 2004 1:26 PM

So if I do this, the MP3's I rip will sound clean (no skips/ jitters)

# Mark said on Friday, July 30, 2004 9:28 PM

Absolute Genius!
Thanks for the info. Record companies suck!!!

# Drex said on Wednesday, August 04, 2004 5:44 PM

Yes, "Show hidden devices" not on Win 98, please advise.

# Grrr.... by ufreligionmajor () | LjSEEK.COM said on Monday, August 14, 2006 5:09 AM

PingBack from http://www.ljseek.com/grrr_2294213.html

# fubarpk said on Monday, March 12, 2007 10:47 AM

DVD regions is free and fixes all those problems

# Jay said on Tuesday, July 13, 2010 7:13 PM

I've had this cd since it came out and i've NEVER had the knowledge on how to rip it to my computer, but with this help im totally blasting it outta my speakers and ipod. thanks for posting this information!!! GREATLY appreciate it.

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