DotNetNuke Developer Chris Hammond

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

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.

Posted: Jun 08 2004, 02:32 PM by Chris Hammond | with 39 comment(s)
Filed under: , , ,

Comments

Rulez said:

Cool
# June 8, 2004 3:56 PM

TrackBack said:

# June 8, 2004 4:40 PM

Kcimat said:

Get a mac, and all you'll have to do is copy it in toast! macs rule
# June 8, 2004 11:54 PM

Ramone said:

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.
# June 9, 2004 10:32 AM

swatch said:

I blame the Dutch
# June 9, 2004 12:25 PM

Monkey Boy said:

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.
# June 10, 2004 10:12 PM

MoFo said:

Damn thing still messed up my Windows Media Player. Now I get skips every once and a while when playing my digital files.
# June 12, 2004 2:22 AM

Steve Wallace said:

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.
# June 12, 2004 1:07 PM

Adam said:

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.
# June 15, 2004 2:34 AM

Greg said:

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
# June 15, 2004 10:50 AM

Curtis said:

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.
# June 15, 2004 12:32 PM

Mike said:

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!
# June 15, 2004 2:50 PM

Dave said:

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

Any help would be appreciated.
# June 15, 2004 4:28 PM

Dave again said:

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.
# June 15, 2004 4:41 PM

Chrisgeee said:

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....
# June 16, 2004 10:57 AM

zcrowder said:

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?
# June 16, 2004 1:50 PM

bishop easybake said:

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
# June 16, 2004 2:30 PM

DLjUnkiE said:

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 !!!!!
# June 16, 2004 11:19 PM

brent said:

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??
# June 17, 2004 3:33 PM

jz said:

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...

# June 19, 2004 10:14 AM

D said:

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.
# June 22, 2004 6:56 AM

darkness said:

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.
# June 26, 2004 3:42 PM

wrdsmyth said:

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.
# June 28, 2004 12:02 PM

Joe said:

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
# June 28, 2004 11:17 PM

kdawg said:

Amazing.
Thanks!
# June 30, 2004 8:37 PM

Max said:

Excellent instuctions...I thought it was a lost cause...
# July 1, 2004 4:37 PM

willcee said:

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.

# July 3, 2004 10:14 PM

moo said:

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.
# July 5, 2004 7:42 PM

bkbroiler said:

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
# July 11, 2004 12:34 AM

TonyMetro said:

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

# July 15, 2004 10:23 PM

TonyMetro said:

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.
# July 15, 2004 10:24 PM

Pepper said:

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
# July 16, 2004 1:36 PM

ThuranX said:

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...
# July 20, 2004 8:00 AM

enrico said:

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.
# July 21, 2004 1:46 PM

Venom said:

So if I do this, the MP3's I rip will sound clean (no skips/ jitters)
# July 28, 2004 1:26 PM

Mark said:

Absolute Genius!
Thanks for the info. Record companies suck!!!
# July 30, 2004 9:28 PM

Drex said:

Yes, "Show hidden devices" not on Win 98, please advise.
# August 4, 2004 5:44 PM

Grrr.... by ufreligionmajor () | LjSEEK.COM said:

PingBack from http://www.ljseek.com/grrr_2294213.html
# August 14, 2006 5:09 AM

fubarpk said:

DVD regions is free and fixes all those problems

# March 12, 2007 10:47 AM
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