petit prince

Feature request: 'Clone' mode (exact cue sheet generation)

Hi everybody! I've been away from the forum for quite some time, but now that I see a new EAC version being released and a wishlist for new features being established, I would like to newly advocate a feature I requested nearly two years ago: A 'clone' mode or exact cue sheet generation (or however you'd like to call it).

What I mean by that is quite simple: I want EAC to produce a 1:1 copy ('clone') of my original audio CD. To achieve that EAC would have to generate a 1:1, exact cue sheet replica of my original CD. Which versions 0.99pb1 and earlier unfortunately don't.

More detailed information on the problem is available in these threads:

• How does EAC treat CD Text-information? [BUG?!]
  
• Absolut identische Kopie? (German)
  
• ISO: EAC alternative for *exact* CUE sheets?

Kind regards,

petit prince

Turambar

D'oh! Ignore me...

I do have an excuse though... I visited the download page yesterday, and it pointed me to http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/en/inde...rces/download/

From there, there are two links to digital-world.de. On the download page, it says "Exact Audio Copy 0.99 prebeta 1", but the files you download are Exact Audio Copy V0.95 Beta 4, not 0.99!

The link with the text "If you encounter any problems on downloading, please click here" does point to the right files.

Sorry for wasting your time, hopefully the links can be fixed to avoid future mixups.

Appaller

For me, this is THE crucial function of EAC! This is the reason I'm still using v. 0.95 prebeta 3. Please put it back.

Lund

I agree. EAC should really be able to do that. I never quite understood the need to add "Unknown Artist", "Unknown Album", "Track 1", ... anyway.

petit prince

Thanks for your support, Lund!

I'm afraid that WON'T happen. Read the news entry for February 21, 2006:

Appaller

Yeah, I read that last year and was astonished that the author withdrew this feature based on just a little threatening press. I DO realize the situation he is in (or could be), but the rebel in me just wishes he would flip the middle finger at the greedy establishment and say, "Take your best shot, chump." I know that's not going to happen, but I can still hope, can't I?

As I said, I wish I could move up to a more recent version of EAC as I've been using it (or various versions) for the last eight years or so.....I LOVE this program! But I refuse to give up the TOC feature which, IMHO, is the very core of the product!!

Lund

I think it's not worth the risk to keep it in EAC for only a few releases.

Actually I've never encountered a copy-protected CD, are they really that common? And can't you get your money back, because they're no real Audio CDs?

Appaller

I've seen it plenty of times, although admittedly not in the last two or three years. I saw it massively on a lot of Beatles re-releases, Paul McCartney stuff, etc. At first I was indeed returning the cd's to the point of purchase as they were natively unplayable in my car's cd player. In reality it didn't matter since I was ripping back-ups with EAC for use in the car, which of course worked as the copy protection nonsense was removed. The reason for returning the original **purchased** cd was just to make a point that these kind of shenanigans were simply unacceptable.

Native TOC is a wonderful feature to have **when** you need it, which in all honesty is hardly ever. I was just SO bummed to see it removed just because some a**hole lawyer(s) may have threatened the author. Be that as it may, I still love this software and would be more than happy to pay for it if Andre would indeed charge for it, but only if the new and improved version contained Native TOC.

Anyway, I'll get off my high horse now. Thanks again Andre for a truly great piece of s/w!

Lund

Copy-protected CDs were (still are?) very popular with the German subsidiaries of the major record companies. A German major release might have such a protection with a high probability whereas the UK or US issue did not. And Andre living in Germany, the main target country for these crippled CDs, might have seen this as an issue since his software falls under German jurisdiction...

Yes, that's exactly why everyone should return those CDs if possible. They're violating the CD standard and therefore do not function properly, but also they're a slap in the face of consumer rights.


Well, 2 years or so have passed now. The copy-protection on CDs turned out to be a joke, too. In Germany it's not illegal to surpass a trivial "copy-protection" that doesn't work or is ineffective. And AFAIK, there haven't been filed any charges against software manufacturers because of "surpassing" these so called copy-protections for Audio CD... but I could be wrong here. But maybe Andre is willing to reconsider his decision?

I'd certainly love to see this feature return, because chances are that I might come across a CD where I need this feature. But only if there really won't be no legal threats.

Another possibility would be to use EAC's plugin interface for implementing this feature...


Shshsh! Don't give him any bad ideas!

petit prince

Err ... well, be careful, that is a rather bold statement!

§ 95 a Abs. 1 UrhG [German Law on Copyright and Neighboring Rights] mentions indeed the 'effectiveness' of a copy-protection scheme as a major precondition for the law's prohibition to surpass it. Nonetheless, Abs. 2 S. 2 has what the German jurist calls a 'Legaldefinition' - and that (and only that!) defines 'effective' in the sense of the law: [...] Technische Maßnahmen sind wirksam, soweit durch sie die Nutzung eines geschützten Werkes oder eines anderen nach diesem Gesetz geschützten Schutzgegenstandes von dem Rechtsinhaber durch eine Zugangskontrolle, einen Schutzmechanismus wie Verschlüsselung, Verzerrung oder sonstige Umwandlung oder einen Mechanismus zur Kontrolle der Vervielfältigung, die die Erreichung des Schutzziels sicherstellen, unter Kontrolle gehalten wird. [...] In other words: What you and I would normally think of 'being effective' is not necessarily relevant, the law has its own definition for that (albeit a quite confusing one).

So do I think that the above definition applies to copy-protection schemes on 'Non-'Audio CDs (Key2Audio, Cactus Data Shield, etc. pp.)? - Quite frankly, I don't know. From my own technical understanding I would rather suggest that it does not. But who knows how German courts will interpret this; so far there has been indeed only very little jurisdiction on this matter (which by the way, since § 95 a of the German law was only a transformation of EC directive 2001/29/EC into national law, is probably going to be the same problem in other EU member states ...), so each and every prediction on that would be highly speculative.

Well, I surely do understand your feelings, but I'm afraid we have to face legal reality here: Being sued on that matter can be quite a risky thing. And even if you'd win such a case, you'd have to advance a fair amount of money to get there (not sure how a defence insurance would deal with that ...). So, in other words, there's not just "a little threatening press" in the room, but far more.

petit prince

P.S.: Appaller, if you're in a country that still allows surpassing copy-protection (Switzerland?!), you could simply install EAC V0.95 beta 4 (the one before the profile change of 0.99 prebeta 1) and then add EAC.exe from your archived 0.95 prebeta 3 to its directory. This way you should be able to use both versions and even share your profiles between them.

Don't know if that helps, but I thought I should at least mention it ...

greynol

Share your profiles as stored in the registry (except for drive options), yes; as .cfc files, no, they are not compatible between v0.99 and v0.95.

Lund

...hm, only god and Andre know how different versions with such a big version difference may behave after future updates. I'd rather not run them both on the same user account.

Scorpio

Since this thread is to mention wishes, I don't know if this the right place...but...; The website of our Belgium friend Sid is down, forever. Maybe this is allready known here to some or all, but the link in the Help is still there. Might be confusing or misleading to leave it just there, don't you think?
Suggest to take out the link..

Off-topic, if I may: SatcP has been a great help to me while putting together my own tutorial website (in Dutch). He even put a link on his site to mine....

greynol

This has already been mentioned to Andre and should be fixed in the next release.