Important Update
From Steven Murdoch
It seems that BMG have seen the error of their ways and are offering uncorrupted replacement CDs to anyone who has bought a copy-protected version. For complete information from BMG, see the page at http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-7922576.html?tag=mn_hd (Ed. Note Thank you Steve. You can make the difference if you let record companies know you won't tolerate this garbage.)

Corrupt CD Reports

From Nicola Frankhauser, batch # A-63018/4321895222 A
Playing: Does not play the real audio on CD-ROMs under Windows. Sometimes not even the lame mp3 session is recognized correctly.
Copying: I bought the cd some days ago and figured out how to produce a clean & perfect, red-book compatible cd from a cactus shield protected cd (like natalie imbruglia - white lilies island):
There seem to be two sessions on the cd:
a) Audio Session with the actual tracks
b) Data Session with an embedded mp3 rip of the tracks (quite bad quality)

1. Rip off the whole Audio Session (1. session) with Iso Buster (free, get it at http://users.pandora.be/smart.projects/start2.htm) as RAW Data (2352 bytes / block), which will result in a ~ 500mb RAW audio file.
2. Launch cooledit2000 and open the 500mb audio file as 44.1khz, 16bit, (and Intel ordering of bits).
3. Now we need to separate the tracks in a perfect way. There is always a 2 second pause (or so) with 0 values between the tracks. Execute Edit->Auto-Cue->Define Silence and enter "-999 db" / "1 ms" to define silence and "-999 db" / "1 ms" to define valid audio.
4. Select all (ctrl-a) and execute Edit->Auto-Cue->Find Phrases and Mark. This will find all the 0 value pauses.
5. Now execute View->Cue List. Select all the cues in the new window and press "batch". Then activate "save to file" and select a directory to save the files, change the type of audio to "Windows PCM" and press "Ok". This will save all the pieces as separate files.
6. Delete now the small wav files (the pauses) in the destination directory. Now the 0 value pauses are gone...
7. Fire up your preferred cd-burner, start a new project (or whatever it's called) and add the remaining wav files, set pauses of 2 seconds between each track and burn them.
8. What will come out of your burner is a valid audio cd (which will even be recognized correctly by CDDB). Now you can do whatever you want with it! Enjoy!

From Robin Page, batch # 74321891212 10 IFPI8736
Playing: Windows 98. Encore DVD player - player crashes and locks up. Must power off to eject. Panasonic DVD OK. Car CD OK.
Copying: Cant extract tracks with Adaptec Easy CD Creator 4

From Jeff S in Framingham, Massachussetts, batch # B5281-01
Copying: Converting it to MP3 using iTunes took a couple of hours (normally less than 10 minutes), and it resulted in files with loud and distinct popping sounds added to the tracks.

From Steve Welch in Boulder Colorado, batch # + + B5281-01 SONOPRESS USA 07863680822
Copying: It didn't seem to play correctly, on my iBook or my old DVD player, but I was able to rip it using iTunes 2.0.4 under OS 10.2.2. It took over four hours to rip, but the MP3's seem to be fine.

I've taken it back to Circuit City 3 times but all of their copies seem to be bad. They seem to be totally ignorant of the problem. Here's the weird thing--it plays fine in their HP and Compaq desktop computers in DVD and CD-RW drives.

In my old RCA DVD player, the disk sounds like it is underwater. In my iBook, it just stutters with long silences followed by a few seconds of music.

From jimmeythefish in Nottingham, England, batch #74321891212
Copying: using music match i can copy with my sony cdrw but not with my nec dvdrom drive.

From Patrick, CDNow - USA
Copying: My computer generally locks up for quite a while when trying to access the CD in explorer. Sometimes I would get the lame CD player on the data track of this CD to appear when I put it in, but usually that didn't even happen. I have an Acer CRW8432IA CD Rewriter and a Sony DDU1621 DVD-ROM.

With Audiograbber, my usual ripper, only the Acer drive could rip the CD, and track 1 would not rip at all. On the Sony drive, Audiograbber either refuses to rip the CD, or rips extraordinarily slow (less than 1x). With ISO Buster, I could rip ALL tracks using EITHER drive. It always produces an error trying to read the first sector of track 1, but if you ignore that sector (which is invalid anyway), it reads the rest of the track fine.

I don't know what they were thinking with this. The copy protection is so easily averted. People can still make legal or illegal copies. All they are going to accomplish is frustrating and angering their paying customers. Then again, the record companies have been doing that for years. Count me in on a class action suit... they've had it coming!

OK CD Reports

From David Pacheco, batch # unknown
An easier way to rip the audio tracks from the cd is to use iso buster (http://www.isobuster.com). This will quite happly let you extract the audio data from the cd as wav files.

From Anonymous, batch # 74321895222 6111051210F2 IFPIL471
Playing: This australian release is without copy protection and plays in all my equipment.
Copying: Yes, there is no copy protection

From Pike, batch # A-63018/4321895222 A
Playing: States that it's protected by Midbar CDS200. Win2k, Plextor 121032S
Copying: I spent a good part of the last evening figuring out how to extract these tracks digitally. Here's how I did it (result is 100%)
1.Make an image of the cd with latest Clonecd 3.3.4.1 (not sure if latest version is needed)
2.Mount the image as a virtual audiocd using Deamon-Tools 3.0.0
3.Rip the virtual audiocd with EAC in secure mode.

From Steve E., batch # 07863680822 ++ B5281-01 IFPI LB48 (USA version)
Playing: Windows XP Pro with OEM (LG Brand) CD-ROM drive that came with my Dell system. CD spine has "RCA 07863 68082-2" and back has UPC barcode with the same digits.
Copying: Ripped to MP3s with MusicMatch Jukebox 5.10.0149. Ripped to 128bit and 160bit MP3, and WAV formats. No workarounds or problems. Sound quality is excellent; no distortion and no pops like the MP3s of the non-US version that I found on Morpheus.

From Ray Garrett in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, batch # SONOPRESS USA 07863680822 B5281-01
Copying: CD will rip successfully but extremely slowly with my Teac 532E 32x drive. This is probably because the drive supports C2 error correction. I used Exact Audio Copy to rip the audio tracks. The CD will also play successfully in digital mode with media player with this drive. The CD will not however play in either my brother's CD-ROM or my ACER 10x4x32 CD burner. When played or ripped with either of these drives, there is a series of clicks every few seconds or so in the music. I believe this is the Macrovision SafeAudio protection. There is no markings anywhere on the CD that even hint that the CD is protected. The CD also plays fine in my Kenwood Car CD/MP3 player. I have not yet tried it in my DVD player. If this is indeed the SafeAudio protection. It looks like a combination of Exact Audio Copy and a drive with C2 error correction will successfully bypass the protection.

From Kip Etheridge, Lakewood, Colorado
Copying: Copied to my computer as WMA files using Roxio Easy CD Creator 5.1. I bought the CD from Amazon.com. There is no Cactus Data Shield logo on the jewell case. I guess I lucked out on this one.