Sony testing new anti piracy techniques for CD's

Braedley · Post by **Braedley** » 2005-05-31 04:44pm

By Brian Garrity

NEW YORK (Billboard) - As part of its mounting U.S. rollout of content-enhanced and copy-protected CDs, Sony BMG Music Entertainment is testing technology solutions that bar consumers from making additional copies of burned CD-R discs.

Since March the company has released at least 10 commercial titles -- more than 1 million discs in total -- featuring technology from U.K. anti-piracy specialist First4Internet that allows consumers to make limited copies of protected discs, but blocks users from making copies of the copies.

The concept is known as "sterile burning." And in the eyes of Sony BMG executives, the initiative is central to the industry's efforts to curb casual CD burning.

"The casual piracy, the school yard piracy, is a huge issue for us," says Thomas Hesse, president of global digital business for Sony BMG. "Two-thirds of all piracy comes from ripping and burning CDs, which is why making the CD a secure format is of the utmost importance."

Names of specific titles carrying the technology were not disclosed. The effort is not specific to First4Internet. Other Sony BMG partners are expected to begin commercial trials of sterile burning within the next month.

I'm just glad I live in Canada where I don't have to worry about the legality of copying my disks for more than just backup.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2005-05-31 04:46pm

I personally really don't see that much of a problem, but I'd image some people would easily piss their knickers over this.

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2005-05-31 04:50pm

I don't see how they can even stop people from making multiple copies. Its a sound file, make copy on the computer, burn it to CD. Make multiple direct copies from the same master CD.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2005-05-31 05:54pm

this was tried already, and someone found that you could defeat their copy protection by holding down the shift key while the cd loaded. somehow i'm skeptical that thye can actually come up with a secure way to protect discs.

SPOOFE · Post by **SPOOFE** » 2005-05-31 06:13pm

this was tried already, and someone found that you could defeat their copy protection by holding down the shift key while the cd loaded.

Are you sure? That method simply gave the CD an auto-loading exec or something, basically said "No copy!" The article in the OP makes it seem like they do something to the data copied to the CD-R's.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2005-05-31 06:15pm

SPOOFE wrote:
this was tried already, and someone found that you could defeat their copy protection by holding down the shift key while the cd loaded.
Are you sure? That method simply gave the CD an auto-loading exec or something, basically said "No copy!" The article in the OP makes it seem like they do something to the data copied to the CD-R's.

i don't see how they could actually make the technology copyproof without drastically altering the way cds already work. which would probably wind up violating fair use laws, as there's nothing illegal about backing up your own music collection. or making mp3s if you want to transfer your own cds to an mp3 player.

Spyder · Post by **Spyder** » 2005-05-31 06:43pm

They could spend money on copy protection until they've exhausted a small country's GDP, it'll be cracked in ten minutes.

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2005-05-31 06:58pm

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:I personally really don't see that much of a problem, but I'd image some people would easily piss their knickers over this.

Well yes, Spanky, illegal business practices do tend to make people 'piss their knickers', or more precisely, 'become annoyed at illegal bullshit'. This sort of thing is illegal in a number of places.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2005-05-31 07:01pm

Huh, it is?

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2005-05-31 07:09pm

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:Huh, it is?

it violates fair use laws and the digital millenium act. which lets people make backup copies of their own digital media. and/or transfer their music to mp3 players if they want, which does fall under fair use.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2005-05-31 07:12pm

Ah, I see.

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2005-05-31 07:14pm

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:Ah, I see.

And that's just in the US, where these are not enforced due to massive corporate cocksucking. I beleive Austrailia's consumer rights group has declared these sort of things.. And region-encoding entirely.. Illegal. A few other places walk the same beat. So yes. There's legitimate outcry.

SPOOFE · Post by **SPOOFE** » 2005-05-31 07:30pm

i don't see how they could actually make the technology copyproof without drastically altering the way cds already work.

Sony? Trying to re-invent the wheel? Perish the thought!

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2005-05-31 07:38pm

SPOOFE wrote:
i don't see how they could actually make the technology copyproof without drastically altering the way cds already work.
Sony? Trying to re-invent the wheel? Perish the thought!

remember their mini-disc player? it wound up more or less bombing due to the proprietary formats. sony's mp3 player that limited users to their proprietary atrac formats? it wound up bombing. needless to say i don't think sony's going to be too successful with a product that limits what people can do with their stuff.

Braedley · Post by **Braedley** » 2005-05-31 07:59pm

If you read the full article, and not just the snippet I posted, then you would see that the master can be copied any number of times (something that Sony wants to change), but the burned cd can't be copied. This solves the "friend of a friend" problem that contributes to the ripping and burning theft which they claim is 2/3s of all piracy.
However, (and lets see if I can word this properly) in Canada, taking a copy of a cd prepared by a "friend" (and I use the term loosely) with the friends permission to do so (which would then not be considered theft in the traditional sense) is perfectly legal, but allowing the general public to take (or buy) a copy of a cd prepared by yourself is illegal. The same is true if you download music or movies, and likewise, uploading to the general public (a fine line in things like irc, university networks, etc.) is illegal, but uploading to a "friend" (and only a friend) is fine. This is where my original comment about living in Canada comes from.

SPOOFE · Post by **SPOOFE** » 2005-05-31 08:02pm

remember their mini-disc player? it wound up more or less bombing due to the proprietary formats.

Remember it? I had one of the originals. Hell, I've owned two of them. I was convinced MD could be an excellent format... when they came out, the only similar alternatives were MP3 players, which (at the time) didn't have anywhere NEAR the capacity of MD players.

Sony's hubris was in believing that people would pay a huge fucking price premium for a Sony proprietary format. If they had gotten the price of their MD player/recorders down to $99 before MP3 players did, they would have cemented MD as a standard.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2005-05-31 08:10pm

Braedley wrote:If you read the full article, and not just the snippet I posted, then you would see that the master can be copied any number of times (something that Sony wants to change), but the burned cd can't be copied. This solves the "friend of a friend" problem that contributes to the ripping and burning theft which they claim is 2/3s of all piracy.
However, (and lets see if I can word this properly) in Canada, taking a copy of a cd prepared by a "friend" (and I use the term loosely) with the friends permission to do so (which would then not be considered theft in the traditional sense) is perfectly legal, but allowing the general public to take (or buy) a copy of a cd prepared by yourself is illegal. The same is true if you download music or movies, and likewise, uploading to the general public (a fine line in things like irc, university networks, etc.) is illegal, but uploading to a "friend" (and only a friend) is fine. This is where my original comment about living in Canada comes from.

that only really works for disc to disc copying, which is ridiculously easy to work around. you merely need to rip the mp3s to a hdd. of course, if it's set up so that it won't let you rip the mp3s, or it somehow buggers up your system when trying to rip them, then sony's again violating fair use laws.

so it still doesn't sound very practical or feasible.

SPOOFE · Post by **SPOOFE** » 2005-05-31 08:14pm

of course, if it's set up so that it won't let you rip the mp3s, or it somehow buggers up your system when trying to rip them, then sony's again violating fair use laws.

I imagine Sony thinks they have a way of automatically encoding the MP3's to re-code a CD-R into being unburnable. Or something. I'm in your boat, I think... I can't see how Sony expects to be able to control anything except the original disc.

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2005-05-31 11:36pm

SPOOFE wrote:
this was tried already, and someone found that you could defeat their copy protection by holding down the shift key while the cd loaded.
Are you sure? That method simply gave the CD an auto-loading exec or something, basically said "No copy!" The article in the OP makes it seem like they do something to the data copied to the CD-R's.

I'd have to imagine that they'd need some sort of special driver to facilitate this kind of restriction. Once you have WAV, AIFF or lossless versions of the tracks on the CD, you can burn as many CD-R's as you want, and others can burn as many copies of those CD-R's as they want.

So either it relies on a special, virus-like driver, auto-installed when you pop the CD in, which burns the necessary "sterilization" data to the CD or they rely on the user using some POS software from Sony to burn CDs. I'm guessing that it's more like the former. And if that's the case, it can be bypassed by not allowing auto-execution of programs from an optical drive (something which should be off by default in the first place).

And as usual, this kind of copy protection technology would never work on Mac OS X or Linux.

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2005-05-31 11:41pm

Code: Select all

john@bigbox:~$ dd if=/dev/cdrom of=diskimage conv=noerror,sync

Seems to work for recovering scratched data CDs, might work with this.

Solauren · Post by **Solauren** » 2005-05-31 11:42pm

Someone should point out to Sony that in order for the CD to play on old players, it has to be well, playable or close to the same format.

Besides, there's not a datafile around that can't be cracked.

I mean, if i can get a Access 97 database to talk to a mainframe working on Cobol, this will be a peace of cake for a good C or Access programmer.

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2005-06-01 12:05am

Ahem. People who play with Access aren't "programmers."

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2005-06-01 11:40am

Even if Sony did achieve the impossible, a perfect anti-piracy disc, there's always the audio out socket on every PC or CD player etc. It's then a case of copying the music as it plays through the speakers. Hell, I did this with my MD player (first generation recordable one, still works brilliantly at 5 years old) and still do in some cases if my optic out cable is nowhere to be found. In the end, they have to allow the music to come out of that machine. And that means the music can and will be copied.

Glocksman · Post by **Glocksman** » 2005-06-01 12:19pm

I think Sony knows that audio CD copy protections are of limited to no use against savvy PC users.
What they're trying to prevent is widespread copying of copies by every John or Jane Luser who would have no clue what to do if Roxio didn't copy the disc and then just go out and buy the original.

As others have said, the problem with trying to copy protect audio CD's is making the 'protection' backwards compatible with the existing base of installed players.
Any truly effective protection would have to be incompatible (otherwise you can just hook up the digital out to a PC and copy that stream) and you can imagine the shitstorm that'd happen then.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2005-06-01 12:23pm

Admiral Valdemar wrote:Even if Sony did achieve the impossible, a perfect anti-piracy disc, there's always the audio out socket on every PC or CD player etc. It's then a case of copying the music as it plays through the speakers. Hell, I did this with my MD player (first generation recordable one, still works brilliantly at 5 years old) and still do in some cases if my optic out cable is nowhere to be found. In the end, they have to allow the music to come out of that machine. And that means the music can and will be copied.

That will produce shitty quality. The bigger problem is the S/PDIF digital output, which would allow digital copies. They'll probably outlaw those S/PDIF digital outputs next.