The latest improvement to Sony’s CD “copy protection” technology can still be defeated with sticky tape or marker pens, New Scientist has found. But Sony warns the methods could damage the discs and drives.
Copy protected discs are designed to stop computer users converting music tracks to digital music files, such as MP3s, which can be easily distributed over the internet. Sony’s key2audio is one type of copy protection and is designed to stop music discs playing in PC and Mac CD-ROM drives. Each protected disc comes with the warning: “Will not play in Mac/PC”.
Most protection systems, including key2audio, introduce data to discs that confuse CD-ROM drives, but are ignored by CD audio equipment. Some older copy protected discs had a visible gap near the edge of the disc, between the copy protection data and the music data.
It was found that drawing with a marker pen or applying tape over the gap and copy protection data would sometimes let the discs play normally in computers, presumably by preventing the CD-ROMs from reading the data.
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The latest copy-protected CDs from Sony DADC are meant to be immune to this practice, as the company modified its Key2audio technology six months ago by removing the visible gap. However, a test conducted by New Scientist shows the circumvention technique can still work with recently released discs.
Damage danger
Applying tape made it possible to play the Key2audio protected CD “This is a Remix” by Destiny’s Child in both PCs and Macs – it would not play without the tape. The disc was released in March 2002.
But Sony says anyone who attempts to defeat its copy protection in this way could easily ruin a music disc or damage a disc drive.
Company spokeswoman Sandra Wieflingseder says that audio tracks could be damaged using a marker because it is unclear where the extra, non-music information is located.
“There are no longer visible rings,” Wieflingseder says. “You don’t know where to put the pen so you can destroy one, two, three tracks.” Applying tape may unbalance a disc and cause serious damage to the CD drive, she adds.
The introduction of CD copy protection systems has upset those who enjoy using computers to play music, as well as digital rights campaigners. The UK’s Campaign for Digital Rights has launched a web site to track these protected CDs.
